"Go, clean up this stone house. We will rest and reorganize here tonight."
Forced to come to this godforsaken, desolate village with Yingshi and the other, Li Li could no longer tolerate the servant-like orders ringing in his ears. He finally exploded in anger, "Are you cultivators or bandits? Why should I do these things? Aren't you afraid of damaging your Dao heart by capturing a pure and innocent little demon like me?"
"You fox demon, stepping into the mortal world with ill intentions, and you still think you're in the right? Don't think I don't know you came for Princess Jiaping's seven-aperture exquisite heart!" Yingshi glared at him. "You want to kill people and devour their hearts, how does that count as pure and innocent?"
Li Li was stunned for a moment, quickly controlled his expression, and retorted, "I, I did not! I just came to learn how to be human. Stop judging a fox demon's belly with a cultivator's heart!"
"Whether you did or not, you are under our control now, so you have to listen to us." Yingshi imitated his behavior towards the male lead in the original book, instructing, "If there is no rag, use your tail to sweep the dust, do you hear me!"
"I didn't hear you!" Li Li was tough with his words, but his hands had to start sweeping the cobwebs under the beams.
He was tied with an Immortal-Binding Rope, and there was demonic energy glaring at him from the side, so he could only endure the humiliation for now.
It didn't matter, anyway, he had already planned his revenge, just waiting for the night to completely fall.
At that time, he would increase the dose of the fox poison and release it in multiples. Even if an overdose damaged his own essence blood, he must poison them until they fainted!
Seeing Li Li compromise and start cleaning, Yingshi no longer supervised him, but looked around Fengmo Village with some seriousness.
Honestly, she regretted her decision a bit.
This village was simply a filming location for a Chinese horror movie!
In the twilight, the empty houses looked like standing tombstones. The traces left by the tragic massacre eleven years ago had not completely disappeared.
The stone house they were staying in now was the one with the least residual bloodstains.
Every house in the village was a real haunted house. Staying for one night was fine, but if they had to stay for ten or twenty days, it would be hard to make do like this.
Starting tomorrow, they still had to buy some building materials and build a house themselves...
Yingshi silently planned the blueprint. Turning her head, she saw Shuangjian staring blankly in a certain direction of the village.
"Shuangjian, are you okay?" She leaned closer and asked softly, "Is it because the memories belonging to the original male lead were activated just like in the original text after coming here, making some bloody scenes appear in your mind?"
"...No, I am not unwell. I was just thinking about whether to use stone or wood for building the house," Shuangjian said in a low voice.
"Either is fine, it's just a temporary residence. Whatever is convenient. Anyway, no matter how beautifully it's built, it will be destroyed by the Netherworld Demon Lord who will come killing his way over soon."
Yingshi, who had relaxed for a while, became tense again at this thought. She muttered with some gravity, "This final boss is indeed brutal, I have to start cramming hard tonight..."
...
Night fell.
Li Li, who had been working all evening, was tied to the stone pillar outside the door by the Immortal-Binding Rope.
He watched the pale moon in the sky rise to its highest point, and the corners of his resentfully pursed lips finally relaxed a little, turning into an ill-intentioned smile.
Three fluffy big tails quietly emerged from under his robes. They swayed left and right, twisting and turning, until a corner of the chains on his body was loosened.
Li Li gently lowered his body, and his whole person broke free from the restraints.
Looking at the two rooms on the left and right lit by illumination talismans, his eyes blazed. Smiling, he bit his fingertip and continuously blew the blood beads seeping from his finger into the air.
"..."
Halfway through blowing, he suddenly frowned and stopped, looking around.
Something was wrong.
A very strange feeling, as if his every move was still being watched by someone.
Could his escape have been discovered? ... It shouldn't be!
Even if it was discovered, at this moment he had already spread the fox poison, and with the blessing of the moonlight, it should have at least made those two living people plus a pig fall into unconsciousness.
Li Li stood cautiously in place without moving, until a sudden night wind blew out the two illumination talismans inside the stone house, and he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief—it seemed those two really had fallen asleep, otherwise they would definitely have reignited the talismans.
He lightened his footsteps and walked straight towards the room on the left.
That was Bodhi Heart's room.
Li Li stood in front of the door, raised his hand and knocked on the door, deliberately lowering his voice, carrying a bit of familiar gentleness: "Yingshi, wake up, it's me."
