Chapter Eighty-Six: Return

Auspicious mist gathered and divine light coalesced. Enormous scarlet dragons, their eyes wide and glaring with fury, lay coiled atop the dense clouds formed from the swirling mist. Crimson lightning flickered beneath the clouds.

“Can you truly protect us?” Xi Chunxue raised her head to gaze at the scarlet dragons within the blood-red clouds. To see so many dragons glare at her with wrath in her lifetime was, in its own way, a fulfillment.

Su Yuanbai tilted his head slightly, smiling without a word.

At his feet, a white blossom of the Flower of the Other Shore unfurled and spread, its petals enveloping Xi Chunxue, Xie Miou'an, and Qu Hanchen behind him in a shroud of white.

A bolt of crimson lightning slashed down from the clouds, leaving a faint scorch across the white petals.

“Is this an illusion spell conjured from the Flower of the Other Shore?” Xie Miou'an stared in shock at the blossoming white flower, which looked like a pair of hands raised to the heavens in prayer.

“It’s not a spell—it’s a divine power,” Xi Chunxue replied softly, her gaze lingering on Su Yuanbai’s back.

Qu Hanchen, curious, reached out to gently touch a petal of the white flower. It was no illusion, but something tangible, something real.

More scarlet dragons emerged from the clouds, their horns jagged and fierce. Gouts of infernal flame burst from their mouths, twisting like serpents entwined with red lightning, all striking toward the heart of the Flower of the Other Shore—where Xi Chunxue and the others stood.

What happened next left Xi Chunxue utterly stunned.

Su Yuanbai stepped from within the blossoming white flower, leaving its protection behind. The serpentine flames, entwined with red lightning, immediately shifted direction and surged toward him.

“Is he going to sacrifice himself to save us?!” Qu Hanchen cried out, a wave of emotion swelling within him—so much so that his nose stung with the urge to weep. He had never imagined that this handsome man, who always seemed so cold, would do such a thing.

Even Xi Chunxue felt her heart moved.

Yet Xie Miou'an’s expression was tinged with skepticism as he clutched the Soul-Summoning Banner, watching the man step from the white flower. After so many years observing from the Bichen Prison, he knew this was not the sort to lay down his life for others.

With a thunderous crash, the flaming serpent struck Su Yuanbai’s body, red lightning crackling as it engulfed his slight figure.

Lightning and fire burst in all directions.

The white jade tiles of the Eastern Sea Dragon Palace melted away, leaving nothing but the uneven ocean floor exposed.

Had it been anyone else at the heart of that inferno, Xi Chunxue would never have believed they could survive, especially without the protection of spell or talisman.

But it was Su Yuanbai.

The very one who had led them out of the desolate, ghost-infested Shadow Mountain, who had spirited them, one by one, from the land of the dead, all the while shouting, “Slay the Yama King!”

“This fire is no ordinary flame—it’s the True Inferno of the Mortal Realms, burning spirit and essence alike,” Xie Miou'an said quietly as he watched. Yet he felt no concern for Su Yuanbai; after all, he had tried everything to kill this man, and even the Nine-Rank Immortal Pill, the Miaoyuan Dan, had failed. What was this True Inferno? Even the Threefold Inferno might not be enough.

Only Qu Hanchen watched with genuine worry as lightning and fire raged around Su Yuanbai. Even shielded within the white petals, he could feel the searing, destructive heat.

“No,” Su Yuanbai’s regretful voice reached their ears.

Xie Miou'an didn’t even blink, unable to see how Su Yuanbai had returned. It was as though he had never left the shelter of the flower. Yet the fire and lightning clinging to his robes and the embers on the ground left no doubt—he had come back from the heart of the storm.

“Is it only the bloodline of an ancient fiend that can break even a fragment of this binding?” Su Yuanbai murmured, fingers brushing his chest.

A beam of white light burst from his fingertip, and a pattern resembling the Flower of the Other Shore appeared on his chest, spreading along his meridians and forming a snow-white robe.

At the heart of the garment, a dazzling white flower bloomed, with petals embroidered along the hems.

Suddenly, clouds billowed and the wind rose, thunder and lightning splitting the sky.

A slit appeared in the clouds, and a handsome man descended, treading upon auspicious clouds. He was garbed in an exquisite red dragon robe, crowned with a nine-tasseled imperial diadem, and girded with a red jade belt engraved with dragons.

“So it was you who trespassed in my Eastern Sea Dragon Palace and stole the Stabilizing Pearl?!” His red eyes were cold as he looked down upon the mortals standing between the palace gate and the screen wall.

Ao Chi had just sent his dragons to inform his fourth brother, intending to rest in the main hall, when he sensed an unusual aura and rode out on a scarlet dragon.

Underworld folk? At first sight of the white flower, Ao Chi was puzzled.

He didn’t reveal himself immediately, instead commanding the palace dragons to unleash their lightning and spew the True Inferno—if these intruders perished, so be it.

But they had survived.

Or, more precisely, that man had survived.

Ao Chi’s crimson gaze fixed coldly on the man within the white flower. The man’s beauty surpassed even his own crafted form, as though the heavens themselves had sculpted his features, save for those pitch-black eyes—there was no flaw to be found.

“At last, you show yourself.” Su Yuanbai smiled lightly. As he prepared to step out from the flower, a petite scarlet dragon flew in from afar, its scales scorched and marked.

Trailing behind was a yellowish earth dragon.

“Second Brother, it wasn’t them who stole the Stabilizing Pearl.” The small scarlet dragon landed among the clouds above the palace and transformed into a lovely young woman, her red dress in tatters and two tiny horns on her brow.

The yellow earth dragon behind her didn’t ascend but slipped directly into the heart of Su Yuanbai’s white flower.

“My lord, I’ve returned!” As he landed, Duan Lingqi instantly shifted back to his elderly human form, his face alight with excitement as he addressed Su Yuanbai.

“So you’ve finally come back,” Xi Chunxue remarked with a gentle smile.

“You seem different,” Qu Hanchen observed curiously.

He noticed that Duan Lingqi’s transformed hands were no longer clawed like a dragon’s, but aged and clean, and his brow bore a pronounced bulge.

“He’s about to become a true dragon,” Xie Miou'an said after a long, steady look, his clouded eyes intent.

Duan Lingqi no longer radiated the wild, chaotic aura of a beast—now, a faint trace of dragon’s breath mingled in.