A flash of dazzling purple had actually dyed the Origin of Life and Death, an abstract concept with no color of its own. It was beautiful, almost like a dream.
Yellow Springs' pupils contracted sharply, shrinking to pinpoints. He had never expected such a change.
Had Zhenwu "come back from the dead"?
Or had he left something strange and difficult to detect within the light of his own nature? Something with no purpose beyond establishing a subtle connection, so that anyone who drew near his body could awaken him from that inexplicable state of neither living nor dying and pull him free?
In an instant, thoughts surged through Yellow Springs' mind, and all manner of conjectures arose. He leaned toward the last one.
Back then, Zhenwu had been one of the Five Emperors of Antiquity, the Black Emperor, and the Demon-Quelling Heavenly Venerable among the Nine Venerables of the Daoist Sect. No matter how urgently he had sought the mysteries of the Dao near the Origin of Life and Death, hoping to ferry all beings across the Sea of Suffering and reach the Other Shore, how could greed have clouded his judgment and led him to make a fatal mistake, venturing too deep and too far until the Dao assimilated him?
If he had dared to do such a thing, he must have had a contingency plan—something that could free his true body from its predicament, from the jaws of death!
And it was only natural that Yellow Springs, whom he had subdued back then, would have been marked by that subtle connection without realizing it.
So the self who had once dared not approach, for fear of being assimilated by the Dao, had endured countless hardships, reincarnated, and returned fully prepared—only to become the very spark that awakened him!