Covering the Sky: The Years I Was the Empress's Strictest Master

The boy had clearly never seen such a celestial abode before; the atmosphere of the sacred lands outside already made him feel ashamed of his own in comparison.

Upon entering, he was immediately overwhelmed by the rich spiritual energy and ethereal atmosphere of the furnishings. For a moment, he stood there awkwardly, his dirty little hands tightly clutching the hem of his clothes.

However, his gaze couldn't help but wander around curiously, finally settling on the slender, fair figure in bright yellow by the window.

"What's your name? Where are you from?"

Chi Xuan turned around, her voice gentle.

The boy immediately lowered his head upon hearing the sound, his voice barely audible.

"I...I am Xiang Xuan, I come from Chixia River..."

Chi Xuan's gaze fell upon him, but she sensed no sign of the Undying Golden Body bloodline. She asked again:

"Are you truly a member of the Xiang family? Why have you come alone? Where are your parents and relatives?"

"Yes……"

Xiang Xuan nodded, then shook his head, a look of confusion and bewilderment appearing on his youthful face:

“The Crimson Cloud River has become very strange, especially a year ago, when the clansmen… all disappeared…”

"Gone?"

Chi Xuan frowned slightly, suppressing the urge to immediately head to Chixia River to investigate. Instead, she abandoned the idea of ​​going the long way around and said directly:

"Tell me in detail."

Seeing this, Xiang Xuan hesitated for a moment. After confirming the other party's identity several times, he pursed his dry lips and began to speak intermittently.

He seemed to lack confidence; his voice was soft, with a childlike naiveté.

However, the content of the conversation caused Chi Xuan's expression to gradually harden.

……

Time flows backward once again.

The year 1260 of the Devouring Heaven Calendar

In the southern part of the eastern wilderness, there is the Crimson Cloud River.

Chixia River, this mountain range and river stretching for hundreds of thousands of square kilometers,

It gets its name from the fact that every day at sunset, the sky is filled with rosy clouds reflected in the river, and the land's unique veins dye the entire area a crimson red.

In the more dubious ancient legends known to ordinary people in the Southern Regions today,

This place was once a land of creation after a divine war, where more than a dozen emperor-level figures lay dead, their blood staining the earth's veins and leaving behind an immortal legend.

Only those established and powerful sects truly knew that this place was once the ancestral home of the Xiang family, the lineage with the indestructible golden body.

The ancestors of this lineage once suppressed unrest here, and fought against the rebellious holy spirits and the supreme beings who had emerged from the world...

However, having endured the baptism of darkness and turmoil, especially the impact of the Emperor-level war, even though the Supreme Being had not personally visited this place during the previous upheaval,

The impact of the disturbances stretched across an endless distance, turning the once-famous Xiang Family Stone Village into ruins.

After another one or two thousand years of erosion, ruins and broken walls are everywhere.

The scorched earth, cracks, broken bases, and collapsed buildings seemed to silently recount the devastation of that past catastrophe.

Only the ancestral hall deep in the center still looked somewhat decent.

Furthermore, hundreds of miles away from the ancestral temple, there lies the entrance to a deep, narrow, dark abyss, which the Xiang family had called "Ancestral Abyss" for generations. It is like the throat of a sleeping behemoth.

Deep within this place, it quietly absorbs the essence of heaven and earth, exuding an ancient and mysterious aura.

Whoosh!

Swoosh... Swoosh...

this day,

After more than a thousand years of silence, the Chixia River has finally welcomed a large influx of people again.

Nearly a thousand figures, weary from their journey, along with some members of the Chi family, returned from outer space and descended upon this devastated homeland.

The leader was an elderly man with a weathered face and graying temples.

He was Xiang Yun, the leader of the Xiang family who was assigned to escort some of the clan members to safety on the eve of the turmoil years ago, and also the grandson of Xiang Li.

Currently, his cultivation has stopped before reaching the Great Saint Realm, although he possesses the cultivation of a peak Saint King.

