When a pair of talking snakes slithered past me, it became very easy to guess where I had ended up. There were plenty of other clues too, like the insanely talkative trees.
But I didn't care about any of that. Time was critically short.
I had goals: I had to return home, I had to save my daughter, I had to punish the bitch who considered herself above everyone else.
Self-flagellation? Suffering? Depression? Those things won't save my daughter, won't return a husband to my wives, won't punish the bastards. They're counterproductive. We'll leave them for later.
For now—the hardest part.
Though calling what I was about to do hard? That's one huge joke.
There wasn't a single drop of profound energy in me, meaning that even if the goddess's seal were removed, I would still remain a simple mortal. A simple mortal with a body at the level of a Sovereign Profound Realm practitioner, with dragon physiology. Yes, the bone marrow had been taken away, but the rest of my body had already been transformed, and turning all that back wasn't so easy.
Did the arrogant bitch miscalculate, or did she deliberately leave me this trump card so I wouldn't die too quickly? I was a filter now, after all. My suffering added a nice little bonus to her darling's luck.
But she'd miscalculated somewhere else too. The little world. I had a little world, and it held plenty of energy. Not infinite, of course. But there was still plenty of it. Enough to start my sealed cultivation so the profound veins wouldn't dry up and wither away completely, and enough to activate the Great Way of the Buddha at the right moment and gnaw through the goddess's seal.
I couldn't do that yet. That seal didn't merely block my cultivation; it also created the karmic link with Trash Che. If the link broke, the goddess would find me, and then I might not survive.
So first I needed to find a way to disappear from the radar. A reliable way, one I still couldn't come up with. But I had a little time left for that.
So, the hardest part. I needed to restore the dragon inheritance.
Another hidden trump card still up my sleeve. How? By restoring my bone marrow.
The filth hadn't just torn out my bone marrow. With her pure power, she'd shoved in something barely functional in its place. It worked just enough to keep me from dying, but it also kept me from regenerating what had already been integrated into my body's template.
The Great Way of the Buddha had made it not foreign or alien, but a natural part of my body. Now I simply needed to grow it back.
Do that with my own hands? I'm not that badass. You'd have to be Tarantino-dialogue-level badass for that.
Instead, I quickly found myself beside one of the talkative snakes and smashed the demon's neck with a single blow while it stared at me with gastronomic interest. Its jaw became my surgical instrument: I used it to tear open the skin, reach a section of my spine, and rip it out.
Can you call it luck that I was already in so much pain that the new pain didn't affect me all that much?
The other demons—at least the ones that could—scattered from that scene of incredible brutality. Only the talking trees with faces remained, staring at me in wild horror.
I dropped to the ground like I'd been cut down. Without a spine, you can't sit dramatically in the lotus position. I took literally a drop of profound energy from the little world and activated the Great Way of the Buddha, which began slowly restoring the bone marrow. Very slowly.
It was a cheat, but that didn't mean it completely violated every kind of logic. Recreating the bone marrow of the Primordial Azure Dragon God required an incredible amount of energy.
When, on the third day, I realized this could take many years, I even risked pinching off a tiny speck of the goddess's energy that was sealing my profound veins.
As always, that heavy primordial energy wasn't easy to assimilate, but the pain was already unbelievable anyway.
That bitch had deliberately designed her seal to torment me. The stupid, immoral filth couldn't understand that my inner suffering already brought me enough torment to supply luck to thousands of Trash Ches.
Think I was just lying there this whole time and nobody bothered me? Not a chance. A couple of demonic beasts worked up the courage to attack the strange biped who was just as brutal to himself as he was to others.
I drove them off with the pressure of my dragon soul. Even the goddess couldn't take that from me. At least, she couldn't do it without killing me. Or maybe she had restraints of her own.
In canon, this part makes no damn sense. How could a simple mortal—even if she was that bitch's reincarnation—become so much stronger so suddenly? What did it cost her? Wasn't she saving up all those reincarnations to become even more powerful and bitchier?
But there wasn't time for that kind of thinking yet. I needed to recover as quickly as possible and start planning my tasks.
A week later, my body was completely fine except for my profound veins, so I could at least take care of my basic needs. No, I didn't start scrolling social media. That's a basic need in other universes. I meant food and sleep.
I found a den nearby where a bear was living peacefully. A huge bear. I looked at it and, honestly, was a little stunned.
"And how am I supposed to roast all that meat? How much firewood would that take?"
The bear didn't appreciate my humor, so it roared and swung a paw. I dodged and, out of pure anger, answered in kind with a wide punch to the face. Though I had to jump up just to reach its muzzle.
Now the beast was roaring in pain because my blow had mangled its face. But that didn't calm me down at all. Quite the opposite. There never had been, and I hope never would be, a sadistic streak in me.
