My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

"Let's go, Wolfmother."0

"I can't stay away from here for long. If you insist on leaving, go alone."0

"What if I want you to sleep with me?"0

"Then sleep here." She straightened. All around, the wolves dropped and huddled, forming a vast, snow‑white, fur‑soft bed. She pointed at it. "Here."0

"I heard a Wolfmother once bore a child out in the wider world."0

"A fabrication, meant to draw us closer to the Nine Flames. Tell a lie often enough and it becomes truth."0

Li Yuan laughed, swept her up, and leapt onto the living mattress; the wolves sagged but held. "Think the gods will feel insulted if we do it in front of their tomb?"0

She froze, eyes flying open, an angle she hadn't considered.0

He chuckled, flipped back to the ground, and called to her across the wolf bed, "Next time we meet, have a name. The tundra never sees the sun, so I'll show you the sunset over the mountains. I promise it will be beautiful."0

Without another word he left.0

I'm growing more shameless, he thought,staging these sappy moments at the drop of a hat.Yet some people still carried his genuine feelings, and that was enough.1

The wolf bed rose, lifting the woman in the silver dress. Watching him vanish, she whispered, "Sunset… Is it really that beautiful? What does it look like? Why can't I remember?"0

Her voice faltered, as though something corrected her thoughts. Face hardening, she led the pack and, cold aura swirling, marched back toward the maze.0

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙0

Li Yuan returned to the Trueflame Tribe and entrusted Finn to Shen'dai Nar, a girl who had once confessed to him when he first became the Grand Elder and now served as the most loyal member of theKhagan Faction.0

Then he slipped into the tent closest to the bonfire and shared an ardent night with Snow. She had heard the rumors about the Wolfmother and did her best to please him.0

Afterward, he wiped the sweat from her brow and explained hisrelationshipwith the Wolfmother, skipping the details that could put her life in danger. The big, honest girl believed every word and was happy again.2

After a nap, Li Yuan set Snow behind him on a direwolf and rode to the Evernight Line. Before them was eternal darkness to the west, rare clear daylight to the east, and a razor‑sharp border of light and shadow.0

The two lounged against the direwolf's shaggy flank, chatting about small, homely things while he waited for the sun to set. Clouds ruined the first evening, with snowfall crossing the line onto the daylight side.0

So they returned and tried again the next day.0

It went on like this for more than ten days until Cloudpeak Province's long winter finally eased. At last, they caught the sunset. The line wasn't perpetually storm‑bound after all.0

Clasped together, Li Yuan and Snow watched a furnace red disc sink toward the west and vanish the instant it touched the boundary.0

In that heartbeat, searing heat flooded Li Yuan's chest. He jumped up and exhaled a cone of flame nearly a thousand feet long. The surrounding snow vaporised; and the earth baked bone‑dry, cracking and smoking like drought‑parched farmland.0

Snow clapped in delight. "Darling, you're amazing!"0

Shouldn't you be concerned instead?Li Yuan smiled wryly, shaking his head.That blast was far beyond my usual limit, almost a thousand feet. For a moment, the Yang energy here must have spiked to an incredible density. In other words…0

Li Yuan tipped his head back. The clear sky had fallen abruptly into gloom, and at the far horizon the Evernight Line carved day from darkness.0

He concluded,So it isn't tidal locking, nor some illusion I don't understand. The sun really ends its journey here. This place…is the very edge of the world. Then what, exactly, is that unbroken night behind me?5

Only Li Yuan could run such a test. As far as he knew, no one else possessed an Everflame within them. Without it, a person would never feel that sudden surge of pure Yang when the sun vanished. They would never realise they were standing at the world's rim.0

A colossal double‑fish tomb ofgods, a cemetery of deceptive deaths, the enigmatic Wolfmother, the bonfires of the Nine Flames identical in size, the world's end, frozen night, nameless gods… It was all layers of fog; nothing in clear sight.0

Li Yuan had subdued the Nine Flames and even gained the promise of every future Wolfmother. Yet his expedition to the Western Extremes had ended not with a full stop, but a question mark the size of the sky.0

"Darling? What's wrong?" Snow, the simple girl, shook him from his reverie.0

"It's nothing," he smiled. "Let's head home."0

She hugged his waist from behind, whispering, "I want to give you a child."0

The direwolf padded into the swirling snow of the Evernight.0

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙0

Back at the Trueflame Tribe, Li Yuan and Snow enjoyed a long, fiery night together.0

Afterwards, Li Yuan slipped out alone; it was time to forge the Khagan's Token.0

He would do the work himself. He was, after all, one of the Great Zhou's foremost weaponsmiths. When he forged Azure Serpent he'd discovered something vital. Pure Yin could replace source blood in a weapon's core. That blade held none of his own power, only Yan Yu's; anyone could wield it, yet should he beckon, the blade would still return to its true master.0

If Yin could shape steel into a long blade, could pure Yang, the flame in his veins, birth an axe?0

The people of the Nine Flames were children of fire. An axe hammered in flame would resonate with their very marrow. Only such a weapon could become a true symbol of rule.0

Without delay, Li Yuan flew back to the Tang Sect, retrieved his personal furnace, and collected nearly 100 kg of fresh blood crystal marrow that Tang Nian had finally sourced.0

He warmed up on a few seventh rank trinkets, tossed them to Tang Nian, then tipped the blood crystal marrow into the crucible.0

Metal bloomed, molten and bright. Li Yuan exhaled a steady blaze onto the embryonic axe. Even at that heat, the Ghost Hammer sat motionless.0

With a single breath, he fed the mix a drop of source blood and 500 years of lifespan, then swung the hammer in a storm of ringing blows.1

Heavenly thunder rolled in, merging instantly with the fire he spat; earth fog, crowded out by the rampant Yang, bounced a few aimless times along the ground before fading.0

Time stretched.0

At last came the long hiss of quenching. Half a mountain spring flashed to mist. And from the steam emerged an axe‑head of blinding gold, like a fragment of the sun itself.1

Li Yuan fitted it with a top quality blood gold handle, then carved the runes he'd planned—the nine crests of the Nine Flames circling a single flame.0

Hours passed before the last groove was cut. He drew a breath and hefted the giant axe. The balance was perfect. The moment it touched his palms, dormant Yang inside him surged; his cultivation leapt from fifth rank to fourth.0

Unlike White Serpent or Azure Serpent, the axe didn't belong to him alone. It awakened the Everflame born Yang energy in anyone who held it.0

Without resting, Li Yuan sped over to Eightlinks to meet Sulajgar, and handed over the weapon.0

The man's eyes went wide. His own fifth rank aura vaulted straight to fourth.0

In Li Yuan's sight, the numbers hovering above Suljagar's head shot from 1,710~1,725 to 1,710~13,200, enough to duel a vice master of the Black Lotus Cult.0

Astonished, Suljagar stammered, "Khagan, this…?"0

"The Khagan's Axe, born of the Everflame," Li Yuan declared. "Heaven's gift to our tribe! Go. Call the Nine Flames together. Let everyone know. From this day forward, this axe shall pass to every future khagan. Without it, no one has the right to claim the title."5