Reborn as a succubus - Chapter 60

“What do you mean?”

After the Chief Steward left, Xi Che turned to question Chu Yan.
That droplet of water had floated out from Chu Yan’s chest — and Xi Che had distinctly felt from it the aura of the Heart cleansing spring.

“What was that droplet? Why could it restrain Liu Wuhuan?”

Chu Yan didn’t answer directly. He only said,

“Let’s talk somewhere else.”

Xi Che glanced around. The disturbance here had already drawn a growing crowd of onlookers, so he reluctantly nodded.

“Then let’s go back to Xiaoyao Mountain.”

Chu Yan hadn’t yet replied when he suddenly looked up toward the depths of the clouds.
Xi Che followed his gaze — and his eyes met Zhu Wu’s, cold and watchful, staring right at them.

No wonder Xi Che had sensed that gaze on him since the beginning — it was Zhu Wu.
He narrowed his eyes instinctively. Beside his ear, the White Tiger’s heavy, restless breathing grew louder.

Xi Che knew what it wanted. The last time they’d met, Zhu Wu had humiliated it badly. Now that it had recovered, it naturally craved revenge.

“White Tiger.”

Xi Che pressed a hand lightly on the beast’s head, saying nothing as he looked back at Zhu Wu — though Zhu Wu had once killed him, Xi Che still felt a pang of guilt at the sight of him.

He didn’t speak first. Chu Yan, noticing Zhu Wu’s steady stare, quietly stepped forward to stand between them, shielding Xi Che from his gaze.

Zhu Wu let out a cold laugh and vanished on the spot.
Xi Che hesitated for a moment, then decided to follow.

“You’re going?”

Chu Yan called out to him. Xi Che glanced at the nearby Heavenly Ladder, calculation already in his eyes.

“We’ve caught Liu Wuhuan, but the Ladder’s barrier is destroyed.
Do you really think Zhu Wu summoned me back of his own accord?”

The Heavenly Ladder’s fall had made ascending to Jingyu far too easy. What they needed now was a “war god resurrected from death” to act as its new guardian.

Chu Yan froze for a second, a trace of mockery flashing in his eyes.

“Those schemers up in the Ninety-Nine Heavens move fast, don’t they?”

“The Ninety-Nine Heavens?” Xi Che asked, puzzled.

Chu Yan nodded slightly.

“After Langfeng Pavilion was destroyed, the Chief Stewards withdrew from Jingyu and went there.
They no longer watch the gods of Jingyu as closely as before, but for an event like the Ladder’s destruction, they’ll still intervene.”

He paused, then added,

“And I have a feeling — they may handle fewer affairs now, but their power hasn’t weakened. If anything, they’ve become even harder to read.”

Xi Che was taken aback. His thoughts drifted — if Chu Yan and Zhu Wu’s fight over him had been known to the Ninety-Nine Heavens… that could mean trouble.
He would have to go back — otherwise, more complications might follow.

Back in Jingyu, Xi Che and Chu Yan first went to the Water Prison to see Liu Wuhuan.
He had been punished with divine lightning; the wounds gouged open by the Breaking-Origin Hook still bled down his back. Now he sat slumped in a corner, vacant-eyed and broken. The sight was not frightening for the wounds, but pitiful for how empty he looked.

Ordinarily, they wouldn’t have been allowed to see him — it was only because Liu Wuhuan had insisted on meeting Chu Yan that the Chief Steward gave permission.

When he finally saw Chu Yan, Liu Wuhuan stirred. He turned his head and rasped,

“Ying Lei…”

He spoke only that name, yet Chu Yan already understood. His brow furrowed, and he sighed.

“She has fallen.”

Xi Che frowned deeply.
The heart cleansing spring had dried up — and as its guardian deity, Ying Lei’s fall was inevitable. But what did Liu Wuhuan have to do with her?

Then he remembered that droplet of water which had bound him— it had carried the aura of the Spring. Perhaps… it was something Ying Lei had left behind, and left behind for him.

Liu Wuhuan stayed silent for a long time, motionless — and then he suddenly burst into wild laughter.

Ever since he had shattered the Heavenly Ladder’s barrier, he had seemed hollowed out, indifferent to all things. But now, that laughter — raw and desolate — pierced the air with grief.

So… Ying Lei had been the only one who could move him? What had truly existed between them?

Xi Che looked at Chu Yan, who shook his head slightly.

“I only followed Ying Lei’s dying wish and kept her relics safe.”

Liu Wuhuan laughed until he couldn’t anymore. Then, as though struck by a thought, he lunged to the edge of the prison, gripping the bars.

“Why… why did Ying Lei fall?
I should’ve vanished before her!
If she’s gone—”

Chu Yan frowned.

“I don’t know. But you must understand — a plague god doesn’t die easily.”

The faith sustaining a plague god doesn’t come from worshippers’ devotion, but from fear — fear of disease and misfortune.
As long as mortals fear such things, the plague god will never perish.
In other words, as long as there are humans, as long as there is life and death, the Plague God will exist.

But Liu Wuhuan said,

“If that were true, there would be no succession of our kind.
The negative power sealed within us keeps accumulating — even a god cannot bear it forever.
I wouldn’t die, but I would disappear.”

So plague gods do have succession, though theirs differs from ordinary gods.

