The Endless Promise {COMPLETED}

155. Beneath Caoyang

.

For a thousand years, Bailong had lain in endless pain and agony.

In the constant darkness, he was chained in place, the golden cuffs around his wrist and ankles stretching him in all four directions.

Beneath him was a smooth and hard surface, harder than anything he had ever felt.

But harder still was the pressure from above...

It was the weight of an entire mountain after all, and it painfully bore down on him with enough pressure to grind him into fine dust.

But Immortal Jin wouldn't let him die so easily.

The golden chains drained his powers just enough to keep him from transforming or breaking free, but he remained immortal, so though the weight felt unbearably painful, he would remain alive to suffer it, till he ran mad from the pain and lost all sense of self!

And that wasn't all...

They had chosen Mount Caoyang- a place he had cherished.

There was no end to his bitterness in these thousand years... no end to the darkness in his heart, and he often feared that he might break free somehow and indeed become the demon he was accused of being!

It was only memories of Weiwei that calmed him, anchoring him to sanity, and he consoled himself with the thought that she was well. Surely her father would protect her until things settled in Sky Realm.

As long as Weiwei was okay, then it was worth it... even if he spent an eternity in the maddening pain and oppressive darkness.

But one day, light suddenly returned...

Tendrils of golden light reached him in the darkness, slowly weaving themselves around him, numbing him to the pain.

'Weiwei!' Of course he would recognise this aura... this presence he had yearned for- ached for through the years!

His heart lightened for a bit, as the sheer delight of her presence filled him in and out.

But his joy was short-lived as he realized what she was doing.

'No!'

Liwei was trying to free him!

'Yuan Jing!' He activated his far-seeing technique, then quickly cast around, using his meagre energy to locate her.

He gasped.

Yan Liwei sat somewhere in the sky above Mount Caoyang, a golden formation beneath her, as she cast hand seal after hand seal, directing streams of golden light downwards toward an even larger golden formation which covered the entire mountain.

But more importantly,

'She's alone!' Bailong thought with dismay, and it became clear what she intended to do.

The formation holding Bailong in place was ancient and powerful, resurrected for the singular purpose of punishing him, and it had taken Immortal Jin and more than twenty other powerful Immortals to seal him here.

Weiwei was attempting to use her phoenix essence to free him, but there would be no turning back once she did.

Even two sky Emperors wouldn't survive breaking such a formation on their own, so Bailong knew it would certainly claim her life!

~"Weiwei! Stop it at once!"~ He yelled into her mind. ~"Do you realize what you are doing?!"~

At first no reply came, and he thought he had failed to reach her. But then he could almost feel her smirk when he heard,