Against the Gods

The arrival of Emperor Yun couldn’t be a small matter.

The entire Divine Ice Phoenix Sect was in turmoil when his arrival was made known. The elders and palace masters rushed over to meet him, but they didn’t even manage to bend the knee before Yun Che and Yun Wuxin vanished straight into the Ice Phoenix Sacred Region. They could only exchange helpless looks with each other.

A familiar, icy aura hit him the moment he entered the Ice Phoenix Sacred Region. The next moment, a woman as beautiful as an ice fairy walked up to them.

“I thought it might be the two of you considering the commotion,” Mu Bingyun greeted them smilingly before looking at Yun Wuxin.

“Long time no see, Palace Master Bingyun.” Yun Che nodded back with a smile. For some reason, he always felt relaxed and peaceful whenever he met Mu Bingyun. It was the same even after he became Emperor Yun.

Maybe it was because her eyes reflected the color of ice, but she herself was really as gentle and easy-going as water.

Yun Wuxin chose this moment to take a small step forward and bow down before Mu Bingyun. “Junior disciple of Frozen Cloud Immortal Palace, Yun Wuxin greets the Great Ancestor Master.”

A bit caught off guard by her seriousness and formality, Mu Bingyun shook her head smilingly. “It is okay. Mu Bingyun of Frozen Cloud Immortal Palace ‘passed away’ at least a thousand years ago. Today, that past is long behind me, and I am simply Mu Bingyun of the Snow Song Realm. You do not need to call me great ancestor master.”

“In that case…” Yun Wuxin looked up. “Can I call you auntie?”

The question caused the usually unflappable Mu Bingyun to break into a wide smile. “Of course. My older sister is your father’s consort, so I am your auntie as a matter of course.”

Yun Che: (this girl… she actually managed to use both appellations seamlessly!)

Mu Bingyun turned to Yun Che next. “As expected of the daughter of Emperor Yun. What a lovable child.”

“Palace Master Bingyun,” Yun Che said, “Please address me how you used to. Although I’ve gotten comfortable with the title ‘Emperor Yun’, it feels extremely odd coming from you.”

Yun Wuxin shifted her gaze to her father imperceptibly: (Hmm???)

“... very well.” Mu Bingyun nodded.

“Auntie,” Yun Wuxin suddenly cried out sweetly, “do you know that you look even prettier than I initially imagined? No wonder father always told me that you look like a fairy.”

“???” Yun Che’s eyebrows trembled like a string: since when have I ever said that!?

“...” For a moment, Mu Bingyun was lost for words.

“While we were entering the Eastern Divine Region, father told me that it’s been a year since he saw you, and that he misses you a—ouch!” 

It was Yun Che clapping a hand on top of Yun Wuxin’s head before saying seriously, “Where has Xuanyin gone to, Palace Master Bingyun? Why is she not in the Sacred Region?”

“She is in seclusion right now,” Mu Bingyun answered as before. On the surface, it looked like Yun Wuxin’s words hadn’t affected her.

“Seclusion?”

“It is just to meditate on her heart and cultivate her soul,” Mu Bingyun replied in a gentle voice. “She is aware that the two of you will be arriving around this time. She told me to inform her once you’ve arrived.”

“I shall do that right now.”

“It’s fine.” Yun Che raised his hand to stop her. “Wuxin and I will just visit her directly.”

“The chill in Mist End Valley is extremely heavy. It is not something Wuxin can endure,” Mu Bingyun said. “This is Wuxin’s first time here anyway, so you may as well show her around the Sacred Region first.”

“Very well.” Yun Che stopped declining. “Thank you for your trouble, Palace Master Bingyun.”

He remained as respectful as he was back when he was just a disciple.

“Oh right, how long will the two of you be staying in the Snow Song Realm?” Mu Bingyun asked.

Yun Che shot Yun Wuxin a glance. “That depends on Wuxin, really.”

