Chapter 103: Falling into the Demonic Path

However, whether the Little Martial Uncle of the Tianji Pavilion was A-Yu was ultimately someone else’s private matter. Even though Bian Chunzhou was quite curious, he still maintained a proper sense of boundaries; after all, he was practically a complete stranger to her.

“Who’s A-Wu? A new friend you met?”

Bian Chunzhou waved his hand. “It’s nothing. Just that woman who was entangled with Zhou Ji when we went to Sifang City last time with Senior Brother Bushi from Kudu Temple.”

Only then did Wen Xu remember. “Oh, it’s her. You have a great memory, Chunzhou.”

…There was really no need to praise him like that. Bian Chunzhou scratched his head. “Let’s go look around up ahead. There’s still a small section of stalls we haven’t checked out yet. I wonder what they’re selling.”

However, he soon found out what they were selling.

Wen Xu was wearing a bamboo hat today. Since it had rained in the morning, his outfit didn’t look out of place. At least it was much less conspicuous than appearing blindfolded. After all… over the past few days, he had become somewhat of a celebrity.

The last time he went out without any disguise, he had been recognized the moment he left the mountain gate. Although being recognized wasn’t a big deal, he really couldn’t be bothered to deal with those envious, scrutinizing, or malicious stares.

“Quick, quick, let’s go.”

Before Wen Xu could react, Chunzhou pulled him away at a brisk pace. Only after they had walked a long distance did their steps gradually slow down. “What’s wrong?”

Bian Chunzhou whispered, “It’s so embarrassing! Oh my god, watching your own Shadow Retention Stone is just… so weird. You have no idea, someone is actually selling copies of the Shadow Retention Stones from when we were in the secret realm! Fifty spirit stones each! He could have just robbed me of my spirit stones directly, but instead, he had to give me a piece of my own dark history!”

Wen Xu fell silent. It took him a long moment to find his voice. “People actually buy that?”

Bian Chunzhou said gloomily, “The ridiculous thing is, it’s selling like hotcakes!” Damn it, there were no portrait rights in the cultivation world. Otherwise, he would have demanded a cut of the profits.

“Perhaps they are just curious about your water and fire spells.” After all, before Chunzhou, the cultivation world had always viewed the Water-Fire Spiritual Root as a trash root.

“Not necessarily. They’re definitely more curious about you.” Bian Chunzhou weighed the loose spirit stones in his hand. “Do you know what they’re saying about you out there right now?”

A once-in-a-century genius cultivator, another peerlessly talented sword cultivator after Sword Venerable Meixi, the genius favored by the Suitian Divine Sword, Yonglu Mountain’s most talented new disciple in a hundred years… and so on and so forth. Bian Chunzhou realized that when it came to flattery, the cultivators of the cultivation world were not a single bit inferior to the sycophants Fei Zhong and You Hun^[1] by King Zhou’s side.

Wen Xu shook his head. “I’m not sure, but none of that is me.”

“Wow, that sounds so cool. Next time, I’m going to repeat that to Chen Zuizui!” Hehe.

Wen Xu couldn’t help but laugh. “He definitely won’t pay attention to you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep pestering him until he has to pay attention to me!”

Wen Xu: …Whatever makes you happy.

**

“That bitch! The Zhou Family raised her for so many years, yet she dares to betray the Zhou Family! A mere mortal woman, how dare she do such a-” Father Zhou slammed his palm onto the tea table in a fit of rage, cracking it instantly.

“Master, please calm down. This matter…”

“Get out, you too!”

The Zhou Family could not afford to offend the Tianji Pavilion. Father Zhou knew this better than anyone. He had originally planned to take things slow, but… that woman actually dared to conspire against them! That bitch Zhao Ruowu had even teamed up with A-Yu, working from both inside and out to target the Zhou Family. Setting A-Yu aside for a moment, the Zhou Family had raised Zhao Ruowu. How dared she! She was just a mortal woman. Did she really think the Tianji Pavilion would protect her forever?

Father Zhou had originally calculated everything perfectly. A great sect with generations of history would surely value its reputation. Even if they despised the Zhou Family, they would not be so cruel as to slaughter them. It was merely a betrayal of affection, which would not threaten their lives. But now, they had been slapped with the crime of stealing a treasure from the Tianji Pavilion, and that vile obstacle Zhou Ji had confessed to it himself. The Zhou Family’s reputation was completely ruined.

The Zhou Family might not collapse overnight, but they could never regain their former glory. Having offended the Tianji Pavilion, even if the pavilion did nothing, there would be plenty of others eager to kick them while they were down.

The Zhou Family was finished.

Zhou Zhongling’s face was ash-gray. With no way to release his pent-up rage, he directed it all at Zhou Ji.

“Your A-Yu isn’t dead. Are you happy now?”

“Too bad she hates you to the core. She would rather pretend to have amnesia than acknowledge you!”

“Do you have any idea what kind of disastrous impact your Shadow Retention Stone recording has had on the Zhou Family? She accused you of stealing the Tianji Pavilion’s treasure and claimed I ordered you to do it. She is going to ruin both of us, father and son!”

Zhou Ji seemed not to hear him. However, if one looked closely at his eyes, his pupils contracted slightly, showing that he did not believe A-Yu could become such a person.

“And that Zhao Ruowu is another ungrateful traitor! I truly regret fathering such a useless piece of trash like you!”

Zhou Zhongling blamed heaven, blamed earth, and blamed everyone but himself. He believed he had exhausted himself for the family, even sacrificing his own interests to support it. In his youth, he had also fancied a female cultivator from the Hehuan Sect, but the family would never allow him to marry a female cultivator. Thus, he married a mortal woman and took many concubines, all to carry on the family line and sire talented offspring.

