Yan Zhu carefully looked over the character who was second only to the female protagonist in popularity within her book, arriving at a silent appraisal: Truly worthy of being the second male lead, he certainly looks the part of a suave scoundrel.
As the second male lead, Ling Jue’s defining trait was “demonic.”
His features were demonic, his bloodline was demonic, and his cultivation techniques were demonic.
Currently, the largest demonic cultivation faction in the Western Continent was the Blood Rain Pavilion, and its master was his father,the ancient monster who had recently emerged from seclusion.
The old monster was named Ling Jun. In his youth, he could barely be considered a genius, but within a Blood Rain Pavilion that teemed with geniuses, he lacked the edge needed to be designated for high-level cultivation resources.
That status quo held until he offended a direct disciple of a Northern Continent sect over a certain matter and was hunted down. By a stroke of good fortune, during his desperate flight, he blundered into an ancient tomb and returned with a lower-tier Heaven-grade cultivation manual.
Relying on that manual, Ling Jun gradually outpaced his fellow disciples, ascending to the Spiritization realm within a mere century. The position of Blood Rain Pavilion Master naturally fell into his hands.
Unlike Yan Zhu, who possessed the complete backstory and all the inciting details as the author, characters within the book’s universe still viewed his rapid rise as an unsolved mystery.
Ling Jun deeply understood the philosophy of “keeping a low profile” and preferred accumulating wealth in silence.
Even his own children had no inkling of how their father had achieved his breakthrough.
After all, Heaven-grade cultivation manuals were impossibly rare and had to be guarded with absolute caution. Ever since the Immortal-Demon War, the vast majority of cultivation inheritances had been fractured; even Earth-grade manuals could be counted on two hands. If news of a Heaven-grade manual leaked, it was entirely possible that the “demi-gods” who had been living in seclusion for centuries would come looking for it.
Among Ling Jun’s numerous sons, Ling Jue possessed the highest innate talent and comprehension. From a very young age, his father had groomed him to practice that incomparably demonic Heaven-grade manual.
Yet even Ling Jue remained unaware of its true grade, only vaguely surmising that it was no lower than the lower-tier Earth-grade.
The might of a Heaven-grade manual was astonishing. Before reaching adulthood, Ling Jue had already attained the Core Formation realm, drawing widespread attention and being deemed by many elders as the most likely candidate to inherit the position of Pavilion Master.
His subsequent misfortunes stemmed precisely from this.
Currently, the only person in the world who knew that this Heaven-grade manual was incomplete was Yan Zhu. Practitioners would hit a complete bottleneck at a certain stage, making further progress impossible unless the missing sections were recovered.
Ling Jun had been stuck at the Divine Separation realm for a century. His previous seclusion was an attempt to find a breakthrough, but naturally, he had found nothing. He must have realized this impasse, which explained his sudden emergence from seclusion now.
Calculating the timeline, Yan Zhu deduced that the Ling Jue standing before her should already be at the Demonic Infant realm,right around the narrative plot point where his cultivation bottleneck drove him to reckless practice, ultimately damaging his meridians.
While Yan Zhu was reviewing the plot, Ling Jue was meticulously sizing up the woman with his gaze.
His father had numerous sons but only a single daughter. Ling Shi had been doted on since childhood and was accustomed to seeing every imaginable treasure. This was the first time he had ever heard his younger sister express a fondness for someone.
And a stranger at that.
When they had first crossed paths and exchanged blows, Ling Jue had noticed that the person possessed no spiritual fluctuations, appearing entirely like a mortal.
The thought had surfaced swiftly, only to be dismissed just as quickly.
Setting aside the woman’s extraordinarily striking appearance,which stood out across the entire cultivation world,the subtle sense of the Great Dao emanating from her every movement was simply not something a mortal could possess.
Ling Jue had heard rumors of various eccentric habits cultivated by high-level experts, and he quietly categorized this stranger among them.
Standing slightly behind, he had not yet fully resolved to take such a gamble, though his hand had long since reached out to stealthily grip a life-saving magical artifact, ready to flee at the first sign of trouble.
In truth, when Ling Jue had stepped aside to let them pass earlier, he had genuinely decided to spare them. Those two opponents held no value for him; striking them down would yield no benefits while potentially placing him in grave danger.
A smart person never engages in unprofitable business.
