Chapter 80#

To Be Your New System#

Su Ruhui lay on the stone bed with cowhide tubes inserted into him for five days before his new puppet body was finally completed. He gifted the secret key for the Super First-Grade Flesh Puppet to Han Ye; after all, since Jiang Xueya already possessed it, there was no point in keeping it hidden anymore. There were too few occultists in the Black Street, and even fewer of the heavy-assault type, while the combat power of ordinary humans was far lower than that of the average Demon Race. Flesh puppets could reinforce bone and muscle; perhaps the Black Street could use the Super First-Grade Flesh Puppet to compensate for some of their combat deficiencies.

The Demon Race had descended upon the Border Capital during the Grand Imperial Assembly. Most of the family heads from the forty-eight states were trapped within, becoming hostages used by the demons to blackmail the various provinces. The situation was truly dire; some provincial governments chose to surrender, while more abandoned their family heads to establish new leaders. Su Ruhui looked at the latest talismans sent back by the Heavenly Eye scouts, which recorded what they had witnessed at noon yesterday—the demons had herded many civilians outside the city gates, broken their legs, and forced them to kneel in the snow. After days of torment, these people were dressed in rags, their hair disheveled.

“Help me! Save me!” they wailed hoarsely.

The cries stopped abruptly as their heads were severed by sharp blades. Boiling blood sprayed out, blooming into countless vivid red plum blossoms in the snow.

Atop the towering city walls of the Border Capital, a tall silhouette stood there, clad in a crimson slit-sided robe, as eye-catching as a flame. Even with only an indistinct silhouette, Su Ruhui could still recognize her. That woman possessed an inherent majesty and cold arrogance in every gesture; she was a steel rose in the freezing wind, beautiful yet sharp.

Su Ruhui heard people whispering around him. “I heard the star chart for the array that let the demons descend was drawn by Boss Su.”

“How is that possible? Wouldn’t that mean he killed everyone in the Border Capital?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Boss Su was used by his senior sister; he almost lost his life,” someone else chimed in.

Someone clicked their tongue in wonder. “Isn’t Boss Su supposed to be the smartest? To think even he could be blindsided. It seems Boss Su is only so-so.”

Another person gloated, “So what if everyone in the Border Capital is dead? The more people from the Secret Sect die, the better it is for our Black Street. We should thank Boss Su.”

His vision was suddenly obscured by a fair hand. Su Ruhui turned his eyes and saw Sang Chiyu. The fellow was holding up his right hand, shielding Su Ruhui’s eyes.

“Brother Sang, what are you doing?” Su Ruhui asked.

“Don’t look,” Sang Chiyu moved the water mirror soaked with the Heavenly Eye talisman away. “It will make you sad.”

Su Ruhui was somewhat surprised. “Did you use Mind Reading?”

“I didn’t use Mind Reading,” Sang Chiyu shook his head.

This kid was truly sharp sometimes. Su Ruhui smiled and said, “I’m not sad.”

Sang Chiyu looked at him, his deep, ink-colored eyes reflecting Su Ruhui’s faint smile.

“Do not take the matter of the Border Capital to heart,” Sang Chiyu said.

“Don’t worry.”

He patted Sang Chiyu on the shoulder and walked away from the front hall with his hands tucked in his sleeves. Su Ruhui was still staying at the Blissful Pavilion’s puppet workshop. Since it was the Pavilion’s first time creating a Super First-Grade Flesh Puppet, the craftsmen were worried about potential issues with the prosthetic body and wanted him to stay for a few days of observation.

Half of the workshop was closed, with only the other half still running, reportedly due to a shortage of spirit stones. Earlier, when refugees were frequently disappearing in the Snow Realm, the mines had ceased operations early, leading to a very tight supply of spirit stones this winter. Now that demons and monsters were rampant in the Snow Realm, next year’s mining was out of the question. The Blissful Pavilion had to find ways to save spirit stones. Su Ruhui had given the “Cangqiong” star array to the Hall of Great Compassion and the Blissful Pavilion to hide the location of the mines; perhaps they could extract spirit stones right under the demons’ noses.

The System remained silent, his mind a dead void. This feeling made Su Ruhui very uncomfortable, as if he were missing a limb. He dearly missed that annoying fellow.

Su Ruhui asked the workshop for a few puppet parts to fiddle with in his hands. On his way, he went to see Shentu, who had just been delivered from the Hall of Great Compassion. Although Su Ruhui said he wasn’t sad, Sang Chiyu was clearly not at ease. Originally reluctant to let Su Ruhui pet other dogs, he had now changed his tune and let Shentu keep him company. To be honest, Su Ruhui would have preferred to pet Sang-baby, but Sang Chiyu refused to turn into Sang-baby ever again.

