A delicate flower slipped between the Amethyst Crystal Dragon's fingers and fell back into the lake alongside its blood tears.
The flower was immaculate white, as pure and innocent as a nascent love, clean as a blank sheet of paper.
But upon that blank sheet lay a glaring scarlet streak.
A scarlet so beautiful and mournful it pierced the heart.
The divine herb, Lovesick Heartbreak Red.
It bloomed amid the blood tears filling the entire lake.
The Dragon Emperor's soul glanced at the lakeshore, at the Goddess of Love, who wept with heart-rending sorrow, already consumed by "hatred" and no longer able to control herself.
It did not linger for the beauty. Leaping forward, it transformed into a streaking purple crystal dragon and plunged into the lake, filled with the Goddess of Love's blood tears, rushing toward the divine peony blooming at the bottom.
"Awooo—"
A clear, resonant cry rang out above the water.
The Amethyst Crystal Dragon's entire soul settled upon the bud of the Lovesick Heartbreak Red, and a strange reaction began.
The whole twelve-petal divine flower seemed to have been "pollinated." Its blood-stained white petals withered one by one...
A deep red radiance spread upward from the lakebed—the light of a Soul Beast abandoning everything to cultivate anew as a human.
An embryo, its heartbeat faintly stirring, began to grow in the heart of the Lovesick Heartbreak Red.
The flower embryo resembled a fruit that had come into being after the flower bloomed and withered.
Under the twisting influence of its million years of cultivation and the medicinal power of the Lovesick Heartbreak Red, the boundary between life and death began to reverse. The embryo on the flower slowly grew, gradually taking on the clear outline of a human body.
Under the influence of the dragon soul, the amniotic membrane around the embryo rapidly hardened, transforming into a shell like purple crystal.
Time flowed...
Life and death exchanged places...
The Goddess of Love had long since stopped crying.
She lay by the lake, her tearful eyes once more lifeless. Yet the red and white symbolizing love and hate continued to mingle across her body.
"Crack!"
A crisp sound of splitting rang softly from the bottom of the lake.
With a splash, something broke the surface, bringing up a handful of long hair like purple crystal.
A human figure cut through the water and walked step by step from the lakebed.
A pair of Golden Pupils lit up the vast gloom.
His handsome face, its features sharply defined, tilted up, then lowered gently. Streams of water trickled from the ends of his hair.
His solemn, imposing presence seemed innate, lending his cold features a dashing, heroic air.
His shoulder-length hair gleamed with the texture of crystal.
His body, warm as a newly born dragon's, even heated the lake until a hazy mist rose above it.
He raised his left hand. His golden gaze traced the inside of his forearm, sliding all the way to the tip of his middle finger.
A legendary tale surfaced word by word in his memory:
"The Mysterious Heaven Hundred Treasures Record of the Tang Sect tells of..."
"A young man who was naturally serene and loved nothing more than tending flowers and plants. His home was always filled with green lotuses and water lilies, and countless red and green blooms."
"By day, he often recited poetry to the red flowers and green leaves. At night, he would raise a cup and invite the bright moon among the branches to drink with him."
"Whenever he came across fallen, withered blossoms, he would always weep in sorrow, then sweep the petals into a neat pile and bury them on the spot."
"People often say that emotion can move Heaven. This man loved flowers so dearly that a flower immortal from the heavens secretly descended to the mortal world and became his wife."
"But good times never last. The gods discovered what had happened and flew into a rage. Claiming that an immortal and a mortal could not be together, they ordered the flower immortal to return to the Divine Realm."
"From that day on, the young man had lost his beloved. He sighed and lamented all day, sunk in misery, and abandoned his gardening. The fences collapsed, the hedges fell apart, and the flowers and plants withered away, leaving the garden desolate."
"One day, a white-haired old man came to the young man's home. He told him that the white peony he loved most in the garden had been transformed from his wife's immortal body. If he burned the entire plant, the flower immortal would lose her immortal body, be cast down to the mortal world, and reunite with him as his wife."
