Boundless Heaven, the Xu Family.
Divine mountains towered majestically, purple qi surging into the heavens. Vast palace complexes hung high in the sky, glittering with precious light and wreathed in immortal mist. Primordial divine beasts stood atop the mountains, breathing out auspicious radiance as they guarded the four directions.
"Ah..." A young child's sigh echoed through one of the palaces.
She sat at a jade table, swinging her feet above the floor, her chin propped in her hands, her cheeks puffed out and her lashes trembling.
She did not understand how she had come to such a magnificent, vast, and fantastical world, one filled everywhere with strangeness and mystery.
It was called a "perfect" world, yet true perfection had never existed.
To her, life could be equally wonderful as a man or a woman. Being able to experience two entirely different lives was not so bad.
But being born in this era meant she was destined to face a great reckoning of darkness. That was why she had sighed earlier.
Fortunately, although the Chaotic Ancient era she had been born into was filled with bloodshed and turmoil, with a great reckoning still to come, there remained a thread of hope.
Had she been born during the age of Emperorfall or Immortal Ancient, her chances of survival would have been bleak indeed.
Fortunately, too, her birth in this life was far from humble. She was the youngest daughter of Xu Mingxuan, the Xu Family's reigning imperial lord, and the pearl in the family's palm. As a descendant of human immortals, her aptitude was naturally considerable, and countless halos had surrounded her from infancy.
Had she not yet unraveled the mystery of the womb, she might have felt delighted and proud, held aloft like the moon among the stars, advancing triumphantly along the immortal path to scale the highest peak.
But with the clarity and understanding her memories of her previous life afforded her, she knew all too well what immense murderous dangers lurked beneath this prosperous facade.
The Nine Heavens, the Foreign Realm, the Immortal Domain, the Boundary Sea... and the mysterious, sinister Heavens and Calamity Land. Compared to them, an immortal lineage amounted to nothing-not even a speck of dust.
She gently swung her little feet. Her pretty face held none of a child's innocent cheer, only sorrow and grief that would not fade.
Smack!
Suddenly, a sharp crack rang out. She had slapped herself, muttering, "Xu Xiyue, oh, Xu Xiyue, how did you become so indecisive?"
Since I'm already in this world and cannot change that, what good does it do to sit here whimpering and drowning in worries instead of thinking about how to ascend to the pinnacle and dispel the sinister unknown?
At that thought, her expression changed. The confusion and sorrow in her eyes ebbed like a retreating tide. When she opened them again, tiny flecks of golden light glimmered within.
Then she spread her hands. An ancient, simple design resembling a pagoda could be seen on her left palm, flickering faintly and brimming with mystery.
In her right palm lay a small seal, gleaming gold and shimmering with the light of dawn, captivating the soul. Gazing closely at it felt like sinking into a boundless dream, falling into endless reincarnation.
Only after a long while did Xiyue struggle free, a trace of bewilderment still lingering in her eyes. That little seal was terrifying. A single glance had felt like entering reincarnation once more, leaving her utterly lost within it.
"A Reincarnation Seal?" she murmured. But when she looked at her palm again, the little seal had vanished, as though it had never appeared and everything just now had been an illusion.
Yet she knew that it had been no illusion. The little seal certainly existed; she simply did not know where in her body it had hidden itself.
"Remarkable. My previous life and my present one were two different journeys to begin with. This counts as a reincarnation, too." She smiled faintly, quickly grasping how it had come about.
Moreover, this Reincarnation Seal felt extraordinary to her. It seemed to be more than merely a Reincarnation Seal, more like a divine treasury with deeper mysteries buried within.
Xiyue shook her head. She had only recently set foot on the path of cultivation and could not even look directly at the Reincarnation Seal yet. Those mysteries would have to wait for her to uncover them slowly in the future.
Just then, a pair of hands found their way onto her pretty face and began kneading it into various shapes, bringing a flush of red to her cheeks.
