"Senior Wang, do you not intend to ascend and test your fortune?" Lin Xiao asked, a polite smile masking the probing glint in his eyes.
Wang Laoxie let out a raspy chuckle, waving a withered hand. "Heh, I’ll spare these old bones the excitement. I’m far too aged to be joining in the fun of youngsters. But tell me, Fellow Daoist Lin, why do you hesitate?"
Lin Xiao’s gaze flickered, his smile remaining fixed but his thoughts unreadable. He turned slightly. "And you, Fellow Daoist Liu Yue? Does the Three Lives Stone hold no allure for the righteous?"
Luo Yun also looked over, curious.
Liu Yue shook his head, his expression rigid and solemn. "Power obtained through external artifacts is fleeting. True strength comes from the tempering of one's own Dao. I am young, and my path is long; I have no need for such shortcuts."
Hearing this high-minded declaration, Xiao Yifeng let out a cold, audible sneer. Pedantic fool, he thought. In the face of death, results are the only truth.
"Miaoqing," he said, his voice dropping the formal persona he used with outsiders, "wait here for me."
Without waiting for a response, he strode toward the ancient stone.
His decisiveness drew the gaze of every cultivator present. Su Miaoqing’s heart tightened, her palms damp with cold sweat. Xiao Yifeng was usually the epitome of caution—why was he acting so rashly now?
Mo Shuiyao’s beautiful eyes narrowed, locking onto his back. She was burning to know if this mysterious "Wuchen" had any entanglement with her in a past life.
Xiao Yifeng, however, was not acting on impulse. He moved with the absolute confidence of a man who had lived twice.
His mental fortitude was forged in the fires of betrayal and death. If a mind that had endured two lifetimes couldn't withstand the trial of a mere stone, he might as well slit his own throat and be done with it. To him, the Three Lives Stone wasn't a trial; it was a trough of free fodder.
He calculated swiftly. With his triple-cultivation of Daoist, Buddhist, and Demonic arts, the stone’s feedback—if returned threefold as rumored—would be purified by his unique constitution. It wouldn't destabilize his foundation; it would solidify it. In this treacherous Immortal Mansion, he needed every ounce of power to survive.
As for Liu Yue’s disdain for "external power"? Xiao Yifeng scoffed internally. He believed in only one doctrine: Strength is King.
He reached out and pressed his palm against the cold, rough surface of the Three Lives Stone.
BOOM.
A terrifying suction force erupted from the core of the artifact, instantly draining his essence, energy, and spirit.
The world dissolved. The vision of his "Past Life" began to play.
But this was not a distant, ancient incarnation. It was the life he had lived before he defied time—the tragic, blood-soaked timeline he had erased.
The images flickered rapidly: A humble birth in a mountain village... smoke and fire as the village was razed... his rescue by the icy fairy, Liu Hanyan... his induction into the Whentian Sect.
Then, the darkness descended. The betrayal. The infamy of killing his master. The desperate flight from the righteous sects. His descent into the demonic path, joining the Starry Sky Sacred Hall. He saw himself slaughtering armies across three Great Wars between Good and Evil, a demon god bathed in blood.
Finally, the vision settled on his death—dying in the arms of his former lover, Lin Qingyan, after retiring from the world.
Xiao Yifeng watched his own tragedy unfold with a detached heart. But as the memory reached that final embrace with Lin Qingyan, something shifted.
The image froze.
It did not fade. It locked onto the scene where he lay dying, but the background was wrong. Behind the weeping Lin Qingyan stood a colossal, blurred Stone Gate wrapped in countless chains—a gate that radiated an aura of absolute dread.
Outside the stone, the spectators were bewildered.
"Wait... isn't this the Whentian Sect?" one whispered. "Why does his 'past life' look exactly like the present era?"
The images were flashing faster than anyone else's, a blur of motion. But suddenly, clarity returned for one specific scene.
The onlookers gasped. They saw Xiao Yifeng standing tall, clad in robes of black and gold, wielding a pitch-black longsword. His expression was a mask of cold cruelty. Behind him stood a peerless woman in red. Together, they decimated a battlefield of cultivators, their power shaking the heavens.
Then, the scene froze.
The environment was apocalyptic. The sky was shattered. The Xiao Yifeng inside the vision stood before that massive, chained Stone Gate, holding Lin Qingyan’s body.
Suddenly, the Xiao Yifeng in the reflection moved.
He slowly raised his head. His gaze, icy and piercing, seemed to drill through the thick surface of the Three Lives Stone, looking directly at the real Xiao Yifeng—and the crowd watching him.
He smiled. It was a smile of eerie, knowing madness.
CRAAAACK!
The Three Lives Stone began to violent tremble. Fresh blood oozed from the rock face, forming terrifying, jagged characters that dripped down the surface. It was a judgment from the Heavens:
"Defying the Heavens to change fate. You have a Present, but no Future."
