Divine Favor
Unlike the howling gales, flashing lightning, and roaring thunder in the sky, that person's entrance was not thrillingly dramatic; instead, it was silent.
It was unclear from which direction he came. The figure looked like a tall, one-armed mountain apothecary out gathering herbs in this miserable weather, walking with a leisurely pace.
Occasionally, a flash of lightning would suddenly illuminate the world, revealing the man's appearance at that moment. His eyes were strikingly similar to Shuangjian's, both possessing an eye shape so exquisite it bordered on sharp. However, it was undeniable that they harbored an unconcealable sense of age.
The arrogant young swordsman who had once recklessly destroyed divine weapons and left behind his sword intent during the opening of the gates had long since vanished.
Now, there was only the legendary Nether Demon Lord left in the world.
Shuangjian held Yingshi's hand and stood in front of her to shield her, but Yingshi could not help but step half a pace to the side to keep peeking.
At this moment, she surprisingly calmed down.
The chilling cold that had previously enveloped her body faded away in waves as she tried hard to recall the descriptions in the book...
Originally, during this battle on the eighteenth of January, when the Nether Demon Lord made his entrance, he was supposed to say to the male lead: "You should not have been born."
And during the original final showdown, he would also say a sentence to the male lead: "Everything should have ended here long ago."
No matter which time, he always paid absolute attention to his blood-related son, the sole male protagonist of this book.
But now, the Nether Demon Lord's gaze bypassed Shuangjian and locked directly onto Yingshi.
The sounds of the wind and rain seemed to be isolated at that moment.
The sound of that person speaking was indescribable. His tone was strangely peculiar, as if he had forgotten how to use language—perhaps he had not spoken for many years.
He parted his lips, his eyes fixed on Yingshi, and his words carried a sense of judgment: "A soul from another world."
"..."
Yingshi's breath hitched. She looked up in disbelief, meeting the Nether Demon Lord's gaze.
And he continued, "Are you the 'god' who manipulates everything?"
...God?
A soul from another world?
Did the Nether Demon Lord also sense her transmigration into the book?!
He couldn't possibly think she was Jing Fengliu, could he...?
"...You have the wrong person!" Yingshi couldn't help but shout from behind Shuangjian.
She had promised herself not to be afraid, but her voice still sounded quite weak... Who could have thought that the Nether Demon Lord's opening remarks would be like this?
The initially appearing boss did not look as wildly domineering and cool as she had imagined, but his aura was truly extraordinary. Just standing there silently, he exuded an endless sense of oppression—on some level, it could be said that Shuangjian really resembled him.
He seemed completely unconcerned about the ghostly mist that gradually spread to his legs with his appearance. He merely paused for a moment before continuing to walk forward, even wearing a smile on his face.
"Then I have the wrong person," he said nonchalantly.
The Nether Demon Lord continued forward. The ghostly mist intercepting him transformed into countless sharp threads, like ropes, like blades, but mostly like sharp claws. They swarmed overwhelmingly toward the one-armed figure, yet the attacked person did not even adopt a clear defensive posture.
The ghostly mist, capable of instantly strangling cultivators, stopped as if hitting an invisible wall upon touching his surroundings, and then largely melted away like water seeping into sand.
The water did indeed wet the sand and make it heavy, but that was all.
The sand did not collapse.
However, with this attack, the Nether Demon Lord finally shifted his gaze away from Yingshi and looked toward Shuangjian, who should have been the center of his attention in the original text.
He casually raised his remaining hand and loosely clenched his five fingers.
"Bang—"
A muffled sound exploded, and all the ghostly mist that had rushed toward him but proved powerless simultaneously reverted to scattered fog, blown apart by the fierce wind.
Shuangjian's figure paused slightly, and a trickle of fresh blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, but his expression remained unchanged.
"...!"
Yingshi's heart pounded wildly at the glimpse of that bright red from the corner of her eye. Shuangjian had accumulated so much power, yet he was still suppressed so effortlessly?
Perhaps that overnight plan was indeed unfeasible. Now, rather than facing the danger head-on, it would be better to let the Demon Lord stay his hand like in the original text!
She admitted she was feeling timid, afraid that even after absorbing the Eight Demonic Kings and the ancient demonic essence, Shuangjian was still no match for his father.
She wanted to use her words to stall for time, or trigger the sword intent to persuade the Nether Demon Lord to retreat—was that still viable? The villainous boss seemed very different from the original text as well...
But if Jing Fengliu was determined to protect her... she was ultimately safer than Shuangjian, so she had to protect Shuangjian!
"You old widower, what kind of skill is it to come looking for trouble with Shuangjian?"
