I chased him to the ruined temple and abruptly stopped.
The wind swept sand and dust from the barren slope, striking my face with a rough, gritty touch. The temple gate hung crooked, and half a broken stele stood beneath the steps. The instant that slanted carved mark entered my sight, my heart clenched—the exact same mark was on my wooden hairpin, not a hair's breadth off.
Ji Wuchen stood beside the stele without turning around.
"You knew I would trigger a Lightning Tribulation?" I kept my voice low, my fingertips digging into my palm. "Or... are you after my blood too?"
Only then did he turn around, his gaze falling upon my brow. It was still faintly burning. The Phoenix Mark had yet to fully fade, like a red-hot crack embedded between flesh and skin.
"If I wanted your blood, I would not have brought you here just now." He spoke calmly, as though that battle and those three charred corpses were beneath mention.
I did not believe him. He had pretended to be useless for three years, saved me in a single night, and now led me to this desolate temple. How could there be so many coincidences?
Just as I was about to question him again, he suddenly raised his hand.
A wisp of pale golden light rose from his fingertips and hovered in the air, faint yet solid. It trembled lightly, unexpectedly echoing the Phoenix Mark on my brow from afar. As though linked by some invisible thread, ripples of energy spread outward.
My breath caught.
"I did not guess it." He looked at that strand of golden light. "It told me."
"It?"
"There is something inside me." He paused, as though carefully choosing his words. "It is called the Great Dao Felling Heaven System. It can sense the world's Remnant Dao, Calamity Qi, Battle Intent Fragments... and the Primordial Aura within you."
I stared at him, unable to speak for a moment.
Three years ago, his Dao bones had shattered, and he had become a cripple. Everyone in the clan believed he had merely survived by luck. Yet now, not only had he evaded assassination after assassination, he could also appear at crucial moments and shield me from fatal danger. So it was not luck, nor had he been concealing his cultivation—it was... this unheard-of thing supporting him?
"You said it is a system?" I finally asked. "Then just how strong are you now?"
He shook his head. "I cannot say. Once it is exposed, it will stop functioning. All I can do now is hide and wait until the time is ripe."
"So you have been enduring all this time?" I gave a cold laugh. "Watching others trample over your head and slap your face, and you endured it?"
"It is not endurance." His gaze darkened. "I am cultivating. Every extra day I lie low, I become a little stronger than I was yesterday. The harder my enemies press me, the more it gives me."
The moment his words fell, the clouds overhead suddenly churned.
Purple-red heavenly light pressed downward, like a sheet of rotting flesh plastered across the night sky. Dull thunder rolled in the distance, but it did not come from the clouds. It seemed to rise from deep underground instead, making the stone slabs beneath our feet tremble faintly.
Ji Wuchen's expression changed, and he stepped in front of me.
"It is here."
Before his words faded, a bolt of blood-red lightning tore through the sky and struck straight down!
Boom—!
The entire ruined temple shook violently. The stone steps before the entrance exploded into fragments, and roof tiles rained down. I instinctively retreated, but he grabbed my wrist and forcibly dragged me into the temple.
With his back to me, he spread his arms. A pale golden barrier rose in an instant, blocking every flying stone and aftershock.
Yet the barrier lasted only a moment before cracks began spreading along its edges. Though the blood lightning had not struck him directly, its residual force was already more than the Pseudo-Primordial Body could withstand. Sweetness surged into his throat as blood rose, but he forcibly swallowed it back down.
"Do not move!" he barked. "This tribulation recognizes the aura created by our resonance. Separating will only provoke it into becoming fiercer!"
I leaned against a broken wall, my breathing still unsteady. Watching blood seep from his shoulder and stain his clothes red, my fingers curled unconsciously.
If he had not stood in front of me to block that strike, I would already have fallen.
But why should I trust him? Why would someone hiding such a secret tell me the truth at precisely this time?
Gritting my teeth, I slowly raised my right hand.
