Later, back at the fox den, everyone was enjoying good food and drinking zhe yan's peach wine. Mo yuan's disciples had left for kunlun mountain earlier but everyone else had decided to stay. They were just too curious to leave. There was a silent anticipation at the table as everyone waited for someone to broach the topic.
After everyone was done with their dinner, feng jiu couldn't take the anticipatory silence anymore, she could read the questions on each one's face and felt her curiosity rise, too. So, she called donghua out on it.
"donghua, look at their faces, everyone is waiting for you to explain the events that happened today. Have a little mercy please." She smiled sweetly up at him as she said that, imploring him with her eyes.
Donghua looked down at her with softness in his eyes and said to her, "I was waiting to see how long you could hold out, my little fox."
Turning towards the table and began, "all of you might not know that during the prehistoric times before I had unified the realms, I removed my name from the rock of three lives to ensure peace for the realms. The rock of three lives governs the fate of immortal couples, it is the keeper of love fate. By removing my name from the rock I had made a life free of love and marriage for myself. This meant I could never love someone and if I did the consequences of it would be disastrous or so I thought."
"then, millenias later, I met this little fox and fell in love at first sight," Donghua said, looking down at feng jiu beside him and pulled on a strand of her hair, teasingly.
"I knew the repercussions of that and wanted to protect her from them. But xaio bai has always been stubborn and wilful. Once she decided, she loved me, she made sure to use every little weapon in her arsenal to be around me." As he said that he felt, xaio bai hiding her face behind his arms. Chucking at her sudden shy nature, he continued, "So, I had no choice but to push her away. That was the only way I knew to protect her from me and herself." He looked piercingly at bai yi while he said this.
"I also had to consider the protection of the realms because every time I was with her, I would lose my powers faster than I could cultivate. After the qing cang debacle, I had no choice but to go into seclusion and recover my cultivation. But with the absence of ye hua, it got delayed again and again. The day he came back, I could no longer postpone it. For the next 600 years, deep into seclusion I still couldn't recover more than 50 percent of my cultivation. So, I came back. After that, you all know what happened the next time we met."
Donghua then proceeded to explain what the heavens had told him about their fate together when he had left to find answers to save xaio bai. While he was explaining this, lian sing interrupted, "what did the heavens mean by, 'she must let go of her bonds, embrace what she is and be one with what she was meant for'?"
At this, donghua looked towards his brothers, seeing the understanding flash on their face, he nodded for them to proceed. It was bai zhi who spoke first. " 'letting go of the bonds' means giving up the ties to her family, to her blood. Xaio jiu was not meant to be born this late with all our bloods in her veins. It diluted the power of her primordial spirit and to access those innate powers of her she needed to be free of all the blood ties."
Zhe yan continued explaining further, " 'embrace what she is' means to find her true self as the source of all living. She needed to connect with her primordial spirit, her true essence."
Mo yuan ended it by saying, " 'be one with what she was meant for' is her bond with dong hua. They were quite literally made for each other. Only by reforming the bond that was once broken could the chains be removed. Their whole beings are tied together, so it was eminent to re-forge the bond between their spirits, too."
Feng jiu observed each of their faces and said, "why do I have this feeling that you all did something gravely dangerous to achieve this?"
She noticed the guilty look in donghua's eyes and in a sharp voice she asked, "what did you do dong hua?"
Dong hua could see the burning fury on her face, so in an attempt to calm down her anger, he started caressing her waist trying to soothe her. Then in a gentle voice, he answered, "nothing much."
"To fulfill the first part, nine drops of blood from your oldest living ancestor was needed. Your grandfather helped with that."
Feng jiu interrupted, "why nine exactly?"
Dong hua sighed "What's your name, xaio bai?"
"Oh", she replied understanding that her name literally meant phoenix nine. She remembered that this unimaginative name of hers was because of her father's lazy nature who had named her after the phoenix birthmark on her head and the ninth month that she was born in. Zhe yan had also told her that her name also signified the position of her immortal star in the sky, the ninth star in the Phoenix constellation, that had appeared with her birth.
Dong hua continued unperturbed, "yes, oh. From bai zhi's blood and mine, I wrote our names on the rock again. For the second part, the part that bounded you to this life was needed and that was the soil from where you were born. Then came the part about connecting you to your primordial spirit, for that, a part of the essence of the oldest primordial spirit of an animal was needed. Zhe yan provided that when he bound the soil to the rock with the true essence of his spirit. And the last requirement was the sacrifice of my own primordial spirit in order to seal everything to the stone, to make our names reappear on it."
