Inside this pitch-dark Xuanxian Pagoda, Ning Wuchen lost count of how much time had passed. Only his aching meridians reminded him that he was still alive.
Unable to die, yet barely surviving.
Endowed with brilliant talent, for the very first time he felt a trace of doubt, unable to understand how things had come to this.
Yet there were some matters he saw clearly. For instance, why his sword tassel was in the hands of the Xie family, and what Changning had truly made him swallow in the Huaxu Secret Realm five years ago.
He had never imagined that a single demonic seed and a few wisps of out-of-control demonic qi would cause the world to willfully and stubbornly conclude that he had fallen into demonic deviation. Some even attempted to extract information regarding the Demon Realm from him, as if from the very beginning, he was a demon lurking in the realm of cultivation.
No one came to save him.
Not a single person came to save him.
He had been abandoned once again, just like back then when Changning left him behind and departed the cultivation world without looking back.
He had always known that the sword tassel Changning used to stab him at the Sword-Inquiring Platform lacked any real intent to kill; otherwise, it would have been utterly impossible for him to dodge it so easily. That person hadn’t wanted to kill him; he had simply wanted to discard him.
Yet hearing those soft footsteps drawing near, he still hoped that the person from his memories would suddenly appear and carry him away.
The visitor stopped right in front of him, remaining silent for a long while, as if finally having enjoyed enough of his wretched appearance before speaking slowly: “Do you hate them?”
Ning Wuchen did not answer the question. Despite being in such a battered and wretched state, he still managed to slightly curve the corners of his lips: “Changning, you truly are ruthless.”
“Ruthless?” Shen Zaixin lifted a strand of the man’s scattered long hair with his fingertips, playing with it as he chuckled softly: “I am merely helping you see through some truths. You should be thanking me instead.”
As he spoke, he tilted his head and asked once more: “Do you hate them?”
Ning Wuchen parted his lips, but no sound came out.
The other man did not seem in any rush to get an answer, continuing to muse aloud: “Meridians completely shattered, eyes blinded, and today, aside from this unexpected visit of mine, you were destined to be trapped forever in this dark and dreary place. Do you hate them?”
“You can never again pick up the sword you love most. Do you hate them?”
“Clearly you never did a single wrong, yet they resent your talent and cultivation, fearing that you stand in their way, leaving you to shoulder everything alone. Do you hate them?”
“Not a single person wishes for you to walk out of here alive, including the very common mortals you once saved. Do you hate them?”
Ning Wuchen thought in a daze: how could he not hate? Yet he carried a guilty conscience, making it impossible for his hatred to be open and upright.
“Ning Wuchen, we—” Shen Zaixin paused, letting out a light sigh: “are ultimately the same.”
Equally rejected by the world, equally resentful of the unfairness of the Heavenly Dao.
His face was gently cupped by the other’s warm hands, foreheads and noses pressed close together, allowing him to clearly inhale the familiar dark fragrance alongside a thick, pungent smell of blood.
“You’re injured?” Ning Wuchen frowned and asked.
The man chuckled indifferently: “If I wanted to come in and see you, I naturally had to pay some price.”
A pair of cold hands devoid of any warmth touched his face once more—so cold, resembling the corpse of someone who had already been dead for quite some time.
Watching all this in silence, 152 finally understood why the host had gone to such lengths to reduce himself to this half-dead state.
Directing and acting out such a scenario served no other purpose than to give Ning Wuchen a thorough, unquestionable reason for absolute hatred.
“Therefore, you ought to hate.” A chilling fingertip landed right between his brows. The very next instant, the source of the man’s primordial vitality and spiritual energy poured endlessly into his body, repairing his physical form, and allowing him to finally perceive the paper-white complexion of the person before him.
Ning Wuchen’s heart felt as though it were being sliced apart, on the verge of weeping blood. Yet with his limbs tightly bound by the heavy chains, he was utterly powerless to resist, forced to watch as Shen Zaixin’s fundamental life force surged entirely into his body through the fingertips pressed against his brow.
“No, don’t do this. Changning, I beg you, stop!”
“I am bestowing everything I am upon you.”
With his vitality completely exhausted, the moment he broke free from the chains, Shen Zaixin finally collapsed limply into his embrace.
The person in his arms was completely devoid of color, yet remained breathtakingly beautiful.
He desperately attempted to channel his own life force back into the man’s body, but it was all in vain.
