Dominating Martial King

Just then, the Vermilion Bird Star Lord suddenly let out a soft "hm?" of surprise and turned her head to look behind her.

In the Void a hundred li away, a man was striding through the air toward them.

His face was like a bull’s head, his eyes like windmills, with six arms, a towering, burly frame, skin like forged gold-iron, and every hair on his body like a drawn Sword.

—No matter how one looked at that face, it did not resemble a man, yet the Vermilion Bird Star Lord knew that the one before her was a Human Clan God of rather impure blood.

He carried a jar of liquor in his hand, his bearing careless and brash, loose yet flamboyant.

"Li Tan?"

A solemn glint flashed deep in the Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s eyes, though her face remained as calm as ever: "At a time like this, you still have leisure to come to me? Is it for that Holy Emperor seedling of your Human Clan? Rest easy, I’ve no interest in him at the moment."

She then lifted the corner of her lips, her tone laced with mockery: "Rather than waste effort on me, you’d do better to be more wary of those Ancestor Gods. You wish to use this daughter of the Yin Hou Tian Nai Luo as a ritual, secretly assisting the Wood Sword Immortal to attain the Star God’s throne—do you truly take those few as clay idols, wooden puppets, blind and deaf, unable to see through you? Beware that your appetite grows too large and bursts your belly."

"Ha! That Human Emperor of yours is quite capable indeed—insidious and crafty, very much like that dead ghost Xuanhuang; why would he need me to worry for him? Star Lord, you peer at flowers through fog, seeing only a fragment and not the whole beast. If you think this turmoil was stirred up by Burial Sky, then you are gravely mistaken."

Li Tan laughed loudly and continued to saunter up beside the Vermilion Bird Star Lord: "To tell it straight, Star Lord may not believe it, but I too am very much looking forward to what comes next."

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord furrowed her brows slightly.

She could not judge whether Li Tan’s words were true or false, nor whether she herself had misread the situation.

After Li Tan took his place beside the Vermilion Bird, he tilted the jar and poured a mouthful of wine into his blood basin of a mouth: "I came here for you, Star Lord. I truly did not expect you’d personally descend at such a time. You must be here for Ghost Star, yes? That piece of trash actually dreams of becoming Lord of Death Country, Sovereign of the Netherworld. Plainly a dog, yet harboring ambitions of standing on his own. To have a master such as you—he is truly blessed."

At these words, the Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s expression turned dark and cold: "Speak quickly!"

The Emperor Xuanhuang might be insidious and crafty, but this War God Li Tan was little better, his belly likewise full of foul schemes.

Else how could he rally the seventy-two tribes of Jiuli to stand in opposition to the Emperor Xuanhuang as an equal?

"You really shouldn’t have come."

Li Tan’s aura began to shift; his whole being became like a Divine Weapon drawn from its sheath, its edge bared, irresistible in its sharpness.

His voice seemed to carry blades within it, cutting and chilling: "Your arrival has introduced a variable into today’s contest for the seat of Death God—a variable that must be eliminated."

A variable?

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord fixed her gaze on Li Tan: "Everyone here is a variable. How am I any different from them?"

Li Tan smiled, his aura easing slightly: "It seems the Star Lord still does not know the origin of Yin Hou Tian Nai Luo?"

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s puzzlement deepened: "Yin Hou Tian Nai Luo is not merely a Human Clan orphan? Her life has been rather legendary, has it not?"

"You could say that!"

Li Tan nodded: "A mere common orphan could never make beings such as Jingwei, Shen Tu, Yu Lei, the Snake Bone Witch, Asura, Yaksha, Rashamon and the like all bow to her, nor make the three great Ghost Kings of the West Mountain—Single-Horned and Dali among them—willingly serve."

Not waiting for the Vermilion Bird Star Lord to speak, he continued: "Star Lord, have you heard of the Ubume? In days past, when your elder sister the Nine Phoenix betrayed the Ninth Generation Human Emperor, she was already with child. She was unwilling to continue the pregnancy, so she took medicines to induce a miscarriage; thus, in this Heaven and Earth, there came to be the Ghost Bird Ubume."

The Ubume had existed hundreds of thousands of years ago and was once a famed Ghost God of the Mortal World.

It was said she flew by day and hid by night, feathered she was a bird, feathers shed she became a woman, also known as the Night Wanderer, or Gou Xing and Yi Fei.

The Ubume had a particular habit: she delighted in taking the children of others to raise as her own.

Many believed the Ubume had been a woman in childbirth before her death, yet few knew that this Ubume was in truth the unborn daughter of the Ninth Generation Heavenly Emperor.

The world only said she loved to seize others’ children to rear, yet did not know that every child the Ubume raised was an abandoned infant she had found.

Those parents, unwilling to bear the infamy of abandoning their babes, shifted that sin onto the Ubume’s shoulders.

The Ubume remained as she was, never caring.

All of it sprang from her obsessions, her unwillingness and resentment, and from her kindness.

Why were those mothers so merciless, to cast aside the children they had borne?

"Ubume?"

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s face changed slightly, a hidden pain touched.

She immediately thought of something, her pupils faintly contracting.

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s entire body erupted in Nanming Lihuo, flames surging to the heavens: "You mean to say that Yin Hou Tian Nai Luo—she is in fact the Ubume?"

"She was, once."

Li Tan looked at the Vermilion Bird Star Lord, his eyes full of derision: "But as early as fifty-three thousand years ago, she had already become the Netherworld Phoenix—unique under Heaven, far more formidable than the Zhe Dragon. And twenty years ago, Tian Nai Luo chose to bear a child. She knew that only a complete Life would have a chance to break your Sealing, to take command of the Nine Nether Imperial Spring.

Yet she was not like her mother. Though fully capable of undergoing Nirvana and rebirth within Si Huangquan’s body, she chose to forgo it, giving all that she was to her daughter without the slightest hesitation. From that moment on, your Phoenix Lineage can no longer bear offspring, nor can you Nirvana again! This is her vengeance upon your clan—impressive, is it not? You thought it had to do with your main tree, but never knew there was a fixed cause behind it."

His eyes held unmasked delight, his pleasure evident.

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord, without the slightest hesitation, transformed into a mass of firelight and fled toward the direction of that stone worker.

Li Tan had long been prepared; a great gate opened behind him in an instant, and dozens of claw chains shot out, grabbing toward the Vermilion Bird Star Lord.

Li Tan’s lips curved in a sneer: "What now, are you going to butcher your grandniece and let that beloved subordinate of yours inherit her power?"

The Vermilion Bird Star Lord had already revealed her Vermilion Bird form. The flames around her body first contracted violently, then exploded outward, swelling to shroud a hundred li of Void.

"Li Tan, get out of my way!"

A shriek like a cuckoo crying blood tore through the four directions.

Scarlet fire spewed from the Vermilion Bird Star Lord’s eyes.

How could she possibly kill Si Huangquan.

If that child died, then their Phoenix Lineage was doomed to an inevitable end.

Li Tan’s Wild God gaze was cold as ice.

For the moment, he could not allow her to pass, lest she ruin Chu Xisheng’s stratagem.