Chapter 29
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Translator: transcendentwings
Editor: teaff
Translator’s Note: another looooooooooong chapter
Nan Li disregarded Ye Buyi’s resentment and resistance and carried Ye Buyi, who had thrown up a mouthful of blood, over his shoulder back into the room, roughly flinging him onto the bed.
The crying Ye Buyi wanted to run away, but Nan Li choked him by the neck and pressed him back onto the bed: “Ye Buyi, know to appreciate my favor.”
Ye Buyi finally stopped moving.
Nan Li just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Ye Buyi whisper in a very small voice: “Nan Li, let me go ba.”
Nan Li had already drank a lot of alcohol and his intoxication fogged his mind. Hearing this, anger rose uncontrollably, but he forced himself to hold back as he retorted: “. . . Where do you want to go? Where can you go?”
Ye Buyi didn’t speak.
Nan Li sneered: “Could you have even survived a day in the wasteland without me? Ye Buyi, do you have a conscience?”
Ye Buyi stared at him with red eyes and sobbed in a low voice: “Nan Li, thank you, but I beg you, please let me go ba.”
Nan Li’s facial features were twisted in anger: “Stop daydreaming. Ye Buyi, you listen to me, even if you die, you can only die in Hutiao Ravine.”
Ye Buyi began to shake: “. . . For what reason?”
“For the reason that I saved your insignificant life.” Nan Li was so enraged that he burst into hysterical laughter instead, “Or did you think you could have lived until this day by your own strength?”
Ye Buyi’s lips were snow white as he mustered all the courage he had to voice the words in his heart: “. . . Your original intent wasn’t to save me at all. It was only because I had a pair of eyes similar to that of your deceased wife.”
When he initially saw the mural of Nan Li’s deceased wife, Ye Buyi, who had a bit of a silly disposition, didn’t even consider that he was a substitute, he was only preoccupied by his sense of remorse.
. . . She was so good, so it was right that Nan Li couldn’t forget her. Now that it was him by Nan Li’s side, he should learn more of the disposition Nan Li likes so that he could make the other a little happier.
He regarded Nan Li as his entire world, but Nan Li only deemed him as a dispensable trinket.
Hearing Ye Buyi exposing him like this, Nan Li was furious. The blue veins on his forehead pulsed: “What did you say? Say it again?”
He originally had a violent temperament and would only restrain himself slightly in front of Ye Buyi in the past. It was the first time Ye Buyi saw Nan Li become so infuriated that he couldn’t help trembling in fear and shrank back to a corner of the bed.
“You should thank your parents for making you look marginally alike.” Nan Li sneered, “Otherwise, on the first day we met, you would’ve died in my body like the remnant soul of your fellow practitioner.”
Ye Buyi raised his head abruptly: “. . . What did you say?”
“What do you think I rely on to cultivate?” Nan Li didn’t think that there was anything wrong with what he said, “Your fellow cultivator died, his soul became superfluous, so what if I absorbed his soul to cultivate? In comparison, I treat you very well, what are you dissatisfied with?”
Ye Buyi stared at Nan Li, his gaze foreign as if this was the first time in his life he laid eyes on him: “You, You consumed his soul? Didn’t you promise to bury him. . .”
Nan Li felt that Ye Buyi was being unreasonable as he curled his lips in a mocking smile: “Hasn’t he been buried already? Otherwise, where did the tomb by the lake come from?”
Ye Buyi’s pitch rose higher: “But you told me, if I followed you to Hutiao Ravine, you, you’d bury him properly. Why did you have to. . .”
Nan Li countered: “Did I say that I wouldn’t devour his soul?”
Ye Buyi opened his mouth and ultimately closed it sullenly.
Nan Li finally calmed down somewhat after that tirade and wanted to touch Ye Buyi’s head, but was avoided.
Ye Buyi uttered tearfully: “During the first time, we pinky promised, hooked and stamped. You stated that you wouldn’t lie to me in the future, that you would treat me well. . . They were all lies. . . From the beginning, you’ve never treated me with an honest heart. . .”
The flame that had been suppressed swiftly became a raging prairie under the stimulation of Ye Buyi’s words. In his fury, Nan Li snapped indifferently: “Honest words? You want it, but are you worthy? Are any of you worthy?”
“It was you, hypocritical cultivators, who sent me into the wasteland in the first place. That I f*cked you, an insignificant cultivator was something you deserved!”
Ye Buyi froze in place.
Those words were like a sharp ice pick that smashed into Ye Buyi’s heart no-holds-barred. It was like his joints were filled with shards of ice, numbing and frigid, painfully splintering.
After an unknown amount of time passed in this state, Ye Buyi finally bent over in pain and hit the edge of the bedpost with his head repeatedly, knocking against it with a dongdong sound.
In the past, he only regarded the so-called heartache as a mere expression, only when things ended up in such a tragic state did he know that it was a dull ache that actually manifests, throbbing until his head was covered in cold sweat.
After throwing down those words, Nan Li didn’t feel happy in his heart at all and his chest also ended up feeling very suffocated. Then adding on Ye Buyi’s reaction, he immediately stretched out his hand to protect the other’s forehead: “What are you doing?! Don’t pretend to go insane in front of me.”
Before the last syllable fell, he heard the sliding sound of the short sword at his waist being unsheathed.
Nan Li stepped back agilely, only to see Ye Buyi holding the short sword, his eyes red, like a bunny provoked into anger as the other glared at him ferociously.
“What? You want to kill me?” When he came back to his senses, Nan Li somewhat regretted the vicious words he’d unleashed onto Ye Buyi earlier. However he was used to being the highest authority, so wanting him to admit that he was wrong and swallow his words was completely impossible, “You’ve become braver ah, Ye Buyi.”
He really believed that Ye Buyi would rush over to stab him.
In just a few short moments, Nan Li had already conceived the resulting scene after the other charged over.
He wouldn’t avoid it and would just let him stab him once. Either way, he wouldn’t be killed by such a small thing. After running him through and calming down, Nan Li would slowly coax him into coming around bit by bit and his little temper tantrum would disappear regardless.
Nan Li was confident that he understood Ye Buyi very well, thus when Ye Buyi’s detached pinky rolled off the bed, Nan Li wasn’t able to react.
A few seconds later, Nan Li let out an expletive, lunged forward and slapped the short sword onto the ground: “You’ve become f*cking crazy ba, Ye Buyi?”
Ye Buyi curled up on the bed, cradling his hand as blood gushed like a fountain from the severed little-finger on his right hand.
His shoulders seized uncontrollably: “Hurts. . . It hurts. . .”
Nan Li yanked his hand over and circulated his powers to stop the bleeding: “Now you know that it’s painful? If you’re angry then stab me ah? You’re so f*cking capable for bringing the blade down on yourself ah.”
Ye Buyi’s face was very pale, his lips chapped, and his breathing very light, but he still tried his best to push Nan Li away: “Dirty.”
Nan Li became instantly antagonized: “You think I’m dirty? So you chopped your finger off? Then you’ve been f*cking touched by me inside and out, so why don’t you just go die ne?”
Hearing this, Ye Buyi was stunned for a long time before he whispered: “. . . That’s right, I’m dirty, it’s me that’s dirty. I beg you to let me go ba.”
Nan Li found that this person couldn’t process his words at all anymore. Observing that the bleeding stopped, he flicked his sleeves: “If you want to f* ck off, then f*ck off faster. With your body covered in the smell of blood, only death will await you if you depart from Hutiao Ravine.”
Hurtling those words down, he left in a huff.
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Nan Li felt that the cries made it somewhat hard to breathe. He wanted to push the door open and enter, but after reaching his hand out halfway, he paused.
He temporarily couldn’t face Ye Buyi, hence, he could only turn around and leave, abandoning the sobs that made his heart throb in pain behind him.
That night, he drank seven or eight jugs of aged wine and slept in his clothes on the throne in the main hall.
Who would’ve thought that on the next day, when he returned to the room, Ye Buyi would be nowhere to be seen.
. . . He didn’t bring anything with him, including that amputated finger.
He seized the ghostly cultivator who was guarding the gates and interrogated him. The answer that he received was that Ye Buyi exited Hutiao Ravine last night stating that the Ghost King had ordered him to scram.
Hearing this piece of intel, Nan Li paced around the hall in circles before he raised a hand to smash one of the figurines.
The howling scream from inside the statue not only didn’t calm him down, but made him more unbearably manic.
Very soon, shards of the sculptures were strewn everywhere as Nan Li stood among them, his throat choked with pain.
The little cultivator ran away?
He dared leave?
He couldn’t even wield a sword properly, yet he chopped off one of his fingers last night. . .
He didn’t dare to contemplate it any further: “Zhu Dongfeng! Come here now!”
Zhu Dongfeng approached from outside the hall. Upon seeing the mess on the ground, he couldn’t help but feel astonished: “You. . .”
Nan Li pointed outside the palace: “You go, go and bring the little cultivator back for me.”
Zhu Dongfeng naturally wouldn’t go against Nan Li’s orders: “. . . Yes.”
Nan Li hesitated for a moment then called Zhu Dongfeng back and specifically instructed: “He’s injured, so he probably wouldn’t have made it very far. After you locate him, tell him to stop making trouble. Last night I. . . just drank too much. That’s why I blurted out those cruel words; If he is unwilling to come back then you can just carry him back on your shoulder. Remember to be mindful not to pull on his hand.”
Zhu Dongfeng was full of helplessness and left as commanded.
Nan Li sat restlessly in the hall for an entire day before he saw the return of Zhu Dongfeng who had departed to carry out his orders.
“You didn’t find him?” Nan Li gritted his teeth, “He is only a young practitioner with a low cultivation base, practically no different from a mere mortal and the lot of you can’t even catch a mortal?”
Zhu Dongfeng was shamefaced: “My Lord, we combed through the surrounding areas, but we truly couldn’t find a trace of the concubine.”
Nan Li became more and more flustered internally.
Where could he have gone in this vast wasteland?
He forcibly suppressed the panic and fear in his heart and shot up irately: “A bunch of useless trash! I’ll go search for him myself.”
One day passed, then three, then a whole three months came and went.
Nan Li was shocked to find that he really couldn’t locate Ye Buyi anymore.
He experienced the feeling of continuous sleepless nights.
