The man in the dream finally parted from his lips with lingering reluctance, planting burning kisses all the way down from his chin, hot enough to draw a breathy gasp from him even in his slumber. The man’s movements paused for a fraction of a second, and then he kissed him with an even more fervent intensity, as if striving desperately to please him.
At the exact moment of release, the white light of the dream was swallowed by darkness. A pair of hands brushed gently across his cheeks, accompanied by the muffled, indistinct murmurs of a man, until he finally slipped away into deep sleep.
Early the next morning, Shen Zaixin was awakened by the morning light spilling through the lattice window. Recalling the bizarre dream of the previous night, he lowered his gaze to check himself, only to find no traces remaining, causing his phoenix eyes to narrow slightly.
Experiencing the exact same dream two nights in a row was completely out of character for him.
“152, did you happen to see anyone enter the room last night?”
152 sounded thoroughly perplexed: The system detected zero unfamiliar auras. Besides, this room is covered in your own restrictive barriers from top to bottom; surely you would know if someone got in?
Could it really be that he was just overthinking things?
Lowering his gaze in contemplation for a moment, Shen Zaixin was about to look away when his eyes caught an inconspicuous, dried white smudge on the mattress. Stretching out a fingertip to brush across it, he instantly understood what it was, a cold smile pulling at the corners of his lips: “Do you still think nobody came?”
152: Ever since binding with Shen Zaixin, not a single day had gone by with its eyes remaining clean!
What shocked it even more, however, was that someone actually had the sheer audacity to play the ruffian and pull such a stunt right on this demon lord. Did this person not realize that Shen Zaixin was the undisputed ringleader of all ruffians?
Truly, living long enough meant you got to witness everything.
Suppressing its excitement, 152 asked with feigned casualness: What are you going to do now?
Shen Zaixin replied indifferently: “Ever heard of fishing enforcement?”
152 had an instant epiphany: Got it.
Amidst their exchange, he pushed open the bedroom door and spotted a blue-clad figure sitting alone in the pavilion beside the quiet courtyard, leisurely playing a game of go against herself.
Hearing the movement, the woman in blue turned her head to glance at him, speaking flatly: “You’re awake.”
The woman’s features were refined and serene, carrying an air mellowed by the passage of time. Though she was a woman, her imposing presence made it impossible for anyone to take her lightly. She was none other than the master of the Canglan Sect, Lu Wanru.
Shen Zaixin felt zero surprise at her visit. After all, Xie Linghua had been brought down the mountain by him for two full days now without a single piece of news reaching the sect, and those elders in the Law Enforcement Hall were likely already growing disgruntled.
“The Sect Master has quite the refined leisure,” he drawled lazily, seating himself across the stone bench from Lu Wanru. With a delicate hand, he picked up a black Go piece and dropped it onto the unfinished board, filling the pavilion with the crisp sound of jade stones clicking against the wood.
Though autumn had arrived, there was no biting chill in the air; a warm sun hung high in the clear sky while the courtyard smelled of sweet osmanthus, making it a rare, pleasant day.
After a long silence, Lu Wanru lowered her gaze to look at the treacherous, fog-shrouded game board and sighed helplessly: “You brat. Every time a clear, tit-for-tat situation falls into your hands, you always manage to turn it into a complete mess.”
“Only unpredictable game boards like this are actually fun.” Shen Zaixin twirled the smooth, flawless black stone between his fingertips, occasionally tossing it up and catching it again for amusement. “Some people like to project themselves into a game of Go, caring far too much about winning or losing, completely unaware that they have merely become pieces on the board themselves. When that happens, fate naturally slips out of their own hands.
If that is how you play, where is the joy in it?”
To him, chess pieces were forever nothing more than playthings in his palm. By keeping his emotions detached, he naturally avoided the grief and joy born from the victories and defeats of mere toys.
Hearing his pointed, sarcastic remark, Lu Wanru’s brows betrayed not a shred of anger as she stated calmly: “I am merely grateful that it was Wuchen who entered the demonic path and not you.”
