Cut Down

To say Bai Yujing felt like he’d been struck by a bolt from the blue would be an understatement. All his previous melancholy and zen-like acceptance vanished in an instant, replaced by an overwhelming wave of humiliation and indignant fury.

On the outside, the white snake—adorned in its red silk—looked up with a docile, innocent face. On the inside, however, his mind was a chaotic mess of shock.

—Why the hell is Xuan Lie here?!

He was just a “Sky-Reaching hatchling” in a tiny minor realm; how could it possibly warrant the personal arrival of someone of his stature? Did the venerable Xuantian Immortal, the leader of the Righteous Path, truly have nothing better to do with his time?

Amidst his utter disbelief, a subtle thread of resentment surfaced through Bai Yujing’s embarrassment. If this man was so bored, why hadn’t he tried to stop Qingyu? She was a girl he had watched grow up; he knew there was something suspicious about the “Ascension,” so why hadn’t he lifted a finger to interfere before she went through with it?

Old grudges and new humiliations intertwined, nearly incinerating Bai Yujing’s sanity. This was a disaster. This “Stone” would probably mock him for this for the next hundred years… it would be better to just self-destruct and be done with it!

For a split second, Bai Yujing forgot his days of patient endurance; he forgot the strange anomalies surrounding Shen Fenglin. His mind held only one thought: taking the man in front of him down to the grave. Yes, he’d self-destruct, fake his death, and vanish. That way, no one in the world would ever know he’d raised another ungrateful wolf, and no one would ever be able to laugh at him for it.

However, just as he was about to break his restraints in a moment of madness, a subtle sense of clarity rose from his abdomen. Like a crisp autumn breeze, it swept through his feverish mind.

…Wait.

Bai Yujing suddenly remembered that he had only revealed his true form to Xuan Lie once—back when he had been nursing a grudge and purposefully snuck into the man’s bathing palace to bite him. To avoid looking weak, he had purposefully transformed into a gargantuan, ancient Sky-Reaching Serpent; back then, a single one of his scales was as large as that “Stupid Stone’s” head.

Both of them had been at the Tribulation Transcendence stage at the time, and since Xuan Lie had been in the middle of tempering his body in the Purgatory Pool, there was no way he could have seen through the disguise. Moreover, after seeing a giant python that blotted out the sun with eyes like stars, Xuan Lie was probably scared witless by his “majestic” true form. So…

Just as Bai Yujing was cautiously curling his tail-tip, meticulously calculating the odds of being recognized, Xuan Lie suddenly reached into the cage and thrust his hand directly in front of the snake.

“…?”

Man and snake stared at each other for three seconds. Xuan Lie seemed to lose his patience. With a cold face and a completely rude manner—one entirely unbecoming of an Immortal Venerable—he grabbed Bai Yujing by the tail and yanked the little snake out of the cage.

“…!”

…You lewd bastard! Did no one ever teach you that you can’t just grab a snake demon’s tail?!

Bai Yujing was both humiliated and enraged, cursing Xuan Lie up and down in his heart. On the outside, however, fearing his noble head might smack against the cage door, he hurriedly lowered his head and coiled himself around the man’s wrist.

Shen Fenglin and his followers were paralyzed by the sudden turn of events, unsure what this Immortal from the Upper Realm was planning.

Bai Yujing tilted his head up to glare at Xuan Lie. Those eyes, so intimately familiar to him, were looking back coldly, devoid of any emotion. Seeing that high-and-mighty, detached expression made Bai Yujing’s blood boil; he desperately wanted to sink his fangs into the man.

The next second, Xuan Lie spoke. “Golden Core stage?”

…This dog didn’t recognize me.

Bai Yujing knew Xuan Lie’s temperament well. If the “Stupid Stone” had recognized him, that would definitely not have been the first question out of his mouth.

At this realization, Bai Yujing instantly relaxed, his tensed head drooping slightly. From an outsider’s perspective, the young serpent seemed to have found a protector, obediently circling the man’s wrist with its tail and lowering its head in silent admission to the question.

The vibrant red silk around the white snake’s neck brushed against Xuan Lie’s wrist, adding a splash of startling color to his austere sleeves.

“…”

In a fleeting moment unnoticed by anyone, Xuan Lie’s breathing hitched almost imperceptibly, though he recovered instantly.

According to the ceremony’s protocol, the next step after removing the demon from the cage was to extract the core and strip the scales in the center of the platform.

