Chapter 18#

Chapter 18: The Inner Demon#

Elder Xu finished speaking and turned his head to look at Feng Qianqiu, who was leisurely sipping hot tea in the bedroom. The sect leader was dressed quite respectably today, with wide robes and large sleeves, giving off a strong vibe of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He looked at his son with a half-smile. “Any thoughts?”

Feng Xianyu was about to go back to sleep, hugging his pillow and shaking his head innocently.

Feng Qianqiu’s teeth itched with irritation, and he asked again with a hint of threat: “Really none?”

“No.” Feng Xianyu was clueless, even tilting his head and asking, “Dad, what exactly are you trying to say?”

Elder Xu: “…”

Elder Xu desperately tried to signal Feng Xianyu with his eyes, but Feng Xianyu didn’t see it and was still rubbing his eyes.

Feng Qianqiu could no longer maintain his sect leader demeanor. With a crash, he slammed his teacup onto the ground. Before Elder Xu could stop him, Feng Qianqiu had already swooped over like a gust of wind, grabbing Feng Xianyu by the ear and yanking him out of bed.

Elder Xu: “Calm down! Sect leader, calm down!!!”

Feng Xianyu grimaced in pain: “Let go! Let go! Dad! I’ll get up, okay? It hurts like hell!”

Feng Qianqiu ignored him and roared into Feng Xianyu’s ear: “Don’t you have any sense of urgency?!”

Using all his strength, Feng Xianyu broke free from his father’s clutches, rubbing his ear incessantly and muttering, “What sense of urgency? I just want to sleep.”

“You—” Feng Qianqiu was fuming.

Elder Xu tried to intervene again: “Calm down! Sect leader, calm down!!!”

Seeing that Feng Xianyu was impervious to persuasion and about to slump back onto the bed like a boneless mess, Feng Qianqiu cursed on the spot: “Sleep my ass!”

“Sect leader, calm down!” Elder Xu was drenched in sweat. Feng Qianqiu laughed coldly and rapidly drew a formation array.

Before Feng Xianyu could even see what array it was, let alone utter the words “I don’t want to,” his father grabbed him by the collar, bunched him up, and tossed him into the unfolding array text. He landed flat on his back on the cold stone floor, his rear end taking the brunt of the fall.

Elder Xu: “…”

Feng Qianqiu’s cold voice came from afar: “You go into seclusion too!”

Then he tossed over a set of clothes and a few bottles of pills, which clattered and rolled across the ground. The array vanished without a trace, leaving only silence all around.

Feng Xianyu: “???”

Feng Xianyu barely managed to get up, stunned by the fall, unable to believe what had just happened, and completely bewildered.

How could Feng Qianqiu be so cold and ruthless! He just wanted to sleep!

This cave had no daylight; only a luminous pearl glowed faintly beside the central stone platform.

If he were outside, he might have been able to struggle a bit, but now he had been thrown in here. Since things had come to this, Feng Xianyu had no choice but to reluctantly put on the clothes, swallow the pills with displeasure, and sit cross-legged on the stone platform. He formed hand seals, calmed his mind, closed his eyes, and began circulating his spiritual power, letting it slowly travel along his meridians throughout his body, finally gathering in his dantian.

A faint golden bow phantom appeared before him, and the formless spiritual energy of the world around him was being drawn toward Feng Xianyu.

After circulating through several major and minor cycles, Feng Xianyu quickly realized that his cultivation speed was much faster than he remembered.

Torrential spiritual energy surged endlessly in his sea of consciousness, and the spiritual energy from the outside world poured in like a mad flood.

A bold guess emerged in Feng Xianyu’s mind: Could it be that the cultivation he had in his previous life hadn’t dissipated with his rebirth?

Otherwise, there was no explanation for why he was cultivating so quickly—it was almost inhuman. Before long, even the faint outline of an infant soul began to take shape at the golden core in his sea of consciousness.

In seclusion, one loses track of time; day and night rotated endlessly.

After several days, Feng Xianyu opened his eyes, full of energy. He jumped directly into the spiritual spring beside him, summoned his Qiqie Bow, and caressed it lovingly for a moment, thinking of the faint hehuan flower imprint he had seen in his sea of consciousness.

It hadn’t completely disappeared either, floating like an unmoored boat deep within the sea of consciousness.

Feng Xianyu sighed, stood up from the spiritual spring, changed his clothes, and began searching for an exit, thinking about how he would go show off to Feng Qianqiu.

As he groped around, he accidentally touched a part of the cave wall that sounded hollow. Instinctively, he pressed lightly—Feng Xianyu had just come out of seclusion and couldn’t control his spiritual power well. Unexpectedly, a massive ball of spiritual energy exploded from his palm with a thunderous roar, blasting straight through the cave wall!

It revealed a tunnel leading to another cave.

Feng Xianyu: “…”

How was he going to explain this to Elder Xu!

Before Feng Xianyu could even repent, he suddenly heard what seemed to be suppressed, heavy, and irregular breathing from deep within the tunnel.

Cultivation in seclusion requires a “mind fast,” meaning one must not listen or think, keeping the mind as still as water to reach a state of nothingness and self-forgetfulness, becoming one with the great Dao and unifying spirit and energy. Listening to this fellow cultivator’s breathing, it was clearly disturbed, with signs of going into Qi deviation.

Feng Xianyu held his breath and concealed his presence.

All the seclusion caves on Qingdu Mountain were in the back hills; one just needed to register to use them. As he observed with his divine sense, Feng Xianyu silently crept closer along the tunnel, wondering which disciple had been careless in their cultivation and strayed off course—he would hand them over to Elder Xu for a good lesson.