With Ning Wuchen having turned to the demonic path, as long as Shen Zaixin remained the Zhaoyan Immortal for even a single day, the Demon Realm could be held in check. But had Shen Zaixin chosen the demonic path, the future landscape of the cultivation world would likely be turned completely upside down, leaving not a single day of peace.
“Indeed, no one is more suited for the seat of Sect Master than you,” Shen Zaixin scoffed.
“Then you should know why I am here today.” Lu Wanru steered the conversation toward the main topic, her tone flat yet leaving no room for refusal: “Allowing a member of the demon race to go around accumulating merit and doing good deeds in broad daylight while basking in public adulation is sheer absurdity.”
Once the townspeople’s hostility toward the demon race diminished, their reverence for the cultivation sects would correspondingly drop. If demons could be benevolent, how were those venerable, demon-slaying cultivators supposed to justify their own existence?
152 marveled: The Sect Master of your Canglan Sect is truly a ruthless workaholic. Anyone or anything posing the slightest threat to the sect is discarded without hesitation; she is practically colder and more rational than the system’s core intelligence.
As the senior martial sister of Shen Zaixin’s generation in the Canglan Sect, Xie Linghua shared no shallow junior-senior bond with Lu Wanru, yet the moment her demonic identity was exposed, she had been shoved straight into the dungeon without a second thought, with the sect even eager to squeeze every last drop of intelligence regarding the Demon Realm out of her through interrogation.
Ning Wuchen was no exception.
Shen Zaixin casually tossed a Go piece into the deadlocked game, instantly altering the entire landscape of the board. “At most five days. The demon race will remain the vicious, evil demon race they have always been, and the Canglan Sect will continue to stand as the righteous head protecting all living beings.”
With the Canglan Sect’s affairs handled and an answer secured, Lu Wanru dropped any pretense of seniority and stepped into a spatial teleportation array, vanishing instantly without lingering a moment longer.
The Go pieces scattered across the board were swept back into the bowl in a single motion, mixing black and white into an indiscriminate blur. Had those ancient traditionalists back on Canglan Mountain witnessed Shen Zaixin’s casual disregard, they would undoubtedly stroke their beards in fury and curse him for lacking all propriety.
The red-robed Immortal propped his head up with the knuckles of his left hand slightly curved, his eyelids half-closed in laziness while his right hand twirled a white stone. Suddenly, his fingertips snapped forward with a burst of force, sending the white piece whistling through the air to strike down a sparrow resting on the courtyard’s bluestone path. The bird’s wings beat frantically, and after a persistent struggle, it finally managed to beat its wings and soar away into the distance.
After repeatedly knocking down an unknown number of sparrows and watching them fly away, the arch-demon finally grew thoroughly bored. Staring blankly at the remaining few sparrows in the courtyard that had given up struggling, he stated indifferently: “Useless creatures.”
If you refuse to take the path to heaven, you have only yourself to blame when he turns ruthless.
The next instant, a surge of spiritual energy swept across the courtyard, and grey feathers stained with droplets of blood drifted down across the ground.
“System.”
His tone was soft enough to sound almost gentle, but having witnessed his actions just now, 152 felt an inexplicable premonition that it was the chicken being sacrificed to warn the monkeys, prompting it to stammer out: What does the host need?
“I want to redeem a mind-clearing potion.”
152 hemmed and hawed: But you do not have enough points.
“Tsk, put it on my tab.”
The system does not feature a loan function.
“Hmm, and here I thought you were different from those trash systems.”
152 instantly felt its hackles rise, crying out in a panicked, tearful breakdown: Of course I am different! I will exchange it for you right now, just consider the points a gift from me to the host!
Pity that its previous ten thousand points were still missing a culprit, and now it had to buy insurance for its own miserable little life. Probably not a single entity in the entire System Department had managed to mix things up as poorly as it had.
Shen Zaixin flashed a smile that could only be described as benevolent: “Good boy.”
