Chapter 622: Ch 622 - Finally, I Can Rest

Yino knew the truth of Nangong Xi’s destiny, just as he had known the secrets of Wen Ruzhi. Though the so-called heroines of the Five Great Immortal Sects came from different origins, their core fates were identical, with Ruzhi being merely the spiritual embryo of the Dragon Sovereign.

Nangong Xi was the tragic reincarnation of the moon goddess from above the Nine Heavens. Calling her a reincarnation was a polite lie, as the true entity, the Silver Moon Goddess, remained high in the Qing Palace of the Nine Heavens. The young woman was nothing more than a discarded vessel, an avatar body severed from the main soul in a cruel trick of One Soul, Two Bodies.

Despite sharing a single soul, their power was divided with monstrous disparity. The main body kept ninety-nine percent of their shared cultivation, leaving Nangong Xi as nothing but a beautiful, empty shell with a pathetic, lingering trace of Divinity.

While the main body reposed in the safety of the Immortal Realm to focus on quiet cultivation, the avatar body was cast down into the filth of the Mortal Realm to wander, suffer, and accumulate the heavy, agonizing burdens of Karma. Once this miserable puppet finally struggled her way back to the Immortal Realm, the main body would devour her, merging completely to refine every ounce of insight and Karma she had bled for in the Lower Realm.

Once digested, the Silver Moon goddess would simply split her soul again, birthing a new holy maiden in the Frost Palace every hundred years in a continuous, sickening cycle of reincarnation. The proud Nangong Xi standing before Yino was merely the ninth-generation avatar body, a beautiful bird locked in the cage of her own destiny, completely unaware she was born to be consumed.

Her main body was incredibly cunning, whispering sweet lies to convince her they were equal partners. These promises assured her that once she gathered enough Karmic Merit, she would achieve Ascension and stand as a True Immortal, never mentioning that Ascension meant being digested in a complete and terrifying erasure.

Under this sweet delusion, the avatar body worked tirelessly, striving for perfection in the Lower Realm. It was no wonder she had looked down on Yino with such haughty pity and sneered at Yuyan’s tragic fate, genuinely believing her own future as the Reincarnation of the Silver Moon Goddess was limitless, a pathetic and laughable delusion.

In the game. Yuyan would lose her mind and become an Evil Sword Immortal, but Nangong Xi’s end was far more degrading. Eventually discovering the horrific truth of Ascension, and realizing she was just a piece of meat raised for slaughter, she would rebel, attempting to murder her main body to escape being refined.

The outcome was pure despair as her rebellion failed instantly. Hunted down like a wild dog and branded as a Fallen Immortal, the proud holy maiden of the Frost Palace suffered years of degradation in the mud that broke her mind, reducing her to a raving, desperate beast.

To Yino, they were all just broken playthings in waiting, and none of them had the right to look down on anyone.

"How dare you defile my pure Divinity!" Nangong Xi shrieked. Behind her, the majestic Moon Goddess Projection manifested as she snatched the Moon-Crossing Silver Sword from the empty air. Having lived for only twenty years, she had already broken through to the Void Refinement stage, making her the most perfect vessel of all nine generations.

Though she held only a fraction of the main body’s power, their identical souls meant she could easily reach the Immortal Realm with diligent effort. But that was why the main body kept ninety-nine percent of the power to herself. That monstrous power existed solely to crush the avatar body if she ever dared to rebel against her destiny, forcefully swallowing her whole. The harder she worked, the faster she ran toward her own destruction.

"It really is a pity for someone with your talent...." Yino mocked with a low chuckle. "No matter how hard an avatar body struggles, it remains nothing but a shadow." He summoned his sword Wangziu, channeling his Qi into the cold steel to form a brutal slaughter array.

He had no intention of revealing the cruel truth to her yet, having not even finished gathering the opportunities in the Jianlan Sect. With no time to entangle himself with the karma of the Frost Palace, his mockery served a single, cold purpose: to shatter her proud Dao Heart and secure his victory.

"So what if I am an avatar body!" she spat. "I’ve worked tirelessly and borne endless karma, and even as an avatar body, I’ve got more than enough power to crush you!" Humiliation burned in Nangong Xi’s eyes before she fixed him with a cold, moonlit stare.

