Before he could finish his words, Ning Wuchen understood the implication behind the unfinished sentence. A self-deprecating smile inevitably surfaced at the corners of his lips; clearly, just yesterday that person had been luring him beneath the acacia tree, yet at this very moment, he was coldly watching him struggle and plead in the deep sea of desire.
Such cruelty was perhaps the ultimate punishment for his hypocritical posturing.
Silently sinking to his knees, Ning Wuchen allowed the orange-yellow candlelight to cast its glow across his lowered brow and eyes, melting away the icy frost.
Just like a noble-bred hound presented with a bone, it kept its head held high and aloof in front of outsiders, while secretly yearning to savor it over and over again, unwilling to ever let go.
“Mm…” The fingertips Shen Zaixin rested upon the armrest of the circle chair trembled slightly, his head tilted back halfway as his half-closed phoenix eyes overflowed with boundless watery brilliance, hazy and intoxicating.
The Immortal rested one hand on the armrest while burying his other hand deep into Ning Wuchen’s hair, stroking his head with gentle fondness as he chuckled softly: “Senior Brother is so obedient.”
For a long time, as the candle on the desk flickered once more, Ning Wuchen finally raised his head. Silently swallowing the bitterness, he lowered his gaze to tidy up the youth’s robes that he had ruffled, once more resembling the cold, detached practitioner of the ruthless Dao.
“Hm?” Shen Zaixin pressed a foot down against the man’s icy silver mask, raising an eyebrow with an amused, half-smiling expression: “You don’t want it?”
Closing his eyes to lock away the dark gloom lurking in the depths of his gaze, Ning Wuchen filled his mind with the memory of the bite marks and hickeys blanketing the youth’s delicate skin, a silent testament to the intensity of the previous night’s passion. Surging waves of murderous intent and jealousy raged within his chest, yet he forced himself to act as though he noticed none of it, repeating over and over that if he let the beast in his heart break loose, Changning’s body simply wouldn’t be able to endure it.
After a long pause, he rasped out hoarsely: “Indulgence in desire is detrimental to cultivation.”
152: It had been fully prepared to go AFK and block everything out, and yet this was the outcome?
Why did those words sound precisely like a long-suffering, submissive wife who, upon discovering her husband had taken a mistress, chose not to cry or make a scene, but instead worried that her husband’s health would suffer due to overindulgence?
152: I can only say that even dogs would have to step aside and yield the path to his level of simping.
Hearing something remarkably amusing, Shen Zaixin let out a low chuckle that caused his shoulders to tremble. After a brief moment, he reined in his laughter and murmured softly: “Senior Brother truly is different from those stray mutts outside, always so considerate.”
Ning Wuchen let out a muffled groan, enduring the foot running wild across his chest. A tingling wave of shivers swept across his entire body, causing his cold, clear eyes to gradually lose their focus: “Changning…”
For a time, only suppressed gasps echoed through the grand hall.
Watching him stripped of his armor and lost in a daze, Shen Zaixin couldn’t help chuckling: “Could it be that Senior Brother had never once before…”
Before he could finish, Ning Wuchen interrupted him with a hoarse voice: “I have.”
“Hm?”
Enduring the youth’s half-smiling, teasing gaze, he abandoned all pride to lay bare his filthy, unsightly side: “In the secret chamber of the Azure Sky Palace, there is a portrait of you. Sometimes, when you left the Sword Peak, I…”
When it came to the rest, however, he found it utterly impossible to voice aloud.
Just at that moment, a paper crane fluttered in through the half-closed window, coming to a rest upon the back of Shen Zaixin’s hand.
Recognizing it at a single glance as a unique sound-transmission technique belonging to the Canglan Sect, Ning Wuchen’s expression instantly turned solemn, washing away the lingering tenderness from his brow.
A clear, youthful voice filled with anxiety spilled from the paper crane: “Junior Uncle, Uncle Xie has met with an accident! Please hurry back to the sect!”
No one within the Canglan Sect was unaware of Shen Zaixin’s idle and lackadaisical temperament; had it not been a matter of extreme urgency, they would never have resorted to using magic to contact him.
