Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 55
by Little PandaShattered Sound (Part 5)
Don’t Be Afraid
“Chun’er!!”
“Tang Wenchun!”
Two cries — one from Xuanjiu, one from Yu Zhaoming — cut sharp through the surrounding silence and groans of pain, dragging Tang Wenchun back from her sinking, muddled consciousness.
Tang Wenchun turned her head with effort and looked at them. She saw the anxiety plain on Xuanjiu’s face, and on Yu Zhaoming’s — always so composed — a panic and fury that couldn’t be hidden.
How rare, that she’d think something like that even now… How strange. She was about to die, and her mind was still wandering off to nonsense like this.
“Yunzhongjun, she’s only a junior! Don’t you dare touch her!!”
Xuanjiu shouted, one hand pressed to her wound — the surge of emotion had torn it open again, and blood spattered out across the floor. But Yunzhongjun’s eyes were scarlet, and she paid Xuanjiu no heed whatsoever. She leaned in closer, until she was all but pressed against Tang Wenchun.
“Tang Wenchun. Tang Wenchun.” Yunzhongjun glared at her through gritted teeth. “You’re doing just fine, aren’t you? You really believed I wouldn’t do anything to you?”
“Cough… cough…” The hand gripping her tightened another fraction. Tang Wenchun coughed weakly and lifted her eyes a sliver. “Stop… stop this. Yunzhongjun, you still can… you can still beg your shijie’s forgiveness someday. Letting it end like this — it’s not worth it.”
If Yunzhongjun stopped now, the wedding would certainly be ruined, but she could still go on being Sect Master. As for whether Nüluo would thereafter become Yunzhongjun’s forbidden morsel1… Tang Wenchun lowered her eyes. I’m sorry, she said silently. She could never learn the Sword Sect’s selfless impartiality. She wanted her Shizun and Yu Zhaoming to live — to live, and live well.
“Not worth it… not worth it!! Hahaha — what do you know! I was born of this, and of this I will live. Otherwise, who am I? And who, then, is me! Why should I stop? I will make all the world know: whoever weds my shijie makes an enemy of me!”
Yunzhongjun’s other hand flexed, then slashed through the air. In the distance Shen Feng loosed a wail of anguish — his Nascent Soul was torn, living, straight out of his body.
The onlookers cried out in horror: “Yunzhongjun has surely gone mad!”
But Yunzhongjun ignored them entirely. She looked at Tang Wenchun with contempt. “You think everyone lives as you do — muddling along, day by day? Even dying for someone else’s sake, when you’d rather not live at all. Since that’s how it is, then this is where we part ways.”
With a vicious smile, she spoke words as cutting and venomous as the day they first met: “Tell me — once you’re dead, do you think your shijie will thank me for it?”
Flames erupted from Yunzhongjun’s palm — black-red firelight, an omen of ill fortune, though she seemed to have stopped caring altogether. Tang Wenchun felt it catch and burn, searing straight through the Illusion Wood’s disguise, scorching down onto her soul itself.
Tang Wenchun had grown up safe and sound, lived all these years without a single wound — apart from those few times Yu Zhaoming killed her. Even that pain had been the very limit of what she could bear. But this agony was a hundred times, a thousand times crueler than that heart-piercing torment. She couldn’t withstand it. Screams of pain ripped out of her.
“Tang Wenchun!!” Yu Zhaoming cried out. This time, Tang Wenchun couldn’t answer her even with a glance.
“…Demonic… it’s demonic… Yunzhongjun has… fallen to demons…”
Yu Zhaoming heard Xuanjiu’s low voice and turned. Her Shizun — always so bright and open — stood trembling, hands shaking, eyes fixed and blank on Yunzhongjun, as though trapped inside some memory. Yu Zhaoming gently shook her, and Xuanjiu jolted as if startled awake, twisting around to look at her disciple. Yu Zhaoming saw it clearly: despair flickering in Xuanjiu’s eyes.
“My Eldest Senior Brother, back then… he too…”
“Shizun…” Yu Zhaoming had barely begun when Tang Wenchun’s screams tore into her ears once more — ever more shrill, ever weaker. She whipped around and saw Tang Wenchun’s head slowly drooping. She could even feel her own cultivation climbing as Tang Wenchun faded.
Yu Zhaoming raised her eyes — and met Yunzhongjun’s vicious smile.
She knew everything. She knew Tang Wenchun was her heart demon!
In that instant, Yu Zhaoming understood. This was exactly what Yunzhongjun wanted: to make her Shizun watch her little disciple die in agony. To make Yu Zhaoming choose the climb of her cultivation over rescue — to stand by and let her heart demon die before her eyes. To make Tang Wenchun die in the most despairing way possible, under the very gazes of her Shizun and her shijie!
This was her revenge on Tang Wenchun!
Yu Zhaoming’s whole body shook. She stared at Tang Wenchun, fingers curling tight until her nails bit into the flesh with a sharp sting.
