Chapter 91
Bu Tianhan has been on the demonic path for a while, killing people using demonic and extreme techniques. Especially those who had hurt him, he did not spare any of them and did not rush to take their lives, instead taking his time like he was teasing puppies, intimidating them, and making trouble for them.
Those people now show fear when they see him, and he has now reached a frighteningly high point.
Most of them were just ants that he could play with within the palm of his hand. But at some point, a very small number of people in that group became the exception.
Like the rest of the people in the cultivation world, these people wanted to deal with him in every way possible—to stop him from doing everything he wanted to do and to destroy his foundation. However, their strength did not allow them to do so, and he could only toy with them at will. But those people were a little more fortunate in that every time he was about to kill them, some mysterious force that probably surpassed this world would take them away.
Unlike the others, Bu Tianhan did not just sacrifice the inner dantians, he could even take away the spirit if he wanted to. This is why he could know that although he had killed those people, they were not completely dead.
Someone had picked up their yuanshen and was able to completely remove it from this world.
That was when Bu Tianhan first glimpsed the so-called ‘Great Dao’ and gained a deep understanding that there might be a greater world beyond this one. He thought it was an upper realm after ascension, as people had often said, but he had a vague feeling that it was something else.
This thing happened a few more times afterward, and every so often, there would be people behaving strangely but with the same goal in mind—to stop him from furthering his cultivation. Each time, someone saved them before he was about to kill them or catch their yuanshen.
Slowly, as his cultivation grew, he began to be able to hear the conversations those people were having through special means before they died. So, not only did he take them, but he used them as bait to seduce those behind them that came to their rescue. He thought of catching them all in one fell swoop, but he didn’t intend to kill them, he just wanted to find a way out of this world through them.
As it turned out, he was unable to keep any, as every time he was about to succeed, a man named Gu Xiyu would always save them.
Why did he know that name?
It was because he had heard them ask for help in their conversations.
The man called Gu Xiyu was indeed a little more interesting than the others, making him go from his initial goal of keeping them behind to making that man fail once. He knew that this Gu Xiyu might be more valuable than the minions whose names he couldn’t even remember.
It had been years since he last heard that name, so long that he didn’t even know how many years had passed.
But he would never forget this name, even if he went up in smoke.
Ever since this name stopped appearing in his life, he hadn’t seen those weird people that kept trying to stop him either. He thought that they had given up, or perhaps grown tired of him.
But never in a million years did he expect that when they reappeared, it would be ‘Gu Xiyu’ himself.
How could he not be thrilled and excited?
The man he had always wanted to defeat and capture had suddenly come to him, and he couldn’t wait to take him down, imprison him, and torture him so that those high and mighty men who were trying to manipulate the fate of others could also taste the pain he had experienced over the years.
Why should he not be allowed to fight back?
The difference was that when Gu Xiyu arrived this time, his yuanshen was also bound to this strange thing. He originally had great scruples about this object, thinking that it was a new trick from those unknown people, but he instead found a lot of information about this world hidden inside.
Including his identity in this world, which was defined as an extremely evil ‘villain’.
Bu Tianhan stared at the description of himself on the glowing panel and let out a laugh in his mind.
It was quite apt.
The important thing was that Gu Xiyu didn’t seem to know that he had this information, and from his calm introduction and explanation of the situation, he seemed to think of him as the party called ‘system’. If Gu Xiyu wanted to know something, all the information would pass through his hands, which meant that Gu Xiyu could get the answers he wanted according to his mood.
Bu Tianhan also noticed the gray “special task” section in the corner of the light panel. He thought that was where he could issue Gu Xiyu the so-called missions, but he studied it for a while without knowing how to use it. Gu Xiyu in front of him had stopped meditating and got up to walk towards him, so he could only put this thing away for now and deal with him head-on.
Gu Xiyu waited for a while without any response from the intelligence system, but he didn’t care. He decided to deal with the great demon in front of him first.
“You let my people go, are you trying to trade yourself for them?” Unexpectedly, Bu Tianhan did not directly attack him, but followed the pattern of ‘villains die from talking too much’ and began to engage in a conversation with him.
Gu Xiyu’s lips twitched slightly, showing that he was too lazy to even reply a word, not even bothering to waste energy consuming unnecessary Qi.
He certainly wasn’t waiting here because he wanted to stay, the current great demon had such a high risk value that all he wanted was to first reduce that value through the missions from the main system. Right now, the Great Demon could send anyone that approached him to death.