And what sort of accident could Xie Linghua possibly encounter? It was undoubtedly her refusing to heed his rare, well-intentioned warning and once again arbitrarily overusing her spiritual power to treat mortals who came seeking medical help.
Pondering for a moment, Shen Zaixin said: “Senior Brother surely knows the identity of that snow leopard. The only reason I brought it along was to secure the Heavenly-Veiling Pearl of the demon race.”
The man immediately picked up on his implication: “Leave this matter to me. Changning can return to the Canglan Sect with peace of mind.”
The red-robed Immortal curved his eyes: “I’ll have to trouble Senior Brother then.”
152 sneered: When you need something, it’s Senior Brother; when you don’t, it’s Ning Wuchen. Truly a master of convenience.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” As the Demon Lord meticulously finished adjusting his shoes and socks, Shen Zaixin rose from his chair. A spatial teleportation array immediately materialized within the hall. He leaned forward to press a light kiss to the forehead of the man still half-kneeling on the ground who had yet to stand up, chuckling softly: “A parting kiss.”
With that, he turned and stepped into the teleportation array without a shred of lingering reluctance, vanishing instantly. Before Ning Wuchen could utter the words caught in his throat, he stood in the empty palace for a long while before murmuring quietly to the vacant space: “Just when will you ever stay for even a single moment because of me?”
The distance a spatial teleportation array could cross was limited, and it could not be used continuously without breaks, forcing Shen Zaixin to rely on sword flight for the remainder of the journey.
After circling five times above a familiar patch of woods, he finally had to face an incredible reality.
He had actually gotten lost!
Accompanied simultaneously by 152’s unbridled schadenfreude echoing in his mind: Dearest host, the system lacks a navigation function, you know.
As a former disciple of the Canglan Sect, Shen Zaixin had passed through this forest countless times when heading down the mountain for trials. Getting lost here made absolute zero sense, and he couldn’t even detect the slightest trace of any barrier spells.
Shen Zaixin had never been one for squandering effort on futile tasks. Since he couldn’t find a way out for the moment, he simply chose a sturdy tree, lounging lazily across its thick branch to pretend to take a nap.
Perhaps from consuming too much spiritual energy during his nonstop journey, a wave of weariness suddenly washed over him, gradually drawing him toward sleep.
Half-asleep and half-awake, he felt as though someone was caressing his face, followed by a soft, wet sensation brushing against his lips. Refusing to settle for a mere taste, the intruder boldly parted his teeth, sliding a tongue into his mouth to suckle repeatedly, as if intent on wringing every last drop of sweetness from his lips.
A crisp yet completely unfamiliar aura enveloped him. In his hazy state of consciousness, he half-wished to open his eyes to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, yet felt pinned down as if trapped within a nightmare, entirely unable to move.
When daylight finally broke, Shen Zaixin slowly opened his eyes, recalling the blurred fragments of his dream from the previous night with a momentary daze in his gaze.
Could it be that his excessive indulgence over the past few days had finally bled over into his dreams?
Thinking of it that way felt rather comical, so he dismissed the thought entirely, leaping lightly down from the tree. Following a familiar route forward, he was surprised to find himself exiting the woods with effortless ease.
By the time he returned to the Canglan Sect, three full days had already passed.
Flying on his sword all the way to Sword Peak, he spotted a figure pacing back and forth with anxious urgency right in front of the Azure Sky Palace from afar.
“Yugui,” Shen Zaixin called out the youth’s name. Hearing the voice, the boy paused in his steps, his eyes lighting up the moment he spotted the newcomer before he broke into a sprint.
“Junior Uncle!”
Giving a calm nod of acknowledgment, Shen Zaixin continued: “Speak, what happened?”
Hurriedly nodding, Yugui adopted a complicated expression at the thought of what he had to recount: “As the only disciple in Peak Dan who is skilled in both alchemy and medicine, Uncle Xie treats commoners from the foot of the mountain for free every single day. Who would have guessed that today, perhaps due to exhausting her spiritual power and failing to maintain control, she accidentally revealed her true form…”
There was no need to spell out what followed.
