Chapter 627: Ch 627 - If You Betray the Moon Cult, Even I Will Cut You Down

Ever since the annual martial tournament ended, word of Nangong Xi’s defeat spread through the Nine Provinces and Four Domains.

For days now, Nangong Xi had shut herself away to recover from her injuries.

Of course, with the natural gifts she carried as the reincarnation of the moon goddess, the few times she had overclocked her primordial spirit during the fight hardly warranted so many days of rest.

Her so-called seclusion was really just Nangong Xi sinking into low spirits, unwilling to face anyone. ℯℯ𝑙.

As the avatar body of the silver moon fairy, she had been told from the moment of her birth that her purpose was to temper herself in the Mortal Realm.

Her main body told her that so long as she trained diligently among mortals and came to understand the sufferings of worldly desires and passions, then one day, once her Fortune was complete, she could return to the Immortal Realm, that true home of hers. There she would rejoin the main body as the revered silver moon fairy, reunited with her real family in the Immortal Realm.

She longed to go home, so at every moment she held herself to the strictest discipline.

She was the silver moon fairy. She was the reincarnation of the moon goddess. So she ought to be pure as snow, untouched by worldly dust, standing atop the Dao with peerless immortal grace, undefeated in every battle, the strongest heaven’s pride of her generation among the Five Great Immortal Sects...

She was meant to be flawless, just like her main body.

She did not believe there was any hierarchy between herself and the main body. They were one soul, two bodies, bearing the same heavenly mandate of the moon goddess. It was only because they had been assigned different duties that the main body’s cultivation stood a hundred times higher than her own.

This was how her life was supposed to be.

But three days ago, the conviction she had always held to was shattered with ease by that nameless half-blood boy.

She could sense it. He was of mixed blood, part human and part true phoenix.

By all reason, his lineage was impure. Even with half a phoenix’s plumage, there was no way he could be a match for her, the reincarnation of the silver moon goddess...

Yet reality fell short of that.

She had lost.

She had fought with everything she had, all but burning her soul, while Yino never once fought in earnest. He had looked at her the way one looks at a child throwing a tantrum.

He said an avatar body was, in the end, only an avatar body, and with that he crushed the pride she had guarded for so long.

But later, while she lay unconscious, he had said that his earlier words did not mean her talent was inferior to the main body’s. He meant her destiny.

The fate of nothing more than an avatar body?

She could not make sense of what he meant.

Because the main body had once said they were not divided into high and low, noble and base, main and secondary. Once her Fortune was complete, her soul would naturally return to the Immortal Realm and she would become a true Immortal of her own, wielding the silver moon goddess’s authority alongside the main body.

Turn it over as she might, she still felt her dao heart shaken.

Since her winning streak had already been broken, she was in no rush to cultivate for the moment. She simply decided to seek out the main body herself and press her, again and again, for an answer...

"You lost to a boy who is half human, half demon."

In the Biluo Qing Palace, upon the jade dais.

The silver moon fairy listened in silence, not a ripple of feeling passing across her brow.

Nangong Xi nodded without a word and bit down on her teeth, the self-reproach plain on her immortal features.

Yet the whole Qing Palace stayed quiet for a long while, and the silver-haired fairy only opened her divine moon pupils in puzzlement.

"So? What of it?"

"You lost, and that’s that. Besides, this sense of defeat is itself one of the things you were meant to learn from tempering yourself in the Mortal Realm."

"You came to me. Don’t tell me you need a few comforting words from me?"

Her voice stayed cold and distant to the last, and the corner of her mouth curved with a mocking edge.

Below the dais, Nangong Xi’s eyes stirred, and her beautiful face that was already full of reproach showed even more of its unwilling humiliation.

This was why she had refused to see the main body for years.

The talk of one soul, two bodies, of main and avatar being equals, was in the end nothing more than words she had chosen to believe on her own.

How could she fail to feel the way the main body regarded her?

Every time, she looked down on her from that lofty, godlike vantage...

