Chapter 27#

The Breathtakingly Peerless Great Demon Ba Snake#

Seeing this sudden change, Bai rushed over from the side, transforming into human form and reaching out to intercept the object. However, the object came with tremendous speed. It grazed the tips of Bai’s fingers and burrowed into Lu Heng’s dantian.

“What was that?” Bai called out anxiously. “Quickly use your demonic qi to shield your demon core!”

“It’s Min’s demon core.” Lu Heng turned his awareness inward to inspect his dantian. In the grey, hazy sea of qi, his own dimly glowing demon core floated suspended, while a brilliantly radiant demon core orbited around it. With each revolution, Min’s demon core shrank a little smaller, while the cracks on Lu Heng’s demon core gradually diminished.

Lu Heng reported what he was seeing to Bai.

Bai pondered for a moment, then said, “Most likely when the Thousand-Leaf Lotus bloomed, spiritual qi overflowed. After absorbing the spiritual qi, Min’s demon core experienced a surge of demonic energy. In accordance with Min’s dying wish, it spontaneously transferred its cultivation into your demon core. This kind of occurrence is utterly unheard of. Do you feel anything is amiss?”

“Not at present.” Lu Heng shook his head.

“At this point, all we can do is make the best of the situation. Calm your mind and circulate your technique to absorb the transfer. I will stand guard for you.”

The arrow is nocked on the bowstring—it must be released. Lu Heng had no choice but to circulate his technique, guiding his demon core to absorb the cultivation being channeled into it. As time passed, Min’s demon core shrank down to the size of a date pit. This unexpected session of cultivation was visibly drawing to a close.

Only then did Lu Heng breathe a slight sigh of relief. The moment his mind relaxed, he became aware of an intense itch at the top of his head.

Lu Heng instinctively reached up to scratch it, only to discover he had no hands to use. It finally registered that he was currently in snake form. He was too embarrassed to trouble Bai with something like this, so he thought to numb the itch with the cold spiritual spring water instead. To his surprise, what appeared on the water’s surface was a small black snake whose crown had split open along a long, gaping fissure—it looked quite horrifying.

Lu Heng’s face drained of color. “My head has cracked open!”

Hearing this, Bai hurried over to inspect. Upon closer examination, Bai’s refined features twisted into a strange expression, and he ultimately couldn’t hold back a burst of laughter: “You’re about to shed your skin. Every time a member of the Snake Clan advances a level in cultivation, they must shed once.”

Lu Heng felt mortified, wishing he could dig a pit and bury himself. However, with a purely human soul inside, how could he have ever anticipated something like snake shedding?

Snake shedding is an excruciating ordeal, comparable to passing through the gates of hell. Some snake clan members even perish during the process. And Lu Heng, a half-baked member of the Snake Clan with zero experience in this matter, found the process all the more perilous. Fortunately, Bai was at his side standing guard, channeling demonic energy to aid him whenever he struggled. What’s more, the half-bloomed Thousand-Leaf Lotus nearby was emanating its medicinal properties in all directions, continuously replenishing Lu Heng’s vital essence. He barely managed to reach the final step.

However, at this critical juncture, a sudden and unforeseen change erupted.

In Lu Heng’s dantian, the demon core—now reduced to the size of a grain of rice—expelled its final transfer of cultivation. What was terrifying was that this was a wisp of ink-black fog, laced with the stench of blood, surging toward Lu Heng’s own demon core. Even someone like Lu Heng, who had only just set foot on the path of cultivation, could recognize that this was anything but benign.

Lu Heng reacted with astonishing speed, immediately rallying his own demonic energy to contend with the black fog. This was, after all, his own sea of qi—by all rights, he should have held a decisive advantage. But the black fog was bizarre and sinister. For a time, the two sides remained locked in a stalemate.

“What’s wrong?” Bai saw Lu Heng’s brow furrowed tightly, his complexion grim.

“My demon core has encountered a problem.” The situation was perilous, and Lu Heng had no energy to spare for explanations.