Ning Wuchen’s arms trembled violently as he cradled the body, murmuring in a low voice laden with unbearable agony: “Changning, you are always so cruel.”
In truth, if Changning had only wanted to drive him into madness, what need was there to reduce himself to this state? He had always, always been entirely willing; it was simply that the person never saw it.
A hint of madness stirred within him: if he had chosen to sink into the demonic path together with Changning back then, accompanying him in his slaughter and destruction, would it not have been better than bearing the brunt of these unearned sins today, only to remain powerless in the face of his beloved’s departure?
Gathering his final breath, the man’s fingertips brushed across the moisture at the corner of Ning Wuchen’s eyes, before pressing a parting kiss to his lips. Smiling weakly and pale as paper, he whispered: “Ning Wuchen, kill them.”
Kill those who wear hypocritical masks, and kill those who cast you aside.
Since this mortal realm has failed you, you might as well destroy it.
Ning Wuchen lowered his head, using his fingers to gently comb through the disheveled locks of the person in his arms. The man lay quietly against him, breathtakingly exquisite, yet he would never open his eyes again.
A thunderous roar echoed within his heart, reducing all vegetation to ash. Reason was scorched away in an instant; the collapse of an entire world required nothing more than this single moment.
Ning Wuchen stroked the cheeks of the person in his arms over and over again, despair and panic arriving belatedly to stir up a bloody storm within his mind. His heart was left with nothing but an isolated, desolate wasteland.
His Changning was dead, having perished right before his very eyes.
The meridians within his body recovered completely as before, and the dormant spiritual energy residing in his dantian gradually merged with the primordial life force transmitted by the man, forging a terrifying power capable of destroying heaven and earth.
“Shuangchi!” A gloomy, icy voice rang out. Far away at the Sword-Inquiring Platform, the Shuangchi sword—sealed beneath the giant sword stele—heard his summons. In a fraction of a second, it shattered the stone walls, transforming into a streak of brilliant white light that soared from the freezing mountain peak right into his hand before the terrified gazes of countless cultivators.
Demonic patterns spread from his brow across the entirety of his right face, and his pale eyes turned scarlet—bizarre and terrifying. Cradling the person in his arms, Ning Wuchen stepped out of the Xuanxian Pagoda step by step.
High up in an inconspicuous tree outside the Xuanxian Pagoda, Xie Linfeng experienced a wave of inexplicable panic as he gazed at the heavily guarded crowd surrounding the tower. The moment the Shuangchi sword flew into the Xuanxian Pagoda earlier was proof enough that Ning Wuchen had not only broken free, but had also fully recovered his cultivation.
He raised his head to look through the gaps in the foliage at the gray, overcast sky, thinking to himself that a storm was brewing.
A subtle disturbance suddenly broke out in front of the Xuanxian Pagoda. Withdrawing his gaze, he looked forward just as a man covered entirely in bloodstains walked out, appearing to cradle someone in his arms.
Catching sight of the flash of red within the man’s arms, Xie Linfeng’s heart clenched violently. He channeled his spiritual power, preparing to rush forward, when a sharp pain suddenly struck the back of his head. Instantly robbed of his consciousness, he collapsed and lost all awareness.
A youth dressed in crimson grabbed his collar with evident disdain and quietly vanished from the spot.
In the depths of his mind, 152’s voice raged with indignation: [Shen Zaixin, I really bought into your nonsense! You have no heart at all! You even lied to your own system!]
Heaven knows how terrified its data had been of falling apart when it watched the host’s vitality value drop directly to zero.
“Tsk, how can you call it lying?” Shen Zaixin chuckled with absolute innocence: “The Demon Lord Shen Zaixin is truly dead, you know.”
As he spoke, he found an isolated corner to discard the person he was dragging along, before setting up a barrier to completely conceal Xie Linfeng’s figure.
Watching the youth’s semi-transparent soul form, 152 fell silent.
Once this was done, Shen Zaixin’s expression gradually turned serious: “152, query the protagonist’s emotional metrics.”
Though completely unaware of his underlying objective, 152 complied nonetheless. The moment it pulled up the display screen, a sharp gasp echoed in its mind: [Isn’t Xie Linfeng knocked out by you? Why are his corruption value and hatred value skyrocketing like crazy?]
Seeming to have anticipated this all along, Shen Zaixin curved his lips: “What if both Ning Wuchen and Xie Linfeng are the protagonist?”
