Chu He stared blankly at Zhou Hui, seemingly not reacting to what he was saying.
“But…” he murmured after a long while, his expression bewildered and distant: “But how can you… how can you…”
—How can you not want me?
The one who had been armed over long years, the one wrapped in ice, the one burdened by countless secrets until his spine was rigid, ready to snap if bent even slightly—all that suddenly vanished at this moment. The deeply hidden, lonely, solitary, little Phoenix, longing for a bit of warmth and faith, let out a desperate cry from the weakest part of his soul.
Large chunks of rock collapsed, soil slid like a torrent, the underground river channel completely caved in, and the tremors of the earth made the rocks beside them shiver. In the chaos, gravel hit Phoenix’s forehead, but he didn’t dodge, didn’t even react. In the dim light, blood flowed down his cheek along his temple.
Zhou Hui tremblingly reached out to wipe away the bloodstain, but then saw Phoenix suddenly grasp him, as if he had found the last straw in a desperate situation: “But if you don’t want me anymore… where else can I go? If I come back, if I come back alive… where else can I go?…”
In the distant roar, thousands of evil spirits shrieked. That was the Demon Lord’s Dharma form, struggling to rise from beneath the pile of rocks.
“Phoenix, tell me,” Zhou Hui’s blood-stained hand cupped his cold, beautiful cheek, his eyes fixed on Phoenix’s: “—Tell me, what exactly are you going to do? If it’s a thunder tribulation, I’ll block it for you, it’s alright, I’m willing to do it, even if you want to become a Buddha, it’s alright, just tell me yourself, let me know…”
However, Phoenix looked at him in despair and shook his head. “I can’t… Zhou Hui, I can’t tell you…”
“You are a great demon. Some things I do might not kill me, but if you knew… you would… certainly die…”
The earth produced a dense, spiderweb-like network of cracks during the tremor, then these converged into fissures, and with a terrible groaning sound, the ground trembled and shattered into several pieces. Countless pieces of gravel and soil fell into the abyss; the entire mountain was about to collapse.
“If I come back alive, I will definitely find you… It’s useless even if you try to drive me away, I’ll follow you forever and ever…” Phoenix gasped violently, the excessive pressure making his words even somewhat incoherent: “—I will definitely come back, if I can come back…”
He staggered to his feet, supporting himself with the Buddha Bone Blade in the center of the cracking earth, his expression as bewildered and blank as someone abandoned. That expression suddenly reminded Zhou Hui of a memory: the moment the little Phoenix gazed at Sakyamuni walking towards the lotus throne in the Buddhist temple. That was the first time he had been abandoned, and he cried so sadly that even Zhou Hui, observing from the void thousands of years later, felt a bone-chilling sadness.
—Yet, even those agonizing cries and tears could not compare to this moment.
Cannot compare to this moment, Phoenix’s tear-stained, blank, bewildered face.
“…It’s for Sakyamuni, isn’t it?” Zhou Hui finally couldn’t help but ask, throwing caution to the wind, “You’re doing all this for that Sakyamuni, aren’t you?!”
Phoenix, as if suddenly awakened from a nightmare, looked at him, and after a long while, slowly nodded.
“…Yes,” he said hoarsely, his voice weak yet firm:
“I’m going to…”
The last few words were drowned out by the earth-shattering tremor, but Zhou Hui saw the lip movements. In that instant, he froze, unable to believe his eyes.
The ground suddenly shook violently, then again. Amidst the swirling dust, the Demon Lord’s Dharma form, like a giant, pushed aside countless piles of rocks and stood up, walking with bloody steps. Phoenix’s strike had shattered the gates of hell and caused no light damage to the Demon Lord’s Dharma form. In the smoke, his grotesque giant face was crisscrossed with torn flesh, and he carried the blood-soaked Wu Bei—Wu Bei was considered strong, but compared to the Demon Lord’s massive Asura King form, he was like a little chick.
“Are you done with your sentiments? If so, it’s time to go.” The Demon Lord said coldly, “I’ve learned my lesson from last time and came to greet you personally. There are many things waiting for us in the Four Evil Paths—”
Chu He gave Zhou Hui one last deep look. In that gaze was an indescribable emotion and an unavoidable separation. After a moment, he closed his eyes, and all weakness and longing vanished without a trace. The fully armed, flawless him had returned to the endless battlefield.
Chu He turned to face the Demon Lord, taking a step forward. Zhou Hui roared in despair, “Phoenix!”
However, the next second, the Demon Lord’s charred hand spread open in the air, a hurricane forming a vortex that created a black hole, which instantly stretched and lengthened, forming a spatial rift ten feet long and wide in the void.
