Spirit Lake Healing, Silver Countenance, Moonlit Longing

The wind of the Source of Myriad Dragons was so gentle it seemed almost unreal.

Milky-white spiritual mist flowed slowly, brushing over Tang Wulin's battered, bloodied body and bringing threads of warm vitality that slightly suppressed the bone-piercing agony deep within his flesh. Yet this warmth nurtured by heaven and earth could not reach the heart that had suddenly sunk within him.

The white-clad girl stood quietly upon the stone platform. Her silver-blue dragon eyes were clear and empty as they remained fixed on him, holding only a scrutinizing gaze tracing the Golden Dragon King's Origin, without the slightest warmth reserved for an old acquaintance.

Strange, distant, lofty.

This face, identical to Na'er's, now resembled a fragile glaze of moonlight—beautiful to the extreme, yet cold to the extreme. It struck Tang Wulin's heart hard, chilling the hope that had just begun to rise within him bit by bit.

Di Tian remained bowed, standing with his head lowered, not daring to breathe too loudly.

Before this Silver Dragon Lord, even as the supreme ruler of the Star Dou Great Forest and a hundred-thousand-year ferocious beast, he was merely a servant who bowed his head and obeyed. He quietly awaited his mistress's command, not daring to make the slightest move.

After a long while, Gu Yue Na's soft, ethereal voice rang out once more in the silent forest:

"Release the restraints. Bring him over."

"Yes, my lord."

Di Tian raised his hand in response, and the Black Dragon Origin Chains wrapped around Tang Wulin's limbs and bloodline instantly dissolved without a trace.

The instant the restraints vanished, overwhelming weakness surged back. Tang Wulin's bones and tendons had already been shattered, and his soul power was exhausted. Without external support, his body immediately fell limp. Had a strand of gentle silver radiance not extended from ahead in time and lightly supported his waist and abdomen, he would have crashed heavily to the ground.

The silver light was soft as water, carrying not the slightest hostility. It steadily lifted his broken body and slowly moved him toward the front of the stone platform.

Only then did Tang Wulin see clearly that behind the stone platform was not level ground, but a vast, bottomless Spirit Lake.

The lake water was clear and crystalline, shimmering with faint blue-white light. There was neither wind nor ripple upon its surface, and it was so still that it resembled a divine mirror reflecting the ages. An incomparably pure aura of life continuously rose from the lake, enveloping the entire Source of Myriad Dragons. All vitality between heaven and earth originated here—the source core of the Star Dou Great Forest, Life Lake.

At the deepest part of the lake, a jade-white core crystal could vaguely be seen floating silently, flowing with endless vitality and pulsing with an ancient, enduring rhythm. It was the purest origin of life on the entire Douluo Continent, the core source that nourished all living beings through the ages and sustained the heartland of Star Dou.

Gu Yue Na moved with lotus-like steps, slowly descending from the stone platform and arriving at the shore of Life Lake.

Her pure-white skirts hung lightly over the lake's surface without touching a trace of moisture. Countless streams of silver light flowed from her body, perfectly merging with the origin power of Life Lake. The fated bond between gold and silver, hardness and softness, made the dormant Golden Dragon King's Origin within Tang Wulin tremble faintly, instinctively responding to the Silver Dragon before him and this sacred Spirit Lake.

"Your body has shattered, your soul power is exhausted, and your bloodline has been injured."

Gu Yue Na looked directly at him. Her voice was gentle and pleasing, yet still carried a godlike indifference, as though she were stating a fact unrelated to herself. "Your bloodline is one of a kind. You cannot perish."

She would not save all living beings, nor would she pity mortals. Even if Tang Wulin's injuries had left him on the verge of death, miserable and wretched, they could not stir the slightest compassion in her. The only reason she acted had never been the boy before her, but the strand of Golden Dragon King's Origin within him that shared the same source as her and was bound to her by fate.

