Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 58

Shattered Sound (Part 8)

Dust Returns to Dust

Tang Wenchun gave a slight start. Xuanjiu and Yu Zhaoming had shielded her well — so well that even after hearing the black-robed figure’s excited words, she still had presence of mind left to think about other things. She had no idea who this person in black was, but the information he’d let slip had shaken her to her core.

            

She looked hard. The skin of Yunzhongjun’s fingertips had begun to fester; the ends of her hair were withering away strand by strand — as if something beneath that skin was drinking this body dry of every last drop of its essence, about to tear itself free.

She absolutely could not let “it” come out!!

In that instant, the thought blazed up in Tang Wenchun’s mind.

            

What could she still do? What could still stop Yunzhongjun!!

Facing a heart demon gone mad — a Mahayana heart demon — Xuanjiu and Yu Zhaoming had already emptied their arsenals. At most, they had bought time for the cultivators fleeing the hall. The man in black made no move to stop them. But in so short a span, where would rescue come from?

Yet dying here, like this — Tang Wenchun refused to accept it.

            

She could accept dying for Yu Zhaoming. Everything she had came from Yu Zhaoming; every second she had squandered was squandered on Yu Zhaoming’s account; she carried guilt toward her in her heart.

But in the five years she had lived in this world since transmigrating, there had been Xuanjiu’s selfless teaching — and even now, Xuanjiu was willing to burn her divine soul to ash if it would get her disciples out alive.

And there was Yu Zhaoming — her companionship, day and night, and even at a moment like this, unwilling to kill her.

            

All at once, her own life felt precious to her.

To die in a place like this, over a disaster she had done nothing to deserve — no matter how she looked at it, Tang Wenchun’s heart rebelled.

Her gaze fell on Nüluo inside the talisman array. Against the Yunzhongjun of this moment, nothing short of extraordinary measures would serve. Tang Wenchun was certain she wasn’t the only one who had thought of Nüluo. But the only one who could break the array was her — because she could sense it clearly: demon qi was wound all around those talismans. Demon qi is vicious stuff for an ordinary cultivator, corrosive even.

            

But Tang Wenchun was a heart demon. Demon qi was hers to wield by nature. Breaking this array — she had seven or eight parts confidence in ten.

But… her gaze came to rest on Nüluo.

But that person was Nüluo, who had always been kind to her.

            

Tang Wenchun still remembered their first meeting: when Yunzhongjun had made one of her vicious threats, it was Nüluo who had defused it. When they met again years later, even though Tang Wenchun had overheard what she shouldn’t have, Nüluo had never once held it against her.

Nüluo had always been gentle and all-embracing. She could embrace anything; only her junior sister was her soft spot and her bottom line. But the junior sister she remembered was long gone.

To hurt Nüluo, though — Tang Wenchun still hesitated. She watched Nüluo for a long time, her fingers on the hilt loosening, then tightening. She knew she ought to be more decisive. She’d been through the work of killing back in the Sword Sect — but those had been evil men.

            

And Nüluo? What wrong had Nüluo ever done? Why must she be the sacrifice, the one held at knifepoint? Sound Sect, Shenfeng Sect, even Yunzhongjun — they fought over her, decided her road and her destination, and not one of them had ever asked what she wanted to say, what she wanted to do. She looked like the most important person in the room, yet she was precisely the least important note in it.

Even now, the decision Tang Wenchun was making had never asked Nüluo’s opinion either.

Tang Wenchun wavered, unable to settle. She had believed she’d adapted to this world well after transmigrating — only now did she understand: she hadn’t.

            

She could never be like Shizun Xuanjiu, selfless enough to stand up for a stranger — even an imperfect stranger. Nor like Yunzhongjun, ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of a single obsession. Through Yu Zhaoming she had cultivation, could soar the sky and dive the earth — but at bottom, she was an ordinary person.

