NOVEL WEB Chapter 139: Private Meeting
It wasn't a battle.
Not one of swords or cultivation or even schemes.
But when Yan Yiren requested private audiences with each of the women connected to Hei Long — not to fight, not to threaten, but to speak — the Empire itself seemed to pause and wait for the aftermath.
Because when a woman reborn in flame speaks with those who inherited her absence…
Something always burns.
First: Qingxue
Location: The Blade Shrine
Yan Yiren found her kneeling before a stone monument, cleaning her sword with quiet, deliberate strokes. Qingxue didn't rise when Yiren arrived. Didn't turn. Only said:
"You won. Why speak with me?"
Yan Yiren knelt beside her.
Not as a challenger.
But as a shadow returning to where the light now shined.
"Because you remind me of myself. The part I carved out to let him live."
That got Qingxue's attention.
Her hands stopped. Slowly, she looked at the woman she'd once dismissed as legend.
"Do you want him back?" Qingxue asked bluntly.
Yiren tilted her head.
"No. I want him to remember who I am."
"…and what happens when he does?"
Yiren's eyes flickered with quiet fire.
"Then he'll remember what kind of woman he was willing to become a monster for."
Qingxue said nothing for a long time.
Then she whispered:
"He's colder now. Sharper. Harder."
Yiren smiled.
"Because I died soft."
She left without another word.
Qingxue sat before the blade shrine long after — and for the first time in years, her hand trembled when she held her sword.
Second: Zhao Yuran
Location: Alchemy Pavilion, Underground Furnace
The room stank of ash and copper. Dozens of broken cauldrons lined the walls, scorched and melted from Yuran's latest experiments. She stood in the center, hair unkempt, spiritual robes soaked with smoke.
"You're real," she said without turning.
"I always was."
Yuran laughed bitterly.
"I thought I could erase him. Burn the memories out."
"You tried to kill the part of you that wanted him."
"I wanted to be the first," Yuran hissed.
"I was the first," Yiren said. "It didn't save me."
Yuran turned, eyes rimmed with red.
"I gave him everything."
"So did I," Yiren replied. "And I died with it."
A beat passed.
Then Yiren stepped closer — and held out her hand.
"I'm not here to take him," she said gently.
"But if you want to keep any piece of yourself intact… stop chasing what was never yours to own."
Yuran didn't take her hand.
But she didn't slap it away either.
Yiren left through the smoke.
Yuran collapsed against her workbench.
And wept.
Third: Mu Yexin
Location: Hall of Illusions
The illusions twisted as Yiren approached.
Every mirrored wall warped — showing versions of Hei Long laughing, crying, dying.
Yiren walked through them unfazed.
Until she found Yexin standing barefoot in the center of the room, arms crossed, eyes unreadable.
"So," Yexin said, "you're the ghost behind the glass."
"I suppose I am."
"You really think a past life gives you the right to rewrite the story?"
"No," Yiren said softly. "But the story never ended. You're all chapters after a misplaced comma."
Yexin smiled coldly.
"You should know. I make stories."
"I was the story," Yiren replied. "Until it was taken from me."
Silence.
Then Yexin whispered:
"He laughed with me. Smiled. Let me touch parts of him no one else could."
"Good," Yiren said. "Then you'll understand how much it'll hurt when he starts doing that… while thinking of someone else."
The illusions around them began to crack — not from power, but from truth.
Yiren walked past her.
And Yexin stood in the shattering remnants of her own self-delusion.
Hei Long's Balcony
Yiren stood beside him.
The meetings were over.
"She threatened you?" he asked.
"No."
"Insulted you?"
"No."
"Fought you?"
She smiled.
"No. But I did remind them I bled first."
Hei Long didn't respond.
His hands gripped the railing.
"Did they hate you?" he asked.
Yiren looked out at the city.
At the banners preparing for the Heavenly Synthesis Ceremony that might now never come.
"No. They envied me."
"And for the first time, I pitied them."
The mirrors were shaking.
Not cracking.
Not warping.
Shaking.
That had never happened before.
Mu Yexin had spent the past three days locked inside her private illusionarium, a spiritual chamber she had built herself — layered with shifting lenses of memory, soul-thread projections, and fragments of past consciousness. It was where she tested forbidden dreamscapes.
And now…
It was reconstructing something not hers.
Something older than she was.
Something buried.
She Had Started with a Spark
Yan Yiren's words still echoed in her head.
"I was the story."
That was the kind of line you couldn't let go of. So Yexin did what she always did.
She built a dream out of it.
She fed the room pieces of Hei Long's qi.
Then pieces of her own memories — all moments involving him.
And finally, something she had sworn she'd never touch:
A strand of temporal dust from the Mirror Sanctum itself.
The room came alive.
And then it began to scream.
A Scene Formed
Not from illusion.
Not from manipulation.
From memory.
And it wasn't hers.
It wasn't even Yiren's.
It was something… else.
Mu Yexin sat in the center of the chamber, heart pounding, breath shallow, watching a world she'd never seen unfold around her.
The Forgotten Timeline
A city that no longer exists.
Silver towers burning.
