January 14th
"...As long as he's okay!"
Yingshi and Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All stared together at the clash between the black energy and the flowing light, watching as it scattered and then condensed again, completely enveloping the flowing light. Finally, they could breathe a sigh of relief.
Heaven knows her legs had gone completely soft; she didn't even dare to imagine what she would do if something happened to Shuangjian!
If it were the original Han Shuangjian, he would have had a special protagonist halo over his head, and indeed no one would need to worry about him, because he had his own "perfect destiny" that he was bound to fulfill.
But now the destiny the author wanted to plan for him was to trap him forever!
This step-father Jing Fengliu is so detestable, ahhh!
If she returned to reality, she would definitely throw rotten eggs at him!
"Ahem... Alright, time is up." Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All waved his sleeve to hide the light screen.
"So fast?" Yingshi non-stop pulled out a small blank card and started drawing and painting again. "Senior Hundred-Thousand, do you want to play Werewolf?"
Right now, she just wanted to use the question exchange method to get Jing Fengliu's mimetic live broadcast, to control Shuangjian's movements in time.
There were still three demon kings left. Although Shuangjian's strength was gradually increasing through continuous absorption, and he should have more and more confidence when facing the demon kings, different demon kings had different mechanics, and "mechanics" were the easiest places for Jing Fengliu to modify.
"Werewolf? Is it a game targeting wolf demons?" Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All's beard twitched. "The former Demon King was of the wolf clan. I advise you to change the name of this game; otherwise, no one will be willing to join your card game."
So the former Demon King was a wolf demon?
Because the book never explicitly wrote about the race of the demon king to whom the spiritual core in Shuangjian's body belonged, only mentioning that he could switch to animal ears and tail forms after becoming a half-demon, Yingshi always thought the demon king's true form was some kind of magical creature.
Then... would Shuangjian's half-demon form have pointy, furry wolf ears and a fluffy wolf tail?
Can... can it be touched?
Would it feel soft to the touch, or would it have a bit of firmness?
Anyway, it must be very warm...?
...Help, quickly stop these inappropriate fantasies!
With a serious face, Yingshi crumpled the paper with the cartoon wolf pattern she had drawn into a ball and started drawing a tiger again.
"Then let's call it Tiger-man." She said, "Get ready to gather people, Senior, we need a twelve-person game."
...
"Bang—"
When the rat demon's cave door was violently broken open, Yingshi was the first person to notice.
Time passed quickly through one board game after another. It was now January 13th, but the flowing light symbolizing the last demon king hadn't extinguished for a long time.
In the end, Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All simply left his light screen suspended in the void permanently, not putting it away.
Yingshi kept staring at the light screen, playing the game absentmindedly, completely unable to sit still. Whenever she opened her mouth, apart from saying "I am a good person," she couldn't say a single nutritious word. She could only act as the judge, mechanically announcing, "It's dark, please all demons close your eyes, next, the tiger-men..."
The door was broken open at that exact moment.
The demons were still obediently closing their eyes. Even if they heard special noises, they didn't open them due to the "game rules," only asking verbally, "What happened?"
"..."
Yingshi looked in shock at the man and woman who broke in, shouting "Wake up!" while patting Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All's hand—Demon cultivators have attacked our home! How can you still be so immersed?!
The features of this man and woman were so distinct that it was hard not to recognize them.
The woman was dressed in purple, with a very graceful figure, and amorous feelings in her eyebrows and eyes. There was a faint purple flower stamen mark on her forehead.
The man's appearance was also extremely outstanding. He wore a black martial arts outfit with a trailing cloak, holding a thick white bone whip while standing beside the woman.
These two were precisely the left and right guardians under the Demon King of Eight Sufferings, as well as the female supporting character codenamed "Evil Demonic Witch" in the original text, Mao Yu, and the second male lead with more screen time than Qin Yuman and Duan Qinghe in the original text, Shang You.
—The main characters who should have been missed by their "level skipping" actually appeared, and in a way that was vastly different from the original text.
Yingshi suddenly had a bad premonition. She subconsciously looked at the light screen monitoring the situation on Shuangjian's side. The black energy and the final flowing light were still in a stalemate; Shuangjian had not yet decided the victor against the Demon King of Eight Sufferings...
"Yo... what are you doing here, a sacrifice?"
Mao Yu obviously didn't expect to see such a weird scene of a group of demons sitting around after breaking through the door. She covered her face and giggled, her eyes flowing, and sneered, "Since when are the sacrifices of the demon realm guided by cultivators?"
The sound of her voice simply made people's bones go soft, and this was also one of her tricks, as if she was spreading bone-softening powder into the air as she breathed.
After hearing her words, the mole brothers with the shallowest cultivation directly had golden stars popping out of their eyes.
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All quickly stood up, his eyebrows raised, and sternly said, "What kind of scoundrels dare to destroy this old man's cave?!"
