Chapter 43
Chapter 43: White Jade Capital in the Heavens
That green shadow had killed the White Dragon.
The earlier rainbow-cloud omen had already proved a hatchling had been born.
So would an existence even stronger than a heavenly demon simply let the hatchling vanish—leave roots behind and invite future trouble?
Shao Heng didn’t even finish the thought before it happened.
In an instant, all three moonlight phantom bodies she formed shattered like glass. A force slammed into her and sent her flying. She tore through six tall trees before she finally crashed into the ground.
“Pfft—”
Blood sprayed from her mouth. Dark bits came with it.
Everything inside her screamed. Bones snapped. Tendons tore. She couldn’t even push herself up.
She had never been hurt this badly.
She didn’t activate Grace the Four Directions to heal right away. First, teeth clenched, she reached into the wide sleeve and forced the death qi inside the hatchling to dissipate on its own.
Only then did she swallow a Rejuvenation Pill, forcing it down around the taste of blood.
She kept her voice steady, respectful, and loud enough to carry.
“Greetings, Senior. This junior caught the hatchling for you in advance. Please decide how to handle it.”
With trembling control, she lifted her sleeve to reveal Little Dragon.
The hatchling had tried to flee earlier. Now it scrambled deeper into her sleeve, terrified, but Shao Heng’s grip on its head turned into a death lock. It could only thrash its tail in panic.
A green shadow descended from the sky.
It was a woman.
She wore a black-and-white long dress like ink-washed mountains. A green-and-silver sword rested in her hand. Her brows and eyes looked as if they had been painted, yet the life in them was sharp and real. A white lotus ornament sat at her brow, serene as snow—making the rest of her beauty feel almost ruthless.
She didn’t answer.
She only lifted her hand.
Little Dragon was yanked out of Shao Heng’s sleeve and into the woman’s palm as if the space between them didn’t exist.
The pull sent fresh agony through Shao Heng’s half-healed bones and tendons. Rage surged—hot, helpless, humiliating.
She swallowed it.
A Seventh Realm cultivator could kill her whenever she wished. With that kind of overwhelming strength, cleverness was a joke. Running would be stupidity.
So Shao Heng lay where she had been thrown, head lowered, obedient as an insect. Waiting to be dealt with.
The woman hovered in the air.
She tied the hatchling into knot after knot, flipping it around like a toy rope. Little Dragon thrashed, squealed, tried to bite—every struggle pathetic in her hand.
At last, the woman threw her head back and laughed.
“So this is what True Dragons look like when they’re little.” She tilted the knotted hatchling. “Like a piece of rope.”
She flicked the hatchling’s forehead. “Go ahead and hate me. I don’t care.”
“Who told your father to offend a bird out there?”
Shao Heng’s breath hitched.
The woman continued, voice easy, almost conversational.
“Kong Fei Huang of the Peacock Clan traded with me to kill your father.”
“I wanted that thing, so he could only die.”
Shao Heng’s heartbeat thundered.
A Fifth Realm Golden Core Stage cultivator was called a perfected. A Sixth Realm Nascent Soul Stage cultivator was a True Lord.
Only someone in the Seventh Realm—someone who had touched the Great Dao’s true meaning and grasped laws—could be called a Venerable.
Venerable.
Shao Heng curled her fingers into the dirt until her knuckles whitened.
Even so… she didn’t regret taking Little Dragon earlier. Not for a second.
Crisis was two words: danger and opportunity.
If she could tame the hatchling, it meant endless rare treasures. She had made that choice knowing the danger. Regret was useless—because if time rewound, she would do it again.
When the woman finally grew bored of playing, her gaze drifted down to Shao Heng.
The lotus at her brow flashed.
A pressure settled over Shao Heng like a mountain sliding into place. The sensation was intimate and cold, searching every inch of her flesh.
Divine sense.
Divine sense from a Seventh Realm cultivator!
Shao Heng’s face went pale. She widened her eyes, letting fear bloom there.
Inside, she was almost trembling with something else.
Gray Cocoon moved.
The gray, hazy light covering her dantian shrank at once, wrapping Gray Cocoon together with the Azure Emperor sigils. The Venerable’s divine sense swept over her—thorough, merciless—
And found nothing.
A thrill sparked, electric and sharp.
What was Gray Cocoon? What kind of thing could hide her even from a Seventh Realm scan?
