Chapter 101: The New Heavenly Dao

  After a long time, everything dissipated. There was a woman, kneeling on one knee, her left hand propping herself up, her eyes empty and hollow.

  She struggled to get up and stumbled towards the woman lying in the sea of flowers on the other side.

  "Qing Zhu, it's over." Du Si Lin stroked Xiao Qing Zhu's hair and said.

  But Xiao Qingzhu didn't respond, she closed her eyes tightly, as if she had fallen asleep.

  "Qing bamboo..." Du Sulin's tears mixed with blood fell from his empty eye sockets.

  "Tai Guang......" Hua An transformed into a human figure, standing beside Du Si Lin. She opened her mouth, but didn't know what to say, her clear eyes filled with confusion.

  Du Sulin picked up Xiao Qingzhu and jumped down from the high platform, walking unsteadily, step by step, out of the altar.

  No one stopped her anymore, they just watched Du Sulin's back disappear from their sight.

  Du Sulin didn't know how long she had been holding Xiao Qingzhu, but she could feel Xiao's body getting cooler and cooler. Her heart was like a fossil dried by the wind, numb from the pain.

  Unconsciously, she had walked to the foot of Fangshan Mountain. At this time, the sky was already dark, and Du Shilin could no longer see, but her heart remained clear and transparent.

  She had set a boundary on herself, and wherever she went, ordinary people would automatically disperse or ignore her.

  "Qingzhu, you said we'd come back together to watch the sunrise again." Du Siling spoke indifferently, ignoring Xiao Qingzhu's silence.

  Du Sulin was actually already at the end of his strength, and being able to carry Xiao Qingzhu for so long was already a miracle. By the time they reached the middle of the mountain, his body could no longer take it.

  She was panting heavily, trying her best to recover some of her strength, but how could the injuries she had sustained possibly improve in such a short period of time?

  "Sorry, Qing Zhu, sorry......" She kept repeating this sentence.

  Suddenly, a cool sensation spread across his lips, "No, don't say sorry, fool."

  Du Sulin was stunned on the spot. Was it... Qing Zhu's voice? Was it her illusion, but the coolness that came from her lips felt so real.

  "Qing...... Qing Zhu?" she called out tentatively, her tone cautious.

  "Hmm." Xiao Qingzhu's voice sounded again.

  It's alright, it's Qing Zhu, Du Si Lin could feel it, Xiao Qing Zhu's body moved slightly.

  "Si Lin, your eyes..." Xiao Qingzhu stretched out her hand, wanting to touch Du Si Lin's empty eye socket, but stopped halfway.

  "The heavens are destroyed, so my eyes are also blind." Du Sulin replied, paused for a moment, and then smiled, "But it doesn't matter, you're still here."

  Under the night sky, she smiled radiantly, like a blooming flower, beautiful and captivating.

  "Does it hurt?" Xiao Qingzhu's hand finally touched Du Siling's cheek, gently wiping away her tears.

  Du Sulin shook his head, "Compared to you, they're nothing."

  "You all know... " Xiao Qing Zhu furrowed her brow, she had woken up, but her physical condition was very poor, having lost too much blood, to the point where when she struggled to get up, she felt dizzy and fell back into Du Si Lin's arms.

  Du Sulin quickly changed his posture, so that Xiao Qingzhu could lean against him more comfortably.

  "At first, I thought that I would always be a burden to you, and that's not good." Xiao Qing lay her head on Du Si Lin's leg, playing with the hair that fell down from her head. "You are the successor of the Du family, but I am just an ordinary person. You struggle between life and death, and all I can do is wait and pray. Si Lin, I know you will protect me, but I don't want you to get hurt because of protecting me."

  "Hmm." Duslin responded with a murmur, she had originally wanted to say "sorry", but then remembered that Xiao Qingzhu didn't like her apologizing, so the three words got stuck in her throat and were swallowed back down. "You made an exchange with Peng Haotian to help me retrieve my soul, so......" Left me. These last four words, Duslin didn't say out loud, she felt heartache for Xiao Qingzhu, everything was done silently by him, all the hardships he endured alone, in fact, he wasn't weak at all, on the contrary, very resilient.

