Yang Chen: Your Ladyship, Your Dao of Reincarnation Also Owes Me Karma!

Houtu's gaze pierced through the thick stone walls of Pingxin Hall.

Her eyes crossed the borders of the tribe, passed over the savage mountains and rivers, and finally settled upon that land of death, shrouded year-round in endless resentment and towering bloodshed.

The Netherworld Blood Sea.

At that moment, the domineering ferocity belonging to an ancestral witch quietly receded from her eyes like the ebbing tide.

In its place was a vast compassion that was almost divine.

And an unflinching resolve to burn herself to ashes in order to illuminate eternal darkness.

"My condition is..."

Her voice was soft. Every word seemed to drain all the strength from her body, carrying a weight heavy enough to crush the heavens of eternity.

"If one day in the future, I transform myself into reincarnation and open a path to rebirth for the countless wandering souls and ghosts of the Primordial World..."

Boom!

The instant her words fell, the steady, weighty pulse within Pingxin Hall, one that seemed fused with the earth itself, suddenly faltered!

The mural of Pangu cleaving open the heavens upon the stone wall warped in light and shadow, as though even the giant axe that split chaos trembled.

What a heaven-shaking vow!

At this very moment, in this very place, she had revealed to Yang Chen—the greatest variable, a being whose bloodline bore the mark of her mortal enemy—the ultimate secret of her future transformation into reincarnation!

This was no longer a negotiation.

It was a gamble that staked everything.

She had turned her most secret Dao and the future fate of the entire Witch Clan into heavy chips, then pushed them resolutely onto the table before Yang Chen.

Houtu withdrew her gaze, which seemed to have seen through life and death, and looked at Yang Chen once more.

There was no longer the slightest hint of testing in the depths of those gentle eyes. All that remained was an undisguised plea and trust.

"I hope you can act and protect my Witch Clan."

Her voice carried a faint, almost imperceptible tremor.

It was not fear, but the deepest concern of a mother about to embark on a distant journey for the children she could not bear to leave behind.

"So that after I am gone, they will not be purged by other factions and meet the fate of... extermination."

Yang Chen watched her quietly.

He said nothing.

Pingxin Hall sank into a deathly silence older than the savage land beyond its walls.

The Luminous Pearls set into the dome gave off a cold, dim light. Their rays passed through the floating dust in the air, casting two solitary, opposing shadows that stretched and twisted soundlessly across the rough stone walls.

Yang Chen's fingertips tapped lightly against the enormous, coarse stone table, once after another, with a steady rhythm.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The sound was not loud, yet it pierced the heavy aura within the hall that was linked to the pulse of the earth, striking Houtu's mind with absolute precision.

Every beat seemed to measure the cracks in her Dao Heart.

After a long while.

A faint trace of admiration passed through Yang Chen's eyes.

The future Lord of the Earthly Dao.

Such foresight into the future, such resolve to sacrifice herself for her people, such vast compassion capable of bearing the suffering of all living beings.

Indeed, it was enough to make even the Six Sages seated high above the nine heavens seem small.

He truly felt a measure of respect.

But respect was respect.

Business was business.

Yang Chen smiled.

He gently shook his head.

That gesture stirred not the slightest ripple of mana, yet Houtu's eyes, always gentle as the earth, suddenly contracted.

The steady aura surrounding her, fused with the entire land of the Witch Clan, showed the slightest disturbance—so subtle it was nearly impossible to notice.

Even the light in the hall seemed to dim.

"Your Ladyship, this deal of yours does sound quite worthwhile."

Yang Chen's voice finally broke the suffocating stillness.

His tone carried a trace of teasing, a smile impossible to fathom, echoing lightly through the empty hall.

"Using an illusory future, an uncertain promise."

"To exchange for my very real protection here and now."

His words contained no heat, yet they were like an invisible scalpel, precisely cutting open the naked, essential core of the transaction hidden beneath Houtu's grand compassionate vow while she was utterly unguarded.

Houtu's heart sank sharply.

"But..."

Yang Chen's tone abruptly changed.

The teasing and the smile receded like the tide, vanishing without a trace.

In their place was an absolute sharpness that pierced through eternity and pointed directly at the source.

"When you transform into reincarnation and complete heaven and earth, the merit of that deed will indeed be great enough to shake the entire Primordial World."

"But it will also be karma—a colossal karma so immense that even Saints would avoid it from afar and shrink back at the sight of it!"

His voice was not loud, but every word became a solid sledgehammer that smashed fiercely against Houtu's Dao Heart, harder than divine iron!

Houtu's breath stopped for a moment.

"You wish to establish the underworld!"

"You wish to divide life and death!"

"You wish to govern reincarnation!"

Yang Chen did not speak quickly, yet each sentence pressed forward step by step, every word carrying an oppressive force that could crush all things.

"This means establishing an entirely new order and forming a world of your own outside the order Heaven's Dao has already decreed!"

"Your Ladyship, do you think..."

The corners of Yang Chen's lips slowly curved into an arc of utter coldness.

"Will the lofty Heaven's Dao allow you to succeed so easily?"

"Before other factions even have the chance to purge your people, the obstacles and tribulations sent down by Heaven's Dao alone will be enough to make your painstaking grand vow fail completely and vanish like foam!"

Before his words had even faded.

Yang Chen rose to his feet.

He lifted the earthenware wine bowl, larger than a human head, and slowly walked toward Houtu, one step at a time.

The distance between them swiftly closed in silence.

Less than three feet remained.

The pungent scent of wine around him mingled with an aura of ending older than chaos and more deathly still than the void, rushing toward her.

At that moment, Houtu's aura, always one with the earth and all-embracing, involuntarily contracted inward, forming the most instinctive defensive barrier.

Her Dao was afraid!

Yang Chen looked directly into her eyes, where stormy waves had long been stirred, taking in all her shock and disbelief.

He spoke one word at a time, his voice so clear that it seemed to carve directly into the depths of Houtu's Divine Soul with a blade.

"Therefore."

"It is not I who need the protection of your Witch Clan."

"It is your incomparably difficult Dao of Reincarnation, a path destined to fight Heaven's Dao for its very existence, that needs me."

"It needs me—the 'variable' whom even Heaven's Dao fears and whom even the Six Sages must persuade with kind words—to safeguard it!"

The instant his words fell, Yang Chen raised the wine bowl in his hand.

He offered a distant toast to Houtu.

It was not the posture of equal allies.

It was more like a creditor looking down upon his own possession.

He looked at Houtu's face, drained of all color and pale as paper. The smile on his face was brilliant enough to sting the eyes.

"Your Ladyship, you miscalculated."

"From the very beginning, it was not I who owed the Witch Clan karma."

"It is your Dao of Reincarnation that also owes me an immense debt of karma!"