"...Shuangjian?"
The young girl's voice came through the door panel, indeed carrying a bit of sleepiness.
If he hadn't spoken to wake her, she wouldn't have woken up.
His first layer of fox poison was hypnosis, the second layer...
The blood beads from his fingertips were once again sent into the room along the cracks in the floor. Li Li's eyes flickered, and he took the opportunity to say: "It's me. The aura here is mixed. You forced yourself into meditation just now, which easily causes meridian disorder..."
When he said this, his speaking speed was not fast, and his tone was also very restrained, trying hard to replicate word by word the speaking style of that demon cultivator in his impression.
"If you feel unwell, don't force it." He paused, and said softly, "Why don't you let me in and help you..."
The inside of the door was quiet for a moment.
Yingshi, who was leaning against the wall drowsily, vaguely felt an inexplicable dry heat rising from her lower abdomen.
Cultivation was indeed an annoying thing. In order to stay focused, she deliberately separated into two rooms with Shuangjian, meditating on her own and running her mental cultivation method to stimulate her spiritual veins. As a result, she didn't know when she actually started dozing off... It was really too outrageous!
Now Shuangjian cared about her situation and specially came to find her...
Yingshi tugged at her collar, feeling a bit of joy in her heart. Although she felt that the heat clinging to her body couldn't be waved away, it didn't seem too uncomfortable, it just gave her a strange palpitation.
Blushing, she was about to rub over to open the door, but she didn't know that separated by a door, an extremely bloody scene was playing out outside—
Li Li stood openly outside the door, still racking his brains to think of words more like that demon cultivator, completely unaware that an extremely cold killing intent was falling from behind him without warning.
He didn't even have time to turn his head.
No angry shouts, no questioning, no exposure, only a ghost mist piercing his chest and tearing his abdomen, cleanly ending his life, instantly plundering his consciousness, and shattering the deception he hadn't had time to carry on.
Before the smell of blood could spread, it was blown away by the night wind.
The moment the door opened, Shuangjian stood in place, kicking away a severed, bloodstained fox tail that was melting by the door.
"..."
He pursed his lips, a little annoyed.
Originally, he had planned to let this fox demon go.
Because he needed him to find the Demon Lord's severed arm buried underground.
Out of concern, Yingshi hoped that he would absorb the demonic energy in that severed arm.
He indeed needed to fill up with more demonic energy in order to have more certainty in fighting against that person at the critical moment.
But he didn't want to absorb the severed arm; everything belonging to that person repulsed him. Moreover, he had other methods to guide the ghost mist, only he couldn't reveal them to Yingshi—he could go to the Burning Heaven Scorched Earth and devour other demons.
Most importantly, he did not want to reject Yingshi's good intentions.
Therefore, compared to them actually digging three feet into the ground to find the Demon Lord's severed arm, or failing to find it until the very end and having to face Yingshi's disappointed expression... it would be better to let that fox demon go. He would certainly be bewitched by the severed hand just like in his previous two lives, attach it to his body, and thereby gain the ability to tear open the entrance to the Demon Realm.
Then, after Shuangjian completely dealt with that fox demon in Chunri, he could enter the Nether Realm from the Demon Realm.
—The plan was perfect and intricately linked; he only needed to go easy and let this demon think he had successfully escaped for a night.
But he had underestimated this demon's stupidity, and even more so, he underestimated his covetous desires toward Yingshi.
Both of these were unforgivable and punishable by death. He had no choice but to pass judgment and send him to his death.
Then, the door opened.
Thus, Shuangjian once again turned from the judge to the judged. He stood stiffly outside the door, unable to move his feet.
Because Yingshi said with immense reliance, "Shuangjian, then come in quickly. I thought I could focus if I was alone, but my mind actually got even groggier..."
—Yingshi mistakenly thought that the person standing outside her door right now was the "Han Shuangjian" who had coaxed her into opening the door a second ago.
"..."
Shuangjian's mind went somewhat numb.
He could only recall the scene of Li Li's fingertip blood flying in the air when he killed him, and from that, he thought of a concept—fox poison, similar to the "Drunk Life, Dream Death" wine that wouldn't cause amnesia.
A fox demon would spread a large amount of fox poison at the moment of extracting a heart, keeping the target in extreme pleasure until death, and then waking them up in the final second of death to experience immense pain, tempering their hearts to add a richer flavor.