"The young man immediately came to his senses, deeply regretting how poorly he had treated the flowers. He began tending to the garden with care once more."
"Though he loved his immortal wife, he could not bear to destroy the white peony. From that day on, he cherished it even more, weeping and pouring his heart out to the flower day and night, until at last his tears ran dry and his heart shattered. He died of lovesickness."
"As he lay dying, his heart's blood dripped onto the petals of his wife's immortal body, creating the Lovesick Heartbreak Red in its final form..."
After ten thousand years, by way of the memories of Xu Family descendants who had infiltrated the Tang Sect, the Dragon Emperor finally glimpsed two secrets:
The Lovesick Heartbreak Red could reverse life and death;
The Universe Asking-Love Valley was the place where the Goddess of Love had fallen.
A blood-stained white peony sprouted from the left wrist of the reincarnated Dragon Emperor, blossoming in his palm.
The Goddess of Love's tears had fallen into the mortal world.
God Rank, Body Martial Soul
—Lovesick Heartbreak Red!
The one and only in the world: a God Rank plant-type Martial Soul.
The Dragon Emperor's right hand rose from the lake as well.
He held in his right palm a stone so heavy it seemed without equal, black as ink.
Divine herb: Lovesick Heartbreak Red.
Its companion—
Divine mineral: Crow-Absolute Stone.
The hardest and heaviest, pure beyond compare.
The Dragon God's twin dragon: the Amethyst Dragon Emperor.
He looked at the white peony on his left wrist and the Crow-Absolute Stone in his right hand. At last, he spoke his first words since his rebirth. "So this is the divine physique known as the Flower Immortal Physique?"
The Lovesick Heartbreak Red Martial Soul quickly shrank back into his left wrist.
He gently closed his right hand. The hardest substance in the world rapidly melted in his grasp...
It turned into a Crow-Absolute Stone garment, temporarily covering his otherwise naked new body.
Step by step, the water parted around him as the Dragon Emperor made his way to shore.
He looked down at the Goddess of Love, who had calmed down, though the love and hate within her remained... chaotic and sharp.
How could it have failed to see through the Goddess of Love's little trick?
Before his death, the Dragon Emperor had been a peak God King. His will had been born of one of the two strongest Godhoods in the universe: the Will of Destruction.
How could he not see that within the Goddess of Love's seemingly tranquil soul, beneath the love floating on the surface...
Lay hatred, sunk into her heart and rooted in her bones.
Since the Crow-Absolute Stone had been formed from a pool of the Goddess of Love's blood tears before her fall, it could not contain only a trial of love.
Within that pool of blood tears, the Dragon Emperor's Will of Destruction had sensed not only love, but also a deep, concentrated hatred.
It was only because the gods had taken charge that the Goddess of Love's soul was needed to stabilize the Universe Asking-Love Valley secret realm. They had suppressed the hatred within her, preventing her from falling into an evil god.
Thus, perfect, devoted love alone could never have nurtured a Lovesick Heartbreak Red with a million years of cultivation.
This was a lie the Goddess of Love's soul had spun as a trial, to preserve the foundation of the Universe Asking-Love Valley.
The true answer to the divine trial was the hatred born from love. Only then could it fully nourish a million-year-old Lovesick Heartbreak Red.
A Flower Immortal Physique straight out of the legends of the Mysterious Heaven Hundred Treasures Record.
Author's Note:
The reason I introduced the divine herb Lovesick Heartbreak Red, besides bringing out the fated sense of "red versus blue" (Lovesick Heartbreak Red versus Blue Silver Emperor, more or less red versus blue), was to better tie it to the Thunderous Hell-Prison Vine Tang Wulin would obtain in the future.
Because there were only two divine creations in this world:
The Goddess of Love's Tear—Lovesick Heartbreak Red;
Thunder God's World Fall—Thunderous Hell-Prison Vine.
Of course, both were flowers growing on the graves of gods, so their Martial Soul quality was naturally God Rank.