Bai Li stilled for a minute, as if he hadn’t understood his words. He asked, “What?”
Having been closely observing his expression, Shi Wuduan could tell that Bai Li was truly unaware. He hesitated, then conjured a small flame at his fingertip and pointed it towards Bai Li.
Bai Li, following his gaze, looked down and saw that his shadow was swaying, gone one moment and present the next. Though he thought it was quite bizarre, it felt strangely familiar — as if he knew the reason behind it, yet was incapable of remembering. It was just a vague notion buried inside his chest.
It was far more uncomfortable than holding in pee. Shi Wuduan saw Bai Li stare blankly at the ground for a moment before his expression twisted. Then, the person who’d just been energetically spewing a whole lot of crap swayed and suddenly collapsed. He curled into a ball and groaned, then frenziedly began banging his head against a rock as if he was convulsing.
His actions scared the hell out of Shi Wuduan. He saw a small fleck of light near Bai Li’s forehead, but it was so dim that even in the eerie darkness of this realm’s night, it was hardly visible. Still, the image of Bai Li seemingly attempting to bash his brains out on a rock made Shi Wuduan unthinkingly reach out and try to hold him down by his shoulders, but there was a kind of explosive energy coiled up within him, and sure enough, in a moment of carelessness, Shi Wuduan was thrashed aside.
His hand unintentionally brushed past the speck of light on Bai Li’s forehead. Only then did he realize that it wasn’t a simple glow. It was almost like there was something solid in there, something cold, like a still pool on an autumn night, freezing to the touch.
Shi Wuduan frowned, then pressed his knee into Bai Li’s back. Then, despite his wild struggling, he managed to viciously elbow him in the side of the neck. Bai Li finally collapsed soundlessly, and was more cooperative than ever.
Shi Wuduan sat down by the side and looked at the scratches on the back of Bai Li’s well-defined hand. The blood that flowed from it was pure black, reminding him every second of how inhuman this person was.
He scoffed, looked up at the sky that had no intention of brightening, wrinkled his nose, and kicked away the mangled bird corpse by his foot. He muttered to himself, “What the fuck even is all this damn shit?”
He sat for a while, then sighed. The hand he was resting on his knee tapped lightly against it as he gazed into the sky. These three creepy, uncanny realms, that separated the Hall of Demons and the human realm, had an eighteen-day cycle, had no light, but still had water and grass and beasts — just what were they?
Crevices?
How had that ancient cultivator, lost to the annals of history, sealed the Hall of Demons? And those shadows, remnants of the dead… he turned to the side, almost as if he could see that endless sea of black qi seeping in from some unseen rift, holding the shattered country together, thread by thread, the sky overcast as the seven deceitful lanterns floated away, a vague flash of red light hinting at an even more convoluted and uncontrollable finale.
Bai Li’s body unconsciously twitched. Shi Wuduan looked down at him with a complicated expression. Suddenly, he raised an eyebrow; an idea surfaced in his mind — if he killed the Hall of Demon’s master, if……
The thought was bewitchingly tempting. Shi Wuduan slowly sat up. Threads of ghostly silk flickered at his fingertips and approached Bai Li’s exposed neck. It was soft and slack as his head lolled to the side, making him seem so very fragile — the Demon Lord… was merely this, after all.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Djl Ol rffwfv jubclhfv. Snfc atbeut tf kjr ecmbcrmlber, tlr tjcvr jcv offa aklamtfv ecklaalcuis. Lf tevvifv atfgf, tlr wfrrlis ragfkc tjlg mbcmfjifv tlr veras ojmf. Lf rffwfv ilxf jc lcpegfv, kgfamtfv ilaaif jclwji.
Vtl Qevejc’r lmf-mbiv olcufgr abemtfv Djl Ol’r fdejiis lmf-mbiv cfmx. Lf tfjgv Djl Ol wjxlcu jc lcvlralcma cblrf.
