Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Fall

Tianxuan Continent. The Minghan Glacier. "Ah—!"

Accompanied by a piercing, miserable scream, scarlet blood splattered across the icy ground, and a mangled, bloody severed limb rolled away.

Atop more than a hundred mammoth elephants, countless Ninth Rank Warriors were fiercely attacking a peerlessly beautiful woman.

This woman was none other than the Empress of Tianxuan, Jun Jiuqi.

At this moment, she was covered in blood, resembling a killing deity who had just climbed out of the depths of the netherworld, continuously harvesting lives.

Beneath her feet, hundreds upon hundreds of corpses were already piled up—every single one of them a top-tier Blood Vein Warrior of the Tianxuan Continent.

Jun Jiuqi's eyes had been gouged out alive by someone, and bloody tears streamed down incessantly. Beneath her feet, she was ruthlessly stepping on a woman dressed in magnificent attire—her younger sister, Jun Lingxue.

Jun Lingxue's arm had been cleanly severed by Jun Jiuqi, and blood poured across the ground.

Suppressing the excruciating agony, her facial features were distorted and crazed with pain.

"Elder sister, I never expected that even after casting the Spirit-Devouring Curse to weaken your cultivation by ten percent and gouging out your eyes alive, you would still have the strength to slaughter so many of my Blood Covenant Guards!"

Jun Lingxue's pretty face twisted in a hideous expression, her eyes brimming with consuming jealousy. "Why won't you just die? As long as you are still alive, Father will never look at me! Brother Mu's heart and eyes see only you! Why must you fight me for everything? Why can you so effortlessly obtain everything I dream of?!"

"I hate you! I hate you so much I could hack you into a thousand pieces!"

Listening to the shrill, hysterical roar beside her, Jun Jiuqi realized that this younger sister, who had always appeared docile, obedient, gentle, and virtuous in her memories, was now utterly shattered.

It turned out that everything had merely been a facade.

Jun Lingxue had taken advantage of Jun Jiuqi's lack of preparedness to ambush her, cruelly slaughtering her Jiulin Imperial Guard and gouging out her eyes while she was defenseless. Then, she had sent over a thousand Blood Covenant Guards to surround and attack her, determined to drive her to absolute ruin!

"Heh." With a cold laugh, Jun Jiuqi grabbed Jun Lingxue fiercely by the throat and hoisted her entire body into the air.

Her voice was cold to the extreme.

"Jun Lingxue, from childhood until now, whatever you wanted, I gave it to you. With your frail constitution and missing spiritual roots, I dug out half my heart and gave it to you, guiding you every step of the way to the throne of the Holy Maiden of the Tianxuan Empire."

"When you wanted the True Dragon Taisui as a mount, I shattered the void, stepped through thorns, and battled the Taisui for seven days and seven nights before subduing it and bringing it to you as a gift."

"When you wanted the Azure Lotus beneath the glacial abyss to use as a medicinal catalyst for elixirs, I searched beneath the glacier for three months before finding the Azure Lotus, bringing it back to present to you."

When Jun Jiuqi said these words, there was not a trace of expression on her face.

"I dare say that as an elder sister, I was more than generous to you. Why on earth did you treat me this way?"

"Why? You actually have the nerve to ask me why? Hahaha! Jun Jiuqi, oh Jun Jiuqi, why are you so painfully naive?"

Jun Lingxue burst into frantic laughter.

"We were born in the imperial family, both princesses! Yet from the moment you were born, you possessed superior spiritual roots and the Purple Auspicious Dragon Body. His Majesty pinned his highest hopes on you, and Brother Mu's heart and soul were filled with you alone! The powerhouses of the Tianxuan Empire worshipped and adored you. The moment you were born, you were already a Rank Three Blood Dragon Warrior!"

"And what about me? Missing spiritual roots, frail in health—even by the age of ten, my spiritual roots had still not awakened, and everyone called me trash!"

"They mocked me, abused me, and ground me viciously beneath their feet! Everything you did for me was nothing more than charity, out of pity! You are even more hateful than them! Whatever Jun Lingxue wants, I will take it with my own hands; I don't need your hypocritical pity! And I certainly don't need your charity!"

