Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 5
by Little PandaSlipping Up
Yet another death.
Faced with this crisis, Tang Wenchun’s first instinct was—
“Use the transmission talisman, quick!”
But instead, Yu Zhaoming turned to gaze into the distance, her eyes sharpening. She gripped Cangfeng tightly, spiritual qi stirring around her—she was about to forcibly channel what little spiritual energy she had left.
Tang Wenchun frantically scanned the surroundings, her heart sinking. The Mysterious Yin Grass nearby had already been mostly depleted by Yu Zhaoming earlier.
The Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird closed in fast, swooping savagely at Yu Zhaoming. Tang Wenchun shrieked in alarm, but Yu Zhaoming did not flinch. She met the bird’s assault head-on, swinging her blade without a trace of fear.
Sword and talon clashed; ice and flame collided, igniting a burst of blinding light in an instant. Yu Zhaoming’s figure flickered between sword gleam and fire—she became a streak of sword shadow, agile and razor-sharp.
Tang Wenchun held her breath, eyes fixed on the battle. The wounds on Yu Zhaoming’s body multiplied, yet her expression never changed, nor did the hand gripping Cangfeng tremble once—as though she had fused with the sword, become the invincible sword immortal of the original book.
The Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird lunged fiercely, but it could never close the distance to Yu Zhaoming’s body. Every attack was evaded with perfect precision, answered by swift, accurate swordwork. Sword light tore across the sky; fire splattered in every direction.
Yu Zhaoming flipped backward, sliding dozens of steps until she reached the cliff’s edge, where she barely arrested her retreat with Cangfeng and looked up at the furious demon beast before her.
“Use the transmission talisman,” Tang Wenchun said quietly. She knew Yu Zhaoming couldn’t hear her, but she couldn’t stop herself from urging it anyway.
Yu Zhaoming gazed deeply at the Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird. Then, in a sudden motion, she flipped her fingers and Cangfeng shot out—Yu Zhaoming landed on the blade and rode the sword along the cliff face, heading straight for the depths of the Secret Realm.
Tang Wenchun looked behind them. The Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird was streaking after Yu Zhaoming’s sword shadow. Yu Zhaoming dodged the bird’s attacks again and again before finally plunging into the dense forest below the cliff, flying low to the ground.
From behind came the sound of crashing trees and the Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird’s enraged screeches. Tang Wenchun’s heart eased—Yu Zhaoming had temporarily blocked the bird behind her. She whooped with excitement: “Yu Zhaoming! You’re amazing!!”
The corner of Yu Zhaoming’s lip curved slightly, and Cangfeng hummed and buzzed as if smugly pleased.
But Yu Zhaoming’s speed did not diminish in the slightest. Tang Wenchun was puzzled at first, but the reason came to her in the next breath: if a Golden Core stage Yu Zhaoming couldn’t withstand the Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird, then those trees could serve only as a temporary barrier.
Tang Wenchun recalled the bird’s hawk-sharp eyes and couldn’t suppress a shudder. A raptor’s vision was exceptional—Yu Zhaoming had killed its partner and made off with the guarded herb. It certainly wouldn’t let the matter rest so easily.
At this point, her only options were to crush the transmission talisman or press deeper into the Secret Realm, leveraging the presence of other demon beasts to intimidate the Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird into retreating.
“This is basically gambling with her life,” Tang Wenchun muttered. The crisis was gradually fading now. Chin in hand, she watched the girl’s racing silhouette—watched her weave nimbly past the sudden strikes of hidden demon beasts—and couldn’t help but sigh. “Going this far—is it worth it?”
Human life is precious—that was the principle Tang Wenchun had been raised on. But in this world, it didn’t seem to apply quite the same way.
The Scorching Fire Phoenix Bird clearly hated Yu Zhaoming to the bone. No matter how many times she shook it off, it caught up again. Yu Zhaoming had no choice but to fly low to the ground, hiding by day and traveling by night to escape the bird’s line of sight.
Fire crackled and popped. Insect song filled the air from all sides. A faint hint of dawn light glowed on the horizon.
