Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 42

Demon Shadows Flickering (Part 4)

Yu Zhaoming Knows

Tang Wenchun’s fingers closed around the Paper Crane as her eyes narrowed. “The bait’s been taken.”

            

Zhan Lun’s smile spread as well. “Drawing the snake from its hole¹ — a genuinely fine move.” He tipped back lazily, relief washing over his face. “Looks like we’ll be wrapping this job up ahead of schedule.”

Tang Wenchun, however, was frowning, lips pressed into a tight line, worry written across her face that she couldn’t conceal. Zhan Lun propped his cheek on one hand and studied her, puzzled. “You know, you really are a strange one. When we couldn’t find her, you worried. Now the fish has taken the hook, and you’re still wearing that same long face… Ah — don’t tell me you’re afraid she’s in danger?”

He laughed. “Don’t fret. Never mind that a Great Cultivator is covertly guarding this contest — you can trust Yu Zhaoming herself, too. She’s the Sword Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister, after all. Who’s to say that if real danger did find her, she wouldn’t seize a flash of enlightenment right out of it and break through to Nascent Soul?”

            

But not one of those things — neither the Great Cultivator nor the breakthrough — brought Tang Wenchun anything but torment! And she couldn’t tell a soul why.

“No. I have to go see for myself.” Tang Wenchun shot to her feet.

Zhan Lun clicked his tongue. “Going now would only make a mess of things, wouldn’t it?”

            

“I have a way. No mess at all!” No sooner had the words left her than her whole body dissolved into the air, like water seeping into it, and she was gone.

Zhan Lun jolted, whipping his gaze in every direction. A voice drifted out of the empty air: “Young Pavilion Master, no use looking. That little fellow daoist is no longer here.”

As the words fell, the Treasure Gathering Pavilion steward Zhan Lun had summoned earlier appeared at his side.

            

“Uncle Zhou.” Zhan Lun hurriedly rose to offer his seat.

The middle-aged man nodded to him and sat down without ceremony. Zhan Lun beamed, produced his tea set, and poured Uncle Zhou a fresh cup. “So even you couldn’t tell what technique Fellow Daoist Tang used?”

“I couldn’t. Not a single trace.” Uncle Zhou shook his head, then mulled it over carefully before speaking again. “Rather than a technique — there wasn’t the slightest fluctuation of Spiritual Qi in the air. It’s closer to an innate talent of the Yao Race.”

            

“The Yao Race…” Zhan Lun turned it over in his mind. Strange currents had stirred among the Human Race of late — traces of demon cultivators, of evil cultivators — but not a whisper of the Yao. If Fellow Daoist Tang really were of the Yao Race, it would hardly matter. Still…

“This streak of hers — a person she can’t see, and she simply must go chasing after them. It really is rather like a clingy little demoness.”

Uncle Zhou waited in silence for Zhan Lun to come back to himself; only when the young man’s attention returned did he speak. “The matter you asked me to investigate has grown a few clearer threads, Young Pavilion Master. Here is the dossier — please look it over.”

            

Zhan Lun accepted it with a smile and bowed. “My thanks for your help, Uncle Zhou.”

“Since it was the Young Pavilion Master’s instruction, and it touches nothing of the competition, of course it could be done.” Uncle Zhou said this, but his gaze was not on Zhan Lun — it was fixed on the window.

“Sly one.”

            

Yunzhongjun gave a soft snort and withdrew her Spiritual Consciousness. Those words of Uncle Zhou’s had never been meant for Zhan Lun at all — they had been meant for her. She drew out a fresh flask of wine, fingers stroking the bottle: a single character, “Luo,” carved into its side.

“The last bottle, shijie. Once it’s finished… can I come find you? You’ve been keeping your distance from me lately…”

Yunzhongjun muttered under her breath. She frowned, gaze fixed on the far distance — and then, all at once, she seemed to spot something, and a smile of supreme wickedness spread across her face. Her wrist flipped; the Black Umbrella was in her hand, and she stood atop the eaves with it. A cool breeze swept past, and she seemed to turn weightless; in moments she was rising into the high sky together with the Black Umbrella, swaying and drifting — headed straight for the ghost market in the city.

            

“Well now, look who it is. If it isn’t the Sword Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister?”

Yu Zhaoming looked around at those present. This was a tumbledown little house not far from the ghost market. At its center, a man sat upright in the master’s seat, eyes glinting as he watched her. He was dressed all in white, and his once handsome face was made savage by a scar that ran clear across his cheek.

“Ah! Him! That’s the Wuji Sect’s Thirteenth Young Master!!”

