ATAVID CH58

The hand Wei Xun was holding tightened slightly.

The heat from Jiang Qunyu’s palm felt like a cluster of fire, igniting instantly. It spread along Wei Xun’s wrist bones, causing the heart within his chest to burn as well, hammering out of control.

He remained silent, not pulling his hand away.

Seeing this, Jiang Qunyu’s eyes curved into crescents. He turned, smoothly moving to shield Wei Xun behind him in one fluid motion.

Hua Zhen’s eyes were as sinister as a poisonous snake coiled to strike. He curled his lips into a satisfied smile, though his tone was feignedly heartbroken: “Wei Xun, oh Wei Xun, I still held onto some past affection for you, but I never expected you to truly collude with the Demon Realm…”

“Collude your grandfather,” Jiang Qunyu, lacking the patience for more nonsense, cut him off. His voice was as cold as quenched ice, hitting everyone present like a physical blow.

His gaze swept over the astonished disciples outside the cave, his eyes filled with undisguised killing intent.

“Get lost,” he said. “Today, whoever dares to stop me, I will kill.”

Before the last word had even faded, the hundreds of red scythe-shadows suspended in mid-air suddenly accelerated. The sound of them piercing the air was shrill and extreme, roaring toward them like ten thousand fires.

The disciples forming the array had their complexions change drastically. They hurried to raise their hands in defense, but before that sharp edge, they could only hold out for a single second before being blasted away, falling to the ground in utter disarray.

Hua Zhen’s expression chilled: “Heh, a mere leftover of the Demon Realm at the Nascent Soul stage, daring to speak so arrogantly.”

“I recall the Fourth Elder is also at the Nascent Soul stage, isn’t he?” Jiang Qunyu acted as if he had heard a joke, his eyes filled with blatant mockery.

Hua Zhen had been stagnant at the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage for hundreds of years; he despised anyone using his cultivation level to mock him. Upon hearing this, his face instantly turned ash-gray.

The spiritual power around his body surged violently, the azure light nearly flipping the entire courtyard. He raised his hand to summon his life-bound artifact, the cold light bearing down on the two.

“You reckless, death-seeking thing!” he roared. “Today, I will clean up the sect’s house and take you both down together!”

In the next instant, he moved like a ghost, his palm wind carrying the force to split mountains and shatter stones, sweeping straight toward them.

Jiang Qunyu’s expression hardened, his red scythe turning rapidly to block in front of him.

With a thunderous “clang,” the clash of spiritual powers set off a wild wave. He was forced back half a step, a sweet, metallic taste rising in his throat.

He was already fighting a crowd, and now that he had to protect the Wei Xun behind him, his movements were inevitably restricted.

The remnants of those spiritual energies grazed his shoulders, tearing small slits in his red robes.

“Heh.” Hua Zhen saw this and curled his lips in a smug smile, “Let’s see how long you can hold on!”

As Jiang Qunyu parried his killing blows, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret.

If only I hadn’t been lazy and had actually cultivated properly instead of half-assing it!

He had no intention of a long-drawn-out fight. If it were only Hua Zhen, he could trade blows evenly. But this was the Lingxiao Sect; his Blood Realm could only trap the elders and deacons temporarily. Once the Blood Realm dissipated and they all attacked together, Jiang Qunyu had no confidence in being able to carry Wei Xun out in one piece.

Must leave quickly.

Thinking of this, he no longer hesitated. He channeled every ounce of demonic energy in his body, making a desperate gamble as he pressed down fiercely on Hua Zhen.

Crimson demonic energy surged like flowing clouds across the sky. The red scythe expanded in mid-air, transforming into a blinding scarlet ray of light, carrying the resolve of a broken vessel as it hacked toward Hua Zhen.

Hua Zhen’s face tightened as he hurriedly deployed his life-bound artifact to defend.

In that brief gap while he was blocked, Jiang Qunyu grabbed Wei Xun’s wrist, his crimson domain expanding with a roar. With the red scythe clearing the path, he ripped open a gap.

