Chapter 4: Red Eyes

But it was already too late!

Xiao Changxuan seized Lou Xun’s wrist in an underhand grip. Lou Xun failed to dodge in time, and his hand was forced hard against the light screen. The ancient runes flowing across the LED screen paused for an instant, then began drawing out Lou Xun’s spiritual power.

But his spiritual pool was already exhausted!

If a semi-immortal overused their spiritual power, it would inevitably trigger a backlash. And with Lou Xun’s current condition, he absolutely would not survive that backlash.

Seeing this, Lou Xun struggled even more violently. Yet Xiao Changxuan’s hand was like iron. No matter how Lou Xun tried to wrench free, he could not move.

The oath mark had burned Xiao Changxuan’s hand into a bloody mess, but he did not seem to care at all. He merely watched coldly from the side.

In just an instant, Lou Xun had become a live fish on the chopping block, left for others to butcher.

“If you break your oath, your cultivation will be cut in half… When the Xu family surrounds you then,” Lou Xun’s voice seemed to drift through the void, “Xiao Changxuan, you won’t survive either.”

Xiao Changxuan merely tilted his head and looked at him. He still wore that same smile that was not quite a smile. His dark eyes half-lowered in the flickering golden light, making it impossible to read the emotions inside.

“We’ll talk about that later,” he said.

A heart-rending pain tore from Lou Xun’s spiritual pool straight into his mind. His consciousness grew increasingly blurred. The dark red that had originally only occupied the bottom of his eyes slowly crawled upward, and waves of buzzing cut through his mind again and again.

—“It is not that I want you dead.”

He seemed to have returned to that hopeless rainy night before his death. He had been forced to stand at the edge of a high building, while the mocking voice behind him sounded distant and light, yet unusually clear.

“Only a semi-immortal. The Mortal Realm has as many as it wants. Who would care?”

“The miserable deaths of your teammates were all your fault too. If they had not tried to save you, how could they have ended up without even their bones left?”

“Ah Xun—run!!! Don’t look back!!! Run—!!!”

“I hate… sob… Ah Xun… I hate this so much—”

Countless voices tangled beside Lou Xun’s ears. His vision split into overlapping shadows, as if he had been trapped inside a glass dome. The sounds of Xiao Changxuan and the paper effigies behind him reached him in a blur. He could not make out a single word.

When he raised his eyes again, both pupils had abruptly turned blood-red, burning with bloodthirsty hatred.

“Silver hair and red eyes.” Xiao Changxuan looked at him, his voice threaded with complicated emotion. “Whoever designed that had excellent taste.”

The next moment, Lou Xun tore free of him in a suicidal burst. A sharp, beautiful attack shot straight toward Xiao Changxuan’s face. The formation disc he flung out was like a blade, slicing an extremely fine line of blood across the Demon Lord’s cheek.

Suddenly, the spot on the light screen where Lou Xun’s palm had just touched flashed with a neon cursor reading: [Authentication Successful]. Immediately after, countless ripples spread outward, like a stone dropped into a green lake.

Xiao Changxuan lost focus for the briefest moment, and Lou Xun grabbed him by the collar with one hand. In his other hand, Lou Xun pinched an explosive formation. Spiritual light blazed and flickered, and he was about to swing his fist down, ready to blow Xiao Changxuan’s head off regardless of the consequences.

“Hey… you really are ruthless!”

Xiao Changxuan swiftly leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Lou Xun’s waist, shoving him backward into the rippling light screen. The ripples surged open, and in the next instant, the light screen flared brilliantly, dissolving the explosive formation in Lou Xun’s hand and scattering its spiritual light.

With his attack dissolved, Lou Xun somehow found another burst of strength. He turned his head and bit viciously into Xiao Changxuan’s neck.

“Hiss—” Xiao Changxuan sucked in a breath from the pain. “Your teeth are way too sharp!”

As soon as he finished speaking, the rippling light screen behind them generated an enormous suction force and dragged both of them inside.

Behind them, countless paper effigies lunged forward like mountain wolves, their bloody mouths stretched wide—

Everything seemed to stop in that instant.

Darkness abruptly swallowed Lou Xun.

*

When he opened his eyes again, he saw a mottled bluestone wall.

The thick taste of blood filled Lou Xun’s mouth. His eyes were lowered, his back drenched in cold sweat. The sound of his heartbeat, along with his emotions, occupied every part of his thoughts—that hatred had not yet faded.