  Xiao Qingzhu leaned against Du Sulin's body, a smile floating at the corner of his mouth. "He took your soul and spirit but it was useless to him. Your soul and spiritual energy are too strong, he can't use them. Back then, he did this just to verify the Du family's Soul Gathering and Spirit Condensing method."

  "It is the Heavenly Path communicating with you, letting you know that using your heart's blood as a sacrificial offering can seal and petrify the untransformed bones."

  "After you disappeared after the battle with Haoran, I learned from Peng Haotian that it's highly likely you won't be coming back," Xiao Qingzhu's fingertips wrapped around Du Shilin's hair strands again and again, releasing them only to rewrap them. "I guarded the place where you went missing for three months, during which my mind was in disarray, even hating myself for not being able to help you, and not knowing where to find you after you disappeared, could only guard that piece of ruins. Until one day, when I stood there, the Heavenly Dao found me. It told me that my body is special, born close to the Dao, and that the heart's blood of extreme yin and yang, which was born for me, can be used as an offering to permanently seal the bone that won't decompose. At that time, I knew you would definitely come back, and that the heart's blood cannot be obtained from anyone but the one I love."

  "The blood of extreme yin and yang in one's mind, so you..."

  Xiao Qingzhu nodded, but then saw Du Siling's empty eyes and his heart skipped a beat. He responded with a single word: "Hmph." I don't have the extreme yin-yang blood in my body, but I know that things will reverse when they reach an extreme, and yin and yang can transform into each other. Since I couldn't achieve extreme yang, I'll do my best to achieve extreme yin. Coincidentally, Peng Haotian wanted to condense his soul and gather his spirit, and in order to make the soul's power stronger, he needed to absorb the energy of other souls. This energy required pure extreme yin blood to purify it. So I reached an agreement with him again, and as a condition, I told him that he couldn't harm or kill you in the future. However, even after absorbing a large amount of yin energy, I still couldn't achieve extreme yin. Later, the Heavenly Way appeared once more and told me that if I absorbed soul power, cut off cause and effect, and wrapped myself in resentment, it would use its power to revive those who died unjustly in this calamity after the seal was lifted. I thought to myself, with your temperament, you wouldn't kill me even if I wanted you to take my heart's blood. But if I had killed countless people, perhaps things would have been different. As a result, you still couldn't bring yourself to do it. That's why I turned my attention to Jing Jie and the Seventeenth, forcing you into a corner with no other choice.

  "Do you know, the moment the sword pierced your chest was a thousand times more painful than when it pierced my heart." Du Sulin recalled that pain, his heart still trembling with fear, and even his breathing became unconsciously rapid.

  Xiao Qingzhu turned around, stretched out her hand to hug Du Siling, and buried her head in her arms. "I know that the people who survive are often more painful, but Siling, in such a situation, there is only one way to let everyone live."

  "After all, we are all designed by the heavenly way." Du Sulin sighed.

  "How to say?"

  "The Unyielding Bone is the darling of the heavenly and earthly energies, originally created by the Heavenly Way. However, as time evolved, he developed his own thoughts and gradually became uncontrollable by the Heavenly Way. Now, he even wants to defy the heavens, which is why the Heavenly Way has the intention to eliminate him. As for the Du family, they were the cleaners of the Heavenly Way during their era. By my generation, the Unyielding Bone's interference caused me to be born with a damaged soul and later become a zombie after being possessed by the Dragon Soul. I had long lost the qualification to inherit the Du family's legacy. Therefore, the Heavenly Way wanted to use my hand to fight the Unyielding Bone, hoping for mutual destruction or even annihilation. However, unexpectedly, before facing the Unyielding Bone, I had already perished with the Dryad, my soul severely damaged and trapped in a coma. To continue his plan, the Heavenly Way had no choice but to merge a part of himself into me, transforming me into the Wheel of Heaven's Eye, allowing me to return to the mortal world. At the same time, the Heavenly Way knew that once I found out about the sacrifice, I would be even less likely to harm you, so she went to find you. And I think, Peng Huitian's method of condensing the soul and gathering the spirits requires the purification of the soul with the blood of the utmost yin, which is also part of the Heavenly Way's plan."

