Nantian Fengyu closed her eyes, ignoring the looming threat of the God of Ti. She reached deep within herself, to the very core of her soul where the mark of the Divine Phoenix resided.
She began to burn her life force, her divine soul, not for power, but for connection.
"Junior Brother..." she whispered internally, her soul crying out across the short distance. "Yun Lintian... can you hear ?"
Her Divine Phoenix Soul, radiant and desperate, reached out, trying to brush against the slumbering Divine Phoenix Soul within Yun Lintian—the soul he had inherited long ago. It was a fragile, soul-deep call, a sister calling to her brother, a phoenix crying to its kin.
"Wake up... please... they’re all gone... Linlin and Qingqing... they’re gone... They called for you with their last breath..."
She poured every mory, every shared laugh, every mont of camaraderie into the call. She showed him the small, lifeless white tiger cub. She let him feel the final, mournful gust of wind.
"Long Xi and Qinxuan... they fell protecting you... I can’t hold on much longer..."
Her internal voice was a desperate plea, a final prayer against the inevitable. She poured her entire being, her very essence, into this one, last attempt to reach him, to shatter the deep trance of balance and summon the storm of his wrath before it was too late for them all.
Nantian Fengyu’s soul call brushed against the dormant Divine Phoenix Soul within Yun Lintian. For a heart-stopping mont, she felt a connection—a flicker of recognition. But the response that echoed back in her mind was not one of awakening, but of serene, immovable resolve.
"He cannot wake now," the soul-voice of Yun Lintian’s phoenix imprint responded, its tone ancient and calm, yet filled with an unshakable certainty. "He stands at the precipice of the final enlightennt. The balance of all things hangs in the mont. To disturb him is to unravel everything. He must not be roused."
The ssage was clear, final. Her plea had been heard and rejected by the very laws that governed his breakthrough. Despair, colder than any ice, threatened to freeze her burning heart.
But in that absolute depths of despair, a mory, long buried and protected, surged forth with the clarity of a lightning strike.
The abandoned Nine Firmant City. The dust-covered inn. Stepping through the threshold and being pulled into a vibrant past...
She saw it again. Herself and Yun Lintian, younger, less burdened, exploring the mysterious ruins. They had stepped into an inn and the world had shifted. The city was alive, bustling. And there, she had t her.
Nantian Yu. A woman of the Divine Phoenix Clan from a bygone era. Beautiful, proud, yet carrying a deep sorrow in her eyes. And the way Nantian Yu had looked at Yun Lintian... it wasn’t the look of a stranger. It was a gaze filled with ancient recognition, with a love that had transcended ti itself.
Sothing tragic had happened in that city. It had fallen under a terrible attack. And in the end, Nantian Yu had died in Yun Lintian’s arms.
The mory played out like a haunting dream. Nantian Yu’s final words, whispered with her last breath, echoed in Nantian Fengyu’s soul: "The legend of the Phoenix... Feng and Yu... Feng, the male, sacrifices himself to protect Yu, the female... his fla becos her eternal light..."
Then, the vision of the past faded. They were back in the dusty, abandoned inn. And there, on the staircase, was a skeleton. Ti had claid the flesh, but not the jade necklace around its neck. Compelled by a force she didn’t understand, Nantian Fengyu had reached out and touched it.
The mont her fingers brushed the cold jade, the mory flooded into her—not as a story, but as her own lived experience. The joy, the love, the battle, the sacrifice, the searing pain of death—it was all hers.
She saw through Nantian Yu’s eyes. She felt Nantian Yu’s love for the man who was, in another life, Yun Lintian. She felt Nantian Yu’s despair as she died, not in the arms of a stranger, but of her beloved.
She was Nantian Yu.
Tears had stread down her face then, and she had quickly hidden them, burying the earth-shattering revelation deep within her soul, too overwheld to confront it.
Now, standing as the final line between Yun Lintian and annihilation, the truth she had suppressed crystalized with perfect, painful clarity. The legend was only half right. Sotis, the female Phoenix must also sacrifice herself for the male.
Her duty was not to wake him. Her duty was to protect him. To give him the ti he needed, no matter the cost. Just as Nantian Yu would have done. Just as she had always been destined to do.
The despair vanished, replaced by a profound, terrifying calm. Her tears dried, replaced by a resolve that burned brighter than her divine flas.
She sent one final, gentle thought to the Divine Phoenix Soul within Yun Lintian. "I understand. Protect him."
Then, she severed the connection.
Nantian Fengyu resolutely turned around to face Nian Shi and Yin. Her expression was serene, yet her eyes blazed with an ancient fire. The Divine Phoenix sigil on her forehead, which had been glowing, now erupted into a sun-like brilliance, burning with such intensity it seed to sear her very skin.
"It’s ti for to protect you, my Feng," she whispered, a vow to the past, present, and future.
Buzz—
She did not just summon her power. She unleashed her true essence. Her body dissolved into pure, incandescent fla. Not the form of a woman wreathed in fire, but the complete, glorious form of the Divine Phoenix itself—a magnificent bird of legend, its feathers like molten gold and crimson, its wings spanning the heavens, radiating not just heat, but the very essence of life and rebirth.
Scree—!
A cry tore from her beak—a Phoenix’s screech that was both a dirge for the fallen and a declaration of war against the primordials.
The sound reverberated through the entire space, shaking the foundations of reality.
And then, the impossible happened.
The withered, dead land around her, scoured bare by Uncreation and temporal decay, began to vitalize. From the gray, lifeless dust, green shoots pushed forth, growing at an impossible rate.
The barren soil regained its rich, dark color, teeming with vitality. The air, once heavy with death, grew fresh and filled with the promise of dawn...
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