ATAVID CH125

“Master, were you trapped in a nightmare again?” Xie Chuan followed behind Wei Xun with a long sword slung across his back.

Wei Xun gave Xie Chuan a listless glance. A dark shadow hung beneath his eyelids; due to not sleeping well for a long time, his entire state looked rather poor.

This year was the twenty-fifth year of Xiping.

Wei Xun had just become the new Lord of the Demon Realm.

Likely because he had been a cultivator in the realm of cultivation before falling into demonhood, the various demon tribes rooted below for centuries were all dissatisfied in their hearts. Openly and covertly, they laid down layer upon layer of schemes, only hoping to drag him off his high pedestal and eliminate him once and for all.

There were also opportunistic fools who attempted to curry favor with him, but their methods were crudely insufferable—revolving repeatedly around nothing more than offering beauties, applying knock-out drugs, or framing and slandering him.

Wei Xun had long gotten used to such tricks. Over time, he merely looked on with a cold eye, letting them toss and turn as they pleased.

In the past, these tricks were useless against Wei Xun.

Yet over the past month, Wei Xun would always have some strange dreams.

Most of the scenes in the dream were no different from his real life.

At sixteen, his cultivation was completely destroyed and he became entirely blind; at seventeen, he entered the water dungeon and suffered humiliation from others; at eighteen, he severed his path to immortality, fell into the demon path, and degenerated into half-demon, half-ghost.

The only difference was that during that calamity, by his side, there was an extra inner demon.

Unlike those stupid inner demons currently in his spiritual sense, the inner demon in his dream was clearly much smarter.

“Wei Xun—”

“Wei Xun—”

It would always drag out its voice to call him like that.

When he first entered this nightmare, Wei Xun only felt that this inner demon was noisily unbearable.

If it were his true self encountering such a haunting, clingy demonic creature, he would only cut it off by the roots without showing a single shred of leniency.

And the self in the dream had indeed not disappointed him.

Like a bystander standing completely outside the picture, Wei Xun looked on coldly as his dream self killed that inner demon.

The first time, the second time.

In just a month’s time, he had killed that inner demon twice.

Oh, right—that inner demon surprisingly had a name, called Jiang Qunyu.

Sure enough, unlike his previous inner demons, this inner demon had somehow developed a spiritual sense.

Later, he tried many methods, but could no longer kill that inner demon.

His dream self gave up.

With a temperament akin to a young child, he always had verbal squabbles with that inner demon. They could even clash sharply or come to blows over trivial matters like who would sleep on the bed and who would sleep on the rafters on a given day.

Wei Xun stared at this ridiculous and illusory dream with an expressionless face, saying nothing. Only after a long while did his thin lips part slightly, spitting out two words: “Childish.”

Truly a fool—two years have passed, yet he couldn’t even eliminate a single inner demon.

Wei Xun felt contempt toward it.

Because his dream self was too foolish, Wei Xun inevitably suspected whether someone in the Yunque Palace was secretly playing tricks under the instigation of various forces in the Demon Realm—secretly burning abnormal incense in his sleeping quarters and laying down sinister arts to make him sink into phantom realms night after night, deprived of peace.

“Presumably just some low-class tricks again.”

He raised his eyes, his expression indifferent and waverless, his voice cool as he instructed faintly: “Replace every single palace attendant in the hall.”

“Your subordinate obeys.” Xie Chuan answered and withdrew.

After burning incense no longer, those eerie nightmares that had tormented him for a long time indeed came to a halt.

Once, he happened to remember this matter and sent someone to summon the demon tribe’s witch doctor.

He asked: “What exactly was the incense burned in this hall previously?”

The witch doctor bowed his head to answer, respectfully replying: “Your Lordship, that was merely the most ordinary spirit-soothing incense, without any abnormality whatsoever.”

Wei Xun lowered his eyelashes, thinking to himself: Spirit-soothing incense? Then why couldn’t he sleep well every time he burned it?

From that day on, he completely abandoned the incense in the hall, never lighting it again.

Yet it seemed it truly had nothing to do with that incense, because starting from a certain year of Xiping, he began having those dreams again.

In the dream, Wei Xun plotted step by step, tricking Jiang Qunyu into possessing him. Originally, he harbored a mind of utilization, wanting to use this strand of inner demon to block a sword strike for himself.

It clearly could have succeeded, yet at the final moment, he informed him that one could also see objects using spiritual sense.

Foolish beyond belief.

Wei Xun sneered coldly.

Sure enough, that inner demon didn’t die.

Wei Xun watched coldly, finally curling his lips to comment in a vicious tone: “Softening your heart toward the same inner demon? Truly laughable.”

Yet before he could finish his words, in the dream, that inner demon blocked a sword strike for his self.

The words in Wei Xun’s mouth stuck in his throat.

He didn’t even know what to say. An emotion he had never touched before quietly spread from the depths of his chest—it was an extremely faint, extremely acrid sour swelling, winding thread by thread around his internal organs, unfamiliar yet abrupt.

He narrowed his long, narrow eyes slightly, quietly watching the continuation of the dream.

Watching his dream self kill Huazhen, and after confirming that the inner demon had finally dissipated, only then did he continue walking toward the mortal world.

