While Baxian played with Xiao Hu's emotions, Xinzi crossed the Evernight Palace's halls, letting buried memories guide him through the pathways to reach the ancestral hall. There, once per day, Night Spirits of all levels and backgrounds would assemble to bow and pray their Divine Ancestor—thanking Yongye for the love, care, and powers that they received at birth, while beseeching the Thousand-Faced God to favor them above all other branches.
Offerings followed the prayers, with the same pledges of undying loyalty repeated everyday, for tens of thousands of years. Xinzi disliked the process. Dull, colorless, lacking in all but austerity. Hengye Zhen, however, didn't care. The ancestral hall's door appeared, with two armored giants standing at its left and right.
Well...the average male Night Spirit's mortal shell stood at 2.0 m, so perhaps using the term giant here was slightly inappropriate.
"Oh, Greatest One, forgive us for not welcoming you at the palace's entrance! Your humble servants greet you!" Both men's cultivation bases ranked high among the Immortals of the Eternal Night. Still, they kneeled without delay, tears filling their eyes as they glanced at Xinzi's Divine Soul.
"You may rise. Guarding the ancestral hall is an honor that all worthy Night Spirits aspire to. From the moment that you are assigned to this post, you cannot leave until death or a new pair of guards appear to replace you. That being the case, what is there to blame? It is the Night's beliefs that you defend here. My Divine Self only has praises to offer," Xinzi said, and further ado, flew in.
"Thank you, oh Greatest One, for your praise!" The immortal guards' voices carried such zeal and reverence that bystanders would wonder if they owed their lives to Xinzi. But coming from Night Spirits, such behavior was the norm. On the contrary, it was people like Baxian and Yuemi that didn't fit the traditional mold.
One grand ebony tablet stood at the center of the ancestrall hall, with the names of all previous God-Monarchs engraved in Divine Light. Above the tablet, two names hovered, more dazzling than any of the rest: Hengye Tian and Hengye Zhen, with the latter underneath the former.
That the Thousand-Faced God dared to refer to itself as Tian showed that its ambitions surpassed all that the Gods in Heaven could imagine. But even if they knew, so what? The Heavenly Emperor lost. The Solar Dragon God dared not pick a fight. The Three Pure Ones hid in seclusion. With Gods and Devils alike shivering at the mere mention of its name, Heaven aside, who could stand in its way?
The mere fact that his master once wished to challenge this ultipotent entity for dominance over the Night Pantheon made Xinzi hold him in high esteem. A pity that, just like the rest, all his life he played in the palm of Yongye's hand. Even Heaven's boons and warnings couldn't change his fate.
Right before the ancestral tablet, one orb stood in suspension. Colossal black and white chains coiled around the orb, trapping it in a tenth-layer Immortal Formation that not only sheltered what the orb held, but also fed it with mind-boggling levels of Immortal Qi. Xinzi's eyes lay on that thing, a young man about his age.
Dressed in a luxurious black robe embroidered with blue wave patterns and tall epaulets on its shoulders, the young man was over two meters tall, with lustrous white skin and a mane of flowing black hair that shone like the moon. And even though he sat crossed-legged, his perfect musculature added to his frame and overflowing divine light to make all that stared at him bow and accept their inferiority. All...except for Xinzi, who could naturally not feel any inferiority towards his true mortal shell.
Alas, at the mortal shell's back, a monstrous apparition with 1,000 masked faces that stood on elongated necks, ruined the mortal shell's appeal, reminding all that at this young man's back, the shadow of the Thousand-Faced God would always exist.
"Yongye is the Thousand-Faced God, but the Thousand-Faced God isn't just Yongye. Zhen'er, how many of our Divine Ancestor's faces have you confronted?" Yuemi's voice came from Xinzi's back.
His Xinzi body walked beside her, its eyes turned dull by the lack of soul. In her hands, Yuemi held an uncanny whip. Black lightning replaced the thong, and on the whip handle, one could see bleached faces from which laughs and cries echoed.
Xinzi didn't turn towards Yuemi—ignoring her completely. The Lord-Regent pouted at this treatment, and regardless, stopped by Xinzi's side—leaning on his shoulder.
"I suppose that since you spent the majority of your time in Heaven getting nurtured in Yongye's womb, you can't have met other faces, right? Or maybe you did afterward? Tell me, when Yongye helped you cast this matchless mortal shell, were you still inside or outside? I never got the answer to that." The mellow tone that Yuemi addressed Xinzi with carried eerie vibes. As before, Xinzi didn't reply—aware that indifference was the best way to mess up Yuemi's mind. The more messed-up, the more mistakes she'd commit, enabling him to ensure the best result.
The Lord-Regent's eyes narrowed, and she pulled back, leaning on the Xinzi-body instead. Her right knee and thigh stood oddly close to its groin, with the lightning whip cracking beside it.
"Yongye isn't just powerful. Her cunning and ruthlessness knows no rival. Everything that I do receives her tacit permission. And I wouldn't dare to step into a territory that she doesn't allow. So Zhen'er, your Divine Mother allows me to call you Zhen'er and enables me to use this whip to discipline her only begotten son. How does that make you feel? Careful, you can't get angry. The whip will know," Yuemi said while rubbing her head against Xinzi's neck.
Still, he didn't react. Her grip tightened around the handle, but she restrained her surging rage.
"Return to this mortal shell. I still do not have the authority to strike your Divine Soul or true shell. Zhen'er, remember that each whip strike you take is equal to one step of the Divine Consecration Ladder. I'm curious to see how many this shell of yours can shoulder.. Come and make mommy proud."
