The Phoenix Wisdom King from the Heavenly Dao’s forbidden land left with a Great Demon from the Sea of Blood on the battlefield of gods and demons, and from then on, vanished from Luminous Heaven.
When the news reached the Thirty-Three Heavens, all the Venerables were shocked.
Hell, Mount Buzhou.
Hell is divided into four major categories: the eight hot, the eight cold, the Avīci, and the isolated. Each category is further divided into four gates and sixteen sub-hells. Mount Buzhou is located at the center of the four great gates of Hell. It is said to be able to bypass Mount Sumeru and lead directly to the Formless Heaven, and it is one of the sacred mountains, along with Mount Ash and the Iron Wheel Mountains of Hell.
And what makes it even more special is that, according to legend, Mount Buzhou has the Demon’s Eye, which is the source of hell’s demonic power.
Phoenix sat on the edge of a cliff, gazing at the ten-thousand-zhang-deep chasm below. Within the abyss, black energy swirled like a giant dragon. Through the rolling body of the dragon, one could see a bright, blood-red giant sphere at the very bottom, shaped like an eyeball, staring straight at the gloomy sky of Hell.
Zhou Hui came from behind, holding a gray outer robe, and gently draped it over Phoenix’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry, I was too…”
“It’s alright,” Phoenix said softly.
He beckoned behind him. Zhou Hui hesitated for a moment but still sat down beside him. The two sat side-by-side on the cliff, looking into the abyss. The giant eye seemed to rotate, giving off a dull, blood-red glint.
“You’re not used to Mount Buzhou, are you?” Zhou Hui asked in a low voice.
“Why do you ask?”
“…I just feel that you live in the golden-jade-and-lapis-lazuli Thirty-Three Heavens and hold the esteemed position of a Wisdom King. Suddenly coming to a place in the Lower Three Paths like Hell…”
Phoenix tilted his head to look at Zhou Hui. His robes were very loose, making him appear even more slender. His hair was gathered to one shoulder, revealing the distinct and delicate line of his collarbone. Deeper within, fresh and hidden wounds were concealed.
“Were you born here?” he asked, not answering the question.
Zhou Hui nodded. “Beside the Demon’s Eye. I’ve lived there as long as I can remember. But later, the Saṃghāta wind, with its extreme heat and foul stench, blew stronger and stronger, so I moved up from below. Sometimes I go for a swim in the Sea of Blood. What about you?”
“…The Heavenly Dao’s forbidden land, Xueba Peak.” Phoenix paused, then said slowly, “The mountaintop is frozen for a thousand li, with wind and snow year-round. Countless glaciers stretch endlessly, forming the ten-thousand-ren ice ridges of the Mount Sumeru range. At the highest point, there is a magnificent temple…”
Zhou Hui’s expression didn’t change, but a hidden unease flashed in his eyes.
“The temple is uninhabited year-round. Only I live there. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only person in the world.” Phoenix showed a faint, light smile. “When I occasionally came to Hell before, I felt that Hell was much livelier than Mount Sumeru.”
Zhou Hui’s heart was filled with complex and indescribable feelings. The anxiety that comes after obtaining what one desires faintly emerged from the bottom of his heart. “Then… have you been to Mount Buzhou before?”
“I have.”
Was it to subdue demons? Or did he pass through Mount Buzhou during a Heavenly Dao campaign? A place this harsh and dangerous, even if he came, he wouldn’t have stayed…
Just as Zhou Hui was thinking this, he heard Phoenix say, “Actually, I was born on Mount Buzhou.”
Zhou Hui was stunned.
He thought the other was joking, but when he looked up, he only saw Phoenix gazing at the Demon’s Eye in the chasm below, his expression placid, not at all like he was joking.
“I also heard it from Venerable Bhadra later. In the primeval era, as heaven and earth weathered and the mountains and rivers shifted, the Phoenix’s jade embryo from the Formless Heaven was knocked down. It passed through the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths and fell right onto the Demon’s Eye at the foot of Mount Buzhou… The Buddha did not want an ancient divine bird to be born in Hell, so he forcefully opened a direct path from the Formless Heaven to Mount Buzhou. Just as he was about to retrieve the Phoenix embryo, I suddenly hatched beside the Demon’s Eye…”
“But that was a very, very long time ago, many years before you were born.”
He looked at Zhou Hui and smiled slightly, his eyes seeming to say, See, I really was born long before you.
For some reason, when he smiled, there was a deep loneliness in his eyes, as if the whistling wind and snow of a thousand years on the glaciers still lingered deep within his soul, never to cease.
