The lotus curtains were warm; it was their wedding night.
Miao Shuang opened his eyes. Thick, heavy red obscured his vision.
The pain in his chest had not yet faded, wind and snow howled in his ears, and the chill had seeped into the very cracks of his bones.
Just moments ago, he had been run through the heart by Immortal Lord Bo Yan’s blade, and his life had ended.
A Void-Refinement-stage cultivator, half a step from the Dao — the two of them had fought and tangled for forty-nine days, and in the end Miao Shuang had lost, by the narrowest margin.
His skill simply wasn’t a match. He accepted that much.
They said evil could never overcome righteousness; he, the calamity-bringing Demon Lord who had done countless evil deeds, had finally ended his sinful life. He supposed the righteous-path cultivators were clapping their hands in celebration right about now, congratulating each other as they celebrated the New Year together.
Only…
The body that had long since frozen stiff in the wind and snow was gradually warming up again. Miao Shuang felt that he could move once more. He slowly flexed his wrist, and his palm reached up to feel at his chest.
There was no wound on his chest.
The heart that should have been shattered to pieces by that overwhelming sword intent was still beating — in fact, from the shock, it was beating even more vigorously than usual.
……
What was going on?
He was still alive?
As he moved, the red before his eyes swayed along with him, and only then did Miao Shuang realize that what was obscuring his vision wasn’t blood flowing into his eyes, but a piece of red cloth.
He yanked the red cloth off.
The fine red silk was embroidered with gold thread, festive and luxurious.
What was this?
A red bridal veil?
Even the unflappable Demon Lord himself was shocked to find himself inexplicably covered with a red veil, dressed in wedding attire, sitting in a bridal chamber playing the part of a bride. He lifted his head and looked around.
Sheer bed curtains hung down, a large red “囍” (double happiness) character was pasted on the window lattice, the clamor in his ears had receded — forget the howling wind and snow, even the red candlelight burning at the bedside didn’t flicker even slightly.
Without a doubt, this was not Myriad Demons Peak where he had died, and it might not even be the cultivation world at all — it was a bridal chamber belonging to some mortal household.
Miao Shuang: “…”
How novel.
First time learning what the afterlife looked like.
He didn’t believe he could have possibly survived Immortal Lord Bo Yan’s blade by sheer luck, and yet the fact remained that his consciousness was still intact.
Could it be that whoever killed him had dragged his soul into some kind of illusion, letting him lose himself in a sea of desire, so that he could pass on more comfortably and pleasantly?
But that was a technique only cultivators of the Hehuan Sect could master — he hadn’t even succeeded in stealing it when he tried, so there was no way it had anything to do with the noble and moonlit Immortal Lord Bo Yan.
Immortal Lord Bo Yan had spent his whole life exterminating demons and upholding the Dao; surely he wouldn’t go soft-hearted enough to offer a dying demon like him some kind of hospice care.
Now that was strange…
Just as he was pondering this, a voice suddenly came from outside the room. “General, please go in quickly, don’t keep Madam waiting too long.”
The voice was shrill and thin, laced with a simpering smile, yet faintly carrying a threat beneath it. “After all, this marriage was graciously bestowed by His Majesty himself — such boundless imperial favor. General really ought to be a bit happier about it.”
…General? Madam?
Just because he’d been stabbed once by his archenemy, he, Miao Shuang, had gone from being the dignified Demon Lord to some general’s wife? Ha?
To think that in his past life, when he commanded the thousand demons, countless people had scrambled every day for the chance to cultivate dual cultivation with him — though he hadn’t looked twice at any of those crooked melons and cracked dates… But at the very least, it should have been some general marrying him, not the other way around.
The moment it occurred to him that he was about to become someone else’s property beneath the sheets, Miao Shuang couldn’t help feeling a flare of irritation. Whoever wanted to be this general’s wife could have the job — he, Miao Shuang, certainly wasn’t going to be it.
He raised his hand, intending to tear this bridal chamber apart and show these ignorant mortals a thing or two, but the moment he lifted his hand, his expression froze.
There wasn’t a single trace of cultivation left in his body!
The door panel stirred slightly — the person outside was about to come in. In this critical instant, Miao Shuang decisively withdrew his hand, grabbed the red veil, and put it back over his head.