He swallowed the sticky blood. The dark red in his eyes receded little by little. Lou Xun’s consciousness struggled with difficulty through the remaining emotions. Those excessively extreme feelings still clung to him, half-severed yet unbroken, as if he were sinking into a swamp.

His head felt as if it were splitting open. Nearly suffering qi deviation was no different from taking a trip through the gates of hell. All he could hear was his heartbeat, magnified a hundredfold.

Only after an unknown amount of time did he finally catch his breath and speak.

“Madman.”

Lou Xun shoved Xiao Changxuan away from in front of him and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “A moody, unpredictable madman.”

Xiao Changxuan was pushed back against the stone wall. He simply leaned against it and glanced sideways at the torn bite wound on his shoulder and neck, then said cheerfully, “Likewise.”

The two stared at each other in silence for a while. Lou Xun moved his gaze away from the round bite mark on Xiao Changxuan’s shoulder and said, “Twice.”

“…?”

“The first time, in front of the drum tower, you could have saved me. The second time, when the paper effigies surrounded us, you could have saved me too.” Lou Xun’s voice was flat. “But you insisted on forcing me into a dead end, making me take a walk through the gates of hell before fishing me back out. Is that fun, Xiao Changxuan?”

“……” Xiao Changxuan patted his sleeves and stood, walking toward Lou Xun. “How are you supposed to reason with a madman?”

“You waver between killing me and saving me.” Lou Xun stood before Xiao Changxuan could offer him a hand. “I imagine some selfish part of you wants me to meet King Yama, but you also have a reason you cannot let me die. I am merely an unknown semi-immortal. I truly wonder what reason could make the Demon Lord so conflicted over my life and death.”

Xiao Changxuan stood where he was, hands clasped behind his back. “Then why don’t you also tell this venerable one how you arrived at the Xu family, and why you produced demonic qi and nearly suffered qi deviation?”

The person opposite him fell silent.

“You’re so clever,” Xiao Changxuan said. “Don’t you know some things are enough as long as both sides understand them?”

Beneath Lou Xun’s wide sleeves, his five fingers tightened, then loosened. In the end, he let go.

Xiao Changxuan was choosing not to expose him.

He had no choice.

He did not know how much Xiao Changxuan truly knew, nor what exactly Xiao Changxuan wanted him to do.

But whatever Xiao Changxuan wanted him to do, Lou Xun had no choice.

The gap in strength, the oath mark on the back of his hand, and the qi deviation—every factor restricted him.

Lou Xun exhaled and silently began circulating a full cycle of spiritual energy to repair his spiritual pool. Then he turned to observe their surroundings.

This was a massive natural cave. On one side, a stone platform path had been built for people to stand and walk on, leading straight toward an electronic light sphere in the center. On the other side lay a bottomless pool. The light sphere was like a moon, surrounded by flickering light-screen data. It emitted a faint luminous blue glow, the only light source in the entire cavern.

“At first, I did indeed find the teleportation formation gate.” Xiao Changxuan walked to his side. “I also tested it with the Xu family’s teleportation formation. It didn’t recognize me. It only recognized the Xu family bloodline.”

“So?” Lou Xun raised the back of his hand.

“So…” Xiao Changxuan tapped his own forehead. “It was not intentional.”

Lou Xun did not even spare him a glance. Xiao Changxuan was used to it and continued, “Actually, I didn’t expect you to learn it either. I just thought you looked somewhat similar, so I tried. But… why aren’t you the least bit concerned about being of Xu Clan blood?”

Eight out of ten sentences from this man were lies.

There was no point believing him.

Lou Xun aimed the Xu family teleportation formation on the back of his hand toward the light sphere. As expected, the formation reacted, glowing a little brighter.

He took two steps forward and answered calmly, “Even if I am, so what?”

He stepped onto the stone platform path. Beside it, the water in the pool was clear, with ripples gently swaying and reflecting onto the light sphere.

It was like a full moon floating over water in the dark night. It possessed its own quiet stillness, the curved waves of light breathtakingly beautiful.

Lou Xun, who was walking toward the round moon, suddenly paused. He turned back to look at Xiao Changxuan. “Unless you want me to care.”