“Don’t resist. Let me help you.”

Seeing Lu Heng give a slight nod, Bai extended his divine sense into Lu Heng’s dantian. With the assistance of Bai’s powerful divine sense, Lu Heng finally succeeded in driving the black fog out of his sea of qi.

After the black fog seeped out from Lu Heng’s dantian, it churned and roiled in midair. Moments later, it coalesced into a hideous, ferocious spider. The spider’s back was densely covered with human heads. Lu Heng forced down his revulsion and stared for a few moments, recognizing that several of the faces seemed to belong to the servants who had died that night in Princess Lin Yang’s small courtyard.

What kind of dark sorcery was this? Lu Heng was inwardly appalled.

The grotesque spider opened its jaws and lunged toward Lu Heng. At that very moment, dark clouds converged in the sky with startling swiftness, and a bolt of heavenly lightning shot straight down at the spider. The heavenly lightning obliterated the evil creature in three or four strikes, but it did not cease—instead, it came hurtling directly toward Lu Heng.

It seemed that the recent upheaval had tainted Lu Heng’s dantian with traces of the evil creature’s aura. The heavenly lightning had mistaken him for the evil entity and intended to destroy him along with it.

The ordeal of shedding and the battle with the evil creature had already drained every last bit of Lu Heng’s energy. He had nothing left with which to contend with this furious heavenly lightning.

Heavenly tribulations could not be intervened upon by outsiders—any assistance only amplified their destructive power. Bai paced back and forth in frantic circles at his side. The thought struck him that it was because he had brought Lu Heng to witness the Thousand-Leaf Lotus’s maturation that this chain of accidents had occurred. Now it was threatening Lu Heng’s very life.

Guilt gnawed at Bai’s heart. He clenched his jaw, his fingers dancing through seals. Golden light flickered into existence in the air, and after several rolls and shifts, it formed an intricate, ornate chain that linked Bai and Lu Heng together.

At the same moment, the heavenly lightning struck—directly hitting the crown of Lu Heng’s head. Lu Heng had closed his eyes, bracing for the searing pain to come. But after waiting for a long while, he found that seemingly nothing had happened.

This heavenly lightning had seemed so ferocious in its approach—was it all show? Lu Heng cracked open his eyes in bewilderment, only to see the chain floating in midair, and Bai beside him looking visibly haggard.

“Bai! What’s wrong with you? What is this chain?”

But Bai did not answer Lu Heng’s question, saying only: “Don’t panic. I will keep you safe.”

“Are you out of your mind? An outsider interfering with a tribulation only makes the heavenly lightning even more powerful—we’ll both be finished!” Lu Heng thought to himself. Dying was a certainty anyway. This time I’ve already gotten so much more than I bargained for. How could I drag someone else down with me? The only regret was that he wouldn’t get to see Shikong one more time.

Bai sat with his eyes closed for a few moments, recovering his composure. “It’s fine. This is an innate demonic art of our Snow Rabbit Clan. It merely transfers the damage—it won’t affect the tribulation itself.”

“That won’t do either! Let me go right now!” Lu Heng tried to withdraw the heavenly lightning’s target away from this area, but the chain held him fast in place, unable to move.

“My cultivation is far greater than yours. I’ll be fine.” Having said this, Bai closed his eyes and began circulating his technique, paying no further heed to Lu Heng.

The remaining bolts of heavenly lightning struck Lu Heng in relentless succession.

Just like the first, he felt absolutely nothing. But Bai at his side grew more and more battered with each strike. It was only after the final bolt of heavenly lightning came crashing down that Bai finally spat out a mouthful of fresh blood and collapsed unconscious. The chain linking the two of them at last dissolved, and Lu Heng—who had been pinned in place by it all this time—could finally move again.

Lu Heng shifted back into human form and rushed to Bai’s side to assess his injuries. Mercifully, there was no danger to his life—only that forcibly withstanding a dozen-odd bolts of heavenly lightning on such short notice had somewhat damaged his vitality. Lu Heng retrieved a pill Shikong had left behind and pressed it into Bai’s mouth. Only when he heard Bai’s breathing gradually steady did he finally relax.

