Shrouding the Heavens: The Years When I Was the Empress's Strictest Master

The little girl shakily pushed herself to her feet.

Since the day she was born, she had never even had a proper name. At this moment, she truly only wanted to see her brother one last time!

He was her only family in this world!

Why would they not even grant her such a trivial request?

What right did these people have to stop her?

That was her brother!

Crack...

Suddenly, her feet slipped, and she crashed heavily into the muddy ground.

In her current state, that fall left her unable to get back up for quite a while. No matter how stubbornly she struggled, it was useless.

The human body had its limits, let alone when she was merely a Mortal Body.

There was not even any possibility of a miracle.

Splash... splash...

The rain was still falling, growing heavier and heavier.

In the mud, freezing rainwater and filth easily seeped through her already soaked clothes. The bone-piercing cold made her body tremble without end.

But colder than her body was her heart, which had clung to its last sliver of hope only to have it ruthlessly trampled.

Her brother... was dead...

She had not believed it when people from Yan Capital came to tell her that day.

She had thought that she had to see for herself. She wanted one look at her brother, even if it was only a corner of his clothes or a shattered Bronze Mask.

Inside the station's barrier.

Crimson Feather Captain Hauge, surrounded by a crowd of White Feather soldiers, watched the girl as though she were an entertaining spectacle.

Of course, the real show was still to come. This was merely an appetizer.

Splash...

The rain blurred the girl's vision. She could no longer tell whether it was tears or rainwater. Hatred and fury tangled deep within her heart, while despair and grief drowned her like icy tides.

Under the torrential rain, she felt that she might truly be going to see her brother. It seemed as though an unfamiliar voice had been speaking by her ear all along.

The three villagers who had brought her here had already left.

There was no one beside her.

She was hallucinating...

Yet the voice by her ear seemed to be growing louder with time. It had appeared when she was whipped to the ground, but at the time, all she could think about was entering the station. She had not listened carefully at all.

After all, with her malnourished body, tinnitus and hallucinations were normal. She had long grown used to them.

But this hallucination was somewhat unusual.

Splash...

The torn bundle in her arms came apart, and half a piece of rock-hard dried food, given to her by villagers, rolled into the mud.

The rust-covered Bronze Ring her brother had left her also fell out, becoming even more inconspicuous in the muddy water.

Inside the ring, amid a void of nothingness and chaos.

Seeing that the girl seemed completely oblivious to his earlier voice, Tan Lin's remnant soul gradually realized that the All-Causes Soul Pearl had only just begun its transformation. His connection with the outside world had only just opened up, and it was intermittent, still needing time to stabilize.

All of a sudden.

He stopped wasting effort trying to communicate with the young Empress. With a thought, the Deep Crimson Light Point within the Soul Pearl flew into his palm once more.

Whoosh!

[All-Cause Vision] activated!

At that moment, on the Soul Pearl's barrier, aside from the Causal Lines that had dimmed following his dissolution.

A new, slender glowing line had quietly formed when his soul transmission reached the girl's mind. It connected soundlessly, and quite a few pale crimson Causal Points had already appeared.

In just that brief span, nearly half the Soul Pearl's power consumed by activating [All-Cause Vision] for the first time had already been replenished!

This discovery lifted Tan Lin's spirits. As expected of the future Empress—Causal Points provided by her alone were already this considerable!

As the Deep Crimson Light Point grew, the gentle radiance nourishing his remnant soul became even richer. The agonizing pain of his true soul being torn apart also eased considerably.

Within the unseen void, a faint spiritual radiance, one that only the Primordial Spirit of an Immortal Platform cultivator could emit, inexplicably appeared around the shell of his remnant soul.

Though he had dissolved himself and lost his Dao Fruit and cultivation, he had been a future Dao Attainer in his previous life. He had attained the Dao in the Big Dipper and engraved Dao marks into heaven and earth.

Now that this wisp of his true soul had not perished and could connect with the outside world, a turn of thought allowed him to easily draw upon part of the power of those Dao marks.

Using the Soul Pearl space as the Immortal Platform in his head, he could help himself reassemble his Primordial Spirit!

Yet his true soul was incomplete, after all, and the Primordial Spirit he reassembled would likewise be incomplete. How far it could ultimately recover was hard to say.

Fortunately, his focus was on his next life, so he did not dwell on such matters...

In truth, once the barrier separating him from the outside world vanished, if he wished, he could briefly have the Human Emperor "return" through the traces he had left in heaven and earth during his previous life.

However, such a return was destined to be fleeting. Once the time limit passed, whether this wisp of his original remnant soul would be completely extinguished was uncertain.

He still had hope of reincarnation and rebirth. There was no need to dig his own grave.

Time slowly passed.

The feeling of regaining a trace of power gradually brightened Tan Lin's mood.

With the accumulation of three lifetimes of cultivation, he quickly reassembled an incomplete Primordial Spirit at Immortal Platform Level One.

Even without a physical body, if he manifested only as a remnant soul, suppressing so-called Dragon Transformation prodigies and ordinary Half-Step Great Experts of the Immortal Platform was effortless!