“Go.”

His voice was deep and urgent.

Red robes and white silk intertwined in the wind, sweeping past the panicked gazes of the courtyard. The two leapt out of the encirclement, their sleeves fluttering like two intersecting rays of light, vanishing scores of yards away in the blink of an eye.

Behind them, Hua Zhen’s furious roar echoed through the heavens: “Chase! Do not let them escape!”

Jiang Qunyu didn’t know how many days it had been since he and Wei Xun left the Lingxiao Sect.

Only when the relentless sounds of pursuit could no longer be heard did he lead Wei Xun into the depths of a remote forest.

Twilight draped over the mountaintop, and the mist between the trees grew thicker.

When they found a stone cave beneath a cliff sheltered from the wind, Jiang Qunyu let out a heavy sigh of relief, the tension in his body unraveling. The coppery, bloody taste he had been suppressing for so long nearly surged up, only to be swallowed back down by sheer force of will.

Wei Xun seemed to notice his unstable breathing; the hand held by him stiffened slightly.

He bit his lip, his expression and eyes full of chill: “You are injured.”

“Not injured.” Jiang Qunyu took advantage of the fact that the other couldn’t see and teased him nonchalantly after lying: “You should look after yourself. Look at you—how majestic you were outside, and now you’re truly like a pampered little lady, needing me to protect you.”

Wei Xun’s aura sank. He grabbed Jiang Qunyu’s hand and pulled him down to sit.

Jiang Qunyu was startled, then pouted.

Alright, Wei Xun had been so quiet and tight-lipped these past few days, doing whatever he was told, so obedient that Jiang Qunyu had forgotten that Wei Xun was, at his core, a forceful, ill-tempered man.

The strength in his palm was great; Jiang Qunyu struggled once, failed to break free, and let him be. But looking at his own bruised wrist, he couldn’t help but get angry: “Be gentle.”

Wei Xun paused, his long lashes casting faint shadows. After a long silence, he spat out two words: “Sorry.”

He finally released his hand.

Jiang Qunyu rotated his wrist, scanning the crude, rough environment of the stone cave, and couldn’t help but mutter: “So much for your mysophobia; you’re not afraid of the dirt now, are you?”

Wei Xun did not retort. He raised his hand, and from somewhere, a medicinal pill appeared. His fingertips reached Jiang Qunyu’s lips, his movements gentle yet allowing no room for refusal: “Eat.”

Jiang Qunyu hadn’t reacted yet. He gave a dull “oh” and took the pill from his hand.

It was bitter. Jiang Qunyu frowned: “This isn’t one of the pills I gave you.”

He had assumed it was one he’d stolen for Wei Xun from the Alchemy Peak, thinking there were plenty anyway and he could just steal more if they ran out.

Wei Xun looked strangely menacing at the moment, so he figured he’d better just eat it obediently.

He hadn’t expected it to be something else entirely.

“Mm,” Wei Xun responded.

Twilight flowed into the cave, falling on his pale profile and softening his usually sharp, cold outline.

His tone was flat, as if he were merely discussing the weather: “Wei Lan left it for me, said it could be used to break through realms.”

Jiang Qunyu: “?”

No matter what, whatever Wei Lan left for Wei Xun was surely no ordinary item.

He looked at Wei Xun with complex eyes: “You’re really generous.”

Wei Xun, however, didn’t care. Although he couldn’t see clearly, he stubbornly kept his gaze on Jiang Qunyu: “Didn’t you take me out?”

Jiang Qunyu understood. He meant that if he had stayed in the water dungeon as before, he would have consumed this pill then.

No wonder his cultivation was completely drained, no different from a mortal, yet he was still able to endure a year in that water dungeon.

The air fell silent again.

It was a long while before Jiang Qunyu spoke, his voice muffled: “Sorry, if I hadn’t beaten those two up, you wouldn’t have been framed for colluding with the demons.”

He hadn’t realized that in this illusion, Wei Xun had been forced to take the fall because of him.

