Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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Yin Xuan looked at Chen Hua’s astonished expression and smiled smugly.
He looked at Chen Hua with pity: “When you murdered your master, did you ever imagine this day would come?”
Chen Hua’s face was as pale as gold leaf, and his body swayed precariously.
“It seems you are quite satisfied with your senior brother.”
He switched back to Yin Xuan’s voice and said, “How about I give you another chance? If you help me rescue Suan Yu, I’ll still be your senior brother, okay?”
Chen Hua’s lips trembled as she gritted her teeth and said, “Impossible! I didn’t aid and abet evil back then, and I still won’t now!”
“Then I have no choice but to kill you.” Yin Xuan’s face showed regret. He tightened his grip on Chen Hua’s heart and said coldly, “If I use just a little more force, you will turn into a pile of rotten bones. I taught you the method of condensing the demon core into a heart, didn’t I? I didn’t expect that after all these years, you still wouldn’t know to change it.”
All demons possessed a demon core. The demon core was present from birth, and for most demons, it was located in their heart. If the heart suffered an irreversible blow, the demon core would shatter, and the demon would die instantly.
However, there were also special cases like Chen Hua, who did not have a demon core, or whose demon core was not located in their heart.
When Chen Hua was enlightened by Yuan Li, he broke free from the constraints of the painting and gained his freedom, but he wasn’t able to cultivate from the start. Most humans and demons cultivated by absorbing and circulating spiritual energy through their body’s meridians. However, Chen Hua was born a skeleton without flesh and blood. It was Yin Xuan who taught him to condense the absorbed spiritual energy at his heart before he could formally begin cultivating.
Over time, this simulated heart became his demonic core, and also his Achilles’ heel.
Only he and Yin Xuan knew about this.
Now that Yin Xuan had his lifeline in his grasp, he was not afraid that Yin Xuan won’t have the strength to fight back, and he was just enjoying his pain.
Back then, when he enlightened Chen Hua, his original intention was to find a way to improve his puppetry skills from the human skin and skull diagram, but he never expected that Chen Hua would betray him.
Recalling those days, Yin Xuan’s eyes flashed with malice, and he tightened his grip even more: “If you hadn’t betrayed me, I wouldn’t have had to cripple a puppet for nothing. Do you know how much effort it takes to create those puppet clones? Even if you were to give me your life, it still wouldn’t be enough.”
He was originally a direct disciple of Chi Songzi. Back then, when the Yellow Emperor and Chi You were fighting a great battle in the mortal realm, the upper realm was also affected, and many demons from the Yellow Emperor’s faction descended to the mortal realm. He was originally watching the show, but unexpectedly, his master Chi Songzi suddenly sent him a message, asking him to take his junior brothers and sisters to the mortal realm to provide support.
Their master, Chi Songzi, was a former subordinate of Emperor Yan, and their junior sister was Emperor Yan’s daughter. Yellow Emperor should thus have been their enemy.
But when the time came, his master actually ordered him to lead his fellow disciples down to the mortal realm to provide support and help the Yellow Emperor defeat Chi You.
He had questioned his master about the reason, but his master only sternly ordered him to obey. Later, he had no choice but to lead his fellow disciples down to the mortal realm to provide support, but little did he know that this would cut off his chance to return to the upper realm.
The war god Chi You was incredibly powerful, and even with the help of many people summoned by the Yellow Emperor, the war was still a Pyrrhic victory.
In the battle for supremacy, countless powerful demons perished or were wounded, and he too remained in the mortal realm to recuperate. He originally planned to return to the upper realm after recovering, but little did he know that the Yellow Emperor had already secretly plotted to sever the connection between heaven and earth. Before they could return to the upper realm, the Yellow Emperor first abdicated in favor of Zhuanxu, who then died. While Yuan Li and the other two severed the path to heaven, blocking communication between the two realms.
Those like him who remained in the lower realm thus had no chance to return to the upper realm.
Because communication between the upper and lower realms was blocked, the spiritual energy in the lower realm became increasingly scarce. Countless powerful demons perished and vanished. His fellow disciples who had descended to the lower realm with him also met their demise. In the end, only he survived.
Although he was a disciple of Chi Songzi, his human bloodline hindered his cultivation and his lifespan was not as long as that of the demon race.
As the spiritual energy in the lower realm became increasingly scarce, his cultivation could no longer break through the bottleneck. What was even more unacceptable to him was that his lifespan was coming to an end.
He began to age and weaken uncontrollably…
As he lay weakly in his thatched hut awaiting death, the only thing that sustained him was his burning hatred and his obsession with returning to the upper realm.
Later, on his deathbed, he mastered puppetry and forged a puppet clone using secret techniques. In his final moments, enduring the excruciating pain of his soul being torn apart, he transferred half of his soul to the puppet clone. Once the puppet clone had fully grown and begun its cultivation, and his original body was nearing the end of its lifespan, he could then transfer the other half of his soul into the puppet clone.
He was able to overcome the shackles of these long years by relying on his puppet clones.
Later on, he was no longer limited to creating just one clone. As long as he could find suitable materials, he could create even more puppet clones.
He raised these puppet clones, taught them cultivation, and then sent them out to train. The one who survived and had the highest cultivation level became his perfect body, while the other puppet clones, if they did not die outside, would become alchemy materials for his new body.
