The Right Moment

Blood-red firelight dyed the valley crimson, but Jiang Wangxuan did not flee first as he had said he would. The time had not yet come!

A phoenix-luan's cry rang through the snowy night.

The cry was clear and lingering, like metal and stone striking together, or the first ring of a blade being honed in blazing fire. It shook the snow filling the sky to a momentary standstill.

The Cooking Radiance Kindling King Body, wrapped in Blood Yang Spirit Fire, abruptly spread two pairs of orange-red feathered wings. As flames surged, a divine bird emerged from the fire, standing on one leg in the air. Soaring Fire coiled around its body, and its trailing tail feathers cast streams of fire across the sky.

The Soaring Luan had descended upon the valley: a child of Bifang, one favored by Soaring Fire.

Before the Southern Fire Rebellion, according to the ancient Theory of Five Manifestations, Soaring Fire had been the changing position among the five fires, a fire of rising and transformation. Its season was summer, when it scorched all beneath heaven.

Bifang was the master of the fruition position, and an ancestor of the Soaring Luan had once been a subordinate lord beneath him. After the Southern Fire Rebellion, when True Lord Miaosui changed Soaring into Hearth, the Soaring Luan clan, once favored by that fruition position, gradually declined.

What had now descended here was likely Fang Lin's last means of saving his life. An elder of his Lineage must have left him a trace of the Soaring Luan's spiritual wonder, a trump card for a desperate struggle when life and death hung in the balance!

The Soaring Luan lifted its single leg and spread both wings.

Its foot tapped lightly on the air, as though stepping on some invisible kindling. In an instant, a raging fire erupted through the peach grove. Pink and white petals scattered in the flames, turning into orange-red sparks that danced across the sky.

The flames blazed orange, scorching the air until it warped. It was as though an invisible cauldron had been turned over the entire valley, its bottom boiling over a fierce fire.

Peach roots curled and shrank in the flames with shrill squeals. The stream swiftly dried up, and broken, withered branches turned to handfuls of flying ash in the heat.

The entire valley was like a vessel cast into a cauldron, and the Soaring Luan was the king of kindling standing at its bottom.

It stood on one leg at the heart of the fire, Soaring Fire coiling around its body and its trailing tail feathers casting streams of flame across the sky. Its crimson eyes gazed indifferently down at the land being refined below.

A Soaring Fire Divine Ability, Ascending Soar Fire!

Only after waves of fire had swallowed the entire valley did it become clear that the Spider Mother hiding in the peach grove was still alive. Several blood shadows had built a final line of defense around her.

The Spider Mother shrieked in grief amid the flames, her compound eyes fixed with hatred on the Soaring Luan in the sky. That power did not belong to a son of the Jixia Fang Clan.

Everything was just as her teachers and elders had foreseen. The Fang Clan clansman who cultivated Hearth Fire was an opportunity for her, a chance to purge her tainted blood.

The Soaring Luan's illusory figure was slowly fading, but the blood shadows of her teachers and elders, who had once willingly merged with the bloodline of the Empty Shrine Blessing-Bestowing Spider, were having their souls scattered one after another in the raging fire.

At last, only one remained: a young Daoist attendant who had carried her out of hell when she was little, during that catastrophe. Her many teachers and elders had actually meant to take her away from Punishment Yang Peak!

"Peach Spider, live!"

The Daoist attendant's blood shadow finally turned to ash, and the Soaring Luan in the sky vanished with it. Fang Lin fell from the air and crashed heavily into the ash-covered valley floor. He struggled onto one knee and saw the Spider Mother also crawling up from the ash!

She was still alive!

A wave of water swept over the valley floor, now a field of ruins. The moment the flames vanished, Clear Water locked the half-crippled Spider Mother fast!

Jiang Wangxuan's spellcasting fingers trembled slightly. From the side, he had watched the whole thing, seeing the blood shadows of cultivators emerge from the Spider Mother's body one after another.

In life, they had merged their bloodlines with hers. Amid the Ascending Soar Fire, they had separated themselves one by one, bearing wave after wave of searing flame for the Spider Mother!

These people, the surviving bloodlines of the Southern Fire Heavenly Manor, had actually entrusted their final hope to an Empty Shrine Blessing-Bestowing Spider.

Six chains of Clear Water bound the gravely weakened Spider Mother with ease, but Jiang Wangxuan did not know what to do with this being who might be the last surviving bloodline of Punishment Yang Peak!

Fiery red blood continued to seep from the Spider Mother's body, but her compound eyes were calm. At last, she had nothing left!

The offspring she had raised for a hundred years had all perished in a single day. They had been born from her tainted bloodline, and she, their bloodline's source, had also suffered a grievous blow. But the power of that tainted bloodline had also waned and dispersed.

Yes, this was an opportunity!

The Spider Mother propped up her ravaged body on her naturally truncated legs. She seemed to raise her headless front and "look" at Jiang Wangxuan, the only one present who had come through unscathed!

"Do you know why the Punishment Sacrifice Dao lineage has fallen to such a state?"

Jiang Wangxuan said nothing. He cast another spell, and a water prison appeared. The Spider Mother fell into a pond formed from Clear Water.

The six chains sank firmly into the bottom of the pond, holding the Spider Mother captive in the prison of Clear Water.

Third-grade spell, Layered Clear Water Locks and Sinking Pool!

Yet that Clear Water could not extinguish the protective blood fire on the Spider Mother's body. In a voice like a saw cutting, she continued, "The Punishment Sacrifice Dao lineage came from the bloodlines of the great shamans of High Antiquity. Their flesh was of utmost hardness and utmost yang. Wind and thunder stirred when they breathed, and a raised hand could cover the stars. To pass down such great power, every great shaman left a drop of original Essence Blood at the Ancestral Pool upon their death!"

