“My lord, this creature’s qi and blood flow in reverse, its fate is in chaos…”
“Someone! Bring me my cauldron!”
At Jia Wujie’s command, several ghost-masked guards sprang into action, hauling an enormous bronze cauldron to the center of the great hall.
The cauldron was so large it would take ten people with linked arms to encircle it; merely filling it with fresh water took half an hour.
Jia Wujie snapped his fingers, and a flame ignited beneath the cauldron, bringing the water to a rolling boil.
Chou Mingde’s expression grew worse and worse. He had never imagined that Jia Wujie would suddenly do something like this.
This “Four-Unlikes” was his masterpiece, created by crossing dozens of spirit mountains to handpick the finest specimens spirit horses, immortal deer, and other Spirit Beasts then fusing them together with secret arts and draping them in the skin of an albino python. Countless failures had gone into it, at enormous expense. It was beyond comparison with those earlier abominations like the “Human-Hound” and the “Bottle-Woman.”
He took pride in his flawless creation, confident it would surely win the Demon Venerable’s favor. Yet he never expected that with one careless remark, the Demon Venerable would order his masterpiece thrown into the cauldron, to be eaten as meat and broth like some lowly beast.
How could he possibly accept this?
But within this Demonic Palace, no one could defy the Demon Venerable’s word.
Chou Mingde clenched his fists as he watched the beautiful, sacred Four-Unlikes being thrown, struggling and screaming, into the giant cauldron of boiling water by the ghost-masked guards.
Under the boiling water’s cooking, the Four-Unlikes let out a miserable cry. Listening closely, one could hear the voices of several Spirit Beasts mixed within the howling, a horse’s neigh, a deer’s call, an ox’s lowing, and even the hiss of a snake flicking its tongue!
Xu Baizhou was stunned by the scene before him. Amid the churning of the giant cauldron, several glowing phantoms faintly emerged, a horse, a deer, an ox, and a giant python as thick as one person’s embrace!
They struggled and leaped upward, as if trying to escape the cauldron!
The sight was so uncanny that everyone present was struck dumb.
But the spectacle did not last long. The Four-Unlikes strained with its last strength to lift its pure white neck high, then let out a whimper and sank into the cauldron.
The flames beneath the cauldron kept burning, and a strange aroma of meat slowly began to drift from its mouth, echoing through the Demonic Palace.
Jia Wujie, who had been resting with his eyes closed, twitched his nostrils slightly, then opened his eyes.
Down below, the clear water in the giant cauldron had turned into a white meat broth, bubbling away, its unseasoned fragrance spreading in all directions.
But the sight of the Four-Unlikes being thrown alive into the cauldron and boiled to death had stripped everyone present of any appetite for the meaty aroma.
Everyone except Jia Wujie, seated high upon his platform.
At Jia Wujie’s command, ghost-masked guards immediately stepped forward and fished the now fully cooked Four-Unlikes out of the cauldron. Before everyone’s eyes, it was cut into countless pieces of meat and arranged on plates.
The plates of meat were distributed among those seated on both sides of the hall, and all of them looked at the meat before them with visible distress.
Then Jia Wujie was the first to pick up a steaming-hot piece of meat with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth. After swallowing, he looked at the crowd, who still hesitated to raise their chopsticks, slammed his chopsticks down on the table, and barked: “Eat!”
The crowd below the stage exchanged glances, still hesitating. Seeing this, Jia Wujie waved his hand, and the ghost-masked guards standing around the great hall immediately sprang into action, grabbing the meat from the plates and shoving it into everyone’s mouths. In no time, all the meat had been forced down their throats.
Xu Baizhou watched those people retching repeatedly, their faces turning green, and for a moment couldn’t tell which was worse standing here or sitting over there.
Once the Four-Unlikes had been completely divided and eaten, several ghost-masked guards carried the giant cauldron aside. The flames beneath it still burned, and the water inside still boiled, as if ready to throw something else in at any moment.
