Transforming into a stunningly beautiful fox spirit, leaving a scar on the heart of a prodigy.

Su Chang'an's consciousness was sinking.

The kind of heaviness that has no end.

She had thought that after her soul dissipated, she would be greeted by a long, deep sleep.

But consciousness did not dissipate.

A layer of dark red aura enveloped her, like a piece of amber sealing her inside. That was the essence of the celestial fox that she had personally peeled away earlier—the moment this power was poured into the remnants of the ancient celestial fox's body, it spontaneously formed a protective barrier deep within her heart meridian.

The barrier shut out the remaining consciousness inside the mangled body.

Those ancient, heavy remnants of will, weary from three thousand years, are seeping into her little by little along the withered spiritual veins.

It was blocked by a barrier.

temporary.

Su Chang'an tried to control his soul and stop it.

no response.

It felt like someone was forcing my head down into the water.

There was only blackness all around. Pure, unadulterated darkness. A dark red halo illuminated a small area the size of a palm around me; beyond that, nothing could be seen.

The spiritual vein channels surrounded us from all directions, withered like dead tree roots. Traces of the power of laws still remained on the channel walls—a hazy gray light, like an old bronze mirror that hadn't been polished for thousands of years.

The gray light instinctively recoiled when it encountered the dark red halo.

Su Chang'an's consciousness drifted down the passage in this deathly silence.

Time has no meaning here.

She didn't know how much time had passed.

---

In the depths of darkness—

"Clang!"

The sound of chains dragging over rocks.

A sharp, metallic scraping sound bounced back and forth in the passage several times, penetrating deep into Su Chang'an's soul.

next moment.

The darkness before my eyes shattered.

It was as if someone had smashed a mirror in half, the fragments flipping, rearranging, and piecing themselves back together. Su Chang'an's perspective was gripped tightly by an invisible hand, snapped to another position with a "click".

She was no longer a bystander.

She stood on a desolate plain.

The soil beneath my feet was warm—it was soaked with blood.

The sky was red. Not the red of a sunset. It was a dark red, like blood that had been splattered on, dried, and then covered with fresh blood. Black mist swirled in the air, so thick you could almost squeeze water out of it, pressing down on you with a real weight.

Dead body.

Everywhere.

Piled up like a mountain.

Broken weapons lay embedded in the mud, a torn flag drooped halfway, its patterns obscured by blood. Spears were broken, and blades were chipped in half. Blood pooled in the low-lying areas, and black, misty particles floated on their surfaces, clumps like rotting cotton.

The wind swept over.

The air was thick with the smell of rust.

Su Chang'an looked down at his hands.

It wasn't her hand.

Black magic patterns crawled across the back of my hands and palms, spreading along the meridians all the way to my forearms. The magic patterns writhed beneath my skin, gleaming with a dark, dim light.

She turned her head to look behind her.

Nine tails.

Eight of them had turned charcoal black, exuding an aura of destruction. The only remaining pure white one was squeezed in the middle by the eight black tails, its tips stained with fragments of black mist.

Su Chang'an understood in an instant.

She is looking at memories from three thousand years ago.

The memories of the ancient celestial fox.

Her body was beyond her control. Every movement was a replay of a predetermined trajectory. Her fists clenched, her knuckles cracking. Eight black tails unfurled behind her. An aura of destruction formed a force field, forcefully pushing back the surrounding stench of blood by three feet.

Gu Tianhu's gaze swept across the wasteland.

There were no living creatures.

There weren't even any insects.

Only corpses piled up to chest height.

---

Then a flood of memories poured in.

It didn't happen little by little. It was like the floodgates were opened.

Su Chang'an's mind was swollen from the overwhelming amount of information, as if someone was hammering her temples from the inside out.

The underlying laws governing this world unfolded before her in the most brutal way.

The world is a furnace.

