Chapter 42

The woman stiffened. After a moment, she suddenly shoved the girl away again and snapped, “Who’s crying?! Don’t flatter yourself!”
“Elder Sister…”
“Don’t call me that! I’m not your elder sister!” she roared.
“…”
Shen Qing silently watched this display of so-called “sisterly affection,” fury surging through her veins like molten fire. She flexed her icy fingers and stepped forward.
The girl noticed someone approaching and immediately spread her arms, shielding the woman behind her. “Who are you?! Don’t come near my Elder Sister!”
The reaction made it seem as though the two had been secretly playing here, while someone outside was always ready to capture her Elder Sister.
Cold moonlight washed over her eyes. Shen Qing’s face was expressionless. When she drew close, she suddenly stepped onto the boat, yanked the girl aside, and without warning drove the lotus hairpin straight toward the red-clad woman whose features were blurred.
One thrust, straight through the throat.
The blood that poured from her neck burned Shen Qing’s eyes, making her want nothing more than to stab again and again, to vent all the hatred that had accumulated over the years.
She pulled out the hairpin and stabbed viciously once more, then again.
Illusions were fragile things. The once-dreaded great demon, so overwhelming in the past, was now weak as paper. She didn’t even resist, simply standing there as Shen Qing took her life.
Only when the woman’s neck was mangled beyond recognition, when her body stiffened and toppled backward, did a sharp pain snap Shen Qing back to herself.
Looking at how easily the figure had fallen, a wave of emptiness surged up in Shen Qing’s heart.
What is fake can never become real.
Blood blurred her vision. It took a moment for her focus to return. Lowering her gaze, she saw the girl clamped onto her hand, biting down hard.
Earlier, blinded by hatred, Shen Qing had barely noticed the girl’s feeble attempts to stop her. Left with no choice, the girl had seized her hand and bitten into the web between her thumb and forefinger.
Shen Qing lifted her hand and effortlessly yanked the small girl away. She glanced at the bleeding bite mark, unconcerned by the negligible pain. Frowning slightly, she carefully wiped away the shiny saliva smeared on the girl’s collar.
Then she grabbed the sobbing girl and turned back.
She’d brought the lotus hairpin in case the girl made trouble and refused to follow her obediently.
Now that Liu Wanxiu had shrunk into the size of a five-year-old, taking her back would be effortless.
The girl struggled like a little beast in her grip. “Let me go! Bad person! You killed my Elder Sister! I want my Elder Sister!”
Seeing her struggle fiercely, Shen Qing tossed her to the ground, her expression dark. Looking down at her, she asked coldly, “Liu Wanxiu, when you say she was your Elder Sister, do you mean your real, blood-related sister?”
Little Wanxiu glared at her with reddened eyes, stubborn like a cornered animal. “She was my Elder Sister!”
“As far as I know,” Shen Qing said flatly, “Minister Liu has only one daughter, and that is you. When did you acknowledge a demon as your sister?”
In the Domain, Liu Wanxiu was only five years old. Her mind had returned to that age as well. Faced with such questions, her thoughts fell into chaos, and she didn’t know how to answer.
After a long while, she murmured timidly, “Elder Sister is warm. She’s not a demon.”
Little did she know, demons, too, could be warm or cold.
Shen Qing had no desire to argue with a child. Only an awakened Liu Wanxiu could give her the answers she wanted. She grabbed the girl by the back of her collar again and dragged her toward the edge of the Domain.
Her own mind was in knots. She only wanted to wake Liu Wanxiu, shake her awake, and ask her properly, what exactly that funeral demon was to her, and where this so-called Elder Sister had come from.
But then,
“Hmph.”
A soft chuckle sounded behind her.
Shen Qing stopped abruptly and turned back slowly.
A man, with a face, and a familiar one at that.
Under the moonlight stood a young man in white upon the deck, jade crown upon his head, white silk wrapped around his neck. His narrow eyes were lowered slightly, as though appraising the “corpse” of the funeral demon.
After a moment, he lifted his hand lightly. As his sleeve slipped back, white silk wrapped around his wrist was revealed.
The instant he raised his hand, Shen Qing bolted, hauling Liu Wanxiu along as she fled at full speed, as though trying to outrun her own lifetime. The wind roared in her ears, her heart nearly leaping out of her throat.
