The black qi followed her, and only when it realized that the place she was heading to was Peach Blossom Cove did it suddenly ask, “The person you want to kill is Su Liuyun?”
The handsome demon’s expression was very strange. “You… don’t you like him very much?”
She leaped across the rooftops. “When did I ever like him?”
The handsome demon let out a cold sneer. “Every time I’m about to kill him, you arrive just in time. If you don’t like him, why take such a huge risk for his sake?”
Chao Jinsui also fell silent. “Coincidence.”
This really was a coincidence—
She had heard the system talk about something like a Child of Fortune, someone who seemed to have divine help every time they encountered danger… thinking back, it really was like that.
The demon clearly did not believe her explanation, and said coldly, “Even when he drugged you, you only stabbed him once.”
She had wanted to stab him to death, but wasn’t it because his fortune protected him that she failed?
Originally, their recent conversations had no longer been so sharp and barbed, but the moment Su Liuyun was mentioned, the demon’s tone became extremely harsh, and his attitude took a sudden turn for the worse.
As if everything between them during this period had never happened, they returned to that state of opposition again.
The young man’s danfeng eyes were cold and thin, his gloomy, blade-like gaze scraping across her.
“I’ll be watching you. Don’t let me see you unable to strike.”
—Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind letting you and him become a pair of ill-fated lovers, dying without even a corpse left whole.
Chao Jinsui suddenly realized something: Yan Xueyi seemed to really hate Su Liuyun.
However, Peach Blossom Cove had already arrived.
✦ ─ ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ ─ ✦
She flipped into the courtyard, avoided a patrol of cultivators, found a concealed corner, and deftly took out the soporific incense. White smoke drifted in, and very soon, after several heavy muffled thuds from inside the room, everything fell into silence.
After waiting a little longer, Chao Jinsui slipped into the house.
In the main courtyard of Peach Blossom Cove, the lamplight flickered, extremely still and quiet. The disciples guarding the door had all collapsed onto the ground.
She quickly set up a barrier.
In the inner chamber, sure enough, only Su Baiyin and Su Liuyun were there.
Su Baiyin had collapsed over the table.
Without any effort, she arrived at Su Liuyun’s bedside. The dagger flashed, and just as it was about to plunge down—
In the next instant, the person on the bed suddenly opened his eyes.
Su Liuyun tilted his head, and the dagger went off course.
The soporific incense that Elder Bai had boasted could drug ten Nascent Soul cultivators didn’t even last a quarter of an hour in front of the Child of Fortune.
At the critical moment, Su Liuyun pulled a cord. The bell on the bed rang out, waking Su Baiyin, who had been drugged unconscious.
The next second, a sword stabbed in from the side!
—Well then, at the crucial moment, someone always comes to the rescue.
Chao Jinsui had no choice but to put away her dagger and deal with Su Baiyin first.
But the Su family quickly learned just how terrifying it was to let a Golden Core cultivator come to Kunlun.
In just two or three exchanges, Su Baiyin was steadily forced back in defeat.
But he did not force the fight. Knowing he was no match for Chao Jinsui, he shouted, “Wake up at once!”
Chao Jinsui thought—just as expected, the soporific incense wasn’t reliable. Good thing she had set up a barrier.
With the barrier outside, the sound could not get out at all.
Very quickly, Su Baiyin realized this as well. His expression changed drastically, and the next second, he was about to crush a communication talisman—
But a mass of black qi suddenly crushed his wrist.
The tail of a giant snake swept out, flinging Su Baiyin away in a single strike. He slammed heavily into the wall and fainted.
Chao Jinsui put away her dagger. “Thanks.”
She quickly walked toward Su Liuyun.
At this moment, Su Liuyun could not move at all. Struggling, he spoke, “Young Sect Master, did you come because of the matter of bone replacement? This matter is not beyond negotiation!”
He said urgently, “I will send a message home right now—don’t make a move against my uncle!”
Chao Jinsui’s expression turned strange. “You think I came to negotiate with you about bone replacement?”
She walked up to him.
The pressure of a Nascent Soul cultivator made his chest ache violently, and he nearly spat out a mouthful of blood.
“I came to take your life!”
In a flash of lightning, a faint golden vajra shield suddenly sprang out around Su Liuyun.
Chao Jinsui: …
Now that demon should finally believe this is a coincidence, right?
Sure enough, she felt the demon’s gaze become very strange.
Chao Jinsui examined the protective treasure. Truly a very useful turtle shell.
But brute force overcomes all techniques. She gathered spiritual energy at the tip of her dagger, concentrating the full power of a Nascent Soul cultivator into one strike and smashing it against the golden light. The rebound made her throat turn sweet, but she endured it.
Sweat appeared on her temples, yet her hand was extremely steady. Accompanied by a crack, she actually pried open a gap in it!
Su Liuyun looked at her in disbelief, realizing her determination to kill him—
“Other than that time with the drug, I believe I have never done anything to wrong you!”
“Don’t you remember? Back then, when you entered that place, it was I who saved you and brought you back!”
“That grasshopper… don’t you remember it!”
Su Liuyun stretched out his hand. In front of her was a grasshopper.
When she saw that thing, she suddenly froze.
In a flash, she realized something.