152: [But how is that even possible? The original plot transmitted by the main system clearly indicates that the protagonist is Xie Linfeng!]
“Well, what I mean is, they are both Xie Linfeng—incomplete pieces of Xie Linfeng.”
152: [What on earth is going on here?]
“This is likely no longer the initial worldline.”
The Huaxu Bell was not only capable of generating illusions and inner demons, but its holder could also use it to repair their soul and spiritual platform. The moment he touched the Huaxu Bell back in the Huaxu Secret Realm, he had already noticed a patch of blank white within his own soul, standing out conspicuously amidst the deep black, much like something that had faded away.
Once a soul suffered a deficiency, it was bound to exert an impact on the physical body; as the person himself, it was impossible not to notice unless the part of the soul that had been wiped away consisted of memories.
Since Shen Zaixin’s memories of this lifetime remained intact, he found it difficult not to suspect the issue of a worldline reset.
Though fearless of death, he considered his own life far too valuable. Had it not been for the sake of attempting to break away from the world and verify a hypothesis, he would never have risked his own life simply to provoke Ning Wuchen into a corrupted state.
[Does the host mean… someone rebooted the worldline and trapped us here without us even realizing it? But that is the privilege of the main system—how could anyone possibly pull that off?]
“Who says nobody could?” Shen Zaixin twirled the Jueming ring on his index finger, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Have you forgotten? The moment the protagonist dies, the protection mechanism forcefully resets the worldline. Unless the task is completed, even the main system cannot interfere. Besides, haven’t you always been racking your brain over why Xie Linfeng surrendered to me so effortlessly?”
A sudden wave of realization dawned upon 152. No wonder Xie Linfeng had been tamed so easily—they were old flames all along!
Yet, a sudden thought crossing its mind left it bewildered once more: [But wouldn’t checking the worldline just require a simple suicide? What does letting Ning Wuchen turn dark and seek revenge have to do with any of this?]
“Of course it does. Dying requires a sense of ritual.” Shen Zaixin said with a beaming smile: “I am the Demon Lord, after all. If no one accompanies me in death, it would be far too shabby.”
Ning Wuchen had acted as the guardian deity of the cultivation world for hundreds of years, only to be ultimately betrayed by those standing behind him. Sending these people off by the hand of the Qingrong Immortal—who had once held all living beings in his heart—was the most merciful method he could possibly conceive.
Remaining silent for a brief moment, 152 thought of how it had been forced into endless overtime without its knowledge, and instantly reached its breaking point: [Who on earth pulled off this wonderful stunt?!]
Shen Zaixin lowered his gaze with a smile, looking down toward the world below. The entire city of Canglan was shrouded in a layer of mist, with traces of blood washed clean by the falling rain and cries of anguish fading away into the wind. From a distance, it resembled a landscape painting accidentally stained with red ink, looking exceptionally striking.
It was only a pity that the Demon Realm and Canglan City sat worlds apart, exceeding the effective range of a teleportation array; otherwise, amidst such internal chaos, the entire cultivation world would have been ambushed and swallowed whole by the Demon Realm.
Beneath the blade of the Shuangchi sword, no living soul ever managed to escape. Centuries ago, Shen Zaixin at the Sword-Inquiring Platform had been the sole exception.
A white figure was slowly approaching the Xuanxian Pagoda, wielding the pristine Shuangchi sword that remained completely unstained by dust. Suddenly, he raised his gaze to look up toward the top of the tower where Shen Zaixin stood, his eyes hollow and unseeing.
Even while knowing the man couldn’t see him, 152 still felt a momentary jolt of panic.
The relentless rain poured down, washing away all the filth and bloodstains from his body until nothing remained—he had nothing left at all.
Kneeling down out of sheer exhaustion beside the youth who slumbered in eternal rest, Ning Wuchen ensured a protective barrier enveloped the body, shielding it so that not a single drop of rain could touch him.
The rain in Canglan City poured for three whole days and nights, burying all the bloodshed beneath. Holding a corpse that refused to decay out in the rain, Ning Wuchen remained kneeling for three days and nights as well.
[World Reset] The Immortal’s Guide to Raising a Dog
Shen Zaixin’s semi-transparent soul form drifted down from the top of the tower. Wearing a calm expression, he lowered his gaze to study Ning Wuchen for a moment, the emotions within his eyes difficult to decipher.
After a long while, he suddenly spoke in a soft tone: “Aren’t you planning to come out yet?”