ATAVID CH15: Two Years of Companionship

Jiang Qunyu didn’t have time to react.
Wei Xun’s presence abruptly withdrew. The silk ribbon gripped in his palm was violently yanked away by a strong force, leaving only an empty coldness at his fingertips.
Jiang Qunyu: “…”

The eyelashes beneath the white silk trembled. The knuckles of Jiang Qunyu’s tightly clenched fists turned white, as shock and anger surged in his heart like overturning seas.
Just a moment ago, he absurdly thought that his relationship with Wei Xun had somewhat eased.

After all, they had spent two years together, which more or less counted as accompanying each other as they grew up. Even if they weren’t friends, there should still be some mutual consideration between them.
But facts proved that one should never try to understand a moody, unpredictable lunatic.

Especially when this lunatic was a bloodthirsty, eccentric, bizarrely-fetished, wife-stealing lunatic from a certain restricted novel!

Sword qi was already grazing the tip of his nose as it struck. Relying on his instinctive intuition for danger, Jiang Qunyu instantly activated the meager demonic energy Wei Xun had left beside him.

His figure fiercely dodged to the side, barely avoiding that fatal strike.
But the overwhelming sword intent was airtight. He ultimately couldn’t avoid it all. Several cold gleams slashed through his flesh, and a piercing pain instantly swept over his entire body.
The sensation of blades slicing open flesh grated on his nerves. Bright red blood beads seeped from countless tiny wounds, quickly soaking his plain white clothes.

Even the tip of his nose was surrounded by a strong stench of blood, choking his throat tight.

Jiang Qunyu leaned his back against a rough tree trunk, panting heavily. His chest heaved violently; every breath pulled at his wounds, hurting him so much he saw stars.

He didn’t know where Wei Xun was hiding. Looking randomly in a certain direction with blind eyes, unwilling hostility surged in their depths: “Wei Xun, you are a fucking lunatic!”

Wei Xun didn’t answer.
He had lightly retreated more than thirty feet away and was standing right outside the gaps of the sword qi net, leisurely admiring the bitterly struggling Jiang Qunyu.
As if watching a play that had nothing to do with him.

So pitiful.
Wei Xun thought expressionlessly.

The next second, however, he suddenly burst into loud laughter.
Laughing until the corners of his eyes were stained with a bit of moisture, he finally restrained his smile and slowly sighed with emotion, the mockery in his tone almost overflowing: “You are so naive.”

“A lunatic like you deserves to die alone and have a terrible death!” Jiang Qunyu cursed loudly, supporting himself against the tree trunk and stumbling forward.
But it was pitch-black before his eyes. Without Wei Xun’s guidance, it was hard for him to even walk normally, let alone dodge an assassination attempt.

After barely two steps, he stumbled and nearly fell, adding a few more shallow wounds to his body.

Wei Xun wasn’t wrong to say he was naive.
Otherwise, a moment ago, he wouldn’t have thought that since this was Wei Xun’s own body after all, no matter how crazy Wei Xun was, he wouldn’t stab himself again like last time.
The truth was, this psychopath Wei Xun wasn’t self-harming anymore; he was so crazy he simply borrowed the hands of the Lingxiao Sect to destroy this vessel.
And the sole purpose was to completely eliminate him, this inner demon.

“That demon seems to be injured! Take this chance, let’s work together to kill him!”
The pursuing Lingxiao Sect disciples shouted sternly, their sword blades pointing straight at Jiang Qunyu, an eager, ruthless light burning in their eyes.
“B-But… he killed so many Golden Core stage senior brothers and sisters before, can we really win?”

The small, thin disciple beside him had a trembling voice. The hand holding his sword shook, his eyes full of fear.
“What are you afraid of! Kill him, and when we return to the sect, we’ll be accepted as the Fourth Elder’s direct disciples! Look at him now, blind and extremely weak, this is the perfect time to strike!”
That disciple’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard, the greed in his eyes impossible to hide.

Jiang Qunyu heard their conversation loud and clear.
The pitch-blackness before his eyes made it impossible to distinguish the potholes under his feet. Without paying attention, he tripped over a tree root and fell heavily to the ground.
His wounds scraped against the rough dirt, hurting so much he gritted his teeth tightly.
He couldn’t care about the pain and took a light breath.
Closing his eyes to concentrate, a sword appeared in his palm.

The sky had completely darkened, the dense green leaves overlapping and squeezing into a patch of ink-black.
The wind swept through the branches, the rustling sound spreading across the mountains and fields, making the surroundings seem even colder and gloomier.