Cultivators screaming.
A battlefield filled with the dead.
And in the middle of it all:
A girl who looked like Yiren.
Same eyes. Same fire.
But younger.
More afraid.
And pregnant.
Mu Yexin Choked
The image of the girl running through smoke and flame—clutching her stomach, one hand holding a broken charm—was so vivid it couldn't be a dream.
She watched the girl reach a hill of corpses—
—and found Hei Long there.
But he wasn't Hei Long.
Not yet.
He was younger. Unscarred. Not sharp like the man they knew now.
Just… desperate.
She collapsed into his arms.
"Please," the girl gasped. "Don't let them take her—"
Not me, Yexin realized.
Her.
A daughter.
Then the Scene Changed
Hei Long carried her into a ritual circle. One surrounded by runes that pulsed with death-seal energy. Forbidden even now.
The girl screamed.
Begged.
And he kissed her forehead.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You're not strong enough to remember."
She screamed one last time.
And then—
Light.
Silence.
Erasure.
Back in the Illusionarium
Mu Yexin fell backward, gasping, blood trickling from her nose.
The chamber dimmed.
The memory faded.
And all that remained were her own ragged breaths.
"Yiren was pregnant…"
"He sealed her… and the child."
"And she doesn't know."
Later – A Single Letter
Mu Yexin didn't sleep.
She didn't speak.
She just wrote one thing, over and over again on a slip of spiritual parchment.
She doesn't remember. But she was never alone in that seal.
And then she sealed the paper in a butterfly.
And sent it.
To Yan Yiren.
Elsewhere — Yan Yiren's Chamber
The butterfly reached her just before dawn.
It burst into red light.
And Yiren saw the vision — fragmented, broken, but enough.
She fell to her knees.
For the first time since awakening, she screamed.
Not in rage.
Not in triumph.
But in grief.
Because there had been more.
And Hei Long had taken that too.
Meanwhile — Hei Long Stood at the Cliffside Shrine
Where he thought no one would find him.
Holding a carved pendant in his hand.
A child's pendant.
One he buried.
But the earth always remembers.
No guards followed him.
No dragons flew overhead.
No woman from his harem dared accompany him.
Hei Long walked alone.
His hair was unbound. His armor left behind. His only companion was a black cloak that carried the scent of old ash — and a satchel of offerings meant for a place that even the gods had abandoned.
The wind howled like a warning across the glacier plains. It sang of names never spoken again. Names erased by those who feared what they meant.
At the edge of the world stood the Temple of Lost Names.
And it waited for him.
The Temple Itself
There were no doors.
No monks.
No lanterns.
Just walls made of mirrorstone and bones — some human, some not — etched with runes that wept when touched.
Hei Long stepped across the threshold.
His spiritual pressure dimmed instantly.
Not from suppression.
From shame.
Because here, in this place, every lie remembered itself.
The First Hall — Memory Unwanted
A child's laughter echoed.
Not his.
Hers.
And someone else's.
A younger voice. High-pitched. Calling out a word that stabbed his heart like frost.
"Baba."
He froze.
The sound repeated.
Each syllable more clear. More vivid. More real.
"Baba! Look!"
He looked.
The mirrors lit up.
And there they were:
Yan Yiren, cradling a child — eyes so bright they eclipsed the world. Her smile was tired but warm.
Hei Long, younger, kneeling beside them with calloused hands and a face softened by love.
The illusion shattered when he reached out to touch them.
He didn't cry.
But something cracked behind his eyes.
The Second Hall — Truth Rewritten
Torches lit themselves as he walked.
Every flame whispered a version of his name.
Not Hei Long.
Li Mingyan.
The name before the empire. Before the sword. Before he buried love beneath the weight of power.
He whispered it once — and the air pulsed like a heartbeat.
A wall of runes lit up ahead.
It read:
"You cannot carry a name you refused to die for."
He didn't look away.
He stepped closer.
And beneath it, new letters burned into existence.
"But you can still choose the one you sealed away."
The Final Chamber — The Tomb of Forgotten Kin
There was no coffin.
Just a single shrine.
Covered in dust.
Draped in black feathers.
And resting atop it… a child's bracelet.
Carved of white jade and scorched at the edges, it bore no name.
Because he never gave her one.
Hei Long fell to his knees.
Not as a warrior.
Not as a legend.
As a father who didn't know he'd been one.
And the room whispered:
"She is not gone."
"She is waiting."
"But you must give her a name."
At That Moment — Back in the Capital
Yan Yiren clutched the dream-scroll Yexin had sent her.
She saw the same child again.
Running. Laughing. Pointing at birds.
She whispered:
"What was her name?"
And from the window, a voice answered:
"She didn't have one."
Hei Long's voice.
Behind her.
Returned.
Covered in ash.
Eyes hollow.
But present.
"I came back too late," he said.
Yiren stood slowly.
"I didn't remember her."
"I made sure you couldn't," he replied.
"Why?"
"Because I thought the pain would kill us both."
She walked up to him.
And slapped him.
Then embraced him before he fell.
And said:
"Then we live with the pain. Together. Or we don't live at all."