"That is why I am going to pull you down from your pedestal! I will seize everything that belongs to you!"

"Only by doing this can I show those who once mocked and despised me that I, Jun Lingxue, am the strongest person in the Tianxuan Continent, and that I alone shall become the master of this world! Hahaha!"

The unbridled laughter echoed across the heavens and earth. Jun Jiuqi took a deep breath, cast a cold glance at her distorted features, and let out a disdainful laugh. "You will never become the master of Tianxuan. As long as I draw breath, you are only fit to crawl on your knees."

"In the past, I believed that a lowly origin did not define everything. But looking at it now..."

"A lowly slave is nothing more than a lowly slave."

The moment her voice fell, the sound of flesh being punctured rang out. Jun Jiuqi's hand pierced straight through Jun Lingxue's chest, ruthlessly gouging out her heart!

Blood droplets splattered across her peerlessly enchanting face, yet she did not even blink an eye.

"What belongs to me shall not benefit you, not even if I destroy it."

The next instant, Jun Jiuqi exerted force in her hand, directly crushing the heart that radiated a purplish-red divine light!

In a flash, divine light burst forth!

A dragon's roar shook the nine heavens!

The pressure belonging to the spiritual root of a supreme powerhouse spread across the world, and the terrifying shockwave instantly tore all the surrounding Ninth Rank Blood Warriors to shreds!

The boundless aura was powerful enough to destroy heaven and earth!

It shook the firmament!

Jun Lingxue was discarded on the ground like a tattered rag. Looking in terror at the woman before her whose three thousand strands of white hair fluttered as if a killing deity had descended to the mortal realm, she shrieked at the top of her lungs, "You actually destroyed my root! Bitch, I'll kill you! Black Witches! What are you waiting for?! Kill her! Kill her—ahhh..."

In an instant, streaks of black radiance descended from the skies, and countless robed black shamans materialized out of thin air.

Chanting incantations, a massive black malevolent shamanic array plummeted from above!

"Jun Jiuqi, today is your day to die!"

A shrill, eerie voice echoed from the sky, accompanied by a blinding flash of light as a gigantic purple-gold dragon soared into existence around Jun Jiuqi.

"So the Black Witch Country has already sworn allegiance to my good sister. Since that is the case, this sovereign need not show mercy. I will send all of you to hell right now!"

Offering her blood as a sacrifice, Jun Jiuqi poured all her spiritual power into her dantian, and the terrifying pressure surrounding her enveloped the entire world!

Then, black and white collided in mid-air, sparking terrifying air currents and gales!

In an instant, mountain ranges were completely obliterated and the earth shattered, resembling the collision of cosmic star rivers destroying all creation.

Countless black shamans perished on the spot instantly, lacking even the time to activate their teleportation pillars...

A rain of blood fell from the sky, dyeing even the sunlight red.

It seemed to portend the fall of a generation of powerhouses.

Amidst that blinding light, Jun Jiuqi spat out a mouthful of blood as her body plunged into the freezing, frigid abyss...

...

"...She cannot be allowed to escape! That bitch possesses superior spiritual roots and the Purple Auspicious Dragon Body; her physical body is a supreme tonic! Dredge her up for me, this Holy Maiden wants to pull out her tendons, drink her blood, and squeeze out every last ounce of value!"

Frigid seawater submerged Jun Jiuqi, and overhead came the crazed screams of her dear younger sister.

She slowly closed her eyes.

Jun Lingxue, the Black Witch Country—so this was their plan all along.

How utterly wonderful.

Pity that even if her soul were scattered to the winds and her physical body utterly destroyed, she would never grant them their wish.

Accompanied by a streak of golden light, a radiance soared from beneath the glacier, illuminating the sky with divine brilliance.

Before the shocked gazes of the countless rushing Blood Covenant Guards, the golden light split into six beams, shooting off toward the four cardinal directions!