Living beings are born, grow old, get sick, and die in the furnace; resentment and karma are the ashes left after the burning. The ashes do not disappear; they rise up, condense into malevolent energy, and pile up layer upon layer in the highest part of the sky.

It takes three thousand years to fill it up completely.

When the pile is full, Heaven must clean up the garbage.

The way they cleaned up the garbage was absolutely disgusting.

Heaven doesn't act on its own. It selects an unlucky soul from the world—someone with an extremely inauspicious fate, destined to be betrayed and abandoned by all. It uses this person as a vessel, letting them absorb all the calamities and malevolent energy accumulated in the world over three thousand years into their body, through their unbearably bitter destiny.

Finally, the malevolent energy burst his body.

The container is broken, the trash is cleared away, and the world is clean.

Entering the next three-thousand-year cycle of reincarnation.

Repeatedly.

It is justified.

Su Chang'an clenched her fist. Not Gu Tianhu's fist—it was her own consciousness clenching it.

That scoundrel God treats living people like rags. Used and then thrown away.

Then she saw the "rag" that had been chosen.

---

The far northern snowfield.

The mountain was buried by heavy snow.

The wind was so strong it could blow right through you to the bone. Ice crystals mixed with snowflakes clattered and crackled against the rocks.

A boy walks in the snow.

The thin, tattered clothes were so worn that their original color was unrecognizable. The shoes on his feet were long gone, and his toes were frozen blue-purple, leaving a bloody footprint in the snow with every step.

He was as thin as a stick.

It sways when the wind blows.

Su Chang'an saw his face clearly.

Then her mind went blank.

The boy's name was Li Changgeng.

Three thousand years later, a quasi-emperor of the Central Continent. The founder of the Supreme Forgetfulness Sect. The old madman who forcibly tore her soul out of Chen Xuan's sea of ​​consciousness.

She looked about fifteen or sixteen years old.

He's so thin he looks unrecognizable.

His eyes were full of fear and confusion, like a puppy that had been kicked out of its kennel and was lost in a blizzard.

Gu Tianhu found him on the snowy plains.

Wrap him in its tail. Take it back to the cave. Make a fire. Dry the ice crystals off its body.

When Li Changgeng woke up, he looked at the big white fox in front of him, and tears kept welling up in his eyes.

The ancient fox taught him cultivation. He taught him to wield a sword. He taught him to unleash his first sword strike in the snow.

An iron sword.

What was split open was not snowflakes, but a path for a child who was freezing to death to survive.

---

Memories flow rapidly.

The screen suddenly jumped.

Young Li Changgeng rolled around in the snow.

This isn't practicing martial arts. It's fighting for your life.

Visible black malevolent energy surged into his body from the heavens and earth like a madman. It poured in through his mouth, his nose, and every pore of his skin. Black lines crawled all over his body. His meridians snapped one by one, the sound as crisp as breaking chopsticks.

His muscles were twitching. His soul was screaming.

He dug his fingers into the snow, drawing blood. His nail broke, and the blood stained the white snow beneath him.

A heavenly calamity is about to descend.

The first influx of malevolent energy into the body of the person destined for calamity.

Su Chang'an felt a chill run down his spine as he watched the boy in the picture writhing in pain in the snow.

It's not fear.

It was the pain of that malevolent energy corroding her very essence that, through the first-person perspective of the Ancient Heavenly Fox, truly entered her soul.

It felt like hundreds of rusty knives were simultaneously pulling into the bone.

Gu Tianhu stood in front of Li Changgeng.

She didn't use any protective aura. Snowflakes landed on her shoulders, melted, and soaked her clothes.

She looked at the little thing curled up in the snow at her feet.

Hands hanging down at the sides.

His fingers curled up little by little. His nails dug into the flesh of his palm.

Su Chang'an heard Gu Tianhu's voice.

It wasn't meant for anyone else. It sounded like it was being forced out through gritted teeth, squeezed from the deepest part of my throat.