"Why Essence Blood again? Because bloodlines belong to yin; only blood can carry the great shamans' power of utmost yang and hardness. The Ancestral Pool was born among the ancient shaman race, yet it ultimately vanished in that upheaval. The Ancestral Pool! It was fortunate enough to make it through the dark age of recent antiquity, but it could not escape the faithlessness of your Qinghuan!"

"The great power of Punishment Sacrifice was ultimately polluted by bloodlines. There was no longer an Ancestral Pool to cleanse the yin taint from our bloodlines!"

Layered Clear Water Locks and Sinking Pool trembled violently, while the Cavern Spring Talismanic Words Bracelet on Jiang Wangxuan's wrist flashed ceaselessly with emerald spiritual light.

"Junior, this power of Clear Water doesn't belong to you either. How laughable!" the Spider Mother jeered.

"Spider Mother! Cough, cough, cough!"

Fang Lin finally climbed out of the ash. He was in terrible condition: his true essence was depleted and his Law Power out of control. The Ascending Soar Fire-Wielding Talisman his clan had left him for protection had exhausted all his true essence.

Unfortunately, the Ascending Soar Fire Divine Ability he had summoned had fallen just a little short. Only if he had entered Foundation Establishment could he have wielded Ascending Soar Fire's soul-burning wonder, leaving the Spider Mother no chance of escape.

In the end, a miss by a hair's breadth was an error of a thousand miles. This Spider Mother was indeed worthy of being the last surviving bloodline of Southern Fire's Punishment Yang Peak! But this was fine too. Brother Jiang had kept his composure and subdued the battered Spider Mother well!

"What happened today was neither your wish nor mine. Spider Mother, you can still return to Jixia. There may yet be hope for the Ancestral Pool!"

The Spider Mother watched the Fang Clan clansman who had burned her teachers and elders until their souls scattered rise to his feet again. Sadly, she said, "Do you know why my teachers and elders chose to be buried in my belly?"

Jiang Wangxuan lowered his eyes, unwilling to look any longer. From the tragic sacrifices just now, Big Fat Fish had already calculated the most likely answer!

The records on the Empty Shrine Blessing-Bestowing Spider were scant, but they did contain this one assessment: the blessing-bestowing spider worships at the ancestral hall, spins webs and raises young, and passes down bloodlines!

"From childhood, my kind were fed the spirit blood of Punishment Yang Peak. Teachers and elders often took pity on us and fed us their heart blood as well. All this was the wonder that allowed my kind to preserve their bloodline's inheritance. Punishment Yang passed its heart blood to me, and I can pass it to their descendants in turn!"

"So they all entered my belly and merged into my bloodline, leaving behind a remnant of consciousness to await the right moment! Now they too are gone. Punishment Yang Peak has finally been extinguished!"

"And I, in the end, have only one road left to take!"

Jiang Wangxuan's expression changed drastically. Layered Clear Water Locks and Sinking Pool, which he had reinforced many times, suddenly went out of control. Layer upon layer of frost abruptly formed across the valley floor, where almost everything had been burned away. The source of that frost was the temple that had just been burned down along with the peach grove.

At the bottom of the pond where the Spider Mother was imprisoned, Cold Qi burst forth in an instant. Thick ice quickly formed over the Clear Water chains and the pond, and the Spider Mother broke free of the prison.

On her back, two frost-white cicada wings unfurled gracefully in the snowy night, as though she were undergoing a metamorphosis!

More astonishing still, the Spider Mother's cultivation surged. From her battered state, she returned to Qi Refinement Perfection in an instant. Yet it did not stop there, instead continuing to swell!

A second pair of cicada wings grew within those few breaths. The Spider Mother flew into the air, and eight frosty feelers sprouted from her eight naturally truncated legs.

After a third pair of cicada wings grew beneath the Spider Mother's abdomen, the peach grove that had been burned to ash rose from the scorched ground once more. Now the grove was hung with icy spikes of frost.

Jiang Wangxuan quickly cast a spell, summoning a stream of water to pull Fang Lin back to safety. But the peach grove gave him no chance. Countless frost spikes froze the Clear Water into ice sculptures suspended in the air.

By then, Fang Lin had slowly risen to his feet. Countless frost-covered peach trees surrounded him on every side, and the dim Hearth Radiance Kindling Fire on his body flickered on the verge of going out in the snowy wind.

As the peach grove swallowed the last sight of him, Fang Lin looked in despair through a gap at Jiang Wangxuan, who remained at the edge of the grove. He opened his mouth, clearly forming the words, "Run!"

Fang Lin staggered forward a few steps. He understood now: in midair, not far from him, the Spider Mother had completed her metamorphosis!

At the final moment, she had consumed the cicada slough left behind by the Cicada Immortal.

Over the past hundred years, she had wanted to swallow this treasure countless times, but each time her tainted bloodline had made her abandon the thought.

Her bloodline was already tainted. Even if she consumed the cicada slough, her body would burst and she would die. Only a pure bloodline could merge with a treasure left by another race and complete a metamorphosis!

After metamorphosis, an Empty Shrine Blessing-Bestowing Spider would become a unique variant and leave behind the inheritance of the spider brood. This was a path the elders of the clan chose only after leaving direct descendants of their bloodline.

But this Cicada Immortal was different. This Purple Mansion Divine Ability had left behind not only a cicada slough, but also that Radiant Wish.

Everything that happened tonight was part of the teachers' and elders' plan. They had waited far, far too long for this chance. Tonight, the Radiant Wish condensed by True Person Shouhui had abruptly returned to Jinping Mountain, sending the remnant souls of Punishment Yang Peak wild with joy.

The right moment for which they had struggled to stay alive had finally arrived!