As night fell, dim, flickering candlelight illuminated the bedroom.
The Immortal wore only a single lounging robe, his cascading, waterfall-like hair still damp as he lounged lazily against the daybed, flipping through an untitled volume of text.
Before long, perhaps struck by weariness, the Immortal didn’t even bother drying the jet-black strands clinging to his back, simply dozing off right there against the daybed.
The windows remained tightly shut, yet the candle flame inside the bedroom flickered without any wind. The next second, Shen Zaixin felt an uncontrollable, familiar wave of drowsiness wash over his entire body. Struggling to retain a shred of lucidity, he instructed 152 in his mind: “System, use the mind-clearing potion.”
Mind-clearing potion used successfully.
Following the system’s cold, mechanical chime, Shen Zaixin snapped back to absolute clarity instantly. Controlling his breathing and heartbeat to mimic someone fast asleep, he waited.
A barely audible footstep sounded, accompanied by the intimate rustle of fabric brushing against the carpet. Immediately afterward, he felt calloused fingertips stroke his cheek, rubbing back and forth with a reluctance to let go.
A crisp, clean aura drew closer. The moment the other person covered him entirely and pressed their lips to his, Shen Zaixin opened his eyes abruptly. His fingers locked around the man’s throat, and with a swift flip, he pinned the intruder beneath him.
He glared coldly at the handsome yet utterly unfamiliar black-robed man beneath him. A flash of surprise crossed his face upon catching sight of those striking red and blue heterochromatic eyes, though it vanished in a heartbeat, replaced entirely by murderous intent: “Before you die, I’ll allow you to state your name.”
The man grabbed by the throat showed not a shred of panic. Those indifferent heterochromatic eyes gazed back at him brimming with tenderness: “Before I die, won’t you give me a name?”
152 felt a chill run down its spine, creeped out by the man’s gaze: Could he be some old romantic debt you picked up ages ago? Did you seriously forget who he even is?
The man was undeniably bizarre, but adhering to the principle of better to kill a thousand by mistake than let a single one escape, Shen Zaixin was just about to strike when a thunderous crash shattered the silence. The bedroom door was kicked open from the outside, followed immediately by Yugui’s anxious, clear voice: “Junior Uncle, are you al—”
Upon spotting the Immortal draped in a single half-exposed robe in a highly suggestive pose atop the daybed, the youth instantly turned bright red. Averting his gaze in panic, he hurriedly slammed the door shut and bolted backward down the hall: “Junior Uncle, I’m sorry!”
“Tsk.” Shen Zaixin dropped his hand from the man’s throat with a dark expression. He really should have dealt with this bed-crawling freak first before delivering any death eulogies over his corpse.
Turning on his heel to leave, he was yanked back by the courting-death man: “Are you planning on walking out dressed like that?”
Shen Zaixin nearly laughed out of sheer fury. He hadn’t even interrogated this unidentified man yet, and the fellow was already trying to boss him around?
He had never been an immortal with a mild temper, and at this moment, his patience reached its absolute breaking point. He swung his hand across the man’s face with a sharp slap, his gaze cold and laden with fury: “Who do you think you are, daring to lecture me?”
Then he watched as the man clutched his heavily swelling cheek. Those deadpan heterochromatic eyes suddenly welled up with a wave of deep nostalgia and profound emotion, his brows thick with excitement, his gaze shining so brightly it looked exactly like a large, loyal dog receiving a reward from its master, complete with an imaginary tail wagging furiously behind him.
Shen Zaixin: “…”
152: Ah… well… truly a top-tier freak!
“Get lost.” Dropping those cold words, he turned and threw open the door, storming out of the bedroom without looking back.
The strange man remained silent for a long moment. Despite having just been cursed and slapped, the corners of his mouth curled upward in a beaming smile. Perhaps because it had been far too long since he last smiled, his expression looked awkward and clumsy as he murmured softly to himself: “This long-lost feeling, truly wonderful.”