Tang Wenchun clenched her teeth, trying to strangle her own screams, but the pain was too much. Her mouth was full of blood now; her gaze had begun to scatter.
When they’d first met, Yunzhongjun had told her she was exceptionally skilled at tormenting people. It seemed that was true. It hurt, it hurt so much — her soul was burning, her cultivation draining away. If it went on like this, would Yu Zhaoming never have to trouble her head over her again?
The thought drifted up through the haze. As if she’d sensed Yu Zhaoming’s gaze, she turned her head with great effort and met that face — shock and fury tangled together. Then, as if to soothe her, Tang Wenchun smiled.
Yu Zhaoming’s pupils dilated.
In that moment, Tang Wenchun’s figure suddenly overlapped with the girl from the day of her Nascent Soul breakthrough. Yu Zhaoming remembered how Tang Wenchun had reversed the sword’s hilt in her hands; remembered how she’d cried out, so softly, that it hurt. Her body trembled once more.
Why?
Everyone wants to live. Everyone wants to attain the Dao and ascend.
That is what everyone in this world pursues.
The Sword Sect taught that sacrifice was for the world, for righteousness, for the human race’s flame to burn on without end. Yu Zhaoming accepted that teaching. She was willing to live it.
But what about Tang Wenchun? Why should her heart demon — in life or in death — concern her, Yu Zhaoming, alone? She was lively and cheerful, beloved by so many; yet she was also fiercely protective of her own, one to think some of the Sword Sect’s ideals loved too broadly, to grumble about it to her in private, to chime in at the Sect Master’s side so the sect’s disciples could win a little more for themselves.
She was a little selfish, perhaps. A little greedy. But within that selfishness, that protectiveness of her own — there was a place in it for her, Yu Zhaoming. She would not lay down her life for all the world, but she would die for her sake alone.
Yu Zhaoming had never been so confused. But answers take time — and she would tear her heart demon back from death’s grip first, and only then would there be long, long years to puzzle through everything she could not yet understand.
She refused to leave behind regret. She would keep time — keep Tang Wenchun — not lose everything the way she had when she first set foot on the immortal path, left with nothing but the chase of a distant dream.
She wanted long years, endless years. Years of seeking the answers together with Tang Wenchun — not a lifetime of regret!
Yu Zhaoming tightened her grip on her sword. She looked at Tang Wenchun, rose slowly to her feet, her aura climbing higher and higher — and swung.
“Let her go!!”
This strike was nothing like the parting of primordial chaos at the world’s beginning2 — it carried no vast, world-shattering breath, no will to cleave heaven and earth apart. Instead it bowed its head inward: a question turned upon the self, asking what the self truly meant, asking what mattered most to her at this moment, this breath.
Yunzhongjun sneered. She stood a full two major realms above Yu Zhaoming in cultivation; however prodigious a genius Yu Zhaoming might be, Yunzhongjun need not even take up her natal weapon. That earlier Primordial Shatter had been brilliant beyond dispute — invincible within its own realm, capable even of fighting across realms. But so what? It was still nothing more than a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
“Interesting. That you could produce such a sword art for her sake. Since you want to die too, I’ll oblige you.”
Yunzhongjun flung Tang Wenchun aside and reached toward Yu Zhaoming; a pair of enormous palms materialized in the air, bearing down on her. Yu Zhaoming’s strike arrived in the same breath — and in that instant, Yunzhongjun’s mind, strangely, wavered.
In the blur of it, she seemed to see the Yunzhongjun of long ago — the so-called host she had strangled with her own hands, the one who had blocked her freedom and her longing, who had tried to kill her; the true loser — and the look in that one’s eyes before she died.
“You and I… are one. You won — so treat shijie well. Don’t let her grieve, don’t let her despair… and don’t let her be afraid… She’s so afraid of the dark, and of blood, and of holding me back, of becoming the Sound Sect’s shame… If one day she no longer wants me, I don’t want — I don’t want…”
“What use are these words? You’re about to die. With me to look after shijie, she’ll naturally become the happiest person under all of heaven.”
That was how she had answered, back then. Then, under the dying woman’s grieving, reluctant gaze, she had strangled the life out of her and seized absolute control of this body. From then on she was free — free to pursue her longing. Her shijie.
Her shijie…
Agony lanced through her waist.
Yunzhongjun snapped back from the haze. Yu Zhaoming had already used the opening to snatch Tang Wenchun back. But Yunzhongjun no longer cared. She only looked down — at her shijie. Nüluo had clearly just awoken; her legs were still unsteady beneath her, yet she had thrown herself forward anyway, both hands gripping the dagger artifact tight, and driven it deep, viciously, into Yunzhongjun’s waist.
This artifact… Yunzhongjun’s mind blurred again. She remembered, from very long ago — when she had only just been born into awareness — the quarrel she had heard.
“Shizun, why betroth shijie to the Shenfeng Sect! They don’t suit each other!”