In the distance, nine figures arrived at an unbelievable speed, standing poised in the void with the overwhelming pressure of powerhouses radiating from their bodies.

These nine individuals were the Nine Great Elders of the Holy Shrine of the Tianxuan Empire.

At their head was none other than the First Elder.

"This is bad! She actually went so far as to use a forbidden art to shatter her golden body... As expected of Tianxuan's very first empress—ruthless to her enemies, and even more ruthless to herself."

Watching this scene, Jun Lingxue grew intensely furious.

"First Elder, we cannot let it end like this. I must obtain her spiritual root and golden body. Only by refining them can I brew the Origin-Breaking Pill that will assist my breakthrough! Otherwise, won't all our efforts over the years be in vain?"

"The Holy Maiden need not be anxious. This is the Heart-Gnawing Forbidden Art, and the soul of the one who casts the spell must endure the pain of a thousand knives cleaving her heart. It won't be long before her soul disperses and she perishes. When the restraining power fades by then, the heavens will surely send down strange phenomena, and her six shattered golden bodies scattered across various lands will manifest one by one. At that time, the Holy Maiden may naturally go and claim her physical body and spiritual root to use as medicine."

Hearing this, Jun Lingxue finally wore a satisfied expression. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through her chest, causing her to stagger.

"Is the Holy Maiden injured? Let this old man heal you first."

The First Elder stepped forward, turning his wrist to reveal a colorful luminescent stone.

Accompanied by a shroud of holy light, the bloody cavern in Jun Lingxue's chest actually began to heal gradually.

The First Elder put away the divine stone and said, "Holy Maiden, the people from the palace will soon arrive."

"Elder, rest assured; I know what must be done."

The next second, a miraculous scene unfolded.

Jun Lingxue's facial features and physique actually began to shift. In a flash, they transformed into a face identical to Jun Jiuqi's.

"Jun Jiuqi, from this day forth, I am the Empress of Tianxuan. Everything that was yours shall belong to me, hahaha..."

---

Chapter 2: Rebirth

A hundred years later.

Tianxuan Continent.

The Northern Frontier, a small city situated in the desolate wilderness.

The originally bright sky suddenly darkened like night, and a streak of silver-and-gold intertwined starlight cut through the firmament!

"Look! What is that?" "Could it be that another profound practitioner has ascended?"

The light streaked across the city above, passing over forests and mountains before crashing heavily into the ground with a loud boom!

The tremendous impact blasted a crater over thirty meters in diameter into the earth.

A few meters away, a carriage happened to be driving by. The woman inside lifted the curtain and asked, "Master, what happened?" "I don't know. I'll go take a look, wife, you wait here."

A tall, burly man headed toward the direction of the rising black flames...

At this moment, Jun Jiuqi was rubbing her bruised and aching rear end before locking eyes with a pair of pitch-black, watery beast eyes.

Clutched in her arms was a drab, ashy little beast whose original white fur could barely be discerned, though patches of it had been scorched away by the fall, making it look at first glance like a pitiful stray dog that hadn't been washed in days.

"Where did this little fellow come from? It actually looks a bit like a puppy..."

Jun Jiuqi was somewhat bewildered, but upon hearing the childish voice issuing from her own mouth, she was dumbfounded.

She looked down and saw a pair of tender, delicate little hands that clearly did not belong to an adult.

What was going on?

Hadn't she been framed by that bitch Jun Lingxue and plunged into the Frigid Polar Sea?

How had she ended up looking like a child? Was this a rebirth? Or a transmigration? And what on earth was going on with this little beast?

Just as Jun Jiuqi was racking her brain in confusion, a puzzled voice came from above, "A kid?"

Then she found herself face-to-face with a weathered, rugged man's face...

...

One year later.

Liucheng, Northern Frontier—Sijia Village.

Jun Jiuqi lay on a straw mat atop the ice, chewing on a blade of grass while her slender little feet kicked and swayed in the air.

In front of her was a fishing rod, its golden line lowered into a fishing hole hacked through the ice.

All around was a vast expanse of pristine white.

Not far from the ice lake sat a small village—none other than Sijia Village.