The Dragon God was incomplete, yin and yang depended upon one another. If gold perished, silver would be harmed. This was fate carved into the laws of heaven and earth, impossible to alter. At this time, she still remained in the era of the Peerless Tang Clan. There were still long, distant years before the Dragon God's incarnation split into Gu Yue and Na'er, and before she met Tang Wulin. Those tangled loves and hatreds, companionship and parting, were an unwritten future to her. Naturally, she could not know him.

As her words fell, Gu Yue Na gently raised her hand.

Buzzz—!

The entire Life Lake suddenly trembled!

The Life Core that had lain dormant at the bottom of the lake for countless ages abruptly lit up with a towering jade-white divine radiance. A vast, boundless, incomparably pure torrent of life surged into the sky, transforming into countless fine strands of light that, guided by Gu Yue Na's Silver Dragon soul power, all poured toward Tang Wulin's body.

Unlike the tyrannical impact of a soul master's soul power, this life force originating from the Continent's Origin was gentle, tolerant, and nourishing without a sound.

Countless threads of light passed through his tattered clothes, cracked flesh, and misaligned bones, flowing through his bloodline and meridians to every corner of his body.

The tearing agony was instantly soothed away. His broken bones gave faint sounds of healing, his displaced organs slowly returned to their proper places, and his exhausted, dried-up meridians were filled and restored by endless vitality.

The crisscrossing bloodstains, burns, and bruises across his body scabbed over and fell away at a visible rate, revealing fresh, smooth skin beneath.

The Golden Dragon King's Bloodline, which had been thrown into disorder and nearly fallen silent after Di Tian's palm strike, gradually resumed its steady circulation under the nourishment of the ultimate life origin. Its formerly dim radiance slowly revealed faint streams of golden light.

His damaged physical foundation, overdrawn spiritual origin, and completely exhausted reserves of soul power rapidly healed at a heaven-defying speed beneath the infusion of the endless life force at Star Dou's core.

Tang Wulin was slightly stunned as he allowed the endless vitality to wash through his body.

He could clearly feel his ravaged body, once on the verge of death, rapidly recovering its strength. The bone-piercing chill faded completely, replaced by a warm fullness. Injuries that had made even breathing unbearably painful moments ago were swiftly vanishing.

The pain in his body grew lighter and lighter, yet the bitterness and fixation in his heart became heavier and heavier.

He slightly raised his eyes and stared blankly at the white-clad girl standing so close before him.

Her moonlight-like long hair, peerless features, and cool yet gentle bearing—every frown and movement perfectly overlapped with the small figure in his memories.

It was Na'er.

She really looked too much like her.

So much that he nearly could not stop himself from reaching out and softly calling her little sister, just as he had when they were children.

Yet those clear, indifferent silver dragon eyes were empty, without thought or memory, without the slightest familiar warmth.

She had saved him not because she knew him, nor because her heart had softened. It was merely fate at work, merely to preserve the other half of the Dragon God's Origin.

This ultimately gentle healing had been cold and unfamiliar from beginning to end.

The evening breeze swept across Spirit Lake, stirring her hair. She was beautiful beyond all dust of the mortal world.

Tang Wulin stared blankly at that peerless face, and before he realized it, his vision gradually blurred.

Before him stood Gu Yue Na, the Silver Dragon Lord from before the split, from before the ages. Yet what churned in his heart was another person's figure.

It was Gu Yue, frozen in ice for a thousand years, who had fallen into love.

It was the lover who had once stood at his side, shared his joys and sorrows, and given him all her tenderness, only to be separated from him by life and death in the end, torn apart by fate.

Everyone knew Na'er was gentle and innocent, a naive girl who relied upon her older brother.

But only he remembered that Gu Yue's gentleness lay hidden beneath her pride, her deep love buried within fate. She had endured, persisted, and loved with all her soul, only for them to die together and be separated forever in the end.

At this moment, the dazzling silver face before him was both Na'er and Gu Yue.