He wavered for a moment, but in the end, he leaned down and heard that Bai Li was vaguely mumbling, “Wuduan…”
Shi Wuduan startled. His finger lightly touched Bai Li’s cheek. Seemingly sensing something, his eyebrows furrowed as if he was in great pain. The icy cold light on his forehead grew even dimmer and colder; when it shone on Bai Li’s face it made him seem especially frail.
“Wuduan….. go… hurry…..”
Shi Wuduan paused, then asked quietly, “Go where?”
“Leave…. don’t…… don’t fall in…..”
“Fall in?” Shi Wuduan leaned closer, “Fall where?”
Bai Li’s lips opened and closed, seeming a bit green, yet he wasn’t able to make a sound. His hands unwittingly balled into fists, pitch-black nails extending and stabbing into his palm, “Don’t fall… in… to…..”
His voice was awfully hoarse. Suddenly, he started seizing, so agonized he wasn’t able to make a sound.
The thread at Shi Wuduan’s fingertips sliced a few strands of Bai Li’s hair. He hesitated for a long while, but finally, he sighed, withdrew his hand, and once again concealed the starsilk. He pressed down on Bai Li’s shoulder and said softly, “It’s alright, it’s alright.”
Bai Li’s chest heaved with rapid breaths. He stuttered out, “It hurts… ah… it hurts… hurts…..”
He doesn’t want me to fall in…. fall into what?
Out of the blue, Shi Wuduan recalled the black mist that had appeared in the fox’s cave of Cangyun Valley. Back then, after Bai Li had arduously thrown him out, he’d witnessed the black qi stab through his body as if… it was going to tear him to pieces.
The pained cries that Bai Li hadn’t been able to suppress back then suddenly intertwined with the pained moans that he heard now.
Shi Wuduan blanked out for a moment, then, clumsily, he circled his arm under Bai Li’s, reaching across his back. Bai Li was like a human-sized puppet that he could move as he pleased. His head lolled weakly on his shoulder. Shi Wuduan, as if he was comforting a child, started patting him on the back. He heard the faint, almost whimpering, sound by his ear become weaker and weaker. He thought, somewhat disturbed: so, this day has come to you as well.
When Bai Li woke again, it’d be many hours later. In the darkness, it was remarkably easy to lose one’s sense of time. He blearily opened his eyes and found that his head was pillowed on something soft. Bai Li astonishedly turned to look, and nearly leapt up off the ground. He unconsciously stroked his hair, goosebumps rising on his skin — Shi Wuduan was far too wicked; he’d actually put the buxu’s corpse under his head.
Shi Wuduan was sitting not far from him, a straw of grass held in his mouth. He was gripping a small stick he’d gotten from somewhere, scrawling odd symbols into the ground. Upon hearing the ruckus, though his actions paused, he went on as if he hadn’t heard anything; he didn’t so much as look up.
Bai Li sat silently for a while, feeling like he’d dreamed a very long dream. He’d dreamed of a pitch-black hand dragging him into a pit worse than hell, where he suffered every torture imaginable. In that dream, it’d felt like someone was chopping him in half with a blunt knife. When he looked down all of his blood was slowly draining out of a gaping hole in his chest, slowly turning black.
He’d felt cold all over, pained as if he’d been skewered on a rack of knives over a pot of boiling oil searing his very soul…. until, a pair of hands gently encircled him, patting his back and speaking gently to him.
He looked disbelievingly at Shi Wuduan, who was still unmoving. A while later, he quietly said, “I thought… you would kill me.”
Shi Wuduan kept chewing on his straw, ignoring him.
Bai Li looked down, and a moment later, he couldn’t help but beam elatedly. The deep-seated viciousness in his face seemed to disappear, and he was beautiful as the pure, clean light of the moon.
“Thank… thank you very much.” He suddenly buried his face in his hands, almost choking with sobs. Then he began to laugh, completely uncontrollably. He almost felt that even if he leaped off the cliff right that moment and died… he’d have no more regrets.
Shi Wuduan looked up at him and thought, he really is seriously insane. He spat out the grass, caught it, then chucked it at Bai Li. He said shortly, “Start a fire, and get that… that beaked, feathered thing cleaned up.”
