Boom, boom—

The Glazed Azure Phoenix Anchor-Stone dropped out of the sky and slammed into the earth with a roar.

The gates of the immortal city of Shanghuang spread slowly open, meaning to throw out the wreckage of a failed kalpa-crossing.

For an ordinary cultivator, to fail a kalpa was to end with the body dead and the Dao gone.

Shen Yi had crossed the kalpa by way of an Anchor-Stone, which spared him the risk of falling himself but had cost him better than six hundred thousand years of demon lifespan. The bargain was certainly no loss. Still, if conditions had allowed it, he would rather not have paid out even that much demon lifespan.

The Crimson-Eyed Mysterious Phoenix was a phoenix by name too, but she was plainly not truly of a kind with the Glazed Azure Phoenix. There was some thread of relation, no more — barely enough to be worth the attempt.

Shen Yi watched the Anchor-Stone quietly.

Once the demon soul had melted into the stone, the phoenix eyes took on color all at once, then trembled faintly, straining to open.

The lids seemed to weigh a mountain; nothing she did would lift them.

Shen Yi knew how to help her, and stood where he was with his face unchanged.

Some pits only needed stepping in once.

There was no telling how long had passed. Then a keen light flickered in those phoenix eyes, the pupils clear as glaze, and inside them something like an unseen flame seemed to dance.

Only when these marvels faded did a deep weariness pass through the phoenix demon's eyes.

But the Crimson-Eyed Mysterious Phoenix hid that weariness quickly. She had won this chance at great cost, and she would not have anyone think little of her.

"Hah."

Shen Yi waved a hand at last, and Demon Origins gathered out of the air one after another.

The Mysterious Phoenix… no, she should be called the azure phoenix now. The woman had shown will enough: with a demon soul at the twelfth layer of Return-to-Void, and not even of the same…