Out of fear of death, Invest Everything into Health

As the words fell, they also arrived before the Divine Phoenix Hall.

Huai Jingming stopped and bowed, saying,

"We’ve arrived. Please go in."

Now that it had truly come to this moment, Fan Wubing instead was no longer nervous.

He smiled and said, "Thank you."

Then he pushed the door open and walked in.

Time inside was frozen. Fan Wubing sensed it at once—the Eternal Cosmos Dao hovered here. No matter how many years passed outside, this place remained utterly motionless.

He looked at the Divine Phoenix Celestial Venerable, who sat with her back to him at a low desk,

"So this is the way you use to run away from the passage of years?"

Si Jiuyou was in the middle of writing something with her brush. She stayed silent at first, and after a while, her voice of will resounded in Fan Wubing’s mind,

"Why didn’t you discuss it with me?"

"What?" Fan Wubing froze.

Si Jiuyou added,

"Back then, when those people from the Xuan Sect came looking for you, why did you make that kind of decision on your own instead of discussing it with me first?"

Fan Wubing was completely dumbfounded. He hadn’t expected that after so many years apart, upon meeting again, she would bring up this topic first.

He couldn’t help asking,

"All these years, you’ve been brooding over it?"

Si Jiuyou’s will still revealed no emotion,

"If you hadn’t met Peach Blossoms, you really would have died. But clearly you had no way of knowing you would encounter Peach Blossoms. So you never left yourself a way out. You’ve always pushed yourself hard since you were young, but that was to make your ’life’ more precious. Willing to risk it, yet still cherishing it—that’s what I always thought. But that day, you didn’t cherish your life at all."

Fan Wubing didn’t know how to explain. He turned his head slightly aside,

"I just didn’t want you to be the one taking the risk."

"Why didn’t you give up on me?"

"If I gave up on you, wouldn’t everything I’d done before become a joke? Back then I was just a nobody, but I always felt that even a nobody should live out his own moment of glory."

"You think that was your moment of glory? Sacrificing yourself for someone else?"

Fu Manman had once commented on Fan Wubing, saying he was very self-centered; no matter what he did, he carried a particular kind of unwavering confidence, and the people around him would subconsciously take him as the center.

But in front of his senior sister, this confidence was of no use. He even felt a bit unsure of himself and said softly,

"You’re not ’someone else.’"

Si Jiuyou said nothing.

After the atmosphere had frozen for a while, Fan Wubing asked,

"Are you angry?"

Si Jiuyou shook her head,

"I would feel grief and sorrow from losing you, but not anger because of it. I know you did it for me. But I still did get angry. What I’m angry about is that after you escaped with your life, you actually just up and left."

Fan Wubing said,

"Peach Blossoms turned me into a Demon Cultivator. I... had no face to stay by your side anymore. Besides, didn’t I leave you a letter?"

"You mean this?" Si Jiuyou flicked out a letter.

Fan Wubing took it and looked. It was indeed that letter from back then, preserved perfectly, with almost no marks of time.

"You still kept it..."

"This is the only thing you left me!" Si Jiuyou’s will finally wavered a little.

She felt a surge of irritation.

"I’m... sorry." Fan Wubing apologized.

Si Jiuyou shook her head and said,

"When I first saw this letter, I was both angry and sad, to the point of despair. Because I just couldn’t understand—clearly I had already come to see you as my only support, yet you felt I would look down on you for being forced into becoming a Demon Cultivator. Is that how you see me?"

"But if I had really continued traveling with you, you being falsely accused of becoming a Demon Cultivator would have become an ironclad ’fact.’ I didn’t want you to be wronged."

"I always thought we were family."

Fan Wubing forced a smile,

"But I never treated you as family."

Si Jiuyou abruptly turned her head.

Fan Wubing was able to see what she looked like now. She was still the senior sister from his memories, only with a bit more of that ethereal air belonging to one who had attained the Dao. Her eyes were full of shock and disbelief, and even her shoulders couldn’t help but tremble.

Then she turned her back to Fan Wubing again. Her back now carried more loneliness and heaviness,

"Right, in this world, you have real family."

Fan Wubing went to sit down facing her, looking at her face more clearly and up close,

"The world says you’re invincible, that you ended the war between heaven and man with a single punch. You’re mysterious, powerful, distant. A friend once said you’re the most domineering person she’s ever seen—that as long as you’re there, even if the sky falls, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t expect that just one sentence like that would make you throw away your so-called ’dominance’ and ’invincibility.’"

Si Jiuyou’s eyes were tinged with a layer of gray,

"If you don’t see me as family... then what difference is there between everything I’ve done and a dream? I set out from Everlasting Mountain, went against the flow along the Path of Eternity, searched through billions upon billions of Small Thousand Worlds before I came here and found you. Does all of this... have no meaning?"

Fan Wubing started laughing.

Si Jiuyou lowered her head,

"Are you laughing at me? Laughing that I’m a fool."

Fan Wubing said with a smile,

"I am laughing at you. But I’m laughing that after all these years, you’re still the same as before."

"The same in what way?" Si Jiuyou knit her brows.

Fan Wubing said,

"The same in that you’re nothing like a senior sister. Whether you’re Fu Ming from the Eternal Immortal Continent, or Fu Ming of the Eternal Immortal Sect, or the Si Jiuyou you are now, you’re nothing like a senior sister. I’ve always felt a senior sister should be gentle and considerate, understanding and empathetic, both a confidant and wise. But aside from always walking ahead of me, you’re nothing like a senior sister."

"That’s very presumptuous."

"Forgive my presumptuousness." Fan Wubing let out a breath and chuckled lightly. "But that’s fine too. Before coming here, I was actually very nervous, afraid you were no longer the senior sister I knew. I didn’t know what kind of state of mind I should use to face you. Whenever I thought about it, I’d realize—ah, so that much time has passed. Maybe we haven’t seen each other in over a hundred million years. I couldn’t help wondering whether your personality had changed, whether you no longer cared about what we went through back then."