Legend Management Bureau Chapter 257

[ … words ]

Seeing Du Yu’s serious expression, Xie Yujiao felt a twinge of uncertainty.

“What’s with the serious face?” Xie Yujiao smiled at Du Yu. “Is there anything the two of us can’t say to each other?”

Hearing Xie Yujiao say this, Du Yu furrowed his brows slightly.

He had so many questions running through his mind that he simply did not know where to start.

“Du Yu, are you listening?” Xie Yujiao called out again when she saw he had no reaction.

“I’m listening…” Du Yu snapped back to reality. He looked at Xie Yujiao and slowly asked, “A’jiao, how exactly did you meet the Seventh Lord and the Eighth Lord?”

Xie Yujiao paused for a moment, then burst into laughter, looking completely relieved.

“What are you laughing at?” Du Yu looked at her in confusion.

“Du Yu, how did you know they took me in?”

His first question was how Xie Yujiao wasn’t actually Xie Bi’an’s descendant. His second was why she didn’t seem to want to hide it at all.

“Will my true identity change how you see me?” Xie Yujiao asked him.

“Of course not,” Du Yu replied, shaking his head. “But I have to admit, I’m terribly curious. If you weren’t born into the Xie family, who were you before all this?”

“Before?” Xie Yujiao offered a bitter smile. “I could have been anyone in the world, except Xie Yujiao.”

“I don’t understand,” Du Yu shook his head. “What do you mean you could be anyone, except Xie Yujiao?”

Xie Yujiao did not answer his question directly. Instead, she pulled Du Yu aside, sat him down, and asked, “Du Yu, do you believe there are people in this world who exist outside the Six Paths of Reincarnation?”

“Outside the Six Paths?” Du Yu pondered the concept for a moment but drew a blank. “You mean the Six Paths to Reincarnate?”

“Exactly,” Xie Yujiao nodded. “No matter who you are in this world, you must experience the Six Paths of Reincarnation after death. But I do not enter that cycle.”

Du Yu nodded slowly. He felt like he understood, yet he had even more questions now.

“Wait… you’re saying you bypass the Six Paths of Reincarnation? Does that mean you won’t enter the Underworld after you die?”

Xie Yujiao nodded, a wry smile touching her lips. “It sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth.”

“Hold on,” Du Yu hurriedly shook his head. “I don’t get it. How do you know you won’t enter Hell after death? It’s not like you’ve died before.”

“Haha.” Xie Yujiao covered her mouth, chuckling softly. “Who said I’ve never died? Before I met the Eighth Lord, I had already died dozens of times…”

“Huh?” Du Yu was getting even more confused. “A’jiao, if you can’t enter Hell, how could you have died dozens of times? You aren’t supposed to be able to Reincarnate…”

“No,” Xie Yujiao said, shaking her head. “I think… I might be one of the world’s “forgotten ones.” Just because I can’t enter Hell doesn’t mean I cannot Reincarnate. Whenever I die, I turn into a solitary soul wandering the mortal realm. After my first death, I roamed aimlessly for decades before accidentally discovering that I could choose an expecting mother and Reincarnate on my own. I’ve done it many times since then. As long as I attach myself to a pregnant woman in labor, I am reborn into this world as a newborn.”

Du Yu nodded slowly. So this was what it meant to be a “Reincarnator”?

“I think I’m starting to understand. But when you put it like that… it doesn’t sound like a bad deal. Your method to Reincarnate simply shifted from ‘Underworld Assigned’ to ‘Do-It-Yourself.’ Looked at another way, you actually saved the Underworld some paperwork,” Du Yu joked.

“Is it really that simple?” Xie Yujiao looked at him with resignation. “Du Yu, you might be overlooking a crucial detail. If I cannot enter the Underworld after I die, then I cannot drink the Meng Po Soup. I have lived under dozens of different identities while carrying the exact same memories. It is not a blessing. I remember everyone, but no one ever remembers me.”

“Oh… you’re right!” Du Yu suddenly realized. Before stepping onto the Reincarnation Platform, a soul had to drink the Meng Po Soup. But Xie Yujiao bypassed that process entirely. This meant she would never forget the events of her past lives. No wonder she called herself the “forgotten one” of this world.

But what exactly caused her to have such a unique constitution?

“And so, I aimlessly drifted through lifetime after lifetime, not even knowing the purpose of my own existence. If I happened to Reincarnate into a body with decent innate talent, I could still practice some spells. If I ended up in a body with poor aptitude, I was doomed to live a completely mediocre life,” Xie Yujiao continued. “After roughly two thousand years… my existence finally caught the attention of the Seventh Lord and the Eighth Lord.”

“Did they arrest you and drag you down to the Underworld?” Du Yu asked.

“Not quite…” Xie Yujiao shook her head. “The Eighth Lord personally sought me out. He asked if I wanted to end my current existence and start a completely new path. I was only thirteen years old in that lifetime. I had just witnessed the death of my parents and was on the verge of ending my own life… but he appeared before me like a savior.”

Du Yu nodded. “So that’s why you said they ‘took you in’…”

“Exactly. The Eighth Lord brought me back to the Impermanence Hall and entrusted me to the Seventh Lord to raise. I owe the Seventh Lord a debt of gratitude as heavy as a mountain. He didn’t just teach me top-tier cultivation techniques; he gave me a brand-new identity. And thus, “Xie Yujiao” was born, and has lived on to this day.”