He used Zhou Hui’s shoulder to stand up but staggered. Zhou Hui shot up to support him and then swept him up into a bridal carry.
Phoenix rested very obediently in his arms, his hands wrapped around his strong neck.
Phoenix didn’t weigh much to begin with. Even in human form, his bones were hollow. To Zhou Hui, it was nothing. They walked down from the cliff, clinging to each other, following the rugged mountain path, through the demonic forest of Hell burning with red smoke. On a flat area on the mountainside, there was a small wooden cabin. In front of the cabin grew fiery red Asura flowers, blooming wildly in clusters in the wind.
Zhou Hui stepped onto the wooden plank walkway in front of the cabin. The steps of the cabin connected to a platform, on which was spread a soft, jet-black demon beast pelt.
He placed Phoenix on the pelt to sit, then turned and used a green bamboo tube to fetch water. He then sat in front of him and gently fed it to him.
But Phoenix turned his head, indicating he didn’t want to drink. Then he turned back and gently pressed his forehead against Zhou Hui’s.
“I don’t have many good things…” Zhou Hui said, a little awkwardly.
But Phoenix said, “It doesn’t matter.”
His long eyelashes drooped slightly, it was unclear what he was pondering. After a long moment, as if sensing something, he looked up at Zhou Hui. “When I say it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter. You don’t need to overthink it.”
“But…”
“Just sit here with me for a while,” Phoenix said in a low voice. “I haven’t… spoken to anyone in a long time.”
He seemed to sigh, but the sound was so faint it was almost inaudible, dissipating into the damp wind as soon as it left his lips.
Phoenix wrapped his arms around his shins and rested his head on Zhou Hui’s lap, quietly gazing at the dense red pine forest of Mount Buzhou in the distance. His eyes were starkly black and white, and very clear. Zhou Hui had never seen the jewel-like, crystal-clear lakes of Mount Sumeru, but now, looking at Phoenix’s eyes, he suddenly felt that perhaps even those legendary lakes of ice and snow were nothing more than this.
He had once wondered if Phoenix would feel bored or find the scorching environment of Hell unbearable. But he soon discovered that Phoenix was very indifferent to everything around him. It seemed that whether it was the magnificent Heavenly Dao temples of flowing gold and shattered jade, or the Mount Buzhou of Hell with its roiling seas of blood and poisonous smoke, to him, there was no difference.
Phoenix nestled beside him, simply enjoying the warmth of companionship.
It seemed that when he curled up and sat there, he formed a quiet little world of his own. No matter how the world changed or the stars shifted, no trace would be left in those lonely and calm eyes.
Why did he agree to me? Zhou Hui thought.
The high and mighty Wisdom King, a beauty as if beyond the clouds, should be an existence that everyone vies to flatter and praise. So why did he, of all people, agree to me?
On Phoenix’s seventh day on Mount Buzhou, the lord of the Four Evil Paths, Great Asura King Fan Luo, sent an emissary to pay a visit, asking if His Highness could grace the Demon Palace with his presence for a discussion.
At that time, Phoenix was clinging to Zhou Hui’s shoulders, trembling with the intense movements, letting out intermittent moans. The sound was a bit hoarse from being torn, sounding very painful at first, but upon closer listening, it concealed an urgent emptiness and craving.
Zhou Hui pulled back a little. He touched with his hand and felt that it was very dry. Although the intense friction doubled his own ferocious pleasure, the little reason he had left told him that this meant the other person was feeling no pleasure at all and was in great pain.
Zhou Hui stopped, sucking and kissing Phoenix’s cold, trembling lips, and asked in a low, hoarse voice, “Should I be gentler?”
But Phoenix shook his head, his sweat-soaked hair sticking to his cheeks, making his face look even paler and more pitiful.
“Am I too…”
Phoenix strained his head up to kiss Zhou Hui, the knuckles of both his hands marked with kiss marks. Against his skin, which was almost transparent with sweat, it was terrifyingly suggestive.
That desperate gamble of being so afraid of loneliness that he would rather endure pain than lose it, was like an electric current passing through his cold, soft lips and tongue, striking directly at Zhou Hui’s heart. No man could withstand this. In that moment, Zhou Hui simply forgot all his concerns and heartache. He pushed Phoenix down onto the bed and thrust into him fiercely, pumping vigorously amidst his broken moans, not knowing how long he went on in his excitement, until he finally erupted deep inside with an exceptionally deep thrust.
The release lasted for a long time. Only when it finally subsided did Zhou Hui let out a long breath and hold the exhausted Phoenix, kissing his sweaty hair.
“Does it hurt?”