One person, two shadows, intertwined and etched deep into his heart.

He suddenly understood.

It was not that she had forgotten the past. Time itself had been reversed.

He had rushed here from later years, intruding into the era of the Peerless Tang Clan. The Gu Yue Na before him had not yet split apart, had not yet entered the human world, and had not yet met him. All their companionship, longing, life-and-death separations, and farewells still lay in the distant future. None of it had happened yet.

Between them flowed a river of time that could never run backward.

"Gu Yue..."

An extremely soft, hoarse murmur carrying endless desolation and longing slipped uncontrollably from his throat.

The sound was too quiet. The breeze over Spirit Lake gently scattered it, leaving it so faint it was almost impossible to hear.

Not Na'er.

Gu Yue.

The person he thought of day and night, the person he had longed for through lifetime after lifetime, yet would never see again.

Tears uncontrollably welled in his eyes, blurring the peerless figure in silver-white before him.

The wounds on his body had healed.

But the wound in his heart was completely torn open at that moment.

Gu Yue Na faintly furrowed her brows, and a trace of confusion flickered through her clear eyes.

She had heard that whisper.

Gu Yue?

An unfamiliar name, an unfamiliar emotion.

This boy clearly possessed low cultivation and an immature bloodline, yet his eyes held a longing and devotion as vast and heavy as mountains and seas, so heavy it was nearly suffocating, along with an inseparable desolation and sorrow.

This emotion, intense to the extreme, had appeared without reason, yet it was real enough to make even her Silver Dragon Origin tremble faintly.

She could not understand it.

She could not understand why, when he looked at her, his eyes were filled with the dazed disbelief of recovering something once lost, and the sorrow of losing it again after gaining it.

She had no way of knowing that this boy had come from the distant future and knew the future that belonged to her.

The healing power of Life Lake continued to flow. Tang Wulin's injuries had already completely healed, and even the hidden physical damage and skeletal weaknesses left behind by the shattered Dragon Moon Battle Armor were thoroughly eradicated by the Continent's Origin.

At this moment, his body was whole, his soul power abundant, and his bloodline boiling. He had returned to his peak condition.

Gu Yue Na slowly withdrew her fair hand. The silver radiance filling the sky gathered back into her body, the trembling of Life Lake gradually subsided, and the Origin Core at the lake bottom returned to silence, leaving only faint vitality lingering around the shore.

She took half a step back, creating distance. Her cool gaze quietly settled on the fully healed Tang Wulin as she spoke calmly:

"Your injuries have healed."

Her words were calm and without ripples, as though she had merely completed an ordained ritual of fate.

Tang Wulin stood where he was. His body was unharmed, and his strength had returned, but his heart felt hollow, filled with unbearable bitterness.

He looked at the Silver Dragon Emperor standing upstream in time, at this face that would one day split into Na'er and become Gu Yue. Nothing remained in his heart but endless melancholy.

Time had been reversed. He had met her too early.

She possessed every feature of the lover from his future, yet had not borne those unforgettable memories.

Di Tian stepped forward at the right moment and asked with lowered head, "My lord, how should this person be dealt with?"

Gu Yue Na's gaze darkened slightly. A profound glint passed through her silver-blue dragon pupils as they fell upon Tang Wulin's ever-boiling Golden Dragon King's Bloodline.

"Keep him here."

"From this day onward, settle him in the Source of Myriad Dragons."

"I will watch him."

Watch this incomplete strand of Golden Dragon King's Origin, watch the other half bound to her by fate, watch this unfamiliar boy whose eyes concealed endless secrets and whose presence inexplicably unsettled her heart.

Tang Wulin stood by Spirit Lake as the evening breeze stirred his restored clothes. Looking at the cool, peerless girl in white before him, countless thoughts circled through his heart until only a silent sigh remained.

I crossed long years of time to come here,

and met you ahead of time.

But the story that belongs to us

has yet to begin.