However, just as he prepared to further reassemble and strengthen his Primordial Spirit, his expression tightened slightly.

"What is this...?"

Buzz...

Within [All-Cause Vision], the several previously thickest dim lines on the Soul Pearl's barrier had somehow begun to brighten. Though they had not become fully luminous, they now gave off a faint crimson glow.

And the places those Causal Lines connected to were the restricted zones, the Central Plains, and Mars beyond the domain!

"How is that possible?"

The sudden change left Tan Lin deeply unsettled.

Whoosh!

Soon, one of the Causal Lines connected to a restricted zone changed again!

A branch split off from it!

Tan Lin shifted his gaze and saw the Anchor Point at the end of that branch moving rapidly, drawing closer and closer to him...

A warning flared in his heart. Realizing something was wrong, he decisively severed his connection to the Dao marks of the outside world.

He had never expected that after dozens, even millions of years—from the Primordial Era to the Ancient Era—Xiaoyao Heavenly Venerable, the Undying Heavenly Emperor, and the others were still watching everything he had left behind in this world during his previous life.

Had they guessed something from the few flaws he had exposed back then?

"It seems the Human Emperor Hall's lineage being able to survive until now was largely thanks to these old monsters. They wanted to use it as bait to fish for a creature like me, one that might not even reappear?"

Tan Lin's thoughts raced as he immediately understood many of the key points.

"If the All-Causes Soul Pearl had not transformed, I might truly have fallen into these old dogs' trap without realizing it. Everything from my previous life, including the Dao marks, can no longer be contacted or connected to personally..."

At that moment, he noticed a gray-robed Daoist carrying a jade bottle quietly entering the tea shed through the curtain of rain.

And not a single cultivator inside the tea shed noticed him!

"Whose lackey is this? Or is he a Dao body?"

Tan Lin's remnant soul wore a grave expression.

At first glance, he had thought Xiaoyao Heavenly Venerable's Dao body had arrived in person, but upon closer inspection, it did not seem so.

After sleeping for nearly a million years, he did not know whether Yun Geng, that later arrival, had been successfully taken over by Xiaoyao after failing to seize Tan Lin's body!

He could not be certain.

But no matter what, he would not risk communicating with the young Empress again.

Even if she was the key to restoring his remnant soul and would most likely serve as a bridge for his future indirect connection to the outside world for quite some time, if she died now, he would only watch from the sidelines.

Besides, she most likely would not die...

"Old sir, if I give you this, can you teach me cultivation?"

Just as Tan Lin's thoughts whirled, the situation outside changed again.

The girl with pigtails, her wounded body covered in blood and mud, had somehow arrived before the gray-robed Daoist. She held up the Divine Source from the box and offered it to him.

"Oh?"

Under the rain canopy, an unusual flicker of surprise appeared on the Daoist's ancient well-like face.

He had appeared here, yet all the surrounding cultivators treated him as air. This child, however, had truly noticed him.

In his surprise, he did not casually take the Divine Source. Instead, he stared at her.

She was filthy from head to toe. Only her large, black gemstone-like eyes remained clear and bright, untouched by dust beneath their tear tracks.

He could see the hope, pleading, resentment, and countless other complicated emotions filling her eyes. He could even discern her true thoughts.

That only made him more surprised.

At eight or nine years old, she not only understood that possessing a treasure invited disaster, but had also found, intentionally or otherwise, the sole possible way out amid this hopeless trap surrounded by wolves and tigers.

And she intended to use a trade to gain a path toward fulfilling some future purpose—toward revenge.

If she were not truly a Mortal Body, with no secrets anywhere on her body in his eyes, he would have genuinely suspected her origins.

Still, this was good. Since fate had brought them together and she was a Mortal Body, perhaps he could test that "new method" on her?

"Tsk, tsk. She truly is a good seedling, blessed with keen eyes and an extraordinary mind..."

As he spoke, he truly accepted the Divine Source, placing it into the jade bottle in his hand. Then he casually took out a booklet and handed it to the girl.

Swish!

Swish...

All around them, greedy and burning gazes followed the movement of the Divine Source.

The many cultivators in the tea shed glanced at the Feathered Immortal Dynasty soldiers opposite them, who seemed entirely detached from the matter.

They understood the other side's intentions. They wanted to watch a grand spectacle of wild dogs fighting over food. Perhaps the Divine Source would even return to the other side's hands in the end.

But Divine Source moved people's hearts. Even knowing there was a pit ahead, some would still rush eagerly into it!

One had to know that before they had fully grown, the entire fortunes of many holy land saints and saintesses, or young masters and noble daughters of great clans, amounted to only a few pieces of Divine Source.

Boom...

In an instant, several cultivators within the tea shed attacked the Daoist and the girl almost simultaneously.

Dao Marks emerged from their navel Sea of Reincarnation, rapidly taking shape and becoming tangible.

Bang!

Crack... crack...

Amid crisscrossing divine light, the entire tea shed had already shattered into pieces.

"Ox-nosed Daoist, hand over the thing... Aah!!!"

Pfft!

Pfft... pfft...