"I hear you're quite skilled at fortune-telling. Why don't you read my fortune, little master?"
Baize had slept for many years, only just waking up and coming down to the mortal realm in search of food.
From afar, he had spotted two stalls at the corner of the street, with signs claiming they could tell fortunes and read palms, even brazenly boasting that the proprietors were half-immortal sages.
Perhaps because he had not shown himself in the mortal world for so long, the ancient auspicious beast followed the scent right over.
Pushing his way past several eager onlookers, he plopped down onto the stool in front of the small stall.
He had expected a white-bearded old man, not a fair-faced youth.
The youth was certainly good-looking, though somewhat effeminate, and his features looked vaguely familiar.
"Extend your hand. There isn't a palm reading I can't handle."
The speaker was none other than Siyin, who had sneaked down from Kunlun Xu, accompanied by her senior brother, Zilan.
Without a word of polite nonsense, Baize thrust his hand straight out in front of Siyin.
"Go ahead and look!"
He looked at Siyin with a half-smile, seeming very eager to hear what she would say next.
Seeming provoked by his sarcastic and eccentric expression, Siyin folded her fan with a snap.
She fixed her gaze on his palm, and the dismissive disdain in her eyes instantly vanished, replaced by sheer shock.
Time slipped quietly by, and Baize grew increasingly nervous.
The surrounding onlookers gathered around slowly, watching the spectacle.
Beads of cold sweat rolled down Siyin's forehead, yet she could not utter a single word.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
Zilan, who had just finished collecting silver from the final customer, was coming over to urge Siyin to return.
Seeing a crowd gathered around Siyin's stall and fearing she had run into trouble she couldn't handle, he had hurried over in a panic.
"Senior brother, he..."
Siyin used her eyes to signal toward the customer before her, and the look she directed at Zilan was filled with terror.
This person's palm lines were utterly chaotic; she could not make heads or tails of them, and the longer she looked, the more dizzy and disoriented she felt.
There was only one possible explanation for such a phenomenon: the person before her possessed an extremely lofty status and a cultivation level far, far superior to her own.
Only then would she be utterly incapable of discerning his destiny.
Zilan was originally the twin brother of the Demon Lord Yan Chiwu, and upon becoming an apprentice at Kunlun Xu, he had instantly recognized that Siyin's true form was a little fox.
Yet today, try as he might, he could not figure out Baize's true identity no matter how long he stared.
"Hmph!"
Just as he prepared to use secret demonic arts to probe Baize's true form, his eyes were stabbed by a blinding golden light emanating from all around Baize.
He let out a muffled grunt, a trail of bright red blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.
"Forgive me, High God. We are disciples under the God of War, Moyuan, of Kunlun Xu. We humbly beg the High God to pardon our offense of disrespect."
Zilan took two steps back and bowed deeply.
He understood that it was his own repeated attempts to probe Baize's identity that had displeased the being, resulting in this minor punishment.
Otherwise, the moment his demonic energy leaked out, it likely would have been his dying hour.
"Five hundred years of vicissitudes, five hundred years of shifting seas. Waking from my slumber, I never imagined that Moyuan would take on apprentices who are quite so..."
Before finishing his sentence, Baize looked at Siyin and shook his head in disappointment.
He had finally remembered why this person's face looked so familiar.
She bore a striking sixty-percent resemblance to the Demon Ancestor Shaowan, though her appearance was similar, her spirit was not.
It was a waste of such a face.
How dazzling and brilliant the former Phoenix had been, only to meet her downfall at Moyuan's hands.
The deep love those two once shared had also ended in nothingness.
And the most ridiculous part of it all was that Moyuan had actually taken on an apprentice who looked so terribly much like Shaowan.
Baize looked at Siyin with a half-smile.
For a moment, he wondered who on earth Moyuan was actually thinking of as he looked at her day and night.
"How dare you slander my master!"
Only moments ago, Siyin had been trembling in terror before Baize, but hearing him speak of Moyuan hardened her spine.
Stepping out from behind her senior brother Zilan, she glared at Baize, her eyes burning with fury.