That year, his wife, Yun Hua, died at the hands of a cultivator and Nan Li himself was thrown into the savage wasteland. Thousands of years have passed since then, Yun Hua became the cinnabar mole in his heart, and he had luckily encountered Ye Buyi after much difficulty. But now, Ye Buyi had become a needle, a thorn that was wedged into his heart making it challenging to eat and rest peacefully.
Only in his dreams could he still see Ye Buyi, thus he drank more and more fiercely so that he could go find Ye Buyi after sinking into drunkenness.
On this day, he once again dreamed of an event that had occurred in the past with Ye Buyi.
As usual, they played the salvaging game by the lake. After playing several rounds, Ye Buyi complained that he was tired, climbed ashore and laid still. His wet clothes outlined his round buttocks, extremely adorable.
As he laid prone on the ground, fiddling with the items he had fished out, there was one in particular that he couldn’t help toying with so much that he didn’t want to let go.
It was a shard that glowed, like a bauble that had fallen from some sort of ornament.
Ye Buyi put it on his chest and gestured: “It must be exquisite to fashion jewelry from it with a chain.”
Nan Li picked him up and placed him on his lap, teasing him: “An accessory with a chain? How can a grown man like you like this sort of glowing thing? Just like a young maiden.”
Young Maiden Ye didn’t speak and rolled the fragment around in the palm of his hand.
“Is it really that beautiful?” Nan Li held the hand that was holding the shard, “. . . Stop looking at it, look at me.”
Young Maiden Ye glanced at him and when he lowered his head while pursing his lips in a shy manner; he seemed even more like a young girl.
“Just a glance and you’d react as such? Do you actually like me that much?” Nan Li couldn’t help teasing him again.
Ye Buyi blushed and bit his lip as he pondered it for a while before he answered earnestly: “It’s just. . . the kind of like where I want to be your bride.”
Nan Li was very satisfied with that answer and gave him a peck on the lips: “Okay ah. I’ll incorporate this into a chain and when I want to organize a wedding to liven things up a bit, I’ll ask you to wear it when you marry me.”
After those words left his lips, Nan Li woke up.
He was sleeping on Ye Buyi’s bed.
After opening his eyes, the empty room hollowed out his heart in an instant.
Just when he shifted his legs to alight from the bed, Zhu Dongfeng knocked on the door and entered: “My Lord.”
“What is it?” Nan Li looked up indolently, “Have you found the little cultivator?”
Zhu Dongfeng paused for a moment: “Yes, I found him.”
Nan Li wasn’t prepared to hear this good news at all. Hearing such a reply, he was pleasantly surprised and leapt to the ground on bare feet, excited: “Really? Where is he? Is he injured? Has he lost weight?”
An unbearable expression surfaced on Zhu Dongfeng’s face: “My Lord. . . Restrain your grief.”
Nan Li was so immersed in joy that he couldn’t comprehend Zhu Dongfeng’s words: “Grief? Restrain what grief?”
Zhu Dongfeng gestured outside the doorway and two ghost servants entered with a bundle of white cloth.
They spread the cloth roll out which contained a scattered skeleton inside. There were obvious bite and drag marks made by wild beasts and most of the muscles and tissue had already been removed, only his arm hadn’t been gnawed on too drastically so that one could still clearly make out that the right hand clenched in a fist was missing a digit.
. . . The little finger was missing there.
“The concubine actually didn’t go too far.” Zhu Dongfeng explained, “A ghost servant found him under a cliff not too far from Hutiao Ravine. The wild grasses there had grown very tall which was why we couldn’t find the concubine when we initially began our search.”
Nan Li stared at the remains on the ground with a strange glint in his gaze.
He didn’t believe that this pile of bones was his little cultivator who loved to cry: “What was he doing there?”
Zhu Dongfeng: “The concubine seemed to have fallen off the cliff. . . When we found the concubine, these were sprinkled around him. . .”
He retrieved a piece of cloth from inside his lapel and unfolded it layer by layer.
A few dried luohan flower petals drifted away and landed on the skeleton.
Looking at these petals, Nan Li recalled something,
—When he and Ye Buyi had first met, he had been sitting on the edge of a cliff full of luohan flowers tuning his sheng.
That cliff face was isolated and could not be reached by directly embarking on any mountain road. After Ye Buyi left Hutiao Ravine, he climbed up there with his bare hands presumably to pick a luohan flower to keep as a souvenir and remembrance.
He murmured to himself: “. . . Was it that cliff?”
Zhu Dongfeng didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t understand what Nan Li was referring to.
Nan Li looked at the corpse on the ground and asked further: “. . . Dead?”
Zhu Dongfeng couldn’t say a word in reply.
Nan Li pointed at the remains, wanting to smile but couldn’t: “He died? Just to pick a flower?”
He gazed at the skeleton and softly mumbled: “. . . You didn’t even bring the chained ornament I made for you with you, yet you ran to pick flowers. What a stupid cultivator.”
When his words fell, he coughed a few times and felt mucosal secretions pooling in his mouth, choking him until he felt stuffy in the chest.
He turned his head to the side to spit out the extraneous fluids, but vomited a large mouthful of blood instead.
All of Ye Buyi’s memories ended on the day blood sprinkled onto his remains.
After all of the remnants of Ye Buyi’s soul were incorporated into his body, Xu Xingzhi slowly opened his eyes.
Noting the change, ecstasy revealed itself on the Ghost King Nan Li’s face.
The person before him was a rare specimen he had finally procured after more than ten years of arduous scouring.
Ever since he threw up blood and became seriously ill, Nan Li set up the twenty-seven illusion formation in Hutiao Ravine to capture those who approached. As long as someone tried to break into the ravine, he would go through the trouble of testing their hearts.
First of all, the body of the person couldn’t be too weak. Ye Buyi wasn’t in good health since he was a child and even though he grew much stronger after growing up, he was still a little frail and sensitive. Nan Li didn’t want him to be a sick seedling after his resurrection.
Secondly, the age of the one who was chosen must be appropriate and mustn’t have any peculiar bad habits so as to not contaminate Ye Buyi’s soul.
The most important thing was that that person must possess a benevolent and foolish heart like Ye Buyi.
Only such a heart could be worthy of him.
And this person before him at this moment basically fulfilled all of Nan Li’s requirements.
. . . Once the soul purging was completed, all of Xu Xingzhi’s memories would be overwritten by Ye Buyi’s.
Nan Li only needed to draw Xu Xingzhi’s soul out of his body, gouge out his heart and place it into Ye Buyi’s corpse that he had preemptively preserved. Next, after evoking the long lasting spiritual technique, he would be able to bring Ye Buyi back to life with all of his memories intact.
The flesh that Ye Buyi lost was really tough to reshape, but as long as his little cultivator was willing to come back, even if he could only obtain a skeleton that could move and talk, he wouldn’t say a word of complaint.
He stroked Xu Xingzhi’s cheek, who had woken up, and lowered his voice to he the softest and lightest possible: “Can you recognize who I am? Little cultivator?”
Xu Xingzhi took a deep breath and replied coldly: “I recognize you. One outright b*stard.”
“. . . Little cultivator?” Nan Li was stunned for a while, then he abruptly came to his senses, “You?? It’s still you? You are not him???”
Xu Xingzhi still had a splitting headache, but before the face of such a scumbag, he politely revealed a mocking smile: “What? You can’t recognize your Ye Buyi anymore?”
The expression on Nan Li’s face changed drastically. He dragged Xu Xingzhi off the platform, grabbing a fistful of his lapel: “How is that possible? How could the soul purging fail?”
Xu Xingzhi sarcastically mocked: “Maybe your little cultivator doesn’t want to see you again ba.”
How would Nan Li be willing to listen to Xu Xingzhi’s load of bull? He circulated his spiritual power then flattened his palm against Xu Xingzhi’s forehead. Closing his eyes to concentrate his power, he started to investigate meticulously.
After a moment, Nan Li’s eyes snapped open in astonishment: “You’ve already been purif. . .”
Before he could finish his sentence, the sound of an explosion that split the heavens and the earth traveled from outside the palace. It was as if Gong Gong crashed into Buzhou Mountain head-on and a surging demonic force swept over like a tsunami slamming the door of the secret chamber open.
Nan Li whipped around abruptly, his expression dropping below zero in an instant: “Who?”
Zhu Dongfeng fell into the secret chamber with a phantom spear protruding from his back!
A gurgling sound bubbled from his mouth, but he still managed to squeeze out a sentence through the muzzle of blood: “. . . My Lord, the twenty–seven illusion arrays. . . have all been broken. . . My Lord, please leave quickly. . .”
The phantom spear in his back was suddenly withdrawn and the loud noise from the splashing of blood and squelching of flesh completely buried his last few words which were already weakly uttered.
An arc of light like a shooting star swept over, pointing straight at the back of Nan Li’s neck.
Zhou Beinan’s command came from behind him: “. . . Put him down.”
Hearing this, Nan Li was surprisingly obedient and shoved Xu Xingzhi against the wall,. A glint flashed across his eyes as four phantom nails appeared out of thin air, respectively nailing Xu Xingzhi by his shoulders and trouser legs, pinning him onto the wall directly.
After Xu Xingzhi was fixed in place, he turned his head back and immediately came face-to-face with Zhou Beinan.
Seeing his face, Zhou Beinan furrowed his brow, seeming somewhat confused.
A grim smile emerged on Nan Li’s face: “It’s you ah? Your soul hasn’t dissipated yet?”
Zhou Beinan was startled: “You recognize me? . . .”
Nan Li grinned fiercely then raised his hand suddenly to grasp the tip of Zhou Beinan’s spear. The expression on his face didn’t change at all and with a slight twitch of his fingers, the phantom spear in Zhou Beinan’s hands morphed into a puff of ash without warning!
While the dust floated everywhere, Nan Li caught Zhou Beinan by the neck and pressed him onto the ground.
He was obviously already incensed by the failure earlier and all rationality had scattered. As such, he vented all his anger on Zhou Beinan: “I’m the Ghost King. How could the remnant of a ghost dare to wield their blade before me?”
Nan Li exerted a growing amount of force, so much that the floor tiles shattered into pieces and Zhou Beinan was depressed into the ground inch by inch. His spiritual body started to faintly flicker between alternating light and dark, evidently because he was unable to counter against such overwhelming ghostly powers.