“It is already the best choice available. The Shenfeng Sect is the Sound Sect’s subordinate branch — with you and me here, no one would dare slight Nüluo.” Her Shizun already bore the marks of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man3. He regarded her. “Before you question me, question yourself first — what thoughts have you been harboring toward your shijie?”
“No — no, I — I haven’t. Shijie, I only think of her as my own elder sister…”
With every word of that denial, the heart demon’s strength swelled — enough for Her to struggle awake from the blackness of her long slumber.
“Child, you can deceive everyone. Perhaps you can even deceive yourself. But who do you think your eyes deceive?”
Grief, fear, struggle, and a bitter refusal to accept — these became the newborn heart demon’s nourishment.
“…Shizun, am I not allowed?”
“Nüluo’s foundation is too poor. Even if she gave you everything she had, she could not walk beside you for long. Nothing has begun yet — parting now is a kindness to you both. Do not sink into this delusion. Knowing your temperament, do you mean to use a Slave Seal? Make a Furnace of her, carve up everything you are and hand it all to her?! Your talent spans the age — you are the Sound Sect’s hope for the future.”
“But — but…”
“Nüluo has already consented. Or do you mean to go seize her, go make a scene?” The old man regarded his most prized disciple, his gaze heavy. “If you go, you are no disciple of mine! Ah Yun — the Sound Sect has poured its all into raising you. Your cultivation resources, your pills, your natal artifact — which of them did your teachers and elders not scour heaven and sea to bring you? On your shoulders you carry more than yourself: every disciple the Sound Sect will ever have, ten thousand years of the road ahead. Will you fail them all?”
Anxiety, unease, guilt, and the anger and bitterness quietly sprouting in the dark wove together — and at last the heart demon opened her eyes completely.
The heart demon hid herself away, secretly peering out through the sea of consciousness at the world beyond. Everything out there was lovely — sunlight, rain and dew, all manner of people.
But shijie — only shijie — held her gaze above all others. Whether it was herself or the original Yunzhongjun, their eyes always lingered long on their shijie. When she smiled, Yunzhongjun could not answer; she could only hide it, desperately. But the heart demon would answer with a wide, unguarded grin.
“This dagger is for you. Just in case.” Yunzhongjun held the artifact out to Nüluo.
“So sharp! That must have cost a fortune, no?”
Yunzhongjun shook her head. “Just something I happened to see on the road.” She would never say it — but the heart demon knew. She had harvested Jade Steel and melted Jade Marrow into it; to beg a Great Cultivator of the Weapon Sect to forge it, she had played the Spring Wind Healing Melody for three months, drained her cultivation past its limits, then spent over half a year in seclusion recovering — all in exchange for that one dagger.
Nüluo only laughed. “I’m a sound cultivator — I’d never get any use out of something so violent.”
“Just in case,” Yunzhongjun said.
The heart demon watched in secret, gazed in secret at Nüluo, thinking: how beautiful she is, shining there in the sun. If she were Yunzhongjun — if this body were hers — she would stay at shijie’s side every single day, and there would never, ever come a day when Nüluo needed that dagger.
Never, ever…
Blood had flooded Nüluo’s hands, but she still gripped the dagger tight and lifted her head to look at Yunzhongjun.
Yunzhongjun pressed a hand to her wound and drew a deep breath. “Don’t look. There’s blood. You… you faint at the sight of it.”
The author has something to say:
Honestly, I typed out a whole string of explanations, but I deleted every last one. Go ahead and scold me as you please — I’m lifting the pot lid just enough to slide into my groveling kneel.
Also: Yunzhongjun is a heart demon. She acts by turns righteous and wicked, purely as the mood strikes her — earlier on she even made a move trying to get Tang Wenchun to swallow Yu Zhaoming, and Tang Wenchun went and killed herself instead. Shijie is the tripwire that sends her off the deep end.
As for a heart demon’s emotional instability — you can see it in Tang Wenchun’s own breakdowns back in the first few chapters.
And by the way — I actually cried when I wrote the host’s death. That original self was just too suffocating.
Footnotes
- 禁脔 | Jinluan | Literally 'the forbidden cut of meat' — from the Book of Jin, which records that the choicest strip of pork at the imperial table was reserved for the emperor alone and nicknamed the 'forbidden morsel'; the term came to denote a person or thing one claims exclusively and refuses to let anyone else touch.
- 鸿蒙开天 | Hongmeng Kaitian | In Chinese cosmology, Hongmeng is the formless mist that existed before heaven and earth separated; the giant Pangu split them apart with an axe to create the world, a myth recorded in Chinese texts as early as the Three Kingdoms era.
- 天人五衰 | Tianren Wushuai | A Buddhist doctrine: the five signs — among them a fading halo, soiled robes, and a suddenly foul body scent — that herald the impending death of a deva, a heaven-dwelling god whose eons-long lifespan is nonetheless finite.
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