But this soul fragment that had hurt so many people …… it had to be taught a lesson.
So, Gu Xiyu did not say anything. He took the sword out with a thought and directly attacked the arrogant Bu Tianhan. He couldn’t see through his thoughts, but he caught the momentary flash of shock and anger, as if he were accusing him of being unethical.
Gu Xiyu finally had a smile in his eyes, but it was very faint, like a butterfly accidentally touching the surface of the water. The waves were fleeting, and the water quickly returned to its original calm.
During the fight, the stone prison was directly blown up by the two sides colliding with a force higher than it could withstand. Bu Tianhan’s expression changed as he watched the moves he had slapped out dissolve into soft, glowing light when they met Gu Xiyu’s sword intent, and the murmur under his breath was tinged with anger: “Emotionless Dao… ”
There were very few people who followed this path, and the techniques they practiced were few and far between. The most widely known and recognizable methods to cultivate this path were to cut off emotions and to calm the mind.
They were Bu Tianhan’s nemeses, so he could recognize them at a glance.
But what surprised him most was not that Gu Xiyu knew his weakness, he was very puzzled by Gu Xiyu’s identity as a ‘replacement’.
Apart from knowing the secret that those people came from other places, Bu Tianhan also knew that every time they appeared in front of him, their identities were not really theirs. This was because he happened to meet someone whose death he had unwittingly witnessed earlier. It was in the wilderness, and he had probably been chased by an enemy and was fleeing in the deep forest. He happened to find him when he was at death’s door, so he killed him, took his dantian, and refined it.
He didn’t have a problem refining a damaged dantian; it was like a herb that had been broken into pieces and thrown into soup; the effects were still there.
It was also after that that he would make a point of investigating what was behind those identities every time, and those he could find out confirmed his suspicions that they had died at one time or another.
So he knew that the man in white before him must have previously had another identity. But he had no recollection of this face among those who had practiced the Emotionless dao and had never even seen or heard of a Daoist on this path with such a high cultivation realm. Moreover, 90% of the cultivators who practiced the Emotionless Dao had died under his sword, he did not remember killing this person.
Unprepared, Bu Tianhan was pitted again by this man named Gu Xiyu.
Although his cultivation was slightly higher than Gu Xiyu’s, he had no choice but to use the Demon Seed, which was the trump card in all his attacks. But hitting Gu Xiyu’s sword intent with it was like hitting a stone with a pebble, and there was no way to fight back.
He could only lose in humiliation.
On the other hand, Gu Xiyu was in a bit of a happy mood, having beaten up the great demon king of this world mercilessly.
Like a great elder who had finished teaching a disobedient child a lesson, he was filled with a sense of accomplishment.
“Bu Tianhan,” Gu Xiyu’s voice was very soft, but it steadily reached the ears of the man who was sent flying to the wall. “You’d better stop practicing such supremely negative and evil techniques that harm the lives of innocent people.”
The more one cultivates this kind of technique, the more one will lose oneself and find it difficult to control oneself. Eventually, one will be completely controlled by the demonic thoughts in their heart. The Great Demon was such a proud man and always had strong self-control, even if it was just a fragment, he did not want to see him fall.
What’s more, since this soul fragment would eventually have to fuse with the main soul, in case it grew crooked, wouldn’t it indirectly affect the character of the original?
He left this pretentious-sounding remark to Bu Tianhan and then left without giving him another look. This Demon Palace didn’t have demonic cultivators who could stop him, and they let him leave without any problems.
After Gu Xiyu left, Bu Tianhan was left alone in that stone prison for a long time. The rest of the surviving demon cultivators didn’t dare to go there, mainly because the one who had the guts to go there was directly smashed in the head and died a miserable death.
So everyone chose to ignore it, and Bu Tianhan lived up to his title as the Great Demon, suddenly laughing like a bewitched man after the silence, causing goose bumps and shivers to rise among his subordinates.
Bu Tianhan was angry, but this was not his first defeat at the hands of Gu Xiyu, and he had expected him to be difficult to deal with, so he quickly adjusted his mood. After that, he looked forward to what this man would do to him afterward, and how he could stop him.
Bu Tianhan was full of rebelliousness; if he would obediently listen to Gu Xiyu, then he wouldn’t be him.
“Twelve.” Together with Gu Xiyu himself, a total of thirteen sacrifices had escaped.