Nan Li lost all his patience, his expression was terrifying, and both eyes became bloody red: “You don’t remember me? En? How pitiful that you can’t even remember the grand declarations you made? You had proclaimed that you were going to skewer my heart with a single stab of your spear and grind my bones into dust, don’t you recall?”
Zhou Beinan widened his eyes: “You—It’s you. . .”
“You can’t even protect your little sister who was on the verge of giving birth.” Nan Li sneered maliciously, “I still remember your name, Zhou Beinan, you are nothing more than trash.”
He tightened his fingers, trying to go to the extent of snuffing out Zhou Beinan’s spiritual body at once!
However just as he exerted all of his strength, his whole body was knocked flying. He slammed into the wall on one side so solidly that he fractured the wall of the secret chamber into pieces.
Meng Chongguang stepped in from the outside.
The corner of his eye and the center of his forehead were scarlet like blood, and the crimson light in his eyes seemed concentrated enough to drip out. His head of black hair fluttered about due to the ghostly energy that was undulating in the air.
He stood there prominently bearing a remarkable resemblance to a demonic spirit that had lost its senses.
Yet he was in no mood to fight with Nan Li at all, only searching for a shadow of Xu Xingzhi with a pair of hollow and lost eyes: “Shixiong? Where are you?”
In the hazy dust, Nan Li climbed staggeringly to his feet. He unsheathed the short sword at his waist and charged straight towards Xu Xingzhi.
Catching sight of someone drifting about in his line of sight, Meng Chongguang’s gaze sharpened and a pulse of scarlet light was cast from his palm, making a beeline for Nan Li.
Nan Li maneuvered his short sword into a block. The sound of clashing steel rang out, the noise exploding in little bursts. Nan Li was only able to parry a few rounds before he tasted unbearable sweetness flooding his mouth, forcing him to abandon his blade as he took a heavy strike from Meng Chongguang directly.
One of his arms was dismembered and sent flying away, but he only borrowed its momentum to lunge towards Xu Xingzhi instead. Before reaching him, he concentrated his ghostly spiritual energy into his remaining hand and attempted to suck the residual soul residing in Xu Xingzhi out.
However, he combed through every meridian in Xu Xingzhi’s entire body and still couldn’t locate the remnant soul he had treasured for so many years!
“Give it back to me!” Nan Li hissed, “Give him back to me!”
And yet, that little ball of soul didn’t respond to him and hid deep inside Xu Xingzhi’s body, refusing to come out again.
Just like all those years ago, Ye Buyi refused to answer him and no longer paid any attention to him.
Nan Li was stimulated by the leap in his thoughts becoming panicked and at a loss. His face blanched and just as he was about to conduct another search, two ghost servants broke through the window and grabbed a hold of the crazed Nan Li, one on each side: “My Lord, leave quickly!”
Nan Li growled: “I won’t leave! He’s still here, he. . .”
One of the higher-level ghost servants took advantage of Nan Li’s madness to steel his heart and chopped Nan Li on the nape.
Nan Li was currently in a state where his blood was surging, thus when he took this hit, his blood and energy rushed to his brain making him faint away instantly.
The ghostly servant pushed Nan Li into the arms of another ghost servant: “Swiftly bring our Lord. . .”
Before he could finish speaking, the ghost servant burst open from the middle and met its demise, disappearing without a trace!
After experiencing twenty-seven illusion arrays, Meng Chongguang lost his reason and senses. He was disoriented like a drunk man or a trapped beast running around in circles uncontrollably. Wherever he heard a disturbance, he would launch a wave of pure demonic force without a moment’s hesitation.
And so that ghostly servant became Nan Li’s unfortunate scapegoat.
The other ghost servant was so startled that it started trembling all over. How could he dare to linger any longer now. Quietly supporting Nan Li, it passed through the walls and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Zhou Beinan rubbed his throat and supported himself off the ground, coughing.
He had just managed to sit up halfway when instinct made him agilely roll aside immediately.
In a flash, a huge pit was blasted out by Meng Chongguang’s spiritual power in the exact spot he occupied previously.
Zhou Beinan scolded: “Meng Chonggunag, look clearly. . .”
Before he could finish speaking, Meng Chongguang swept another palm out indiscriminately, making half of the secret chamber collapse instantly!
Just as Zhou Beinan used all of his strength to scramble away and escape out the doorway of the secret chamber that no longer existed, he happened to catch sight of Qu Chi walking towards them with an unconscious Tao Xian on his back while Lu Yujiu, Zhou Wang, and Yuan Ruzhou followed not too far behind.
Zhou Beinan hollered a warning: “Run away quickly! Meng Chongguang has gone crazy!”
After Meng Chongguang heard these movements, a majestic, scarlet demonic force gathered in his palm and a wicked smile hung on the corner of his lips.
Realizing that Meng Chongguang was about to launch an attack, Xu Xingzhi, who was dizzy and dazed from the invasion of Nan Li’s ghostly powers earlier, finally regained his strength to speak and called out hoarsely: “Meng. . . Chongguang!”
With just this call, the heavy and dense murderous intent leaking from Meng Chongguang’s eyes gradually faded away in utter defeat.
He cast his gaze around frantically like an anxious child and finally saw Xu Xingzhi who was nailed to the wall in plain sight.
His whole body immediately came alive with a breath of life and his sharp edges were drastically grinded away to nothing. He bounded straight over and latched onto Xu Xingzhi’s waist without giving anyone time to voice a protest. He mewled repeatedly like a young kitten that still fed on it’s mother’s milk: “Shixiong! Shixiong. . .”
Zhou Beinan, who had been a hair’s breadth away from his demise, gaped in stupefaction.
Xu Xingzhi was still lightheaded and was barely able to take two breaths. Seeing the tear-stained face of the beauty that was Meng Chongguang in front of him, his heart softened into a messy puddle: “What are you crying for, already a grown, valorous man. Let me down.”
“Shixiong, sorry, I’m sorry. . .” Meng Chongguang wiped his face with the back of his hand messily in a panic, “I, did I scare Shixiong? Chongguang didn’t do it on purpose, didn’t. . .”
With a lift of his hand, the phantom nails that pinned Xu Xingzhi’s sleeves to the wall were all removed.
Xu Xingzhi, who was powerless, fell slowly against his shoulder.
The moment he came into contact with Meng Chongguang’s body, he seemed to have fallen into a dark and deep canyon. His awareness completely faded as he lost consciousness and fainted.
Perhaps it was thanks to the stimulation of Nan Li’s ghostly powers, but another complete memory fragment surfaced in Xu Xingzhi’s mind at last.
The author has something to say:
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Author's Chapter Summary:
Pinky finger, demonic spirit, luohan flowers
The translator has something to say: didn’t want to translate the title as “deranged”, “demented”, “unhinged”, or anything along those lines because NL and MCG seem more like they are stuck in the denial phase of grief because they couldn’t bear the loss or thought of loss while YBY just couldn’t handle the dishonesty and what he now perceived as his “true” situation
The editor has something to say: I looked up luohan flower in Chinese and got pictures of fish instead. Seems like the full name is actually luohanguo (monkfruit) flowers?
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Translator: transcendentwings
Editor: teaff
Translator’s Note: another looooooooooong chapter
Nan Li disregarded Ye Buyi’s resentment and resistance and carried Ye Buyi, who had thrown up a mouthful of blood, over his shoulder back into the room, roughly flinging him onto the bed.
The crying Ye Buyi wanted to run away, but Nan Li choked him by the neck and pressed him back onto the bed: “Ye Buyi, know to appreciate my favor.”
Ye Buyi finally stopped moving.
Nan Li just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Ye Buyi whisper in a very small voice: “Nan Li, let me go ba.”
Nan Li had already drank a lot of alcohol and his intoxication fogged his mind. Hearing this, anger rose uncontrollably, but he forced himself to hold back as he retorted: “. . . Where do you want to go? Where can you go?”
Ye Buyi didn’t speak.
Nan Li sneered: “Could you have even survived a day in the wasteland without me? Ye Buyi, do you have a conscience?”
Ye Buyi stared at him with red eyes and sobbed in a low voice: “Nan Li, thank you, but I beg you, please let me go ba.”
Nan Li’s facial features were twisted in anger: “Stop daydreaming. Ye Buyi, you listen to me, even if you die, you can only die in Hutiao Ravine.”
Ye Buyi began to shake: “. . . For what reason?”
“For the reason that I saved your insignificant life.” Nan Li was so enraged that he burst into hysterical laughter instead, “Or did you think you could have lived until this day by your own strength?”
Ye Buyi’s lips were snow white as he mustered all the courage he had to voice the words in his heart: “. . . Your original intent wasn’t to save me at all. It was only because I had a pair of eyes similar to that of your deceased wife.”
When he initially saw the mural of Nan Li’s deceased wife, Ye Buyi, who had a bit of a silly disposition, didn’t even consider that he was a substitute, he was only preoccupied by his sense of remorse.
. . . She was so good, so it was right that Nan Li couldn’t forget her. Now that it was him by Nan Li’s side, he should learn more of the disposition Nan Li likes so that he could make the other a little happier.
He regarded Nan Li as his entire world, but Nan Li only deemed him as a dispensable trinket.
Hearing Ye Buyi exposing him like this, Nan Li was furious. The blue veins on his forehead pulsed: “What did you say? Say it again?”
He originally had a violent temperament and would only restrain himself slightly in front of Ye Buyi in the past. It was the first time Ye Buyi saw Nan Li become so infuriated that he couldn’t help trembling in fear and shrank back to a corner of the bed.
“You should thank your parents for making you look marginally alike.” Nan Li sneered, “Otherwise, on the first day we met, you would’ve died in my body like the remnant soul of your fellow practitioner.”
Ye Buyi raised his head abruptly: “. . . What did you say?”
“What do you think I rely on to cultivate?” Nan Li didn’t think that there was anything wrong with what he said, “Your fellow cultivator died, his soul became superfluous, so what if I absorbed his soul to cultivate? In comparison, I treat you very well, what are you dissatisfied with?”
Ye Buyi stared at Nan Li, his gaze foreign as if this was the first time in his life he laid eyes on him: “You, You consumed his soul? Didn’t you promise to bury him. . .”
Nan Li felt that Ye Buyi was being unreasonable as he curled his lips in a mocking smile: “Hasn’t he been buried already? Otherwise, where did the tomb by the lake come from?”
