"--What?"
A youthful, immature voice—so young as to be almost childish—rang out, blocking his path and making him involuntarily lose focus for a moment.
But the Heavenly Supreme about to break into the Endless Fire Domain clearly had no time to care about that.
"What audacity! You dare block even a Heavenly Supreme? Are you tired of living?!"
Yet as his furious shout fell, he finally saw the other party's face.
The figure was still immature, looking no different from a child, though slender enough; more importantly, that face made it impossible at a glance to tell whether it belonged to a boy or girl. Only their clothing and hairstyle barely identified them as a youth.
Yet upon seeing that vaguely familiar face, the Heavenly Supreme's heart plunged into an icy abyss, freezing him to the bone.
"Y-Yao Wan?! I-Is that you?!"
"Impossible! How is this possible?! Weren't you in secluded cultivation?!"
His delight at having slipped through the encirclement, his obsession with washing away his past humiliation—all those thoughts vanished into thin air upon seeing that face.
Even though he knew that face still differed somewhat from the real person's, fear nonetheless crawled up from beneath his feet like a malicious ghost lurking under a pond, seeming ready to drag him into its depths. It chilled him to the marrow.
It seemed this man knew Mother, and had clearly clashed with her before.
So much so that upon seeing his face, he could not help recalling Mother, wearing an expression as though he had seen a ghost.
Throughout the countless wars fought to establish the Endless Fire Domain, Mother had accumulated enemies too numerous to count, including no small number of Heavenly Supremes.
"You need not take me for my mother."
That was all the immature youth before him