“More like the opposite,” Yun Wuxin muttered defiantly because her father was messing up her hair.

Mu Bingyun shot them one last smile before leaving the place.

The second Mu Bingyun’s aura was far enough, Yun Che immediately put on an angry face and growled at Yun Wuxin, “What was that?? You’re really getting more and more out of control, girl!”

“I… I was just helping you, father,” Yun Wuxin replied in a timid and aggrieved tone.

“Like I need any help from you!”

“That is true.” Yun Wuxin nodded deeply. “Your ability to handle women is already off the charts. You can handle this yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant! Whew…” Yun Che let out a long sigh after uttering that. He was really starting to think that he had led his daughter astray during this journey. How was he going to explain this to Chu Yuechan later?

Yun Wuxin giggled like a little devil. “You’ve already put your magic on that other auntie anyway. It’s not good to favor one and discriminate against the other, right?”

“That’s not how you interpret or use that idiom!!” Yun Che’s voice grew louder, and his eyes widened even more.

Yun Che’s stern expression finally cowed Yun Wuxin and made her worried. “Y-you’re not actually angry, are you?”

She grabbed her father’s sleeve and tugged it timidly. “I-I wasn’t trying to make you angry on purpose. It’s just… you looked pretty unhappy when you said that you could never have friends, so I was thinking that maybe this would cheer you up… I really wasn’t trying to make you angry on purpose.”

“...” Touched by his daughter’s thoughtfulness, Yun Che immediately replaced his stern expression with a hearty laugh. “Hahahaha, I didn’t think it would be this easy to scare you, girl. Looks like my authority as a father hasn’t diminished much after all, hahahaha!”

Yun Wuxin immediately tossed his sleeve away and turned her face away from Yun Che, humphing. “Dammit! I should’ve known that you wouldn’t be angry over something like this! You might even be happy for the assist! Hmph!”

Suddenly, the sound of the wind and snow turned pleasant. Yet another fairy-like woman stepped out from behind the snow.

When Yun Wuxin turned to see who it was, her eyes met the woman’s countenance, and her lips parted unconsciously.

After the woman came to a stop in front of Yun Che and Yun Wuxin, she looked at the former and asked, “What should I call you now? Emperor Yun or Senior Brother Yun?”

Her gaze looked the same as ever. It never changed whether he was Yun Che, the Devil Master, or Emperor Yun.

Yun Che replied, “Since it’s Feixue, of course I would prefer to hear ‘Senior Brother Yun’ or ‘Yun Che’ from you.”

“Fairy sister,” Yun Wuxin said suddenly, “nice to meet you. I am Yun Wuxin.”

Yun Che: (she called her fairy sister?)

At first, Mu Feixue looked a bit surprised. Then, her icy pupils melted into obvious gentleness and something complicated. “I would not think that Senior Brother Yun has a daughter this big already. The passage of time truly is as beautiful and cruel as this eternal snow.”

“Be that as it may, it seems that time’s concept of cruelty doesn't apply to you, Feixue,” Yun Che said smilingly.

“...” Her pupils shivered a little, and the tiniest smile appeared on her face. It was too bad that Mu Feixue’s smile had always been as vanishing as the first snow.

“I shall not disturb you two any longer.”

She stepped away after leaving behind these departing words.

Yun Wuxin’s gaze kept lingering on Mu Feixue’s back. She didn’t look away even after she was long gone.

“She looks very similar to your mom, doesn’t she?” Yun Che asked.

“Ah? Does she?” Yun Wuxin exclaimed in surprise.

Her surprise made Yun Che surprised. “Then why were you staring at her like that?”

Yun Wuxin narrowed her eyes at her father, but she soon realized that her father wasn’t faking his astonishment. So she asked, “She was the one who gave you the Eternal Imagery Stone, right father?”

“Huh?” Yun Che rubbed the tip of his nose. “How did you know that? Did your Auntie Qianying tell you about it?”