Yu Zhaoming sat cross-legged, Cangfeng resting upright on her knees. She tilted her head slightly, looking upward. The deeper into the Secret Realm she went, the denser the forest grew. Gazing up, the deep-black branches wove together so thickly, as though even the sky were invisible.
Tang Wenchun followed Yu Zhaoming’s gaze upward. She was utterly bored.
“Terrifying. Looks like there’s some monster lurking up there.”
Yu Zhaoming withdrew her gaze. She lowered her eyes, sat quietly in thought for a moment, and then closed them.
Tang Wenchun blinked, still not having processed what was happening—and in the next instant, Yu Zhaoming appeared right in front of her.
Tang Wenchun leaped up like a monkey whose tail had been stepped on, clutching the illusory Cangfeng to her chest and staring at Yu Zhaoming with wide, pleading eyes. “Wh—what are you going to do?”
Yu Zhaoming looked Tang Wenchun up and down.
This was a young woman entirely unlike herself. She had the doe-like, guileless eyes—large, round, and bright. Her face was small, her cheeks softly rounded in a way that made you want to poke them. Everything about her was soft and harmless, even her brows arching gently without a trace of sharpness.
Over this period of time, the heart demon had shrieked and hollered—afraid of bugs, afraid of demon beasts, afraid of vines snaking out of nowhere. The things she feared were so numerous that Yu Zhaoming couldn’t keep count.
Why was her heart demon like this?
Yu Zhaoming lowered her eyes. She saw Cangfeng gripped in her own hand. Everything in the Sea of Consciousness was illusory, but Cangfeng carried a trace of sword spirit—the feel of it in her grip was especially real. Yu Zhaoming suddenly tightened her hold on Cangfeng and raised the sword toward Tang Wenchun.
Sure enough, sure enough—was a heart demon destined to be killed?
Tang Wenchun’s eyes brimmed with tears, but the instant Yu Zhaoming lunged with her blade, she still tried her hardest to dodge. Yu Zhaoming’s strike missed, and she gave a small nod. “Improvement.”
Tang Wenchun: …What was with this inexplicable sense of being taught a lesson? Nobody would be bored enough to teach their heart demon how to fight, right?
Tang Wenchun had no time to dwell on it. Yu Zhaoming’s sword qi was like a rainbow, her moves unbound by any fixed pattern, battering Tang Wenchun until she was reeling, utterly wretched. Finally, the sword tip came to rest on Tang Wenchun’s forehead.
“Too weak,” Yu Zhaoming said.
Tang Wenchun felt the sword qi pressing against her forehead like needle points, as though it could pierce through her skull at any moment. She’d been beaten into a temper now, glaring hard at Yu Zhaoming. “If you’re going to kill me, then kill me. Next time I’ll definitely be stronger!”
Yu Zhaoming regarded Tang Wenchun’s eyes in silence. When she said nothing, her presence was heavy with authority—though the youthful freshness of her face softened that pressure somewhat.
But Tang Wenchun had seen Yu Zhaoming in battle. She knew this was not someone easy to deal with, and a certain fear was unavoidable. She couldn’t help shrinking back. “Y—you’re not planning to torture me first before killing me, are you?”
Yu Zhaoming was quiet a moment, then flourished her sword in a graceful arc and sheathed it, leaving behind a single line: “You’re overthinking it.”
Then she vanished.
Tang Wenchun stared blankly at the empty Sea of Consciousness and patted her perfectly intact self. “What was that about!!”
What was that about? Yu Zhaoming looked down at her own palm. Her hand was not a young lady’s hand at all—it was covered in the calluses of years of sword practice. Entirely unlike her heart demon, who looked like a cosseted young girl.
But how could her heart demon be a girl like that? Yu Zhaoming couldn’t fathom it. Still, the other party was simply too weak. Yu Zhaoming didn’t even want to acknowledge her as her heart demon.