            

Tang Wenchun’s voice abruptly rang out inside the Sea of Consciousness.

Yu Zhaoming froze. She hadn’t imagined Tang Wenchun would appear inside her Sea of Consciousness at a moment like this. Didn’t she… absolutely hate coming back here? Why return this time?

That genuine puzzlement surfaced in Yu Zhaoming’s eyes, along with very real astonishment — and in the eyes of the man across from her, it read as astonishment that was completely, truly unfeigned.

            

The Thirteenth Young Master took it for astonishment at finding him here. That look gave him a twisted flicker of satisfaction. He reached up, fingers trailing across his scar. Though a long time had passed since that day, the muscles of his face jumped, as if he could still feel the pain — precisely as sharp as it had been.

“Eldest Senior Sister. It’s been a while.”

Yu Zhaoming said nothing, only watched him in silence. The Thirteenth Young Master sprang down from his seat at once. Beside him, someone frowned and murmured, “Thirteenth Young Master, we haven’t even confirmed whether she’s friend or foe.”

            

“Eh, but she happens to be the one who saved my life.” When they had first met, the Thirteenth Young Master had still been a young man; a mere five years on, a deathly, listless air had crept over him, and not a trace of that boyish spirit remained. He waved a hand; seeing that no one around dared speak again, a smug grin broke across his face. There was even a gleam of showing-off in the look he turned on Yu Zhaoming. “Besides, even if she’s an enemy now, she’ll be a friend soon enough.”

The Thirteenth Young Master drew close all at once, bloodshot eyes fixed on her, at once frenzied and shadowed with gloom. “Eldest Senior Sister — am I right, or am I not?”

At the sight, Tang Wenchun involuntarily stepped back — only to feel a pair of hands brace her firmly from behind. She turned and saw Yu Zhaoming’s faintly translucent figure: a strand of her Spiritual Consciousness had settled beside Tang Wenchun, standing with her.

            

“What are you doing here?” Tang Wenchun asked.

Yu Zhaoming didn’t answer. She knew how much Tang Wenchun disliked her Sea of Consciousness. She could hold up under the solitude, but at heart she was someone who loved liveliness and dreaded being alone.

Yu Zhaoming pressed her lips tightly together, with no intention of speaking.

            

So Tang Wenchun tried again. “What do you think he’s playing at?”

Her brow knotted tight. As for the Grand Sect Competition — most of its contents were known only to core disciples, and the Thirteenth Young Master no longer ranked among them, but he had once been his sect’s pride; otherwise the Desolate Heaven Secret Realm would never have admitted him in the first place. It was entirely possible he’d caught wind of something early.

Privately, Tang Wenchun fretted: This isn’t some trap laid just for us, is it?

            

Only then did Yu Zhaoming speak, low and heavy. “Keep watching, and you’ll know. It comes down to one of two things — fight, or surrender.”

Sick with worry, Tang Wenchun turned her eyes back to the world outside.

Yu Zhaoming’s gaze neither wavered nor dodged; she simply looked at the Thirteenth Young Master. The two stood locked against each other until, in the end, it was he who couldn’t hold and gave way. He scoffed. “Still all that unbending pride, Eldest Senior Sister. But what good does pride do? Stuck all this time with no breakthrough, your cultivation not advancing an inch — that doesn’t feel good, does it?”

            

Yu Zhaoming’s eyes darkened at once.

The Thirteenth Young Master was keenly attuned to that shift, and a manic laugh burst out of him. “Yu Zhaoming, oh Yu Zhaoming. How does it taste, being a genius? But then one day you fall, and you toil at cultivation like any mortal — and gain not a hair of progress. That feels awful too, doesn’t it? I know exactly what you’re thinking. I was the same. I was the same…”

Hands clasped behind his back, he paced back and forth before her like a man unhinged, then abruptly lifted his head. “But I’m different now. And you? Would you like to be like me?”

            

Outside the Sea of Consciousness, Yu Zhaoming made no reply. Inside the Sea of Consciousness, Tang Wenchun turned to look at her, eyes brimming with worry. Yu Zhaoming lowered her head and met that worried look. “No need to worry about me. I will break through.”

You’ll break through — but you don’t know what you’ll pay for it.

Tang Wenchun’s lips quivered; a bitter, aching soreness surged up in her chest. She hurriedly turned her face away, not daring to look at Yu Zhaoming again.

            

“It is hard to bear.” Yu Zhaoming gave her answer — and hearing the Thirteenth Young Master’s laugh of self-satisfied triumph, she knew it was exactly the answer he had wanted.

