Chapter 6
Chapter 6
After that, Li Jinxue traveled across almost every corner of the three realms.
She visited the Hall of Heavenly Secrets, knelt at the Fate-Commanding Platform, and broke into Medicine King Valley. She even scoured through forbidden texts that should never have been touched. Shang Wujiu, assuming she was simply unwilling to accept his fate, accompanied her every day in her search for a solution. He had no idea that she had already heard the only answer that could change his destiny on the very first day.
That answer had come from Ning Zhiming.
At the time, Ning Zhiming was merely the Young Master of the Hall of Heavenly Secrets, the keeper of the Book of Fate and a master of divination. Looking at the natal chart, he had told her, “If you want to save Shang Wujiu, there is a way. Use your Phoenix Heart Lamp to stabilize the sea in place of his Abyss-Suppressing Bone. That will shift his death tribulation away.”
Li Jinxue didn’t even blink. “The price?”
Ning Zhiming looked at her for a long time, his gaze a mix of pity and testing. “The price is that you must personally deliver this path of survival into his hands. After the Heart Lamp is gouged out, he must be the one to seal you into the Sea of No Return. Only if he sends you down with his own hands will the Life Covenant recognize its master. Furthermore, from that moment on, he must never know the truth, nor can he harbor even a shred of his former affection for you. If his love is not severed, the covenant will be unstable, and he will still die.”
Feng Qiwu flipped the table on the spot. “Absurd! You want her to pay with her life, and you want Wujiu to personally hate her for the rest of his?”
Ning Zhiming remained calm. “Either he dies, or she goes.”
That day, everyone waited for Li Jinxue to hesitate.
But she only asked, “If I go, how long will he live?”
“As long as the Sea of No Return does not suffer another major rupture, he will live a long life, ascend to godhood, and hold the highest rank in the Nine Heavens.”
Li Jinxue nodded.
Before the covenant was signed, Feng Qiwu tried to stop her through tears, and Cang Chenzhou urged her to reconsider. Cang Chenzhou even said that if it truly came to that, he could kidnap Shang Wujiu and take him away; the world was vast, and there would always be a place to hide.
Li Jinxue only shook her head.
“A man like him… if he knew I took his place, he would destroy the entire sea before letting me go down alone.” She smiled faintly. “So, he must hate me. He must hate me so much that he never wants to look back.”
With reddened eyes, Cang Chenzhou asked her, “Is it worth it?”
Li Jinxue was silent for a long while before she spoke. “The day I found him on Shattered Snow Mountain, he was dying, yet his hand was still death-gripped around his sword. Back then, I thought to myself: if this man can survive, he deserves to see many, many years of spring.”
“I am simply giving him what I wanted for him in the beginning.”