Zhou Hui roared, “Stop—!” then lunged forward!
“Ah, I forgot.” At that moment, the Demon Lord looked at Wu Bei in his hand and said casually. He grabbed Wu Bei’s hands and stretched them in opposite directions, just like a beast tearing apart its helpless prey. With a sudden burst of strength, he was about to easily tear Wu Bei in half—
Zhou Hui’s face changed drastically, and he lunged forward like lightning, but in that fleeting moment, Chu He, being closer, was faster. In a blink of an eye, he leaped in front of the Demon Lord! The Demon Lord had no time to dodge. Phoenix flicked his wrist and struck horizontally, the Buddha Bone Blade emitting a dazzling golden light that directly cleaved towards his face!
The Demon Lord retreated amidst the strong energy hurricane, his heavy footsteps causing vibrations, then he shrank and returned to his human form. The sharp, fan-shaped golden light grazed the top of his head, continuously cutting countless giant rocks in half without losing speed, instantly disappearing into the mountain wall! Wu Bei fell from mid-air, was caught by Phoenix, and then thrown away.
—He must have done it on purpose. The direction Wu Bei was thrown was a pile of sharp boulders. If no one had caught him, his body would probably have shattered into pieces.
Zhou Hui had no time to react further. He vanished on the spot, appearing the next moment in front of the pile of boulders, and with a “Boom!”, heavily blocked Wu Bei’s free-falling body! Then he looked up. In the fierce wind, Chu He turned and walked towards the spatial rift.
“Phoenix—!”
That sound seemed to resound deep within his soul. Chu He’s heart was gripped by an invisible giant hand, fiercely twisted into a gruesome mass of flesh and blood. He gasped, his fingers spasming, trembling as he clutched the Buddha Bone Blade, and swung his wrist to strike back.
—Boom!
Golden light pierced the void, shattering countless mountain rocks into dust. It poured down, instantly blocking Zhou Hui’s path!
“The mountain is collapsing…” Phoenix said softly, without looking back, “Go back… I love you.”
Zhou Hui’s pupils contracted, trembling slightly, his entire body almost numb.
Phoenix took a step forward, and was swallowed by the endless darkness.
—This scene was remarkably similar: when Group Six besieged the Hell Realm, Phoenix also betrayed him this way, abandoning him, only looking back at him one last time before decisively leaving with the Demon Lord Fan Luo. That final gaze seemed to hide many words, or perhaps it was just a simple, meaningless glance. That scene had appeared countless times in Zhou Hui’s nightmares, tormenting him, making him restless; he had searched countless times in the vast sea of humanity for Phoenix’s possible traces, attempting to pursue that impossible sentence in his gaze, but no matter how far, through mountains and waters, he could not find that faint answer from his midnight dreams.
Now he finally knew.
It was just saying, go back, I love you.
Mount Wang Jiaxue let out a long, distant, sharp cry, and then, in silence, it collapsed with a thunderous roar.
At that moment, the ground trembled violently for a hundred miles around, the earth cracked, snow avalanches slid, and the permafrost shattered into countless pieces; mountain rocks weighing thousands of pounds vied to fall into the abyss, emitting a sharp, whistling sound in the fierce wind.
The Demon Sealing Barrier lifted Zhou Hui and Wu Bei, carrying them straight up through the chaotic earth to the gray, dust-filled sky. Zhou Hui tightly gripped the edge of the barrier, looking down at the ground, watching helplessly as the black cave entrance was crushed and filled, and tens of miles of land simultaneously sank. His hands were veined and bulging from the excessive force. If anyone had seen his face at that moment, it would have been terrifying.
—He knew it was too late.
The Demon Lord Fan Luo’s spatial gate had closed. Presumably, by now, Phoenix had reached the very edge of the boundary between the human and hell realms.
Zhou Hui took a deep, trembling breath, feeling his lungs fill with air mixed with blood, dust, and rust, so scalding that he tightly clutched his chest, where flesh and blood were exposed, as if his internal organs were shriveling into a ball in excruciating pain.
He should hate Phoenix. This person had abandoned him again, without saying a word, and walked away with another man right in front of him.
But when Zhou Hui closed his eyes, what welled up from the depths of his heart was not hatred, but the image of Phoenix standing there pale and bewildered, as if in a chaotic and absurd nightmare, looking at him across the disordered situation and the collapsing earth, silently uttering that sentence—
Yes, it’s because of Sakyamuni. I must go… kill him.
In the void, at the boundary between the Human Realm and Hell.