After all this commotion, only three birthday gifts had been presented. Jia Wujie seemed to have no desire to inspect them one by one any longer, and said, “Enough, enough. All of you, withdraw. Dang Ji, put everything away carefully. I’ll look at it when I have time!”
At these words, Xu Baizhou immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness, I won’t be thrown into the cauldron and boiled alive, Xu Baizhou thought.
Just as he was about to withdraw with the crowd, he suddenly heard Jia Wujie say, as if remembering something, “Chi Xian Cang Gui, I nearly forgot about you two. I dote on you two the most, you know. For my birthday, what have you prepared?”
Chi Xian Cang Gui, what an interesting name, Xu Baizhou thought gleefully, wondering which two unlucky souls it belonged to.
At that moment, a voice sounded beside his ear.
“Venerable One! Venerable One! We’re over here!”
Xu Baizhou’s eyes went wide as he watched the red-haired big guy excitedly raise his hand, then drag him forward, pushing through the crowd to the front.
Chi Xian and Cang Gui took positions on either side of Xu Baizhou, and with a shove, they pushed him to the ground, kneeling before Jia Wujie.
So the unlucky one is me, Xu Baizhou thought.
He heard the two of them declare in unison: “The Heavenly Demon ascends the Divine Land, ten thousand ghosts follow the Holy Master! Chi Xian and Cang Gui wish the Venerable One ten thousand years of life and dominion over Shangyang!”
With that, the two knelt down in unison and kowtowed three resounding times to Jia Wujie.
“Hahahaha! Good, good! You two are the most sensible. A reward!” Chi Xian Cang Gui’s routine worked wonderfully on Jia Wujie before they had even presented their gift, they had already earned several chests of rewards.
The two were overjoyed, showering Jia Wujie with flattery and praise, coaxing peal after peal of laughter from him.
Only after several rounds of rewards did they begin introducing Xu Baizhou whose legs had gone numb from kneeling to Jia Wujie.
“Venerable One, behold! This is the birthday gift we two present to you today!”
Chi Xian grabbed a handful of Xu Baizhou’s smooth short hair, forcing his face upward, where it met Jia Wujie’s gaze on the stage, half playful, half probing.
“What’s special about this one?” Jia Wujie said, studying Xu Baizhou’s face for a moment.
Cang Gui stammered, “V-Venerable One, this man’s qi and blood flow in reverse, his f-fate is in chaos, he is a superb Medicinal Catalyst! We need only c-confine him in the dungeon, f-feed him with d-demonic potion, and after n-ninety-nine and eighty-one days, boil and eat him. It will be worth a hundred times the demonic potion’s effect, and will help the Venerable One’s Cultivation Base advance greatly!”
Xu Baizhou was shocked to hear this. These two had presented him to the Demon Venerable so that he could be eaten?
But then Xu Baizhou thought about it, well, fair enough. Aside from being eaten, he didn’t seem to have much other use anyway.
Yet Jia Wujie’s brow lifted slightly, and he said, “Oh? But I feel this one seems rather strange.”
“Strange?” Cang Gui looked at Xu Baizhou, then at the other monsters that had been presented as birthday gifts, and said, “My lord, is this… strange?”
“Strange,” Jia Wujie said earnestly. “And ugly. The sight of him has completely ruined this sovereign’s appetite.”
Wonderful. To think he had escaped disaster because he looked strange and ugly, Xu Baizhou thought, not knowing whether he should be happy or sad.
But what Jia Wujie said next made Xu Baizhou’s just-settled heart tighten up all over again.
Jia Wujie frowned and studied him for a long while, then declared, “Far too strange. Someone, come here!”
Several ghost-masked guards immediately stepped forward to receive orders.
“You few twist his two arms together for me!”
At Jia Wujie’s command, two ghost-masked guards lunged forward, each seizing one of Xu Baizhou’s arms.
“No, no, no, AAAH!”
Without a moment’s pause, there came a “crack,” and one of Xu Baizhou’s arms had been twisted clean off!
It’s over, Xu Baizhou thought. It seems I’m going to die a miserable death here today.