Zhou Zhongling did not believe he was in the wrong. He had done right by the family, and right by the grandfather who had entrusted the family to him.

“Father, A-Yu… you sent people to kill her, didn’t you?”

Zhou Ji had actually suspected this all along. How could an accident happen so suddenly? A-Yu clearly had the protective talisman he gave her. Even if she fell prey to a demonic beast, it was impossible for there to be… absolutely no trace of the talisman being used.

“What if it was me? What if it wasn’t? The fact is, she isn’t dead.”

In the past, Zhou Ji had felt that his father’s gaze held a faint trace of hatred and jealousy. Later, when he fell in love with A-Yu, his father’s eyes grew even more disgusted. He had thought his father looked at him that way because he had failed to live up to his expectations. But now, he suddenly understood. His father simply did not like him. In fact… he hated him.

“But why?”

“How could you do that! She did nothing wrong!”

Zhou Ji’s eyes were bloodshot. He could not accept this truth. He had thought he could give A-Yu the best possible future, but he never expected… He collapsed limply to the ground. If not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he would have looked exactly like a corpse.

Seeing him like this, Father Zhou felt a sense of satisfaction. However, it was not long before he fell even deeper into madness.

“How dare they! What right do they have! I sacrificed so much for the family, and they actually dare… actually dare to remove me from the registry! On what grounds! The Zhou Family is mine! It belongs to me, Zhou Zhongling!”

Father Zhou had only written to the clan to ask the elders to remove Zhou Ji from the registry. Yet the news he received in return was: “Cowards! Cowardly trash! Do they think that by removing me from the registry, the Zhou Family can truly rest easy? Tianji Pavilion, Tianji Pavilion, what a grand Tianji Pavilion!”

Half a lifetime of scheming had come to nothing. Zhou Zhongling had already fallen into a demonic state. His eyes were blood-red, completely devoid of any human emotion. Right now, he looked more like… a wild beast.

The Five Sects Conference had ended. Yonglu Mountain’s performance this time was neither good nor bad, maintaining their usual standard. Coupled with their Little Martial Uncle showing off a bit, Gu Wufang felt this trip to the Five Sects Conference was a complete success.

“Hey, Old Tang, no need to see us off, really.”

Tang Ji: “…Do you think I actually want to see you off?”

As the two sect masters bid each other farewell without pretense, Wen Xu, standing to the side, suddenly sensed a hint of… a disgusting aura in the wind. If he had to describe it, it was like slop that had been rotting for a long time.

It was sickening.

At the same time, Gu Wufang and Tang Ji both paled. They looked toward the center of the city simultaneously. “Someone has fallen into demonhood.”

When cultivators train, if their Dao Heart is pure and upright, they will naturally enjoy smooth sailing. However, if their Dao Heart loses its balance and is not corrected in time, they will fall into demonhood once their Dao Heart is completely subverted.

Falling into demonhood was entirely different from being a demonic cultivator. Demonic cultivators were, at most, unconventional in their behavior and cultivation methods. A demon, however, possessed no sanity, no concept of good and evil. It was an existence far more evil than even evil cultivators. Evil cultivators at least retained their reason, but a demon possessed only the instincts to feed, plunder, and destroy.

The most troublesome part was that a demon could rapidly increase its cultivation by devouring others. If it could not be destroyed while it was still weak, it would become a catastrophe. Two thousand years ago, a demon lord had emerged who almost destroyed the entire continent.

Sifang City was under the protection of the Suitian Sword Sect. As the sect master, Tang Ji naturally could not shirk his responsibility and immediately dispatched disciples to eliminate the demon.

Wen Xu had, of course, read about the existence of “demonhood” in the continent’s records. Although a cultivator falling into demonhood was terrifying, the probability of it happening was actually extremely low. It could only occur when a cultivator completely abandoned their humanity, harboring not a single shred of positive emotion toward the world.

In other words, a creature that could fall into demonhood could no longer be called human. It was pure, unadulterated evil.

Wen Xu guessed that perhaps someone in the martial arena of Sifang’s outer city had fallen into demonhood. After all, pure evil surely wouldn’t be found among the ordinary people in the main city.

“What happened up ahead? Why does the security on the flying vessel feel so much tighter?”

When Bian Chunzhou saw Wen Xuxu return, he poked his head out to look outside. He felt a sense of dread in his heart, as if something terrible was about to happen.

“Someone in Sifang City has fallen into demonhood.”

“Fallen into demonhood?” Bian Chunzhou gasped in horror. “Did I hear you right? Isn’t the probability of a cultivator falling into demonhood extremely low?” After all, normal people, even evil cultivators who killed and committed crimes, surely had anchors in their Dao Hearts. With an anchor, even if they lost their way, they couldn’t possibly capsize so completely, right?!

Wen Xu shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what the Sect Master and the others said.”

Then it had to be true. Bian Chunzhou was in disbelief. The next second, the flying vessel beneath their feet shook violently. He grabbed Wen Xuxu beside him, barely managing to keep his footing.

Just as he was about to ask what was happening, an even more violent shudder ran through the vessel. Wisps of a sickening aura seeped inside. Bian Chunzhou never got motion sickness on flying vessels, but now he felt a strong urge to vomit.

It smelled awful. What was this…

“Blegh.” Wen Xu was already throwing up.

{T/N: A quick clarification on terminology: The “demon” (魔 – Mo) mentioned in this chapter is completely different from the “demons” (妖 – Yao) seen in previous chapters. Yao refers to Monsters, Beasts, or Spirits (for example, the MC’s Master is a Half-Monster/Dragon). Meanwhile, Mo refers to dark, evil corruption, as seen in this chapter.}