"I will guide you on the path of spiritual cultivation."

"I'll teach you how to hold a sword."

"It's not so that you can be a rag for this damned God."

---

The ancient fox made a move.

Take a step forward.

The footprints were left deep in the snow.

She looked up.

The black, malevolent clouds gathering in the sky resembled an overturned black pot, obscuring the sun. The malevolent energy solidified into pillars, crashing down one by one, relentlessly targeting Li Changgeng's position.

Gu Tianhu's body lit up.

The Celestial Fox's essence exploded from his dantian, flowing through his meridians to his limbs and bones. The light dispelled the darkness within a three-zhang radius.

She made a hand seal in front of her chest.

Spiritual energy was forcibly drawn from between heaven and earth, forming an array on the snowfield. The array's light illuminated the snow, and its edges perfectly enveloped Li Changgeng.

The malevolent energy collided with the formation.

A few flashes of light. It held.

The ancient fox revealed its true form in the snow.

Nine-tailed silver fox.

A primordial flame rose from his body, dark red in color, and burned the snowflakes until they turned into steam before they even hit the ground.

She forcefully imposed cause and effect.

The invisible causal chain between the malevolent energy of heaven and earth and Li Changgeng was severed by her claw.

The chains exploded.

The sound of metal clashing echoed across the snowfield.

Then she unfurled her nine tails. The tips of the tails were enveloped in primordial flames.

She channeled all the ominous and malevolent energy that was originally targeting Li Changgeng into her own body.

The black aura shifted direction.

They stopped focusing on Li Changgeng.

All of them rushed towards her.

Su Chang'an's soul trembled violently at this moment.

Because she could sense it—

The pure essence of the celestial fox was corrupted the moment it encountered the malevolent energy. Black mist mingled with the crimson flames. Its meridians were being impacted. Its soul felt as if it were being squeezed and twisted in someone's hand.

This pain.

She had experienced it once with Su Qing—at Luofeng Slope, when Su Qing burned his essence and perished together with Huang.

But that time was only for a moment.

This time, it's continuous. It's relentless. It's endless.

The ancient fox's claws gripped the ice. A spiderweb-like pattern appeared on the ice.

She was trembling.

My whole body was shaking.

---

Li Changgeng survived.

The malevolent energy left his body. He lay in the center of the formation. His breathing became steady. His complexion slowly returned to normal, the bluish-purple hue returning to its healthy color.

Gu Tianhu walked up to him.

Squat down.

A finger touched his forehead.

The spiritual energy entered his sea of ​​consciousness.

Su Chang'an watched as the spiritual energy churned within Li Changgeng's sea of ​​consciousness. All the memories of the heavenly tribulation, the infusion of malevolent energy, and the ancient celestial fox bearing it all for him…

Broken.

It crumbled into dust, piece by piece.

It was wiped clean.

Gu Tianhu withdrew his finger.

Li Changgeng woke up from his coma.

All that remained in his memory was one image—his master had suddenly changed, his master no longer wanted him, and his master had left without looking back.

Su Chang'an felt a strong sense of suffocation at that moment.

She got it.

The ancient celestial fox shielded him from the heavenly tribulation. After she did, the malevolent energy within her would grow stronger and stronger, eventually consuming her entire mind. She would transform into a world-destroying demon.

So she had to leave.

Li Changgeng must be made to believe that she is a cold-blooded and ruthless master.

He must be made to hate her.

If you hate her, you won't seek her out. If you don't seek her out, you won't be hurt by her.

Gu Tianhu turned around.

She didn't turn around.

Li Changgeng called her name in the snow.

Each cry grew louder than the last. Each cry grew hoarseer than the last.

The sound was swallowed up by the wind and snow.

Gu Tianhu's steps did not stop.

Su Chang'an watched Gu Tianhu's retreating figure.

Eight black tails dragged across the snow.

It left a black mark.

Like an old scar. The longer it drags on, the more it hurts.

