Chapter 1759 — A Strange Turn of Events (Part Two)

Suddenly, Gu Mengyao gave a clear, piercing cry—bright and lovely, like the call of some bird of flight—and Wei Zhao and the others all felt their spirits lift. Then the golden radiance around her began to fade, the pair of golden wings at her back vanished, and her skin returned to its normal hue. At last her body swayed once, and she crumpled to the ground.

The whole process had lasted roughly half an hour.

Only then did Wei Zhao dare to hurry over. He lifted Gu Mengyao from the floor, laid her on the bed, and quickly began examining her condition.

Yet when he finished, he found nothing out of the ordinary. Gu Mengyao's pulse was entirely normal, her belly was not distended, and her stomach remained flat—heaven only knew where that black phoenix had gone, or whether it had simply been digested during those thirty minutes.

"Brother Arrow, how is Sister Yao Yao?" Shen Yushu asked anxiously.

"She looks perfectly normal." Wei Zhao shook his head. "I haven't found anything wrong..."

"Then what just happened..." Recalling it all, Tang Yun still felt a lingering chill of dread. It had been far too eerie—as though in that moment Gu Mengyao had become a phoenix... In her daze, she had been struck by exactly that illusion.

"I don't know. It may be an aftereffect of eating that black phoenix, but for now she seems fine..." Wei Zhao said.

"Then when... when will she wake up?" Shen Yushu asked.

"I don't know. Right now she seems to be sleeping—we can only wait for her to wake naturally..." Wei Zhao smiled wryly, for he had never seen anything like this either. Had he known how bizarre it would be, he would never have bought the black phoenix; if Gu Mengyao came down with some illness from eating it, the fault would be his.

"Then for now..." Shen Yushu breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that Gu Mengyao was all right.

"For now, I don't know either. But to avoid any mishap, it's best to wait for her to wake on her own." Wei Zhao did not dare force her awake; he too feared something might go wrong.

"All right... I'd actually wanted a taste of that black phoenix myself, but now it looks so frightening that I'm glad I didn't." Shen Yushu patted her chest. "Sister Yao Yao kept it all to herself, and look what a mess it turned out."

"That doesn't seem to have been her intention. She wouldn't answer us when we spoke to her—she seemed to have no will of her own at the time." Tang Yun had stayed in the room the whole while watching over Gu Mengyao, so her observations were the most careful of all.

"True enough, Sister Yao Yao isn't the type to keep things to herself..." Little Shu nodded. "But what happened just now really was terrifying, and I can't imagine what went wrong..."

"All we can do is wait for Yao Yao to wake up." Wei Zhao, equally at a loss, shrugged. "Everyone should get some rest early—dinner's off the table, ha ha."

"Right, let's rest then... and wait for Sister Yao Yao to wake tomorrow..." Shen Yushu nodded.

In truth, Wei Zhao was full of questions too, but there was no way to get answers now; they would have to wait until tomorrow. Perhaps that black phoenix truly was some spirit beast that could not be eaten at random, yet Gu Mengyao had swallowed it through a strange twist of fate, bringing about what had just happened...

Fortunately, apart from the visions she had displayed earlier, nothing else had gone wrong, which set Wei Zhao's mind somewhat at ease.

After returning to his room, Wei Zhao resumed his cultivation...

Yet none of those present—Wei Zhao included—had any idea that a world-shaking event had occurred tonight.

In the Palace of the Dark Night, at the very moment Gu Mengyao swallowed the black phoenix.

The Grand Elder hastily summoned the Palace Mistress, Wan'er, Elder Li, and the other elders together.

"Did any of you feel it?" the Grand Elder asked, brows tightly knit.

"It seems... it seems the Dark Phoenix bloodline suddenly awakened and resonated with the bloodline in my body..." the Palace Mistress Wan'er said cautiously. "Could it be that within the Palace of the Dark Night there is another besides myself who carries the Dark Phoenix bloodline?"

"That is impossible. If there were, I would be at ease, and I would not spend every day driving you on so relentlessly!" said the Grand Elder. "You are the sole heir of the Dark Phoenix bloodline, and its awakening bears on a great matter after the Heaven-Rank Assembly! If anyone could replace you, I would not have kept you confined..."

The Grand Elder spoke the truth: had there been anyone who could replace the Palace Mistress Wan'er, she would not have treated Wan'er so harshly and exactingly all these years, forbidding her even a single step down the mountain and allowing her only to cultivate in seclusion.

"Then it was..." the Palace Mistress Wan'er asked cautiously.

"I do not know... At first I thought the Dark Phoenix bloodline within you had awakened, but when I came to you, I knew it was not so..." The Grand Elder shook her head and spoke with some regret. "Had you not been deflowered, and given yourself to a mortal, bearing a mongrel of impure blood—would our Palace of the Dark Night have come to this?"

The Palace Mistress Wan'er lowered her head, not daring to argue. In those days, for love, she had acted on impulse—and brought irreparable loss upon the Palace of the Dark Night! Had she instead joined with the young master of the Profound Elixir Sect at the time, that sect had its own miraculous pills and medicines to ensure the child's bloodline be pure. If they had devoted themselves to raising such a child, they could have awakened the Dark Phoenix bloodline within her and made her the heir, and then that great matter could have been done...

But now... the Palace Mistress Wan'er could only do all she could in her cultivation, yet never could she awaken the Dark Phoenix bloodline within her own body...

"Enough. Elder Li, have the Shadow Group investigate what on earth happened to provoke such a phenomenon!" said the Grand Elder. "Wan'er, you continue your cultivation. Time is short—you must advance to the Heaven Rank as soon as possible. Only thus might the Dark Phoenix bloodline within you be awakened!"

"Yes!" the Palace Mistress Wan'er answered.

Throughout the Palace of the Dark Night, hers was the only line that bore the Dark Phoenix bloodline.

Legend had it that her ancestor had inadvertently eaten a fabled Dark Phoenix spirit beast, and so the Dark Phoenix bloodline had entered the body, permitting the inheritance of the Dark Night Spirit Mountain and offering hope of setting foot upon the Heavenly Dao.

But after generations of breeding and inheritance, by the time of the Palace Mistress Wan'er, the Dark Phoenix bloodline in her body had grown thin. Though each generation of bloodline heirs had tried every means to preserve its purity, each generation inevitably suffered some loss.

Still, it was said that the Profound Elixir Sect could call forth its founding ancestor to gather the rare herbs and elixirs of heaven and earth and refine a Marrow-Cleansing Bone-Tempering Pill for Wan'er's child—but only on the condition that Wan'er wed the young master of the Profound Elixir Sect at the time, who was now its sect master.