Jun Jiuqi never expected that she would be reborn as a child.

She had originally believed that her physical body would be completely destroyed in that great battle, and that the backlash of the forbidden art would surely scatter her soul to the winds.

Who could have imagined that due to a twist of fate, she would be given a second lease on life, turning into a child of eleven or twelve years old.

The burly man she encountered outside Liucheng that day had taken her and the curly-haired little beast in her arms back with him. The man was an escort guard who lived with his wife in Sijia Village of Liucheng. The couple had been childless for many years, and so Jun Jiuqi became their daughter.

Over this past year, Jun Jiuqi had gradually come to understand her situation.Using the forbidden Heart-Gnawing Curse to shatter her golden body had caused her three souls and seven spirits to scatter as well, leaving her spiritual sense increasingly weak. Coupled with a hundred years of wandering as a "wandering ghost," her physical condition had gone from bad to worse.

If this continued, sooner or later her soul would scatter and her golden body would perish.

Therefore, if she wanted to survive, she had to retrieve her golden body and other severed limbs.

At the beginning of her rebirth, her spiritual power had been so weak that she continually gathered various medicinal herbs to brew into medicinal liquids just to barely maintain a human form.

Now that her strength had recovered somewhat, she could finally sense the location of her golden body.

The closest one was over two thousand miles away, in the northwest direction. It required crossing Liucheng and the forests. If it were the past, she would have directly summoned Chiyun and crossed over on a wisp of auspicious vapor.

But now...

Jun Jiuqi looked at her own frail and slender body and silently abandoned that extravagant hope.

Her eyes quickly faded of their fierce edge, returning to the clear purity of a child.

At that moment, movement suddenly came from beneath the ice lake.

Jun Jiuqi's eyes lit up—it was finally here.

A massive shadow flashed beneath the water, and the fishing line began to shake frantically.

Jun Jiuqi's plump little hands immediately grabbed the fishing rod, and the next second, the golden line snapped taut. Accompanied by a splash, a chubby baby wearing a fiery red bellyband and bare-bottomed burst out from beneath the water!

With horns on his head and a tail behind him, it was precisely her spirit beast, Chiyun.

"Quick! Quick! Quick! It's coming, it's coming!"

As the little toddler scrambled out in a panic and rolled onto the ice, a massive shadow also broke through the water from below!

Boom!

The water surface exploded as a dozen-meter-long blobfish leaped out of the ice, its entire body covered in mottled spots, two long barbels dangling from its mouth, and its blood-red maw opened wide with rows of sharp fangs as it lunged to bite Jun Jiuqi!

Jun Jiuqi lunged forward, leaping three meters high into the air before delivering a fierce, downward kick!

Bang!

That five-to-six-ton monster was actually kicked flying by a single blow of hers, slamming heavily onto the ice.

Then Jun Jiuqi swung her tiny fists, raining blow after blow upon the creature's eyes.

This blobfish was merely a Tier 1 spirit beast; although its physical strength was astonishing, its speed was not. Its weakness lay in its eyes, and as long as one watched out for the ice spikes it spat out, it could be easily dealt with.

A flurry of wind-tight punches, mixed with a wisp of faint spiritual power, concealed a ferocious and fierce force.

Before long, the blobfish stopped moving altogether.

"Jiujiu, the blade."

Standing nearby, Chiyun showed quite a bit of resourcefulness as he puffed and panted, dragging a three-meter-long broadsword over to hand to Jun Jiuqi.

Jun Jiuqi took the broadsword and, without batting an eye, executed a clean and decisive slash!

The blobfish's head was severed!

Chiyun hurriedly scampered over, rummaging around for a long time within the fish's bloody, stinky head until he finally felt a white crystal.

This was precisely the beast's inner core.

"Jiujiu, for you!"

Chiyun held the inner core aloft in his hands like offering a treasure to Jun Jiuqi. Jun Jiuqi took it, clicking her tongue with a trace of disdain, "Just this?"

The inner core contained impurities, and its energy was not pure either.

