Yun Cuo disappeared after saying goodbye to him that day and went missing for more than ten days without a trace. At first, it was Zhu Xing and their group of friends who invited him out for a walk, but he didn’t see anyone. It was then they remembered to ask the Xue family, who had business dealings with Yun Cuo.
When asked, Xue Huai was not around, and Xue Zong also said he hadn’t seen Yun Cuo’s person for several days—he hadn’t given the money yet.
Everyone was worried that something was wrong with Yun Cuo and Xue He was particularly anxious. His cultivation was not high, and he couldn’t even drive the green bird or the raven, so he couldn’t even help to find the person. Mrs. Liu was not here, so he didn’t dare to seek help from Xue Zong. After thinking about it, he gritted his teeth and wrote a letter to Xue Huai asking for help.
The letter sent by this unlucky child was still sealed with a sound-retaining spell. Xue Huai had to play it repeatedly in order to understand the situation. Xue He’s sobbing voice echoed through the entire Immortal Sect, making him stupefied after hearing it.
He packed his package and explained the situation to his grandparents. After thinking about it, he didn’t directly go back to Xianzhou; instead, he went to a canyon on the border of the Demon Realm.
He remembered that Yun Cuo had a forbidden place for cultivation. Before he officially dispatched his troops, his usual meditation, cultivation, and enlightenment were all in a certain spiritual cave in that canyon, prohibiting others from stepping on it.
He had never been there in his previous life. Yun Cuo did not allow him to go, saying that it had become the demon clan’s territory already. He used his immortal roots to go there, not only could he not see the road clearly, but he could also encounter danger.
At that time, their relationship was still very good, and Yun Cuo was afraid that he would worry. He would thus give him advance notice of when he would come out every time, and he would come out as he promised.
However, no matter how long the cultivation time used to be, it would never exceed fifteen days. Today is the nineteenth day.
Xue Huai thought of Yun Cuo’s silver hair and crimson eyes and suddenly realized a serious problem: “It can’t be because his demon aura has gone astray and he has gone crazy, right?”
Yun Cuo was originally a half-immortal and half-demon, and this kind of physique is the most dangerous when cultivating. Any slight mistake can lead to a big mess.
Let’s not talk about the entanglement between Yun Cuo and him, saving people is more important. In that dangerous place, only someone with his level of cultivation can go there alone. Realizing that there was no time to delay, he set off. Xue Huai also wrote a letter to the doctor he knew, asking him to take people to wait at the canyon’s entrance.
In Xue Huai’s eyes, there is not much difference between the Demon Realm and the Immortal Realm. At most, there are more strange and peculiar things to look at. Talking about the gluttonous ghost that he raised, it is also connected with demons.
There’s a little trouble, he couldn’t see the road clearly.
Just like how he saw the bats of the Demon Realm as a black mist, he couldn’t imagine how Yun Cuo looked at their Immortal Realm when he couldn’t suppress the demon eyes. Could it be that my face actually looks like a mist in Yun Cuo’s eyes?
As he was lost in thought, he saw that the deeper he went, the more rugged the road became, the trees were sky-high, and the mountain paths were cramped. So his imperial sword and the fast-moving clouds were no longer effective; thus, he could only walk honestly. Under such circumstances, he stepped on the air several times and could not move a single step. After thinking for a while, Xue Huai simply closed his eyes and calmed down, using his spiritual vision to look around.
There were thousands of black shadows lurking around, possibly bats or something else, but for some reason, Xue Huai felt that these things were looking at him; however, none of them had the intention of taking action.
He simply spoke up and asked, “Hello, I’m here to find someone, there is no other bad meaning. Could you please show me the way?”
No one answered, and after a moment, he only heard the sound of birds flying away from the deep forest. The sound of tens of thousands of wings flapping came from near and far, getting further and further away from him.
A furry paw touched his ankle.
Xue Huai opened his eyes and noticed that the canyon in the dark clouds had opened up at some point. Upon closer inspection, a gloomy red sun rose in the sky. Yun Cuo’s silver-gray kitten is crouching by his feet.
The gloomy and sullen red sun shone down, illuminating the tame and lovely little animal in front of him with a bit of evilness. It suddenly became less affectionate towards Xue Huai, a warning light flashed in its emerald green eyes. Just as Xue Huai was about to squat down and pick it up, he was viciously attacked by it, and then he watched as it turned around and ran away quickly.
Xue Huai now had a target, he followed straight on.
This silly cat is quite flexible, running left and right, almost disappearing into the bright red fog several times. This fog seemed to have limited his magical power. As his vision expanded, the imperial sword and imperial wind could no longer be stretched out. Xue Huai cast several spells out and found that it was as if the candle flame had been extinguished. He was completely unable to cast it, no different from a mortal.
If you can’t cast it. then you can’t cast it, Xue Huai casually broke a branch to use as a weapon and climbed up the hill patiently.
After he left the deep forest of the canyon, he found himself walking higher and higher, stepping on a tangled ladder of stones to the sky, with a wide abyss behind him. Only after walking up to the top did he realized that the place where he was right now was a cliff, and nothing else was on top but a wide and deep cave.
