Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Li Jinxue was settled into the Yaotai Medical Hall.

As soon as the news spread, the entire Ninth Heaven erupted.

Some said Shang Wujiu had gone mad; he had personally sentenced the Criminal Immortal back then, yet now he had fished her out of the Sea of No Return. Others claimed that if Li Jinxue left the sea, the seal would surely fall into chaos, and she should be suppressed again immediately. Still others knelt upon the Celestial Steps, pleading for Shang Wujiu to order her execution as an offering to the fellow disciples who had died three hundred years ago.

Shang Wujiu saw no one.

He stood in the inner hall, watching Li Jinxue on the jade couch.

She remained in a stupor, looking as though she might dissipate at any moment. The Physicians had been busy the entire night, finally reporting with fear and trembling, “Imperial Lord, the Criminal Immortal’s internal organs were long ago corroded by the sea’s miasma. She is only hanging on by a Remnant Flame of her Life Lamp. The reason she has survived until today doesn’t seem to be the mercy of the Heavenly Dao, but rather… rather as if she is enduring something for someone else.”

“For whom?” Shang Wujiu asked.

The Physician did not dare to answer.

Suddenly, the sound of a wheelchair rolling over the floor tiles came from outside the door.

Shang Wujiu was momentarily stunned when Feng Qiwu was pushed in by a maidservant.

She had once been the most outstanding Alchemist-Doctor in the Ninth Heaven and was Li Jinxue’s closest friend. After the chaos of the Sea of No Return three hundred years ago, her throat had been infested by resentment, leaving her unable to speak long sentences, and her legs had been ruined.

Feng Qiwu raised her hand, signaling for everyone to leave.

Once the hall doors were closed, she took a thin Life Register from her sleeve and placed it in Shang Wujiu’s hand.

It was the Life Register Duplicate of his own destiny.

As Shang Wujiu flipped to the first page, his pupils suddenly constricted.

Every injury he had suffered over the past three hundred years, every bolt of heavenly tribulation lightning he had endured while breaking through cultivation realms, and even the nights he had nearly succumbed to inner demons were all recorded clearly within. However, at the end of every page, there was an extra line of small characters that should not have been there.

“Transferred to Li Jinxue.”

“Transferred to Li Jinxue.”

“Transferred to Li Jinxue.”

For three hundred years, every single page was like this.

Shang Wujiu’s fingertips turned cold as he looked up at Feng Qiwu.

Feng Qiwu stared at him and spoke with great difficulty, her voice as raspy as sandpaper: “That Life Lamp… was never… yours.”

For the first time, the hand Shang Wujiu used to hold the Life Register trembled.

He remembered the year of his ascension, when there were ninety-nine bolts of heavenly lightning. The final three should have been fatal, yet they had inexplicably weakened. He remembered the battle in the Demon Realm, when his heart was devoured by ten thousand ghosts, only to wake up with a scorched Phoenix Feather by his bedside. He remembered every time he thought his life was so tough it defied the heavens, he would dream of seawater in the middle of the night-dreaming of someone standing in the endless darkness, softly calling for him to return.

It wasn’t that his life was tough.

It was that someone had endured everything he was meant to suffer in his stead.