Do You Want to Eat Me?
No matter his tone or his height, which didn’t even reach the scarred man’s thighs, he looked completely harmless and innocent. However, in the eyes of the scarred man and his gang, he was more terrifying than an evil ghost. It was broad daylight, and even if there were ghosts, they wouldn’t appear; the little demon with strange horns in front of them was obviously much more terrifying.
Damn it, they had only wanted to borrow some silver to spend, and who the hell knew they would actually bump into a demon.
The scarred man retreated, his hands rubbing against the rough, gritty sand and gravel. The immense terror forced him to ignore the pain of his palms being scratched by sharp stones, and a faint smell of blood permeated Duan Wangyue’s nose, making the corners of his eyes flush with a pale crimson, which only made him look even more like a cute piece of jade.
He took a step forward, and the scarred man crawled backward a few steps while rubbing against the ground. As he moved, a trail of blood was left on both sides, and the smell of blood grew stronger and stronger.
Duan Wangyue acted as if he had discovered something amusing, teasing the scarred man until he had nowhere left to retreat and nowhere left to crawl. The palms he pressed against the stony path were shredded, and the stark white bones beneath the flesh were even visible.
The scarred man leaned against a large tree, calmly looking at the seemingly gentle little demon in front of him. The long-delayed, intense pain in his palms rushed to his head in waves, hurting him so much that he was covered in sweat. Aside from the initial terror upon seeing that pair of horns, the scarred man had now figured things out, or perhaps he had suddenly let go.
Since he was going to die anyway, why not fight and try to kill this little demon first?
The other three men always followed closely behind the scarred man, guessing his thoughts inside and out. They could roughly figure out what the scarred man was going to do with just a single look.
Duan Wangyue’s feet were off the ground as he hung from a tree trunk, and hanging on the tree with him was Old Master Du.
The scarred man’s hands were injured, resting palms-up on his knees, and he stared viciously at the person and the demon hanging on the tree. “Old Master, the fellows and I are old acquaintances of yours. Now I’m giving you a chance to survive. Do you want it, or do you not?”
Old Master Du raised his eyes tremblingly to look at him. He was old and simply couldn’t withstand such torment. Now, even lifting his eyelids to look at someone required a bit of effort, let alone speaking. His lips opened and closed, producing only a few inaudible breaths of air.
“Er Dan, did you hear what the Old Master said?”
Er Dan, who was guarding Old Master Du, said, “The Old Master said he wants it. He wants to go to the capital to see his grandson.”
The scarred man raised his head and motioned for Er Dan to let Old Master Du down. As soon as the old man’s feet touched the ground, a sharp dagger was shoved into his hands. He seemed to have guessed what this gang wanted to do, and failed to hold the dagger steady after trying several times, constantly muttering no under his breath.
The scarred man watched the scene with great interest and said, “Didn’t you already make your choice? If you choose ‘want’, then kill that little bastard.”
The old man was led by Er Dan to Duan Wangyue. Looking at the cute little child born looking like jade, the old man thought of his own little grandson and felt a pang of reluctance, until he saw Er Dan pull back the hood that was loosely covering the child’s head, revealing just a small face, and saw the pair of horns growing from his head. The previous reluctance and pity instantly turned into dread and fear.
A demon, a monster!
Duan Wangyue looked coldly at the scene, and he heard the scarred man say, “As long as you kill this little demon, you can go see your grandson.”
“He isn’t human; he’s just a monster. Kill him and take his head to the immortal manor, and you might even get a bounty.”
He is not human.
He is a monster.
Old Master Du muttered to himself, finding support in those two sentences. He was a demon, and killing him was only right and proper.
The cold, hard dagger stabbed straight into his lower abdomen. The moment the intense pain struck, he heard a cry of alarm from the person rumored to be his bodyguard: “Young Master!”
And the scarred man’s loud, laughing roar: “Good, good, good!”
The grandpa who had said at the wonton shop that he was afraid he would be targeted by bad people for his money, the one who said he would treat him to wontons, pulled out the dagger stabbed in his lower abdomen and drove it in fiercely again, weeping with compassion and fear as he muttered I’m sorry over and over.
Duan Wangyue lowered his gaze to look at the hands that had served him a bowl of steaming wontons become stained with his own blood. He was trembling slightly all over from the pain, took a light breath to ease the suffering in his body, and raised his eyes to look at the wonton grandpa who was crying uncontrollably. With the innocent naivety of a child, he asked him, “Why are you saying sorry?”
Old Master Du was stunned. Only then did he let go of the slippery hands as if suddenly enlightened, and he ran away, stumbling and scrambling.
Er Dan spat on the ground and was about to give chase when the scarred man said, “No need to chase. The little demon right here is the most important thing.”
“How should we deal with this little demon? Send him to the immortal sects?”
The scarred man chuckled a few times and said viciously, “Send him to what immortal sect? I’m going to feed him to a big demon!”
Duan Wangyue was still hanging from the tree, watching coldly as these big men discussed how to dispose of him. The wounds carved into him by Old Master Du with the dagger were still bleeding continuously, quickly pooling into a dark red puddle on the ground.
Suddenly, Duan Wangyue raised his head to look ahead, as if he had discovered something interesting, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled into a smile.
[System Message: Host binding successful! 886 is at your service, at your command, ovo!]
Xiao Yuan had never thought that the matter of transmigrating into a book would ever have anything to do with him, nor had he ever thought that transmigrating into a book wasn’t just the novel settings authors cooked up while sitting in front of their computers, hammering away at their keyboards.
It was actually happening.
In the back of his mind, 886 was still chattering away: [Host! Our mission is simply to achieve a world peace ending! It is super simple, du, ovo!]
Super simple?