Wei Xun looked strange at these words: “But I am indeed colluding with you.”

“…” Jiang Qunyu’s brain went blank, his expression twisting for a moment.

Fuck.

Wei Xun’s tone made it sound like they were having an affair.

He was silent for a long time before he couldn’t help but say: “When did I collude with you?!”

“Isn’t that what we are doing now?” Wei Xun countered.

Jiang Qunyu was speechless.

Before he could think of a retort, Wei Xun suddenly curled his lips and smiled. The smile was eerie, yet carried a sense of indescribable pleasure: “That idiot outside is truly pathetic.”

Jiang Qunyu couldn’t keep up with his train of thought: “Huh?”

“He ended up in the water dungeon because of others.” Wei Xun turned his head, his brows and eyes making no effort to hide his triumph: “But I am here because of you.”

Jiang Qunyu felt Wei Xun was going crazy again.

He raised his hand and covered Wei Xun’s mouth: “Shut up.”

The youth, with the white silk band covering his eyes, stood silently in the gloom, the biting, frigid aura around him softening slightly.

He blinked, suppressing the impulse to lick Jiang Qunyu’s palm.

Jiang Qunyu saw he had fallen silent and released his hand.

Perhaps because of that pill, his eyelids grew heavy before long. Jiang Qunyu was getting sleepy.

In his hazy state, he heard Wei Xun ask: “Jiang Qunyu, how did he start cultivating again back then?”

Jiang Qunyu didn’t know why he asked, nor why Wei Xun always regarded his current self and his external self as two different people. He yawned, his voice slurred: “…Demonization?”

Wei Xun didn’t ask anything else.

…

…………

In the days that followed, more and more people from the Lingxiao Sect caught up.

At first, because of the pill Wei Xun had fed him, Jiang Qunyu was still able to handle them with relative ease.

But later, it was likely the handiwork of Sect Leader Jiang. Under the guise of purging the sect, he sent out several Great Completion-stage elders and deacons. On the surface, they claimed they were just bringing Wei Xun back to Lingxiao, but every move was a killing blow, aimed directly at vital points.

Jiang Qunyu gradually found himself overwhelmed. After escaping another encirclement, he finally couldn’t help but vomit blood in front of Wei Xun.

“Jiang Qunyu,” Wei Xun called him, his face dark and gloomy, “Enough.”

“Enough of what?” Jiang Qunyu felt a bit better after spitting out the blood. He wiped the corner of his mouth, vowing to cultivate properly once they got out.

In the past, he had always stayed by Wei Xun’s side, feeling like Wei Xun would always be there to cover for him, so he had been lazy. Now, he saw that continuing like this was absolutely impossible.

Otherwise, once they were separated in the future, if he encountered a similar situation, he would only have a dead end.

Wei Xun’s face tightened: “I’ll go back with them; you go.”

“Oh—” Jiang Qunyu drew out the syllable, feeling amused. He extended two fingers to press against Wei Xun’s cheeks and lifted them: “So ugly, makes me look like I owe you millions.”

Wei Xun lowered his long lashes. Rarely violating his own wishes, he spoke with a grim tone: “You’ve been warned. I’m letting you go. This is your only chance.”

After a pause, his voice sank deeper, as if squeezed out from his chest: “If you don’t leave now, and you dare to abandon me in the future, I will draw your tendons, peel your skin, brew your blood into wine, and drink it down drop by drop.”

Jiang Qunyu was stunned, and he cursed with indignation: “Wei Xun, your grandfather’s… biting the hand that feeds you.”

Wei Xun didn’t speak, just watched him quietly.

Having reached this point, Jiang Qunyu felt like an idiot.

He shouldn’t have jumped out of that tree at that moment, saying he wanted to take Wei Xun away.

He should have let those people lock Wei Xun in the water dungeon, and when they had almost forgotten that a madman was locked in there, he could have gone to fish him out.