The plain white-clad youth propped himself up with the sword and stood up. The white silk blindfold was stained with mud, yet it highlighted the cold white skin of his neck and wrists.
He tilted his head slightly, coldly “looking” at those approaching figures.
The resentment surging in the depths of his eyes almost solidified into substance.

He hated that unprovoked car accident that brought his eighteen-year-old life to a screeching halt.
He hated this absurd novel that made him transmigrate as Wei Xun’s inner demon, without even a body of his own.

He hated Wei Xun even more, hated his cold heart and ruthlessness, hated him for treating two years of companionship as a child’s game.
He also hated himself. He hated that he had been transmigrated for too long, got too deeply immersed in the role, and actually felt compassion for a lunatic, forgetting that the cultivation world was inherently cold and fickle.

He was only twenty years old. Before this, all he had received were the gentle teachings of modern society.
No one had ever taught him not to easily trust anyone in the cultivation world. No one had ever taught him not to use his own principles to judge a bloodthirsty villain.
It was his fault.

Wisps and threads of demonic energy spread out from Jiang Qunyu’s body.
Half of his face was slowly covered by dark purple demonic patterns, winding down his jawline to his neck, actually exuding a bit of bizarre, aesthetic beauty.

Seeing this, the hearts of the Lingxiao Sect disciples all pounded wildly. Their hands gripping their swords turned white, and they subconsciously lightened their breathing.
Someone’s Adam’s apple bobbed continuously; someone unconsciously retreated half an inch.
Yet they were hooked by the temptation of becoming direct disciples, forcing themselves to stay rooted in place, not daring to act rashly.

“D-Don’t be afraid! It’s just some unorthodox demonic energy!”
The disciple who spoke first feigned calmness, shouting to embolden himself, and raised his sword to viciously slash at the black mist tangling around his ankle.
But that demonic energy was like maggots attached to the bone. Slashing open one layer, it tangled back up at an even faster speed.
In the blink of an eye, it wrapped around his limbs, immobilizing him, leaving him stiff in place to let out a muffled groan of terror.

Jiang Qunyu truly didn’t like using a sword. His hands were actually out of strength, his chest pounding like a drum, his breathing completely chaotic.
His face was as pale as paper. Gritting his teeth, relying on the guidance of his divine sense, he gathered his last bit of strength into his palm, raised his hand, and hurled Soul-Devouring out.

The jade-white blade pierced through the wind, shooting straight for that disciple’s neck like a freezing white rainbow.
It was as fast as a streak of silver light. Before the disciple even had time to cry out, he only felt a coldness at his neck, and then the world spun around him.
The soft slicing sound of the blade cutting through flesh was masked by the sounds of the forest. A head rolled onto the ground, blood splattering onto the dark green branches and leaves.

Almost simultaneously, Jiang Qunyu suddenly “saw”.
Everything around him was frighteningly clear. It wasn’t the appearance of seeing with physical eyes, but rather the crystal-clear perception of a fully spread divine sense.
He could see the morning dew on the grass blades, the trajectory of falling leaves swept up by the wind, and could even sense the crawling of ants under the soil—further and clearer than what the physical eyes could see.
So this is what Wei Xun meant when he said divine sense is a cultivator’s second pair of eyes.

There were a total of four disciples who had chased after them. One was already dead, his neck dripping with fresh blood, tangled with black mist, the eyes of his head fallen on the ground full of terror.
The other three disciples looked at him as if they had seen a ghost, frozen in place, their entire bodies trembling.
Wei Xun stood far away, leaning sideways against a tree trunk, his pitch-black pupils looking at him coldly, expressionless.

“Soul-Devouring, come back.”
The youth said in a low, hoarse voice.
Soul-Devouring obediently spun back into Jiang Qunyu’s palm.
Gripping the sword, he walked forward step by step.
The night breeze swept past, lifting his ink-black hair that reached the back of his knees, and concurrently flipped off the loose white silk at the side of his eyes.
That piece of plain white silk ribbon fluttered to the ground, fully revealing his face.
That thin, weak disciple had once seen Wei Xun from afar. Seeing his face clearly now, his legs instantly gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.
His voice trembled severely: “Y-You are Wei Xun! You’re still alive?!”

Jiang Qunyu’s back was straight. His body, covered in sword wounds seeping red, remained silent.
Amidst the rustling sounds of leaves filling the sky, it was bizarrely quiet.
“Scram,” after a long time, he finally spoke: “You cannot kill me.”
The several disciples had long been scared out of their wits by this face beneath the white silk. They immediately turned and fled, stumbling and crawling, and vanished into the depths of the dense forest in the blink of an eye.

It wasn’t until the forest regained its deathly silence once again.
Jiang Qunyu finally couldn’t hold back the nausea churning in his throat, supported himself against the tree, bent over, and began to dry heave.

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