He intentionally released his pressure, and the aura belonging to a great demon immediately struck out. The other conscious demons in the cave also stood up one after another, vigilantly staring at the intruders.
Shang You's gaze passed over the demons, looking straight at Yingshi, frowning to confirm, "Xu Yingshi?"
"..."
Should she say "as expected"?
They really came for her.
The one Shuangjian was fighting at this moment was exactly the direct boss of these two.
Sending the guardians to the demon realm to find her, was it the intention of the Demon King of Eight Sufferings?
Was it a roundabout method he came up with to deal with Shuangjian?
Yingshi clenched her hands tightly, trying to calmly confront them, "What do you want to do?"
"Under the orders of the Demon King, we are merely inviting Miss Xu to be a guest in the hall. Rest assured, Miss, we won't harm your life; you are an honored guest of the Demon King."
Mao Yu said it lightly, as if she was just inviting someone for a cup of tea.
But it was clear that cultivators could not set foot in the Burning Heaven Scorched Earth. After being eroded by that demonic energy, they would suffer pain worse than death. Those who smoothly entered the demonic path like Qin Yuman were one in ten thousand, and a uniquely blessed "dual cultivator of righteous and evil" like Shuangjian was the only one in the world. Most people would explode and die because they couldn't endure the demonic energy invading their bodies.
"Don't even think about it!" The rabbit demon mustered up the courage to stand in front of Yingshi. Her voice trembled, but she braced herself and said, "Lord Judge is our friend! You are not allowed to take her away!"
"Yes! You are not allowed to take her away!" The mole brothers, who had just recovered from the dizziness, also shouted in unison.
"Oh?" Mao Yu couldn't help but laugh, her face still softly smiling, but the demonic energy at her fingertips suddenly elongated, striking like a poisonous snake towards the little demons standing side by side encouraging each other.
"Smack!"
Yingshi used the Water Bathing Heavenly Brilliance Technique to scatter that wisp of demonic energy symbolizing the start of the battle. In the next second, the bone whip in Shang You's hand swung down towards her—in the original plot, this second male lead was precisely an admirer of the demonic witch.
Yingshi could have dodged this whip, but someone intercepted it faster.
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All, whose beard was trembling with anger, slapped out an energy wave with his withered palm, which collided with the demonic energy swung by the bone whip, emitting a muffled explosive sound.
Energy overflowed, dust rustled down from the cave walls, and the books that the rat demon had finally managed to put back in order fell to the ground once again.
"This is too much! Running wild in my territory, do you think I am just a decoration?!"
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All glared with wide rat eyes. Taking full responsibility, the whole rat stood at the very front of the group, looking completely different from his guilty, evasive self on the day the fox demon invaded. If Yingshi had any mental energy left to spare, she would definitely have been moved by the performance of her old card buddy—but she was already frozen in that moment.
Because she saw the black energy in the light screen disappear.
It did not just dim, scatter, or weaken; it completely and utterly vanished.
Only the solitary, glaring stream of light representing the Demon King of Eight Sufferings remained.
In that instant, Yingshi could no longer feel the power of the colliding demonic and monster energies around her. Her blood flowed backward, her vision went black and white by turns, and the whole world seemed to rapidly fade into a dead, silent gray.
...Did something happen to Shuangjian?
How could something happen to him?
He said he would return before January 14th, so he would definitely do it. Shuangjian was not someone who would break his promise.
Right... Shuangjian would not break his promise. The transmission of this light screen must have lost its effect...
She could not let herself panic. How could the disappearance of the energy mean Shuangjian's death?
She absolutely could not make such a judgment...
Yingshi kept telling herself this in her mind, but her hands and feet were still ice-cold and immobilized. She couldn't even shift her gaze. Even though the light screen had been withdrawn because Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All had retracted his power to face the enemy, she continued to stare at that empty space like a statue.
Shang You glanced faintly in Yingshi's direction, then looked back at Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All, saying indifferently, "Rat, a wise man submits to circumstances. You cannot stop the person the Demon King of Eight Sufferings wants."
A more terrifying demonic aura was slowly released, faintly suppressing Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All's great monster aura.
The monsters with weaker cultivation in the cave immediately turned pale and found it difficult to breathe.
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All was naturally not weak, but Shang You was a ruthless character in the original book who could arm-wrestle with the mid-stage male lead. His strength was absolutely not to be underestimated.
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All gritted his teeth, wanting to clash head-on with him, but a cold hand stopped his wrist.
Yingshi reached out to press down his attack, squeezing out a few words from her throat almost as if sleepwalking: "I will go with them."
"...Are you joking?!" Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All brushed her hand away in astonishment. "You are a cultivator!"
Yingshi knew.
But she had the sword intent of the Nether Demon Lord on her, and beside her was Xiangxiang, who might have been "planted" by Jing Fengliu... She didn't feel that anything would happen to her at all; she was only worried about Shuangjian!
