ATAVID CH81

Seeing Jiang Qunyu’s silence, Wei Xun was not surprised.

He unhurriedly smoothed the stray hairs near Jiang Qunyu’s temples, his fingertips brushing past that reddened earlobe as if by accident, before saying flatly, “You ought to call me husband. Have we not already completed our wedding ritual?”

Jiang Qunyu: “…Husband?”

His face turned incredibly peculiar. “It would make more sense for you to call me husband.”

Fine. He had to admit that the very moment Wei Xun kissed him earlier, he understood completely—he could probably never associate with Wei Xun as a mere friend again. Not only did he lack the disgust and resistance he had imagined, but a hidden, secret trace of joy—one he was reluctant to admit even to himself—had uncontrollably welled up in the depths of his heart.

After thoroughly rebuilding his worldview, he accepted this fact with great difficulty. Furthermore, he began to suspect whether it was because this was a Danmei world that his sexual orientation had been dragged off course along with it.

So what if it was bent? Even so, he still wanted to strongly contend for certain matters of principle. For instance, who would be on top and who would be on bottom, or who was the one who actually ought to cry out “husband.”

…Moreover, the object of his crooked affection was Wei Xun. This realization made him feel temporarily as if a fishbone were stuck in his throat, finding it rather difficult to accept.

Besides, he felt he still required a certain amount of time to think it through properly. Was his currently frantically pounding heart because he truly liked Wei Xun a little, or was it a mere illusion born from his subconscious dependence on Wei Xun, given that the two of them had been entangled together for nearly a century since his arrival in this world?

“Heh,” Wei Xun tugged his lips, remaining noncommittal toward Jiang Qunyu’s words.

He turned, walked to the door, pulled it open, and called down Xie Chuan, who was curled up and dozing on a tree outside the hall. After whispering a few commands, he closed the door once more and turned back to walk inside.

Jiang Qunyu felt as if his legs were weighed down with lead. Seeing Wei Xun return, his instinctive reaction was to hide, wishing he could find a crack in the ground to crawl into. But he could no longer transform into a clump of black mist like he used to; finding a place where he could just flatten himself out like a pancake was no easy task.

The ceiling beams?

The moment this thought popped up, Wei Xun’s voice—as cold as thin ice—hurled right down at him: “If you dare hide from me, I will fuck you to death.”

“Cough, cough, cough—”

Caught utterly off guard by this wild, unbridled remark from Wei Xun, Jiang Qunyu began to cough violently out of sheer fright, nearly choking himself to death.

Taking advantage of the moment, Wei Xun poured a cup of water, walked over to stand before Jiang Qunyu, and propped up the back of his neck with one hand, forcing him to tilt his head up. His tone, however, was unsettlingly gentle: “Open your mouth.”

Jiang Qunyu had no choice but to take a sip of water from his hand, the warm liquid sliding down his throat and suppression the itchiness.

It took him a moment to recover before he instinctively took a step back, trying to widen the distance between them. Yet, failing to notice the stools and tables behind him, his ankle slammed hard against a solid wooden leg. A distinct, blunt pain exploded instantly, causing physiological tears to well up in the corners of his eyes.

But at this moment, he couldn’t care less about the pain; his entire person was thrown into utter disarray.

Was Wei Xun insane?! What on earth had he gone through over the past century for such words to actually come out of his mouth!

“Are you out of your mind?” Jiang Qunyu’s face was filled with horror, the depths of his eyes packed with disbelief.

Wei Xun gave him a ghostly glance. “You can test it out.”

Jiang Qunyu was instantly choked up, unable to speak for a long while. Damn it, this psychopath. He couldn’t beat him, and he couldn’t hide from him either. He could only steel his nerves to talk tough, stiffening his neck to argue back in an attempt to salvage a shred of his precariously crumbling dignity: “I didn’t even say I was going to the ceiling beams.”

“I didn’t say you were going to the ceiling beams,” Wei Xun said expressionlessly. Before his voice even faded, he had already leaned down, sliding one arm under the crook of Jiang Qunyu’s knees while his other hand firmly wrapped around his waist. With a slight exertion of force, he lifted the person steadily into a bridal carry.

Jiang Qunyu’s entire body froze instantly, his hands and feet not knowing where to place themselves. Only now did he realize his words earlier were full of loopholes, yet he remained as stubborn as a dead duck: “Regardless, when I say I wasn’t, I wasn’t!”

“As you wish.” Wei Xun did not argue further. Carrying him over to the bed, he placed him down with gentle movements.