That wouldn’t just have cured Wei Xun’s madness; it would have allowed them to avoid this endless pursuit.

Unfortunately, it was too late to say anything now.

“I’m not leaving.” Jiang Qunyu suppressed the bloody taste in his throat and smiled: “Don’t worry, I won’t die. If I really die, just put up with it and wait a few days for me. When I come back to save you, I’ll get you out eventually.”

Though I wonder, if it really comes to that, how many days will have passed for the ‘Yizhen Huangquan’ (One Pillow Yellow Spring) by the time I get out?

Rain began to fall in the forest, and the sky pressed down, dark and heavy, with the threat of a coming storm.

Rain landed on Wei Xun’s long lashes. He blinked, and the rainwater slid down his lower lids and along his pale cheeks, as if he were weeping.

Jiang Qunyu felt a little dazed.

I think I’ve never seen Wei Xun cry, he thought.

Wei Xun looked at him, his vision becoming clearer and clearer, as if there was only a blurry veil left between him and Jiang Qunyu.

He curled his lips and smiled: “Alright then, let’s die together.”

Jiang Qunyu: “?”

Does this madman have reading comprehension problems? I never said I wanted to die with him! Wasn’t I just telling him to wait a few days if I died?

Behind them, those endless cultivators were catching up again.

Jiang Qunyu gritted his teeth and said hatefully: “If you want to die, die on your own! If you don’t want to die, hurry up and resolve your broken obsession so we can get out together!”

As he spoke, he faced the long swords cutting through the darkness, his expression ugly.

His voice was quenched in ice, carrying blatant malice: “What? Have enough of your people not died yet? You’re still coming?”

The man hearing this had his spiritual energy surge wildly, his roar shaking the forest: “Arrogant to the extreme! Then today, let your life be a sacrifice to the disciples of my Lingxiao Sect who died in vain!”

The sword qi surged like a tide, crashing down.

…

Before long, there were a few more corpses of Lingxiao Sect disciples in the forest.

Jiang Qunyu vomited more blood. He had more sword wounds on his body, fresh blood gushing from the wounds, soaking his red clothes and dyeing them a deeper hue. Yet, there was no expression on his face, as if those wounds weren’t his at all.

The attacker saw this, and his face turned exceptionally ugly.

He sneered: “Demons really are filthy things. To be like this and yet not change your expression? Or is it that you are different from other demons—you cannot feel pain?”

Jiang Qunyu paused.

The oddities of these past few days finally clicked. He had been wondering what was so strange.

…I’ve been injured many times over these last few days, and not once have I felt any pain.

Could it be… because this is inside the ‘Yizhen Huangquan’?

He thought about it and felt it was fine this way. At least if he died now, he wouldn’t feel the pain.

The dizziness from blood loss, however, was very real.

He held on with his last breath and looked back at Wei Xun.

Wei Xun stood there, unmoving, but his face was as pale as paper—so pale that it looked as if it were he who was injured, not Jiang Qunyu.

Jiang Qunyu muttered internally: The seventeen-year-old Wei Xun is really delicate.

But his eyes seemed to have changed.

The layer of misty fog had vanished, replaced by a deep scarlet. The aura around him was changing, too—chilling, violent, as if something was waking up from within his body.

Jiang Qunyu was startled.

The surrounding cultivators were all horrified.

The sky-covering demonic aura suddenly pressed down, thicker and more violent than Jiang Qunyu’s Blood Realm. The demonic energy seemed to have a life of its own, instantly engulfing the entire forest.

Someone trembled: “Wei… Junior Brother Wei has become a demon!”

In the next instant, Wei Xun moved. The Devouring Soul Sword was drawn. In just a single moment, those pursuing cultivators collapsed, one after another. Blood splashed on the fallen leaves, on the rain, on Wei Xun’s robes.

Then he walked over.

He leaned down and gently pulled the blood-drenched youth into his arms, his hold so tight it felt as if he were trying to knead the man into his very bones and blood.

