Chapter 367 — The Phoenix Shrine

The next day, the Champion's Road challenge continued, with the human-ghost hybrid Ning Tianming taking up the challenge, while Donghuang's special exchange group had already set off for Crimson Deity Isle and the Phoenix Shrine.

Out on the ocean, aboard the great ship, Zheng Hai kept feeling that this special exchange group was strange—but just what was strange about it, he could not say.

"Elder Ke, are we really going to explore a secret realm?" he asked the Bureau Eleven archaeologist beside him, Senior Qixia Zong.

"What else?" Elder Ke said.

"Why do I feel like it's to keep Brother Lu from being carried off!" Zheng Hai looked at Lu Bai and Fengjue Jieyi, shoulder to shoulder in the distance, "whispering sweet nothings," and felt a wave of bewilderment—and envy.

Wait, wait, wait—since when had Lu Bai gotten entangled with Fengjue Jieyi, third among the Seven Isles?

Compared with exploring a secret realm, he could not shake the feeling that the Donghuang delegation's true purpose this time was to keep watch over "Lu Bai."

Damn it, why hadn't the Seven Isles sent anyone to use a beauty trap on him?

He wanted to test his own weak spot too.

"Look at you—not a shred of ambition!" Old Master Ke shook his head.

The old man refused to believe that Shi Jin, faced with a phoenix-clan ruin of a secret realm, would waver for the sake of beauty. The will of their Bureau Eleven archaeologists... was absolutely unshakable!

Ruins! Ruins! Ruins!

Women only slow down how fast they take ruins apart!

"If anyone's getting carried off, it's us carrying that little girl back to Donghuang." Old Master Ke was a man of grand ambitions.

The Phoenix Shrine had been built to guard and make offerings to the Phoenix Secret Realm.

So long as they relocated the Phoenix Secret Realm—moved it to Donghuang—then the Phoenix Shrine would move to Donghuang too, and a whole company of shrine maidens marrying into Donghuang would be perfectly reasonable.

This Zheng Hai had surely never heard the saying widely circulated within Bureau Eleven.

Because the newcomer Shitan had cracked ruins and secret realms so absurdly fast after joining Bureau Eleven that within the bureau, the phrase "Shi moves, the realm shifts" had long been in circulation... and this time would probably be no exception.

It was just unclear whether this one could be relocated. Pray it did not come to demolition.

"Ah..."

Zheng Hai, knowing nothing of the purpose of this trip or of Shi Jin's true identity, felt only a dense fog of confusion.

...

"I didn't think you'd make up your mind so quickly. I assumed you'd need a while longer to think it over." Aboard the great ship, Fengjue Jieyi, in her shrine maiden robes, gazed at the sea and spoke with surprise.

"It's mainly that Senior Ke in our delegation heard about the Phoenix Secret Realm and was very interested—couldn't wait to come explore it." Shi Jin coughed dryly, weakly.

His short white hair fluttered, and he looked as though he might drop dead the very next moment, which made Jieyi beside him a little uneasy.

She was terrified that "Lu Bai" might suddenly collapse at her side.

If that happened, it would look as though she had come to "assassinate" Lu Bai.

"Is that so." Fengjue Jieyi forced a smile. "Still, I should warn you in advance: although the Phoenix Secret Realm is also an uncracked ruin of a secret realm, it differs in some essential ways from other ruins."

"Oh?" Shi Jin said. "I'd like to hear the details."

"My teacher has studied that secret realm thoroughly. This realm can only be communed with by humans bearing a special phoenix bloodline. You could say that those of mixed blood are the key to cracking the Phoenix Secret Realm."

"No other method can provoke any change in the Phoenix Secret Realm. So rather than wasting too much time and effort on the realm, my suggestion is that, under my guidance, we tour the Phoenix Shrine and Phoenix Mountain more—the scenery here is really quite beautiful," Fengjue Jieyi said.

Shi Jin pondered slightly.

It was about what he had learned.

The Undying Dark Phoenix had said the same: Chitong's bloodline was the key that opened the Phoenix Secret Realm.

And Chitong's power was, in essence, also the mixed blood of human and phoenix clan. Though she was now a Heroic Spirit, the essence of that power would not change.

"Is there anything special over there?" Shi Jin asked again.

"Of course," Feng Jue Jieyi said. "On Phoenix Mountain, a hundred phoenixes dance together—it is steeped in myth and legend, and among the Seven Isles' newly risen shrines, it is the most distinctive of them all."

"Those are the pet beasts of the shrine maidens."

"Beyond that, the spirit plants on the mountain are one of a kind—all but unknown to the outside world."

Shi Li: "I've heard that the maidens of the Phoenix Shrine are all mixed-bloods?"

He had been curious about this for a long time. Even in Donghuang, apart from Mu Huiyin and the Empress, he had never heard of anyone with Phoenix Clan blood.

So why were there so many here in the Seven Isles?

Could it be that back then, the mixed-blood faction of the Phoenix Clan had fled from Donghuang to the Seven Isles?

It was certainly within the realm of possibility.

Donghuang's territory was vast beyond measure, many times the size of the Seven Isles, and in ancient times it had been the center of the Totem Wars—contested ground for all. Thus, many beast tamers of that era, seeking to escape the heart of the fighting, fled to places comparatively wild and peaceful.

Old Ke, not far off, was studying exactly this. Donghuang bloodlines were distributed across the dozen or so totem nations bordering Donghuang, and throughout the surrounding Seven Isles.

So if, during the Phoenix Clan's civil strife, part of the mixed-blood Phoenix Clan had fled to other lands, that too was entirely possible.

"Mm. They are all like me—the only differences lie in the density of our bloodlines and our degree of compatibility with the Phoenix blood." Feng Jue Jieyi said.

"After my teacher emerged from the Phoenix Secret Realm, she began researching how to raise the purity of her own Phoenix bloodline. After ten years of effort, she developed a resource called the Phoenix Fruit. This fruit can not only bestow Phoenix blood upon specific humans, making them mixed-bloods, but also strengthen the bloodline density of Phoenix-type pet beasts. The entire Phoenix Shrine was built upon this special resource, the Phoenix Fruit."

None of this was any secret. Feng Jue Jieyi explained it to Shi Jin bit by bit, and Shi Jin's expression shifted subtly.

The Phoenix Fruit?!

"There's a resource like that?" Shi Jin found it hard to believe.

The intelligence the Overlord of the Seas and his lot had obtained back then had said nothing about such a thing.

"It is the crystallisation of my teacher's life's work. A pity, though—after using the Phoenix Fruit to forge countless keys, the Phoenix Shrine still could not crack the Phoenix Secret Realm," Feng Jue Jieyi said. "Though it did cultivate a great many outstanding mixed-blood beast tamers."

She smiled faintly. "If not for my teacher, I would never have achieved what I have, still less reached the seventh rank at my age through the Phoenix bloodline."

"Senior Feng Jue, you truly are formidable..." Shi Li said.

If she were in Donghuang, this person could at the very least secure a high position in the Twelve Bureaus!

The Twelve Bureaus—the Bureau of Mixed Bloods!

In Donghuang, there were many mixed-blood beast-taming families.

Those who could join this bureau were, apart from a few beast tamers of rare bloodlines, mostly the heads of mixed-blood families, or successors of exceptional potential—like Ning Tianming, heir to one of the great families.

They held pivotal standing in the mixed-blood world, and constituted a most important part of Donghuang's beast-taming strength.