Oh well, it would have to do for now.

"Let's go home."

Putting the inner core away, Jun Jiuqi hoisted the broadsword onto her shoulder and prepared to head back.

Chiyun very consciously trotted over to shoulder the giant fish. Jiujiu had said that even a mosquito's leg was meat.

Right now they were as poor as church mice, so saving what they could was the smart thing to do, wasn't it?

Thus, a bizarre scene appeared on the ice: a frail-looking young girl leading a toddler who didn't even reach a grown person's thighs; one of them was shouldering a three-meter-long broadsword while the other lugged a water beast dozens of times larger than his own body, strolling leisurely back toward the village.

---

Chapter 3: Sea of Consciousness and Void Cauldron

Jun Jiuqi's family lived at the very edge of the village. As they neared home, she suddenly came to a halt.

Jun Jiuqi cast a sideways glance at Chiyun, lifting her chin toward the two horns on his head. "Horns, put them away."

Chiyun's mouth immediately drooped into a pout, but he still obediently retracted the horns on his head.

Jun Jiuqi reminded him flatly, "And the tail."

Behind Chiyun's backside, a dragon tail was wagging audibly. Hearing this, it drooped down instantly with a pitiful air.

"Jiujiu, do I really have to put the tail away? It feels uncomfortable like this."

Chiyun poked his little fingers together looking wronged, cautiously trying to negotiate.

Jun Jiuqi smiled brilliantly at him, and then uttered two cold words.

"No."

That coldness brook no argument whatsoever.

In the end, Chiyun pulled in his tail with the utmost reluctance and followed his master into a fenced courtyard.

"Dad, Mom, I'm back!" Jun Jiuqi called out.

"Jiujiu is back?" Immediately, Lv Xiuer's gentle response floated out from the courtyard. "Dinner is ready, come eat!"

"Okay!" "Aigiya, you caught such a big fish again? Our Jiujiu is so capable!"

...

Shortly after, the family of three sat in the courtyard gathered around a stone table for dinner.

The beautiful woman ladled out rice for Jun Jiuqi, and the burly man beside her placed food into her bowl. The family enjoyed a warm, ordinary, and simple happiness.

They were precisely the couple who had rescued Jun Jiuqi along with the curly-haired little beast by her side back then.The man also shared the surname Jun, though it was written with the character "Jun" (Jun), so Jun Jiuqi still went by the name "Jun Jiuqi."

The couple actually knew about the oddities surrounding Jun Jiuqi—an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl possessing superhuman strength whose appetite was greater than three robust men put together.

After rescuing Jun Jiuqi, she had slept soundly in bed for a full month, and by the third month, Chiyun had inexplicably appeared by her side.

Now a year had passed, yet Jun Jiuqi remained just as she was when first rescued, her appearance seemingly unchanged at all.

They were well aware of this child's "differences," yet they silently kept everything hidden to prevent the villagers from discovering anything unusual.

Fortunately, their home was located at the northernmost and most remote part of the village, so villagers rarely came by.

"Jiuer, didn't you say you wanted to go take a look around the market in Liucheng? Dad will take you tomorrow, how about that?" Jun Qingfeng looked at his daughter with doting eyes.

"Really?" Jun Jiuqi wanted to buy some medicinal herbs, and she could conveniently sell the blobfish's tendons and skin to earn some income.

"Mm, Dad's escort agency has a day off tomorrow, so I'll bring your mother along, and our family of three can go together."

"That's wonderful!"

Beside them, Lv Xiuer looked at them gently, occasionally placing food in both of their bowls and feeding Chiyun.

Chiyun was eating with rice grains stuck all over his face without even realizing it, and Lv Xiuer gently wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.

Jun Jiuqi told Lv Xiuer, "Mom, don't spoil him so much, let him eat by himself."

An old monster who had lived for a thousand years, what was he acting so childish for!

"Mom doesn't mind, Mom likes feeding our little Yun," Lv Xiuer said with a smile as she picked up another bowl. "Jiujiu, Mom specially made your favorite rice pastries, come, take a bite..."