At other times, a small amount of fox poison served to "spice things up."
On one hand, inhaling an appropriate amount would make a person's mind groggy, unable to distinguish many things—Li Li wanted to use this to confuse Yingshi into mistaking his identity.
On the other hand... he refused to consider that aspect.
Shuangjian's expression turned slightly cold as he told Yingshi, "I won't come in, Yingshi. You might feel a bit unwell tonight, but if you just sleep for a few hours, you will get better. I will guard you right outside the door."
"...Why?" Yingshi didn't expect the person who said he would accompany her a second ago to suddenly change his tune. It couldn't be that she opened the door a bit too slowly, making Shuangjian feel sensitive and suspect that she didn't want to be disturbed, right? After all, cultivating in separate rooms was her idea.
"You can guard me inside the room too!" Yingshi naturally reached out to pull his arm. "There isn't even a place to sit outside. If we are together, I can ask you if I run into any problems. Just now, halfway through circulating my spiritual energy, I felt hot all over. I don't know if it has anything to do with this environment..."
Shuangjian, who had always been completely obedient to her words and actions, did not yield to her pull and come in this time.
Instead, he grabbed her wrist.
"..."
Yingshi looked at him blankly.
After opening the door, her senses seemed to have become unusually sharp.
Shuangjian's breath, voice, and even the temperature of his fingertips pressing against her wrist bone at this moment were infinitely magnified.
And all of this was precisely proving Shuangjian's words—
He said, "Yingshi, you have been poisoned by fox poison."
...Fox poison?
The original book had written about fox poison.
Like Xu Yingshi's anklet, Bai Fangsui's thousand-year cold jade, and Qiaoyuan's blood pact, it was one of the settings Jing Fengliu handed out to the female supporting characters one by one to make the romantic scenes more exciting and give the readers more room for imagination.
Even though these settings exclusively made for ambiguous romance never managed to play their intended roles every time, they would still pop up every now and then to assert their presence.
In the original book, the fox demon later tried to devour Princess Jiaping's heart several times in the Demon Realm and used fox poison on her for this purpose. However, just as he was about to strike, he was interrupted and lured away by the male lead's schemes.
Poisoned by the fox poison, the Princess then asked the male lead for help, saying she felt unwell. But this time, much to the readers' fury, the male lead chose to evacuate at top speed, running away first and leaving the Princess to endure it all alone.
Judging from the description in the original text, the fox poison was likely some kind of indescribable substance that made a person's body more sensitive.
Unlike "Drunk Life, Dream Death", which only numbed a person's spirit, made them lose their senses, and purely pursue pleasure. For those who loved sleeping, drinking a few mouthfuls just meant getting a good, refreshing sleep and waking up to forget their troubles. It could be said to contain a hidden meaning of care and blessing, otherwise it wouldn't have been chosen as the base for the daughter's wedding wine.
But fox poison was different.
It was clearly an advanced illegal drug repackaged under a different name!
Once the first stage was activated, it manifested as a knockout drop; after the second stage was triggered, it would act like an aphrodisiac.
Yingshi's expression became dazed, her face turning red and white alternately.
In her daze, she heard Shuangjian point out again, "Just now, the one speaking outside your door was the fox demon disguised as me."
As he spoke, he had already let go of the hand holding her wrist. He seemed to say a few more things after that, expressing guilt and comfort. In any case, his expression was heavy, and he kept his eyes lowered, barely looking at her.
The content of his words carelessly went in one of Yingshi's ears and out the other, because she couldn't help but associate it with the plot in the original text. The Princess, suffering from the fox poison, asked the male lead for help but was left all alone... Just now, Shuangjian also seemed to have said something like "you will be fine after sleeping it off"—of course, the original text was exactly like that. The Princess endured it forcefully and was perfectly fine afterward. How could a so-called aphrodisiac be that hard to cure? It wasn't like you'd die if you didn't do it. Couldn't it just be understood as a slightly stronger hormonal change?
However, looking at Shuangjian, who took a step back and wanted to close the door, Yingshi couldn't help but ask out of nowhere, "But Shuangjian, if I say I feel unwell... will you save me?"
Shuangjian's heart trembled violently. He finally raised his eyes and took his first look at her tonight.
"...Are you already feeling unwell?" he asked in a low voice.
"..." Yingshi blinked her eyes and said slowly, "...I can hold it in."