Ye Buyi’s pitch rose higher: “But you told me, if I followed you to Hutiao Ravine, you, you’d bury him properly. Why did you have to. . .”
Nan Li countered: “Did I say that I wouldn’t devour his soul?”
Ye Buyi opened his mouth and ultimately closed it sullenly.
Nan Li finally calmed down somewhat after that tirade and wanted to touch Ye Buyi’s head, but was avoided.
Ye Buyi uttered tearfully: “During the first time, we pinky promised, hooked and stamped. You stated that you wouldn’t lie to me in the future, that you would treat me well. . . They were all lies. . . From the beginning, you’ve never treated me with an honest heart. . .”
The flame that had been suppressed swiftly became a raging prairie under the stimulation of Ye Buyi’s words. In his fury, Nan Li snapped indifferently: “Honest words? You want it, but are you worthy? Are any of you worthy?”
“It was you, hypocritical cultivators, who sent me into the wasteland in the first place. That I f*cked you, an insignificant cultivator was something you deserved!”
Ye Buyi froze in place.
Those words were like a sharp ice pick that smashed into Ye Buyi’s heart no-holds-barred. It was like his joints were filled with shards of ice, numbing and frigid, painfully splintering.
After an unknown amount of time passed in this state, Ye Buyi finally bent over in pain and hit the edge of the bedpost with his head repeatedly, knocking against it with a dongdong sound.
In the past, he only regarded the so-called heartache as a mere expression, only when things ended up in such a tragic state did he know that it was a dull ache that actually manifests, throbbing until his head was covered in cold sweat.
After throwing down those words, Nan Li didn’t feel happy in his heart at all and his chest also ended up feeling very suffocated. Then adding on Ye Buyi’s reaction, he immediately stretched out his hand to protect the other’s forehead: “What are you doing?! Don’t pretend to go insane in front of me.”
Before the last syllable fell, he heard the sliding sound of the short sword at his waist being unsheathed.
Nan Li stepped back agilely, only to see Ye Buyi holding the short sword, his eyes red, like a bunny provoked into anger as the other glared at him ferociously.
“What? You want to kill me?” When he came back to his senses, Nan Li somewhat regretted the vicious words he’d unleashed onto Ye Buyi earlier. However he was used to being the highest authority, so wanting him to admit that he was wrong and swallow his words was completely impossible, “You’ve become braver ah, Ye Buyi.”
He really believed that Ye Buyi would rush over to stab him.
In just a few short moments, Nan Li had already conceived the resulting scene after the other charged over.
He wouldn’t avoid it and would just let him stab him once. Either way, he wouldn’t be killed by such a small thing. After running him through and calming down, Nan Li would slowly coax him into coming around bit by bit and his little temper tantrum would disappear regardless.
Nan Li was confident that he understood Ye Buyi very well, thus when Ye Buyi’s detached pinky rolled off the bed, Nan Li wasn’t able to react.
A few seconds later, Nan Li let out an expletive, lunged forward and slapped the short sword onto the ground: “You’ve become f*cking crazy ba, Ye Buyi?”
Ye Buyi curled up on the bed, cradling his hand as blood gushed like a fountain from the severed little-finger on his right hand.
His shoulders seized uncontrollably: “Hurts. . . It hurts. . .”
Nan Li yanked his hand over and circulated his powers to stop the bleeding: “Now you know that it’s painful? If you’re angry then stab me ah? You’re so f*cking capable for bringing the blade down on yourself ah.”
Ye Buyi’s face was very pale, his lips chapped, and his breathing very light, but he still tried his best to push Nan Li away: “Dirty.”
Nan Li became instantly antagonized: “You think I’m dirty? So you chopped your finger off? Then you’ve been f*cking touched by me inside and out, so why don’t you just go die ne?”
Hearing this, Ye Buyi was stunned for a long time before he whispered: “. . . That’s right, I’m dirty, it’s me that’s dirty. I beg you to let me go ba.”
Nan Li found that this person couldn’t process his words at all anymore. Observing that the bleeding stopped, he flicked his sleeves: “If you want to f* ck off, then f*ck off faster. With your body covered in the smell of blood, only death will await you if you depart from Hutiao Ravine.”
Hurtling those words down, he left in a huff.
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Nan Li felt that the cries made it somewhat hard to breathe. He wanted to push the door open and enter, but after reaching his hand out halfway, he paused.
He temporarily couldn’t face Ye Buyi, hence, he could only turn around and leave, abandoning the sobs that made his heart throb in pain behind him.
That night, he drank seven or eight jugs of aged wine and slept in his clothes on the throne in the main hall.
Who would’ve thought that on the next day, when he returned to the room, Ye Buyi would be nowhere to be seen.
. . . He didn’t bring anything with him, including that amputated finger.
He seized the ghostly cultivator who was guarding the gates and interrogated him. The answer that he received was that Ye Buyi exited Hutiao Ravine last night stating that the Ghost King had ordered him to scram.
Hearing this piece of intel, Nan Li paced around the hall in circles before he raised a hand to smash one of the figurines.
The howling scream from inside the statue not only didn’t calm him down, but made him more unbearably manic.
Very soon, shards of the sculptures were strewn everywhere as Nan Li stood among them, his throat choked with pain.
The little cultivator ran away?
He dared leave?
He couldn’t even wield a sword properly, yet he chopped off one of his fingers last night. . .
He didn’t dare to contemplate it any further: “Zhu Dongfeng! Come here now!”
Zhu Dongfeng approached from outside the hall. Upon seeing the mess on the ground, he couldn’t help but feel astonished: “You. . .”
Nan Li pointed outside the palace: “You go, go and bring the little cultivator back for me.”
Zhu Dongfeng naturally wouldn’t go against Nan Li’s orders: “. . . Yes.”
Nan Li hesitated for a moment then called Zhu Dongfeng back and specifically instructed: “He’s injured, so he probably wouldn’t have made it very far. After you locate him, tell him to stop making trouble. Last night I. . . just drank too much. That’s why I blurted out those cruel words; If he is unwilling to come back then you can just carry him back on your shoulder. Remember to be mindful not to pull on his hand.”
Zhu Dongfeng was full of helplessness and left as commanded.
Nan Li sat restlessly in the hall for an entire day before he saw the return of Zhu Dongfeng who had departed to carry out his orders.
“You didn’t find him?” Nan Li gritted his teeth, “He is only a young practitioner with a low cultivation base, practically no different from a mere mortal and the lot of you can’t even catch a mortal?”
Zhu Dongfeng was shamefaced: “My Lord, we combed through the surrounding areas, but we truly couldn’t find a trace of the concubine.”
Nan Li became more and more flustered internally.
Where could he have gone in this vast wasteland?
He forcibly suppressed the panic and fear in his heart and shot up irately: “A bunch of useless trash! I’ll go search for him myself.”
One day passed, then three, then a whole three months came and went.
Nan Li was shocked to find that he really couldn’t locate Ye Buyi anymore.
He experienced the feeling of continuous sleepless nights.
That year, his wife, Yun Hua, died at the hands of a cultivator and Nan Li himself was thrown into the savage wasteland. Thousands of years have passed since then, Yun Hua became the cinnabar mole in his heart, and he had luckily encountered Ye Buyi after much difficulty. But now, Ye Buyi had become a needle, a thorn that was wedged into his heart making it challenging to eat and rest peacefully.
Only in his dreams could he still see Ye Buyi, thus he drank more and more fiercely so that he could go find Ye Buyi after sinking into drunkenness.
On this day, he once again dreamed of an event that had occurred in the past with Ye Buyi.
As usual, they played the salvaging game by the lake. After playing several rounds, Ye Buyi complained that he was tired, climbed ashore and laid still. His wet clothes outlined his round buttocks, extremely adorable.
As he laid prone on the ground, fiddling with the items he had fished out, there was one in particular that he couldn’t help toying with so much that he didn’t want to let go.
It was a shard that glowed, like a bauble that had fallen from some sort of ornament.
Ye Buyi put it on his chest and gestured: “It must be exquisite to fashion jewelry from it with a chain.”
Nan Li picked him up and placed him on his lap, teasing him: “An accessory with a chain? How can a grown man like you like this sort of glowing thing? Just like a young maiden.”
Young Maiden Ye didn’t speak and rolled the fragment around in the palm of his hand.
“Is it really that beautiful?” Nan Li held the hand that was holding the shard, “. . . Stop looking at it, look at me.”
Young Maiden Ye glanced at him and when he lowered his head while pursing his lips in a shy manner; he seemed even more like a young girl.
“Just a glance and you’d react as such? Do you actually like me that much?” Nan Li couldn’t help teasing him again.
Ye Buyi blushed and bit his lip as he pondered it for a while before he answered earnestly: “It’s just. . . the kind of like where I want to be your bride.”
Nan Li was very satisfied with that answer and gave him a peck on the lips: “Okay ah. I’ll incorporate this into a chain and when I want to organize a wedding to liven things up a bit, I’ll ask you to wear it when you marry me.”
After those words left his lips, Nan Li woke up.
He was sleeping on Ye Buyi’s bed.
After opening his eyes, the empty room hollowed out his heart in an instant.
Just when he shifted his legs to alight from the bed, Zhu Dongfeng knocked on the door and entered: “My Lord.”
“What is it?” Nan Li looked up indolently, “Have you found the little cultivator?”
Zhu Dongfeng paused for a moment: “Yes, I found him.”
Nan Li wasn’t prepared to hear this good news at all. Hearing such a reply, he was pleasantly surprised and leapt to the ground on bare feet, excited: “Really? Where is he? Is he injured? Has he lost weight?”
An unbearable expression surfaced on Zhu Dongfeng’s face: “My Lord. . . Restrain your grief.”
Nan Li was so immersed in joy that he couldn’t comprehend Zhu Dongfeng’s words: “Grief? Restrain what grief?”
Zhu Dongfeng gestured outside the doorway and two ghost servants entered with a bundle of white cloth.
They spread the cloth roll out which contained a scattered skeleton inside. There were obvious bite and drag marks made by wild beasts and most of the muscles and tissue had already been removed, only his arm hadn’t been gnawed on too drastically so that one could still clearly make out that the right hand clenched in a fist was missing a digit.
. . . The little finger was missing there.