But at nearly three thousand years old, his lifespan has gradually shifted from youth to old age, and his brows are etched with the marks of time and hardship.

Hundreds of members of the Xiang family perished with him.

Among them are men, women, young and old, with cultivation levels ranging from the Sea of ​​Wheels to the Sendai.

Most of them are descendants of those who left the evacuation team, or a new generation born later in their new homes abroad.

For the vast majority of these young people, Chixiachuan was just a vague and distant name they had heard from their parents and grandparents.

It wasn't until I actually set foot on this land, saw the ruins before me, and felt that faint, almost imperceptible, stirring feeling deep within my very being...

In an instant, a strange emotion began to grow in their hearts.

"Finally... I'm back..."

Standing at the edge of the ruins, gazing at the familiar yet strangely dilapidated scene, Xiang Yun's old eyes instantly welled up with tears, and his voice choked with emotion.

He seemed to see again the bustling scene of Shizhai in those days, with children playing and cultivators practicing martial arts.

I saw my grandfather Xiang Li's stern yet kind face.

I saw it... that "figure" that first rose from the stone village like the blazing sun, and then fell like a shooting star.

"Yunzu, is this... the true ancestral land of our Xiang family?"

Beside him, a boy of no more than twelve or thirteen years old, with clear eyes, curiously looked around.

He is Xiang Yun's great-grandson, born outside the region, and his name is Xiang Chen.

"Yes, Chen'er, this is it."

Xiang Yun gently patted the boy's head, his voice low and deep:

“Every brick, every tile, every blade of grass here has been soaked with the sweat and blood of our Xiang family ancestors. Look over there…”

As he spoke, he pointed to the still-standing palace in the center of the ruins:

“That’s our Xiang family’s ancestral hall, and over there…”

He then pointed to several relatively intact ruins:

"That used to be the site of the Stone Village Formation... That was the training ground, where the clan's young men used to hone their skills and practice their magical arts..."

As Xiang Yun recounted...

Vivid images flashed through the minds of the young people around them, giving them a greater sense of awe and identification with these ruins.

"Clear the ruins, collect the remains of our ancestors, and rebuild our homes!"

After a long pause, Xiang Yun composed himself, a resolute look appearing on his aged face, and issued his first order upon his return.

In the following years, Chixiachuan became lively.

Xiang Yun and other high-ranking members led their clansmen, who, like industrious worker ants, began clearing away the ruins.

They didn't initially rely heavily on supernatural powers or magic. Each person carefully picked up the broken rubble, identified the collapsed beams and pillars, and categorized and organized the usable materials.

Of course, most importantly, they need to find and collect the remains of the old people who stubbornly stayed behind and ultimately perished with their ancestral land.

Fortunately, perhaps because of the extraordinary feat of that "Great Accomplishment Holy Body" during the turmoil, he won the admiration of many Daoist cultivators.

Or perhaps it was due to some special changes that occurred here later.

In short, the ancestral land of Chixia River miraculously remained unoccupied or destroyed by other forces for over a thousand years after the turmoil.

Later, some forces that migrated back to the Southern Region from beyond the borders, knowing the inside story and grateful for the Holy Body's grace, even secretly reached a tacit understanding.

This created an invisible blockade and "protection" over the place, preventing ignorant people from coming to desecrate it.

Therefore, the remains of most of the elders, such as Xiang Li, are still preserved in their original locations, either sitting cross-legged in the dilapidated ancestral hall or leaning against the broken walls.

Although now reduced to bones, its posture still retains the will it had in life.

During this time, Xiang Yun and others, with tears in their eyes, carefully identified and collected the remains of Xiang Li and dozens of other elderly people.

The body was placed in the finest coffin and temporarily placed in a clean grotto that had been cleared out, in preparation for a more solemn burial after the ancestral hall is rebuilt.

"Ancestors, grandfathers... uncles and brothers... your unworthy descendant Xiang Yun has returned with the children!"