That wouldn’t do. Yu Zhaoming thought it over. She didn’t know the reason, but the heart demon had indeed helped her. She had always believed in repaying favors—she just didn’t know what the heart demon needed. The only thing she could think of was that the heart demon was far too weak. If that was the case, then she would first push her to grow stronger.
And so Tang Wenchun’s nightmare began.
Tang Wenchun lay sprawled on the ground. Fam, who gets it! Ever since that day when Yu Zhaoming had suddenly shown up in the Sea of Consciousness and beaten her, Yu Zhaoming came to the Sea of Consciousness every day during her rest periods. Not only did she beat her—she also conjured up all manner of things Tang Wenchun loathed: pythons thicker than a person, dense swarms of tiny bugs, and of course swords—endless, endless swords.
“How do you have so much energy! Aren’t you… aren’t you running for your life?” Tang Wenchun was on the verge of tears. She’d been perfectly fine on her own in the Sea of Consciousness—why was she being subjected to this?
“Tempering. You are genuinely too weak.”
Yu Zhaoming dropped that line and vanished once more, leaving Tang Wenchun pounding the ground in fury: “Outrageous!! You want to kill the heart demon, and you also want to use the heart demon as a whetstone!!”
Before transmigrating, studying desperately had already been a grind1. Now, after transmigrating, she was being dragged into the grind by a cultivation fanatic. It was simply outrageous!!
Tang Wenchun gritted her teeth. “I don’t believe it…”
Yu Zhaoming was disgusting her with these tactics—she would be disgusting right back. At the very least, she needed to make Yu Zhaoming think twice before casually entering the Sea of Consciousness again! She thought of the transformation arts Yu Zhaoming had used, and a plan suddenly took shape. But then…
“How am I supposed to learn Yu Zhaoming’s transformation arts?”
The moment that thought flashed through her mind, a passage of incantation surfaced from deep within her memory. Tang Wenchun froze—then it came to her. Right. She was Yu Zhaoming’s heart demon. So whatever Yu Zhaoming knew, she ought to know as well.
In that instant, a tangle of emotions filled Tang Wenchun’s heart. She had watched Yu Zhaoming’s courage and cunning firsthand, and countless times she had felt that her original decision to favor Yu Zhaoming above all other characters in the entire book was a wise one. But she had transmigrated into the other woman’s heart demon—and between the two of them… getting along seemed nearly impossible.
In the end, Tang Wenchun shook her head and decided to stop thinking about it. There was still a long way to go before Yu Zhaoming truly and thoroughly severed her heart demon and became the lofty, remote Emotionless Dao Sword Venerable. Perhaps by then, she would have figured out a way to separate from Yu Zhaoming.
Her first priority now, Tang Wenchun clenched her fist, was to give that hateful woman a little transmigrator shock.
“Call me too weak—I refuse to believe you’re fearless!!”
The next day, the moment Yu Zhaoming entered the Sea of Consciousness, she sensed something was wrong. Standing before her was a giant bug a full two people tall—its back flat, its body long and segmented, two thread-like antennae as long as its body, waving with menacing swagger.
Yu Zhaoming’s face went pale. She took an involuntary half-step back.
“Hahaha! You laughed at me for being scared of bugs, so let’s see if you’re scared—”
Before the words could finish, the sword came like a needle, piercing straight through the giant bug’s forehead. The bug’s form shuddered a few times, then became Tang Wenchun’s shape—eyes wide—before her entire body dissolved away.
This time she died too fast, and didn’t hear Yu Zhaoming’s rueful murmur: “Not good. This time… how am I supposed to repay the favor.”
The author has something to say:
Yu Zhaoming’s repayment: You’re too weak. I don’t really know how to repay the favor, so…
Tang Wenchun: So you beat me up?
Yu Zhaoming: No, I just want you to be a bit stronger.
Tang Wenchun: And once I’m strong you’ll kill me again.
Yu Zhaoming: …
Yu Zhaoming seeing the bug (expressionless) actually: Aaaaaah!
Tang Wenchun: The number of times you went ‘aaah’ is the same as the number of sword thrusts, isn’t it?
Please bookmark!
0 Comments