“The concubine actually didn’t go too far.” Zhu Dongfeng explained, “A ghost servant found him under a cliff not too far from Hutiao Ravine. The wild grasses there had grown very tall which was why we couldn’t find the concubine when we initially began our search.”
Nan Li stared at the remains on the ground with a strange glint in his gaze.
He didn’t believe that this pile of bones was his little cultivator who loved to cry: “What was he doing there?”
Zhu Dongfeng: “The concubine seemed to have fallen off the cliff. . . When we found the concubine, these were sprinkled around him. . .”
He retrieved a piece of cloth from inside his lapel and unfolded it layer by layer.
A few dried luohan flower petals drifted away and landed on the skeleton.
Looking at these petals, Nan Li recalled something,
—When he and Ye Buyi had first met, he had been sitting on the edge of a cliff full of luohan flowers tuning his sheng.
That cliff face was isolated and could not be reached by directly embarking on any mountain road. After Ye Buyi left Hutiao Ravine, he climbed up there with his bare hands presumably to pick a luohan flower to keep as a souvenir and remembrance.
He murmured to himself: “. . . Was it that cliff?”
Zhu Dongfeng didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t understand what Nan Li was referring to.
Nan Li looked at the corpse on the ground and asked further: “. . . Dead?”
Zhu Dongfeng couldn’t say a word in reply.
Nan Li pointed at the remains, wanting to smile but couldn’t: “He died? Just to pick a flower?”
He gazed at the skeleton and softly mumbled: “. . . You didn’t even bring the chained ornament I made for you with you, yet you ran to pick flowers. What a stupid cultivator.”
When his words fell, he coughed a few times and felt mucosal secretions pooling in his mouth, choking him until he felt stuffy in the chest.
He turned his head to the side to spit out the extraneous fluids, but vomited a large mouthful of blood instead.
All of Ye Buyi’s memories ended on the day blood sprinkled onto his remains.
After all of the remnants of Ye Buyi’s soul were incorporated into his body, Xu Xingzhi slowly opened his eyes.
Noting the change, ecstasy revealed itself on the Ghost King Nan Li’s face.
The person before him was a rare specimen he had finally procured after more than ten years of arduous scouring.
Ever since he threw up blood and became seriously ill, Nan Li set up the twenty-seven illusion formation in Hutiao Ravine to capture those who approached. As long as someone tried to break into the ravine, he would go through the trouble of testing their hearts.
First of all, the body of the person couldn’t be too weak. Ye Buyi wasn’t in good health since he was a child and even though he grew much stronger after growing up, he was still a little frail and sensitive. Nan Li didn’t want him to be a sick seedling after his resurrection.
Secondly, the age of the one who was chosen must be appropriate and mustn’t have any peculiar bad habits so as to not contaminate Ye Buyi’s soul.
The most important thing was that that person must possess a benevolent and foolish heart like Ye Buyi.
Only such a heart could be worthy of him.
And this person before him at this moment basically fulfilled all of Nan Li’s requirements.
. . . Once the soul purging was completed, all of Xu Xingzhi’s memories would be overwritten by Ye Buyi’s.
Nan Li only needed to draw Xu Xingzhi’s soul out of his body, gouge out his heart and place it into Ye Buyi’s corpse that he had preemptively preserved. Next, after evoking the long lasting spiritual technique, he would be able to bring Ye Buyi back to life with all of his memories intact.
The flesh that Ye Buyi lost was really tough to reshape, but as long as his little cultivator was willing to come back, even if he could only obtain a skeleton that could move and talk, he wouldn’t say a word of complaint.
He stroked Xu Xingzhi’s cheek, who had woken up, and lowered his voice to he the softest and lightest possible: “Can you recognize who I am? Little cultivator?”
Xu Xingzhi took a deep breath and replied coldly: “I recognize you. One outright b*stard.”
“. . . Little cultivator?” Nan Li was stunned for a while, then he abruptly came to his senses, “You?? It’s still you? You are not him???”
Xu Xingzhi still had a splitting headache, but before the face of such a scumbag, he politely revealed a mocking smile: “What? You can’t recognize your Ye Buyi anymore?”
The expression on Nan Li’s face changed drastically. He dragged Xu Xingzhi off the platform, grabbing a fistful of his lapel: “How is that possible? How could the soul purging fail?”
Xu Xingzhi sarcastically mocked: “Maybe your little cultivator doesn’t want to see you again ba.”
How would Nan Li be willing to listen to Xu Xingzhi’s load of bull? He circulated his spiritual power then flattened his palm against Xu Xingzhi’s forehead. Closing his eyes to concentrate his power, he started to investigate meticulously.
After a moment, Nan Li’s eyes snapped open in astonishment: “You’ve already been purif. . .”
Before he could finish his sentence, the sound of an explosion that split the heavens and the earth traveled from outside the palace. It was as if Gong Gong crashed into Buzhou Mountain head-on and a surging demonic force swept over like a tsunami slamming the door of the secret chamber open.
Nan Li whipped around abruptly, his expression dropping below zero in an instant: “Who?”
Zhu Dongfeng fell into the secret chamber with a phantom spear protruding from his back!
A gurgling sound bubbled from his mouth, but he still managed to squeeze out a sentence through the muzzle of blood: “. . . My Lord, the twenty–seven illusion arrays. . . have all been broken. . . My Lord, please leave quickly. . .”
The phantom spear in his back was suddenly withdrawn and the loud noise from the splashing of blood and squelching of flesh completely buried his last few words which were already weakly uttered.
An arc of light like a shooting star swept over, pointing straight at the back of Nan Li’s neck.
Zhou Beinan’s command came from behind him: “. . . Put him down.”
Hearing this, Nan Li was surprisingly obedient and shoved Xu Xingzhi against the wall,. A glint flashed across his eyes as four phantom nails appeared out of thin air, respectively nailing Xu Xingzhi by his shoulders and trouser legs, pinning him onto the wall directly.
After Xu Xingzhi was fixed in place, he turned his head back and immediately came face-to-face with Zhou Beinan.
Seeing his face, Zhou Beinan furrowed his brow, seeming somewhat confused.
A grim smile emerged on Nan Li’s face: “It’s you ah? Your soul hasn’t dissipated yet?”
Zhou Beinan was startled: “You recognize me? . . .”
Nan Li grinned fiercely then raised his hand suddenly to grasp the tip of Zhou Beinan’s spear. The expression on his face didn’t change at all and with a slight twitch of his fingers, the phantom spear in Zhou Beinan’s hands morphed into a puff of ash without warning!
While the dust floated everywhere, Nan Li caught Zhou Beinan by the neck and pressed him onto the ground.
He was obviously already incensed by the failure earlier and all rationality had scattered. As such, he vented all his anger on Zhou Beinan: “I’m the Ghost King. How could the remnant of a ghost dare to wield their blade before me?”
Nan Li exerted a growing amount of force, so much that the floor tiles shattered into pieces and Zhou Beinan was depressed into the ground inch by inch. His spiritual body started to faintly flicker between alternating light and dark, evidently because he was unable to counter against such overwhelming ghostly powers.
Nan Li lost all his patience, his expression was terrifying, and both eyes became bloody red: “You don’t remember me? En? How pitiful that you can’t even remember the grand declarations you made? You had proclaimed that you were going to skewer my heart with a single stab of your spear and grind my bones into dust, don’t you recall?”
Zhou Beinan widened his eyes: “You—It’s you. . .”
“You can’t even protect your little sister who was on the verge of giving birth.” Nan Li sneered maliciously, “I still remember your name, Zhou Beinan, you are nothing more than trash.”
He tightened his fingers, trying to go to the extent of snuffing out Zhou Beinan’s spiritual body at once!
However just as he exerted all of his strength, his whole body was knocked flying. He slammed into the wall on one side so solidly that he fractured the wall of the secret chamber into pieces.
Meng Chongguang stepped in from the outside.
The corner of his eye and the center of his forehead were scarlet like blood, and the crimson light in his eyes seemed concentrated enough to drip out. His head of black hair fluttered about due to the ghostly energy that was undulating in the air.
He stood there prominently bearing a remarkable resemblance to a demonic spirit that had lost its senses.
Yet he was in no mood to fight with Nan Li at all, only searching for a shadow of Xu Xingzhi with a pair of hollow and lost eyes: “Shixiong? Where are you?”
In the hazy dust, Nan Li climbed staggeringly to his feet. He unsheathed the short sword at his waist and charged straight towards Xu Xingzhi.
Catching sight of someone drifting about in his line of sight, Meng Chongguang’s gaze sharpened and a pulse of scarlet light was cast from his palm, making a beeline for Nan Li.
Nan Li maneuvered his short sword into a block. The sound of clashing steel rang out, the noise exploding in little bursts. Nan Li was only able to parry a few rounds before he tasted unbearable sweetness flooding his mouth, forcing him to abandon his blade as he took a heavy strike from Meng Chongguang directly.
One of his arms was dismembered and sent flying away, but he only borrowed its momentum to lunge towards Xu Xingzhi instead. Before reaching him, he concentrated his ghostly spiritual energy into his remaining hand and attempted to suck the residual soul residing in Xu Xingzhi out.
However, he combed through every meridian in Xu Xingzhi’s entire body and still couldn’t locate the remnant soul he had treasured for so many years!
“Give it back to me!” Nan Li hissed, “Give him back to me!”
And yet, that little ball of soul didn’t respond to him and hid deep inside Xu Xingzhi’s body, refusing to come out again.
Just like all those years ago, Ye Buyi refused to answer him and no longer paid any attention to him.
Nan Li was stimulated by the leap in his thoughts becoming panicked and at a loss. His face blanched and just as he was about to conduct another search, two ghost servants broke through the window and grabbed a hold of the crazed Nan Li, one on each side: “My Lord, leave quickly!”
Nan Li growled: “I won’t leave! He’s still here, he. . .”
One of the higher-level ghost servants took advantage of Nan Li’s madness to steel his heart and chopped Nan Li on the nape.
Nan Li was currently in a state where his blood was surging, thus when he took this hit, his blood and energy rushed to his brain making him faint away instantly.
The ghostly servant pushed Nan Li into the arms of another ghost servant: “Swiftly bring our Lord. . .”
Before he could finish speaking, the ghost servant burst open from the middle and met its demise, disappearing without a trace!