"Shuangjian's energy is gone..." She blinked, her voice trembling with confusion. "I want to go to the Demon King's palace and see..."
Yingshi's words stunned Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All and made Mao Yu and Shang You look sideways slightly.
"Quite a straightforward person," Mao Yu tilted her head. "Then please, Miss Xu."
...
The crossing between the monster and demon realms was not a dock for boats to come and go, but a distorted spatial rift zone that appeared on the surface as a muddy "river".
Crossing this river would lead to the Nether Realm on the "opposite bank".
Under the guidance of Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All, Yingshi had seen this place before. It was said to be the place where the Tree of Blessing appeared.
She had imagined many times the scene of herself trying to penetrate deep into the Tree of Blessing on a full moon night, successfully helping Shuangjian or Xiangxiang obtain the ancient monster essence. But she never thought that she would actually come here in person to "throw her life away" in the Burning Sky Scorched Earth.
Mao Yu led the way in front, Shang You guarded in the back, and Yingshi was in the middle. Xiangxiang also followed at her feet, but the two demon king guardians seemed to have no thoughts about this absolutely unique pig, completely ignoring its presence.
"What are you dawdling for? Hurry up, don't you want to see that person one last time?" Mao Yu urged.
If possible, she might have added more prefixes to her words to make Yingshi feel even more anxious and impatient.
But unfortunately, she had never seen the guy who broke into the Demon King's palace either.
Although the legend of that person had rapidly spread across the Burning Sky Scorched Earth, it was just as outrageous as the legend: he only challenged demon kings, and none of the demon kings who had seen him were still alive.
It was truly unbelievable.
If not for the mismatch in age and moves, all the demons would have suspected that it was the long-missing Nether Demon Lord.
Yingshi didn't need her urging. Since she had decided to risk entering the Nether Realm, she naturally wouldn't dawdle on purpose. No one was more anxious than her.
But the problem was, why did she have a physical sensation of being unable to move her feet?
"No, it's very strange. It feels like there's a unique barrier piled up in front of me!" Yingshi said with difficulty.
She stood by the river but could not step into it as freely as Mao Yu. Not only was there an indescribable sense of obstruction in front of her, but there was also a pulling force behind her, as if something was calling her back—Yingshi turned her head and found that the hem of her clothes was bitten by Xiangxiang.
"Oink." Xiangxiang held her clothes in its mouth and pulled her back. Yingshi was slightly startled, and her first reaction was to pull the hem of her clothes back.
If Xiangxiang was stopping her, it seemed she had to go even more...
"Troublesome..." Shang You frowned from the side.
Holding a bone whip, he swung it fiercely towards the space above the crossing river, and an opening similar to the Gate of the Monster Realm split open there.
In that instant, a complex stench rushed to their faces. It was a foul air mixed with the smells of blood, decay, and burning.
The sky light of the monster realm was forced to break at that spot, and the rift itself looked like a suddenly opened, malicious eye, waiting unblinkingly for Yingshi to step in.
"Go in..." But before Shang You could finish his command, a pair of pitch-black, terrifying giant hands emerged from the torn "eye".
These hands were extremely huge, with each finger resembling a thousand-year-old ancient tree. Yet, such behemoths did not seem clumsy at all; instead, they were so swift that they exceeded the limits of what the human eye could capture, grabbing straight at Yingshi, who was right in front of the rift!
Yingshi had no time to react at all. She only felt a tightness around her body, and she was completely enveloped.
"!!!"
The ones who had time to react were Mao Yu and Shang You on the side.
All the expressions on their faces froze at the same time. Almost simultaneously, they dropped heavily to one knee with a "thud", burying their heads deeply, and performed the most respectful bow of submission towards the rift and the terrifying giant hands.
The aura of the Demon King of Eight Sufferings enveloped the earth. Although they did not know why he would suddenly be so furious and unrestrained, directly crossing the two realms to cause a massive uproar... it was not their place to question.
The two guardians who lowered their heads thus missed the most shocking scene—
The giant demonic hands reaching out from the rift did not crush the young girl they had grasped.
The moment it grabbed its target, its colossal form underwent a drastic change.
The viscous, shadowy substance that formed the giant hand seemed to peel away layer by layer. Its massive silhouette shrank at a visible pace, like a melting black iceberg, until it gradually revealed what had been encased at its very core... a human figure.
He was practically soaked in blood.
The original color of his clothes was completely unrecognizable.
Yet, he slowly took the place of the giant hand.
His posture even mirrored the hand's final movement: one arm reaching forward, steadily and protectively pulling the "captured" girl into a half-embrace against his chest.
"..."
Yingshi stood frozen, her face a mixture of tear tracks and bloodstains.
The blood had been splattered onto her, but the tears had fallen involuntarily the very moment she laid eyes on the person before her.
It was Shuangjian.
At that exact moment, the clock struck midnight.
January 14th had arrived.