A real man could bend as well as stand firm — since he didn’t yet know what he was dealing with, he’d wait quietly and see how things developed.
Someone came in, but Miao Shuang didn’t hear any footsteps.
There was only the creaking rumble of wooden wheels rolling across the floor, passing through the doorway where the threshold had been removed, slowly approaching him.
After a long while, the general who had not uttered a single word the whole time finally arrived before him, and lifted the veil that had been hastily thrown over his head without being properly set straight.
The field of view, once blocked by red, brightened again, and the first thing that came into view was the other person’s hand.
A hand covered in scars.
The fingernails that had been torn out hadn’t fully grown back; the layered scars on the inside of the wrist were proof that the tendons there seemed to have been severed and then reconnected. Because of this, the hand had become rather clumsy — even lifting a veil was quite difficult for it.
This person had suffered brutal torture.
Following the arm upward with his gaze, Miao Shuang finally saw his face clearly.
A face so familiar it couldn’t possibly be more familiar.
During those forty-nine days when he’d been besieged by righteous-path cultivators at Myriad Demons Peak, he had faced this very face day and night, and just two quarter-hours ago, the owner of this face had looked at him with cold indifference and mercilessly driven an icy sword straight into his heart.
“Immortal Lord Bo Yan…” Miao Shuang gritted his teeth viciously, wishing he could chew these four words to pieces and swallow them down.
Qi Yan lifted his eyelids and glanced at him faintly, his expression showing not the slightest ripple at being addressed this way.
Miao Shuang: “…”
Something was off.
This person didn’t seem to be Immortal Lord Bo Yan.
Although Immortal Lord Bo Yan always wore that same deathly expression of keeping everyone at arm’s length, it was more a matter of solitary aloofness and detachment — cold and otherworldly, like a flower atop a high peak.
But this person now…
He wasn’t sure if it was because of the brutal torture he’d suffered, but his gaze was as indifferent as a stagnant pool of water, dark almost to the point of gloominess.
And moreover, he didn’t seem to recognize him at all.
If Immortal Lord Bo Yan had discovered he was still alive, there was no way his reaction would be this detached and indifferent.
What was going on?
This Qi Yan wasn’t that Qi Yan?
And yet he was certain he couldn’t be mistaken — the soul housed within the body before him was undoubtedly Qi Yan’s; he’d recognize it even reduced to ash.
Had this Qi Yan fellow lost his memory?
Stabbed him with a sword, and then forgotten about him too?
How was this any different from f*cking him and then pulling up his pants and running off?
In the silence as their gazes met, that shrill, thin voice sounded again from outside the door. “This old servant won’t disturb the General’s consummation of the marriage any further, then. Since His Majesty personally decreed this auspicious hour, I do hope the General and Madam will enjoy a lovely spring night together~”
The door was pulled shut. Miao Shuang glanced toward it and narrowed his eyes.
Every other word out of that mouth was “His Majesty this, His Majesty that” — on the surface it sounded like congratulations, but it was clearly a thinly veiled threat.
A shrill, strange-voiced dead eunuch, actually daring to order a general around like that — just what dynasty, what era was this, that even some ambiguous half-thing dared to be so domineering?
Wait.
What that dead eunuch said sounded rather familiar, somehow… he felt like he’d seen it somewhere before…
General, Emperor, a marriage bestowed by imperial decree…
Now he had some impression of it.
This seemed to be the plot from that book he’d read before.
Two months ago, he’d casually cut down a few righteous-path cultivators who didn’t know better than to provoke him, taken their storage artifacts, and collected a few odds and ends of no particular importance.
The things on those righteous-path cultivators had been rather uninteresting — some cultivation classics, which he’d used as firewood — except for one mortal paperback novel that had actually been somewhat entertaining, for no other reason than that its protagonists were Miao Shuang and Qi Yan.
He and Qi Yan had fought for a thousand years — word of their deeds had spread not only through the cultivation world but had even begun to circulate among mortals, and after being embellished by various people, the tales had been woven into something even more dramatic than their actual history.
He recalled hearing once that mortals had some term for this… “tong ren”? Fan fiction?
