108:

  Reaching out with his free hand, Xiao Feng noticed how the ring the cultivator wore on his index finger, seemingly an ordinary metal band, began to glow a fluorescent orange, as if it was being heated to its boiling point. Then he simply plucked out a vial that contained a deep azure liquid within, seemingly out of thin air.

  Unstoppering the cork, he gulped down the vial’s contents without hesitation and its effects seemed to be instantaneous, as the silver-haired cultivator’s visage began to return to a healthier hue, his bulging veins quickly easing back in.

  “Now,” The cultivator said as he sealed the empty vial again before it seemingly blinked out of existence and the glowing metal band returned to an unassuming appearance. “I believe our unfortunate tryst is at its conclusion, at least for now. Spatial rings cannot store organic matter without devastating the life within and I would not prefer that to happen to you, my little friend. And if I return to the surface world right now, your pack will tear through this pocket dimension and give chase after me. If the devastation they cause isn’t enough to get me branded a demon, then the clan patriarch would claim my head instead. The Phantom Realm really isn’t a secret, not to those that matter anyway, but having a bunch of hot-headed cultivators trying to step into this pocket dimension is going to be a mighty pain in the neck,” The cultivator rambled, as if the yet to hatch void fox could make sense of what he was saying.

  “To put it simply,” The cultivator mused aloud, his expression one of mild annoyance as he did so, “I can’t run away and go back home. Oh and don’t get the wrong idea, your pack is strong but they would still get slaughtered by another esoteric dao cultivator when they run into one. Not before destroying a few sects, I’m sure, but remember this, predator— there’s always someone out there with sharper fangs. So I need to escape your pack within the phantom realm, hope they don’t notice the spatial tear I am about to make, all while in a hostile pocket dimension where my illusions don’t work and flight is forbidden. Joy.”

  The cultivator allowed himself a long sigh, before looking over his shoulder, into the distance where the pack of void foxes were barely more than specks in the distance.

  “I am Soul Emperor Xueyun Bai of the Heavenly Jade Pavillion, one of the three great merchant houses of Tian. I will come and find you after escaping this infernal realm, but it might take me some time. Do try to survive until then, the place I am dropping you in has one of the lowest qi densities on the continent. Should be somewhere in the Azure Lotus Sect’s territory, I believe that was what it was called,” The Soul Emperor, who stood at a cultivation stage that was beyond what Xiao Feng’s predecessor considered the sky itself in the form of Elder Haoyun Liu, explained, before he pressed his index and middle finger together and placed both upon his forehead.

  “Flare,” The silver-haired cultivator whispered.

  The next moment, the world around Xiao Feng turned an incredibly bright white that was offensive to the eyes, to the point where he was certain that the unborn kit’s eyes would have been burnt out even from within the beast egg’s interior if the cultivator hadn’t been excluding it from the effects.

  “Zhanxie,” The silver-haired cultivator declared and his sword unsheathed itself, now floating to his side with its tip pointed forward. “Sunder,” he bellowed.

  The blade’s tip was awash with a brilliant golden color as it pulled back unaided before coming crashing down, slicing not the air before the silver-haired cultivator, but space itself,

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  An inky black line was carved across the world itself, from which spiderwebbed a hundred fine cracks. A few moments passed, before the fine cracks had turned to wide ones and another few moments later, a roughly circular hole had been punched in reality itself.

  On the other side, lay a calm forest.

  “For what it’s worth,” The silver-haired cultivator said. “I do apologize for how things turned out.”

  Then the beast-egg was thrust forth by a gentle gust of wind, carried into the beyond without having a say in its own fate.

  The crack sealed almost immediately after, the shattered pieces of space replaced all at once, almost like it was being repaired with a vengeance.

  The beast-egg and the unborn kit within, that had only woken because it was violently disturbed from its rest, descended into a slumber not long after it had been deposited near the base of a tree, behind a clump of shrubbery.

  Xiao Feng tried to fight sleep’s call, trying to see if he could stay in the memory for longer, only to ultimately fail.

  The next thing he knew, he was standing on the baby kit’s side of the realm of yul, standing before it with an expression of utter disbelief written all across his expression.

  No. Not it.

  “You’re a girl, huh,” Xiao Feng asked in English.

  “Yes!” The kit answered in a high-energy, shrill tone.

  Xiao Feng flinched, not having expected the answer to come in English. Of course, the kit was speaking in her beast tongue, but in the realm of yul, there was no such thing as a language barrier.

  “You have quite the story,” Xiao Feng observed.

  “Yes!” She eagerly replied. “Two-legged man of power took me from family. Ancestral memories oblige family to destroy my egg. But two-legged man of power also help me escape. One day, he will come back for me.”

  “I see,” Xiao Feng nodded in understanding.

  “Two-legged man of power, very strong. You…,” The young kit paused, as if trying to discover the concept of tact before replying. “Not so strong. You still want to be friends?”

  Xiao Feng considered the baby kit’s question, while trying not to be stunned by the level of intelligence and composure she was displaying right after hatching. A Soul Emperor, well, that was so beyond even his predecessor, that merely entangling with such an existence sounded like something he was very much not interested in. But the cultivator had let the baby kit escape even though there was a chance he wouldn’t find her again and he belonged to a merchant pavilion, so he was definitely from the righteous path.

  He wouldn’t cut down Xiao Feng and take his friend from him, not if they were bonded and had a use to him. For all of the Phantom Dao’s mysteries, it didn’t feel like the Soul Emperor was particularly threatened by the void foxes, more so annoyed. And he could very well get another one instead of killing Xiao Feng if he wanted to bond with one, but it didn’t feel like the Soul Emperor would not already have a bonded beast if he wanted one.

  But all that wasn’t the reason why Xiao Feng already knew the answer that was cemented in his heart.

  Xiao Feng had already lived one life, one where he had waited for life to come to him. In his second life, he didn’t want to do that. Life was as spontaneous and beautiful as it was abrupt and he did not want to be left holding a bag of regrets twice.

  He had found the beast egg due to a cultivation art only he possessed. He had healed it with a pill that he had worked very hard to refine. He had believed that the beast egg could be healed, even when the odds were unlikely at best. This was his and the void fox’s story to write, not some thief soul emperor’s.

  “Yep! I still want to be friends,” Xiao Feng cheerfully offered.

  “You feed me when hungry. You heal my egg so I hatch. I want to be friends too!” The baby kit declared with far more energy than Xiao Feng had managed.

  He laughed and bent down to fondly pat the baby void fox’s crown.

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