“I even know that she likes you very, very, VERY much.”

For some reason, Yun Wuxin sounded odd when she said this.

“Okay, you definitely didn’t hear THAT from your Auntie Qianying,” Yun Che declared immediately.

Yun Wuxin’s eyes grew even odder. “Father, I just want to check, but… don’t tell me you didn’t watch the projection engraved in the Eternal Imagery Stone at all before you gave it to me as a gift?”

Startled, Yun Che shook his head. “No. I told her that I was going to gift the Eternal Imagery Stone to my daughter after all. All I was thinking after I got it was to give it to you as quickly as possible.”

“I had no idea there was an existing projection in the Eternal Imagery Stone. Did she make it?”

Yun Wuxin stomped her foot angrily. “Father, you… you’re such a dumb dumb sometimes, you know that!?”

Yun Che: “Er… huh…?”

“It’s bad enough that you’re so fickle in love, but it’s even worse that you would betray the love of someone this wonderful and single-minded!”

Yun Wuxin took out the Eternal Imagery Stone in question and slapped it on her father’s palm. “Watch it now… I’ll show myself around while you do so!”

Before Yun Che could say anything, she turned away and flew toward the Sacred Hall, leaving him to “reflect” upon his mistakes.

“Wuxin, where are you go—” 

However, Yun Wuxin ignored him completely and flew out of sight in no time.

Both exasperated and amused, Yun Che shook his head and held up the Eternal Imagery Stone. He had to admit that Yun Wuxin’s reaction had made him very curious.

His profound energy seeped into the Eternal Imagery Stone. As it turned out, there were a lot of projections inside the object such as the birthday images Yun Wuxin had shown him before, some daily life images she left behind for various reasons, and many more relating to Chu Yuechan or Feng Xue’er.

A short while later, he finally found the earliest projection in the Eternal Imagery Stone and summoned it.

The background was that of icy crystals, icy branches, and a familiar, cold mist that looked thick enough to spill into reality. Yun Che immediately recognized it as a bedroom in the Ice Phoenix Sacred Region.

Then, Mu Feixue slowly entered the scene.

“Yun… Che…”

Her icy pupils seemed unfocused and misty as she stared forward. The whisper that escaped her lips was without a doubt his name.

“Today is the seven hundredth day since news of your death reached this realm …”

“It has been an ordeal that is both short and impossibly long.”

Her voice sounded as ephemeral as a dream.

“I had thought that time would heal all wounds, but...”

“When I hear the sound of the wind, I hear your voice. When I look at the heavenly lake, I see your image. When I feel the air, I sense your aura. And when I touched the snow… it felt cold enough to deaden my soul.”

“Even on the occasions that I regain clarity of mind, your name still won’t leave my finger.”

At first, Yun Che didn’t get what she was saying. Then, he realized in shock that every object in the shimmering projection—the ice tables, the ice walls, the ice corals, the ice branches—they all had his name engraved on them. [1]

A myriad of emotions rose from his heart at this moment. The clearest one was a pain he couldn’t describe.

He had known that Mu Feixue was in love with him, but he had no idea that it was to this extent.

He recalled every interaction he ever had with Mu Feixue, but he just couldn’t find the one that made her so infatuated with him.

“Is this what the books describe as the tribulations of love? No wonder they all say that it is easier to survive ten thousand calamities than it is to survive one love tribulation...”

She closed her eyes as she traced the names she had engraved with her fingertips. “I regret choosing fear when you were still with me. I regret backing down again and again when I should be advancing.”

“If a miracle exists in this world… I swear I won’t run away in shame any longer. I will look you in the eyes and tell you that I am not your ‘Little Fairy’. I will tell you that I only want to be your Mu Feixue forever…”

    “...”

That was where the projection ended.

It was the only projection Mu Feixue had engraved in the Eternal Imagery Stone.