Bu Tianhan smiled, thinking, ‘How could I not pay back tenfold?’
In the past, Gu Xiyu was in his world, but now that he was in his territory …… of course he had to play by his rules.
[[Congratulations to the mission executor for completing the side mission.]]
After Gu Xiyu left, he received an automatic notification from the autonomous system.
He waited for a few minutes before another one came.
[[Target risk value +5, risk value is now 85.]]
Gu Xiyu was on his way back to the Tiansu Immortal Gate when he heard this. He stared at the updated value for a long time and asked the system with a frown, “Did you report it wrong?”
It was the main system communication channel that was tuned in, and it took a while for it to respond: [[No error was reported.]]
[[This is the value after the target’s rage after your attack, it is a positive increase.]]
“?” Gu Xiyu was puzzled: “Okay, what about the mission reward?” This was not a special task, the main mission line will usually provide a deduction in risk value.
Unexpectedly, the main system told him after a long silence, [[There is no reward.]]
Gu Xiyu: “?”
The main system explained before he got enraged or questioned whether he was being played: [[The soul fragment in Cultivation World 1385 has the highest energy after the soul was split, and because of his background experience in this world, plus the influence of the path chosen, he has long been outside the normal range that the system can control. Therefore, the system is unable to truly calculate the data to reduce his risk value and has only issued the most appropriate mission based on the feedback from the world’s current situation.]]
[[This means that although the mission needs to be carried out, it is impossible to estimate how it will be completed and the impact on the risk value upon completion. It is up to the mission executor’s luck.]]
Gu Xiyu endured for a long time but finally couldn’t hold back: “Then why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
The main system’s reply was straightforward: [[Forgot.]]
“……”
Gu Xiyu felt that from the main system to the intelligent system, there was not a single good thing that was reliable.
Since things had come to this point, he could only go back to the Tianxiu Immortal Sect for the time being and think about what to do next. Tianxiu Immortal Sect was a large sect, with many people coming and going, and his Immortal Peak was in a relatively secluded area, so he deliberately picked a less-populated path to go back, so as not to attract too much attention.
There was only a simple-designed wooden house on the mountain peak, and behind the house was a small lotus pond with a few koi carp and the occasional immortal crane playing nearby. The courtyard was surrounded by flowers and trees, and there was a special plot of land for planting, but nothing else.
There were no people around, no servants, no disciples.
It was very much in line with the original owner’s aloofness.
There was a mirror of equal height in the room, and Gu Xiyu walked past it to have a look, mainly to get a better idea of what this body looked like. He was stunned when he saw the face in the mirror, and there was dismay and hesitation in his eyes, like he couldn’t believe that the person in the mirror looked like this.
Whether it was good or not, the bodies Gu Xiyu had transmigrated into had all been quite good-looking, and he was already numb to it. He just didn’t expect that a body in this world would look so much like his original appearance. Except for some subtle differences, such as marks and hairstyle, it was like a copy and paste.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the system had grown to the point where not only the name of the host body, but even its looks could be recreated after his own.
Gu Xiyu couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the mirror, and the coldness that penetrated his body from his palm made him feel that this was real. The person in the mirror changed his movements as he did so, even his eyes were no longer one light and one dark color, but more like a pair of eyes that blended two colors and looked very balanced.
However, this increased Gu Xiyu’s fondness for this body. The main reason was that he was facing the Great Demon, and if he worked harder in his cultivation, he could keep him in check in the future. Once he tries to do something bad, he could intervene and stop it, and sooner or later, he could return peace to the cultivation world and save the lives of both the male and female protagonists.
Thinking about it this way, the mission shouldn’t be too difficult. Since he couldn’t use a soft approach on the Great Demon of this world, it didn’t seem like a bad idea to fight hard to the end.
However, Gu Xiyu soon realized that this idea was too naïve.
It was a few days after he had returned to the Tiansu Immortal Sect, a man with a silver crown on his head and a graceful and elegant air came to his mountain peak. He was outside studying the flowers and plants that the original owner had planted in the courtyard when the other man landed and saw him. His expression was even more surprised than his: “Junior brother, are you really back?”
Gu Xiyu gave him a questioning look.
The man looked as if he had something to say, and he was tangled for a while, not knowing how to explain. In the end, he only said, “Something happened outside, and it seems to have something to do with junior brother. The sect master said that if you were really in the Immortal Sect, you should go to the main hall in person.”