Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Yan Guichen guarded the Endless Prison for a full thousand years.

For the first two hundred years, he checked that life lamp every single day. Though the flame was weak, it remained lit. He believed Siming’s words, thinking that Fei Li was truly just in a deep slumber.

In the three hundredth year, the life lamp began to flicker and sway, though there was no wind.

In the four hundredth year, faint thumping sounds occasionally echoed from the depths of the Sealing Array, like someone knocking on a door from a very, very distant place. The sound came rhythmically, one strike after another, as light as a dying person scraping their knuckles against a stone wall. Yan Guichen went to question Siming, but Siming only said it was a normal reaction from the Demonic Bone being purified.

In the five hundredth year, he heard his own name from outside the array.

The voice was as thin as a gossamer thread, seeping out from the cracks bit by bit. Yan Guichen moved to break the array on the spot, but he was stopped by a Divine General sent by the Celestial Emperor. The Divine General said that if the array were opened prematurely, Fei Li’s soul would be utterly extinguished.

Yan Guichen stood before the gates of the array, motionless for an entire night.

He cut open his palm, letting his blood drip onto the stone doors one drop at a time, whispering to her to endure a little longer, to wait just a bit more. He did not know that on the other side of the door, Fei Li was using a hand burned so badly the bone was exposed to touch that small bit of seeping coolness.

He thought he was saving her.

It wasn’t until the thousandth year was complete that he opened the Endless Prison with his own hands.

Fei Li was not in the abyss.

There were no red robes, no long whip, and no final look like the one she had given him. There was only a floor covered in black ash and the cracked remains of a life lamp.

Yan Guichen knelt in the ashes, his fingers trembling so violently he couldn’t even scoop it up.

When Siming arrived, he still wore that look of mercy, even attempting to persuade him to restrain his grief.

“The Demonic Bone has been incinerated. She has… fulfilled her final purpose for the Three Realms.”

In that moment, Yan Guichen finally understood what filthy lies were hidden behind the word “slumber.”

With one strike of his sword, he shattered the white jade steps before the Lingxiao Palace.

After that day, the Celestial Realm lost an Upper Immortal who was devoid of heart and desire, and gained a Yan Guichen who searched for a soul like a madman.

He destroyed half of Siming Palace, snatched away the remaining fragments of Fei Li’s life lamp, and then gouged out his own immortal bone. He cast his longevity and divine sense inch by inch into the Sea of Reincarnation, all just to fish back a single wisp of her soul from among tens of thousands of reincarnations.

It took him a thousand years.

For the first four hundred years, what he found was her hatred-the sound of her crying, which had been burned to pieces and then stitched back together.

Only in the final six hundred years did he finally recover her name.