However…
He had not anticipated that his younger sister would become so infatuated with that woman, insisting on following them even if it meant ditching him.
Ling Jue knew all too well how deeply cherished Ling Shi was. He shuddered to think what the old man would do to him if the little girl suffered even the slightest scrape, so he had gritted his teeth and tagged along.
Thus, they had ended up in this awkward, deadlocked standoff.
A faint smile hung on Ling Jue’s face, though inside he was panic-stricken. His gaze remained locked on the pair’s every movement, not daring to relax for a single second.
He watched as the woman leaned close to the masked young woman’s ear. A cultivator’s acute hearing allowed him to catch every word uttered by the other party.
“His weakness is his abdomen.”
Ling Jue’s eyes widened, a tumultuous storm churning within his chest. The immense shock paralyzed his body, rendering him too terrified to make another rash move.
,How could she possibly know my weakness is the abdomen?!
Ling Jue was struck dumb with astonishment. Not even his father knew that his frantic cultivation in pursuit of a breakthrough had injured his abdominal meridians and nearly caused his cultivation to plummet from the Demonic Infant realm.
Barely managing to steady his churning emotions, Ling Jue regarded the opposing Yan Zhu with sharply heightened vigilance. He was now thoroughly convinced that the other party was an eccentric senior expert harboring bizarre hobbies, masquerading as a mortal.
And that remark just now,wasn’t it deliberately spoken for him to hear?!
It was practically a warning addressed straight to him!
A delayed wave of terror washed over him, accompanied by a profound sense of gratitude that he hadn’t done anything irreversible.
Meanwhile, Yan Zhu remained entirely unaware that she had been pegged as an almighty expert.
Many settings in this world had been brushed over with just a few lines of text, and since she herself was not a cultivator, Yan Zhu had never imagined that the confidential information she shared would be overheard word-for-word by the “enemy.”
She had simply wanted to inform Song Qing, hoping the young girl would have an extra bargaining chip when a conflict broke out.
In reality, Ling Jue’s greatest weakness was not his abdomen, but his very physique,or rather, the blood flowing through his veins, inherited from his father.
The female protagonist Song Wenqing’s blood was his absolute nemesis.
The origin of this could be traced back to the grudges of the older generation, involving a web of complex entanglements.
Blood that appeared entirely unremarkable to others acted as an unmitigated poison to him.
The moment a single drop touched him, it would rapidly spread throughout his body, throwing his meridians into chaos and draining every ounce of his spiritual power.
The antidote was equally difficult to swallow: drinking another drop to fight poison with poison.
After learning of this from his father, the second male lead in the book had harbored the intention of eliminating this threat at the root, painstakingly scheming to get close to the female protagonist.
Naturally, following the standard conventions of novel progression, mutual affection had gradually blossomed during their time together.
Song Wenqing’s earlobe felt ticklish from the warm breath brushing against it, a flush spreading across its alabaster surface.
She turned her head slightly, intending to warn the person that cultivators possessed acute hearing, but then felt it was unnecessary. Pressing her lips together, she pivoted to ask a different question.
“Did you divine this through divination as well?”
Feeling somewhat guilty, Yan Zhu nodded. Realizing a moment too late that the young girl couldn’t see, she took hold of the girl’s hand and traced a small hook with her finger against the soft palm.
Song Wenqing’s expression flickered slightly. Where the warm skin made contact, a strange tingling sensation spread outward; unexpectedly, she didn’t dislike the feeling.
Throughout their days together, her curiosity toward this person had only grown stronger.
At first, there had been vigilance,suspicion regarding her identity, her motives, and the underlying reasons for saving her.
A faint sense of gratitude, as if it were some shameful, unspeakable secret, had been deliberately suppressed and pushed down to some hidden corner of her heart.
Now, that feeling had transformed into curiosity about everything unique about her: her appearance, her identity, her origins, and why she was so set on heading to the Lingyun Taoist Sect…
Song Wenqing did not believe she was merely a mortal. Occasionally, she could sense the faint aura of Great Dao laws emanating from her. Yet her purpose remained unclear; everything about this mysterious woman was wrapped in an enigma.
,Wanting to understand her?
The thought breached the surface like a fish breaking the water’s ripples, only to dive back down with breathless speed, leaving behind expanding rings that took a long time to settle.