Yin Xuan was merely one of his countless puppet clones.
Although these clones contained his soul, their appearances and personalities differed somewhat, likely due to the influence of the materials used in their creation.
Chen Hua was neither the first nor the last person to have deep feelings for his puppet clone.
Yin Xuan had seen many people like Chen Hua.
He scoffed at this but didn’t say anything. Instead, he composed himself and said coldly, “I’ll give you one last chance. Help me rescue Suan Yu, and you and Yin Xuan will both survive. Otherwise, you and Yin Xuan… will both be annihilated.”
Chen Hua’s eyebrows twitched, and he suddenly looked up at him.
Yin Xuan smiled confidently, deliberately mimicking his usual gentle demeanor: “Good junior brother, my life is in your hands.”
“How do I know if what you’re saying is true or false?” Chen Hua said. “Perhaps you’ve already killed my senior brother. Refining souls and stealing memories isn’t something you can’t do. Why should I believe you?”
Seeing that he seemed to be wavering, Yin Xuan added fuel to the fire.
He placed one of Chen Hua’s hands on his chest, simultaneously gripping Chen Hua’s vital point. Seeing the cold sweat covering Chen Hua’s face, he said, “You can feel for yourself whether Yin Xuan’s soul is still inside my body. He is sealed in my heart. You can save him by doing me a small favor. Whether Yin Xuan lives or dies is entirely up to you.”
Chen Hua’s expression wavered more and more. After a long while, he said coldly, “You had better tell the truth.”
As he spoke, he tentatively tried to sense his senior brother’s presence.
Yin Xuan smiled, not worried that Chen Hua would discover his deception. He had used this trick to deceive many people into working for him. This was also why he didn’t restrict his puppet clones from interacting with people.
A false identity, coupled with the word “love,” was enough to deceive people into working for him and risking their lives for him.
It was an incredibly profitable business.
He confidently waited for Chen Hua to bow down and compromise with him like those people had before, but what he got in return was a heavy blow from Chen Hua.
—The white skeleton’s bone claws pierced into his dantian. Chen Hua’s face was pale, but the force in his hand did not diminish in the slightest, and he forcefully pierced through Yin Xuan’s abdomen.
Caught off guard and severely injured, Yin Xuan’s face turned ashen, his eyes gleaming with murderous intent: “You…you’re…courting…death!”
At the same time, he twitched his fingers and crushed Chen Hua’s demon core.
However, Chen Hua only spat out a mouthful of blood but did not disappear as Yin Xuan had expected. He even disregarded his injuries and, taking advantage of Yin Xuan’s moment of astonishment, pierced through his chest with his other hand.
Do you think you’re the only smart person in the world?
Chen Hua spat out a mouthful of blood, his face as pale as paper, and said sarcastically, “Senior brother, you once taught me that a cunning rabbit has three burrows, and you must always learn to leave yourself a way out.”
“Your teachings, word by word, are etched in the hearts of people.”
His hand twisted inside Yin Xuan’s chest cavity, then suddenly pulled out, the snow-white bone claw stained with blood, and in his palm was a still-beating heart: “You are a half-demon, so even without a heart, you shouldn’t die, right? Just like me, I can still live without a demon core.”
Yin Xuan’s face turned pale. He slapped him away and took a few steps back, clutching the bloody hole in his chest, his eyes as cold and venomous as a man-eating snake.
Chen Hua struck with deadly force, unexpectedly inflicting heavy damage on his heart and dantian. While it didn’t kill him, it severely damaged his foundation. Yin Xuan wasn’t a pure demon; he still possessed half-human blood. For an ordinary great demon, these injuries might not be serious, but for him, they were a major problem.
Blood continued to gush from the wound, and Yin Xuan’s appearance visibly began to age.
When did you find out?
When was it discovered?
If Bi’an’s words were an awakening, making him realize Yin Xuan’s abnormality.
What allowed him to see through the illusion of the past was none other than Yin Xuan himself.
Yin Xuan’s words were misleading him, implying that the deceased Yuan Li had possessed Yin Xuan, and that Yin Xuan’s soul still existed, so there was still a glimmer of hope for him.
However, Chen Hua didn’t believe a word he said.
Admittedly, demons and even cultivators had many ways to search souls and explore memories, but it was almost impossible to do something as detailed and trivial as Yin Xuan’s method; moreover, he remembered the jade pendant he had found in Yuan Li’s alchemy room.
That was the jade pendant that his senior brother always wore. He found it in Yuan Li’s alchemy room, so he assumed that his senior brother had already been killed by Yuan Li and his body was gone.
But after hearing Yin Xuan’s words today, he suddenly realized that Yuan Li and Yin Xuan might actually be the same person.
In this way, it made perfect sense that Yin Xuan’s jade pendant appeared in the forbidden alchemy room.
Chen Hua looked at him silently, shook the blood off his bone claws, took off his skin, and prepared to fight to the death.
Although he had a backup plan to prevent Yin Xuan from taking his life, the destruction of half of his demon core was a genuine act to deceive Yin Xuan.
He severely injured Yin Xuan, and Yin Xuan destroyed his demon core in return.
Both were severely injured; the only way to determine a winner was to fight to the death.
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