But legs could never outrun wings.
With a gentle leap, slow in appearance yet swift in truth, the Bai Shuisha arrived behind her in an instant. One hand came to rest on Shen Qing’s shoulder.
That single touch dragged her back to the dream, where the funeral demon had casually torn off one of Li Daoxuan’s arms. Her scalp prickled, every hair standing on end.
She feared pain. Even more, she feared having her arm torn off alive. So she twisted sharply at the waist, slipping sideways like an eel and wrenching free from his grip. This time she was smarter, she didn’t run. Instead, she stopped a short distance away, clutching Liu Wanxiu and facing him directly, eyes brimming with vigilance.
Little Wanxiu was about to start struggling again when Shen Qing barked sharply, “Be quiet!”
Startled by her tone, the girl shuddered and fell silent.
In her previous life, Shen Qing had been entangled most often with the funeral demon. Everything she knew about the Bai Shuisha had come from her senior brother. She couldn’t read his temperament at all and could only wait and observe.
Some great demons were mad and volatile, smiling one moment, killing the next. Others were steady and reasonable, even politely announcing, “Excuse me, I’m about to make a move,” before striking.
She didn’t know which kind the Bai Shuisha was.
Keeping her guard up, Shen Qing tested him cautiously. “Who are you?” she asked, feigning ignorance.
A faint smile curved his lips as he mercilessly pierced her pretense. “Who am I? I think this young lady knows very well. After all, just yesterday the two of you paid a visit to my home, and you even left something behind in my little darling’s stomach.”
As he flipped his hand, three strings of arm bangles suddenly appeared. “When I returned and saw it vomiting and suffering diarrhea, I was terribly worried. Fortunately, it spat everything out and was unharmed. Since nothing happened, I won’t pursue the matter today.”
Shen Qing recalled that gaping, blood-basin maw and the red lotus spirit with saliva streaming down, and an inexplicable black line slid across her mind. For a moment, she truly felt that the way these fiends thought was utterly unfathomable.
Since he had already mercilessly torn through her pretense, Shen Qing no longer bothered to circle around or put on an act. She went straight to the point. “Then what do you intend to do? Could it be that you blame the two of us for wrecking your home and have come to seek revenge?”
The young man wore a faint smile and shook his head. “Since the two of you were thrown into my domain by someone else, I naturally won’t lay hands on innocent people. If there’s anyone to hold accountable, it should be the one who bored holes through my home.”
When Shen Qing returned, she had already asked, Cuizhi and the others had not seen Li Daoxuan break into the painted barge. No one knew that the person who fell into the underground palace together with her that day was Li Daoxuan. That meant he had not entered through the same entrance as she had.
It was highly likely that Li Daoxuan had secretly planted a teleportation array on her without her knowing, allowing him to avoid all eyes and transmit himself directly to her side.
Yet Bai Shuisha said that the person behind the scenes had thrown both of them into his underground palace together.
If so, then Bai Shuisha was not familiar with the one who framed her, or rather, at this point in time, they were not yet acquainted.
The thought had barely settled when Bai Shuisha spoke again. “What I want is her.”
The direction he pointed to was unmistakably the little Wanxiu in Shen Qing’s arms.
He had never liked dawdling. Before Shen Qing could react, he grabbed with all five fingers. In an instant, little Wanxiu was pulled away by an irresistible force. The young man seized her by the neck and lifted her into the air; her small legs kicked helplessly in midair.
Though a soul could not be easily strangled to death, the suffering was very real.
Immediately after, he casually flicked the bracelets in his hand. They struck Shen Qing squarely in the chest. In an instant, she felt an overwhelming pressure crash into her heart, crushing her internal organs. Before the pain even had time to fully bloom, the force slammed her backward and sent her sprawling to the ground.
She had only just managed to draw a breath when Shen Qing suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. Then a drowning pain spread from her chest in a web-like pattern, radiating through her entire body.
“Hng, ”
The blow left Shen Qing barely conscious, her mouth and nose filled with the taste of rust.
“However, since you injured her, I must naturally repay you in kind.”
Shen Qing knew that the “her” he referred to was that false, faceless figure, the wedding-funeral fiend that existed only within Liu Wanxiu’s memories.
The young man shook his head, seized Liu Wanxiu’s soul, and departed.