Harboring emotions she herself couldn’t quite untangle, Song Wenqing used that question as a shield, cutting off their exchange to halt her own chaotic thoughts.
“I understand.”
With a hint of coolness, she ended the conversation, putting a stop to both their interaction and her own runaway train of thought.
Seeing that her fabrication had gone undetected, Yan Zhu let out a sigh of relief, shifting her gaze back to the enemy opposite and remaining on guard for any sudden movements.
Ling Jue naturally caught that line of sight. Though his heart was hammering wildly with panic, a practiced smile still plastered his face.
“Haha, what I said just now was merely a joke, purely a misunderstanding.”
“My sister and I simply have a penchant for beautiful maidens, and we got a bit carried away in the moment, acting somewhat presumptuously. I hope you’ll forgive us.”
“The two maidens are presumably not from the Western Continent. As the saying goes, guests from afar should be welcomed,why not let me, as the host, show the two of you around?”
As his words fell, a prolonged silence descended upon the surroundings.
Ling Jue glanced sidelong at the “expert’s” expression, trying to decipher any hidden meaning, but found nothing. He parted his lips, hesitating over whether he should force out a few more words.
Before he could decide, a sharp pain shot through his wrist. Subconsciously glancing down, he found it fractured. When he snapped his gaze back up, he only caught the retreating figure of his younger sister scurrying off excitedly.
“Little Lingshi!”
Ignoring his injury, Ling Jue cried out in alarm, instantly flashing forward in a spatial teleportation spell to snatch her back. Unfortunately, he managed only to graze the hem of her garment; the next second, the girl had hurled herself straight into the arms of the person opposite.
The sudden impact caught Yan Zhu off guard, pushing her back a few steps before she managed to steady herself. Looking down, she found herself face-to-face with a pair of round, blinking eyes, her mind instantly blanking.
,You little demon lord, why are you here?!
Inhaling the pleasant fragrance radiating from this person, Ling Shi beamed happily.
Like.
However, within her youthful mind, she lacked a sufficiently rich vocabulary or precise words to articulate this unprecedented emotion.
She opened her arms, wrapping them tightly around the beautiful elder sister’s waist, expressing her most eager desire with blunt simplicity.
“Come home with me.”
Her childish voice rang out, drawing three distinct gazes filled with entirely different emotions.
Those bright, crystal-clear eyes fluttered open and closed, her flushed pink cheeks radiating earnestness, looking remarkably well-behaved and adorable. Had Yan Zhu not known the little imp’s true nature, she might genuinely have been taken in by the act.
Ling Shi: the number one most dangerous character in the book, even more terrifying than her monstrous father.
Originally, when Yan Zhu created this character, she merely wanted to play with the trope: “The wealthy family had seven sons and finally welcomed a daughter. CEO: Pamper her, spoil her to death.”
Yet Ling Shi’s self-awareness had evolved with startling speed. From the very stroke of the pen, Yan Zhu had felt that this character was slipping beyond her control.
Even so, she had been stubborn. Once the concept was sparked, she maintained a stubborn persistence to see it through to the end.
Later, across the mere five hundred thousand words of Searching for Immortals, the two had clashed countless times. Every single time, Yan Zhu compromised to maintain character logic, resulting in repeated defeats without a single victory.
Through that crucible, Ling Shi’s image became increasingly three-dimensional, ultimately manifesting as an unadulterated little demon lord.
Her innate talent was freakishly high. In the plot developments written thus far, a mere sixteen-year-old was capable of fighting the female protagonist to a standstill. Consequently, though the entire Western Continent cursed her under their breath out of fear, they genuinely viewed her as the future hope of demonic cultivation.
Fate had lived up to her constitution of possessing a “seven-orifices exquisite heart”; favored by destiny, fortune followed her wherever she went.
The instant her gaze locked with the girl’s, Yan Zhu was flooded with the sheer terror of being dominated by this little one during those dark, sunless days of rush-deadlines.
Squatting down halfway so they were eye-to-eye, she tried her best to soften her tone.
“But Big Sister has things she needs to do right now, so I can’t go home with you.”
Ling Shi remained silent, her gaze lingering on the woman’s face for a moment before shifting to the person standing nearby.
“Is it because of her?”
She raised her short finger, pointing directly toward Song Wenqing.
Before Yan Zhu could formulate a reply, she heard the child add:
“Then I’ll kill her.”