Sacrifice one to save many — easy to say. But when it’s your own hand on the sword, Tang Wenchun felt that hand begin to tremble.

If it were Yu Zhaoming — what would she do? Tang Wenchun wondered, her hand shaking faintly — and then she realized this thought was nothing but an attempt to pass the buck. This had been her idea; was she now going to make Yu Zhaoming do the dirty work?

            

No. If she leaned on Yu Zhaoming like this, what difference was there between her and a heart demon siphoning away its host’s cultivation? Tang Wenchun’s grip snapped tight around the hilt. She looked at Nüluo.

Nüluo was still alive — clear-minded, and in agony. She had seen everything, including the look Tang Wenchun turned on her, and the resolve in it.

The instant their eyes met, she nodded to Tang Wenchun. On that swollen, distorted face, impossibly, there appeared calm — and relief.

            

She knew what she was going to do.

Tang Wenchun thought. She turned her head — Yunzhongjun’s hair was withering by degrees now, and a black crack had opened across her forehead. She was frantic beyond control, a low rasp of growls in her throat; she looked less and less like a person, and more and more like a thing of demonkind.

A monster born of obsession.

            

This could not go on.

Tang Wenchun raised her sword point. She saw the look of encouragement Nüluo was giving her. Something settled in her heart, and she looked back at Nüluo with decision.

“I’m sorry,” she said without sound.

            

She was Yu Zhaoming’s heart demon; her cultivation and root bone were of one origin with Yu Zhaoming’s. But her sword intent was not Yu Zhaoming’s ice. Snowflakes drifted down soft — like the first snow of winter, gentle. They scattered down, drifting and whirling, and the earth was mantled in frost. All things were about to sleep; when spring warmed and the flowers opened, that would be the day they broke through the soil.

And on that day — what came would be new life.

This was a snow that stood for hope.

            

Tang Wenchun turned her sword point, ice-blue light flickering in her eyes. This was not one of the Nine Styles of Red Dust that Xuanjiu had taught her, nor Yu Zhaoming’s own Emotionless Sword Intent — this was a stroke Tang Wenchun had comprehended herself. It belonged to her alone.

In that instant, where no one was watching, something was quietly changing in Yu Zhaoming’s Sea of Consciousness. The once-hazy green mountain ran clearer; the pond that had been dead water gained a pulse of life. Even Yu Zhaoming herself only faintly sensed that her spiritual energy was flowing more smoothly than before.

Yu Zhaoming’s spirit lifted, and her assault grew fiercer. One lapse of attention, and a long gash was opened across Yunzhongjun’s cheek. But what flowed from the wound was not blood — it was flame, red shot through with black.

            

Above, the black-robed figure who had been silently watching all of this suddenly went “oh?” His gaze landed on Tang Wenchun, carrying a shade of uncertainty. “A heart demon?”

Tang Wenchun heard it, but all her attention was on her sword.

Nüluo was a good person. At a moment like this, Tang Wenchun thought, even if she had no choice but to point her sword at an innocent, she could still leave her some dignity.

            

“Yunzhongjun!!” Tang Wenchun shouted. “If you don’t stop — I’ll run her through with one stroke!”

Yunzhongjun, mid-lunge toward Xuanjiu, stopped dead. Her whole body collapsed into a mass of black shadow, whirled back through the air, and landed in front of Tang Wenchun. The talisman array the man in black had spread had already been cut through by Tang Wenchun’s single stroke; the sword art gathered, crystallized into ice in an instant, and sealed Nüluo inside — eyes closed, life or death unknown.

“Stop this!!” Yunzhongjun cried.

            

Tang Wenchun stared fixedly at the crack on Yunzhongjun’s forehead. It was not deep. Between Yunzhongjun’s brows it sat like a black flower of hell in full bloom, lending her face a touch of eerie, demonic beauty.

“Take her and leave this place,” Tang Wenchun said.

Yunzhongjun did not move. She only looked at Nüluo, trapped in the ice.