Out of boredom and curiosity, Miao Shuang had opened up the fan-fiction paperback he’d picked up, wanting to see just how these mortals had cast the two of them.
The book was titled “The Sacred Gu,” and its contents were indeed quite fresh — it had constructed an alternate dynasty called “Yong.” In it, Qi Yan had been cast as a general of the Yong Kingdom, risking his life time and again for his country and amassing illustrious military achievements, only to be feared by the emperor for his accomplishments overshadowing the throne, who wished to eliminate him as soon as possible.
It so happened that the “Sacred Gu” of the Miao territories had surfaced in the world — whoever obtained it could obtain the realm. The Emperor of Great Yong dispatched Qi Yan to raze the Miao settlements, but he failed to bring back the Sacred Gu, returning instead with only an empty box. The emperor seized this opportunity to charge Qi Yan with a crime, throwing him in prison and subjecting him to torture, trying to force him to reveal the Sacred Gu’s whereabouts.
Qi Yan was stripped of all his martial cultivation, his hands and feet broken, yet he still refused to speak. The tyrannical emperor then came up with an even more vicious scheme — he issued an imperial edict granting Qi Yan a marriage, claiming it was in consideration of his meritorious service to Great Yong, that he would show him mercy and let him off the hook by holding a joyous occasion to counteract his bad luck. In reality, he bestowed upon him a Miao healer as a spouse — this Miao healer was not only vicious and venomous as a scorpion, but was also male.
Yes, that’s right — this Miao healer was none other than himself, the dignified Demon Lord whose fearsome reputation alone could stop a crying child mid-wail at night — Miao Shuang.
As for what connection the Demon Lord had to the Miao territories… probably just because his name happened to contain the character “Miao.” Or perhaps it was because demonic cultivators were seen by mortals as being as vicious as witchcraft and gu poison.
In any case, although the content of the paperback was indeed quite fresh, it truly had nothing to do with him or Qi Yan in reality — no helping it, that’s just how fan-fiction paperbacks were: aside from the names still being the same names, everything else was pure fabrication.
Miao Shuang had classified it as some work released by someone who enjoyed watching Immortal Lords fall from grace to satisfy some kind of ao-complex — no real substance to it, just something to flip through idly when he had nothing better to do.
On the day the righteous-path cultivators had come to kill him, he’d been lounging in the Myriad Demons Hall reading that paperback — he’d simply tucked it into his robes and gone out to meet Qi Yan’s sword. By the time he died, the book should have still been on him.
Perhaps it was because of this that, instead of being obliterated into nothing beneath Qi Yan’s blade, he had instead fallen into the world within this book.
When Void-Refinement-stage cultivators clashed, even space itself could be torn apart — nothing that happened would be strange. He just didn’t understand — it was one thing for him to have fallen in here, but why was Qi Yan here too?
He himself had died and thus had his soul leave his body — but what about Qi Yan?
Could it be that this leader of the righteous path who chased him down to kill him every single day was actually secretly deep in the closet, and had died for love alongside this calamity-bringing Demon Lord?
Miao Shuang was amused by his own thought and laughed.
More likely, Qi Yan had killed him, gone to collect his cultivation artifacts, spotted the book on his person, and gotten sucked in that way.
He had no idea what this person — who had sailed through life smoothly every step of the way, the proud favored son of heaven, the noble and aloof Immortal Lord Bo Yan — would feel inside upon seeing himself cast in the role this paperback had written for him.
Miao Shuang slowly stood up, looking down from above at the person in the wheelchair.
Once a great general who had ridden warhorses into battle, spear in hand, matching a thousand enemies single-handedly — now he could no longer walk, could no longer lift his hands, and could only get around by wheelchair. His injuries hadn’t yet healed, and the bright red wedding attire only made his face look all the more pale and haggard.
But those handsome, refined brows and eyes remained as cold and detached as ever — no matter how the eunuch outside the door mocked him with that sinister tone, no matter how the tyrannical emperor coerced and humiliated him, those deep black eyes remained calm and unruffled throughout.
Miao Shuang took a deep breath.
This person’s deathly composure — facing calamity head-on yet acting as calm as still water, as if none of it had anything to do with him at all — it really was… making him feel something stirring down there.