Xiao Yuan’s hand tapping on his knee paused, and he was almost laughed to death by 886. Although he had read this book, Ascending to the Immortal World, in his early years, even though it had been a long time and the plot in the book was blurry, he still had a vivid memory of the cause of death of the villainous Immortal Venerable in the book who shared the exact same name and tortured his disciple: he was killed by his disciple for the sake of the Dao, and sliced into a skeleton.
The disciple had experimented on goodness knows how many people, and apart from the villainous Immortal Venerable’s head remaining intact, the rest of him was a pile of stark white bones without a single shred of flesh. Even so, the villainous Immortal Venerable was kept alive by his disciple using secret arts, lingering on in agony for a full year.
The disciple went crazy in the end, wanting to destroy the world. He was basically a walking psychopath, and Xiao Yuan would rather go back and continue dealing with the cute psychiatric patients in the asylum than deal with a lunatic who treated him like seafood sashimi.
“No, send me back. This is illegal kidnapping of yours.” Xiao Yuan didn’t want to be sliced into a skeleton. Leaning back in his chair, he habitually raised his hand to push up the bridge of his nose. Being somewhat nearsighted, the gesture he usually made to push up frames hit empty air, directly pressing against his bare nasal bridge.
This made him very uncomfortable, and his tone turned foul as well. “Otherwise, I’ll report you.”
886 had come out to work from system training school on its very first day only to encounter such a difficult host, and it became so anxious that its entire spherical body crackled with electric sparks. If it really got reported, wouldn’t it be finished?
[Host, please don’t! We are a very legitimate system; you don’t need to do any extra tasks, just make the world peaceful! And even if you report me, you can’t go back anymore, because you have already passed away in the real world.]
886 calculated the time and said: [You’re probably already in an urn by now.]
Xiao Yuan: “…”
886 offered earnest advice: [Besides, this is just the very beginning of the book’s world, and you haven’t tortured your disciple yet. As long as you teach him well and don’t abuse him, you can achieve the world peace ending! Once the mission is over, you can change into a preferred identity and return to your original world!]
The beginning?
He was already dead?
Xiao Yuan fell silent for a moment before slowly speaking: “I understand. Where is the disciple? I’ll go find him.”
886 felt it was truly brilliant for successfully winning the host back and having him actively inquire about the protagonist’s location. The entire spherical body excitedly sparked happy little firecrackers: [The north side, system error codes redacted.]
Xiao Yuan: “Say that again?”
886: [The north side, system error codes redacted.]
Xiao Yuan only caught the words “north side”. When he asked again, 886 was no longer responding, and in its place sounded a detached prompt tone.
[System 886 energy depleted, recharging.]
“When will it be fully charged?”
[System 886 energy depleted, recharging.]
Realizing that the system was unresponsive, Xiao Yuan felt his head ache even more. He tried hard to recall the contents of Ascending to the Immortal World, but too much time had passed, so long that he had even forgotten what race the protagonist was and what his name was, remembering only that the cannon foddered Qingyuan Immortal Venerable, who shared his name, had been sliced into a skeleton.
Right, his race.
The world-building of Ascending to the Immortal World was different from traditional leveling web novels; the protagonist of this book wasn’t a pure human, but a half-breed.
Although he was a half-breed who had suffered all kinds of hardships and cold stares, he was still like a cheerful, lively little sunflower, until he met his master, Xiao Yuan, and was tortured into psychological distortion, single-mindedly bent on patricide.
Xiao Yuan didn’t want to be sliced into a skeleton. Fortunately, although 886 was somewhat unreliable, it at least stated the direction where the disciple was located. Summoning his natal sword, Burnt Ink, he looked up at the horizon to earnestly confirm the direction, and finally flew away rapidly toward the south on his sword.
“Roar!”
Birds scattered all over the forest, and the roars of demonic beasts were deafening. Xiao Yuan originally didn’t want to get involved, until he heard someone shouting for help.
The scarred man was practically scared out of his wits. He had hardly ever left Qingyang City since he was a child, and even when leaving the city, he had never encountered any demonic creatures. He was merely a mortal, without the ability of cultivators to fight back against demons and monsters; truly running into evil ghosts meant waiting for death.
Before his neck was bitten off by the half-man, half-tiger demonic beast, the scarred man let out a final, miserable scream: “Ah!”
Duan Wangyue was still hanging from the tree trunk, and the blood of the scarred man and Er Dan’s group splattered all over him, drenching his cloak so that blood dripped down drop by drop.
Mixing with his own blood, it quickly stained a large patch of dark red traces beneath his feet.
The tiger demon released the scarred man’s neck, its nose twitching a few times before its gaze finally fixed on a spot with an extremely rich fragrance. That fragrance had been telling it ever since it first caught a whiff: Eat me, your cultivation will make great progress, come quickly and eat me.
The tiger demon licked its lips. In the movement, Duan Wangyue could even see a few shreds of minced meat hanging from its stark white teeth. The closer it got, the more intense the smell of rotting meat became, but Duan Wangyue acted as though he didn’t smell it at all. He curved his lips, the small dimple on his cheek sinking into a cute arc, and the blood splashed on his forehead trickled down his cheek, gathering at his chin before dripping onto the ground.
“Do you want to eat me?”
“Young Master!”
“Shut up.”
The tiger demon couldn’t understand what the fragrant person in front of it was saying, and it opened its mouth wide, wanting to swallow him whole in one bite. However, just as its mouth opened and before it could make a move, an immortal sword radiating a faint cyan light stabbed through from its back to its front, piercing it straight through and also slicing the somewhat fragile demonic core within its dantian into two halves.
Boom.
The hill-like tiger demon in front of them collapsed to the ground with a crash. Duan Wangyue blinked, and amidst the sea of blood filling his vision, he saw the white-robed immortal lord stepping upon the moonlight.