Su Jiu-shao swallowed hard, her spiritual energy fluttering with nerves. Her words came out faster than intended: “We humbly invite the Immortal Venerable to ascend the altar and claim the Core—”

Shen Fenglin seemed to catch the tremor in her voice, casting an unreadable glance toward her. Su Jiu-shao’s heart nearly stopped.

…The hounds are cooked once the rabbits are caught. After this ceremony, would it be her turn?

Just as she was losing her composure, her spiritual energy nearly spiraling out of control, Shen Fenglin’s gaze snapped away. Su Jiu-shao didn’t have time to process it; she simply followed his gaze with a stiff, instinctive turn of her head.

She saw Xuan Lie holding the little snake, turning to walk toward the distant North Star seat—completely ignoring the ceremonial protocol.

Upon seeing Xuan Lie’s intent, Shen Fenglin’s face changed instantly. The words escaped his lips before he could stop them: “—Immortal Venerable, please wait!”

Xuan Lie paused. He actually stopped, turning his head to look back at him with a chilling gaze.

At such close range, the pressure of a Tribulation Transcendence expert—which far exceeded the capacity of a minor realm—felt like a physical weight, nearly crushing the breath out of Shen Fenglin. But whether it was Xuan Lie’s pause that gave him confidence or some other hidden trump card, Shen Fenglin forced his nearly-bursting dantian to hold on. He squeezed the words out through his teeth:

“Perhaps Sect Leader Jinyu miscommunicated my intentions.”

“What this junior wished to offer was merely the scales and the demon core. I ask that after the Immortal Venerable has performed the extraction—”

“He returns my beloved pet to me.”

The moment the words left his mouth, the entire Celestial Cloud Platform fell into a deathly silence. Not a sound could be heard. Jinyu, the man who had been called out by name, stared at Shen Fenglin in sheer, dumbfounded shock.

Ten full breaths passed before the crowd began to recover from the shock. Shen Fenglin had organized this massive ceremony, and an Immortal Venerable had graced him with his presence—instead of being overwhelmed with gratitude, he actually had the audacity to try and snatch the snake back from the Immortal’s hands!

Is he insane?

The thought screamed in everyone’s mind, but no one dared to speak. In this suffocating atmosphere, Xuan Lie finally turned his body fully around.

He first looked coldly at the white snake on his wrist, then repeated the words one by one: “Beloved… pet?”

…Beloved pet my ass!

Bai Yujing was stunned for a moment before exploding in rage. He had been a spectator until now, amused by Shen Fenglin’s suicidal bravery in trying to rob a cold-faced lunatic like Xuan Lie. But hearing Xuan Lie’s question made him realize that he had just been called a “pet” in front of his greatest rival. His humiliation turned into fury so sharp that even his reverse scales began to prickle.

What kind of trash is Shen Fenglin to call this Seat his pet? And to say such nonsense in front of Xuan Lie… it’s a total disgrace!

Bai Yujing was just about to lash out when a familiar, massive, and murderous spiritual power suddenly exploded, instantly covering the entire altar.

Shen Fenglin’s pupils shrank. He instinctively tried to circulate his spiritual energy, but it was already too late. The surging aura froze his five senses in an instant. The world lost its color. Amidst a deafening ringing in his ears, Shen Fenglin even thought he heard the sound of his own dantian turning to ice.

In that flash of lightning, within the “World of Heaven and Earth” that Xuan Lie had unfurled, Bai Yujing saw the blue light standing in front of Shen Fenglin. It looked like a curtain of water, with dense, strange characters scrolling across it.

[WARNING! WARNING! INITIATING EMERGENCY #*% FUNCTION. REQUESTING HO— &#—]

It was that strange voice again, but this time it sounded broken. It cut off abruptly before finishing the word “Host.”

As the voice vanished, the “water curtain” in front of Shen Fenglin was ruthlessly crushed by the vast spiritual energy. A world-consuming chill swept in.

Amidst the vast “snowstorm,” Shen Fenglin looked up in extreme terror and saw a speck of horrifying dark red. The eerie red gradually spread across the white sky, eventually covering the entire firmament like a massive, ominous blood moon descending upon the world.

You’ve got to be kidding me… how could a Righteous Immortal Venerable have a ‘Domain’ like this?!

Shen Fenglin’s eyes nearly burst from their sockets. Despair took physical form, yet his body remained paralyzed under the crushing weight of the pressure. Why… why was everything going according to the “System’s” guide, only to meet such a disastrous end here?!

…Wait!