On the day the ancestral hall was restored, Xiang Yun knelt before the temporarily stored coffin, tears streaming down his face. Behind him, the clansmen also knelt down, sobbing uncontrollably.

The latter seemed to be able to feel the unwavering obsession and deep attachment to the family tradition that these ancestors held onto until their deaths.

While the rubble was being cleared, reconstruction work was also proceeding at full speed.

Xiang Yun combined his memories with the current needs of his clansmen to plan a new layout for the stone village.

They used local materials, including the unique red ironwood found in Chixia River and the green granite mined from the mountains. The remains of their predecessors had already been collected here, and with the power of cultivators, their efficiency was naturally far superior to that of ordinary people.

As time goes by, the speed visible to the naked eye...

One after another, simple yet sturdy stone and wooden houses, engraved with dense patterns, have been rebuilt.

Some of the dilapidated village walls were repaired, and the road leading to "Zuyuan" was cleared again.

Several years later,

A new stone village, though not as large as in its heyday, still boasts a population of several thousand and is brimming with vitality, has been rebuilt in the Chixia River.

Wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys, and the laughter of children echoed once more through the valley.

Although the population is sparse, it has finally brought life and warmth back to this land that had been silent for over a thousand years.

With their homeland initially established, Xiang Yun spent the following decades building and developing resource points.

He began leading several elders with higher cultivation levels in the clan to visit the forces in the Southern Region that had "taken care" of the ancestral land of Chixia River after the turmoil, as well as some emerging sects that had migrated from outside the region in recent years and also settled here.

Their actions served two purposes: to express gratitude and to re-establish connections, paving the way for the family's future.

During the visit, the Xiang family members could clearly sense that

When those forces heard that they were descendants of the "Holy Body Xiang Family," their attitude was mostly quite polite, even carrying a hint of barely perceptible respect and regret.

Of course, the respect is for the fallen saint, and the regret is for the one who stood up for them, but there is no shortage of consideration for them as well...

The Xiang family is now in a state of utter decline.

Yes, it declined.

This is the deepest pain in Xiang Yun's heart, and also a tacit concern among all the senior members of the Xiang family.

In the decades since their return, new generations of tribespeople have been born and grown up.

During this time, Xiang Yun and the elders, filled with earnest expectations, examined the bloodlines of each newborn, hoping that a person who had reverted to their ancestral form would appear and restore the glory of the Undying Golden Body lineage.

However, the results were disappointing time and time again.

Unfortunately, this is a hidden worry that has existed since Xiang Li's generation.

Over the thousands of years since that generation, the bloodline has been further diluted, and the proportion of mortals, some even destined to be unable to cultivate, has been increasing year by year.

Especially among the newborns of the recent generations, even those with only subtle signs of an indestructible golden body are extremely rare, and their characteristics are mostly negligible.

The vast majority of children, even if they can manage to cultivate, have bloodlines so thin that they are no different from ordinary mortals, making their suffering ordinary and their cultivation progress slow.

If one cultivates using the methods passed down through the Xiang family's bloodline, their future potential will undoubtedly be extremely low!

This means that the very foundation upon which the Xiang family relied for its existence and for its glorious era—its indestructible golden bloodline—has now fallen into complete silence and extinction.

Perhaps in a few generations,

The Xiang family will be completely transformed into an ordinary small family with ordinary bloodlines, relying on the legacy of their ancestors and a little inheritance to survive, and will eventually be submerged in the long river of time.

"Alas... If only the Gravel Ancestor and the others could... have managed to leave behind some of 'that person's' bloodline back then..."

After a meeting of the clan's senior members, an elder with gray hair couldn't help but sigh, his voice filled with helplessness and regret:

"Given the purity of that person's bloodline, if he could marry the clan leader's daughter, even if it's just to leave behind offspring, the bloodline would certainly not be too bad within a few generations. If that were the case, we wouldn't be so troubled by this matter now..."

After these words were spoken, the hall fell silent.

The crowd's expressions were complex, including agreement, helplessness, and a deep sense of regret for the brilliant but prematurely deceased predecessor.