From the moment she stepped in here, she had noticed that the Peach Blossom Cove where Su Liuyun lived—there was not a single place that was not exquisite, not a single place that was not beautiful.
He had never suffered hardship. The Su family had all kinds of protective treasures. A noble young master raised from piles of gold and jade, how could he fold a grasshopper out of grass?
A person like that wouldn’t even give away a cheap magical artifact!
The moment Su Liuyun took out the grasshopper, he suddenly felt the demonic qi in the room surge violently. The powerful pressure almost shattered his body, and a feeling as if death itself were staring at him welled up in his heart.
Su Liuyun’s gaze suddenly shot toward behind Chao Jinsui—
Behind her, the figure of a handsome demon gradually appeared.
A pair of broken demonic horns grew from the top of his head, like an evil fiend crawling out of the Nine Nether Hell.
He had seen the Lord of the Demon Realm more than once, and each time had felt as if he had fallen into an abyss.
But at this moment, he suddenly remembered when he had first met Yan Xueyi.
That was a very, very long time ago.
That handsome yet mad face gradually overlapped with the appearance of a young demon boy.
Su Liuyun’s eyes widened—
No wonder… no wonder!
But he would never react to anything again. All his shock and unwillingness froze upon his face.
Yet the one who struck was not Yan Xueyi.
It was Chao Jinsui.
This time, she left him no room at all.
His heart was pierced through, and his already fragile body was shattered by the surging sword qi.
Even if there were heavenly treasures or a living Medicine God, this body could no longer be saved!
However, after killing him, Chao Jinsui let go, looking as though her soul had left her body.
She saw the fear on Su Liuyun’s face.
—Not him, not Su Liuyun, that coward who clung to life.
How could someone like that risk his life to save her?
Back then, his cultivation had only been at the Foundation Establishment stage—how could he possibly have brought her out unscathed from among ten thousand demons?
She had long harbored doubts, but at the time, apart from Su Liuyun whom she saw when she opened her eyes, she had seen no one else.
No… in the Demon Realm, there were naturally demons.
For a moment, the surroundings fell into dead silence.
The young man formed from black qi looked at her dazed expression, and his face suddenly darkened.
Was this regret?
He turned his gaze away, his sinister yet beautiful danfeng eyes looking toward Chao Jinsui, a mocking smile lingering at the corner of his lips.
A dense, violent aura enveloped him. His long hair stirred without wind, and killing intent suddenly surged.
There was also a heavy, barely perceptible hatred, and a gnashing grief.
But he forcibly restrained his gaze from falling on the girl. On his long fingers, a mass of black, flickering flame rose up.
The ghostly, eerie flame descended onto Su Liuyun’s corpse.
His face expressionless, “If not for my flames, his divine soul couldn’t be burned clean.”
“I heard that a divine soul burned by karmic fire, after death, must descend to the Nine Nether Hell, to be scorched every day.”
Chao Jinsui came back to her senses and immediately grabbed his hand.
“Yan Xueyi!”
“I don’t regret it. You can’t make a move here—if any demonic qi remains, do you want to start a war with the cultivation world right now?”
The corner of his lips curled cruelly as he lifted his danfeng eyes to look at her.
“It won’t implicate you, Young Sect Master.”
“After all, when demons kill, what reason do they need?”
—His state was wrong. Demonic qi overflowed from him. In those beautiful danfeng eyes was a hollow darkness, even his pupils nearly gone, gradually leaving only a chilling, endless black.
She suddenly said: “Yan Xueyi.”
He turned his head. She spoke softly, “My hand hurts.”
Such a gentle sentence, yet like a beast tamer’s command, a password to unlock a door. The moment it left her lips, it miraculously soothed this vicious hound teetering on the brink of madness.
The killing intent stalled. He came back to himself and lowered his head to look—
Her hand was slender, pale, and long. Even though she bore the injuries of sword training, they were not obvious—like fine jade, only a faint layer of callus from practice.
But this demon’s hand was very rough, covered in scars. After all, he had struggled through the Demon Realm for many years—how could he compare to the pampered Young Sect Master of the cultivation world?
Those jade-like hands were now reddened from his grip.
The demon unconsciously loosened his hold.
Yet those slender, pale hands grasped him in return.
Soft, warm.
The room fell silent.
She took his hand. The mass of black ghostly fire at his fingertips slowly turned white, the demonic qi purified beneath her touch.
Though he could have easily pulled away, his whole body stiffened, and he did not move.
Gradually, his entire body also quieted down. The killing intent receded like a retreating tide, and the black mist in his pitch-dark pupils slowly dispersed.
Su Liuyun’s remaining divine soul and his corpse were together burned inch by inch into ashes by the purified flame.
In the room, there was only the crackling sound. Her fingers never withdrew from his palm.
She said to him, “Yan Xueyi, don’t overthink it. I hate Su Liuyun, I wish he would die completely and cleanly.”
“I just…”
“Want to figure some things out.”
She picked up the withered yellow grasshopper from the ground.
As if through those dried blades of grass, she saw the young demon boy from years ago—
The boy, with two broken demonic horns atop his head, leaned his overly handsome face close with a grin and asked her, “What’s so good about that pretty boy? Come back to the Demon Realm with me, how about it?”