“Have you noticed that you’re very indifferent toward everything?” Xiao Changxuan still wore that watertight expression. “Your emotions aren’t vivid at all, and you like using a fixed, normal way of thinking to measure everyone.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Lou Xun placed his hand before the light sphere. The silver-white light fell across the back of his hand, making it seem even more porcelain-pale and jade-like. “Being naturally cold and having normal thoughts is wrong?”

Xiao Changxuan’s smiling eyes curved. “Do you know robots are like that too?”

Lou Xun’s gaze turned abruptly icy. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” Xiao Changxuan said, “I just mentioned it in passing. Lou Banxian, you and a robot are still very different. After all, it can’t suffer qi deviation.”

At that, Lou Xun’s fingers curled slightly. He slanted Xiao Changxuan a glance. The Demon Lord shrugged and said nothing more.

An electronic female voice rang out from the light sphere: [Authentication Passed]. It cut between the two of them, and neither spoke again.

Intelligent data poured down the light sphere’s screen like a tide. Very quickly, it established a spiritual power link and unfurled a vortex large enough for them to pass through. The two exchanged a glance and stepped into the vortex together.

Lou Xun’s spiritual pool, which had only just recovered a fair amount, was shortened by another large chunk in the blink of an eye.

His expression darkened as he allowed another wave of darkness to wrap around them—

[Secondary authentication initiated…]

[Scanning genetic system records]

Lou Xun immediately opened his eyes.

The Xu family definitely did not have his genetic records!

Countless streams of spiritual power data brushed past him. Lou Xun watched as the authentication system was about to flash red, only for it to go out in an instant.

The originally urgent alarm was also cut off. The electronic female voice switched back and forth between [Success] and [Failure], the grating sound almost piercing straight through his eardrums.

[Verification error… verification suc—zzzt… verification successful…]

“Close your eyes.”

Xiao Changxuan’s voice sounded beside his ear.

Lou Xun did not doubt him. He immediately shielded his eyes. When he opened them again, he fell into a patch of grass.

Lou Xun covered his ears and pushed himself up, then saw Xiao Changxuan sitting not far away, also rubbing both ears.

What was going on?

Lou Xun looked around. Everywhere he looked was gray-black wild grass that grew up to his knees.

A deathly silent expanse of gray spread endlessly, like a prairie wilderness stretching all the way to the edge of his vision. The only things that existed here were countless black coffins.

These square black coffins were edged with silver and arranged in a matrix. Above them, cold white light screens glimmered faintly, each one flickering with progress bars and data analysis. Technology merged with this bizarre scene, creating an extremely sharp, heavy beauty in this wilderness.

It was oppressively suffocating.

Lou Xun’s brows slowly furrowed. He walked toward the coffins. As the wild grass swayed, white fireflies drifted out.

He froze for a moment, then raised his hand and caught one of the white specks of light.

“It’s spiritual power,” Xiao Changxuan suddenly said.

Lou Xun looked up at him and saw Xiao Changxuan slightly lift two fingers.

The next moment, countless round white points of starlight emerged over the boundless graveyard. They looked like fireflies, and also like stars scattered through the night, dissolving some of the dead silence pressing down on the heart.

A faint purple light appeared in Xiao Changxuan’s eyes. He turned to Lou Xun. “Those yin-corrupted paper effigies ruined the feng shui of this place long ago. Even if immortals from above came down, they wouldn’t be able to produce this much spiritual power.”

“……” Lou Xun walked up to one of the coffins and lowered his eyes.

Immediately after, he retreated two steps from the coffin, disgust showing in his eyes, and happened to bump into Xiao Changxuan, who had been following behind him at an unhurried pace.

“Eugh.” Xiao Changxuan steadied him and frowned as well. “What is that?”

Lou Xun endured the nausea and stepped forward again. “A person?”

“I dare not agree,” Xiao Changxuan said.

The thing inside the coffin had its hands folded, its eyes lightly closed, no different from an ordinary corpse prepared for burial. But it could only be called humanoid.

Without exception, their skin was as white as porcelain. They had no hair at all, and all of them bore the same blurred face. They could not even be said to have proper faces. Their heads only had a few sunken holes symbolizing facial features.

If not for the hollow eye sockets and the exposed organs at the abdomen, all torn flesh and blood, they might have been considered unfinished humanoid dolls.

Lou Xun felt an eerie familiarity toward the doll’s face. After glancing over it twice, his gaze suddenly stopped at its dantian.

He grabbed Xiao Changxuan’s sleeve, pointed at a bloody, mangled lump, and said, “Look. What is that?”