After experiencing twenty-seven illusion arrays, Meng Chongguang lost his reason and senses. He was disoriented like a drunk man or a trapped beast running around in circles uncontrollably. Wherever he heard a disturbance, he would launch a wave of pure demonic force without a moment’s hesitation.
And so that ghostly servant became Nan Li’s unfortunate scapegoat.
The other ghost servant was so startled that it started trembling all over. How could he dare to linger any longer now. Quietly supporting Nan Li, it passed through the walls and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Zhou Beinan rubbed his throat and supported himself off the ground, coughing.
He had just managed to sit up halfway when instinct made him agilely roll aside immediately.
In a flash, a huge pit was blasted out by Meng Chongguang’s spiritual power in the exact spot he occupied previously.
Zhou Beinan scolded: “Meng Chonggunag, look clearly. . .”
Before he could finish speaking, Meng Chongguang swept another palm out indiscriminately, making half of the secret chamber collapse instantly!
Just as Zhou Beinan used all of his strength to scramble away and escape out the doorway of the secret chamber that no longer existed, he happened to catch sight of Qu Chi walking towards them with an unconscious Tao Xian on his back while Lu Yujiu, Zhou Wang, and Yuan Ruzhou followed not too far behind.
Zhou Beinan hollered a warning: “Run away quickly! Meng Chongguang has gone crazy!”
After Meng Chongguang heard these movements, a majestic, scarlet demonic force gathered in his palm and a wicked smile hung on the corner of his lips.
Realizing that Meng Chongguang was about to launch an attack, Xu Xingzhi, who was dizzy and dazed from the invasion of Nan Li’s ghostly powers earlier, finally regained his strength to speak and called out hoarsely: “Meng. . . Chongguang!”
With just this call, the heavy and dense murderous intent leaking from Meng Chongguang’s eyes gradually faded away in utter defeat.
He cast his gaze around frantically like an anxious child and finally saw Xu Xingzhi who was nailed to the wall in plain sight.
His whole body immediately came alive with a breath of life and his sharp edges were drastically grinded away to nothing. He bounded straight over and latched onto Xu Xingzhi’s waist without giving anyone time to voice a protest. He mewled repeatedly like a young kitten that still fed on it’s mother’s milk: “Shixiong! Shixiong. . .”
Zhou Beinan, who had been a hair’s breadth away from his demise, gaped in stupefaction.
Xu Xingzhi was still lightheaded and was barely able to take two breaths. Seeing the tear-stained face of the beauty that was Meng Chongguang in front of him, his heart softened into a messy puddle: “What are you crying for, already a grown, valorous man. Let me down.”
“Shixiong, sorry, I’m sorry. . .” Meng Chongguang wiped his face with the back of his hand messily in a panic, “I, did I scare Shixiong? Chongguang didn’t do it on purpose, didn’t. . .”
With a lift of his hand, the phantom nails that pinned Xu Xingzhi’s sleeves to the wall were all removed.
Xu Xingzhi, who was powerless, fell slowly against his shoulder.
The moment he came into contact with Meng Chongguang’s body, he seemed to have fallen into a dark and deep canyon. His awareness completely faded as he lost consciousness and fainted.
Perhaps it was thanks to the stimulation of Nan Li’s ghostly powers, but another complete memory fragment surfaced in Xu Xingzhi’s mind at last.
The author has something to say:
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Author's Chapter Summary:
Pinky finger, demonic spirit, luohan flowers
The translator has something to say: didn’t want to translate the title as “deranged”, “demented”, “unhinged”, or anything along those lines because NL and MCG seem more like they are stuck in the denial phase of grief because they couldn’t bear the loss or thought of loss while YBY just couldn’t handle the dishonesty and what he now perceived as his “true” situation
The editor has something to say: I looked up luohan flower in Chinese and got pictures of fish instead. Seems like the full name is actually luohanguo (monkfruit) flowers?
Translator: transcendentwingsEditor: teaffTranslator's Note: another looooooooooong chapterNan Li disregarded Ye Buyi's resentment and resistance and carried Ye Buyi, who had thrown up a mouthful of blood, over his shoulder back into the room, roughly flinging him onto the bed.The crying Ye Buyi wanted to run away, but Nan Li choked him by the neck and pressed him back onto the bed: Ye Buyi, know to appreciate my favor.Ye Buyi finally stopped moving.Nan Li just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Ye Buyi whisper in a very small voice: Nan Li, let me goba.Nan Li had already drank a lot of alcohol and his intoxication fogged his mind. Hearing this, anger rose uncontrollably, but he forced himself to hold back as he retorted: . . . Where do you want to go? Where can you go?Ye Buyi didn't speak.Nan Li sneered: Could you have even survived a day in the wasteland without me? Ye Buyi, do you have a conscience?Ye Buyi stared at him with red eyes and sobbed in a low voice: Nan Li, thank you, but I beg you, please let me goba.Nan Li's facial features were twisted in anger: Stop daydreaming. Ye Buyi, you listen to me, even if you die, you can only die in Hutiao Ravine.Ye Buyi began to shake: . . . For what reason?For the reason that I saved your insignificant life. Nan Li was so enraged that he burst into hysterical laughter instead, Or did you think you could have lived until this day by your own strength?Ye Buyi's lips were snow white as he mustered all the courage he had to voice the words in his heart: . . . Your original intent wasn't to save me at all. It was only because I had a pair of eyes similar to that of your deceased wife.When he initially saw the mural of Nan Li's deceased wife, Ye Buyi, who had a bit of a silly disposition, didn't even consider that he was a substitute, he was only preoccupied by his sense of remorse.. . . She was so good, so it was right that Nan Li couldn't forget her. Now that it was him by Nan Li's side, he should learn more of the disposition Nan Li likes so that he could make the other a little happier.He regarded Nan Li as his entire world, but Nan Li only deemed him as a dispensable trinket.Hearing Ye Buyi exposing him like this, Nan Li was furious. The blue veins on his forehead pulsed: What did you say? Say it again?He originally had a violent temperament and would only restrain himself slightly in front of Ye Buyi in the past. It was the first time Ye Buyi saw Nan Li become so infuriated that he couldn't help trembling in fear and shrank back to a corner of the bed.You should thank your parents for making you look marginally alike. Nan Li sneered, Otherwise, on the first day we met, you would've died in my body like the remnant soul of your fellow practitioner.Ye Buyi raised his head abruptly: . . . What did you say?What do you think I rely on to cultivate? Nan Li didn't think that there was anything wrong with what he said, Your fellow cultivator died, his soul became superfluous, so what if I absorbed his soul to cultivate? In comparison, I treat you very well, what are you dissatisfied with?Ye Buyi stared at Nan Li, his gaze foreign as if this was the first time in his life he laid eyes on him: You, You consumed his soul? Didn't you promise to bury him. . .Nan Li felt that Ye Buyi was being unreasonable as he curled his lips in a mocking smile: Hasn't he been buried already? Otherwise, where did the tomb by the lake come from?Ye Buyi's pitch rose higher: But you told me, if I followed you to Hutiao Ravine, you, you'd bury him properly. Why did you have to. . .Nan Li countered: Did I say that I wouldn't devour his soul?Ye Buyi opened his mouth and ultimately closed it sullenly.Nan Li finally calmed down somewhat after that tirade and wanted to touch Ye Buyi's head, but was avoided.Ye Buyi uttered tearfully: During the first time, we pinky promised, hooked and stamped. You stated that you wouldn't lie to me in the future, that you would treat me well. . . They were all lies. . . From the beginning, you've never treated me with an honest heart. . .The flame that had been suppressed swiftly became a raging prairie under the stimulation of Ye Buyi's words. In his fury, Nan Li snapped indifferently: Honest words? You want it, but are you worthy? Are any of you worthy?It was you, hypocritical cultivators, who sent me into the wasteland in the first place. That I f*cked you, an insignificant cultivator was something you deserved!Ye Buyi froze in place.Those words were like a sharp ice pick that smashed into Ye Buyi's heart no-holds-barred. It was like his joints were filled with shards of ice, numbing and frigid, painfully splintering.After an unknown amount of time passed in this state, Ye Buyi finally bent over in pain and hit the edge of the bedpost with his head repeatedly, knocking against it with adongdongsound.In the past, he only regarded the so-called heartache as a mere expression, only when things ended up in such a tragic state did he know that it was a dull ache that actually manifests, throbbing until his head was covered in cold sweat.After throwing down those words, Nan Li didn't feel happy in his heart at all and his chest also ended up feeling very suffocated. Then adding on Ye Buyi's reaction, he immediately stretched out his hand to protect the other's forehead: What are you doing?! Don't pretend to go insane in front of me.Before the last syllable fell, he heard the sliding sound of the short sword at his waist being unsheathed.Nan Li stepped back agilely, only to see Ye Buyi holding the short sword, his eyes red, like a bunny provoked into anger as the other glared at him ferociously.What? You want to kill me? When he came back to his senses, Nan Li somewhat regretted the vicious words he'd unleashed onto Ye Buyi earlier. However he was used to being the highest authority, so wanting him to admit that he was wrong and swallow his words was completely impossible, You've become braverah, Ye Buyi.He really believed that Ye Buyi would rush over to stab him.In just a few short moments, Nan Li had already conceived the resulting scene after the other charged over.He wouldn't avoid it and would just let him stab him once. Either way, he wouldn't be killed by such a small thing. After running him through and calming down, Nan Li would slowly coax him into coming around bit by bit and his little temper tantrum would disappear regardless.Nan Li was confident that he understood Ye Buyi very well, thus when Ye Buyi's detached pinky rolled off the bed, Nan Li wasn't able to react.A few seconds later, Nan Li let out an expletive, lunged forward and slapped the short sword onto the ground: You've become f*cking crazyba, Ye Buyi?Ye Buyi curled up on the bed, cradling his hand as blood gushed like a fountain from the severed little-finger on his right hand.His shoulders seized uncontrollably: Hurts. . . It hurts. . .Nan Li yanked his hand over and circulated his powers to stop the bleeding: Now you know that it's painful? If you're angry then stab meah? You're so f*cking capable for bringing the blade down on yourselfah.Ye Buyi's face was very pale, his lips chapped, and his breathing very light, but he still tried his best to push Nan Li away: Dirty.Nan Li became