Shen Qing stared at his retreating figure, her bloodshot eyes filled with unwillingness.
Once outside the boundary, Liu Wanxiu’s spirit turned into a ball of white light, which he gathered into his sleeve. He strolled unhurriedly toward the exit, his figure turning into a streak of white light that slipped out.
Behind him, Shen Qing dragged her gravely injured body and followed close behind.
The moment Bai Shuisha returned to the real world and touched down, Shen Qing opened her eyes and fired off a talisman from her hand.
Clearly not expecting Shen Qing to chase after him while enduring such pain, and to strike so swiftly, Bai Shuisha dodged in time, but the talisman still singed the back half of his hair.
A sharp sizzling sound rang out. As a lock of neither-long-nor-short black hair fell to the ground, Bai Shuisha’s killing intent was fully ignited.
The faint, eternal smile still hung at the corner of his lips, but something in his eyes had changed.
A severed neck, once reattached, never quite felt right. Bai Shuisha rolled his neck slightly. “Cough, cough, ” He covered his lips and coughed softly. When he lifted his gaze again, his pupils were a deep, blood-red hue.
His yao form had been revealed.
He let out a sigh. “Little lady, I originally had no wish to kill indiscriminately. Isn’t being alive a good thing?”
Outside the window, the already gloomy sky seemed to worsen, thick clouds piling atop one another. Lightning and thunder roared within them, like the clashing cry of spears and halberds on a battlefield.
Shen Qing slowly braced herself upright. That small, delicate body now stood ramrod straight. Her brows brimmed with solemn killing intent, and for a moment, her presence did not lose out to his at all.
“Of course being alive is good. If one could live well, who wouldn’t want that?” Shen Qing’s throat felt as though it were bleeding. “But unfortunately, even wanting to live properly has now become a luxury.”
The present Bai Shuisha could not grasp the deeper meaning of her words and was momentarily at a loss. “I don’t understand.”
“Whether you understand or not is none of my damn business,” Shen Qing said coldly. “Leave Lady Liu’s soul behind.”
A signal flare suddenly appeared in her hand. With just a light pull, the people of the Xuanji Pavilion would come at once.
“I assume you know Liu Jiyue of the Xuanji Pavilion,” she said, chin raised. “If we truly fight, you should know you’re no match for him. I arranged to come with my senior brother, only I arrived first. He lagged behind a step, but by now, he should already be outside the Liu residence.”
“If I pull this signal flare, my senior brother will set up a barrier outside. Once the others from the Xuanji Pavilion arrive, no matter how heaven-defying your abilities are, you won’t be able to escape.”
Bai Shuisha laughed. “Aren’t you afraid of death?”
Shen Qing laughed as well. “Hahahahaha, ”
Her laughter was dazzlingly bright, so much so that for a moment she looked even more sinister than Bai Shuisha himself. When she had laughed her fill, she wiped the tears from the corner of her eye and said, “Do you think I’m afraid? If you kill me, my senior brother will chase you to the ends of the earth, skin you alive and tear out your tendons. One life for another, worth it.”
A glint flickered in her eyes. “And perhaps my senior brother will follow this lead and uncover the corpse of the other great yao you’ve hidden for so long. Once that corpse is destroyed, the funeral fiend will suffer a devastating blow. At that point, falling into the Xuanji Pavilion’s dragnet will be only a matter of time, ”
As her words fell, the smile on Bai Shuisha’s lips finally vanished completely.
Seeing this, Shen Qing knew she had guessed correctly, at least in part.
“Let me guess,” she added, pressing the advantage, “where exactly did you hide the other fiend’s corpse?”
“You truly are capable,” Bai Shuisha said coldly, lifting his gaze. “But you will never find her. Little lady, if we meet again, I will be sure to give you a very ‘proper’ reception.”
A violent wind suddenly howled through the room, blinding the eyes.
When clarity returned, the young man was gone. Shen Qing remained frozen in her original stance for a long while before slowly sliding down along the edge of the bed, hugging her knees as she collapsed onto the floor.
She was clearly still running a fever, yet her back was already drenched in cold sweat.
Her lips were pale, her mind muddled. Only now, after surviving the ordeal, did Shen Qing begin to come back to herself. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. The intense stimulation made her feel nauseated, but when she covered her mouth and retched violently, nothing came up.