Yingshi pulled on Shuangjian's hand and stepped half a pace forward, deliberately drawing back the Demon Lord's attention.
She had wanted to complain for a long time: whether Changyi died from difficult childbirth or, as the long reviews speculated, died for the balance of good and evil, it had nothing to do with Shuangjian!
But this mentally unstable deadbeat father, massacring villages, attempting to kill his son, and wanting to destroy the world—why couldn't he realize that the problem lay with him?
"Changyi clearly died because of you!" she scolded. "Why don't you go kill yourself?"
When facing her, the Nether Demon Lord seemed to have endless patience. Hearing this, he kept smiling and smilingly shook his head.
"You are wrong," he said. "Changyi died because of you."
You—he said it looking at Yingshi.
He actually said
CR
Changyi died because of her, a reader who transmigrated into a book?!
Yingshi was truly furious. What the hell did that have to do with her!
The timing of her transmigration was already over a decade after Changyi's death. At most, she had only seen a wisp of Changyi's remnant soul in the Rest Gate!
But before she could snap back, the Nether Demon Lord's next words made her blood run cold.
"You feel it too, don't you?" He looked at Shuangjian, a hint of almost pitiful understanding in his eyes. "That formless thing, entangling you, trapping you, making you hurt, making you crazy, making you... not like yourself. Changyi died because of it... You and I will both die because of it."
"..."
Shuangjian did not speak, his expression incomparably dark and cold.
As for Yingshi, her teeth were chattering at that moment.
She suddenly understood.
The Nether Demon Lord, the most insane boss in the original book, had perhaps realized the existence of the "rules" earlier and more thoroughly than Shuangjian.
But he was not the core of the "Domain."
Did his several attempts to kill Shuangjian really stem from a husband who deeply loved his wife, a hatred born from his paranoid love for Changyi?
Was his staying his hand at the critical moment really due to the restraint of a tiger not eating its cubs?
Even his descent into demonic madness...
His "falling in love" with Changyi—was that "love"?
"...And you, the one chosen by the 'god'." The Nether Demon Lord's gaze remained on Shuangjian, his lips curving. "I have wanted to obliterate you for a long time. But I was trapped here by 'it', immobilized day after day for over a decade... Finally, I have waited for you."
Shuangjian looked directly into his eyes without flinching.
He even curled his lips in response.
That thing he feared, that thing connecting Changyi and the Demon Lord, that thing making them lose themselves...
So it turned out, that was not love.
That was the "setting."
"...Shuangjian!"
Yingshi watched in shock as Shuangjian continued to cough up blood. Clearly, no new attack had landed, yet his injuries seemed to be erupting from within. Just as panic set in, she saw the ghost fog that had previously dissolved begin to reassemble.
Inside Shuangjian's body, the restless and churning forces—demonic power, spiritual energy, and demonic qi—did not attempt to painstakingly merge.
Instead, he completely released his suppression over them, allowing them to clash and collide within his meridians, as if staging a destruction within himself first.
But the end of this destruction was not annihilation.
They intertwined and tore at each other, ultimately condensing into a single sword of energy—since that man excelled with a sword, he would defeat him in this very form.
The moment the sword light formed, the smile on the Nether Demon Lord's face finally faded. He blocked the eerie, intangible energy sword with his single arm crossed in front of him, yet his body still swayed, forcing him half a step back.
The robes on his chest tore open, revealing a moderate wound on the exposed skin.
He looked down at the wound, then looked up at Shuangjian, who had dropped to one knee from the exertion of that full-force strike, seemingly struggling just to stay upright. The trace of pitying comprehension in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold killing intent—yet mingled within this killing intent was a hint of admiration.
Because of this admiration, a reward had to be given.
The next second, the Nether Demon Lord appeared just a few feet in front of Shuangjian, thrusting his single arm straight toward Shuangjian's chest!
The speed of this strike was not absurdly fast, but it was incredibly encompassing, as if millions of his clones were attacking from all directions. No matter how Shuangjian tried to dodge, he would ultimately be impaled.
Shuangjian raised his arm to block. This defense was rather plain, as the majority of the remaining ghost fog had gathered in front of Yingshi to form a shield.
"Crack." Yingshi heard the sound of bones shattering.
But she wasn't even sure which part of Shuangjian was injured, because his entire body was blasted backward by a tremendous force, smashing heavily into the mountain rock. The falling rubble almost buried him.
"Shuangjian... Shuangjian, are you okay?!"
Yingshi scrambled up from the ground, practically on her hands and knees, and stumbled toward Shuangjian. She dug through the rubble with her bare hands, tears instantly falling. "Let's not fight the boss anymore, let's go back, okay? Let's run away!"
"...Don't be afraid."