But the further he went, the more he felt something was wrong.

When he finally reached the end and saw the person on the stone platform, Feng Xianyu’s steps abruptly halted, and his mind felt as if it had been violently struck by a heavy hammer.

—Why him?!

In the moment he froze, the luminous pearl shattered with a crack from a palm strike. A gust of snow-white wind suddenly swept toward him, menacingly fierce. Instinctively, Feng Xianyu summoned his Qiqie Bow to block, but his surging spiritual power burst out uncontrollably with him at the center. The powerful force slammed directly into the cultivator’s chest. He let out a muffled grunt but showed no pause in his movements, still pressing forward with deadly determination.

He pushed aside the Qiqie Bow and instead grabbed Feng Xianyu’s hand. His palm was wet—it was blood.

Feng Xianyu used all his strength but couldn’t free his hand. He frantically tried to control his spiritual power, not wanting to actually hurt him. When he looked up, even in the darkness, he could make out the other’s eyes, like sunken water—utterly devoid of light, hard to describe their meaning. It was like a starving beast, nothing like the person Feng Xianyu remembered.

Feng Xianyu was stunned. Seizing the opportunity, the other yanked him close, bringing them so near that Feng Xianyu felt he would drown in the smell of blood and stone calamus.

At such close range, the sharp blade at the tip of the Qiqie Bow was already pressed against the other’s burning throat, leaving a cut. Invisible wind blades left bloody marks on his limbs, chest, and even his cheeks, but he seemed utterly unfazed, not moving an inch.

After a long moment, Feng Xianyu gritted his teeth and called out the other’s name: “Zhuo… Zhuo Yu! Do you see who I am?!”

Zhuo Yu’s breath was as tangled as a mess of hemp. His snow-white robe was stained with his own blood and torn to shreds. His violent spiritual energy was crashing back and forth within the small cave like a hurricane, seemingly unending.

At the sound of Feng Xianyu’s voice, Zhuo Yu’s grip on his hand suddenly loosened.

Feng Xianyu was overjoyed, thinking Zhuo Yu had come to his senses. He didn’t even care that his wrist felt like it was about to snap—where did Zhuo Yu get such strength?

But he was too relieved.

Feng Xianyu vaguely saw Zhuo Yu’s thin, handsome lips curl up vaguely in a meaningful way. It should have been a gentle smile, but it sent a chill down Feng Xianyu’s spine, making him instinctively struggle.

Somehow, Zhuo Yu pressed both of Feng Xianyu’s wrists against his own chest, grasping them together with five fingers so tightly that they seemed to leave marks on Feng Xianyu’s bones. Feng Xianyu gasped, then realized his lower back was also pinned down, clamped like shackles, immobilizing him completely. He was being pulled, inch by inch, irresistibly, into Zhuo Yu’s embrace.

Feng Xianyu pushed hard against Zhuo Yu’s chest, momentarily furious, and shouted, “If you don’t let go, I’ll kill you!”

He heard Zhuo Yu let out a soft laugh, accompanied by a slight vibration of his chest. In the darkness, time felt endless. He didn’t know when the Qiqie Bow fell to the ground with a thud, lying together with the scattered Lingzhao Sword.

“Zhuo Yu, you’re insane!”

In his panic, Feng Xianyu only managed to say this before he was swept off his feet entirely.

Zhuo Yu held Feng Xianyu’s wrist with one hand and pressed his lower back with the other. Seeing no hope of escape, Feng Xianyu’s pupils shot wide open in shock. Not knowing what Zhuo Yu intended to do, he kicked at Zhuo Yu’s feet in despair, but predictably, there was no reaction.

Then, as if unable to bear it any longer, Zhuo Yu carried him along and plunged into the icy spiritual spring water.

As soon as they sank into the water, the roaring explosions of spiritual energy abruptly left him.

Feng Xianyu couldn’t catch his breath and unintentionally blew a series of bubbles. In the freezing water, only where they touched felt scalding hot. Although a cultivator wouldn’t choke in a spiritual spring, he still felt a sense of near drowning.

Zhuo Yu’s expression was almost sorrowful. He suddenly let go of Feng Xianyu’s hand, only to rub his thumb fiercely over Feng Xianyu’s lips. Behind him, the inner demon swelled abruptly, like an endless nightmare, a mass of rotting flesh, pressing down heavily.

For that instant, Feng Xianyu seemed to forget to resist, and then he was pulled together into Zhuo Yu’s inner demon realm.

It was a clear, breezy spring day.

Feng Xianyu and Zhuo Yu were both kneeling in the main hall of Qingdu Mountain, one in red, one in white.

The sunlight made Zhuo Yu’s robe glow.

Feng Qianqiu stood high on the steps and said, “The Wutong Hall has been built. In another month, the two of you will form a bond.”

Zhuo Yu said nothing.

Feng Xianyu stood up abruptly: “I refuse!”

He had imagined countless forms of his future dao partner since childhood. In his imagination, she would either be gentle and charming, or sweet-talking, or at the very least, someone who could go out and have fun with him, lively and talkative. None of it matched Zhuo Yu.

No matter how good Zhuo Yu was, he wasn’t good as a dao partner!

“Yu’er!” Feng Qianqiu’s tone turned stern. “A gentleman’s word is as good as gold. You’ve already agreed; you can’t go back on it.”

“I never agreed to it at all!” Feng Xianyu raised his chin defiantly, looking his father straight in the eye. “I told you from the start I didn’t want to! It’s only you who wants it. You’ve been talking at me, persuading me, forcing me. Why should I do it just because you want me to?!”

Feng Xianyu paused, then said angrily, “I don’t want to be his dao partner!”