As if she were not the same person as her at all, but a servant she kept penned in the Mortal Realm. No matter how hard she tried, from childhood to now, she never once earned her true recognition or praise.

"You are only the avatar body, after all. Between your immortal grace and Fortune and mine lies a world of difference."

"As the avatar, you have no duty to remain flawless. Your mission is to temper yourself in the Mortal Realm, to be worn down by the years, to understand the myriad sufferings of the human world..."

"Losing to a mortal now is nothing out of the ordinary. So why must you chase perfection the way I do?"

Upon the jade dais, the silver moon fairy went on in that same faint, indifferent tone, as though the avatar’s defeat had nothing to do with her main body.

The reasoning was sound, yet to Nangong Xi’s ears it grated all the same.

The words Yino had spoken surfaced in her mind again...

For a moment, she seemed to understand that theory of heavenly mandate he had spoken of. After all, she had been born to be the avatar body who did the dirty, grueling work in the Mortal Realm on the main body’s behalf.

This pursuit of perfection had never been something the main body asked of her. It was only her own wishful attempt to imitate her all along.

"Why must I bear the weight of all this Karma, while you sit high above the Nine Heavens without a care, enjoying the transcendence of the immortal Dao."

At some point, resentment crept into her voice, impossible to hide.

But the instant those words left her, the silver moon fairy’s eyes turned cold upon the dais.

A supreme immortal pressure came crashing down. Nangong Xi could not hold out three seconds before she was forced down, both knees to the floor.

At the same moment, the silver moon fairy rose from the jade dais. With light, lotus steps she came to stand before her.

"Nangong Xi, you have harbored a thought you should never have."

"You and I are one soul. You suffer in the Lower Realm, yes, but do you think I am at ease in the upper realm? Am I not also sealed away in seclusion day after day, abstaining and contemplating the ways of the Dao?"

Her voice was cold, and anger simmered beneath it.

Kneeling beneath her skirts, Nangong Xi lifted her head with effort, only to meet those cold moon pupils brimming with divinity.

"Very well..."

"You are me, and I am you. As the avatar, it is only natural for you to feel envy and pride. This too is part of the human suffering you were meant to learn in the Lower Realm."

As the words fell, the immortal pressure above her head gradually thinned away.

The silver moon fairy’s eyes were no longer cruel and cold, but softened somewhat. She bent down and reached out a jade hand to her.

Nangong Xi did not fully understand, but she took the hand in silence and rose to her feet.

The two fairies with identical faces met each other’s eyes, yet the cold spirit in those matching gazes was worlds apart. Even meeting the main body’s stare, she could not help the instinct to shrink back.

"Come to think of it..."

"From the memories of your Divine Sense I just shared through my Heaven’s Eye, that boy called Yino seems to be deeply tangled by Karma with that Yuyan of the Wuji Sect."

Having drawn her up, the silver-haired fairy stood with her hands behind her back, her moon pupils gazing ahead with a strange light.

Nangong Xi kept her head lowered, still steeped in her displeasure at being scolded, biting her red lips.

"So you just peer into my Divine Sense however you please, without my leave?"

"What of it? You and I are one. What you see, I see."

The silver-haired fairy only glanced back at her once, then let it go and returned to the subject. "Never mind that. You should take note of this woman called Yuyan. That innate Frost Holy Physique of hers is one of the holy relic fragments scattered across the mortal world when that moon goddess fell all those years ago..."

"If you and I are one, then why can I never share your Divine Sense?"

Nangong Xi ignored the matter of Yuyan, still suppressing the resentment inside her as she stared straight at the main body.

The silver-haired fairy paused a moment, then knit her willow brows with a trace of impatience.

"You are the avatar. If you shared my immortal Dao and saw straight through this mortal world, then what would be left for you to temper yourself with among mortals?"

In a few words the logic closed itself into a loop, and Nangong Xi was left with nothing to say.

She asked no more, only bowed her head with her red lips pressed tight, her eyes tracing the crescent-moon patterns as she stared at the floor in loss.