Shi Feiyang asked Ancestor Haha, "What is this secret about Chiyou you mentioned?"
Ancestor Haha answered from a puddle of bloody filth burning with purple-green flames, "First, you must swear to Heaven that you won't kill me and will let me leave safely. Then I'll tell you."
"Then keep it to yourself!"
Shi Feiyang intensified the fire, sending out ever-denser streams of purple-green true fire.
Ancestor Haha hastily cried, "I know you're preventing Grandmaster Taiyi Hunyuan from finding the third portion of Chiyou's primordial spirit!"
"Has he already found it?"
"He couldn't have found it on his own, but I found it for him! I've already made preparations and left a thought-born body hidden in the void. If I die, it will go back and tell Grandmaster Taiyi Hunyuan, helping him find the third portion of Chiyou's primordial spirit! Don't kill me, and I can keep the secret..."
"If I spare you, you'll use this secret to threaten me forever! Better to kill you and be done with it!"
Ancestor Haha cried urgently, "If you kill me today, Chiyou will emerge tomorrow! The bones of all under Heaven will pile into mountains, their names forgotten, while ghosts chant beneath the green maples—and all of it will be your sin!"
"Chiyou is destined to emerge even if I spare you. Keeping you alive would only add several thousand more mountains of bones to this world!"
Ancestor Haha had already cultivated to a state bordering on immortality and indestructibility. Someone like him would normally die only under heavenly retribution.
Though the Purple-Green Tusita Fire was formidable, completely refining him would take at least nine times nine days—eighty-one days in all. Otherwise, if even a wisp of his remnant soul escaped, he could revive someday.
Shi Feiyang had no patience for burning him