The Original Agreement

If life were always like a first meeting, Xu Yuan's assessment of Tianyan might perhaps have been summed up in two words: mysterious. To him back then, Tianyan—her temperament, her cultivation method, even the Heavenly Oversight Pavilion she belonged to—was shrouded in mist. But life always charged forward with time.

So Tianyan was not mysterious.

On the contrary, compared to the bizarre personalities wrought by cultivation systems and individual power, she seemed almost too ordinary.

She got jealous, got angry, and threw unreasonable tantrums. Compared with Ran Qingmo's otherworldly detachment and Li Qingyan's perfection, like flowers reflected in a mirror and moonlight upon water, Tianyan was like the girl next door one could find anywhere in his previous life.

Objectively speaking, she was even a little foolish. After all, as the Heavenly Oversight Pavilion Holy Maiden, after meeting him, she had not managed to land even one proper counterattack.

But in this instant, Xu Yuan's assessment of her returned to what it had been at the start.

Mysterious.

At the heart of the blood mist, within the sea of flesh mimicked by the Black Death Fungal Mat, Xu Yuan looked up at the girl descending upon his head with indifferent killing intent.

The Life Dao Essence devoured the vitality of living beings, nourishing the Black Death Fungal Mat, which in turn transformed into the Abyssal Rift and supplied him with Source Qi, forming a closed cycle.

Just as Xu Yuan had expected, as a calamity from ten thousand years ago, the Strange Ghost's Abyssal Rift could restrain the Tianyan Dao Method of the Heavenly Oversight Pavilion. The Abyssal Rift severed the Tianyan Dao Method's influence over the Source Qi of heaven and earth.

But just as water could extinguish fire, fire could also boil water.

Just as she had in