Then the woman’s brows knitted.
Shao Heng’s stomach dropped.
Did she sense it after all?
The next moment, the woman struck.
Without warning, she tore one of Shao Heng’s storage rings away and pulled something out.
A gold page.
Shao Heng recognized it immediately. She had obtained it by accident on an upper floor of the Wondrous Dharma Pavilion. It had been blank—no writing, no obvious spiritual fluctuation. She had tried every method she knew and found nothing, and eventually she had let it rot in her storage ring.
Yet the woman’s expression shifted the instant it touched her hand.
She knew what it was.
“A mere Qi Induction Realm,” the woman murmured, voice low, “and you still managed to obtain…”
Her gaze snapped down. “Where did you get this?”
Shao Heng didn’t dare lie. “Replying to Venerable, this junior is a disciple of the One Yuan Sect. Inside the sect, this gold page drifted in front of me on its own.”
“It had no words. I thought it was a gift from heaven, so I kept it.”
The woman stared at her a long moment, then asked, “Your name?”
“Replying to Venerable, this junior is called Shao Heng—the Shao as in youth, the Heng as in Du Heng.”
The woman reached out and tapped the gold page with one finger.
Ripples spread across it like water.
In the center, two ancient immortal characters surfaced, crisp and bright.
Shao Heng didn’t recognize the script.
Yet she knew—without question—that it was her own name.
The woman breathed out, something like satisfaction. “So it really is yours.”
“A chance?” Shao Heng asked, voice hoarse.
“You can call it a chance.” The woman’s smile turned strange. “But for you, going to that place is better described as a killing trap. You’d die ten times out of ten.”
Shao Heng forced herself to breathe. “May I ask Venerable—what place?”
The woman released the page.
It drifted back down, floating in front of Shao Heng as lightly as a fallen leaf. The immortal characters remained.
“You want to know what this is?” the woman asked.
“Then I’ll tell you. Since it appeared in front of you on its own, you didn’t obtain it.”
“It chose you.”
“Once you have this Flying Immortal Token, you gain the qualification to enter White Jade Capital.”
White Jade Capital.
A line flickered through Shao Heng’s mind, something she had heard once, half-forgotten: White Jade Capital in the heavens, twelve towers and five cities. An immortal strokes my head, ties my hair, and grants me long life.
Her thoughts raced, but the name was too strange, too heavy with meaning she didn’t yet understand.
Then—plop.
The woman tossed Little Dragon down in front of Shao Heng.
The hatchling’s long body was still tied into a plum-blossom knot. It lay there silently crying, tears soaking its own scales.
Shao Heng fought the impulse to reach for a bottle. She kept her hands still, her face obedient, waiting.
The woman watched her, eyes amused.
“I’m truly both jealous and curious about you,” she said. “You haven’t even stepped into the Third Realm, yet the Flying Immortal Token chose you.”
“I really want to see what faces those old monsters will make—those who beg for the Flying Immortal Token and still can’t get it—when you step into White Jade Capital.”
She lifted her chin slightly.
“Remember this. My name is Yin Liu.”
“This Little Dragon is a meeting gift. Take it and play with it.”
Her laughter rang, light and sharp.
“When the day comes that you step into White Jade Capital…”
She didn’t finish.
By the time Shao Heng jerked her head up, Yin Liu was already gone—air empty, pressure vanished as if she had never existed.
Shao Heng activated Grace the Four Directions at once. Warmth spread through her shattered body, knitting bone and tendon together. With the Rejuvenation Pill still working, she managed to sit up, breath ragged but steady.
She grabbed the knotted hatchling and saw it clearly now: on its neck and claws sat six small bangles.
They weren’t metal at all.
They were silver willow branches, wrapped into rings.
Shao Heng pried the hatchling’s mouth open, poured in a thread of death qi, and sneered.
“Back in my hands again, huh.”
She untied the knot and coiled the hatchling around her forearm.
Little Dragon looked hollowed out, methods sealed, eyes dull and gray, letting her position it however she pleased.
Shao Heng didn’t care.
If she couldn’t get its loyalty, getting its body was enough.
Yin Liu had clearly cleaned the area when she arrived. No living thing dared spy.
Even so, Shao Heng used Face-Changing Art again, swapped to another face, and hurried back toward the One Yuan Sect.