227: Good news awakens divine skills, bad news forcibly binds you!

The old, playful voice was like a depth charge dropped into a calm lake, instantly detonating Luo Tianfei's sanity.

Dual Cultivation?!

These two words were harder for her to endure than the Soul-piercing pain from earlier!

"Ah—! You old fossil, shut up!!"

A scream of utter shame and indignation erupted, accompanied by a towering crimson divine fire!

Rumble—!

In that instant, the water in the entire Yin-Yang Creation Pool boiled and evaporated! The terrifying high temperature reflected a crimson glow onto the ceiling of the Bronze Divine Hall!

Luo Tianfei stood up abruptly from the water, her phoenix eyes burning with purple divine fire as she locked onto the Gatekeeper's phantom, wishing she could grind his bones to ash.

However, her movement caused her perfect body, which had just been obscured by steam, to be exposed to the air once again without reservation.

"..."

Lu Sheng's gaze honestly shifted downward for a tenth of a second.

"What are you looking at!!"

Luo Tianfei's movement froze, then as if she had stepped on a live wire, she let out an even sharper scream and plunged back to the bottom of the pool in a pathetic "splash."

This time, she didn't even dare to show her head, only using a pair of murderous eyes to glare at the innocent-looking Gatekeeper in mid-air.

The atmosphere in the hall was so awkward one could carve out a Sanqing Hall with their toes.

"Troublesome."

Lu Sheng cursed inwardly.

He didn't have time to waste here with a bristling woman.

With a thought, a set of black combat gear instantly appeared on his body, covering his lean, sculpture-like muscles.

Then, without even looking at Luo Tianfei, he flipped his right hand, and a brand-new set of women's combat gear appeared out of thin air. He tossed it over his shoulder, and it landed precisely in the pool water in front of Luo Tianfei.

The movement was fluid and smooth, filled with impatient pragmatism.

"Put it on."

Those two cold words were like a bucket of cold water, dousing half of Luo Tianfei's rage.

She looked at the clothes floating in front of her, then at Lu Sheng, who had his back turned to her without the slightest lingering interest. She nearly crushed her silver teeth from biting down so hard.

This bastard!

What kind of attitude was that?!

Humiliation! This was blatant humiliation!

But she knew better than anyone that now was not the time to lash out.

Suppressing a belly full of fire, Luo Tianfei quickly put on the combat suit—which was surprisingly a perfect fit—under the water before standing up from the pool.

The tight black combat gear outlined her explosive, eye-catching figure perfectly. Combined with her frost-cold, Killing Intent-filled face, she looked like a goddess of vengeance about to go on a killing spree.

"Old man!" Luo Tianfei's voice was cold enough to drop ice shards, "You'd better give me an explanation!"

The Gatekeeper's phantom reappeared. He sized up the two people, whose temperaments had changed drastically, with great interest. He spoke slowly, but his words hit the newly dressed Luo Tianfei like a bolt from the blue.

"An explanation? It's very simple."

"The true mystery of the Yin-Yang Creation Pool is not the cleansing of marrow and tempering of bone, but rather—Unity."

"Dragon and Phoenix are inherently the two most extreme Yang and Yin Origin Sequences in heaven and earth. When your Bloodlines merged in the pool, it triggered the highest Restriction left behind by the Xianqin Civilization."

The Gatekeeper pointed at their foreheads, a mischievous smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

"From now on, a never-fading Dragon-Phoenix Mark has been planted deep within your Soul Origins."

"To put it simply, you have been mandatorily bound."

"Sharing life and death, honor and disgrace, until the end of this era."

Boom!

Luo Tianfei felt the world spinning. Her vision went dark, and she nearly blacked out from the shock.

Bo... bound?!

With this stinking rogue? This shameless bastard? This big long worm?!

She felt her worldview completely collapse at this moment.

"What do you mean?"

Lu Sheng's brow also instantly twisted into a knot.

He didn't like any variables that were out of his control.

The Gatekeeper seemed to enjoy their shocked expressions as he explained leisurely, "It means that from now on, you can share each other's perceptions and emotions to a certain extent. Furthermore, within a certain distance, if one party suffers a fatal injury, the other will suffer an equal backlash."

"Don't believe me? You can try."

Lu Sheng's gaze narrowed. Half-doubting, he closed his eyes and tried to sense the so-called 'Dragon-Phoenix Mark'.

The next second.

A flood of complex emotions—towering shame and indignation, endless Killing Intent, extreme humiliation, and even a trace of panic she hadn't noticed herself—rushed into his Sea of Consciousness without warning like a bursting dam!

"Fuck!"

Lu Sheng let out a muffled groan and snapped his eyes open, taking a sharp breath.

He felt as if he had just been scratched in the face by ten thousand bristling cats.

It really works!

This damn binding was real!

Seeing Lu Sheng's expression, which looked like he had swallowed a fly, how could Luo Tianfei not understand?

Her face, which had just regained some color, instantly turned deathly pale again.

It's over.

Her whole life was over.

She actually had to share her emotions with a man?

Wouldn't that mean she'd have no secrets left in the future?

At the thought that some of her unspeakable maidenly thoughts might be peered into by this bastard, Luo Tianfei wanted to find a block of tofu to bash her head against.

A deathly silence fell over the hall once again.

Only this time, the silence was permeated by a double dose of thick, inescapable anger and despair.

Looking at their expressions of utter hopelessness, as if the sky had fallen, the smile on the Gatekeeper's eternally unchanging face grew even wider.

He was like a viewer who had just finished a tragedy and immediately switched to a comedy channel, his emotions transitioning without any friction.

"What? Think you've lost out?"

The Gatekeeper floated between them, his tone carrying a hint of obvious schadenfreude.

"This seat thinks you've made a huge profit."

"Bullshit!"

Luo Tianfei almost squeezed those words out from between her gritted teeth.

The way she looked at the old man now was even more hostile than how she looked at Lu Sheng.

In her eyes, this old man was the culprit behind this malicious binding incident!

"Profit?" Lu Sheng's face was also as black as the bottom of a pot as he stared coldly at the Gatekeeper. "Don't you know exactly what I've lost?"

Gaining an emotional plugin for no reason, which would scream and spam his brain at any moment—no matter how he calculated it, this was a massive loss.

"Hoho, young man, don't just look at what's in front of you."

The Gatekeeper shook his head, adopting the posture of an elder who had seen it all.

He waved his hand.

Buzz—!

In the void before them, a massive light screen unfolded out of thin air.

The figures appearing on the screen were none other than Lu Sheng and Luo Tianfei.

"This is..." Both were stunned.

"The Dragon-Phoenix Mark is a shackle, but it is also a blessing," the Gatekeeper's voice became serious. "Its greatest function isn't sharing emotions, but... allowing your powers to achieve true 'Unity'!"

Before his voice could fade, the scene on the light screen changed abruptly.

The 'Lu Sheng' and 'Luo Tianfei' on the screen seemed to share a single mind, simultaneously activating their Sequence Bloodlines.

"Roar—!"

"Chirp—!"

A dragon roar and a phoenix cry.

A golden dragon shadow and a crimson phoenix shadow rose from their bodies, intertwining and circling in mid-air. Finally, they perfectly merged into a golden-red pillar of Chaos light that radiated an aura of destruction!

Within that pillar of light, the Dragon and Phoenix phantoms were faintly visible, seemingly containing a terrifying power as if capable of creating a new world.

"This is the ultimate Xianqin combined attack technique—"

"Dragon-Phoenix Heaven Incineration!"