Beyond the horizon, in a never-ending crepuscular galaxy, there was a single star.

A red star.

Radiating crimson waves light.

For the fuel that burned in its core was none other than blood.

And the fire born of it was malice incarnate.

The star, a sun that devoured civilisations, was perhaps a septillion times larger than any continent Youjin Fuqiang’s paltry existence had ever seen.

He could not scream, could not beg. He only stared in wonder as the star rotated on its axis.

No.

The star turned around.

And opened its single eye.

All that was Youjin Fuqiang was stripped away, leaving only his memories.

But even those were burned to a crisp. Only the faintest of echoes remained, which Youjin Chao inherited.

***

Voidfiends didn’t mate unless they’re hit by perverted attacks like Yung’s Pink Heart Beam.

Yet the number of Voidfiend Foxmoths in that battle was far more than the number Silky had last seen in the cave, even including all the unhatched cocoons and grubby caterpillars.

One possibility was the existence of a voidrift that spawned these new species of fiends.

Another one, as suggested by Youjin Yetu who was knowledgeable in these matters, was voidification.

The same process cultists went through to awaken their void powers from being simple, talentless mortals.

“Found it,” Ziyou Maque was at the front. He tore down a wall of stones glued together by a strange binding agent and dim gold foxmoth silk.

“Foxmoth Saliva,” Youjin Tiantian said.

Inside was another cavern. It had a small watering hole in the middle, and a few crystal torches set up for light.

Webbing hung from one wall to another, and strange mushrooms grew from floor to ceiling.

In the nooks and crannies of the walls and fungi compositions, within the webbed structures that hung like bridges, the remaining foxmoths made their nests.

Dim Gold Foxmoths, not their voided counterparts.

“Kyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Silky chirped. He flew in.

There were flutters of wings, and shocked cries in response too.

Yung could feel that every second, the Yaoguai was getting stronger in the presence of such pure feelings of joy.

The critter flew into the air, buzzing dizzily in strange patterns, repeating his cries. From his wings, glittering dust rained out like crystal sand.

At first, only a few foxmoths joined him.

Then a few more.

And within minutes, there were hundreds of them in the sky, dancing like a flock of birds, aloud with happy chirps and squawks.

On the nests and the walls, fat caterpillars watched on with large glittering eyes.

Yung was almost in tears.

The soul contract sent back all of Silky’s emotions. The little guy had never been happier, not even while eating grapes.

“It really was voidification,” Youjin Yetu said. He pointed at the middle of the cavern, beside the water source.

There was a formation there, with boxes and vials thrown about randomly. There was a nine-pointed star in the middle of the formation, with a single crystallised foxmoth head placed upon each point.

“I’ve seen such formations before,” said the old man, “when the clan had raided cultist hideouts in the past.” Yung trusted him with dismantling it. He was the Youjin Clan’s formation elder after all.

Youjin Tiantian opened one of the boxes, “Voidfiend grafts…”

Yung felt his heart skip a beat. He was reminded of what Youjin Fuqiang had said about his mother being a ‘Dark Mother.’

“Shall you not recall your little Silky?” Su Nanya said. She was in her tiny fox form, yawning, on her perch atop Yung’s head after pushing away the foxmoth Yaoguai half an hour ago.

“Let him play,” Yung said. “I think the cultists went through one of the other tunnels.” Before they had discovered the cavern with the foxmoths, there was a fork with three paths.

One path led here.

Two remained.

They left behind a few Youjin and Madlander cultivators in the cave, the non 2nd realmers including Ling, Chun, and Linbi, despite protests.

“Stay here,” Ziyou Maque said. He had learnt his lesson. The fox clan was benevolent, but they were capricious. Seeing his daughter getting killed multiple times today had been more than enough.

Yung pointed towards a tunnel in the middle. A large number of Empathic Links were coming from this direction, reading all manner of malicious emotions. “They went this way.”

Ziyou Maque had just broken through. The best course of action would have been to find a place to meditate and consolidate his unstable cultivation.

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The gang leader knew his priorities though, “Then we chase. Young Yung, perhaps it is better if you stay behind?”