A thread of Golden Flame emerged in my palm, weak yet scorching. This was the first time I had actively drawn upon the power of my bloodline since awakening. As the flame flickered, the Phoenix Mark on my brow began burning again, as though something was waking within it.
I pushed the Golden Flame toward the barrier on the verge of collapse.
The instant fire touched golden light, there was no rejection. Instead, they fused together, transforming into a crimson-gold shield that steadily supported the temple's remaining structure.
Ji Wuchen glanced at me from the corner of his eye, the corner of his lips lifting slightly. "Since it recognizes 'us'... then we will endure it together."
I did not answer. I only stared at the fused barrier. Those two powers could coexist, even strengthen one another—what did that mean? Had our fates truly been bound together by some rule?
Thunder sounded outside once more. This time, the interval was shorter and the power greater.
Ji Wuchen sat down against a broken pillar and closed his eyes to regulate his breathing. His face was somewhat pale, but his breathing remained steady. I leaned against the wall opposite him, silently circulating Spiritual Power to suppress the turmoil within me.
In the silence, time passed little by little.
After an unknown length of time, he suddenly gave a soft laugh.
"You said you would expose my trump card. Now that you have seen it, are you afraid?"
I looked at the wisp of pale golden light still lingering in his hand and shook my head. "No."
After a pause, I added, "I am only wondering why someone capable of hiding such a secret for three years chose to tell me the truth."
He opened his eyes and looked toward the gradually fading Phoenix Mark on my brow. His voice was very soft. "Because you are not an enemy."
"And..." He paused, as if confirming some sensation. "I can feel your pain."
My heart jolted.
It was neither verbal comfort nor a probing attempt to win me over, but an almost instinctive resonance. Just as when that blood lightning descended, I could sense the upheaval of his origin within him, and he could likewise sense my bloodline spiraling out of control.
This was not a coincidence.
Some deeper connection was quietly taking shape.
Thunder sounded outside again, closer than before, yet just as it was about to strike, it suddenly veered away and crashed into a distant mountainside, kicking up a vast cloud of dust.
We both looked toward the doorway.
Those purple-red clouds still loomed overhead, but the lightning seemed to be drawn away by something, no longer concentrated above the ruined temple.
"It is adapting," Ji Wuchen said quietly. "Our resonance has changed how it identifies its target."
"You mean... as long as we are together, it will not strike easily?"
"Not for now." He stood and brushed the dust from his clothes. "But it will return sooner or later. And next time, it may not be only lightning."
I knew whom he meant.
The Blood Demon Sect would not let me go, and Ji Hantian would not let him go either. At this moment, both of us carried secrets enough to alarm the entire Northern Wastes.
"What do we do next?" I asked.
"Wait," he said. "Wait for the Lightning Tribulation to disperse. Wait for them to follow the trail here. Then—"
He turned to look at me, his gaze sharpening. "We will show them what it means for a true taboo to descend upon the world."
I met his gaze without retreating.
The Phoenix Mark on my brow still faintly burned, and the Golden Flame in my palm had not gone out. This time, I did not suppress it.
Wind poured through the breach in the ruined temple, stirring the ends of my hair. That hint of crimson grew ever clearer, like burning embers slowly spreading outward.
Ji Wuchen looked at me, then suddenly reached out and stuffed a jade talisman into my hand.
The icy touch made me freeze.
"If you cannot hold on, crush it," he said. "It contains an Origin Imprint I left behind. It can block one fatal attack for you."
"What about you?"
"Me?" He smiled. "I cannot die yet. There are debts I must settle with my own hands."
I tightened my grip on the jade talisman until my knuckles turned white.
The thunder outside approached once more, even more violent than before.
Ji Wuchen walked to the entrance and raised his head toward the churning blood clouds, his back straight as a pine.
I stepped to his side and stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
Under the lightning's glow, our two shadows fell across the broken wall, faintly overlapping.
The next instant, a scarlet fissure split open in the sky. The second blood lightning was gathering force, aimed straight at the heart of the ruined temple.
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