As Yino charged with Wangziu, Nangong Xi calmly raised her hand to condense a speck of silver moonlight at her fingertips. The light came alive, morphing into an indestructible Moon Shield that absorbed his relentless strikes. Sparks flew with a sharp metallic ring as blade met shield, warping the surrounding air with the force of the impact.

"Moonbeam! "Nangong Xi cried out as her silver sword hummed with the resonance of the Void Refinement stage. Lunging through the shattered shield with a blade that danced like cascading moonlight, she forced Yino to shift his stance. They clashed from high above the Dao Testing Pavilion down to the stone arena floor.

Yet as their Void Refinement sword intent locked, Nangong Xi slowly slipped into a disadvantage.

"Star-Binding Chains!" Realizing she couldn’t match his pure swordsmanship, she swept her sleeve to condense the ambient moonlight into dozens of silver chains that snaked toward him like living serpents. Star orbit patterns glowed along the links, carrying the Power of Laws as they coiled around Yino and snapped shut.

Yino raised his sword to block, but the chains ignored his blade entirely, binding him tightly and anchoring him to her grip. "This is an ancient treasure of the Frost Palace," Nangong Xi sneered. "You can’t escape!" Gripping the star-patterned chains tightly, she formed hand seals with her free hand to chant a spell.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Several chains drove deep into the ground, establishing a Slaughter Array across the Dao Testing Pavilion. As she pointed two fingers downward, the chains rooted themselves deeper, forcing the suppressed Yino to his knees with a heavy thud.

"Yield to the Frost Palace now," she demanded, looking down at the kneeling, white-robed young man. "I’ll let you lose with some dignity." But at that moment, Yino smirked mockingly from the center of the Slaughter Array. "I might not be able to break these chains," he sneered, "but you aren’t escaping either!" Behind his back, he gathered sword intent in his bound fingers.

Reacting instantly, Nangong Xi began chanting as the moon chains flared with blinding light, disrupting his gathering energy with an invisible pressure. Yet her suppression came too late. Long before she deployed the array, Yino had secretly buried eight spiritual swords at the corners of the Dao Testing Pavilion, and though suppressed by the moon chains, he needed only a spark of sword intent to trigger the formation.

"Too late!" His internal spiritual energy surged wildly as he laughed. Scanning her surroundings, Nangong Xi frowned as she realized the eight buried swords were glowing fiercely, the pre-set formation unleashing an abyssal demonic flame that rivaled the power of the Void Refinement stage.

"When did he set up a sword array..." she muttered. Standing in the very center of this array, she turned pale as a terrifying, murderous intent pressed against her like thousands of sharp blades, leaving her breathless and trembling. A dilemma gripped her. If she maintained her suppression, she would be defenseless against the onslaught of the array, but if she let go of the chains, Yino would break free.

"Make your choice," Yino grinned, kneeling beneath the chains, "or we both go down together. But since this is my array, though the choice is yours, a formation that matches my own attribute might not kill me." The moment he spoke, Wangziu driven into the ground activated. Sword energy erupted from the eight buried blades, shooting into the sky to merge into a massive sword array that enveloped them both. Thick abyssal energy swirled within the formation as intersecting lines of sword energy whistled sharply, threatening to shred everything to pieces.

"Yino, do you really think this is all I’m capable of..." she whispered with cold resolve as the deadly array finalized. As the Reincarnation of the Silver Moon Goddess, even as an avatar body, she possessed the latent bloodline potential to break her limits in battle. While she had been unwilling to waste her divine potential on a mere tournament, Yino had proven far more troublesome than she ever anticipated.

She couldn’t lose this fight. As the Reincarnation of the Silver Moon Goddess traveling the Lower Realm, she had never known defeat in her twenty years of life. At this rate, she would achieve Ascension within a decade, perhaps even catching up to the main body to prove that an avatar body was not inherently weaker. There was no way she would allow her pristine, undefeated Dao Heart to be stained in a minor match against him.

With that thought, she finally broke the seal on her forehead once more.

[The Moon Goddess descends] As her divine voice echoed, cold, majestic Divinity filled her gaze. Crossing her hands over her chest, she slowly rotated them, conjuring a massive moon wheel where runes representing the Time Laws flickered with light.