Yung picked up Nyanya and brought her to his eye level. The fox yawned.

“Will they revive?”

“Our powers are not candy from a store.”

“Nyanya.”

“Three hours.” She said. She licked his cheek.

“Keep track of the time,” Yung told Ziyou Maque.

Youjin Tenghou unsheathed his blade, as did the two Meridian Building cultivators from the Free Sparrow gang. The Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realmers were ready for more action.

Yung and those left behind saw the war party off. Their revenge had more lives to take.

“We need to get Floofy back,” Yung said.

Nanya brought her tail down so Yung could see it. She was holding an Occultic Foxball with it.

“Is our Su Xiya not here?”

“This… isn’t it the foxball that was originally in Youjin Fuqiang?”

“Ours. Not that thief’s.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Indeed we do, do we not?” Nanya sounded pleased. “It is of her other body, foolish servant. Her part of the soul stays true with us. If you had not interfered and let the two occultic foxballs converge for longer, Su Xiya could have completed the transition faster.”

“D-Did I mess up?” Yung felt guilty. He wanted to help, but perhaps everything really was in Su Nanya’s hand from the start.

No, she was testing me. My powers were perhaps unexpected to her too. Yung thought. And to me. I never really tested it exhaustively after that one time. Power. Yes, power. I can’t ignore the maxim of this dog-eat-dog world anymore.

“How adorable,” Su Nanya said. “You merely acted in good faith. As it stands now, our Su Xiya cannot display her full cognition with this foxball, and that is all. It is of no problem to one such intelligent as we!” she said, her tail swaying back and forth like a pendulum in front of Yung’s eyes. “Give it a week. Your Floofy shall return stronger, yet not any smarter. Is her strange foolishness not her most adorable point?”

“My Floofy?” Yung gulped. He figured it out a while ago, when he’d seen that entity and the white fox.

Su Xiya was Su Nanya.

He shook his head.

Su Nanya and Su Xiya were both that white fox.

Su Nanya was not the original body. She’s a clone.

Do they each have their own unique personality? If so, geeeeeeeeez. Yung covered his face. Floofy was just a child for heaven’s sake!

“Why must you always think so cravenly?” Su Nanya said with a hard boop on Yung’s head.

“She’s your Floofy. Silky’s friend. But definitely not my Floofy! Not in a million years.” He had to reject the proposition or otherwise he would lose the right to call himself a human being with modern values.

“Fine, be like that. Coward,” Su Nanya said, grinning. “Our Cardinal Body would rather you be dead. For us, however, we are all that matters.” Her words made little sense. “We are one. Always and forever.”

“You and the other… yous?” Yung asked.

“And you and us too,” Su Nanya said.

“Smooth.”

“Praise us more!” She was jubilant.

“Wow, how smart! How beautiful. How cute Nyanya is.”

“Fumu. To continue our wisdom, my well-spoken brown-nosing servant. We are all yours, but you do not need to possess all of us. So fret not.”

Yung sighed in relief. He didn’t know why.

They were the only two standing in the fork now, and Nanya had her sound-blocking barrier going on.

She had so many powers despite being in the Imperfect Heaven 1st Realm. It was illogical.

That goo-like amorphism. Shapeshifting. The crown.

Extreme Yin things.

Yung stopped himself. Before he thought any further, they really needed to have another honest talk.

About boundaries.

“What about the other occultic foxball?” Yung asked.

“It will devour Youjin Fuqiang from within and trap his soul. No need to worry. We shall have someone retrieve it later—” Nanya stopped.

Her head shot up, looking at the third tunnel, ears perked alert.

“What happened?” Yung asked, worried. This place was still in the vicinity of the lost plane, and Nanya was pretty sure that one of the tunnels here led to the other dimension.

“…. Someone is… No. How could—” Her voice was full of disbelief, as if she could not understand what was happening.

She jumped down from Yung’s head and sniffed the third tunnel.

“Thief,” she growled cutely.

“A thief?” Yung asked. Did she mean Youjin Fuqiang? She didn’t seem so disturbed when the void cultist had left earlier.

