"You're... little Shuang?" The old village chief looked her up and down for a long while before finally recognizing her and hurriedly welcoming her inside.
The person before him had changed far too much. Travel-worn and bedraggled, she looked nothing like the pretty, delicate-featured girl she had once been.
When she saw the unconscious Xi Yue, Qing Shuang nearly burst into tears. As far as she remembered, her young mistress had never suffered such severe injuries.
Every inch of her body was cracked from head to toe, and her aura was terribly faint, like a dying candle in the wind that might go out at any moment.
"Don't worry, child. The Willow Deity said there's still life within Little Yue. She'll recover eventually."
The old village chief gently patted Qing Shuang's shoulder, though his own heart was clenched with worry. Gentle, intelligent, and considerate, Xi Yue had long since become family to him. Seeing her suffer this calamity pained him deeply.
More than half a month passed. Stone Village remained peaceful, but on this day, a faint, strange radiance suddenly appeared at the village entrance, drawing the villagers' gazes.
The lightning-struck wood at the village entrance brimmed with life once more. Most of its charred blackness had faded, and forty-nine tender branches swayed in the wind, trailing strands of chaos energy and exuding an ancient, timeless aura.
The Willow Deity had revived. Thanks to the tremendous vitality supplied by the Life Stone, this slumber had been brief, and all the power lost before had been replenished.
A slender figure stepped out of the willow tree, white robes trailing along the ground. Dense chaos mist enveloped the deity, whose peerless grace towered over heaven and earth.
Divine flames flickered all around, and within each flame stood a godlike phantom, bowing in reverent worship.
Yet no one could witness this scene. The deity stepped into one of the stone houses. Its interior was austere, furnished with only a stone table and a stone bed.
A young woman sat cross-legged on the stone bed. Compared with a month ago, her condition had grown even worse.
Her flesh was now a bloody ruin, her exquisite, immortal beauty utterly destroyed. Not a trace of her former peerless loveliness remained.
A veil of fire enveloped her, hazy and blazing, ceaselessly burning her body.
This was the sun god flame. The Kunpeng Method governed yin and yang, and she was now using this solar fire essence to refine herself.
At the same time, she was employing the Divine Silkworm Immortality Art, shedding her old body to live anew.
She had obtained this art from the Xu Family's Ancestral Temple. It was one of the supreme divine arts.
The Divine Silkworm Race was extraordinarily powerful, with only a handful of purebloods in all of heaven and earth. Its precious art resembled the True Phoenix Immortality Art, delving deep into the mysteries of rebirth from decay and revival from annihilation.
The flames danced, blazing ever brighter. Xi Yue's blood essence burned, radiating brilliant divine light. Behind her, ten heavenly caverns rumbled and spun, trembling without cease.
The sounds of the Dao rang endlessly through heaven and earth, and ancient chanting spread out from the void.
Bloody light soared into the sky, illuminating a sea of clouds stretching ten thousand miles. Her boiling blood essence transformed into the purest divine energy, continuously flowing into the ten great heavenly caverns behind her.
She was going to sacrifice herself alive, pouring every last drop of her essence into her heavenly caverns!
The next instant, the ten heavenly caverns joined together and shook violently. Then they all shattered at once!
Xi Yue's body shuddered violently under the tremendous impact. Had all her blood essence not already been refined away, she would surely have coughed up a great mouthful of blood.
Heavenly caverns were the foundation of the human body. If an ordinary person destroyed theirs like this, they would be crippled on the spot!
Hazy sacrificial chants resounded through heaven and earth, as though echoing across eternal time and space from an age before this era.
The flames reached their fiercest intensity. Her flesh was charred black, and her blood essence had burned away entirely, leaving only a point of light in her chest.
That point of light blazed dazzlingly, like a primordial divine sun, radiating undying divine splendor.
Her ambitions were vast. When she first entered the Cave Heaven Realm, she had already formed the beginnings of a fleshly cave heaven. Now she wanted to open it fully.
Moreover, she wanted to attempt to fuse her ten heavenly caverns into one in a single stroke.
She knew full well that, at the end of this process, she would have to sacrifice herself alive.
Since that was the case, she might as well take the initiative and offer herself as a living sacrifice, then reconstruct her true body with the Divine Silkworm Immortality Art!
This was far too dangerous. She was already undergoing nirvana, with death threatening her at every turn. To attempt a living sacrifice now was no different from seeking her own doom!
Even the Willow Deity beside her was startled and somewhat speechless. This went beyond boldness. It was madness taken to its utmost extreme, to the point where only utter obsession could sustain her existence.
It even rivaled the deity's own method.
At that moment, runes danced wildly, endlessly interweaving in the void. A small golden seal shot out of the incinerated body.
The moment the little seal awakened, it shone with dazzling brilliance. Countless rays of golden light swept across the land.
The Reincarnation Seal!
Xi Yue had long suspected that this mark was more than merely a Reincarnation Seal. Even the source of her Reincarnation Divine Ability lay hidden within it.
The Divine Silkworm Immortality Art alone could never reconstruct her true body after she sacrificed herself alive. After all, even the mightiest divine art needed a source to sustain it.
This Reincarnation Seal had thus become the key to her revival.
Indeed, what she had sacrificed alive was not her present self, but the departed self of her previous life. Her true self was dwelling within this mark at that very moment.
Her departed self already existed in the past, so what meaning did destruction or survival hold for it? As long as Xi Yue's true self lived, it could rise again with a thought, impossible to sever completely or kill utterly.
Ever since comprehending the Six Paths of Reincarnation Heavenly Art, she had vaguely sensed that she could control this Reincarnation Seal.
Moreover, she had discovered, to her astonishment, that the mark was "alive." It had a will of its own, controlled by the "him" of her previous life.
Now, that will had truly been sacrificed, becoming nourishment for the reconstruction of her heavenly caverns.
As for the divine essence, it was lost forever. Such a heaven-defying method violated the harmony of heaven; there was no way to use it without paying a price.
Of course, this was no great matter. A few rare treasures of heaven and earth would make up for it.
In truth, although this act appeared to follow the laws of karma, sacrificing herself to bring something else into being, it was effectively deceiving heaven and defying its will. Calamity would surely strike her in the future!
Still, she had no fear.
Cultivators contended with heaven, already forging profound karmic ties with heaven and earth as they seized the world's blessings to strengthen themselves.
As for the heavenly punishment to come...
When the cart reached the mountain, a road would surely appear. There was always a thread of hope in everything, so that, too, was nothing to fear.
Hum!
At that moment, this stretch of heaven and earth began to tremble violently. Ten thousand rays of rosy light and a thousand streams of auspicious color shone forth. Drawn by a mysterious force, the fragments of the ten heavenly caverns revolved around the Reincarnation Seal.
Meanwhile, the point of light within her flesh grew ever more brilliant. It, too, was sacrificed, merging with the Reincarnation Seal to become one!
"She means to open a new path. Such audacity-remarkable!" The Willow Deity extended a hand and sealed off this stretch of heaven and earth. Otherwise, such an enormous disturbance would surely affect Stone Village.
At this moment, the deity could not help marveling. This young woman was truly extraordinary, defying heaven outright, turning the impossible into the possible, and forging a new path no predecessor had ever imagined.
Naturally, the Reincarnation Seal could not escape the deity's gaze either. In an instant, she recalled fragments of the past once more.
"Endless ages pass in haste. The past is inexplicable and hazy. What lies on the road ahead?" The Willow Deity gazed up at the high heavens, murmuring softly.