A Crisis Arises (3.2K)

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 very moment, all she truly wanted was to see her brother one last time!

He was her only family in this world!

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

What gave these people the right to stop her?

That was her brother!

Crash...

Suddenly, her feet slipped, and she fell heavily onto the muddy ground.

In her current state, that fall left her unable to rise for quite some time. 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 chance of a miracle.

Patter... patter...

The rain was still falling, growing heavier and heavier.

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

But colder than her body was her heart, which had retained only the faintest sliver of hope before being ruthlessly trampled.

Her brother... was dead...

She did not believe what the people from Yan Capital had said that day.

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

Inside the station's barrier.

Scarlet Feather Captain Hauge, surrounded by a crowd of White Feather soldiers, watched the girl as though she were some amusing spectacle.

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

Patter...

The rain blurred the girl's vision. She could not tell whether it was tears or rainwater. Hatred and fury tangled deep within her heart, while despair and grief swallowed her like a frigid tide.

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 she had only been focused on entering the station and had not listened carefully.

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

But this hallucination was somewhat unusual.

Splash...

The tattered bundle in her arms came undone. Half a piece of dry rations given to her by the villagers, hard as a rock, rolled into the mud.

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

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

Seeing that the girl seemed utterly oblivious to his earlier voice, Tan Lin's remnant soul gradually realized that the All-Causes Soul Pearl had only just begun to change. His connection with the outside world had only recently opened up and remained intermittent, requiring time to stabilize.

Suddenly.

He stopped trying so hard to communicate with the young Female Emperor. With a thought, the Deep Crimson Light Point within the Soul Pearl flew back into his palm.

Whoosh!

[All-Cause Vision] activated!

At that moment, on the Soul Pearl Barrier, aside from those Causal Lines that had dimmed after his dissolution into the Dao—

A brand-new, slender glowing line had quietly formed when his soul transmission reached the girl's mind. It silently linked them together, and quite a few pale crimson Causal Points had already appeared.

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

This discovery invigorated Tan Lin. As expected of the future Female Emperor—Causal Points provided by her alone were already this considerable!

As the Deep Crimson Light Point grew stronger, the gentle radiance nourishing his remnant soul became several degrees richer. The excruciating pain caused by the severing of his Formless true soul also eased considerably.

Within the void invisible to the naked eye, a faint divine glow unique to the primordial spirit of an Immortal Platform cultivator inexplicably surfaced around the shell of his remnant soul.

Though he had dissolved into the Dao and lost all of his Dao Fruit and cultivation, he had been a Dao-Attainment Imminent expert in his previous life. He had attained the Dao in the Big Dipper and carved Dao traces into heaven and earth.

Now that this strand of his true soul had not perished and could connect with the outside world, a turn of thought was enough for him to easily draw upon part of the power of those Dao traces.

He used the Soul Pearl space as the Immortal Platform within his head to help him reassemble his primordial spirit!

However, his true soul was incomplete, and the primordial spirit he reassembled would likewise be incomplete. As for how far it could ultimately recover, that was difficult to say.

Fortunately, his focus lay primarily on his next lifetime, so he did not dwell on such matters...

In truth, once the barrier separating his senses from the outside world disappeared, he could, if he wished, briefly allow the Human Emperor to "return" through the traces he had left in this world in his previous life.

However, such a return was destined to be fleeting. Once the time limit expired, it was uncertain whether this strand of his original remnant soul would vanish completely.

He still had hope of reincarnation and rebirth. There was no need to dig his own grave with such a foolish act.

Time slowly passed.

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

With the accumulation of his cultivation across three lifetimes, he swiftly reassembled an incomplete primordial spirit at Immortal Platform Level One.

Even without a physical body, if he manifested only through his remnant soul, suppressing so-called Dragon Transformation prodigies and ordinary Immortal Platform Half-Step Great Experts would be effortless!

However, just as he was preparing to further consolidate and strengthen his primordial spirit, his expression tightened slightly.

"What is this...?"

Buzz...

Within [All-Cause Vision], the several dim Causal Lines that had originally been the thickest on the Soul Pearl Barrier somehow began to brighten. Though they had not fully lit up, they now glimmered with faint crimson light.

And the places those Causal Lines connected to were none other than the Restricted Area, the Central Plains, and Mars in the Outer Domain!

"How is that possible?"

The sudden change left Tan Lin deeply unsettled.

Whoosh!

Soon, one of the Causal Lines connected to the Restricted Area changed again!

A Branch Line split off from it!

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

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

He had never expected that after tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of years—after the Primordial Era had passed into the Ancient Era—Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao, the Undying Heavenly Emperor, and the others would still be watching everything he had left behind in this world during his previous life.

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

"It seems the Human Emperor Hall's legacy has endured to this day because these old bastards put in no small effort. Are they using it as bait to fish for me, a fish that may never reappear?"

Tan Lin's thoughts raced, and he immediately understood many things.

"If the All-Causes Soul Pearl had not changed, I might truly have fallen into the trap these old dogs laid without realizing it. I can no longer personally touch or connect with anything from my previous life, including those Dao traces..."

At that moment, he noticed a gray-robed Daoist holding a jade bottle quietly enter the tea stall through the rain curtain outside.

And not a single cultivator in the tea stall 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 Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao's Dao Body had come in person, but upon closer inspection, it did not seem so.

Having slept for nearly a million years, he did not know whether Xiaoyao had succeeded with that later arrival, Yun Geng, after failing to seize Tan Lin's body back then!

He could not be certain.

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

Even if she was an opportunity for him to restore his remnant soul and would most likely serve as his bridge for indirectly connecting with 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 how to cultivate?"

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?"

Beneath the rain shelter, a rare trace of surprise appeared on the Daoist's face, as still as an ancient well.

He had appeared here, and all the cultivators around him regarded him as air. Yet this child had truly noticed him.

Startled, he did not casually take the Divine Source. Instead, he stared at her.

Her entire body was filthy, but her large black gemstone-like eyes were clear and bright, untouched by the slightest stain beneath the tear tracks.

He could see the hope, pleading, resentment, and other complex 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 the principle that possessing a treasure invited disaster, but had also found, whether intentionally or not, the only possible path to survival amid this dead end surrounded by wolves and tigers.

And she sought to use a transaction to obtain a means of achieving some future goal—of exacting revenge.

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

But this was good as well. 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 has discerning eyes and an extraordinary mind. A fine seedling..."

As he spoke, he actually accepted the Divine Source, slipping 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 stall glanced at the Feathered Immortal Dynasty soldiers across from them, who seemed entirely unconcerned.

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

But Divine Source stirred men's hearts. Even knowing there was a pit ahead, some still rushed eagerly to jump into it!

One had to know that the total wealth of many holy land Holy Sons, Holy Daughters, aristocratic young masters, and noble young ladies before they had matured amounted to only a few pieces of Divine Source.

Boom...

In an instant, several cultivators in the tea stall attacked the Daoist and the girl almost simultaneously.

Divine Marks emerged from the Sea of Reincarnation at their navels, taking shape and becoming tangible.

Bang!

Crack... crack...

Amid the crisscrossing divine light, the entire tea stall was already blasted into pieces.

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

Pfft!

Pfft... pfft...