The Human Realm Stele stood quietly in the center of the Six Paths thoroughfare, like a gray, smooth stone tower. Phoenix walked up to it, stopping a few meters away. Behind him was still the Human Realm; in front of him was Hell.
The nauseating smell of burning decaying flesh wafted through the air, along with the distant, faint wailing of wronged spirits. Phoenix stood there motionless, his gaze slightly vacant, his beautiful and pale face devoid of any expression, making it impossible to tell what he was thinking.
The Demon Lord Fan Luo’s footsteps came from behind, stopping after a moment behind Phoenix.
“—What, standing here reminiscing about Zhou Hui?”
Phoenix retracted his gaze, not answering.
“I saw you were quite tragic just now, not caring at all about how I, the one taking over, felt. Why are you back to ice-cold mode in the blink of an eye? Hey, you’re making it hard for me to tell if I should be jealous, so what’s really in your heart…”
“Stop pretending, Fan Luo,” Phoenix said softly, “You need me in your plan to invade the Human Realm, nothing more.”
The Demon Lord’s expression changed, his eerie eyes instantly narrowing. However, before he could say anything, Phoenix simply said, “Step back.”
“…What did you say—”
“Step back. The golden ring lock on my spine will shatter my physical body the moment I cross the Human Realm Stele, leaving only my soul to enter hell.”
The Demon Lord paused, startled.
Phoenix took a deep breath and slowly stepped forward. Whether it was an illusion or another reason, he once again felt a faint, piercing pain from the golden ring lock on his lumbar spine, as if silently foretelling the tragic scene that was about to unfold. In fact, this pain should have disappeared long ago, but it had been truly uncomfortable when it was first put on. He still remembered it was when he had just been captured in H City.
Zhou Hui had confined him in a barrier and, disregarding his resistance, forcibly put this lock on his spine. The excruciating pain that spread through all his nerves made him almost scream and bite off his own hand, even when Zhou Hui was pressing him down hard…
But the pain quickly disappeared, probably because that part of his nerves had been numbed. Instead, whenever it was cloudy or late at night, the area where his bone marrow and the golden ring lock touched always felt cold, making him shiver in his sleep and unconsciously press closer to Zhou Hui’s radiating warmth, so much so that he woke up every morning tightly curled in that man’s arms.
In a soul state, he probably wouldn’t feel cold anymore, right?
Phoenix closed his eyes. It must have been because of the extreme cold, even his tears were frozen, not a single drop could flow out. He walked to the side of the Human Realm Stele, paused, and stood there slowly exhaling the air from his lungs, as if to completely expel all the coldness and fear from his body. Then he lifted his foot and crossed the Human Realm Stele—
At the moment his foot landed, there was no explosion. At the same time, a brilliant arc of light flew out from beneath his collar—it was the ring hanging around his neck! The diamond on the ring emitted a dazzling silver light, and the micro-engraving inside was reflected, projecting a radiant, soaring Phoenix in mid-air!
—Immediately following, clear cries echoed from all directions in the void. The Phoenix light image, as if instantly imbued with life, danced gracefully in the splendid light, resonating with captivating ripples.
The Demon Lord exclaimed in astonishment, “This… what is this?!”
The Phoenix light image slowly descended around Chu He’s body, its myriad tail feathers like gentle waves in a sea of light, one by one falling and retracting, as if paving a brilliant Milky Way descending from the heavens. The next second, the light image rapidly shrank and brightened, transforming into the Phoenix shape carved inside the ring lock, every feather and wing precisely replicated, then accurately absorbed into the golden ring lock behind his spine.
—In an instant, the original Phoenix pattern in the lock perfectly overlaid the absorbed Phoenix light image, like a key precisely fitting into a lock. The golden ring lock made a crisp snapping sound, withdrew from the bone marrow, and clanked onto the ground, stained with blood!
The Demon Lord exclaimed in astonishment, “How is this happening?!”
Phoenix’s expression was indescribable. He looked down at the ring on his chest, then after a moment, raised his hand and grasped it. So this… so this was the key to the golden ring lock!
—Phoenix clasped the ring deeply, tightly in his palm, his teeth clenched so hard that his face was rigid with the last vestiges of his strength. He remembered the vast frozen earth under the starry sky, and the wedding ring Zhou Hui offered when he knelt on one knee. It turned out that at that moment, Zhou Hui had personally given him the key to unlock the golden ring lock!
“I will… I will definitely come back…”
Phoenix thought again and again, the voice in his mind trembling and clear, as if to engrave this thought deep into his heart.
“Even if burned to ashes by raging fire, I will… definitely return to your side…”
Volume Four: Frozen Long Night