---

Gu Tianhu entered the abyss beneath the Guiyuan Palace.

There is no light.

The moss on the rock face glowed faintly in the darkness. The underground river flowed at the bottom, its sound amplified tenfold as it crashed and pounded through the narrow passage.

She walked down the path along the edge of the rock face, step by step.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, one after another, as if counting down their final steps.

We've reached the bottom.

She treated herself as a sacrifice.

It invokes the supreme laws of heaven and earth.

Something was summoned from the void.

Su Chang'an confronted that thing directly in the memory—

The Emperor's phantom image.

The embodiment of the will of Heaven.

It stood ten thousand feet tall. It had no face. Its entire body was greyish-white, like an unfinished stone statue. But the oppressive force was real, causing the entire abyss to tremble, and pieces of rock peeled off the cliff walls.

The phantom raised its arm.

Three hundred and seventy-two chains emerged from the void.

Each one was engraved with Heavenly Dao runes.

Each one has a sharp cone at the front end.

Su Chang'an watched the chains being smashed down from above.

It penetrates the limbs.

Piercing the torso.

Nailed to the stone platform.

Ancient Celestial Fox's blood trickled down the chains. Drop by drop. Extremely slowly. It struck the surface of the stone platform.

The power of the laws poured in through the chains. Like hundreds of invisible hands, they reached into the depths of her soul, tearing it out piece by piece.

It's not a seal.

It is punishment.

Three hundred and seventy-two nails through the heart.

The instruments of torture used by Heaven to suppress evil spirits.

Su Chang'an's hands were trembling.

It wasn't Gu Tianhu's hand.

It was her own consciousness that was trembling.

She saw it.

I've seen everything clearly.

---

These chains were never the "self-sealing" that Li Changgeng thought they were.

The ancient celestial fox did not willingly endure being locked up for three thousand years for the sake of the greater good of the world.

She did it for someone.

All for a boy, fifteen or sixteen years old, as thin as a stick, who almost froze to death in the snow.

She took the punishment that was to befall him by Heaven.

Then Heaven's will cannot be denied—the malevolent energy must be suppressed.

Gu Tianhu handed himself over.

Three hundred and seventy-two chains pierced the heart.

For three thousand years, life force has been drained day and night.

The heart is fused with the runes. With each beat, a sliver of life is drained away.

Three thousand years.

And what about Li Changgeng?

Su Chang'an's soul fluctuated violently due to anger.

He searched for three thousand years.

He believed his master established the supreme rule of detachment for the sake of all living beings. He believed his master sealed himself away for the greater good. Based on this misunderstanding, he built a sect, took in thousands of disciples, and cultivated himself to become a quasi-emperor.

Then he wants to reverse the flow of time and bring her back from three thousand years ago.

Su Chang'an almost ground his teeth to powder.

He'll save my ass!

If the river of time were reversed, the law of causality would collapse.

The evil energy that Gu Tianhu took for him will be released again.

Three thousand years of suppression reduced to nothing.

Heaven will find another person to face this calamity.

That person could be Chen Xuan. Or it could be any unlucky soul with a particularly difficult fate.

The ancient celestial fox spent three thousand years of his life in vain.

She endured three thousand years of pain, all for nothing.

It was all for nothing.

Su Chang'an's consciousness vibrated to its limit within the dark red barrier.

She shouted a sentence in her heart.

"Li Changgeng, you are an absolute idiot."

This sentence lingered in my consciousness for a long time.

No one answered.

Su Chang'an stared at the image of Gu Tianhu nailed to the stone platform in his memory.

The runes on the surface of the chain flickered on and off.

Each time a life is extinguished, a sliver of life is taken away.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then she forcefully suppressed her emotions.

Scolds are scolded.

But scolding won't solve the problem.

Su Chang'an focused his consciousness on the dark red halo on his chest.

She must stop Li Changgeng's plan.