Jiang Qunyu didn’t know if he was hallucinating, but he felt Wei Xun’s hands were shaking violently.

“Don’t worry,” Jiang Qunyu said. He felt the warmth leaving his body bit by bit, but he was still smiling, lazily comforting him: “This secret realm is quite interesting; I actually don’t feel any pain. Wait for me for a bit; I’ll be back in a moment.”

Wei Xun didn’t speak for a long time.

The rain fell harder, pitter-pattering against them.

All the wounds on Jiang Qunyu and the pain he should have felt were transferred to Wei Xun. But as Jiang Qunyu’s breathing slowed, that near-death pain grew weaker.

Yet Wei Xun was still in such pain, as if an invisible hand were gripping his heart, churning it recklessly within his chest.

His soul was in pain, too—piercing and bone-deep.

He lowered his head, burying his face in Jiang Qunyu’s neck, his voice hoarse: “Liar…”

Then, amidst this extreme agony, he remembered.

He became a demon at eighteen; the clear, bright wind and moon of the past were annihilated, leaving his heart and eyes filled only with hatred.

Since then, he rarely dreamt.

But perhaps it was on the third time Jiang Qunyu died before his eyes, when he personally dug a grave for him.

He sat before that grave, watching the name he had carved onto the tombstone with the Devouring Soul, occasionally watching a few ghost-blue spirit butterflies land upon it.

He slept propped up on one hand, briefly having a short, beautiful dream.

In the dream, he met Jiang Qunyu at sixteen.

Wei Xun couldn’t see clearly, only vaguely feeling that Jiang Qunyu seemed a little shorter than he had imagined, and a bit more adorable.

He would still fight him for a bed, and in winter, he would still make those ugly little snowmen, then come running to him, bubbling with excitement.

Later, Wei Xun was woken up by Jiang Qunyu.

The person who should have completely dissipated from his life was looking at him triumphantly.

Wei Xun didn’t know when he had stopped wanting to kill him, but he had thought from that moment on that he should give Jiang Qunyu a body.

He wanted to see the real Jiang Qunyu.

At that time, he couldn’t distinguish love from hate, couldn’t discern his own heart; so, in the years that followed, at certain moments, he had stubbornly believed that if they returned to sixteen, everything might be different.

The illusion of ‘Yizhen Huangquan’ had trapped him with that short, beautiful dream.

But his sixteen-year-old self’s obsession had been the hope that Jiang Qunyu could always stay with him.

Therefore, as long as he wished it, this illusion would never dissipate.

But now, the obsession remained, yet Jiang Qunyu was dead.

But his obsession has always been Jiang Qunyu.

He didn’t want anything else.

No cultivation, no hatred, no Lingxiao Sect, no past.

He only wanted Jiang Qunyu.

Wei Xun suddenly began to laugh in a low tone.

The laughter was hoarse, broken, mixed into the downpour, making one’s heart numb.

After a long time, he summoned Devouring Soul. Without the slightest hesitation, he reversed the blade and stabbed it fiercely into his own heart.

Blood overflowed from the corners of his lips, but he didn’t care. He leaned down slightly and kissed Jiang Qunyu’s cold lips. The pale petals of his mouth were stained through with blood, as bright as rouge, desperate and poignant.

Raindrops hit his trembling lashes, mixed with the silent moisture sliding from the corners of his eyes, making it impossible to distinguish between rain and tears.

“Jiang Qunyu,” he whispered, holding the youth’s cold body obsessively, lip pressed to lip, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’ll forge a body for you, alright?”

His vision blurred completely, that veil ultimately failing to be pushed aside.

Before he closed his eyes, he used his very last bit of strength to whisper, regretfully: “It’s a pity… I still couldn’t see you clearly at the end.”

The rain continued to fall, drizzling as if it would never stop.

And the obsession supporting this illusion shattered, collapsing along with the two souls.

The heaven and earth fractured, light and shadow dissolved into flying ashes, drifting gently through the rain and wind.

‘Yizhen Huangquan’ was, at last, broken.