  "So at that time, you asked me, was it after the Heavenly Path that I became so angry?" Xiao Qingzhu recalled that her last impression of that battle was Du Sulin's anger.

  "Uh, I don't mind being the scapegoat for Tian Dao, but I won't accept it using you and putting your life in danger." Du Si Lin replied frankly. She fell silent for a moment before speaking again: "Qing Zhu, I know you don't like me saying sorry, but I still want to say one thing to you. Sorry is always making you worry about me, making you silently bear everything. I promise you, it won't happen again."

  "Fool," because her entire head was buried in Duslin's bosom, so Xiao Qingzhu's voice came out somewhat muffled. "We two are women, and precisely because we're both women, we should support each other even more. You always get used to carrying everything on your own shoulders; that kind of you is too heart-wrenching, and also too exhausting."

  "Hmm." Duslin responded with a murmur, "Qingzhu..." she called out softly.

  Xiao Qingzhu died and came back to life, but she still felt it was unreal. After all, even Peng Haotian had not achieved rebirth.

  "Do you want to know why I'm still alive? Qing Zhu was silent for a moment, "Actually, I really did die, but I did something, so I could come back."

  "What's wrong?"

  Xiao Qingzhu smiled mysteriously, and her body suddenly emitted a kind of inexplicable aura, with an air of majesty that was both present and absent.

  "You......?" Du Sulin felt it, and she lost her voice.

  "In fact, you only destroyed part of the Heavenly Way, but this is enough to severely damage the Heavenly Way. A new Heavenly Way was born, and I was born close to the Heavenly Way. After death, my soul was easily attracted by the Heavenly Way. The new Heavenly Way had just been produced and did not yet have an independent consciousness. So I merged with the new Heavenly Way. One mountain cannot accommodate two tigers, so I destroyed the remaining Heavenly Way."

  These two people really... one ruined the Heavenly Way and another went to merge with a new Heavenly Way.

  The Heavenly Path was originally formless. After Xiao Qinghe became the new Heavenly Path, he ran back to his own body that had been near the Heavenly Path since birth and possessed it again.

  In fact, this body is dead.

  "But I spent almost a year integrating with the Heavenly Path at first, and you... " Du Sulin was speechless, thinking about how short a time Xiao Qingzhu had taken.

  "It's because I'm naturally close to the way." Xiao Qingzhu smiled complacently and raised an eyebrow, "How, are you complaining that I came back too early?"

  "I... " Du Sulin was speechless, she never had such an idea, but only felt that the innate pair of wheels were not as good as the body of the near path.

  "Let's go see the sunrise, it's almost daylight." Xiao Qingzhu didn't dwell on this matter with Du Siling either. After lying down for a while, she gradually adapted to her body, and the weakness that belonged to her body also improved a lot.

  "Good." Du Sulin nodded.

  Xiao Qingzhu looked at Du Siling's empty eyes, where there were originally a pair of bright and clear pupils like stars, now nothing was left.

  "It's okay, what the eyes can see is just the surface, without eyes, as long as my heart is still bright, I can actually see more clearly and feel more subtly." Du Siling seemed to have felt Xiao Qingzhu's gaze, and smiled slightly.

  "From now on, I'll be your eyes. It's good this way, then you won't easily lose me again." Xiao Qingzhu waved her fist at Du Siling.

  Du Sulin grasped Xiao Qingzhu's hand with his backhand, their ten fingers interlocking.

  "I won't, I will never leave you again, nor will I let you leave me again."