instantly antagonized: You think I'm dirty? So you chopped your finger off? Then you've been f*cking touched by me inside and out, so why don't you just go diene?Hearing this, Ye Buyi was stunned for a long time before he whispered: . . . That's right, I'm dirty, it's me that's dirty. I beg you to let me goba.Nan Li found that this person couldn't process his words at all anymore. Observing that the bleeding stopped, he flicked his sleeves: If you want to f* ck off, then f*ck off faster. With your body covered in the smell of blood, only death will await you if you depart from Hutiao Ravine.Hurtling those words down, he left in a huff.Deoofafv ys atf mbiv klcvr, Rjc Ol yfmjwf wbgf rbyfg ogbw tlr vgecxfccfrr. Coafg rajixlcu jgbecv atf vbbgkjs lgglajyis, tf mjeuta atf rbecv bo j atlc rby mbwlcu ogbw atf gbbw.Xgjvejiis, atf kffqlcu rbecv yfmjwf j kjli, jcv atfc la agjcrobgwfv lcab j tfjga kgfcmtlcu mgs.Rjc Ol tjv cfnfg tfjgv j tewjc yflcu mgs lc remt jubcs yfobgf. Pa kjr ilxf kjamtlcu tfiqifrris jr j qjga bo bcf'r ybvs kjr glqqfv boo ys jcbatfg, ecjyif ab gfrlra, ktlif bcis jyif ab yjki bcf'r fsfr bea ilxf j mtliv.Nan Li felt that the cries made it somewhat hard to breathe. He wanted to push the door open and enter, but after reaching his hand out halfway, he paused.He temporarily couldn't face Ye Buyi, hence, he could only turn around and leave, abandoning the sobs that made his heart throb in pain behind him.That night, he drank seven or eight jugs of aged wine and slept in his clothes on the throne in the main hall.Who would've thought that on the next day, when he returned to the room, Ye Buyi would be nowhere to be seen.. . . He didn't bring anything with him, including that amputated finger.He seized the ghostly cultivator who was guarding the gates and interrogated him. The answer that he received was that Ye Buyi exited Hutiao Ravine last night stating that the Ghost King had ordered him to scram.Hearing this piece of intel, Nan Li paced around the hall in circles before he raised a hand to smash one of the figurines.The howling scream from inside the statue not only didn't calm him down, but made him more unbearably manic.Very soon, shards of the sculptures were strewn everywhere as Nan Li stood among them, his throat choked with pain.The little cultivator ran away?He dared leave?He couldn't even wield a sword properly, yet he chopped off one of his fingers last night. . .He didn't dare to contemplate it any further: Zhu Dongfeng! Come here now!Zhu Dongfeng approached from outside the hall. Upon seeing the mess on the ground, he couldn't help but feel astonished: You. . .Nan Li pointed outside the palace: You go, go and bring the little cultivator back for me.Zhu Dongfeng naturally wouldn't go against Nan Li's orders: . . . Yes.Nan Li hesitated for a moment then called Zhu Dongfeng back and specifically instructed: He's injured, so he probably wouldn't have made it very far. After you locate him, tell him to stop making trouble. Last night I. . . just drank too much. That's why I blurted out those cruel words; If he is unwilling to come back then you can just carry him back on your shoulder. Remember to be mindful not to pull on his hand.Zhu Dongfeng was full of helplessness and left as commanded.Nan Li sat restlessly in the hall for an entire day before he saw the return of Zhu Dongfeng who had departed to carry out his orders.You didn't find him? Nan Li gritted his teeth, He is only a young practitioner with a low cultivation base, practically no different from a mere mortal and the lot of you can't even catch a mortal?Zhu Dongfeng was shamefaced: My Lord, we combed through the surrounding areas, but we truly couldn't find a trace of the concubine.Nan Li became more and more flustered internally.Where could he have gone in this vast wasteland?He forcibly suppressed the panic and fear in his heart and shot up irately: A bunch of useless trash! I'll go search for him myself.One day passed, then three, then a whole three months came and went.Nan Li was shocked to find that he really couldn't locate Ye Buyi anymore.He experienced the feeling of continuous sleepless nights.That year, his wife, Yun Hua, died at the hands of a cultivator and Nan Li himself was thrown into the savage wasteland. Thousands of years have passed since then, Yun Hua became thecinnabar molein his heart, and he had luckily encountered Ye Buyi after much difficulty. But now, Ye Buyi had become a needle, a thorn that was wedged into his heart making it challenging to eat and rest peacefully.Only in his dreams could he still see Ye Buyi, thus he drank more and more fiercely so that he could go find Ye Buyi after sinking into drunkenness.On this day, he once again dreamed of an event that had occurred in the past with Ye Buyi.As usual, they played the salvaging game by the lake. After playing several rounds, Ye Buyi complained that he was tired, climbed ashore and laid still. His wet clothes outlined his round buttocks, extremely adorable.As he laid prone on the ground, fiddling with the items he had fished out, there was one in particular that he couldn't help toying with so much that he didn't want to let go.It was a shard that glowed, like a bauble that had fallen from some sort of ornament.Ye Buyi put it on his chest and gestured: It must be exquisite to fashion jewelry from it with a chain.Nan Li picked him up and placed him on his lap, teasing him: An accessory with a chain? How can a grown man like you like this sort of glowing thing? Just like a young maiden.Young Maiden Ye didn't speak and rolled the fragment around in the palm of his hand.Is it really that beautiful? Nan Li held the hand that was holding the shard, . . . Stop looking at it, look at me.Young Maiden Ye glanced at him and when he lowered his head while pursing his lips in a shy manner; he seemed even more like a young girl.Just a glance and you'd react as such? Do you actually like me that much? Nan Li couldn't help teasing him again.Ye Buyi blushed and bit his lip as he pondered it for a while before he answered earnestly: It's just. . . the kind of like where I want to be your bride.Nan Li was very satisfied with that answer and gave him a peck on the lips: Okayah. I'll incorporate this into a chain and when I want to organize a wedding to liven things up a bit, I'll ask you to wear it when you marry me.After those words left his lips, Nan Li woke up.He was sleeping on Ye Buyi's bed.After opening his eyes, the empty room hollowed out his heart in an instant.Just when he shifted his legs to alight from the bed, Zhu Dongfeng knocked on the door and entered: My Lord.What is it? Nan Li looked up indolently, Have you found the little cultivator?Zhu Dongfeng paused for a moment: Yes, I found him.Nan Li wasn't prepared to hear this good news at all. Hearing such a reply, he was pleasantly surprised and leapt to the ground on bare feet, excited: Really? Where is he? Is he injured? Has he lost weight?An unbearable expression surfaced on Zhu Dongfeng's face: My Lord. . . Restrain your grief.Nan Li was so immersed in joy that he couldn't comprehend Zhu Dongfeng's words: Grief? Restrain what grief?Zhu Dongfeng gestured outside the doorway and two ghost servants entered with a bundle of white cloth.They spread the cloth roll out which contained a scattered skeleton inside. There were obvious bite and drag marks made by wild beasts and most of the muscles and tissue had already been removed, only his arm hadn't been gnawed on too drastically so that one could still clearly make out that the right hand clenched in a fist was missing a digit.. . . The little finger was missing there.The concubine actually didn't go too far. Zhu Dongfeng explained, A ghost servant found him under a cliff not too far from Hutiao Ravine. The wild grasses there had grown very tall which was why we couldn't find the concubine when we initially began our search.Nan Li stared at the remains on the ground with a strange glint in his gaze.He didn't believe that this pile of bones was his little cultivator who loved to cry: What was he doing there?Zhu Dongfeng: The concubine seemed to have fallen off the cliff. . . When we found the concubine, these were sprinkled around him. . .He retrieved a piece of cloth from inside his lapel and unfolded it layer by layer.A few dried luohan flower petals drifted away and landed on the skeleton.Looking at these petals, Nan Li recalled something,When he and Ye Buyi had first met, he had been sitting on the edge of a cliff full of luohan flowers tuning his sheng.That cliff face was isolated and could not be reached by directly embarking on any mountain road. After Ye Buyi left Hutiao Ravine, he climbed up there with his bare hands presumably to pick a luohan flower to keep as a souvenir and remembrance.He murmured to himself: . . . Was it that cliff?Zhu Dongfeng didn't know what to say.He didn't understand what Nan Li was referring to.Nan Li looked at the corpse on the ground and asked further: . . . Dead?Zhu Dongfeng couldn't say a word in reply.Nan Li pointed at the remains, wanting to smile but couldn't: He died? Just to pick a flower?He gazed at the skeleton and softly mumbled: . . . You didn't even bring the chained ornament I made for you with you, yet you ran to pick flowers. What a stupid cultivator.When his words fell, he coughed a few times and felt mucosal secretions pooling in his mouth, choking him until he felt stuffy in the chest.He turned his head to the side to spit out the extraneous fluids, but vomited a large mouthful of blood instead.All of Ye Buyi's memories ended on the day blood sprinkled onto his remains.After all of the remnants of Ye Buyi's soul were incorporated into his body, Xu Xingzhi slowly opened his eyes.Noting the change, ecstasy revealed itself on the Ghost King Nan Li's face.The person before him was a rare specimen he had finally procured after more than ten years of arduous scouring.Ever since he threw up blood and became seriously ill, Nan Li set up the twenty-seven illusion formation in Hutiao Ravine to capture those who approached. As long as someone tried to break into the ravine, he would go through the trouble of testing their hearts.First of all, the body of the person couldn't be too weak. Ye Buyi wasn't in good health since he was a child and even though he grew much stronger after growing up, he was still a little frail and sensitive. Nan Li didn't want him to be a sick seedling after his resurrection.Secondly, the age of the one who was chosen must be appropriate and mustn't have any peculiar bad habits so as to not contaminate Ye Buyi's soul.The most important thing was that that person must possess a benevolent and foolish heart like Ye Buyi.Only such a heart could be worthy of him.And this person before him at this moment basically fulfilled all of Nan Li's requirements.. . . Once the soul purging was completed, all of Xu Xingzhi's memories would be overwritten by Ye Buyi's.Nan Li only needed to draw Xu Xingzhi's soul out of his body, gouge out his heart and place it into Ye Buyi's corpse that he had preemptively preserved. Next, after evoking the long lasting spiritual technique, he would be able to bring Ye Buyi back to life with all of his memories intact.The flesh that Ye Buyi lost was really tough to reshape, but as long as his little cultivator was willing to come back, even if he could only obtain a skeleton that could move and talk, he