Before she could do anything else, her entire body went flying backward.
The dense crowd parted down the middle, making way for a narrow path just wide enough for two or three people to pass through.
A woman in white, wearing a bamboo hat, strolled leisurely forward and cast a sidelong glance at Siyin on the ground.
"Now that you're awake, why didn't you come looking for me?"
Yaoguang's lips were rather pale; heaven alone knew what she had just been through.
To think she actually liked Moyuan, and had even come looking for trouble with this little fox on his account.
Then what of Baize, whom she had waited for several millennia? Was he just her bad luck?
"I foresaw that your heart had been stirred by romance, and since the person wasn't me, I grew bored and thought I'd take a stroll in the mortal realm."
Baize took a detached step backward. He was a good, auspicious beast, after all.
He would never get too close to a woman who had someone else in her heart.
"I have no one in my heart!"
Yaoguang glanced around, stepped forward to grab Baize by the arm, and turned back toward her dwelling.
She resided on the outskirts of Kunlun Xu in an immortal palace named Yaoguang Palace.
The cold, desolate rooms bore no resemblance to the cozy boudoir of a maiden.
Instead, they looked precisely like the dwelling of an ascetic monk.
"I spent all those years waiting for you to come of age, so where would I find the mind to seek out anyone else? Why are you angry? Be a good boy, let me coax you!"
"I foresaw it all! If I hadn't gone to cause trouble for that little vixen just now, you would have gone up there to deal with her yourself, wouldn't you?"
That remark struck straight to the heart of Yaoguang's true intentions.
Before she caught sight of Baize, she truly had intended to do just that.
Yet the moment she saw the rich, dense golden light of virtue radiating from Baize, she instantly snapped out of it.
Looking at Siyin, who was still safe and sound, she felt a quiet surge of gratitude that she had not actually struck.
Yaoguang stepped a few paces closer to Baize, their noses nearly touching.
A wisp of golden light slid forward and drilled straight between her eyebrows.
A moment later, Yaoguang calculated on her fingers.
"It seems I was manipulated by someone else's scheme."
Yaoguang let out a bitter laugh. She was an ancient deity, after all; she never imagined she could lower her guard to such an extent, letting someone exploit an opening, nearly losing her heart in the process.
"There aren't many in this world capable of scheming against Elder Sister Yaoguang. If not the Celestial Tribe, then..."
The Qingqiu clan, perhaps.
How else could a single family produce so many High Gods?
One must realize that the leap from High Immortal to High God involved far more than a single dividing ridge.
Which of the High Gods down through the ages had not endured countless trials and tribulation after tribulation before successfully ascending?
Yet for that family, undergoing heavenly tribulations seemed as effortless as drinking water.
"I heard that little fox was sent by Zheyan. Could Zheyan be in cahoots with them? No, no, when I saw him last, his cultivation hadn't advanced, and traces of demonic energy still occasionally leaked from him. It certainly isn't him."
As the sole female God of War in history, Yaoguang cared for all living beings under heaven just as much as Moyuan did.
If anything, she exerted far more effort than Moyuan.
To have been targeted by a scheme without the slightest awareness alarmed her deeply the moment she regained her clarity.
Since she could be manipulated, what about Donghua? What about Zheyan? And what about Moyuan?
They were all former friends; she could not simply stand by and do nothing.
"You're busy worrying about your world again! And you claim you waited thousands of years for me—you were clearly just fobbing me off!"
Seeing her grow increasingly lost in her own world, Baize decided to take drastic action and started making a fuss.
He had always behaved this way, anyway, so acting out now wouldn't arouse any suspicion.
"Alright, alright, I won't go looking for them right now. Stop making a fuss!"
With a resigned sigh, Yaoguang pressed a light kiss to Baize's cheek.
"Kiss, kiss, kiss—you just want to take advantage of me! Let me tell you, little master here is of age now, and I've fully inherited my ancestral memories!"
At the thought of the memories awakening in his mind, Baize suddenly flushed crimson.
He was of age now, which meant he could mate.
Before long, he'd be able to have little cubs of his own.