Shentu had been kept in a cage. Seeing Su Ruhui, he clung to the iron bars and said feebly, “Hurry up and let me go.”

“Don’t even think about it. Give up; it’s impossible to let you go.” Su Ruhui sat cross-legged beside him.

“I haven’t had my little pills for several days, and my head hurts,” Shentu covered his head with his large, furry paws. “Many of us in the Demon Race have headaches, especially those with high occult cultivation, like me.”

“I’ll have a healing occultist take a look at you,” Su Ruhui said.

“It’s useless,” Shentu whimpered. “Only our own medicine works. It’s called ‘Spiritual Breath Pills,’ and they taste like oranges.” Forget it, only the demons had those pills, and Su Ruhui truly couldn’t get them. Shentu settled for the next best thing. “Help me massage my head.”

“No.” Su Ruhui shook his head.

Shentu rolled over to show his belly. " I’ll let you touch my belly if you massage my head."

“No.” Su Ruhui continued assembling the puppet parts in his hands. “Believe it or not, Sang Chiyu is monitoring the two of us from somewhere right now. If I touch your dog head, stroke your tail, or rub your belly, you’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

“That’s not right, he’s the one who sent me here for you to play with!” Shentu barked. “And for the last time, I am a wolf!”

“True, he let you entertain me, but if I get touchy-feely with you, some other cat or dog will replace you to entertain me tomorrow.” Su Ruhui comforted him. “Fine, fine. In a bit, I’ll make you a bowl of braised pork and ask a healing occultist to help treat your head.”

Shentu: “…”

In the front hall of the workshop, Sang Chiyu and Han Ye watched the man and the wolf through a water mirror.

Han Ye mocked, “Su Ruhui really knows you.”

“If I truly intended to monitor his interaction with Shentu, I wouldn’t have invited you,” Sang Chiyu said flatly.

“Then why did you call me here?” Han Ye asked impatiently.

“Was Su Ruhui always like this?” Sang Chiyu stared at the water mirror. “Clearly sad, yet pretending not to be.”

“What ‘sad’ or ’not sad’?” Han Ye observed the Su Ruhui in the mirror. “Isn’t he the same as usual?”

Sang Chiyu glanced at Han Ye, realizing that asking this kid was probably a mistake.

“Have you ever seen him sad?” Sang Chiyu asked.

Han Ye thought back. “Actually, I don’t think I have. That guy has a huge heart. Back then, to build a spider puppet, he raised a black spider. He raised it for three months, only for it to be stepped on by a new kid who just joined the pavilion. He usually cherished that black spider, even naming it ‘Little Pearl.’ God, that name was disgusting—even ‘Su Dog-Egg’ would’ve been better. Pearl was crushed to bits, and I thought he’d be upset, but he wasn’t. He ate and drank as usual, then raised seventy-two spiders of different species and named them the ‘Seventy-Two Heavenly Spirits.’ For a while, the Blissful Pavilion was full of spiderwebs; it was gross.”

Sang Chiyu shifted his gaze back to the water mirror.

Su Ruhui hadn’t been quite right lately, even though he was still talking and laughing, and even used the Blissful Pavilion’s kitchen to cook for Sang Chiyu. However, the guy had prepared a huge table—twenty-four heavy dishes: crystal shrimp dumplings, pan-fried duck, jellyfish stew, roasted beef… every plate was as large as Sang Chiyu’s face. Sang Chiyu had stared at the table in silence as Su Ruhui handed him chopsticks, saying, “A midnight snack for you. Uh, is it too much?” He stood up to throw some of it away, but Sang Chiyu stopped him, took the chopsticks, and spent an hour eating all twenty-four dishes without a word.

Han Ye said he had never seen Su Ruhui sad, but how was that possible? Sang Chiyu thought. Su Ruhui had missed him for so long, and missing someone is, in itself, a very sad thing.

He had asked Su Ruhui multiple times, hoping he would open up, but Su Ruhui’s answer was always that he was overthinking. Sometimes he felt frustrated; they had clearly agreed to be honest with each other, yet Su Ruhui still hid his emotions—though he understood Su Ruhui likely didn’t want him to worry. More headache-inducing was that Su Ruhui made twenty-four dishes for him as a midnight snack every night.

Now Sang Chiyu suddenly realized that perhaps Su Ruhui hadn’t even noticed he was unhappy. Jiang Xueya’s betrayal, the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Border Capital… the debt of blood was too heavy, weighing on Su Ruhui’s heart; he was already at the end of his rope.

Just then, ripples appeared in the water mirror. Sang Chiyu saw a tall, white-clothed figure appear out of thin air beside Su Ruhui. Su Ruhui clearly saw him too, standing up while holding onto the iron cage, locking eyes with the person.

