After Transmigrating, I Died of Depression Without My Phone - Chapter 90.1
Everything had happened so suddenly.
So suddenly that Long Xiang had no way to make sense of it all.
Beiting Xue and the demon queen had disappeared together, leaving the world shrouded in eternal night. It wasn’t until the cultivators and the Northern Court royal family surrounded her that she snapped out of her daze.
An overwhelming sense of unease gripped her heart. It reminded her of the time she had been forcefully possessed by the shards of the Celestial Ladder at the bottom of the Demon Cave.
Around her, chaotic voices and countless figures bombarded her with endless questions. Everyone was waiting for an answer. But who could she turn to for a definitive answer?
Pushing past the crowd, Long Xiang rushed back to the Hall of Souls. She made her way to the towering structure filled with spirit tablets and soul lamps, her trembling hands reaching out to steady Beiting Xue’s toppled soul lamp.
As the new ruler, Beiting Xue’s soul lamp was placed at the very bottom, easily visible.
When the lamp had fallen, the angle made it impossible to tell if it was still burning. But now that she had righted it, the truth was clear.
The soul lamp had gone out.
Beiting Xue… was dead.
Dead?
How could this happen?
Long Xiang couldn’t feel any sense of reality. It felt as though everything unfolding before her was just a dream, one from which she would soon wake up, only to find herself and Beiting Xue still resting peacefully in their small house.
Unable to believe it, she pinched her arm hard. The pain was sharp, leaving her skin red, but she didn’t wake up from this nightmare, and nothing around her changed.
Her hand, which still held the soul lamp, began to tremble even more. Her breathing grew erratic as she desperately tried to stay calm, but it was proving to be impossible.
Frantically, she pulled out her phone, scrolling through the album, hoping she had missed something. She refused to believe Beiting Xue would choose to sacrifice himself before she had even disappeared. There had to be something that triggered this. He couldn’t be dead.
Absolutely not.
But before she could even open her phone, something else emerged. The weakened 4897, locked in her storage ring for so long, suddenly broke free. Unlike Long Xiang, 4897 was now brimming with power, easily shattering the seal she had placed on it. It floated high in the air, looking down at her in her moment of confusion.
“I told you not to watch, didn’t I?”
The light orb swelled, faintly taking on a human form.
Long Xiang shut her eyes and turned away, feeling somewhat blinded by its glow.
The orb of light lazily said, “You wanted to kill Bai Qingyin, but from the start, that was a mistake. Her fate is deeply intertwined with Beiting Xue’s. If you kill her, then Beiting Xue must die as well. Don’t you remember the ending from the book?”
Of course she remembered.
And she kept replaying it in her mind.
Was 4897 implying that Long Xiang had caused Beiting Xue’s death with her own hands? That as long as Bai Qingyin died, Beiting Xue would have to sacrifice himself too? Was that what it meant?
Long Xiang slowly straightened herself, carefully storing away Beiting Xue’s soul lamp before turning her gaze toward the familiar yet now-strange light orb.
“You’re really an AI?”
She had believed it before. After all, it had played its role well. But now, things clearly weren’t that simple.
“Heh.”
The orb chuckled, rising higher, its power growing stronger as it drifted closer to the divine pillar of the Celestial Ladder.
“Whether I am or not, that’s not something you’re qualified to ask anymore!”
The orb laughed cheerfully. “Long Xiang, all those days you humiliated me—what a terrible experience that was! But I’ll let it go. Now that the ending is as it should be and you’ve finally set things right, I’ll spare you this time.”
“Where are you going?”
Long Xiang asked, though she already had an idea.
The light orb now resembled the figure of a young man.
“I came from where I belong. Naturally, I’m returning to where I came from!”
The divine pillar of the Celestial Ladder rose from the Hall of Souls, piercing through the clouds and disappearing into the sky, its peak unseen.
The light orb followed the pillar, vanishing as it ascended, and Long Xiang finally turned to look at the magnificent pillar radiating multicolored light.
It was called the Celestial Ladder, yet there wasn’t a single step on it. Long Xiang attempted to climb it, but unsurprisingly, she failed.
She stood there silently for a long time, then finally pulled out her phone and opened her album. All the videos had vanished.
Her phone’s battery was nearly dead. She tried to channel her spiritual energy into it, but it had little effect.
She frowned, and for the first time, a real sense of failure began to sink in.
The royal family members and cultivators she had ignored earlier flooded into the Hall of Souls at that moment, laying eyes on the divine pillar of the Celestial Ladder.
“This is… the Celestial Ladder has been restored!!”
Someone shouted, and soon, exclamations of shock and awe followed one after another. Everyone was excited, ecstatic. Even though it was still pitch black outside, no one seemed to care. Their eyes were fixed on the Celestial Ladder, their bodies flooded with immense spiritual power. The overwhelming relief after all their suffering brought tears to their eyes.
At this moment, even tears were tears of joy.
Before they had seen the Celestial Ladder, they might have still cared about Beiting Xue’s whereabouts. But now, it didn’t matter at all.
What could possibly be more important than the Celestial Ladder?
The Celestial Ladder had been restored. Spiritual energy surged back into the world, and everything felt in perfect harmony. This was the best outcome anyone could hope for!
All those who had previously supported Beiting Xue only did so because they needed the strongest person to help them repair the Celestial Ladder. Now that their ultimate goal had been achieved, Beiting Xue’s existence would only become an obstacle, someone to control them or, worse, compete with them for access to the Celestial Ladder. The best-case scenario was that he would never appear again.
Long Xiang watched with open eyes as these people cast Beiting Xue aside, no longer concerned about her either. They scrambled and fought among themselves, each trying to climb the Celestial Ladder to see what lay on the other side of the world.
She found it laughable but didn’t bother stopping them. She simply watched coldly.
Soon enough, trouble began. Those who had come into contact with the Celestial Ladder developed strange red rashes all over their bodies. The rashes were unbearably itchy, and those who scratched them found their skin breaking apart. The spiritual energy they had gathered began leaking out from the wounds, merging with the energy radiating from the Celestial Ladder.
The spiritual energy didn’t seem to go anywhere—it remained, circling around the Celestial Ladder, never leaving its vicinity.
Long Xiang couldn’t help but think of Bai Qingyin and Beiting Changyuan.
Every time Beiting Changyuan was with Bai Qingyin, he would feel as though his body had healed, so he became deeply infatuated with her. For a long period, Beiting Changyuan was unable to leave Bai Qingyin’s side, spending day and night with her.
From Long Xiang’s perspective, every time Beiting Changyuan separated from Bai Qingyin, his health deteriorated rapidly, worse than before. Now, these cultivators were in a similar situation with the Celestial Ladder. The ladder was playing the same role Bai Qingyin had once played. But what connection did Bai Qingyin have with the Celestial Ladder?
If Beiting Xue was truly dead… what about her?
Was Bai Qingyin really dead?