To say that the Lightning Sparrow was the most beautiful creature in all of existence wasn’t an exaggeration. It was truly a shame to humanity that no one had laid eyes on it in countless generations and many had even forgotten about its existence entirely.

The only reason Nazaire recognized the corpse immediately was because he was Dyon’s disciple. He had learned more than just a few things from his master, the origin of cursed beasts being among them. So, of course he had learned of the Lightning Sparrow as well.

But, what shocked him was that his master called this beast his… friend? His master had a cursed beast as a companion?

Even with how much Nazaire knew about his master and even with how much he revered his master, he was still shocked at this moment. It had to be said that those who could subdue a cursed creature were even rarer than those who could be called dragon or phoenix riders. It was simply inconceivable.

In addition to this, there were several levels amongst cursed creatures as well. They weren’t all created equal.

Cursed creatures like unicorns and certain fairies could still squeeze their way into certain mythos and hide within legends. However… who had ever heard of a Lightning Sparrow? They were so severely punished and suffered from curses so potent that their names were directly erased from history.

On the entire Immortal Plane, maybe the four of them here – Dyon, Nazaire, Saru and Lilith – were now aware that such a creature existed at all.

Dyon walked into the room, making his way toward Little Gold’s corpse. Even after so many years, the big guy looked like he was just sleeping.

The truth was that Dyon had begun researching cursed beasts because he felt like they held the secrets toward truly breaking free of the heavens. Truly think about it for a moment, all things that existed under the purview of the heavens could be considered its creations. In that case, why would the Heavens ever curse something it, itself, created? It didn’t make any sense.

The only explanation, then, was that these creations had managed to, in some form or fashion, break free of the grand plan the Heavens had marked out of them.

How would an almighty entity react to having its authority questioned? Even in the mortal world of Dyon’s 109th life, there were several empires who couldn’t even compare to the Heavens that did countless things to keep a hold of their power. They burned down libraries, committed mass genocide, indoctrinated generations of people with fear, hatred, racism, sexism… The list of terrible deeds was endless.

And those were just small scale powers. Powers so small that Dyon didn’t even deem them worthy of being seen as ants to him. They were simply too weak to even be that.

In that case, what would an existence with true power, like the Heavens, do? What lengths would it go to in order to hold onto its power? Just how many clans, sects, humans and creatures had suffered its oppression, only to never be remembered?

These were all things Dyon had wanted to know. He wanted to learn how it was he too could piss the Heavens off to such an extent.

Of course, Dyon had found out all the things he wanted to know long ago. To him, the revival of Little Gold didn’t have to do with these petty things any longer.

He had a promise to uphold. He had promised the big guy that there would come a day where the world would come to see her beauty again. It was about time he upheld that promise.

Dyon reached forward, patting Little Gold’s head. Her feathers felt so impossibly light to the touch that he nearly sunk into them. But, he knew that even dragon scales were nothing but an armor of stitched together tin cans in comparison to her coat.

Even in his prime, Dyon would have to exert all his effort to leave a scratch on her. Of course, if he cultivated to what would be his peak in this life, he estimated that he would be even more powerful than he had been in the past. But, he doubted his enemies would allow him the time to do such a thing.

But, he was fine with this. If it wasn’t like this… wouldn’t it all be too boring?

Dyon grinned.

“Look at him, fawning over another woman. What do you think, Little Saru, is that number 9? He’s such a pervert.” Lilith chortled.

“Husband does have … interesting tastes.” Saru replied. “I remember he said that Little Gold doesn’t have a human appearance because she was born in a very ancient era. Back then, beasts didn’t have the ability to turn into humans through cultivation. Beasts were beasts, and humans were humans.

“Who knew husband would still fall for her.”

Dyon nearly choked on his breath. What the hell was going on here? Why was he being attacked? He was just happy to see an old friend. He never even paid attention to Little Gold’s gender and was only aware of it after she nearly pecked him to death for peeking on her bathing.

He was still confused about that time. It wasn’t as though she had any clothes to take off, she was a bird. Why the hell had she been so angry back then?

Nazaire coughed and looked away, pretending not to have heard anything.