Only then did Lu Heng notice something different about himself. The hand he had just used to feed Bai the pill seemed larger, and his field of vision seemed higher than before.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Lu Heng glanced down at the water’s surface. Reflected there was a youth of seventeen or eighteen. The boy’s face still carried traces of immaturity, yet it was already blooming with early brilliance—his looks were truly outstanding. It was Lu Heng’s own face, yet somehow different. Lu Heng knew he was decent-looking, but not decent-looking to this degree. Was this because he was now a member of the demon race?

He couldn’t be bothered to dwell on the matter, with Bai still lying nearby severely injured. Lu Heng planned to harvest the Thousand-Leaf Lotus the moment it fully matured, then take Bai and leave at once, lest further complications arise.

However, Lu Heng had forgotten one crucial thing: the heavenly lightning had already obliterated the barrier Bai had set up.

The Thousand-Leaf Lotus bud finally unfurled its last layer of petals, revealing a tender yellow heart nestled shyly within. The spiritual medicine had ripened. Just as Lu Heng was about to step forward and pick it, a beam of seven-colored radiance burst from the flower’s heart, shooting straight into the heavens.

When a great treasure is born, portents inevitably appear. With the concealing barrier destroyed, everyone within a hundred li had sensed the emergence of the treasure. Immediately, streaks of sword light shot skyward, converging on this direction.

Bitterness rose in Lu Heng’s heart. Misfortunes never come singly. His hands never stopped moving—he packed the harvested Thousand-Leaf Lotus into a jade case, ready to leave with Bai.

But before he could escape, several streaks of sword light arrived with blinding speed, surrounding them both before Lu Heng could even move. The cultivator in the lead, clad in a cyan daoist robe, bellowed at Lu Heng: “What manner of demon creature are you? Leave the treasure behind, and we shall spare your lives.”

It was plain as day that they had come to murder and rob, yet they insisted on wearing a veneer of righteous indignation. Lu Heng couldn’t be bothered to waste breath on such hypocrites. He summoned his long whip and surged forward into the attack.

When Lu Heng first awoke in this world, the long whip had always resided in his dantian, circling near his demon core. This should have been his so-called natal spiritual weapon. However, the whip appeared to have sustained damage at some point—it had always been dim and unassuming, so Lu Heng had never once used it.

Given the circumstances, Lu Heng had no room for caution. He could only bet everything. The cultivators’ cultivation levels were not particularly deep, but Lu Heng had severely depleted his vitality during the shedding process, and fighting them off was laborious. After several rounds of fierce combat, Lu Heng forced himself through injury to finish off the last of them—only to see even more streaks of light converging on this spot from the horizon.

Desperation clawed at Lu Heng. He had no strength left to fight. Was he truly destined to die here today? In this dire moment, the ornament-like spiritual weapon on his left ear—which had remained completely inert until now—spontaneously wrung out every last wisp of Lu Heng’s demonic energy, then released a dazzling beam of white light that enveloped both Lu Heng and Bai.

A moment later, the cultivators who had only just arrived stared, seething with frustration, at the empty cold pool and the several corpses by its edge. They could do nothing but return to their sect to report the matter.

Meanwhile, Lu Heng—teleported to some nameless mountain cave—forced down a single pill with effort, then collapsed face-first onto the ground, unconscious.

When Lu Heng opened his eyes, he had no idea how much time had passed. He lay dazed for a moment before recalling his circumstances.

Instinctively, Lu Heng turned his head to look for Bai, who should have been lying beside him—only to find the space next to him empty. Alarmed, he shot upright. An outer robe drifted down from his body. He then realized that the wounds on his body had all been tended to. It seemed Bai had awoken first.

Glancing around, Lu Heng spotted what appeared to be a figure seated near the cave entrance, silhouetted against the light.