            

Tang Wenchun’s gaze rested on Nüluo. Xuanjiu had landed at her side by now, watching her with a look of faint disapproval.

The Sword Sect’s rules: a sword shall never point at the innocent; when kin and the innocent are in peril, you draw your sword to aid them. Tang Wenchun had violated two commandments in a single stroke. But short of this, she could think of no other way to keep Xuanjiu and Yu Zhaoming alive.

Yet Xuanjiu only said, low: “It’s your master who failed.”

            

It was her fault that a young child had been forced to resort to so base a method. The blame was not Tang Wenchun’s to bear — it belonged to the master who had failed to protect the others. She had thought… it would never come to this.

But Yunzhongjun had fallen to demons, and with that there was room in her heart for nothing else — only the obsession.

Xuanjiu thought, a little lost.

            

Just like back then. In the end, so many of them died — and in the end, they had saved nothing at all.

Yu Zhaoming stood to one side, her gaze on the shell of ice. This was sword intent wholly unlike her own — and yet it was still ice, and from it one could feel something gentle, something that embraced.

Even frozen over, it held no bite of frost.

            

Yu Zhaoming lowered her eyes. If everything a heart demon has comes from its host — then this stroke of Tang Wenchun’s had clearly surpassed her. And the future? Would there come a day when Tang Wenchun slowly left her? Something clenched faintly in Yu Zhaoming’s heart; her hand closed hard.

“If you don’t leave,” Tang Wenchun said sharply, “I’ll end her this instant.”

Yunzhongjun turned her head to look at Tang Wenchun. The provocation widened the fissure on her forehead a few degrees more. But she quickly turned back to the ice-locked Nüluo — that seemed to be the sole wellspring of what humanity remained to her. Yunzhongjun looked at Nüluo for a long time before turning back to Tang Wenchun and splitting into a grin, grotesque and warped. “Go ahead and try. Let’s see who’s faster — you, or me.”

            

Tang Wenchun’s heart drummed. If Yunzhongjun truly shed this skin of hers, would Nüluo even remain her one weakness? Tang Wenchun didn’t dare gamble on it. Xuanjiu and Yu Zhaoming moved together to block the way in front of her.

The sphere of ice gave a light knock — something had tapped it from within. Tang Wenchun looked to Nüluo inside. Nüluo’s lips moved, and Tang Wenchun read them.

Take me away.

            

Yunzhongjun, whose eyes had never left Nüluo, caught it too — and her face bloomed with wild delight. “Shijie, you’re still willing to be with me, aren’t you?” She finished, turned her head toward Tang Wenchun, and her tone turned soft along with it. “My shijie is leaving with me. Surely you don’t really mean to kill my shijie?”

The words were intimate — as if the two of them were on perfectly good terms, just as before.

Tang Wenchun’s lips moved. She watched the grief deepening in Nüluo’s eyes, and a dark premonition rose slowly in her heart. But Yunzhongjun seemed to feel nothing of it at all, gazing at Nüluo with nothing but heat.

            

“Shizun…” Tang Wenchun looked to Xuanjiu.

Xuanjiu had spent years turning through the Red Dust¹ to cultivate her Red Dust Sword Intent; she understood as well. She looked at Yu Zhaoming, still half-lost, and at Yunzhongjun, eyes blazing, and sighed inwardly. She put her hand on Tang Wenchun’s shoulder. “You—”

She slowly closed her mouth. Hadn’t Tang Wenchun cut through the man’s talisman array precisely because she meant to hold Nüluo hostage against Yunzhongjun? Facing her disciple’s eyes, she found she could not bring herself to speak of sect rules or greater righteousness.

            

She looked at Tang Wenchun and took the weight of the condemnation onto herself. “What’s done is done.”

She had failed to stop Yunzhongjun; her weakness had dragged her disciple into this. She could die — but what of the two disciples she’d leave behind?

