Extra Chapter Three
Before Taotie died, he had a dream.
For an ancient great demon like him, dreams always held a specific meaning.
However, this dream was chaotic, like a mishmash. He dreamed of a time long, long ago when he was still a newborn little monster. Back then, he had a weak and vulnerable lamb-like body, with a strange human-like face. His grotesque and eerie appearance made him unpopular.
He was always hungry, never getting enough to eat. When he was starving, he would cry like a baby, lying on the ground whimpering.
Such cries were meaningless; lying on the mountainside and crying out did nothing to fill his stomach. But he just wanted to cry, as if crying more might make food fall from the sky.
The eyes under his armpits suddenly saw a pair of snow-white feet stepping on the grass, faint blue veins winding up beneath the transparent skin.
It was a great demon who had draped himself in a human robe and taken on a human form. With black hair and snowy skin, his downturned eyes carried a sorrowful and gentle expression. Fingers like petals emerged gently from wide sleeves, lightly, gently falling on his head.
He had once buried his head in a rotting corpse to gnaw, and a snow-white flower from a tree had coincidentally fallen on his head. The weight of the great demon’s hand on his head felt almost like that flower.
The great demon petted his head while stuffing a handful of grass into his mouth. Though he could devour anything, there were things he didn’t particularly like to eat. Compared to plants, he preferred flesh and blood.
This was the first time in Taotie’s life that he had been made to eat grass, and in his dream, he relived that experience.
The dream spanned vast distances, and suddenly, he found himself at the great battle between Bai Ze and Qiong Qi thousands of years later. Seeing Bai Ze die at Qiong Qi’s hands, an unnamed rage ignited within him.
How could this happen? How could this happen? How could this happen…
What exactly could happen, he didn’t know and dared not investigate deeply. Those unnamed emotions turned into murderous intent, bursting out in a mix of rage and panic.
If Bai Ze had to die, then it should be by his hand.
He hid in the huge shadow, glaring fiercely at Qiong Qi. He was going to kill Qiong Qi.
Why did he have to kill Qiong Qi?
He was Taotie, capable of devouring all things. Eating Qiong Qi could greatly increase his strength. As for the dangers brought about by forcibly devouring Qiong Qi, he deliberately chose to forget them.
He spent a long time meticulously preparing a death trap for Qiong Qi.
The dream shifted again, becoming the day he first saw He Ruge’s livestream. He had known from the beginning that it was He Ruge, not Bai Ze.
Bai Ze would not descend from the pedestal, shining like the bright moon, illuminating the world but beyond reach forever.
Bai Ze was already dead, and He Ruge had come as his reincarnation. Qiong Qi was also dead. Only he remained entangled in the bonds of the past.
When entrusted to He Ruge, after the last trace of Bai Ze’s power dissipated, he felt as if his heart had been ripped out.
The young man locked in the cage opened his eyes, his black pupils resembling the Forgetful Lake perpetually shrouded in mist, gazing at a vessel for Bai Ze, his expression akin to that of a deity receiving offerings.
“Just a Taotie fragment, daring to use such an intolerable secret method. Today, I shall uphold justice and kill you, you abomination,” he said.
“You abomination.”
The vessel, devoid of past memories, looked at Bai Ze who had forgotten all past events.
And curled up within the main body, he felt as though his heart had been ripped out.
He thought, Bai Ze ultimately forgot, and rightly so, perhaps Bai Ze had never remembered him at all. Bai Ze only remembered killing Qiong Qi.
How could this be?
How could he be completely forgotten?
In the final scene of the dream, he saw the young form of He Ruge. With a short, chubby fish tail, a baby-fat face, moist eyes that spoke with the innocence of a child.
At that moment, he suddenly understood why Bai Ze, back then, had first fed him grass and then meat. The great demon had not misunderstood his intentions at first but had instead taken pleasure in teasing a young cub.
He had thought Bai Ze was the embodiment of pure goodness, devoid of worldly desires, absolutely incapable of doing something so meaningless.
It was all his misunderstanding.
He had once entertained the thought of keeping He Ruge captive, only to dismiss the idea later. But on that day, when he saw the young face of He Ruge, so strikingly similar to Bai Ze’s, that idea suddenly resurfaced.
He wanted to tease this cub. Just as he had once been teased by Bai Ze.
But there was no future after all. In the dream, he was slain by Xi Guican, and in reality, he died by Xi Guican’s hand as well.
As life ebbed away from within him, he remembered the flower drifting down from the branch, twirling gently before landing on his head.
He had once thought he possessed that flower, but now he realized he had only witnessed its withering.
In the great battle between Qiong Qi and Bai Ze, which shook heaven and earth, he watched the person die before him, just as he had watched that white flower fall from the branch, landing in the dust, never to return.
Even if new flowers bloomed on the branches next spring, as beautiful as they might be, they would never be the one that had once caressed his head.
So there was no going back.
Mini Theater:
Bai Ze: This little lamb is hungry, why don’t we feed him some grass?
Qiong Qi: *whimpering*