Phoenix closed his eyes and said softly, “…It’s alright.”
He pressed his face into the hollow of Zhou Hui’s sturdy shoulder. His eyelashes were wet, forming a slightly upturned arc at the long corners of his eyes. After a long while, his fragmented and chaotic breathing finally calmed down. He asked hoarsely, “Why is your body so hot?”
Zhou Hui said, “It’s because your body temperature is too cold. What’s this?”
His fingers gently pressed on a long, old scar on Phoenix’s ribs. The scar had faded so much it was barely noticeable; one wouldn’t see it without looking closely from up close. However, Phoenix did not answer immediately. When Zhou Hui looked up, he saw that his eyes were half-open, his expression somewhat stiff.
“It was left from when you drew the Phoenix Bones…” Zhou Hui realized. “Was it the pure cyan arrow I broke?”
What he didn’t know was that in that moment, Phoenix was not thinking about the broken arrow, but about the more persistent, haunting worries that made fear rise from the depths of his heart. About the person for whom he had drawn bones to make arrows, the person who could bring down heavenly lightning from the Formless Heaven at any moment, and those long years of depending on each other in the empty temple, and the increasingly ruthless methods and heavy deceptions behind that seemingly warm face…
If Zhou Hui knew, what would he think?
Would he leave?
“It’s okay… don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt anymore.” Phoenix squeezed harder into his embrace and said in a small voice, “Really, it doesn’t hurt anymore, I can’t feel anything at all…”
His voice was a little unfocused.
What he actually wanted to say was not that it “didn’t hurt anymore,” but something else, something more painful and obscure. Unfortunately, back then, Zhou Hui had no way of discerning the deeper secrets buried within those pale words.
Phoenix hid the injured side of his chest. He turned over in bed, but then cried out in pain as he suddenly pressed on his hair. Zhou Hui immediately picked him up, pulled his hair out from under him, and gently massaged the back of his head with his thumb. The pressure was even and gentle, and soon the feeling of comfort overcame the pain.
“How is it?”
Phoenix seemed to enjoy this intimate cuddling immensely and nodded silently.
Zhou Hui looked at his slightly closed eyes and the deep, weary shadows beneath his lashes, his gaze filled with unconcealable desire and infatuation. After a long while, he lowered his head and placed a kiss on the tip of Phoenix’s ear. The tickling sensation made Phoenix flinch, but then he turned his head and kissed him back seriously.
“Why did you agree to me?” Zhou Hui asked in a low voice as their breaths mingled. “Why didn’t you kill me, and instead agreed to me?”
Phoenix didn’t answer.
Zhou Hui very gently pulled the hair at the back of his head, making him tilt his head up slightly to look at him. “Hmm? Why?”
His expression was very insistent, staring unblinkingly into Phoenix’s eyes, leaving no room for evasion, not for Phoenix, nor for himself.
However, Phoenix’s gaze back at him was very calm, and his voice was very natural. “Why do you think that? Do you think there’s something wrong with you?”
“…I am a Great Demon from the Sea of Blood. Compared to the honored position of a Heavenly Dao Wisdom King, there is nothing to be proud of…”
“So?”
“So…” Zhou Hui paused, then said, “After you released me from the Heavenly Dao, I returned to the Sea of Blood in Hell. Your words kept replaying in my mind, and without realizing it, I developed a feeling of admiration for you. The moment love blossomed, it was like an epiphany, inspiring a wisdom that a hell demon should never have. Then, from the fire of wisdom, I cultivated the human form that only a top-tier Great Demon can obtain… It can be said that everything I have was bestowed by you. Before you, I am as humble as dust. In fact, the moment I stepped onto the city wall, I was not prepared for you to accept…”
Phoenix looked at him steadily, without smiling.
On the contrary, there were more obscure and profound emotions in his eyes, a deep sadness, and a hint of subtle self-mockery.
“You are wrong to think that,” he said. “Perhaps the one who is as humble as dust is me.”
Zhou Hui was stunned, not understanding what he meant, but Phoenix didn’t explain further.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside the cabin. Someone climbed the steps, crossed the wooden platform, and stood at the door, asking in a hoarse voice, “—Is His Highness the Phoenix Wisdom King present?”
Zhou Hui abruptly threw on his clothes, got up, grabbed the long blade stuck by the bed, and strode through the main room to the wooden door. “Who’s outside?”
There was a moment of silence outside.
“I am an Asura. Is His Highness the Phoenix Wisdom King present?” the hoarse, strange voice asked again.
Zhou Hui threw the door open. Outside stood a human-faced, white-winged Asura bird. Its huge membrane wings almost filled the entire corridor, and its blank, white eyes stared unblinkingly at him.
