Chapter – 43
So That’s How It Is — A Clarification
Yi Yuexi’s face was filled with disbelief.
On the left side was the Marey household. Oushan had stayed home to accompany his mate.
He sensed this surge of aggressive supernatural energy and stepped outside to take a look.
When he saw Yi Yuexi standing outside the courtyard, he froze for a moment.
Marey followed him out.
“What’s going on? Do you need any help?”
Yi Yuexi’s fox-like eyes flickered slightly as he shook his head.
“It’s nothing.”
He wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.
Raising his hand, he swept it through the air. Ice-blue snowflakes fell into the courtyard. At the same time the wind-type ability surged forth, stirring up the accumulated snow. Snowflakes filled the sky, blurring the courtyard and concealing the scene inside the fire house.
Oushan glanced once at the courtyard swirling with wind and snow, then said to his worried mate, “It should be Lu Liufeng’s ability becoming unstable. His mate is helping him sort it out.”
Hearing this, Marey didn’t ask further and instead invited Yi Yuexi to come inside and sit for a while.
Yi Yuexi shook his head in refusal.
“No need. You go on with your work—don’t mind me.”
Lu Liufeng’s abilities were in a state of riot and overflow.
If he hadn’t sensed any destructive aura within it, he would have thought this was a sign of Lu Liufeng about to burst apart.
But now, he wasn’t certain.
He needed to stay here, to ensure a sufficiently safe environment for both the mate and Lu Liufeng.
With such a massive fluctuation of supernatural energy, it wouldn’t take long before it attracted the attention of the entire tribe.
Inside the fire house.
After Jiang Xi closed her eyes, she didn’t immediately enter Lu Liufeng’s ability sea.
Instead, she watched a sequence of memories unfold before her eyes, like scenes from a film.
Waves crashed against cliffs. Sea wind rustled through leaves.
One cave after another dotted the cliff face. At the very top of the cliff was a flat platform, and at its center stood a statue of a human-faced eagle.
One by one, eagles flew against the sea wind and landed on the platform, transforming into beastmen who knelt on one knee before the human-faced eagle, offering prayers.
Suddenly, lightning flashed and thunder roared. The sea turned violently turbulent.
An old man raised his staff and stood before the human-faced eagle.
The prostrate beastmen spread their wings, linking together one by one, encircling the statue at the center.
Complex, incomprehensible words—like chanting—spread through the thunderstorm.
A thick pillar of lightning suddenly fell from the sky, crashing down upon the human-faced eagle statue with a deafening boom.
The face of the statue slowly split apart.
Jiang Xi saw lightning race along the cracks, spreading deep into the cliff wall.
The scene shifted again.
The sky was vast, the sea deep blue.
A gigantic eagle phantom suddenly appeared in the sky. Its sharp, ancient gaze locked onto Jiang Xi in an instant, jolting her mind and plunging her into unconsciousness.
When her awareness returned, she saw the old man who once held the staff, with a fledgling eagle perched on his shoulder. Its feathers were dark brown with amber inlays, and on its back was a lightning-shaped marking.
The old man stood before the cracked human-faced eagle statue, the fledgling still on his shoulder.
This time, Jiang Xi understood the words being spoken.
“Liufeng, you are the only eagle of our clan in a hundred years to awaken the bloodline of the Ancestral Eagle. By the grace of the Ancestral Eagle, you must shoulder the future of Eagle Strait.”
The scene shifted again, and she saw Lu Liufeng in his youth.
Compared to his later gentleness, his amber eyes then held far more of the sharpness inherent to the eagle clan.
The youth stood proud and spirited, sea wind lifting his hair. Around him, beastmen of his age were pressed to the ground by his abilities, unable to move.
The scene changed once more.
Jiang Xi felt a layer of invisible gloom hanging over Eagle Strait.
Inside a stone cave beneath the statue, the old man knelt on the ground with a group of people. At the center altar lay an eagle claw embedded deep into the earth beneath the human-faced eagle.
The Lu Liufeng Jiang Xi knew appeared in the cave and spoke to the kneeling elder.
“High Priest, by the will of the Ancestral Eagle, since this is the oracle, let me go.”
The old man cried out in grief, “You are the only bearer of the Ancestral Eagle bloodline in a hundred years!”
“The laws of Eagle Strait say that once a male marries and follows his mate, he can never return! If you go, you will never come back!”
“……”
The images vanished.
In their place, a sea of supernatural energy filled with lightning and thunder burst into Jiang Xi’s vision.
Following her perception, she slowly raised her head.
She saw the sky裂 open with a massive rift.
Soft green light spread outward from her body. Not only did the lightning and thunder above the ability sea fail to subside—it grew even more violent, surging upward from the sea itself, striking toward the sky.
At the same time, above Lion Roar Tribe, a flash of blinding light streaked across the heavens. Thunder rolled moments later, startling every beastman in the tribe.
But in the next instant, it vanished as if it had never existed.
Within the ability sea—
The rift in the sky widened further. Just as it was about to fully open, a layer of blood-red light descended.
The next second, the rift closed. The lightning faded, but the ability sea began to churn violently.
At the same time, Jiang Xi sensed a gaze—a gaze that made her scalp crawl.
It vanished in a flash.
The healing ability within her body was instantly drained, swept violently into the raging ability sea.
The surging waves calmed.
And Jiang Xi’s consciousness snapped back in an instant.
She suddenly opened her eyes. The depletion of her ability left her utterly weak, her body going limp.
Then she fell into a warm, solid embrace.
Lu Liufeng opened his eyes and instinctively caught his mate.
His long amber eyes were clouded with confusion as they slowly lowered to look at the woman in his arms.
“Just now… what just happened?”
He sensed that his ability had shown signs of breaking through.
But ever since he came to the Cursed Land, his ability had stagnated, never increasing again.
When he arrived in the Cursed Land, his ability had already reached the late stage of the third major rank—the ninth level.
He had known that breakthroughs were impossible here.
Yet just now, the bottleneck had loosened.
He would never mistake the sensation of a major-rank breakthrough.
Lu Liufeng lifted his mate horizontally and sat down, placing her on his lap, holding her close.
Seeing how weak she was, he guessed what had happened.
That gentle, soothing sensation—like being softly stroked—was etched deep into his mind. His ability sea had reached an unprecedented state of calm and obedience.
His mate had sorted out his ability.
And she had done so without using an external manifestation through a guiding stone.
As his memories fully returned, he realized that the “sorting” his mate had spoken of was not what he had imagined.
When she said she had sorted Duan Si’s ability, she had used an external method.
For a moment, Lu Liufeng felt an indescribable mix of emotions—complex, and faintly disappointed.
He looked at his mate and suddenly noticed patches of uneven paleness on her skin.
He raised a finger and touched her.
It felt slick, like mud. A burning sensation spread across his fingertip.
Lu Liufeng lifted his finger before his eyes and examined it closely.
Jiang Xi slowly recovered.
That sensation of being completely drained had left her utterly exhausted.
But not long after, the healing ability within her surged back like a spring, rapidly refilling her body.
She realized she had broken through to level three.
She opened her eyes, about to speak—only to see Lu Liufeng with black, grimy residue on his fingers, bringing them to his nose to sniff.
Her eyes widened instantly. She almost jumped out of his arms.
But her limbs hadn’t fully recovered their strength. No sooner had she struggled upright than she collapsed back down.
Lu Liufeng hurriedly held her tighter, his amber eyes soft as he looked down at her.
“Mate.”