The pain of an innocent creature couldn't ease my own pain in any way. I drew my katana and quickly cut the beast's head off, then started skinning it. And yes, the arrogant filth had left my spatial rings with me. A stupid mistake on her part. If she'd looked at what was inside, I wouldn't have gotten off so easily.
The place was good. A stream ran five meters away, the den was fairly spacious—at least for me—and the scenery in general was pleasant.
And I needed a place where I could calmly think and plan my next steps despite the pain, both physical and emotional.
"How do I get rid of this collar? Only by dying. How do I die so they can't find me afterward? Change identity. But the goddess won't be looking at documents or my face, will she? She'll probably look at profound energy, or maybe the soul itself, right?"
Yes, yes, talking to a bear skull isn't the healthiest behavior, but it helped me concentrate. And I badly needed to concentrate because the constant pain made it hard to think clearly.
"So, little bear, we need to head straight for the capital. There are two whole answers to our questions there. As long as the kimchi-addled loli doesn't kill us, the rest should work itself out."
Orientation wasn't a problem at all. I simply grabbed the nearest talking deer by the scruff, frightened it with my dragon soul, and asked for directions. Turned out the capital was another twenty-odd thousand kilometers away, which meant:
"I'm going to be digging trenches with my face again. Damn it."
I had no profound energy. I couldn't even use the Falling Star technique in its most basic state, but my strong body let me run very fast and for a very long time. And the inertia problems from running at that speed while leaning far forward hadn't gone anywhere.
I had been running for five days straight when a couple of young guys appeared nearby. Unlike me, these fine fellows were flying. Envious.
"Stop! How dare you enter the territory of—"
A sharp leap, two swings of the katana, and a forward roll to bleed off inertia. For just a second, something like conscience pricked at my soul, but...
"Sorry, boys, but I really don't have time for side quests with young masters right now."
I searched them, found only one spatial ring with not much room inside, and continued on without slowing down. The beasts were already taking care of the bodies.
Interlude: You Don't Know My Husband
When the disciples reached Frozen Cloud Palace and reported that Chu Yuechan and Feng Lun had vanished while Chu Yueli had been killed, real panic set in. The Great Mistress and her adopted daughter were inconsolable, while the other fairies didn't know what to do, so they simply panicked.
But while Gong Yuxian gave herself over completely to grief, Feng Qianhui began thinking about how to save the missing members of the Palace.
And they also needed to think about what great power they had managed to offend.
The lone island of calm was Feng Yue, who had also been summoned to the council.
First, she forced the witnesses to recall every word that had been spoken, and from that she concluded who had attacked her husband and the sisters.
Her conclusions frightened her, of course, but that was no reason to panic. One had to think coldly, as befitted members of Frozen Cloud Palace.
"Esteemed Great Mistress, I know where Fairy Chu is now—or at least I think I do."
"Where is my daughter?" the Palace Mistress snapped at her.
"In the Phoenix village. That is my guess." Yue remained calm.
"How can you be so calm? My daughter was killed!"
"But right now, we need to think about the second one."
"Yuxian, the girl is right. We need to think about Yuechan. She is pregnant, possibly injured, and certainly disoriented. And that enemy definitely stripped her of her cultivation."
"How did you reach that conclusion?"
"Remember Feng Lun's stories. Wasn't that her fate? To end up in that village at the Elementary Profound Realm."
"Isn't he the cause of all this misfortune?"
"Yuxian, don't let grief speak for you," the Great Mistress intervened quickly when she saw traces of anger in the young woman's eyes, a woman preparing to defend her husband.
This was no time for an internal split. Too many questions had to be resolved.
"Yue, your idea is sound, but we need to verify it. I'll send a pair of fairies there."
"Absolutely not, Mistress. If everything is as I think, then the remnant of the Phoenix's soul works for the enemy. We need to use the long-distance sight technique Lun invented and scout from afar."
"Then you'll handle it, but a pair of fairies will fly with you anyway. If she really is there..."
"Then we use Lun's method with trained little beasts, or throw a spatial ring with everything necessary and instructions from far away. The people in that village won't harm Fairy Chu."
"What might she need?"
"First and foremost, resources for self-defense. Arrays, weapons. After the child is born—pills for rapid growth."
"If she's safe, why rush so much?"
"Think about it yourselves. If Fairy Chu really is there, she will soon meet fate's darling. And he will naturally save her. How else could it go? That means Fairy Chu is in danger."
"That's a stretch. First we need to make sure Yuechan really is there. Aren't you worried about your husband?"
"If he's dead, I'll find a way to resurrect him. If he's alive, he'll come back."
"And if he can't come back?"
"You simply don't know my husband. Even if he has no arms, no legs, no eyes, and his profound veins are destroyed, he will find a way to get back on his feet and return to me."