Shuangjian's voice was low and hoarse, but he still sounded calm, as if everything was still under his control.
But looking at his injuries, how could Yingshi possibly not be afraid?!
"Is this the favor of a 'god'?" the Nether Demon Lord said lightly. "I am happy for you, child."
After speaking, he raised his hand again. A black demonic array, like a vortex, began to emerge at the tip of his index finger.
This time, the array locked onto Yingshi.
An indescribably terrifying pressure crushed down. Before Yingshi could react, a protective sword intent automatically triggered, forming a pale golden barrier in front of her.
However, this protection did not last long. Under the second wave of attacks, it soon emitted an overwhelmed hum, and the golden light rapidly dimmed.
The sword intent had been triggered, yet the Nether Demon Lord did not leave—she should have known earlier, everything had clearly derailed!
But surprisingly, Yingshi did not panic further. She didn't know if it was because extreme fear brings a certain calmness, or because her freezing hands had been tightly grasped.
It was Shuangjian.
The front of his robes was already soaked in blood. He held onto her with his left hand, while his right hand clenched tightly into a fist, wrapped in a final trace of pitch-black flowing light.
He did not attack the Nether Demon Lord; instead, he slammed his fist into the ground between them.
—Shattering space itself.
Then, the world began to turn upside down.
Yingshi watched helplessly as the solid ground beneath her feet suddenly became the "ceiling."
Gravel, broken wood, and the beads of blood Shuangjian had coughed up all floated upward in defiance of logic.
No, above was no longer above; it had long since become "below," because the ground itself no longer existed, and below had become an endless darkness.
They were perhaps all falling.
Whether it was her and Shuangjian, the Nether Demon Lord, or the so-called "Soul-Guiding Beast," Xiangxiang, who had been sleeping the whole time.
The entire space beneath the cliff seemed to have been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees and then thrown into a massive vortex.
The mountain walls turned sideways, the sky shattered into countless pieces, lightning flashed "underfoot," and above their heads was bottomless darkness.
That darkness did not represent a distant night sky, but an endless hole.
It felt like being inside a polluted kaleidoscope.
...The Zhexian Cave?!
The true Zhexian Cave was never located in some cavern on some mountain.
It was, in itself, an inverted, infinite spatial rift.
Was this how it was written in the book?
Under the immense shock, Yingshi couldn't recall it at all. She tried with all her might not to scream out, not to close her eyes amidst the intense dizziness.
And in this moment of total inversion, that energy sword condensed in the void once again.
This time, the Nether Demon Lord failed to dodge as swiftly.
He was knocked back by a tremendous force, his body smashing heavily against a suspended mountain rock, sending rubble flying.
A gruesome bloody hole appeared on his chest; one could even see the blurry rock wall behind it.
It was empty.
There was no beating heart, no warm flesh and blood, only a void of darkness.
Even the injured man himself was stunned by this.
He slowly raised his remaining hand, fingers spread wide, seemingly wanting to touch the hollow cavity, but paused in mid-air.
The mask of calmness, indifference, and even smiles covering his face finally shattered completely, revealing a mixture of bewilderment, realization, and a hint of mockery underneath.
—Never able to break free.
With such... an empty shell.
He seemed to sneer, his eyes gradually losing focus, as his hand gently gathered in front of his chest.
The hollow wound twisted rapidly as he formed a hand seal, becoming a mangled mess of flesh and blood.
Shuangjian's pupils shrank slightly, recognizing that this was not the precursor to an attack, but the starting stance for self-detonation...
He used the last of his strength to violently pull Yingshi into his arms, wrapping his arms tightly around them both, turning his back toward the impending center of destruction.
A thin barrier of ghost fog lit up around them, carrying them as they plummeted rapidly through this cave where balance did not exist.
No one noticed that the little pig, who had been in a deep sleep for a long time, quietly opened its eyes at that moment.
Yingshi was abruptly pulled into a familiar embrace, her nose bumping against Shuangjian's bloodstained robes. But before she could even feel the warmth, her vision suddenly went black—
In an unnoticed corner, the newly awakened Xiangxiang's body inflated like a balloon. Aiming at the void, it opened its mouth wide.
A familiar devouring.
Only, this time, the target of the devouring was Yingshi, held in Shuangjian's arms.
The shockwave from the Nether Demon Lord's self-detonation instantly destroyed all the mountain rocks, and the inverted Zhexian Cave seemed to be blasted open.
An endless suction force came from behind. In the final moment, Yingshi only saw Shuangjian's panicked eyes...
She had no idea what happened after that.
Her consciousness had completely faded into darkness.
When she woke up again, she could hear the electronic ringing of a melody—it was her roommate's alarm clock.