Promptly, his slightly cool knuckles gripped Jiang Qunyu’s injured ankle, his fingerpad lightly rubbing over the red and swollen patch as he said coldly, “Does it not hurt?”

Having been frightened by Wei Xun just now, Jiang Qunyu had no mind to care whether it hurt or not. Now that the aftereffects were catching up, and being touched like this by Wei Xun, he nodded blankly: “It hurts.”

The moment the word left his mouth, a slightly cool trace of energy transmitted from his ankle. That energy seeped through his skin, carrying a numbing, tingling itchiness, and the originally sharp pain instantly vanished without a trace.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Jiang Qunyu instinctively shrank his foot, wanting to pull it back.

Wei Xun let go of his hand with a touch of regret, his fingerpad grazing against his uninjured skin one last time as if by accident. He lifted his eyes, those pool-like cold eyes filled with an insatiable lingering desire, his tone carrying an obvious trace of lament: “Alright then.”

Jiang Qunyu: “…?”

No, what exactly was he lamenting about?

However, he did recall a long-buried matter from the past. He remembered very clearly that during the years when he was still Wei Xun’s inner demon, Wei Xun had used some unknown secret method to completely transfer the pain that was supposed to fall upon Jiang Qunyu onto himself instead. Because of this, he could barely feel pain in his daily life; even if he was injured, a faint trace of blunt pain would only surface when he was heavily wounded.

Yet, with this new body, that feeling of pain vanishing into thin air was gone. Wei Xun hadn’t felt the pain of his sprained ankle just now either. Did this mean the method Wei Xun had used on him had already lost its efficacy?

Jiang Qunyu let his thoughts wander aimlessly as he quickly skimmed through his past memories. When had he stopped feeling no pain?

Tracing his memory back, it seemed to start from that place called “Yizhen Huangquan.” Yizhen Huangquan… what exactly happened there? Did Wei Xun give him something to eat?

When he tried to grasp that piece of memory, however, Jiang Qunyu felt a wave of blankness. He discovered that a portion of that memory seemed to have been forcefully dug out by someone, or perhaps wiped away by some powerful force. It wasn’t just Yizhen Huangquan; even some of the later times, when recalled at certain moments, felt as if they were separated by a thick, un-piercable fog.

Surely it couldn’t be because too many years had passed that he simply forgot?

He wanted to just ask Wei Xun directly, but this was no different from walking straight into a trap. Asking him would be equivalent to admitting he was Jiang Qunyu. Although… he felt Wei Xun probably already knew who he was.

Wei Xun, however, cast a dark, cold gaze onto Jiang Qunyu’s ankle before looking back at his own ankle.

The Kudu Gu (Bitter Ferry Gu) had vanished.

He remembered the medicinal effects of the agarwood that Jiang Qunyu had blurted out instinctively. Yet, that so-called calming of the mind and nurturing of the spirit was nothing more than a random lie spoken by the seventeen-year-old “Wei Xun” just to deceive Jiang Qunyu. Therefore, because that Gu had vanished, Jiang Qunyu was now slowly remembering those memories.

Wei Xun’s expression grew heavier and heavier. It wasn’t that he hadn’t suspected whether that Gu truly possessed absolutely no side effects, but he genuinely had no better option back then. Jiang Qunyu forgetting him was better than him hurting; he was so afraid of pain.

He had investigated that Gu later on, but all clues terminated at a city that had already been destroyed over two thousand years ago. Back when he was still training under Wei Lan, Wei Lan would occasionally speak to him about Tiandu City. According to Wei Lan, after Tiandu City was destroyed, the sacred objects within the city, along with the ancient records detailing the forbidden arts of the Demon Race, were completely divided up and plundered by those so-called “righteous sects” of the cultivation world.

And the secret art of the Bitter Ferry Gu was bound to be recorded inside one of those ancient books of forbidden arts. Feeding upon romantic love in exchange for the transfer of pain.

Presumably, even Cui Mingjin himself did not know of this other function of the Gu insect. But how did a Gu insect make its way into the mortal realm, and how did it end up in Cui Mingjin’s hands?

The room fell into a dead silence for a time, both occupied with their own thoughts as the air seemed to solidify.

Jiang Qunyu was never one to stay still by nature, not to mention being in the same room as Wei Xun had caused his brain to completely crash, his heartbeat a disorganized mess, and everything around him had slipped out of his control, utterly deviating from his intended script. This sensation of losing control filled him with panic. He wanted to be alone for a bit to calm down, and incidentally sort out this tangled mess.