Feng jiu lost it at this point, she yelled, "sacrifice of your primordial spirit? How could you sacrifice your primordial spirit? If the heavens had decided against us again, you would have died dong hua. The delay of a single second could have sent you to nothingness. How could you give up your life, like that?"
Dong hua looked her straight in the eyes and said just one line, "there is no dong hua without feng jiu."
The expressions on feng jiu's face softened on hearing that. She could feel the sincerity and love behind that one statement. And, if truth be told, she thought, if would have been in his place, I would have done the same; without him there is no meaning to my existence.
Raising her hand to dong hua's face, she caressed his face, whispering, "I understand".
Dong hua nodded his head. He then turned back to his audience and continued, "After the seal was complete, our names were again etched onto the stone, together. The power and essence that had been entombed were released. But the transfer of such energy into xaio bai's body was a tricky thing. That's why I told mo yuan to make a container to safely channel her spirit and to make sure the container doesn't break or the power doesn't leak out."
When dong hua finished, lian song who had been patiently listening to this story with its astounding turn of events was riddled by the events of that moment when he had arrived in that valley. Unable to contain his thoughts, he spoke them out loud, "that was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I was with ye hua when he received that missive with dijun's orders to assist mo yuan. Hearing something about dijun's orders, I snatched it from him and read something about maintaining a container. From an objective point of view, that hadn't sounded very tough to enlist the help of the crown prince when the god of war was already up to the task. But knowing dijun, nothing is ever simple. So, even though the missive was not meant for us, I gathered si ming, Zhong lin and cheng yu to enlist our help. Imagine our surprise, when we saw a red beam of raw power pulsating towards a box-like structure at one end of the valley and the god of war struggling to contain that power inside the box even with the help of high god bai yi, high god bai zhen, and high god bai qian. Honestly, it was a toss-up between what was more shocking, the red beam of power, or the sweating high gods. But like the loyal servants we are to his majesty, we didn't ask questions we joined in along with the fifteen disciples from Kunlun."
Bai zhi scoffed on hearing that and said, "hah, you call that surprising? Imagine what it must have been like for us. When zhe yan and I turned up with dijun, the twenty-four of the most powerful immortals in all the realms were struggling to maintain one container. Now, that was truly mind-boggling. Each one of you was sweating through your robes and some were even bleeding from the corners of their eyes. It was only after dijun told us about the extent of xaio jiu's powers that we felt sympathy for you. Because, from what he told us, only he could control the flow of her powers. So, of course, you were going to struggle with it."
Then bai zhi turned his attention towards his precious granddaughter and continued, "once he had taken hold of your container, he had told us to make a protective shield around us and a twenty-four layered one at that. Each one of us had to cast a layer with mo yuan's being the first and zhe yan's being the last. Honestly, it sounded so absurd at the time but we are blessed that we followed his command unfalteringly. Because, xaio jiu the moment you woke up, the container exploded and the pure raw energy that burst from it, I still shiver thinking about it. Even with twenty-four layers of the most powerful shields, we still felt like we had been stuck by a dozen lightning bolts."
Donghua interrupted bai zhi here, "actually, what you felt was roughly one percent of xaio bai's power. I had absorbed almost all of it, only 2 percent of it had escaped, and because of your shields, you experienced the effect of only a quarter of the released power." He stared pointedly at mo yuan, lian song and ye hua, when he said this. And they received his message loud and clear. What donghua was trying to convey to them at this point was that the one percent of the power that feng jiu had given them access to should be taken very seriously. As that one percent of power, if managed poorly, had the capability to destroy the realms as they know it.
The effect of what he said had not been restricted to the three dragons only, the whole room went silent at this point. They were stunned by the depth of this new piece of information. The fact that it had been only a percent of her power left them reeling. In their minds, the story just took on a whole new meaning.
Taking advantage of this silence, donghua said in a hard voice, "the reason I told you all this is to make you understand the significance of the gifts that xaio bai has bestowed upon you, today. She did it solely to honor the conviction and loyalty you have shown towards me and I trust that you all will use those gifts wisely."
Donghua continued in a bone-chilling voice, "also, the story that had just been shared at this table is not to leave this table ever. No soul other than those present right now should know about the conditions or the connection or the procedure of what happened today. You are free to speak about xaio bai's true nature, her power, and our love; rather I insist that you spread the word about the latter. But if anyone utters a word about anything related to the rock of three lives, you will find yourselves skewered on canghe before you can even begin to process what happened and even xaio bai would not be able to save you from that. Let me make one thing very clear, when it comes to xaio bai's safety, I have no mercy."