Without even thinking, Xiyue knew who had arrived.
She seized the large hands on her face, trying to pull them away.
But things did not go as she wished. Even with all her strength, she could not budge those hands in the slightest.
Utterly helpless, she turned around. Behind her stood a young girl who, though still immature, already showed the first bloom of grace, the makings of a peerless beauty. She had a delicate figure and slightly lifted lashes, and her eyes held a smile.
It was Princess Yaoyue, her elder sister by four years. She was a little over seven, and her cultivation had already reached the cave heaven realm.
With Xiyue's mere blood moving realm cultivation and strength of less than ten thousand jin, she could not possibly shake Yaoyue's large hands.
"Sis, have you ever thought about how, once my cultivation surpasses yours, I'm going to crush you mercilessly?"
Indignant, Xiyue raised her eyes and rolled them at Yaoyue.
"Oh? I'm really looking forward to that day." The corners of Yaoyue's lips curled upward, her large eyes blinking with a shrewd gleam as she spoke in a teasing tone.
Xiyue pressed a hand to her forehead, helpless. This sister of hers was so mischievous that she was practically a little she-devil.
"Oh, right. Father asked me to fetch you. It's time to pay homage to the war flag."
After they had joked around for a while, Yaoyue brought up the real reason for her visit.
The Bloodied War Flag-or rather... the Immortal King Burial Shroud-had an extraordinary origin. It had been a battle flag during the Immortal Ancient era. Back then, an ancestor of the Xu Family, an immortal, had carried it as he led vast armies into bloody battle alongside many other immortals.
Alas, in that battle, kings' blood had stained the frontiers, and immortal bones had been buried in the wilderness, leaving behind an age's lament. That great bloodied flag, which had once rallied countless living beings, had ultimately returned in desolation, wrapped around the remains of two Immortal Kings.
Afterward, the descendants of the Xu Family had ritually refined it over countless ages, turning it into a supreme treasure inscribed with immortal formations, something between a formation and a weapon.
Every descendant of the Xu Family had to pay homage to the war flag while young, looking back upon that era and remembering its tragic song.
The divine mountain soared into the heavens, breaking apart the clouds overhead. Radiance rippled in waves, auspicious light surged, and vital essence hung in the air. The plants exuded tremendous vitality: precious medicinal herbs, sacred medicinal herbs, and even the occasional divine medicinal herb.
Xiyue's large eyes blinked. On the path of cultivation, innate talent came first and resources second. Born into an immortal lineage, she had no need to worry about resources.
Had she been born in the Three Thousand Provinces or the Eight Regions of the lower realm, never mind divine medicinal herbs-even sacred ones would have been rare sights.
A rumbling sound came from the summit of the divine mountain, where the Xu Family's ancestral shrine stood.
From afar, it was shrouded in mist, impossible to see clearly. Only the Xu Family's most central descendants had the privilege of coming here. Everyone else paid homage to a mere projection of the Immortal King Burial Shroud.
Passing through layer upon layer of obscuring mist, they finally reached it. There were no splendid, gilded buildings here, nor any surging auspicious light. There was only an ancient, austere hall, steeped in the vicissitudes of time, simple and mysterious.
The great hall was empty and still, cloaked in darkness, with only scattered points of red light glowing in the distance.
Xiyue walked slowly along this path, all manner of sorrow
and grief washing over her. Those supreme experts of old were singing the tragic song of the Immortal Ancient era, recounting their desolation and unwillingness to yield.
In a daze, she seemed to hear divine voices rumbling beside her ears, piercing through past, present, and future. It was like an ancient sacrificial invocation, vast and profoundly mysterious.
Looking up, she saw a man standing before those scattered red lights. His black hair hung loose, and he possessed an extraordinary, heroic bearing, his figure straight and imposing as a mountain. His eyes were deep and weathered, as though the stars of all the heavens were being born and extinguished within them.