A spark of hope flashed through Shen Fenglin’s mind, and his heart hammered against his ribs again. Right, I still have Master…

His thoughts were entirely jumbled by the extreme crisis. He seemed to have forgotten that his so-called “Master” was the very person he had handed over with his own two hands just moments ago.

Bai Yujing would never leave me to die!

The genius youth, with his distorted face and bloodshot eyes, had never been this pathetic. He couldn’t make a sound; he could only scream in his mind like a man clutching a life-raft, praying that—just like every time before—that person would float out of the celestial flask, scold him for being useless, and then swiftly save the day.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans.

Shen Fenglin used the last of his strength to look up with desperate hope. Then, every plea for help died in his heart.

Under the intersection of the blood moon and the red silk, the white snake remained coiled around the executioner’s wrist. It looked down at him with an indifference so cold it was as if it were looking at a falling lump of meat.

That was the last image imprinted on Shen Fenglin’s mind before his dantian shattered.

The confusion and panic of being abandoned didn’t even have time to surface before his Nascent Soul—which was trying to flee by instinct—was wrapped in an eerie blood-shroud along with his dantian, and then crushed.

CRACK—

The sound of a Nascent Soul dantian breaking wasn’t particularly crisp, but it was somewhat pleasant to the ear. It turned out that a “favored child of heaven” who reached the Nascent Soul stage at eighteen didn’t necessarily die a significant death. It turned out that Shen Fenglin’s life, much like any character he had ever controlled on a screen, could be as light as a feather.

From the moment Xuan Lie acted to the moment Shen Fenglin fell from the Celestial Cloud Platform, everything happened in the blink of an eye. Aside from Bai Yujing, no one saw the true nature of what happened. Even Su Jiu-shao, who was closest, and Jinyu in the distance couldn’t react in time. By the time they regained their senses, the dust had settled.

From that moment on, Shen Fenglin no longer existed on the Celestial Cloud Platform.

The entire venue was silent, but countless chaotic divine senses exploded like a swarm of terrified insects. Many cultivators had assumed that even for a Great Realm Immortal, Xuan Lie’s power would be limited by the minor realm’s spiritual cap. They hadn’t expected a Tribulation Transcendence powerhouse to crush a Nascent Soul expert as easily as squashing an ant.

Fear spread like a ghostly mist. Publicly, everyone—including Shen Fenglin’s disciples—stood frozen in place, trembling. No one dared to move.

Bai Yujing had been enjoying the look of shock and daze on the faces of Shen Fenglin’s followers, but a sudden anomaly in his abdomen made him stiffen. The entire snake began to tremble, curling into a ball.

What’s happening… my stomach feels so strange…

Now that Shen Fenglin was completely gone, the strange golden light inside Bai Yujing’s belly seemed to finally have room to breathe, suddenly becoming restless. It wasn’t pain that he felt, but an indescribable ache—a mixture of swelling and numbness.

“…!”

Bai Yujing’s pupils constricted. He held on for less than half a second before the numbness overwhelmed him. He fell from Xuan Lie’s hand, crashing back onto the gold cage. The entire snake was so weak he nearly collapsed; his snow-white belly was pressed against the hollowed-out patterns of the cage, and he couldn’t even keep his tail up. It hung pitifully over the edge.

However, the mysterious sensation vanished as quickly as it had arrived. As it faded, a warm, cozy heat spread from his belly.

Hiss… that feels good…

The sharp contrast made the current comfort feel heavenly. Bai Yujing even let out a small shake of his head.

However, when he slowly opened his eyes and saw what was happening, he froze.

His snake belly, which had been pressed against the cage, had been flipped over at some point. He was currently lying on his back on top of the cage, belly exposed.

A pair of eyes stared at him from inches away. Those eyes were colder than Bai Yujing remembered—as if they had been soaked in a soul-deep hatred for ten thousand years until only darkness remained.

Yet, the owner of those eyes was currently cradling his soft snake tail. In front of everyone, the man was slowly using his fingers to press and massage the snake’s still-twitching belly.

“…” “…!?”

—Where the hell is this shameless rogue touching?!

Bai Yujing was utterly stunned.

Meeting the white snake’s shocked gaze, Xuan Lie knew he had recovered, but he didn’t withdraw his hand. Instead, he opened his palm in front of the young serpent.

The lingering, suggestive moisture on the man’s fingertips made Bai Yujing daze. Before his jumbled brain could figure out what that was, Xuan Lie gave a cold, undeniable command:

“Coil up.”