There was something about the way she held his hand, and something about her soft gaze and faint smile, that contained indescribable splendor. Somehow, it was very attractive….
It seemed like actual hooks dragging him toward her!
After returning to his own private chamber, he couldn’t stop thinking about one particular question.
“Did something really go wrong with her breakthrough, giving Ghostmother a chance to make a move? Or… did Gongsun Wan’er do it all on purpose?” Although there was no way for him to answer the question, the latter seemed a highly likely possibility.
Since there was no way to determine the answer, he stopped thinking about it. Waving his hand to produce a large amount of souls, he once again began to work on twenty-three-colored flame.
In all of the Eternal Immortal Domains, and even beyond it, twenty-three-colored flame had never existed. Bai Xiaochun had traveled farther along the path of the heavenly necromancer than anyone in history, all thanks to the genius of Bai Hao.
This time, it took him many years to shape the formula for twenty-three-colored flame. And yet, even after all that time, and all of the augury, he still wasn’t confident enough to actually try to conjure the flame.
It was made worse by the fact that he had so few souls to work with. Most of them he had acquired from the treasured fan, and based on his calculations, he only had enough for four attempts.
If he failed four times in a row, he wouldn’t have enough souls to continue his work. The upside was that after the founding of the Arch-Emperor Dynasty, some mysterious natural law had come into play which caused the territory they controlled to begin to transform in a way that resembled the Heavenspan Realm. Souls had begun to appear out in the open, prompting Bai Xiaochun to issue a Dharmic decree for spirit enhancers to work as hard as possible to collect them.
After enough time passed, enough souls were collected to allow one more attempt at conjuring the flame.
“Only five chances….” he thought. He looked at the souls, and then reviewed his new formula. Finally, his eyes shone with determination, and he made his first attempt at the conjuring.
As the souls converged and began to show signs of forming into a multi-colored flame, Bai Xiaochun’s complete attention was focused on the task at hand. Seven days later, his expression flickered, and he quickly performed a double-handed incantation gesture. Using the power of his cultivation base, he forcibly suppressed the power of the explosion that had just resulted when the flame destabilized.
A muffled boom could be heard as he watched the chaotic flame slowly fading away. Afterwards, he sat there, clearly frustrated, his eyes bloodshot, his mind racing as he analyzed the process to determine what had gone wrong.
He spent several months on auguries and analysis. Skipping sleep and other daily tasks, he focused with mad intensity as he tried to solve all previous problems. At that point, he began his second attempt!
Unfortunately, it was also a failure!
It was the same with his third and fourth attempts….
Each time, he spent longer and longer trying to perfect his formula and solve all the problems. By the time he was ready for his fifth attempt, three years had gone by!
Dabao and Xiaoxiao were as naughty as ever, and the Arch-Emperor Dynasty continued to grow and flourish. Furthermore, the War Champion King finally broke through to become a celestial!
The Arch-Emperor Dynasty now had four celestials! Yet again, the dynasty grew stronger and more powerful!
That was when Bai Xiaochun began his fifth attempt!
If he failed, then he would have no more souls, and who knew how long it would be before he could collect enough for another try. On this fifth attempt, he was seventy percent certain that he would succeed in creating a twenty-three-colored flame!
After working with careful and complete precision, another color appeared in the chaotic flame in front of him. As it resolved into a twenty-third color, an indescribable aura surged out from Bai Xiaochun’s private chamber!
Not even the spell formation protecting his private chamber was powerful enough to contain that aura. In fact, it even burst through the imperial palace’s spell formation, as well as the one covering the city itself!
As the aura surged, the sky went dim, and the clouds churned. Multi-colored light filled the air, until a majestic sea of fire was present, filled with twenty-three different colors!
It immediately attracted the attention of everyone in the area, especially the cultivators from the Heavenspan Realm. They were profoundly shaken, a sensation that came from their very blood.
“That’s….”
“How many colors is that?”
“Heavens! That’s… a twenty-three-colored flame!!”
Cries of astonishment filled Arch-Emperor City, and soon, the laughter of Bai Xiaochun joined them.
His face was lit with excitement as he looked at the tongue of twenty-three-colored flame flickering in his palm. It was literally impossible for him to stay calm, as he had sensed that, as soon as the twenty-three-colored flame came into existence, the mark on the back of his hand that represented Bai Hao shivered.
This twenty-three-colored flame would be of immense help to Bai Hao!
Following instinct alone, Bai Xiaochun tried to still his trembling as he sent the twenty-three-colored flame into Bai Hao’s mark!
As the two merged together, the mark vibrated with increasing intensity. Of course, Bai Xiaochun was feeling very nervous; the idea of using multi-colored flame to resurrect Bai Hao was only something he had come up with by means of speculation.
He had no way to know for sure if his idea would work. But now… from the fluctuations he sensed coming from the mark, he had an intense premonition!
“If I can send thirty-colored flame into Hao’er’s mark, then… he can definitely be resurrected!!” Merely thinking back to how Bai Hao had passed away caused his heart to twinge with pain.
Bai Hao was the only apprentice he had ever taken in his entire life!
After the twenty-three-colored flame fully merged into the mark on his hand, Bai Xiaochun’s eyes shone with determination!
Before, he had possessed no evidence to confirm that he could use flame conjuring techniques to resurrect Bai Hao. But as of this moment, he had a new path laid out in front of him.
“I need more souls!” he said, a solemn expression overtaking his face. His stockpile of souls had run out, and the treasured fan had no more souls in it. However, there was a place that had what was surely an endless supply of souls!
He looked up into the sky, which from this perspective looked like a starry sky, but which was actually a vast void!
“That dark void is filled with countless ruins and unending rubble. It also has… endless souls of the deceased!” In the years since he had founded his own nation, he had only gone back to the fan a few times to check on Song Que.
Now that he knew how to resurrect Bai Hao, he made a new decision!
“I’ll use the fan to travel through the void, conjuring flame and collecting souls! Once I make that thirty-colored flame, I’ll resurrect Hao’er!” Having reached the conclusion that this was definitely the best idea, he sent his divine sense to check on Song Junwan, Zhou Zimo, Dabao, and Xiaoxiao.
Although he would be traveling a great distance away from them, he could return to the Arch-Emperor Dynasty at any time by means of teleportation. However, just to be safe, he decided to leave some divine sense behind in the form of a clone, ready to take action at a moment’s notice if necessary.
He didn’t tell his family of his plan. He simply touched his forehead, causing a clone to step out from him, which sat down cross-legged and began to meditate.
Without any further hesitation, he vanished… to reappear in the darkness of the void, on the treasured fan!
He was about to embark on a journey through the void, to collect souls!