Because there was no longer Jiang Qunyu’s noisy voice by his ear, his dream self walked extremely fast. The lantern shadow he carried swayed with a fine, biting chill through the forest; resting for a brief moment, he continued on his way again.

Wei Xun remained silent, a strange sigh of relief unexpectedly rising in his heart.

Before he could thoroughly understand when his sudden emotion had arisen, Jiang Qunyu returned again.

A tiny clump of black mist, in a forest filled with withered bones on the ground, got angry because Wei Xun dug a grave for him—biting hard on Wei Xun’s hand while uttering words devoid of any deterrence.

In the dream, Wei Xun fed the black mist clump his blood.

The black mist clump became a round, squishy ball again, so it always perched atop Wei Xun’s head or shoulder, wishing it could rub its scent all over him.

During the seven years in the mortal world thereafter, and the two years in East Jinghu City, they only had each other, depending on one another to survive. Thus, though they argued at times, they would reconcile again in less than a day.

Wei Xun watched quietly. Finally, he forcibly terminated the dream and returned to reality.

He couldn’t bear to watch that dream any longer.

Because it was at this moment that he understood—perhaps that emotion in his heart could be called jealousy.

Why?

Why was the self in the dream able to meet Jiang Qunyu?

Only he fell into demonhood all alone, day after day, from beginning to end—left walking entirely by himself.

Forcibly breaking the dream resulted in severe backlash, with demonic energy running wild through his meridians. Having reached the Void Refining Realm with great difficulty, he fell back down to the Spirit Transformation Realm.

Yet Wei Xun didn’t care.

He had tried to force the birth of inner demons, but none of those inner demons were like Jiang Qunyu, so he gave up.

They weren’t Jiang Qunyu after all.

He continued to have those dreams—those strange, bizarre dreams that did not belong to him.

Later still, he saw his dream self become the Demon Venerable as well, but his becoming the Demon Venerable was to forge a body for Jiang Qunyu anew.

Wei Xun then thought to himself: What about him?

What was his purpose in becoming the Demon Venerable?

Actually, a long time ago, he had always felt that something was controlling him.

Therefore, during that great battle between good and evil in the eighty-seventh year of Xiping—

When the sky was filled with immortals and demons battling with earth-shattering roars, blade lights staining the rivers and mountains blood-red—at the instant when Lan Yuanzhou’s long sword carried frost-cold immortal power to stab straight into the critical spot of his heart, he did not dodge.

He took that heart-piercing sword strike head-on.

And because of this, he saw the deity that had constantly attempted to manipulate his entire life.

Surging with wrath and unwillingness in his eyes, Xuan Jin questioned in a sharp, harsh tone: “Why? Why didn’t you dodge!”

Wei Xun coughed softly, slowly turning his head away. His unfocused eyes looked toward Xuan Jin, his lips curling into a smile: “…I told you, there was some disgusting thing that had been constantly influencing me.”

Xuan Jin’s hatred wished it could solidify into substance as he roared: “Give me an answer!”

An answer?

Wei Xun didn’t answer him.

His lonely, long life was finally coming to an end.

He merely turned his head back, looking at the grey, hazy sky as snow blew and fluttered down across the heavens, covering the blood-colored earth.

Yet in his mind, he recalled a certain day during those years searching for Jinghu City in the mortal world in the dream—night hung heavy, the dense forest was deep, and darkness surrounded everything, with only a crescent moon in the firmament casting down thin, hazy, pale light.

Jiang Qunyu was too lazy to walk, originally transforming into a black mist clump to perch on the handle of the green paper lantern.

Yet he suddenly jumped down from the handle, transforming into the refined appearance of a youth.

Raising his head with a face full of wonder, he reached out to poke Wei Xun’s shoulder: “Wei Xun—” “Wei Xun—”

He always loved dragging out his voice to call him like that.

He said: “Look up quickly!”

So Wei Xun looked up.

There was nothing—still a pitch-black, heavy expanse.

Jiang Qunyu was shocked by his lack of romantic sentiment, saying in annoyance: “Didn’t you notice that the tree canopy above our heads looks exceptionally like that cat we ran into at the inn yesterday?”

Wei Xun was stunned for a moment. Pursing his lips, he turned his head to look at Jiang Qunyu.

Jiang Qunyu’s eyes seemed to ripple with fine, scattered stars.

Yes, Jiang Qunyu was originally a person who liked to look up at the trees and look down at the flowers.

Whereas Wei Xun was a very boring person.

Without Jiang Qunyu, he was meant to be entirely alone, helpless and miserable.

He raised his hand, catching a falling snowflake. Just when Xuan Jin thought he would never answer again, he said: “Because it’s very boring.”

The life force inside his body dissipated bit by bit as he said word by word: “It’s truly very boring.”

…If,

He meant if—if those dreams he had were a next life he had never touched, he thought that even if he had to experience the first eighteen years all over again,

He was willing to do it too.

In the eighty-seventh year of Xiping, on the third of the third lunar month,

This year, the Demon Venerable Wei Xun passed away.

He was under a hundred years old.

(End of Full Novel)