“See? Only a genius can understand a genius. These are chaotic times — chaotic times! The Human Race’s Heavenly Dao is in motion, and great talent rains down from the heavens. But if the world needs a savior, why bestow so many geniuses? Why let these geniuses suffer such torment? Because Heaven is unjust! It’s raising Gu²! It wants the strongest one among us to emerge — and the rest of us are nothing but nourishment for that one!!”

The Thirteenth Young Master flung his arms wide.

            

Yu Zhaoming did not move, her gaze resting a little low. Genius or blockhead — such things had never weighed on her. But she had genuinely grown a few degrees curious: just how had the Thirteenth Young Master, his Dao Heart shattered, rebuilt his cultivation?

“Why be the very lowest one of all?” Yu Zhaoming asked at last, voice low.

She didn’t care for talk and always wore a stern face, but she was no fool.

            

The Thirteenth Young Master’s head whipped around, eyes alight. “Yes. The strong devour the weak — that is the truth of this world.” And when he saw Yu Zhaoming nod, the madness in his eyes climbed higher. “You do understand me. You truly do. Join us, and I will give you your chance to break through the bottleneck.”

Yu Zhaoming raised her eyes a fraction. “Then what must I pay?”

There is no free lunch in this world. At a time like this, Yu Zhaoming thought, she would likely have to offer up a proof of allegiance³ weighty enough to make it possible.

            

Such as… Inside the Sea of Consciousness, Yu Zhaoming watched Tang Wenchun — fists clenched, glaring out at the scene — and let fall a long, silent sigh. Her heart demon was far too innocent, too gentle and good; she didn’t understand that all too often, even doing nothing at all, she would still draw calamity down on herself.

The Thirteenth Young Master smiled faintly. “Why speak of paying anything? Isn’t this very thing what you came for?”

With that, he produced a battered book with easy openness. “Take it, then. All I ask is that you master it before our eyes.”

            

The words had hardly fallen before the oppressive pressure of a Nascent Soul Great Cultivator settled soundlessly over the little house. Yu Zhaoming watched a black-robed figure in a cloak step slowly out of the dark, demonic flames roiling off him — making no effort whatsoever to hide what he was.

Yu Zhaoming’s head snapped around. “You’ve been scheming against me?”

The Thirteenth Young Master smiled faintly. “How does this count as scheming? Yu-shijie, weren’t you the one looking for us? And besides—” he gestured at the book in Yu Zhaoming’s hands, “this is a splendid opportunity for your breakthrough.”

            

Yu Zhaoming went quiet. “Why should I trust you?”

“…Do you know about heart demons?” the Thirteenth Young Master asked abruptly. “Back during the War of Gods and Demons, before the Heavenly Demon perished, it laid down a curse. Heart Demon Seeds lie hidden inside every last one of the Human Race, silently siphoning away each person’s Spiritual Energy. The stronger you become, the stronger your heart demon becomes. This manual wakes the heart demon — and then you kill it. Feed the Spiritual Qi it secretly siphoned from you back into your own body, and a breakthrough follows naturally. This world has had no demons for ages now. We are one race, all of us — only our Dao paths differ. With a shortcut like this, why not use it?”

Yu Zhaoming’s hand clenched tight in an instant.

            

And inside the Sea of Consciousness, Tang Wenchun’s face drained bone-white. She watched Yu Zhaoming give her one long, deep look — and then the figure scattered and was gone before her eyes. One sentence, and only one, filled her head: It’s over. Yu Zhaoming knows.

---

The author has something to say:

All right — this chapter counts as a small foreshadowing-payoff chapter.

            

The Thirteenth Young Master didn’t die, but he’s ruined. Nobody knew what method he’d used to repair his cultivation — now we know he long ago walked the old road of that bottom-tier disciple he once planned to kill.

Yu Zhaoming and Tang Wenchun laid out their scheme, but the moment the demon cultivators showed up, well — of course this whole thing was really the demon cultivators beating them at their own game. The goal was to assimilate Yu Zhaoming as well.

It was mentioned before that everyone has a heart demon, but only peerless geniuses who carry the Human Race’s fortune can awaken theirs (geniuses who merely believe they’re geniuses don’t count — the Thirteenth Young Master, for one). But the heart demon is in fact latent inside every single person’s body; it’s merely lying dormant. As for why killing it grants you that spiritual power, and why they do what they do — I’ll explain tomorrow. After all, we’ve reached the part everyone’s been longing to see.

            

And what role has Yunzhongjun been playing in all this, and what will she do next? Stay tuned!

This story has actually buried a whole lot of threads…

---