“Thief!” Nanya said again, this time howling. Her voice echoed through the tunnels, bouncing down and about like tremors on the Earth.

Yung heard a ruckus come from the tunnel that led to the cavern with the foxmoths.

Before he could ask what was going on, Nanya leapt ahead. Her body, from the torso down, transformed into a gel-like substance, while the front part of her body turned into iridescent light.

Whoosh!

She vanished, leaving behind a streak of green light like an afterimage.

Yung was impressed by whatever movement art that was, but more than that,

“I can’t believe it. She just left!” He was dumbstruck.

Another howl rang out, “THIEF! HOW DARE YOU!”

First, it sounded far away.

Then, it echoed closer.

Yung looked down at his feet.

Nanya was there again. She bit Yung’s trousers.

“Wai—” Yung was abruptly stopped mid-word as his girlfriend transformed into a streak of gooey green light again.

The world spun upside down, and the cavern walls turned into receding lines of rock.

***

Youjin Chao opened his eyes. He exhaled a warm breath. The steam left his nostrils and swirled in the air like a dragon.

His body was covered by a layer of red and black, and as he stirred, the red and black layer slowly flaked off.

Beneath him, gunk-like impurities had hardened into a clay-like substance inside the dead Chaosfiend’s throat.

“I live,” Chao said. His eyes were tranquil, the red in them shining like rubies.

“I live!” He repeated, and the corner of his mouth rose into a smile.

His mind was clear: the parts inherited from Youjin Fuqiang were left as a packet of memories on one side of his rejuvenated Sea of Consciousness.

His inner lake was no longer barren, his three dantians beat like hearts of tigers.

He had only seen parts of the memories.

The old man had been both a liar and truth-teller. What he said about Brother Yung’s mother and grandfather was the truth.

The man had been a cultist.

And Yung was the son of a Dark Mother.

As for the rest…

Chao’s eyes narrowed. He sat up, more flakes fell off, revealing pristine skin underneath that bore none of the many scars he’d sustained throughout his life. His joints popped like a drum.

Chao stretched, more pops sounded, creating depressions in the air. And finally he stood up like a tall spear, all the flakes falling off and crumbling to dust. He willed his newly found qi into a storage artefact, and a new set of robes covered him.

Taking his rusty sword out, Chao slashed upward, cutting a hole through the the Chaosfiend’s neck.

The sword rendered apart the corpse like butter.

Chao walked out. The air of the cavern was cold. It faintly stank of death, but was far better than the stale air inside the fiend’s maw.

Chao turned back and looked at the two dead behemoths. The cavern was dark, the glowing algae and fungi that seemed to be ever-present in many underground systems were absent here.

But his eyes could see every detail.

His special sight, fully awakened.

The world was divided into heat and blood and those without.

Gold of heat, red of blood, and black of the lacking.

The corpses of the fiends were the latter, black forms barely outlined with dim gold borders to signify that they still had some heat left.

They now looked like dried husks. Because whatever corrupted art Youjin Chao inherited from Youjin Fuqiang’s soul, it had activated and sucked the lifeblood and remnant lifeforce from the two fiends' bodies like a vampire.

Both fiends, both the Chaosfiend and the Voidfiend.

Like some void cultist.

Just like Youjin Fuqiang himself.

But that didn’t matter.

“That’s right. Chiri.” Chao did not know how much time had passed. He also needed to gauge his cultivation bases, consolidate them.

Then his rise would begin.

Chao took one last look at the two behemoths. Three, if counting the dead old void cultist patriarch.

He then turned around, about to head back to Chiri.

“STOP RIGHT THERE! THIEF!”

When a sultry voice that visited his dreams every night called out from every nook and cranny of the cavern.

“Su Nanya?” Youjin Chao was shocked.

One of the tunnels leading into the cavern glowed gold and green.

Chao turned in that direction.

A fist made out of pure Origin Qi hit him squarely in the left cheek.

The pain shot down his spine like the snap of a whip as half his teeth flew out.

Why! Chao wanted to scream, but his consciousness left him once more as he flew out like a spinning wheel and crashed onto the cavern wall on the other side.