His words were more effective than an imperial edict. Bai Li got up without a second word, went to gather firewood, and cheerily began dealing with the buxu corpse that’d just been under his head a few minutes ago, discarding the innards, cutting it into chunks…
Suddenly, the two began to get along just fine. Shi Wuduan stopped picking fights on purpose. He calmly kept scribbling arcane arrays that only he could understand. And just like that, another ten or so days had passed.
That day, Shi Wuduan suddenly tossed the stick aside and placed an arrangement of small stones outside the mouth of the cave as if he was calculating some sort of array. Then, holding a handful of pebbles, he began dazing off. Even when Bai Li, having charred the meat, was frantically putting out the fire, he was still lost in thought.
Up until Bai Li nudged him and asked, “What’s the matter with you?”
Normally, if one asked Shi Wuduan ten questions, he’d barely answer two. It wasn’t aimed at Bai Li in particular, it’s just that that was the way he was to everyone, unless he was in a heightened state of emotion. Yet that day, he said ponderously, “In the unseen, there is an inexorable fate.”
“What?”
Shi Wuduan kept looking blankly at the sky. He continued, “Fate… who determines it? I was never able to figure it out… the karma of this world is so complex, who’s the one pulling the strings? Gods? Do gods really exist in this world?”
He suddenly stood. Confusedly, Bai Li followed him to the cave entrance. At that moment, he was suddenly blinded by a ray of sunlight. At once, Bai Li’s heart was consumed by emptiness. He thought, that’s right, this is… the sunrise of the eighteenth day again.
He glanced unconsciously towards Shi Wuduan, coincidentally meeting his gaze. Bai Li’s eyes widened in shock. He said, “You…”
Shi Wuduan looked down. The perfectly ordinary stones laying on the ground were strung by an invisible thread, trapping Bai Li, who’d unwittingly walked amongst them.
Shi Wuduan chuckled lightly, “An eighteen-day cycle, four hours of light, no wonder it sounded familiar… it’s the eye of the “Six Circle Array,” so it was this all along.”
When he was young, loose cultivator Jiang Hua had once used that brilliant array to confine him within the mountains. So many years had passed since then. That masterful living array, to this day, was still unbroken. No one knew where it’d come from or who made it.
“You were wrong.” The light gradually grew stronger. Shi Wuduan said to Bai Li, leisurely as ever, “You said that there were three realms between the Hall of Demons and the human realm. In truth, according to the results of my calculations, there should be six. The reason you thought that they were only one-way, ‘return from whence you came,’ is because these realms are actually paired. The Inferno Realm you entered back then and the place we’re in now, should be a yin-yang set. They’re not the same place.”
Bai Li stared intently at him. He began to struggle violently.
“I couldn’t have thought that the magnificent living array had such ties to the Hall of Demons,” Shi Wuduan looked at Bai Li, trying to break free. He laughed, “No need to waste your energy. I used the rules of this array to trap you within. So long as you bear the blood of demons, it will be difficult to break free. Although, it can only trap you for four hours at most.”
Once he finished speaking, he didn’t look back at Bai Li. He turned his back on him, as if once and for all, as he said, “I’m leaving. You… take care of yourself.”
Translator-nim, I don’t know how long I’ll last hanging onto this cliff before I fall into the abyss… 😭😭😭.. Next update feels so far away. 🤧🤧🤧. Thank you for the update.. imma go cry in my corner now.😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Thank you for the chapters
I just want them to resolve their misunderstandings and be able to share their troubles with each other. Have a little bit of happiness. Is that too much to ask?
I thought we were finally on the path to SOMETHING 😭 wuduan don’t leave him
Omg. How much more of this ??😳🥺😬😲
Thank you so much for your wonderful work 🙏❤️👏💐🧨🙉
囧
💙💙💙
WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IM DYING 😭
Yo, I was on Bai Lis side until he became a r*pist…but even so wuduan is such a dick! He’s so righteous and patronizing I can’t ;; their flaws are too much. Wuduan needs to fucking stop being an apathetic selfish prick XD I’m so HEATED
I don’t know what to say. They both keep mistreating and betraying each other