The moment the final character formed, a deafening crack echoed through the cavern. A massive fissure split the center of the Three Lives Stone. It could no longer sustain the vision. The laws governing it had shattered against the weight of Xiao Yifeng's anomaly.
Whoosh!
Forced to abort the process, the stone violently regurgitated the energy it had swallowed. But it didn't just return what was taken—it poured back ten times the amount, a desperate compensation for its failure.
Xiao Yifeng stood his ground as a torrent of pure spiritual energy slammed into him.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Barriers within his body shattered like glass. Foundation Establishment Sixth Layer... Seventh Layer... Eighth Layer...
He finally stabilized at the peak of the Ninth Layer.
The sheer volume of energy required to move him was staggering; for an ordinary cultivator, this amount would have pushed them into the Golden Core realm, yet Xiao Yifeng merely climbed three small stages.
In that split second of rapid breakthrough, the aura concealment technique Xiao Yifeng maintained to play the role of "Wuchen" flickered. A wisp of his true, chaotic spiritual signature leaked out.
It was imperceptible to most, but in the corner, Wang Laoxie’s eyes snapped open. He let out a soft, surprised grunt, his gaze sharpening instantly.
Xiao Yifeng opened his eyes, exhaling a breath of turbid air. He stared blankly at the cracked stone.
Even the Three Lives Stone cannot deduce what happened after that Gate? he thought, shaken. That giant door I saw before I died... it possessed the power to reach across time and shatter this artifact? Just what in the Nine Hells is it?
Sensing the heavy atmosphere, he glanced back. Su Miaoqing was looking at him with undisguised worry.
He quickly masked his expression, adopting a faint, reassuring smile as he walked back to the group. "It is fine. Just a mishap."
He expected Su Miaoqing to sigh in relief. Instead, her expression darkened. She looked at him with a mix of sorrow and determination, biting her lip. Then, as if making a grave decision, she stepped forward.
"Miaoqing?" Xiao Yifeng started, reaching out to grab her wrist. "What are you doing?"
Su Miaoqing stopped but didn't turn fully. She looked at his hand on her arm, then shook her head slowly.
"I dislike this feeling," she whispered, her voice trembling but firm. "Being protected by you... it makes me feel useless. I refuse to be a burden that you have to drag along."
She pulled her arm free. Xiao Yifeng’s hand hovered in mid-air, stunned, as she walked up to the Three Lives Stone and pressed her hand against the fissure.
Xiao Yifeng’s heart hammered in his chest. He was far more terrified for her than he had been for himself.
The stone, though damaged, flickered to life once more.
The crowd leaned in, eager to see the origins of this fiery beauty. But as the image clarified, confusion ripple through them.
"That... that's not a human."
Su Miaoqing’s past life was a beast.
It was a colossal bird of prey, wreathed in flames. It resembled a Phoenix, yet it lacked the divine nobility; instead, it radiated a savage, primal hunger. An Undead Bird.
Its life was brutally simple. It did not weave clothes or recite poetry. It killed. It ate. It cultivated.
The vision showed a desolate era where this giant firebird pursued ultimate power with single-minded madness. Its temperament was violent and erratic. To evolve, it hunted its own kind, devouring other fire-attribute divine beasts, swallowing their essence to purify its bloodline. It sought to force a metamorphosis into a True Phoenix.
The spectators watched in awe as the Undead Bird spread wings that blotted out the sun. A single feather drifted down, and upon touching the earth, it incinerated a mountain range into a barren wasteland.
Its power was undeniable—easily surpassing the Tribulation Transcendence stage.
But it was never enough. In the final scene, the Undead Bird challenged a True Phoenix, the King of All Birds. It sought to devour royalty to claim the throne.
The battle raged for three days and three nights, turning the sky into a sea of fire.
In the end, the Undead Bird fell. Yet, through its cannibalistic evolution, it had become so close to a True Phoenix that its soul possessed a terrifying resilience. It refused to dissipate, retaining a wisp of divine will that pierced through the cycle of reincarnation.
The vision faded, leaving the cavern in stunned silence.
Xiao Yifeng rubbed his temples. This is... absurd. He looked at the delicate, pouting girl standing by the stone. Who could have guessed that this pampered, tsundere young miss was a prehistoric, cannibalistic monster in her past life?
The gazes directed at Su Miaoqing shifted from admiration to a strange, fearful reverence.
But the stone was not done. The mist swirled, shifting from the past to the present. The scenes of her current life began to play, rapidly flashing through her childhood.
Xiao Yifeng’s breath hitched.
The timeline was approaching the moment she met him. If the stone showed the specific details of their interactions—the secrets of the Starry Sky Sacred Hall or his dual identity—they were all dead.