wouldn't say a word of complaint.He stroked Xu Xingzhi's cheek, who had woken up, and lowered his voice to he the softest and lightest possible: Can you recognize who I am? Little cultivator?Xu Xingzhi took a deep breath and replied coldly: I recognize you. One outright b*stard.. . . Little cultivator? Nan Li was stunned for a while, then he abruptly came to his senses, You?? It's still you? You are not him???Xu Xingzhi still had a splitting headache, but before the face of such a scumbag, he politely revealed a mocking smile: What? You can't recognize your Ye Buyi anymore?The expression on Nan Li's face changed drastically. He dragged Xu Xingzhi off the platform, grabbing a fistful of his lapel: How is that possible? How could the soul purging fail?Xu Xingzhi sarcastically mocked: Maybe your little cultivator doesn't want to see you againba.How would Nan Li be willing to listen to Xu Xingzhi's load of bull? He circulated his spiritual power then flattened his palm against Xu Xingzhi's forehead. Closing his eyes to concentrate his power, he started to investigate meticulously.After a moment, Nan Li's eyes snapped open in astonishment: You've already been purif. . .Before he could finish his sentence, the sound of an explosion that split the heavens and the earth traveled from outside the palace. It was as ifGong Gong crashed into Buzhou Mountain head-onand a surging demonic force swept over like a tsunami slamming the door of the secret chamber open.Nan Li whipped around abruptly, his expression dropping below zero in an instant: Who?Zhu Dongfeng fell into the secret chamber with a phantom spear protruding from his back!A gurgling sound bubbled from his mouth, but he still managed to squeeze out a sentence through the muzzle of blood: . . . My Lord, the twentyseven illusion arrays. . . have all been broken. . . My Lord, please leave quickly. . .The phantom spear in his back was suddenly withdrawn and the loud noise from the splashing of blood and squelching of flesh completely buried his last few words which were already weakly uttered.An arc of light like a shooting star swept over, pointing straight at the back of Nan Li's neck.Zhou Beinan's command came from behind him: . . . Put him down.Hearing this, Nan Li was surprisingly obedient and shoved Xu Xingzhi against the wall,. A glint flashed across his eyes as four phantom nails appeared out of thin air, respectively nailing Xu Xingzhi by his shoulders and trouser legs, pinning him onto the wall directly.After Xu Xingzhi was fixed in place, he turned his head back and immediately came face-to-face with Zhou Beinan.Seeing his face, Zhou Beinan furrowed his brow, seeming somewhat confused.A grim smile emerged on Nan Li's face: It's youah? Your soul hasn't dissipated yet?Zhou Beinan was startled: You recognize me? . . .Nan Li grinned fiercely then raised his hand suddenly to grasp the tip of Zhou Beinan's spear. The expression on his face didn't change at all and with a slight twitch of his fingers, the phantom spear in Zhou Beinan's hands morphed into a puff of ash without warning!While the dust floated everywhere, Nan Li caught Zhou Beinan by the neck and pressed him onto the ground.He was obviously already incensed by the failure earlier and all rationality had scattered. As such, he vented all his anger on Zhou Beinan: I'm the Ghost King. How could the remnant of a ghost dare to wield their blade before me?Nan Li exerted a growing amount of force, so much that the floor tiles shattered into pieces and Zhou Beinan was depressed into the ground inch by inch. His spiritual body started to faintly flicker between alternating light and dark, evidently because he was unable to counter against such overwhelming ghostly powers.Nan Li lost all his patience, his expression was terrifying, and both eyes became bloody red: You don't remember me?En? How pitiful that you can't even remember the grand declarations you made? You had proclaimed that you were going to skewer my heart with a single stab of your spear and grind my bones into dust, don't you recall?Zhou Beinan widened his eyes: YouIt's you. . .You can't even protect your little sister who was on the verge of giving birth. Nan Li sneered maliciously, I still remember your name, Zhou Beinan, you are nothing more than trash.He tightened his fingers, trying to go to the extent of snuffing out Zhou Beinan's spiritual body at once!However just as he exerted all of his strength, his whole body was knocked flying. He slammed into the wall on one side so solidly that he fractured the wall of the secret chamber into pieces.Meng Chongguang stepped in from the outside.The corner of his eye and the center of his forehead were scarlet like blood, and the crimson light in his eyes seemed concentrated enough to drip out. His head of black hair fluttered about due to the ghostly energy that was undulating in the air.He stood there prominently bearing a remarkable resemblance to a demonic spirit that had lost its senses.Yet he was in no mood to fight with Nan Li at all, only searching for a shadow of Xu Xingzhi with a pair of hollow and lost eyes: Shixiong? Where are you?In the hazy dust, Nan Li climbed staggeringly to his feet. He unsheathed the short sword at his waist and charged straight towards Xu Xingzhi.Catching sight of someone drifting about in his line of sight, Meng Chongguang's gaze sharpened and a pulse of scarlet light was cast from his palm, making a beeline for Nan Li.Nan Li maneuvered his short sword into a block. The sound of clashing steel rang out, the noise exploding in little bursts. Nan Li was only able to parry a few rounds before he tasted unbearable sweetness flooding his mouth, forcing him to abandon his blade as he took a heavy strike from Meng Chongguang directly.One of his arms was dismembered and sent flying away, but he only borrowed its momentum to lunge towards Xu Xingzhi instead. Before reaching him, he concentrated his ghostly spiritual energy into his remaining hand and attempted to suck the residual soul residing in Xu Xingzhi out.However, he combed through every meridian in Xu Xingzhi's entire body and still couldn't locate the remnant soul he had treasured for so many years!Give it back to me! Nan Li hissed, Give him back to me!And yet, that little ball of soul didn't respond to him and hid deep inside Xu Xingzhi's body, refusing to come out again.Just like all those years ago, Ye Buyi refused to answer him and no longer paid any attention to him.Nan Li was stimulated by the leap in his thoughts becoming panicked and at a loss. His face blanched and just as he was about to conduct another search, two ghost servants broke through the window and grabbed a hold of the crazed Nan Li, one on each side: My Lord, leave quickly!Nan Li growled: I won't leave! He's still here, he. . .One of the higher-level ghost servants took advantage of Nan Li's madness to steel his heart and chopped Nan Li on the nape.Nan Li was currently in a state where his blood was surging, thus when he took this hit, his blood and energy rushed to his brain making him faint away instantly.The ghostly servant pushed Nan Li into the arms of another ghost servant: Swiftly bring our Lord. . .Before he could finish speaking, the ghost servant burst open from the middle and met its demise, disappearing without a trace!After experiencing twenty-seven illusion arrays, Meng Chongguang lost his reason and senses. He was disoriented like a drunk man or a trapped beast running around in circles uncontrollably. Wherever he heard a disturbance, he would launch a wave of pure demonic force without a moment's hesitation.And so that ghostly servant became Nan Li's unfortunate scapegoat.The other ghost servant was so startled that it started trembling all over. How could he dare to linger any longer now. Quietly supporting Nan Li, it passed through the walls and disappeared in the blink of an eye.Zhou Beinan rubbed his throat and supported himself off the ground, coughing.He had just managed to sit up halfway when instinct made him agilely roll aside immediately.In a flash, a huge pit was blasted out by Meng Chongguang's spiritual power in the exact spot he occupied previously.Zhou Beinan scolded: Meng Chonggunag, look clearly. . .Before he could finish speaking, Meng Chongguang swept another palm out indiscriminately, making half of the secret chamber collapse instantly!Just as Zhou Beinan used all of his strength to scramble away and escape out the doorway of the secret chamber that no longer existed, he happened to catch sight of Qu Chi walking towards them with an unconscious Tao Xian on his back while Lu Yujiu, Zhou Wang, and Yuan Ruzhou followed not too far behind.Zhou Beinan hollered a warning: Run away quickly! Meng Chongguang has gone crazy!After Meng Chongguang heard these movements, a majestic, scarlet demonic force gathered in his palm and a wicked smile hung on the corner of his lips.Realizing that Meng Chongguang was about to launch an attack, Xu Xingzhi, who was dizzy and dazed from the invasion of Nan Li's ghostly powers earlier, finally regained his strength to speak and called out hoarsely: Meng. . . Chongguang!With just this call, the heavy and dense murderous intent leaking from Meng Chongguang's eyes gradually faded away in utter defeat.He cast his gaze around frantically like an anxious child and finally saw Xu Xingzhi who was nailed to the wall in plain sight.His whole body immediately came alive with a breath of life and his sharp edges were drastically grinded away to nothing. He bounded straight over and latched onto Xu Xingzhi's waist without giving anyone time to voice a protest. He mewled repeatedly like a young kitten that still fed on it's mother's milk: Shixiong!Shixiong. . .Zhou Beinan, who had been a hair's breadth away from his demise, gaped in stupefaction.Xu Xingzhi was still lightheaded and was barely able to take two breaths. Seeing the tear-stained face of the beauty that was Meng Chongguang in front of him, his heart softened into a messy puddle: What are you crying for, already a grown, valorous man. Let me down.Shixiong, sorry, I'm sorry. . . Meng Chongguang wiped his face with the back of his hand messily in a panic, I, did I scareShixiong? Chongguang didn't do it on purpose, didn't. . .With a lift of his hand, the phantom nails that pinned Xu Xingzhi's sleeves to the wall were all removed.Xu Xingzhi, who was powerless, fell slowly against his shoulder.The moment he came into contact with Meng Chongguang's body, he seemed to have fallen into a dark and deep canyon. His awareness completely faded as he lost consciousness and fainted.Perhaps it was thanks to the stimulation of Nan Li's ghostly powers, but another complete memory fragment surfaced in Xu Xingzhi's mind at last.The author has something to say:System reminder: reformatting failedAuthor's Chapter Summary:Pinky finger, demonic spirit, luohan flowersThe translator has something to say: didn't want to translate the title as deranged, demented, unhinged, or anything along those lines because NL and MCG seem more like they are stuck in the denial phase of grief because they couldn't bear the loss or thought of loss while YBY just couldn't handle the dishonesty and what he now perceived as his true situationThe editor has something to say: I looked up luohan flower in Chinese and got pictures offishinstead. Seems like the full name is actually luohanguo monkfruit flowers?