“I want to go out for a stroll,” Jiang Qunyu said with a cold face, trying his best to act fierce.

Wei Xun was still quite normal most of the time, his tone just as cold and indifferent as usual as he refused without hesitation: “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Go to your granddad’s ass.”

“Heh,” Wei Xun glanced at him with a darkened face, threatening, “Try stepping a foot out of this door and see.”

Anxiety surged in Jiang Qunyu’s heart, his mind growing hot as he was entirely governed by emotion. Lacking any time to think, he instinctively leaned forward a bit, tilted his head up, and swiftly pressed a light kiss against the corner of Wei Xun’s lips.

It was nothing more than a fleeting graze, yet it caused both of them to freeze in place simultaneously, entirely stunned.

Belatedly realizing what he had just done, the blood in Jiang Qunyu’s entire body rushed straight to his head, his heart pounding frantically at a near-exploding speed as the tips of his ears turned so hot they felt about to catch fire. He wished he could find a crack in the ground right then and there to bury himself completely.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Was he infected by Wei Xun?

Yet, the tips of Wei Xun’s ears were also incredibly red—so red they looked ready to drip blood.

Jiang Qunyu blinked slowly. After quite a long while, he sluggishly shifted a bit further away, forcing himself to appear calm as he asked with a wooden face, “Is it allowed now?”

Wei Xun remained dazed in place, his long eyelashes blinking like butterfly wings. His thin lips pressed into a straight line, seemingly trying to conceal his own discomposure, as he spoke in a dark, ominous tone: “If you dare not return tonight, once I catch you, I will fuck you to death.”

“…Be a bit more civilized, for your granddad’s sake.” Seeing him relent, Jiang Qunyu felt as if he had received a grand amnesty. Jumping off the bed, he haphazardly grabbed a piece of clothing from his cosmos bag and walked out with stiff, uncoordinated steps.

It wasn’t until he walked outside and was struck by the cold wind that Jiang Qunyu still found it unbelievable. He had actually kissed Wei Xun. Was he crazy, or was this world crazy?

Right at this moment, a figure scaled over the palace wall. He held an exquisite wooden box in his hand, his cheeks bulging as he chewed merrily.

The two of them abruptly locked eyes. Jiang Qunyu silently glanced at the wide-open door right next to the palace wall: “…”

Even after so many years, Xie Chuan still loved descending from strange places; clearly there was a door, yet he insisted on climbing walls.

Seeing Jiang Qunyu, Xie Chuan’s jaws moved a bit as he chewed the pastry in his mouth a couple of times. Only after swallowing did he say, “Can you help me deliver these pastries to Master? Master wanted them.”

“Oh.” Jiang Qunyu reached out to take it, having absolutely no intention of actually delivering the pastries over. He opened it on his own to take a peek, discovering that there were indeed two missing; one didn’t even need to think to know Xie Chuan had pocketed them for himself.

Jiang Qunyu tossed one into his mouth, chewing away as he evaluated, “A bit inferior to the ones from Yunque City.”

“You don’t like it?” Xie Chuan stared with glittering eyes at the pastries in Jiang Qunyu’s hand.

Jiang Qunyu generously tossed the wooden box back to him. Only after Xie Chuan had eaten two more did he speak ghostlily, “Why did you and your master come to the Nine Underworlds?”

Should they not be in Yunque City at this time? After all, Wei Xun had gone through a great deal of effort just to become the Lord of the Demon Realm.

Xie Chuan’s mouth was still stuffed with pastries. Having eaten someone else’s food left his mouth short, and taking their things left his hands soft. He cast a reluctant glance at the pastries in his arms, then looked at the calm-faced Jiang Qunyu. Remembering his master’s attitude toward Jiang Qunyu, as well as this face of Jiang Qunyu’s, he ultimately relented, mumbling, “Master said this place is close to the River of Forgetfulness.”

He wanted to say more, but Wei Xun had pulled open the hall door at some unknown point, standing at the doorway clad in stark white inner robes. His brows were cold, his gaze landing straight on Xie Chuan, his tone indifferent yet laced with a total threat: “Xie Chuan, if you say one more word, I will throw you back to Yunque City right now.”

Xie Chuan paused. His claws snatched two more pastries, tossed the wooden box back to Jiang Qunyu, and fled without looking back.

Jiang Qunyu, holding the wooden box: “…”

Unluckily, he couldn’t afford to provoke Wei Xun either, so he could only leave with a stiffened body.