What Did My Whole Journey Amount To?

By then, Fuxi had huffed and puffed his way to the shore of the East Sea, following the sunflowers Xiang Dong had planted along the way.

He saw neither his sister nor the blond punk, but he did see an Earth Qilin and a True Dragon locked in fierce combat. With his current cultivation, he couldn't very well enter the battlefield, lest he be farmed as an experience mob.

Just as he was about to calculate Nuwa's location, he witnessed a sight he would never forget. The sunflowers all along the route burst into golden light, forming a road of light.

Its starting point was deep in the East Sea, and its destination was Buzhou Mountain. At a speed he couldn't comprehend, the golden light shot straight over his head toward Buzhou Mountain.

It was so fast that he could barely see it. By the time he came to his senses, only a faint halo remained in the sky, not yet dispersed.

The sea of sunflowers along the route vanished with the golden road of light, every plant crumbling into powder and scattering.

But the sunflower seeds in their flower heads remained. The Primordial Xirang's ceaseless vitality had taken effect, and the seeds scattered on the wind, spreading to more distant places.

When they took root and bloomed again, the sea of flowers would be even more luxuriant.

That feeling of blood kinship couldn't be faked. On a sudden impulse, his fingers flew as he performed a divination.

The result showed that his sister, Nuwa, had already returned home.

He calculated again and again to make sure, but the result was always the same. Nuwa had returned home safely. In the time he had spent standing there in a daze, she could even have brewed herself a cup of tea and sat down to rest.

The sea breeze howled past, tossing Fuxi's disheveled hair.

For some reason, Fuxi was suddenly struck by an utterly absurd feeling. He looked down at his feet. In his rush to make up time, the spiritual treasures on his feet had started smoking from all the running. Then he looked back at the road of light stretching across the sky.

A few questions popped into his head. Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

It took Fuxi quite a while to finally accept the truth: Nuwa really had gone back, in a way he could neither understand nor accept.

So...

"What did I... run all those hundreds of millions of miles for?"

Fuxi's trembling voice sounded even more forlorn in the sea breeze.

The blond punk had run off with his sister, and he had been too worried to let it be, so he had chased after them. He had huffed and puffed for tens of thousands of years, running hundreds of millions of miles, and had finally been on the verge of catching up.

And what happened? Now he was being told that she had just boarded a "high-speed train" and zipped straight home, just like that.

So what did that make him? Had he really been so bored his balls ached that he'd come all the way to the seaside for some fresh air?

"Xiang—Dong—!!!"

On the shore of the East Sea, Fuxi's furious, unhinged roar echoed.

If Xiang Dong had known what Fuxi was thinking, he would surely have given him a thumbs-up and said:

You've got perseverance, all right. Want me to give you an award?

But Xiang Dong didn't know. Returning to Buzhou Mountain only meant he had completed eighty percent of his task; the final, crucial step remained.

After bidding Nuwa farewell, Xiang Dong headed for Buzhou Mountain once more. This time, his treatment was excellent. Unlike his first visit, he didn't have to climb while bearing Pangu's Pressure like a weight-training exercise.

Pangu's Pressure opened a path for him of its own accord, so he could travel unburdened and even continue using Flash. That was how he reached the entrance to Pangu Hall in the shortest possible time.

In the blood pool, twelve cocoons of flesh rose and fell as though breathing, the blood vessels on their surfaces expanding and contracting with them.

The Twelve Ancestral Witches' gestation had entered its final stage, and they were all about to take form and be born.

Di Jiang, the eldest brother, would have been the first, but Xiang Dong had used Pangu's Pressure to suppress him. Otherwise, he would have popped out long ago.

Though he had yet to be born, his cocoon of flesh had swollen until it was nearly transparent. Xiang Dong could even make out the blurry shape of Di Jiang's true form, stirring restlessly inside.

"Big brother, you've really got a fiery temper. Someone might think you were in a hurry to be born and reincarnate."

Xiang Dong muttered to himself. Even with Pangu's Pressure forcibly holding Di Jiang back, it was almost no longer enough to prevent his birth.

The Innate Sha Qi and Turbid Qi in the blood pool were still dense, only slightly weaker than before Xiang Dong had freed himself and entered the pool.

Come to think of it, though the Twelve Ancestral Witches had all been born from Pangu's Essence Blood, each had a distinctive appearance. Judging by looks alone, no one would have thought they were brothers and sisters.

Xiang Dong tried to remember. Di Jiang's true form seemed to be a big red ball of flesh with six legs and four wings. A lot of fan works depicted him as adorably goofy.

But at his core, he was still the foremost of the Twelve Ancestral Witches, the Ancestral Witch who represented space and speed. In others' eyes, the Twelve Ancestral Witches were twelve demon gods.

And now, what Xiang Dong wanted was to wash away the Twelve Ancestral Witches' name as demon gods, restore them as the authentic heirs of Pangu, and make them pure Innate Divine Beings.

"Come on, time to hit you with the hard stuff, no tech."

He wasted no more time. After briefly refining the Twelve-Rank World-Cleansing White Lotus, he tossed it into the blood pool.

Freed from his control, the white lotus expanded rapidly in midair. Twelve flawless white petals unfurled, shedding great swathes of soft white light.

It then hovered above the head of his alt in the blood pool, protecting it while joining with the purifying waves of light it released, instantly making the purifying light more than ten times stronger.

In an instant, the blood in the pool began to boil, bubbling and gurgling. The moment the Innate Sha Qi and Turbid Qi touched the purifying white light, they gave off a fierce sizzling sound.

That was professionalism. Professional work had to be left to professionals. With the Twelve-Rank World-Cleansing White Lotus as a cheat, Xiang Dong's great purification project had finally hit the accelerator, fast-forwarding at more than ten times the speed.

The Innate Sha Qi and Turbid Qi in the blood pool visibly dissipated by a considerable amount. Deep in the Earth Veins, however, a steady stream of Postnatal Sha Qi continued to flow in along them.

That could be left alone, since it had no particularly strong corrosive effect on the Ancestral Witches' Primordial Spirits.

Besides, the Twelve Ancestral Witches needed Sha Qi to cultivate the Nine-Turn Profound Art and strengthen their bodies.

So a certain amount of Sha Qi had to be left behind. He only needed to completely purify the Innate Sha Qi that would corrode their Primordial Spirits.

Next came the twelve Nine-Grade Lotus Thrones. Xiang Dong controlled them, positioning each one precisely above a cocoon of flesh.

"Come on, come on, sit in a row and have some fruit. One each, no fighting."

The Nine-Grade Lotus Thrones lowered layer upon layer of light curtains, wrapping the flesh cocoons tightly. The soft purifying light locked onto the faint Primordial Spirits gestating within, while keeping all the Innate Sha Qi outside the door.

That way, when those twelve were born, their heads would at least be clear, and perhaps they would develop a little more fully.

They wouldn't be like they originally were, with underdeveloped cerebellums and brains that hadn't developed at all, doing as they pleased in the Primordial World all day because there was something wrong with their heads, then being schemed to death without ever knowing what had happened.