Old Joys Linger in Dreamlike Souls, Part 4

“Fifth Senior Brother…?”

Yun Yao trembled in Mu Hanyuan’s arms, pushing him slightly away despite the dire situation, seeking his gaze to discern truth from deception.
“What do you mean? He’s already dead—how could he be here?”

“Look, Master,” Mu Hanyuan lowered his eyes, the demonic marks at their corners glinting, his face devoid of joy or sorrow as he watched her push him away. “The one you care about most has always been him.”

From beneath his raised sleeve, his hand turned at his side.
In his palm lay an ancient wooden token, intricately carved with three characters: Mu Jiutian.

“—!”

Yun Yao’s pupils shrank, staring at the token in disbelief.

This was a life token unique to Qianmen’s first-generation disciples, infused with a wisp of the holder’s soul.
When the holder died, the token would vanish with them.

Later, as this method overly drained the soul and was difficult for non-high-realm cultivators, the practice was abolished starting with the second generation, making replication impossible.

Yet the soul aura on this token was unmistakably Mu Jiutian’s.
—It should have vanished with him three hundred years ago!

Yun Yao’s trembling fingers reached for it. “He’s truly alive? He—”

Swish.
Just as her fingertips neared the warm wooden token, Mu Hanyuan’s figure flashed back, evading her.

“Yes, he’s alive.”

Holding the token, he glanced at it indifferently, a trace of malice curling his lips. “What a pity. If you’d found him before I did, perhaps… you two could have been together forever, hmm?”

His words fell, and a deafening roar shook the heavens, drowning out the slaughter below the Ascension Platform.
Yun Yao’s heart quaked, and she looked toward the northern lands beyond the Immortal Palace.

In Yao City, already breached by the demonic army, a towering platform rose before the city gates.

The gathered elders and disciples from various sects, including those in the Void Refinement and Integration realms, could clearly see everything across hundreds of 丈.
There, a cold, black-iron execution platform, etched with countless array runes, stood starkly.
A figure in tattered black robes, face obscured, was nailed to the rack with spirit-locking spikes piercing their shoulder blades.

Flanking the figure were two of the demonic realm’s newly appointed generals—Azure Dragon and Black Tortoise.

Mu Hanyuan’s words hadn’t been concealed.

The crowd’s expressions grew complex, and the elders turned as one to Qianmen’s Sect Leader, Chen Qingmu.

Chen Qingmu stood frozen, staring at the execution platform, his wrinkled face gaunt. His probing divine sense, like a toddler’s steps, reached toward the figure’s soul.
His face flushed red, as if suffocating.
After a few breaths, a hoarse, anguished cry tore from his chest: “Master—!!”

Despite their preparedness, the crowd was stunned.
“Mu Jiutian is truly alive?”
“That’s Yun Yao’s Fifth Senior Brother, one of Qianmen’s Seven Heroes?”
“How? Didn’t he die at the Two Realms Mountain three hundred years ago?”
“…”

Unnoticed, among the warring cultivators, only Fuyu Palace’s lords and high elders confirmed the figure as Mu Jiutian, their faces shifting.
Exchanging glances, Fifth Lord Duan Songyue covertly sent a sword message. They fought while subtly converging toward the center.

Amid the chaos, Chen Qingmu’s figure, carried by his sword’s light, charged the Ascension Platform.
His spiritual energy surged wildly, his hairpiece unraveling, black-and-white hair whipping in the northern wind. Ignoring all else, his face twisted as he flew forward. “Mu Hanyuan! Release him now!”

Mu Hanyuan didn’t move, seemingly oblivious to the terrifying sword intent tearing through the clouds, his white hair fluttering under his black lotus crown, his lashes unblinking.

Before Chen Qingmu’s sword struck, a metallic clash rang out—“Clang—!!”
His blade was parried by a sudden strike from the Vermilion Bird general, who swung a saber from a 丈 away.
Chen Qingmu, unable to halt his momentum, flew back, while the Vermilion Bird lord pursued relentlessly.

Below the platform, other sects joined the fray, including Qianyuan disciples who’d been holding defensive arrays, now drawing swords to meet the demonic cultivators advancing from the platform’s base.

On the Ascension Platform, Mu Hanyuan sneered coldly, the blood-red demonic marks at his eyes curving upward with malice.
His sleeve swept like a death god’s noose, stirring dark flames.
“Kill.”

Under the Demon Sovereign’s command, the demonic army surged like a tide toward the immortal disciples.

In an instant, black and white clashed beneath the sky, the vast battlefield outside the Immortal Palace awash with blood.
The azure sky turned near-crimson.

Amid the sounds of blades tearing flesh, Yun Yao barely suppressed the demonic flames flaring at her brow.

