Chapter 226: Origins Relived: Three Days Left
Somewhere in the Black Tortoise Continent, the moon hung full and luminous over a tranquil valley. Its light fell across the ancient trees in long, pale strips, undisturbed by wind or cloud.
The valley was serene. The trees grew tall and fruitful, the grass thick and unbothered, tended by nothing but nature itself. Water flowed freely through streams and rivers, rippling with soft, pleasing sounds. Every leaf, every blade of grass, every ripple in the stream existed in quiet harmony with the moonlight.
Then the air shifted.
A sphere appeared above the valley—cosmic purple, deep and shimmering, holding itself motionless above the treeline. The trees below parted slowly, their branches drawing back to open a space on the valley floor. No sound. No resistance. Simply room, made.
The sphere descended and touched the earth.
Then it was gone.
The branches returned to their natural positions. The moonlight fell across the valley exactly as it had before.
Silence.
As though nothing had happened.
---
Inside the cosmic purple sphere—now sealed from the world, locked within its own separate dimension—Tunlong Chenyuan exhaled slowly and lowered himself onto the bed. The energy required to relocate the entire estate had cost him. Not catastrophically. But visibly. His eyes closed briefly before reopening with steady focus.
Tian Yuexin turned to him, her brows drawing together. "Are you alr—"
Her words caught in her throat.
Su Tianhao had begun to float.
Slowly. Effortlessly. Rising from her arms as though gravity had simply decided he was exempt from its authority. A vibrant golden light surrounded his tiny form—divine and ancient, the same light that had torn across the Azure Dragon continent only hours ago—swirling around him like living constellations orbiting a newborn star.
Tian Yuexin moved instinctively to catch him. A firm hand stopped her.
Tunlong Chenyuan stood at her side, his expression sharp and serious. "That golden energy surrounding him—it's the same as what fell across the Azure Dragon continent. It's awakening something in our boy."
Tian Yuexin's fists clenched. Su Tianhao now hovered nine feet above her, the golden energy swirling around his small form, radiant and unhurried.
"What is it awakening?" Her voice was controlled, but only just. "Tell me."
"I—" Tunlong Chenyuan's breath caught. "I don't know."
Silence fell over the room so absolute that even the opulent light seemed to hold still.
Then the swirling golden energy brightened and receded—drawing back into Su Tianhao's tiny form like rivers of liquid starlight returning to their source. Gentle. Inevitable.
'So that's what it is,' Su Tianhao realized inwardly. 'That's the origin of my golden spiritual energy. It was decided from the moment of my birth.'
His parents had barely begun to process what they'd witnessed when a burst of light flooded the room—a gentle wave of golden energy that rebounded across all four walls and retracted instantly back into his form. It happened so fast that in that splitting moment the world went so bright that even Peak-stage Martial Saints like Tunlong Chenyuan and Tian Yuexin were momentarily blinded.
When they opened their eyes, their pupils constricted.
Su Tianhao lay sleeping in his mother's arms—peaceful, undisturbed, radiating pure vitality and health that bordered on the divine. And drifting across the room in quiet procession were golden motes—the same golden motes that had ignited a full-scale war across Xuanming Range. No. More powerful than those. Each one carrying a fragment of something vast and incomprehensible, pulsing with quiet, ancient authority.
Tian Yuexin and Tunlong Chenyuan looked at each other without speaking. The golden motes seemed to call to them—gentle, impossible to fully resist, pulling at the deepest parts of their souls with a warmth that felt both familiar and profoundly new.
Tian Yuexin raised her palm instinctively toward a descending mote, watching it reflect like a miniature sun in her moon-like eyes.
"Yuexin—No!"
Too late.
The moment the mote made contact with her skin, warmth rushed through every fibre of her being—followed immediately by an overwhelming flood of energy that surpassed all mortal limits. Her body trembled violently.
"Yuexin!"
Tunlong Chenyuan appeared before her in an instant. He swept Su Tianhao from her arms and placed him in the crib beside the bed in a single movement, then turned back to his wife.
Tian Yuexin's eyes glowed with celestial radiance—her energy erupting outward, lunar silver, chaotic and unstable.
Tunlong Chenyuan moved behind her immediately, pressing his palm against her back to regulate the surge. He felt no concern about the golden motes touching him. His hundred years of punishment in the mortal realm had not merely suppressed his cultivation—it had rendered all progress completely void. Any breakthrough he attempted, any advancement in cultivation or physique during that time, amounted to nothing. That restriction alone had kept a Supreme Dragon anchored at Martial Saint Realm for nearly a century. Without it, his talents would have long since carried him through ascension.
He set the thought aside. Now wasn't the time.
"Focus, Yuexin. This is a massive breakthrough. Nothing can go wrong."
Tian Yuexin nodded and closed her eyes, entering lotus position. Her lunar energy swirled around her like a protective halo as she began regulating the flood.
The golden mote melted into her meridians like molten starlight—clashing immediately with the lunar silver that had been her foundation since birth. For one suspended heartbeat, it was war. Gold and silver tearing at each other, her body caught between two opposing heavens. Veins lit beneath her skin—one path burning with solar heat, the other flowing with cold moonlight. Blood seeped from the corner of her lip as the contradiction threatened to pull her apart.
Tunlong Chenyuan's palm against her back didn't force. It guided.
"Steady," he said quietly. "Don't fight it. Resonate with it."
His draconic soul power poured into her like a vast, steady current—carving channels through the chaos. Where his power passed, the gold and silver stopped clashing and began to circle. Gold rising like dawn. Silver falling like dusk.
Yin and yang. Not destruction. Balance.
Tian Yuexin seized on it. Her breathing slowed. Her mind steadied.
She stopped resisting the golden mote and listened to it instead. It wasn't invading her—it was completing her. The fragment recognized the lunar dao she had cultivated for centuries and wove itself into it like a missing verse finally found. The obscurities in the Ninefold Nirvanic Tribulation Sword Dao clarified all at once, and her heavenly constitution began undergoing a profound transformation that only deepened with every passing breath.
The trembling stopped.
The chaotic surge condensed, compressed, refined. Lunar silver flared once—brighter than moonlight on fresh snow—then dimmed to a softer, deeper glow, now threaded with veins of gold that pulsed like starlight beneath ice. The pressure in the room didn't dissipate. It amplified.
Tian Yuexin felt it in her soul. Her bottleneck was lifting. The path to the Immortal Ascension Realm was opening before her—a breakthrough most Martial Saints spent their entire existence pursuing without ever reaching.
But she felt no joy.
She knew what it meant. The moment she broke through to the Immortal Ascension Realm, the Heavenly Dao would force her ascension immediately, without a single moment to spare for the people she loved. She would be separated from her newborn son before they could even properly bond.
"Chenyuan..." Her voice came out trembling.
"I know," he said, before she could explain. He always knew.
He exhaled heavily—a sound that carried something rare from him. Helplessness. The particular helplessness of someone who had bent the rules of the world to their will for a century and had finally found the one thing that wouldn't bend.
His gaze hardened. "There's no suppressing it, Yuexin. We can only delay it."
Hope rekindled in her eyes. "How long?"
"Three days." He said it firmly. "I can use my sealing technique to halt the breakthrough for three days. That's the maximum—this is an Immortal Realm breakthrough. Stalling it beyond that risks fracturing your meridians. Damaging your dantian. Permanently severing your path to the Immortal Realm."
"Three days," she repeated quietly, her mind already working.