A female Daoist priest who spent every day descending the mountain to accumulate merit and perform good deeds suddenly turned out to be a demon. Ordinary mortals would hardly offer any understanding; for the most part, they would react only with terror, revulsion, and a retroactive suspicion toward all those past acts of kindness.
Noticing the Junior Uncle’s calm and unperturbed expression, Yugui hesitated: “Junior Uncle, did you know all along that Uncle Xie was—”
Shen Zaixin gave a slight nod. Not only had he known all along that Xie Linghua was a demon, but he had even known she was a crow, a species despised and scorned even among the demon race itself.
Ravens were regarded across all six realms as omens of ill fortune.
Yet it was precisely this crow that had once rescued Shen Zaixin, who had been abandoned in the wilderness and on the brink of being corrupted by demonic qi, bringing him back to the Canglan Sect and sparing him from enduring the various hardships mapped out in the original worldline.
152 recalled past events as well. Shen Zaixin hardly ever struck anyone as the type to repay a drop of kindness with a gushing spring, yet he had helped Xie Linghua conceal her identity for all these years, prompting it to finally voice its confusion: Why does the host treat an unremarkable supporting character like Xie Linghua differently?
In the original worldline, Xie Linghua’s identity was supposed to have been exposed early on, leading to her being stripped of her cultivation as a demonic spy who had sneaked into the Canglan Sect, leaving her to die consumed by bitterness and hatred.
Silence hung in the air for a moment before Shen Zaixin replied indifferently: “I simply don’t dislike simple people.”
Dislike he did not, plus he considered his own life quite precious; since she had saved him, that constituted a debt of cosmic proportions. What harm was there in occasionally doing a good deed?
Without asking where she was currently being held, he headed straight toward the dungeons of the Law Enforcement Hall.
The guarding disciples stationed outside the prison dared not ask questions upon seeing him arrive, hurriedly bowing to clear a path and allowing Shen Zaixin to step inside, while leaving Yugui blocked outside the tower.
Every dungeon beneath the heavens shared the same suffocating stillness, gloom, and dampness, plunging anyone who stepped inside straight into a hell reeking of the world’s most tainted and filthiest sins. Even the dungeon belonging to the Canglan Sect, the leader of the righteous path, was no exception.
In the vast, cavernous prison, aside from the stairwell, there was only a single pathway flanked by cells on both sides. Within them were locked various members of the demon and beast clans, as well as sect disciples who had committed unforgivable crimes. If one closed their eyes, the lack of breathing sounds made them indistinguishable from corpses, with only the distant drip of water echoing against the stone.
Closing his eyes to project his spiritual awareness and survey the auras for a moment, Shen Zaixin descended to the second basement level, locating a bruised, battered, and thoroughly wretched-looking woman at the absolute end of the cell block.
A single glance made it obvious she had been subjected to forced interrogation.
He couldn’t help finding it mildly amusing: what deep secrets of the Demon Realm could a crow, looked down upon even by demons, possibly know?
The soft crunch of footsteps finally drew Xie Linghua’s attention. Slowly raising her head to gaze at the young man walking toward her, she rasped out: “This place is filthy. You shouldn’t have come.”
Someone as pure and radiant as him had no business stepping foot in a place like this, let alone entangling himself with someone like her in her current state.
“Senior Sister, I told you long ago not to exhaust your spiritual power trying to save people.” Shen Zaixin’s gaze remained utterly serene, devoid of either mockery or worry, as he stated mildly: “Human nature is far filthier and more complex than you think.”
Take the mortals Xie Linghua had treated, for example. They weren’t purely ungrateful wretches; many simply couldn’t accept the sudden realization that the kind and noble immortal in their hearts had turned out to be a lowly crow, because the deeply ingrained notion of demons being treacherous and vicious was already etched straight into their instincts.
If even cultivators who sought immortality struggled to sever the six roots of desire, how could ordinary mortals be expected to easily cast aside worldly prejudices and the judgments of others?