Fight to the death, and what would it buy?

            

At Xuanjiu’s words, Tang Wenchun’s hand went slack — and Yunzhongjun gathered Nüluo up like a treasure regained. Without the array, what would become of Nüluo when the ice melted? Tang Wenchun dared not think about it. But Yunzhongjun seemed not to think of it either; she simply held Nüluo close and drifted away.

With the chief evil gone, Tang Wenchun looked around the great hall — and found nothing left in it but the dead, and blood.

“Like a farce,” Tang Wenchun said quietly. She glanced about — the man in black had vanished at some point, too. Gone after Yunzhongjun? Tang Wenchun wondered.

            

And at that moment she heard Elder Fang’s voice: “Junior Sister! Are you all right? You’re still alive, right!!”

She strained her eyes into the distance: the cloud layers far off were churning — the cultivators were coming. The strength drained out of Tang Wenchun all at once, and she began to slide toward the ground — but a hand reached out, caught her around the waist, and braced her steadily against a body.

Tang Wenchun twisted around — and found Yu Zhaoming’s deep eyes fixed on her, unblinking.

            

“…What are you looking at me for?”

Yu Zhaoming shook her head. “Nothing. This time — again — we owe you.”

“…It’s not like anything actually got solved.” Tang Wenchun said it quietly. She looked at the horizon and suddenly asked, “Why is it the police always arrive last?”

            

Astonished? A tea offering²? Yu Zhaoming looked utterly at sea, but her heart demon had no intention whatsoever of explaining; the moment the sentence ended, she laughed to herself.

Escaping death with her life — of course that was worth a laugh.

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Yunzhongjun sped forward with the sphere of ice in her arms; she could not bear for her shijie to spend one more second within the bounds of Shenfeng Sect. Even though she had slaughtered the sect down to the last soul, still she could not bear it. A Mahayana cultivator moves fast; soon they were beyond Shenfeng Sect’s borders.

            

Behind her the man in black drifted along, speaking up now and then. “What are you still guarding a half-dead woman for? Shed the mortal form, and you’ll know some joy.” He muttered, “And you still haven’t held up your end of our bargain…”

“Shut up!”

Yunzhongjun set the ice sphere gently on the ground, reached out, seized the man in black, and pulled him over. “That talisman array of yours — broken by a Nascent Soul cultivator! Look at your fine work. Save my shijie, and quickly!”

            

The man in black chuckled. “Nascent Soul cultivator? She’s a heart demon too, if you ask me, you—”

But Yunzhongjun turned on him with murder in her look, black flame coiling about her; the man in black retreated a few steps, dodged the flame, and raised both hands. “Fine, fine, I’ll save her, all right?”

He glanced at Nüluo’s hand inside the ice — and something occurred to him. His eyes darted, and a wicked smile spread across his face. He stretched out both hands and did, in truth, begin dissolving the ice — while pulling the spiritual qi out of Nüluo’s body, strand by strand.

            

Yunzhongjun spread her palm and pressed it to Nüluo’s dantian³. Nüluo let out a sudden shriek of agony. Yunzhongjun lowered her voice, coaxing softly: “Don’t be afraid, shijie. It will stop hurting very soon. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.”

Her voice was softness itself, but her double pupils darkened ever redder, and Nüluo’s screams did not move her by a hair. It was the man in black beside them who laughed. “Ruthless — you’re the ruthless one, outright shattering the dantian of the shijie you love best, turning her into a mortal.”

“She still has her spirit bone. She only can’t cultivate; her lifespan will run far longer than a mortal’s.” Yunzhongjun offered the explanation, tenderness filling her face as she gently wiped the cold sweat from Nüluo’s brow. “I was wrong before. I should have done this long ago. Then we could have stayed together all our lives, and none of today would ever have happened. There’s no going back to the Sound Sect now — but if shijie wants to return, I can build you a Sound Sect… Ah, and I made you a song. I never had the chance to play it for you. This time, you’ll finally get to hear it…”

            

“Yunzhongjun.” Nüluo raised her head suddenly. She looked at Yunzhongjun — pale lips ringed with fresh blood, which lent her face, oddly, a little color. “Do you imagine I’ll live out my days depending on you?”