There was no light inside the cave, and it’s as if it could suck people in.
The places where cultivators are located should be prepared in advance. There should not be any vicious spirit, beasts, or traps. However, in order to avoid being disturbed during cultivation, barriers are often set up at the entrance.
Xue Huai casually threw the branch in his hand over, but as soon as it touched the hole, it was blocked by an invisible barrier, and with a snort—it turned into ashes out of thin air.
He looked at the pile of ash and felt a bit worried.
The cat appeared again, its eyes were much clearer than they were when they were at the foot of the mountain. It came out to took Xue Huai’s clothes and drag him inward. Xue Huai pointed to the door and asked, “Little fool, how can we break through the barrier here? If you want to save your master, you also need to show me a clear path.”
The silly cat froze for a moment, came up and rubbed against his hand, then continued to pull him inside, not sure if it had understood or not.
Xue Huai surveyed the rocky walls of the cave—he wasn’t going to risk his life, but he wasn’t going to just give up either.
He used to always be a sharp-edge sword, and since this door is impassable, it’s better not to pass through it.
It was as if a thunderstorm had risen from the flat ground, with a loud “rumble” exploding, the debris rolled down one after another. Xue Huai repeatedly hit the slightly thinner areas on the side of the cave with his elbow, expressionless, trying to drill a hole out.
All of his magic couldn’t be casted out, so he could only gather his spiritual roots onto his body, allowing him to block it bit by bit. By the time he’d smashed an opening, the skin on his elbow had already chipped, oozing out a little blood, and his cloth was wet and sticky.
Xue Huai breathed a sigh of relief, picked up a few solid pieces of wood, poked open the gap, and then shamelessly crawled in.
He got startled when he landed on the ground—
Three or five steps away from him lay a shriveled corpse.
This person should have been dead for a long time, to the extent that the wind can blow him into powder. Xue Huai walked over to take a look and found several words inscribed on the stone on the ground: in the Three Years of the Great Wilderness, Thunder and Fire caused disaster, and he died in response to the disaster when his cultivation failed.
After a few more steps, the cave became even more terrifying—the deeper Xue Huai went, what he saw were more than just corpses. He didn’t know how many people’s skeletons were piled up in this cave. Walking, sitting, or lying. Most of them were possessed and died on the spot. Towards the end of the walk, he finally saw some signs of human activity—probably because they felt that the scattered corpses were interfering with their cultivation. Someone had sorted and stacked these skeletons neatly on one side.
There are others that are even older, embedded in the rocks of the cave, even their faces are blurred. Xue Huai also saw complex murals depicting birds and animals, as well as late spring’s flowers and trees.
The more Xue Huai looked, the stranger it got. He always felt like the things in these paintings didn’t seem like the things from the Demon Realm, seemingly…… they were closer to the Immortal Realm.
It is a twisted and dull Immortal Realm.
Dead and lifeless, and there’s also an extremely tall figure—almost terrifying in size, giving people a strong sense of oppression. Xue Huai tilted his head to identify them carefully and actually found a few that he actually recognized—
There is a charlatan who runs around the Jianghu, telling fortune, and a shopkeeper who opens unscrupulous shops. These people, Xue Huai, had more or less remembered them when he was a child, but many more are unrecognizable. There was also a man with a gloomy face, wrapped in clouds and mist, who seemed to be Yun Cuo’s father.
Arriving at the end, he saw the image of a woman smoking a flower cigarette.
Unlike other ferocious and terrifying figures, this mural is beautifully carved. It shows a woman with a smile on her face, gentle and kind like a goddess.
This is Yun Cuo’s mother.
Getting this far, Xue Huai understood—this cave is an illusion in Yun Cuo’s mind.
Observation of the mind.
He has heard of this cultivation method, which is the same as the method he will use in the future to delve into his memory and trace the doubts in his previous life. It is very dangerous, and if no one is watching, once he goes astray, he will never wake up again.
He wants to learn the art of observing the mind so that he can see through the unknown details of his previous life. But why did Yun Cuo take such a big risk to explore his memory and inner mind?
Xue Huai stopped in his tracks.
When he reached the end, the world in front of him was completely new. He stepped on it, and the cold air dissipated. The snow shattered with a crack, slowly melted, and then froze again.
It was actually snowing inside the cave, and even the whole place was familiar to Xue Huai—that horrible familiarity made his hair stand on end and chills run down his spine.
This is the wasteland where he fought his last battle before he died, and it is also Yun Cuo’s hometown. There was heavy snow and a cool, pale red moon in the distance that day.
The overwhelming atmosphere of complete desolation and death awakened a memory that Xue Huai didn’t want to face the most. His soul left his body, and when he turned around, he saw his body fall limply, and the whole world could no longer hear him.
The evil spirits pent up in this cave slowly approached from behind, peering at him.
He could no longer distinguish whether it was his own inner demon or Yun Cuo’s inner demon. A strong sense of dizziness and evil breath flooded into his limbs and bones.
