Chapter Eight: Blessings and Misfortunes Entwined

Yu Youwei, her stomach growling with hunger, huddled in a crevice of stone, watching the desperate battle between the eagle and the python. She continued to hope, “It would be best if they both died. The snake’s skin, bones, and gall bladder could fetch a good price, and snake meat is delicious whether in soup or braised. As for the gleaming thunder eagle’s feathers, I could pluck them and make a feather fan for Mother—she’d surely love that.”

If the thunder eagle and the giant python had understood her words, realizing she was already planning to skin, dismember, and pluck them before they’d even drawn their last breath, they might well have joined forces to dispose of her before resuming their own fight. Fortunately for her, their battle raged for seven days and nights until both perished, and neither paid the slightest attention to this insignificant slip of a girl.

Surveying the corpses of the eagle and the python, entwined until death, Yu Youwei popped a fasting pill into her mouth and grinned. “To blunder into a beast-infested area and stumble upon such luck—when fortune comes, even city walls can’t keep it out.” With no one to contradict her, she attributed the mutual destruction of these two high-tier spirit beasts to her own lucky turn of fate.

The night air was chill, and through the mist above, she heard the raucous cries of birds winging homeward.

“I’d better hurry—another spirit beast showing up would be real trouble.” Yu Youwei stretched her numb limbs and, picking up a broken eagle talon, used its sharp tip to slit open the python’s belly. An oval-shaped egg rolled out. “Ah—what incredible luck, there’s even a spirit beast egg!” she exclaimed in delight.

While those with great power could subdue a high-tier beast as a companion, most people used their own blood to hatch spirit beast eggs—a simple process: as long as blood seeped into the shell, the bond was sealed.

Without hesitation, Yu Youwei used the eagle talon to cut her wrist and dripped blood onto the eggshell. The blood soaked in immediately, but then a strange numbness and pain shot from her wounded wrist, spreading swiftly. “Poisoned!” she cried in terror, failing to notice that her wrist remained pressed against the snake egg, and that a suction seemed to draw her blood rapidly within.

Soon her entire arm went numb, the skin taking on a greenish tinge. The paralysis swept through her body, and as her consciousness faded into darkness, she thought she heard the sound of the eggshell cracking. She tried desperately to open her eyes for a glimpse of the beast companion she had hatched, but her efforts were in vain.

A burst of light erupted in the endless darkness—at first a slender thread, soon a flash like lightning cleaving the gloom, illuminating his world.

“Hey, lazybones, get up and fix something for Lord Bear to eat!”

Utterly bewildered, Yu Youwei stared at the white bear cub, whose entire fluffy body was spotless, and could only gape in astonishment.

The bear cub, with almost human expressiveness, slapped its paw to its forehead and wailed, “Damn! Lord Bear has really fallen on hard times. That cursed contract was unlucky enough, but to end up bound to a fool—dragged down by an invincible imbecile, Lord Bear will be stuck as a cub until the end of time!”

Staggered by the talking cub’s complaints, Yu Youwei came fully to her senses. As she sat up, she noticed, to her surprise, a fledgling bird nestled at her thigh, its downy feathers still damp, their edges glimmering with a faint violet light.

“What on earth is going on?” Yu Youwei felt faint once more.

From the bear cub’s grumbling explanation, Yu Youwei pieced together what had happened: The serpent had swallowed a spirit beast egg, not knowing it was actually the egg of a divine white bear. Unable to digest it, the serpent was instead outwitted by the cunning, sentient cub within, who hid in the snake's belly absorbing the essence of its demon core. When Yu Youwei cut her wrist to drop blood, the bear cub mistook her blood for the refined demon essence and absorbed it, inadvertently sealing a master-servant contract.

As for the little eagle, the bear cub was unsure of its origins, but guessed that the gluttonous python had raided the thunder eagle’s nest and swallowed its egg, leading to the thunder eagle’s pursuit and the mutual destruction. The baby eagle hatched within the python’s belly just as Yu Youwei cut it open, and, seeing the bear cub first, mistook it for its mother and attached itself to them both.

Suddenly, Yu Youwei burst into wild laughter. Grabbing the white bear cub by the scruff, she leapt for joy, exclaiming, “From the depths of misfortune comes fortune—my luck has finally turned! This is heaven-defying!”

“Let me go, woman!” the bear cub shouted. As a divine beast, even newly hatched and weak as it was, it couldn’t withstand such treatment. The power of the contract, bound by the laws of heaven and earth, prevented it from resisting. Dizzy from being swung about, it finally pleaded, “Please, put Lord Bear down! One more shake and I’ll be sick!”

“Call me big sister, or I’ll make you vomit bile!” Yu Youwei threatened with a laugh.

“Idiot girl, I beg you, put Lord Bear down,” the cub grumbled.

“No matter how foolish I am, I can’t possibly be as foolish as you!” After another vigorous shake, Yu Youwei finally set the bear cub down with relish, and, cradling the sparkling-feathered baby eagle, said, “Let’s give your mother a proper burial.”

The white bear cub seemed born to communicate with the little eagle. After relaying Yu Youwei’s words, the small bird gently nuzzled her palm with its beak. When she dug a deep grave and laid the eagle to rest, the fledgling became even more attached to her.

“With you two, I’ll need to find a safe place to lie low for a while. Perhaps I really should go to the Ning family,” Yu Youwei mused, eyeing her new companions. Even as a mere novice in the Qi Refining stage, traveling with a baby thunder eagle would be enough to invite disaster—never mind that the white bear, even as a cub, was a divine beast. The Ning family might not be the best marriage prospect, but their reputation was solid. She could live off them as a freeloader for a few years, improve her strength, and then strike out again when it was safer.

Having made up her mind, Yu Youwei had the bear cub lead the little eagle at a distance, while she dragged the python’s carcass out of the gorge. The rain was slowing, the mist thinning into delicate threads that swayed with the breeze. The distant roar of a waterfall spilling into the pool only highlighted the deep stillness of the world around her.

After walking about five miles, a scream pierced the air—a voice that sounded just like Mu Yuyan! Yu Youwei’s face changed instantly. She dropped the python’s body and dashed toward the source of the cry, the white bear cub grumbling behind her, “What’s with the heroics now?” But she paid no heed.

She was not mistaken; it was indeed Mu Yuyan’s voice. Mu Yuyan and the others, including Mu Yuqi, had all been captured by Yu Shiyu’s group, bound with mountain vines and left hanging from the trees at the gorge’s entrance.

Following the sound, Yu Youwei arrived at the mouth of the gorge, just in time to hear Yu Shiyu shout, “She must be hiding in this gorge. Search again! Alive, I want to see her in person; dead, I want her corpse!” Yu Youwei’s face darkened, but she understood—her family would never let her escape a marriage.

No longer bothering to conceal herself, Yu Youwei strode boldly to the gorge’s entrance amid the shocked cries of the Yu family guards. Looking up at the Mu family, trussed and hanging from the trees, she remarked with a touch of mockery, “Second Brother, aren’t you making a bit much of this?”

Yu Shiyu, nearly at his wits’ end, abruptly lost his edge and smiled. “Well done, Little Ninth Sister. You truly are my sister. If anyone bullies you in the future, just give them my name.”