Xu Baizhou had been sickly since childhood. From a very young age, he had known he might not live long, and yet somehow he had limped along in frail health all the way into his twenties.
Over those twenty-odd years, he had imagined the scene of his own death countless times. Perhaps on a quiet morning, or in a noisy afternoon. At home, or in a hospital room.
But he had never imagined that his death would come in a place like this.
This strange, eerie, terrifying, gloomy place, a place of complete and utter unknown.
Agonizing pain radiated from his shoulder. Xu Baizhou couldn’t tell whether the arm was still attached to his body; in fact, apart from the pain, his arm had lost all sensation entirely.
Xu Baizhou was about to die absurdly, right here.
But at that very moment, Jia Wujie suddenly began coughing violently! The coughs were heart-rending, as if he were about to hack up his very heart and liver.
“My lord!” Dang Ji was the first to react, rushing forward.
But before Dang Ji could reach him, Jia Wujie pitched forward and toppled from the high platform.
Jia Wujie lay on the floor of the great hall, eyes shut tight, face deathly pale, without any sign of breath.
Dang Ji propped him up and fed a demonic potion into his mouth, while Chi Xian Cang Gui also rushed over in tears and panic to check on Jia Wujie’s condition. The great hall descended into chaos, and for the moment, no one paid any attention to Xu Baizhou with his broken arm.
Seeing Jia Wujie collapsed and unmoving, the crowd that had been seated on both sides of the hall began to stir.
Someone stepped forward and shouted, “Jia Wujie is utterly heartless! He killed my master and slaughtered my sect, and even forced me to come here and celebrate his birthday! This is Heaven giving us our chance! As disciples of the Immortal Sects, we should all rush forward now and slay this demon fiend on the spot!”
At once, another rose to echo him: “Indeed! I am Ruan Zhengping of the Wind Cloud Garden. Half a month ago, Jia Wujie came to our Wind Cloud Garden, demanding that our sect attend his birthday here at the Demonic Palace to offer our congratulations. When my master refused, he slaughtered every one of our hundred-plus disciples, sparing only me to be held hostage here and subjected to this humiliation! Everyone present must have suffered the same! Why not join together and avenge our sects!”
In an instant, countless Immortal Sect disciples rose to their feet and charged at Jia Wujie!
The ghost-faced guards around them immediately sprang into action, clashing with the Immortal Sect disciples in a chaotic melee. But the Immortal Sect disciples outnumbered them, and each fought as if determined to drag Jia Wujie down to death with them, no matter the cost. For a moment, their momentum actually overwhelmed the ghost-faced guards.
One Immortal Sect disciple broke through the guards’ encirclement first, whirled around, and struck out with a palm aimed straight at Jia Wujie!
At that very moment, the entire Demonic Palace suddenly went dark.
The abrupt change made everyone present freeze, holding their breath as they waited for whatever was hidden in the darkness.
From within the blackness came a rustling, scraping sound of something enormous crawling past, as if something even more dangerous was stirring. The entire Demonic Palace grew colder and more terrifying.
Suddenly, a scream of agony exploded beside everyone’s ears followed by the thunderous crash of flesh and bone hitting the ground!
The smell of blood spread through the Demonic Palace, accompanied by more rustling sounds and the noise of a corpse being dragged across the floor.
Xu Baizhou knelt in the great hall, closest to Jia Wujie and the others.
Though everything around was pitch black, Xu Baizhou could still make out from the blurry shadows before him what had just happened.
It was a massive black tentacle. The tentacle had shot up from beneath the ground, effortlessly blasting away the person who had tried to attack Jia Wujie and then devoured his flesh and blood.
An eerie red glow emanated from above.
By that faint crimson light, everyone looked up, only to see that the entire interior of the Demonic Palace had been enveloped by some black, constantly writhing substance. A gigantic single eye hung from the palace’s ceiling, staring fixedly at everyone from within that mass of blackness!
In that round, solitary eye, a blood-red pupil radiated crimson light, illuminating the entire Demonic Palace.
“The Demonic Palace, it’s come alive…!”