At this moment, the blood on his elbow stained his clothes, and he fell into the snow with a tick. The faint and almost imperceptible sound made Xue Huai sober up—He was enraged, stepping onto the extremely cold ground with unprecedented violence, backhanding a Vajra Seal of Brahma, and dispersing all the evil spirits gathered behind him!
He said coldly, “I am now a living person, I don’t need you guys to think about me.”
This illusion is the center of Yun Cuo’s inner demon. When you peer into people’s hearts, you will also be easily deceived. Xue Huai was panting heavily, the word death was the most extreme fear he had ever experienced. He didn’t want to stay here any longer. He searched and searched and finally found Yun Cuo at the end of the snowfield.
His eyes were closed, and he was leaning against the intricately carved eaves, with snow that could not be brushed away on his shoulders.
The scene in the illusion had changed again. Behind Yun Cuo is a luxurious and noisy pavilion, only he here is as quiet as ice and snow.
This is Xunxian Pavilion’s ground floor, the place where Xue Huai first met him in his two lifetimes.
The little cat pitifully rushed over from somewhere, jumped onto Yun Cuo’s face, and licked him, but there was no sign of him waking up. It was so anxious that it scratched Yun Cuo’s face with its paws, but it didn’t really dare to injure him, it could only go around in circles.
Xue Huai lowered his head to check his breath. He bent down slightly and reached out to grab Yun Cuo’s chin, wanting to detect the pulse under his neck.
Before he could figure it out, a pair of open eyes burst into his field of vision. They were as dark as the night yet as bright as a flickering flame, reflecting his shadow inside.
That is an unknown illusion.
“Report! Immortal Lord, we have achieved a complete victory in the Baifeng Xueyuan battle.”
“Hmm. Has the Left Protector returned yet?”
“Immortal Lord, the Left Protector… died in battle. The Right Protector said that Lord Xue Huai made the wrong decision and insisted on going his way, he was unable to stop him. So he could only take people to evacuate, so…”
“I asked you, has he come back yet?”
“Immortal Lord, he’s dead!”
“Scram, I want to see his person.”
After going around and around, he only got one gram of nothing special ashes.
He said, “The Right Protector is incompetent and can’t even keep an eye on people. I’ll wait for Xue Huai to come back.”
There’s no way a nice, big, living person who was arguing with him before he left could just disappear. That person has always been mischievous, maybe it’s just to piss him off. What others said was all to deceive him, it was all false.
He waited from early spring to late spring, and then from late spring to early summer.
Xianzhou is cold, a place with thin snow all year round, and suddenly the snow stopped.
Xue Huai likes snow.
He began to get restless and said, “Why is there no snow anymore? When exactly will it start snowing?”
“Why hasn’t he come back yet?”
He forgot whose voice was pressing close to his ears and told him, “He won’t come back, and it will never snow here.”
He stumbled through the entire wasteland, walked through all the places that that person liked, and then returned to the pavilion and water pavilion where they first met.
There was nothing.
Xue Huai is dead.
His baby will never come back.
A sharp pain ran through all his limbs, it was as if he were forcibly infused with a mouthful of underground air from their old residence, where the skeletons used to be. It was sour, and he pointed to his heart where it hurt. Then he was pulled out of the water, causing him to detach from his never-waking dreams.
He opened his eyes and encountered a warm breath.
And a pair of calm eyes that are constantly sparkling like water.
The eyes’ owner was leaning down, looking at him, his warm hand clasped on his chin, and he furrowed his eyebrows slightly. Live, fresh temperature, and expression.
Xue Huai said, “Don’t move, your aura has gone astray. If I come a step late, you… wu!”
He didn’t care about anything.
Yun Cuo didn’t care about anything, he directly pressed the person in front of him into his arms and tightly pressed him against the wall, like he was crazy—both hands fiercely gripped Xue Huai’s waist, tore open his clothes, and vigorously caressed his soft skin and the beautiful muscles below. It was hot. The temperature of a living person is real and could be truly held in his arms.
After being stunned for a while, Xue Huai felt that those hands were about to rub him into pieces, and even his clothes were almost completely torn off. He cursed loudly, “Surname Yun, you are looking for dead!”
“You are crazy! You are looking for dead!”
He was really cute when cursing people. He might have a poisonous mouth, but when he gets angry, he doesn’t know how to curse anymore. He keeps saying these things over and over again. In this sealed land of the Demon Realm, he couldn’t even cast any spells. Xue Huai was so angry that he almost wanted to eat people. He bared his fangs and brandish claws1Bare fangs and brandish claws is an idiom referring to making threatening gestures., but in the end, Yun Cuo gently pinched and clasped his wrist.
Yun Cuo whispered, “I’m sorry, my aura has gone astray, and I lost control. Did I hurt you?”
Xue Huai continued to curse angrily, “Don’t say it so ambiguously! You get out of the way!”
Yun Cuo looked at him, and the dark clouds in his eyes gradually dissipated, revealing a little smile.