“Su Guanyu?” Sang Chiyu recognized him.

“Who?” Han Ye asked.

“The person beside Su Ruhui.”

“…” Han Ye was silent for a moment, then asked, “There’s someone beside Su Ruhui?”

Sang Chiyu also fell silent. He soon discovered that not only Han Ye, but even Shentu hadn’t noticed the suddenly appeared Su Guanyu. Workers from the workshop passed by Su Ruhui, and none seemed to see this strange man in white.

Undeniably, Su Guanyu and Su Ruhui were very similar, whether in their features or the curve of their lips when they smiled. Su Ruhui looked very calm, seemingly not surprised by Su Guanyu’s sudden appearance. Su Guanyu snapped his fingers, and as if something had been altered in the unseen realm, all surrounding sounds instantly went silent. The walking workers froze mid-step, maintaining comical poses with their arms swinging and legs lifted. Han Ye was also frozen; Sang Chiyu raised a hand and waved it before his face, but Han Ye gave no reaction.

Su Guanyu had frozen time.

But why wasn’t he frozen? Sang Chiyu looked down at his own palms, his brow furrowing deeply.

“Why can’t they see you?” Su Ruhui asked.

Su Guanyu replied, “Because in their eyes, I do not exist.”

“Why can I see you?”

“I told you,” Su Guanyu said unhurriedly, “Hui-er, you are an extraordinary person. You see things they cannot, just as you can create puppets with intellect while the ants can only crawl in the gutters. The difference between you and them is like that of a human and an ant. Your love for that child named Sang Chiyu is no different from a human loving an ant; you will soon find it utterly absurd.”

“So to you, was loving my mother and having me also utterly absurd?” Su Ruhui asked.

Su Guanyu still wore a peaceful smile. “Hui-er, how could you think that? Your mother, Tantai Xun, was the love of my life, and you are my most beloved son.”

Su Ruhui sighed. “Stop pretending, Old Man. You deliberately attacked the System to make its functions fail. You were probably watching with a smile while my throat was being slit, weren’t you? Did you really go to the Snow Realm’s Tianji to avenge my mother? I don’t think so, Old Man. You had everything planned from that day. You needed to destroy yourself to transform your form and seek eternal life, while conveniently crafting the image of a great lover to make your foolish son believe everything you did was for revenge.”

Su Guanyu broke into a soft laugh. “You are a clever child; I cannot fool you. As for what I want, you will know in the future. Today I am here to do you a favor. The King of Luofu is looking for your little cat. He is the Saint of the Demon Race; they need him to continue their lineage and inherit his unique and powerful secret arts. Unfortunately, your location was discovered by the King of Luofu yesterday. Now, the demon army is on its way. They are taking a detour through Youzhou; in about half an hour, they will be knocking on the gates of the Black Street.”

The puppet in Su Ruhui’s hand gave a clack and fell apart, scattering on the floor. He looked up and asked, “How did they find the Black Street?”

Su Guanyu turned his face toward Shentu in the cage. “This poor little wolf has been saying his head hurts. This isn’t some hereditary demon ailment, but a side effect of enduring the King of Luofu’s secret art. The King’s art is ‘Spiritual Mind Telepathy’; he can invade the minds of others, sometimes extracting their consciousness, sometimes modifying their memories. An invaded demon becomes the ’eyes’ of the King of Luofu. Through his ’eyes,’ the King has seen you. In fact, over the years, the King of Luofu, far away in the Snow Realm’s Royal City, has been monitoring the human world in this way.”

Su Ruhui stood up abruptly, heading toward the main hall of the Blissful Pavilion.

Su Guanyu spoke from a distance behind him, “It’s no use; it’s too late. In half an hour, you can do nothing but hang yourselves. The Black Street has been content in its corner, wallowing in gang struggles and sensory pleasures for too long. The Demon Race’s combat power is too formidable; how can the Black Street, which doesn’t even have a regular army, contend with them? Hui-er, guess if the Black Street, to save itself, will sell out Sang Chiyu just as they sold you out to the Secret Sect seven years ago? If you insist on protecting Sang Chiyu, what will the demons do to the Black Street? You have already sent thirty thousand citizens of the Border Capital to their deaths in demon mouths; can you bear the debt of thirty thousand more lives in the Black Street?”

Su Ruhui stopped in his tracks, shrouded in deep shadow, standing like a cold statue.

Su Guanyu’s voice carried a dangerous lure. “Let me become your new System and unlock your supreme permissions. You will gain unparalleled secret arts. What King of Luofu, what Demon Race—all the insects and ants who are your enemies and want to snatch Sang Chiyu from your side… together, we shall turn them all to ash.”