Chapter 86 The Truth

But Shang Youqing stared at this scene in a daze, but was not moved at all.

She even felt an unprecedented fear.

A chill.

Because... the person in front of her whose heart meridian was pierced by her Golden Feather Fire Blade had a face exactly like He Cong.

When He Cong blocked the thunder tribulation, he also instantly absorbed all the energy of the thunder tribulation...

Shang Youqing finally realized what was going on. She subconsciously stepped back, but it was too late.

An ice wall was instantly built up behind her by the wind and snow.

The person in front of him absorbed the energy of the thunder tribulation, like a completely melted stone statue.

His hand moved first. He lowered his eyelids slightly, staring at the fire blade that pierced his heart meridian, and pulled it out calmly.

In an instant, Shang Youqing was bitten back by the eternal cold air covering the Golden Feather Fire Blade. She fell to the ground unexpectedly and cried out a mouthful of blood.

"He Cong... is this the clone you used to plot against me?"

Snow and wind whipped through his drooping silver hair, his real skin feeling more like transparent, cold jade. His eyes, devoid of pity, cast a chilling glance at the struggling phoenix on the ground. He said, "Yes."

Shang Youqing, his wings trembling violently as he felt the chill, asked again, his voice piercing with coldness, "Did you plant all the killing barriers on you, including the one on Momo? Did you plant them yourself? Was it to lure me to devour them and come here to survive the thunder tribulation?"

The broken bronze bells of the mountain temple chimed intermittently. He stood still, his breath icy, his voice like a pool of still glacial snow. He remained calm, his words still, "Yes."

Then, leaning down, his long, cold, snow-white fingers parted the phoenix's belly feathers, attempting to retrieve the chick from beneath Shang Youqing's feathers.

Shang Youqing flexed her tail feathers to wrap around her abdomen, screaming, "Get out! Get out!"

However, the cold hand casually snapped the delicate feathers she'd so desperately protected, as if snapping a twig.

Amidst the phoenix's agonized screams, the phoenix ripped free its chick, hidden within its soft belly down, and vanished into the raging snowstorm, clutching its young.

Shang Youqing frantically flapped her wings in the ruins of the ancient temple, but her tail feathers were broken, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't fly.

Her wings slammed against the rubble, drawing blood. Still unable to fly, she could only watch helplessly as the icy figure snatched her young chick and vanished from the snowy peaks.

Her heart seemed to be shattered by the cold. Blood streamed from the corners of her mouth, blooming in the falling snow beneath her like startling crimson petals.

Blood seeped down through the cracks in the broken rock, seeping drop by drop into the depths of the winding mountain range.

The priest's spiritual breath touched the weeping phoenix's heartblood, awakening the long-dormant spirit.

The mountains shook, and the bottomless glaciers cracked, sending the blood-soaked phoenix atop the snowy peaks tumbling into the abyssal crevasse.

Shang Youqing stretched her golden wings with all her might, but she couldn't maintain her balance. Her long, slender tail feathers, broken by the tailbone, drooped at the base of her wings. Her entire phoenix form teetered, tumbling into the abyss.

But she ultimately held on.

Shang Youqing was embraced by an incredibly broad and warm arm.

She was in so much pain.

The base of her tail feathers had been broken into several pieces, and the slightest movement sent convulsions of pain throughout her body.

Her breath trembled, and she shivered as she sniffed the familiar, warm spiritual breath of her childhood. Her wings instinctively burrowed into the embrace, and tears of blood continued to fall, leaving her once beautiful and neat feathers in a dismal mess.

As her consciousness faded, Shang Youqing thought she heard a warm, familiar voice that seemed to soothe the entire universe. "Xiaoqing..."

For a long time, Shang Youqing spent most of her time in a coma. She lacked the strength to transform, remaining comatose in her phoenix form.

Each time she finally awoke, she felt as if the lingering chill had penetrated her very bones and feathers. Even she, a fiery phoenix, began to feel the chill.

Each time, Shang Youqing shivered with cold, curling up her dull wings and burying herself in the priest's arms, only to quickly fall into a coma again from the pain of her broken, drooping tail feathers.

In this recurring agony, Shang Youqing slept in that abyss for who knows how long.

By the time she regained consciousness, months had passed.

She was no longer beneath the glacial abyss.

She opened her moist eyes and found herself nestled in a cave nestled in the heart of an ancient tree.

For a moment, she forgot that her tail feathers were injured, and she spread her wings and tried to fly down from the huge ancient tree. As a result, she lost her balance in mid-air and almost fell. In the end, she was held firmly by a pair of warm hands.

Shang Youqing barely stood firm in his palms, looked up, and saw a face as gentle and beautiful as the breeze and the bright moon in her memory.

Shang Youqing opened her mouth to call the priest, but her vocal cords seemed to be torn and crushed by something. She swallowed a little and the pain caused a little blood to seep out.

"You can't speak yet."

The priest touched her furry head and reminded her softly.

Shang Youqing was taken back to the courtyard to treat the wounds that had just been opened when she fell from the ancient tree.

The priest placed her in front of the table, which was filled with bottles and jars of medicine.

Shang Youqing looked around the house and recognized that this was the home she lived in with the priest when she was a child, before she was sent to Wutong Mountain.

As the priest removed the gauze from her tail feather, Shang Youqing lowered her eyes slightly to look over, clearly seeing that the once radiant feathers behind her had lost their luster.

And because the feather bones had been broken, the down had gathered into tiny clumps, clinging to the feather roots in a tangled mess, a truly unsightly sight.

Even ordinary bird feathers, let alone phoenix feathers, were far more beautiful.

Shang Youqing stared at the broken feather bones, motionless, not even blinking.

It was as if she was trying to replay through the broken bones how those hands had so easily broken her feather into this half-dead state.

The priest meticulously tended to the broken feather, channeling his spiritual energy to heal it, doing his best to minimize the pain.

Shang Youqing stared blankly and coldly,

as if unwilling to even look at her own feathers.

She stared gloomily out the window.

The wind poured in through the cracks in the windows and doors, and Shang Youqing's wings curled up reflexively, and he wrapped his wings around his abdomen, feeling so cold.

Then he remembered something and, enduring the pain of the cold air, he opened his wings and lowered his head. The down on his abdomen was soft and flat, but empty, and the chick was no longer there.