Yunzhongjun smiled, gentle as anything. “Does shijie not want only me? Then I’ll bring that child Fu Hua over…”

The blood at the corner of Nüluo’s lips spread. Yunzhongjun’s face changed — as if she had suddenly sensed something. She seized Nüluo’s shoulders and straightened her hunched body: a pitch-black dagger stood driven squarely into her heart.

            

Yunzhongjun’s hands began, faintly, to tremble.

Nüluo laughed. “I couldn’t beat you. I even let you use my junior sister’s body to kill so many people. I wronged my junior sister. But… but now I finally know where she is. I can… I can go find her now…”

“No — no, I’m right here in front of you. I am Yunzhongjun. Shijie — shijie, won’t you love me a little?…” Yunzhongjun’s voice dropped low. But Nüluo only gave her one last look, laid her palm softly against that face she knew so well, and closed her eyes — slowly, and without the slightest hesitation.

            

“Ah… ah…” Yunzhongjun gathered into her arms the body from which every breath had gone.

The man in black stood behind her, watching her shake with weeping, and smiled. “Your shijie is dead. What are you still keeping this body for? Shed it. Quickly.”

“I won’t.” The sound of low sobbing came. “Shijie loved this body.”

            

It was the one thing her shijie had ever cherished.

The man in black shrugged, regret thick in his voice. “What a crashing bore that is.” He turned his head toward the churning clouds at the edge of the sky. “Perhaps it’s livelier over there…”

From far away, it seemed, came the sound of a flute — plaintive, winding — until at the last the note was like a cuckoo weeping blood⁴, and faded away.

            

By then Tang Wenchun, already aboard the immortal boat, was asking: “Did you hear something?”

Yu Zhaoming shook her head.

Tang Wenchun asked again: “Senior Nüluo — she’s still alive, isn’t she?”

            

Yu Zhaoming meant to shake her head — but she saw the pleading in Tang Wenchun’s eyes, paused, and said, “Perhaps. Yunzhongjun won’t let her die.”

“Really?”

“Mm.” Yu Zhaoming answered. She looked at Tang Wenchun, deep and long. “If I were Yunzhongjun — even if I had to break her wings, even if I had to cut off her legs — I would keep her alive, and keep her at my side.”

            

Tang Wenchun stared at her, appalled. “That’s terrifying. How can you think that?”

Yu Zhaoming was genuinely puzzled. “Isn’t that love?”

“Of course it isn’t love!”

            

Then what is love? Yu Zhaoming wondered. She couldn’t work it out. She knew only this: there was little she could keep for her own — and if she could, she would use the most absolute means to keep that person at her side.

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The author has something to say:

Honestly, Yunzhongjun could simply have snatched her shijie away — but no, she had to kill Shen Feng. Xuanjiu came out to shield Shen Feng, and never imagined Yunzhongjun would kill every last one of them.

            

I don’t know if everyone remembers what Xuanjiu said before: once you become a demon, you’re no longer human (Xuanjiu understands this so well because, of course, it goes back to old Sword Sect history). That’s exactly what Yunzhongjun is. She has no humanity left — her human side lives entirely in Nüluo. But she doesn’t truly respect Nüluo either; it’s more an instinct to seize and plunder — including what she did, shattering Nüluo’s dantian. Less love than a paranoid possession.

On this count, Tang Wenchun’s moral compass is far sounder — and Yu Zhaoming far luckier than Yunzhongjun.

Tang Wenchun: …Having read the explanation above, I have a question.

            

Author: What.

Tang Wenchun: Between me and Yu Zhaoming, which of us is actually the heart demon?!

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