As her consciousness returned from her sea of mind, she saw the blood-soaked carnage below.
Her face paled. “Mu Hanyuan, what are you doing?”

“I told you, Yun Yao,” he laughed. “If I can’t be your closest, your dearest, I’ll be your greatest hatred. I’ll destroy everyone you value, starting with him.”

His fingers brushed the token’s edge with dark flames.

Simultaneously, a hundred 丈 away on Yao City’s execution platform, a terrifying vortex of demonic flames engulfed the figure, swallowing them whole.
The temperature soared, as if all were trapped in an inferno.

The demonic cultivators’ momentum surged under the flames, tipping the balance decisively in their favor.

Yun Yao froze.

On the distant platform, flames poured; nearby, Qianmen disciples fell in pools of blood. The blood splashes tore her last hopes apart. She could bear no more. “…Enough!!”

“Zheng—”

With her cry, the Naihe Sword let out an enraged hum, piercing the air.
It halted above the platform, its trembling tip aimed at Mu Hanyuan.
Yun Yao shouted, “Mu Hanyuan! Make them stop!”

He gazed at the sword suspended in the sky.

It reminded him of three hundred years ago, in the demonic realm’s Feng City, on a high execution platform, where a red-clad figure entered his life like a beam of light.
She had been the fulcrum of his burdened existence.

What a pity—that red figure was never there for him.
The one she wanted to pull from the abyss wasn’t him either.

If she’d had a choice then, she’d have taken her senior brother and left without looking back…

The demonic flames in his palm burned fiercely, the token nearing dissolution.

His gaze fell from the hovering sword to Yun Yao, a 丈 away, glaring at him with hatred.
The Naihe Sword thrummed relentlessly.

Her voice low, trembling faintly, she said, “Mu Hanyuan, don’t force me.”

“I’m not forcing you. I’ve always let you choose.”

Smiling, his white hair danced before blood-red demonic marks, mesmerizingly vivid.
He raised his slender hand, showing her the nearly burned-out token of Mu Jiutian.
“After I kill him—or you kill me now.”

“…!”

Yun Yao’s figure shook, pain splitting her brow.

The demonic seed at her brow was about to erupt. If she didn’t perish with it, she’d lose all reason, fall to possession, and slaughter all, dooming Qianyuan in an instant.
She had no time left.

Her fingers clenched tightly.

“—Naihe, kill.”

A clear cry, and the Naihe Sword slashed downward.

“…”

Mu Hanyuan had anticipated it.
He smiled, lowering his lashes, the blood-red marks vivid and dripping.

But in the instant darkness veiled his senses, detached from the woman before him, he sensed something amiss—

The Naihe Sword didn’t strike him but spun in midair, suddenly shooting toward the platform’s opposite side.

Its target:
Fuyu Palace’s dozen Integration-realm elders, who had somehow formed an array. Dozens of powerful golden beams from Fuyu Palace’s main hall in the southeast poured into it, raising a world-shaking killing array.

The Naihe Sword, carrying the might of the immortal realm’s former champion, tore through the golden array with unmatched force, forcing the elders to retreat, spitting blood.

But it was too late.
The killing array had activated, countless runes forming layered golden shadows, interlocking.

At its center, a long-prepared, heaven-shattering sword broke through the illusion, piercing the boundless sky.

Beneath the giant blade, spanning hundreds of 丈, its aura locked onto the black-robed, white-haired Demon Sovereign on the platform.

Mu Hanyuan’s brows rose, his voice cold. “Fuyu Palace.”

He moved to raise his sleeve.

But the array was vicious, drawing ten thousand souls to fuel it, sacrificing them for a heaven-and-earth strike—
Locking Mu Hanyuan for a single breath.

In that breath, he couldn’t escape or even lift his eyelids.

In the deathly silence, he heard a soft female voice brush past his ear: “I’m sorry, Hanyuan. I choose a third path—since this war began with me, let it end with me.”
“You hate only me. After I die, may you find clarity and return from your lost path.”
“Fate is not fixed; it can be changed.”

“—”

An indescribable, unprecedented panic swept through him, nearly tearing his consciousness apart.

After an eternity-like breath, Mu Hanyuan wrenched his eyes open, his gaze wild with fury, blood-red marks vivid.
Then his expression froze.

Above him, directly ahead.

Yun Yao turned, suspended in the air.

The heaven-condemning sword, meant to erase all life, pierced her through, shattering her fragile, wing-like figure.

“………………” “………………”

The world fell silent, as if all life had ceased.

A pink-white lotus flower drifted slowly from the scattered light.
It fell into Mu Hanyuan’s empty gaze.