Du Yu finally grasped what made Xie Yujiao so unique. Compared to a Great Pivot, she sounded more like a glitch in the very fabric of the world. But as he pondered it further, another question came to mind.

“Wait…” Du Yu hesitated, then asked, “When was the ‘first’ you born? And what exactly caused you to develop this constitution in the first place?”

“My earliest memory dates back to the lifetime where we first met. I have no idea if I ever went through the Six Paths of Reincarnation prior to that,” Xie Yujiao answered truthfully. “In that life, I was just the daughter of an ordinary soldier. There was absolutely nothing special about me.”

Du Yu knew deep down that Xie Yujiao wasn’t lying. It seemed that even she couldn’t fully explain the origin of her circumstances.

When Xie Yujiao first appeared in the Jade Emperor’s legends, she was already capable of using teleportation arrays—a magic that wouldn’t become popular until centuries later. Du Yu refused to believe this was a mere coincidence. She had to be harboring deeper secrets, ones that even she was unaware of.

Du Yu had a sinking feeling that a “Reincarnator” might be an “advanced Great Pivot”—something so deeply anomalous that the world itself refused to acknowledge their existence.

Just as Xie Yujiao had said, the world had abandoned them.

“Well, if that’s the case, I have no further questions.” Du Yu slowly stood up, preparing to take his leave.

“That’s it?” Xie Yujiao looked at him in surprise. “You just wanted to know who I really was?”

“Pretty much,” Du Yu nodded. “I know the exact background of everyone working at the Legend Management Bureau, but you were the sole exception. While most of my doubts have been cleared up, there are still a few mysteries left. Still, I’m not in a rush. I’m sure time will give me the answers.”

Du Yu had just reached the door when he ran straight into Zhi Nv.

“Du Yu, there you are!” Zhi Nv called out softly.

“Hey, Zhi Nv. What’s going on?”

“Fairy Yunxiao used spatial teleportation to deliver the Golden Flood Dragon Scissors.”

“Delivered? Already?” Du Yu exclaimed in surprise. “Where is this Fairy Yuanxiao anyway?”

“What do you mean ‘Yuanxiao’? It’s ‘Fairy Yunxiao’, one of the Three Xiao Fairies,” Zhi Nv corrected him. “She seemed terrified of running into the Western Queen Mother, so she dropped off the Golden Flood Dragon Scissors and fled in a hurry.”

“She just left?” Du Yu rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little sheepish. “We didn’t even get a chance to thank her properly.”

“You don’t need to thank her. I’ll be delivering the Western Queen Mother’s return gift to them shortly,” Zhi Nv replied. “But before I do that, go grab Jin Jianglang. Let’s take a look at the Magical Treasure together.”

Du Yu nodded and followed Zhi Nv out. They swung by Jin Jianglang’s room to pick him up before heading to the main hall of the Legend Management Bureau.

A large crowd of onlookers had already gathered. It was everyone’s first time witnessing a Magical Treasure of this caliber, and their sheer astonishment was written all over their faces.

Even before they could get close, Du Yu and the others noticed threads of brilliant light piercing through the gaps in the crowd. If they listened closely, they could hear the faint, astonishing sound of a dragon’s hum resonating in the air.

Du Yu pushed his way through the crowd to the front of the table. Hovering silently above the wood was a massive pair of Scissors.

The weapon was taller than a grown man. Its primary body was a brilliant gold and covered entirely in dragon scales. The blades radiated a pure, piercing white light, exuding a sharp, bloodthirsty aura akin to a flood dragon’s fangs. Four dragon claws sprouted along each side of the blades, while the handles culminated in azure tail fins that fanned out symmetrically to the left and right. With just a subtle twitch of the fins, the Scissors slowly rotated in midair, hovering autonomously as if possessing a sentience of its own.

Shiranui Jinjiro was so stunned that his jaw hung wide open. The difference between these Golden Flood Dragon Scissors and his own Scissor Slash was truly staggering.

“A-As expected of China… to actually possess an artifact forged from two complete flood dragons…” Jin Jianglang stammered.

“Brother of A’xiang, I should probably correct you right now. We don’t typically call these things ‘artifacts.’ They are known as ‘Magical Treasures.’ As the saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. You’d better get used to the terminology.”

“O-Of course,” Jin Jianglang nodded.

Zhi Nv slowly approached and looked at Jin Jianglang. “Jin Jianglang, from now on, this is your Magical Treasure.”

“Huh?” While Jin Jianglang was ecstatic to hear this, he was mostly just overwhelmed with disbelief. “Isn’t this too precious? I only just got here… Besides, wasn’t the agreement that we were only ‘borrowing’ it?”

“You might not fully grasp Chinese social customs,” Zhi Nv said, shaking her head. “Although the Western Queen Mother said we were ‘borrowing’ them, she also prepared a return gift. In theory, returning the item is now out of the question.”

Jin Jianglang turned back to look at Du Yu. “Can I really accept this?”

“Of course. Aside from you, no one else here could possibly bring out its true potential.” Du Yu grabbed the Golden Flood Dragon Scissors, fully intending to shove them into Jin Jianglang’s hands. However, he drastically underestimated their weight. The Scissors were unbelievably heavy, and the momentum dragged Du Yu forward until he face-planted spectacularly onto the floor. The scene was incredibly awkward.