The Asura clans had divinity and were esteemed above the beings of Hell, often appearing as the masters of the Four Evil Paths. However, in Hell, facing the dwelling of a top-tier Great Demon like Zhou Hui, the Asura bird was clearly wary. It did not rashly use the great summons that Asuras typically used on hell demons, but instead, unusually, chose to pay a personal visit.
Zhou Hui held the iron blade and said coldly, “—What is it?”
Phoenix draped on a white robe and walked out from the inner room, leaning against the inner room’s doorframe behind Zhou Hui, his incomparably beautiful face devoid of any expression.
Compared to the Great Demon of the Sea of Blood, someone like the Phoenix Wisdom King, who had actually cleared Hell several times, was obviously more tangibly intimidating. The human-faced, white-winged bird faltered for a moment before saying hoarsely, “Your Highness Wisdom King, the Great Asura King has learned of your honored arrival on Mount Buzhou and wishes to invite you to the Demon Palace on Iron Wheel Mountain for a discussion…”
Phoenix asked, “Who is the Great Asura King?”
The human-faced bird replied, “It is His Highness Fan Luo.”
Phoenix didn’t remember who this person was at all. He said, “I see. Tell him to come himself.”
Phoenix turned and walked back into the inner room. The human-faced, white-winged bird had not expected this reaction at all and took an urgent step forward. “Your Highness Wisdom King…”
Half of the iron blade in Zhou Hui’s hand slid out of its sheath with a clang.
—That was the man who had just broken eleven Phoenix Bones!
The human-faced bird immediately stopped again, and said angrily, “Your Highness Wisdom King!—Mount Sumeru’s gods and Buddhas have sent a decree to the Great Asura King, ordering you to go to the Demon Palace to receive the decree. Do you intend to disregard even the will of the gods and Buddhas?!”
Zhou Hui suddenly turned to look at Phoenix, but only heard him say without turning his head, “Oh? What decree?”
“The Great Asura King invites you to the Demon Palace for a discussion, only then…”
Phoenix turned his face. From his gaze to his expression, everything was placid. Even his tone of voice had no inflection. “How did the previous Great Asura King die?”
The human-faced bird was horrified into silence.
All beings in the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths knew that the previous Asura King had been shot dead by the Phoenix Wisdom King in the Sea of Blood, which led to the subsequent thousand years of turmoil in the Four Evil Paths.
Phoenix asked, “Does Fan Luo want to die that way too?”
—The human-faced bird instantly trembled, its face changing color in fury!
Phoenix turned and walked back into the inner room.
The human-faced bird was immediately enraged. Its blank white eyes rolled back to reveal crimson, and it was about to charge in!
But in the next second, Zhou Hui drew his blade horizontally. The human-faced bird froze before the gleam of the blade, hesitated for a few seconds, then suppressed its anger with heavy breaths, and screeched sharply, “Phoenix Wisdom King! Venerable Bhadra of Mount Sumeru demands your return to the Thirty-Three Heavens! You must leave the Hell Path immediately!”
Phoenix’s calm voice came from the inner room: “If I were you, I would leave this place now.”
—He said this so calmly that the human-faced bird was stunned for a moment, not immediately understanding what he meant.
Then, Zhou Hui casually flicked his blade upwards, slicing across the human-faced bird’s neck, and closed the door.
The next moment, a gushing sound of liquid came from the doorway. The heavy body of the human-faced, white-winged bird fell with a thud, tumbling down the steps!
Zhou Hui casually flicked his blade. A line of blood beads splattered onto the dark wooden wall and quickly soaked in.
He didn’t even feel there was anything wrong. He sheathed his blade and walked into the inner room. He saw Phoenix standing by the window, facing away from him, gazing absently at the distant, gloomy sky.
Is he thinking of leaving? This thought instantly flashed through Zhou Hui’s mind.
Although he immediately forced himself to dismiss the thought, the resulting anxiety and violence lingered in his mind for a long time, making him feel a scorching airflow in his nose as he breathed.
“You…”
“No,” Phoenix interrupted him, seeming to already know what he wanted to ask. “I’m not thinking of leaving.”
He tilted his head to look at Zhou Hui, the corners of his lips actually carrying a slight, soft smile.
·
—At this time, neither Zhou Hui nor Phoenix thought that the decree from the Heavenly Dao was anything more than a warning. At this delicate juncture, it did not represent any threat in a practical sense.
However, a nightmarish shadow followed. Phoenix soon discovered a very terrifying and ominous sign appearing on his body.