Yun Che stayed where he was and blanked out for a very long time. [2]

When he was still in the Snow Song Realm, Mu Feixue had done everything in her power to avoid him. Wherever he went, she would refuse to appear unless absolutely necessary. That never changed even after he attended the Profound God Convention.

After he died in the Star God Realm and returned to the Snow Song Realm three years later, her attitude had suddenly changed tremendously.

It was Mu Feixue who suggested gifting his daughter an Eternal Imagery Stone… It was also her who gave him the Eternal Imagery Stone.

At this point, he fully realized that she was trying to convey her deepest thoughts to him through the Eternal Imagery Stone.

However, he had assumed that it was a brand new Eternal Imagery Stone and hadn’t checked its contents at all. He had gifted it to Yun Wuxin immediately.

Of course Yun Wuxin thought that her father had watched this projection when she saw it for the first time… she might even think, no, she definitely thought that her father was showing off to her and mentally preparing her for her new “auntie”.

After that, Yun Che treated Mu Feixue exactly the same as before, so she must’ve thought that his indifference was his way of letting her down kindly.

Yun Che smacked himself in the head, hard.

Ss… how could I have been so stupid?? I should’ve checked the Eternal Imagery Stone at least once!!

He finally realized just how much loneliness and pain she was hiding every time Mu Feixue watched him with those cool eyes of hers and favored him with her tiny smile.

It took him another while before he finally stopped beating himself up. While he was holding the Eternal Imagery Stone, he accidentally triggered the next projection after Mu Feixue’s.

It showed a Yun Wuxin who was just about to hit fifteen years old.

“Heehee, daddy, this is the first time I’ve used the Eternal Imagery Stone you gifted me. I don’t know if I’m doing this right, but it doesn’t matter, right? I’m your daughter, you’re not allowed to dislike it even if turns out to be ugly, hmph hmph.”

An unconscious smile crept onto his lips as he watched his childish daughter.

“It took me a very, very long time to make the three Glazed Sound Stones I gifted daddy, so you cannot damage them no matter what, okay? If you do, I’ll punish you by making you repair them with me… it’s a promise, okay? This is the proof, and any objections will not be accepted, heehee!”

“As I could ever allow them to be damaged.” Yun Che spoke to himself smilingly. “This is one ‘punishment’ you’ll never be able to fulfill.”

He had fought many dangerous and life-threatening battles right up until the final battle against the Western Divine Region, and his body had suffered god knows how many injuries up to that point. However, the tri-colored Glazed Light Stones he wore around his neck had never suffered so much as a single scratch.

His spiritual perception flickered again, and the third projection began playing. It was not an unfamiliar scene. It was the one Yun Wuxin had shown him on her twentieth birthday.

To be more specific, it was the supernatural phenomena that had occurred when the Blue Pole Star was teleported from the east of the Eastern Divine Region to the south of the Southern Divine Region.

It had only happened for a short moment, but Yun Wuxin had still managed to capture it with the Eternal Imagery Stone.

He had already seen the projection before, and he remembered its contents clearly to this day, but Yun Che thought that he might as well let it play out until the end.

The blue sky shivered, space itself trembled, and the clouds were scattered into nothing. A thick crimson light spread out with incredible speed and enveloped everything in no time...

It was exactly the same as he remembered it. When the projection was about to end, Yun Che brushed his finger against the Eternal Imagery Stone and turned it off.

Right as the projection disappeared, Yun Che’s gaze suddenly shivered a little.

It was because he had caught sight of a purple flash right before the end.

The purple flash had happened so quickly and was so short that it was utterly beyond the eyesight of a normal person to catch. Even Yun Che hadn’t noticed it when he watched the projection the first time.

Even now, he still thought that he was mistaken, and that it was probably something his mind hallucinated because he wasn’t paying attention.

1. (T/N: so this is what passes as yandere in this story).

2. (T/N: oh, he’s dead)