“I should have vanished long ago…
Unless—”
He paused, his eyes dimming.
“Unless someone truly, sincerely believed in me.”

Xi Che froze. He suddenly recalled something.

Back when he hadn’t yet rebelled against Jingyu, he’d been on good terms with Ying Lei.
Whenever he secretly poured out the waters of the Spring to avoid its cleansing, Ying Lei would cover for him. Through her, he’d learned some of her secrets.

In Ying Lei’s temple, there had always been a nameless spirit tablet, enshrined year after year.
Xi Che had once been curious, but never dared ask.

Could that tablet have been for… Liu Wuhuan?

The thought hit him hard. He told the story aloud — anger rising as realization dawned.
There must have been something more between Ying Lei and Liu Wuhuan. Otherwise, why had she always carried that quiet sorrow, a distance even friends could never cross?

“What did you do to her?” he demanded.

After his outburst, Liu Wuhuan finally calmed. All emotion drained away. He began to speak slowly — the story from the beginning.

Someone of Liu Wuhuan’s kind should never have crossed paths with Ying Lei.

Ying Lei was the Water God’s disciple — beautiful, noble, one of the few female deities of Jingyu, adored by all.
Liu Wuhuan was the Plague God, despised and shunned, living alone in the most remote corner of Jingyu.
Their stations could not have been further apart.

Until the mortal world suffered a catastrophic flood.

That flood struck one of the three-thousand minor worlds. Normally, both the Water God and Rain God would have intervened, but deeming the world too insignificant, the Water God sent only Ying Lei — her first trial as an emissary.

Coincidentally, Liu Wuhuan had been meditating by the Heavenly Pool at the time.
He saw the pool’s waters collapse and pour down toward the mortal realm, and peering from the clouds, he beheld endless devastation below.

Back then, he was still a young god, untouched by cynicism — his heart burned only with the desire to save.
Without a thought for whether his power sufficed, he moved to halt the flood.

But the Heavenly Pool’s collapse was unstoppable; a minor god like him could not resist such force. In the struggle, he was swept down to the lower realm by the torrent.

Though uninjured, Liu Wuhuan’s divine power was useless against the flood, so he turned to the simplest way he could — carrying mortals to higher ground, one after another, until they were safe.

It was there that he met Ying Lei, who had descended to aid the relief effort.

For three months, they fought the flood side by side.
When it finally subsided, Ying Lei was recalled to Jingyu by her master, while Liu Wuhuan remained to help the survivors rebuild their villages.

It seemed a fleeting encounter — yet much had quietly changed.
Liu Wuhuan, knowing how others despised him, never believed someone like Ying Lei could be his friend.
Though they had shared hardship and respect grew between them, he hid behind cold indifference, afraid his unworthiness would show.

But the seed of affection had already taken root, unnoticed by either.

After Ying Lei returned to Jingyu, she often found herself thinking of him.
Through the heart cleansing spring’s Mirror, she would secretly watch him — busy and gentle, leading mortals in rebuilding, doing tasks no god would bother with.
A god despised by all, yet in her eyes, he seemed so kind… even endearing.

Her heart grew warmer each day.

Ying Lei was pure and openhearted; she couldn’t hide her feelings.
Soon, the Water God noticed her change. When confronted, she admitted honestly that she liked Liu Wuhuan.

The Water God was furious.
Unable to scold his beloved disciple, he turned his wrath upon Liu Wuhuan instead.

Outwardly, he didn’t forbid the bond — he only said, “Bring him here. Let me see him.”

Naïvely, Ying Lei went to find Liu Wuhuan.
But when she arrived in the mortal world, she saw the wreckage, the suffering, and Liu Wuhuan working tirelessly amid the ruins. Suddenly, all she’d meant to say seemed meaningless. She forgot her purpose and simply stayed to help him.

When the two finally returned to Jingyu, they were already deeply attached.
The Water God received Liu Wuhuan alone — and with a single, cutting sentence, shattered everything he had dared to hope.

“How shameless you are.
Do you wish Ying Lei to be scorned by all of Jingyu, as you are?”

Liu Wuhuan had lived too long under contempt; he knew what that meant.
If Ying Lei were with him, she would inherit all his pain.
He would drag her from the clouds into the mud.

So he fled — from Jingyu, from her, from himself.
He hated the Water God, yes, but more than that, he hated his own weakness.
Their fragile bond, broken by a single sentence, laid his cowardice bare.

After that, Liu Wuhuan severed all contact.
Ying Lei, not knowing why he had disappeared, searched everywhere for him.

Seeing his pupil so distraught, the Water God finally relented.
He summoned Ying Lei and gave her one final task:
If she could accomplish it, he would tell her where Liu Wuhuan was — and never interfere again.

The task seemed simple.
In one minor world, a strange phenomenon had appeared — from above, a mushroom-shaped cloud had formed, spreading slowly but steadily each day.

Through the Mirror of the Spring, the Water God observed it for days; the cloud showed no sign of dispersing, only constant expansion.
He instructed Ying Lei to eliminate it with her divine power. If she could succeed, it would prove her mastery — and he would no longer oppose her wishes.

Ying Lei believed her master was softening, giving her a chance to be with Liu Wuhuan. Overjoyed, she agreed.

She determined that the cloud was likely a concentrated air mass.
If pressure were applied from above, it would compress and dissipate.
So she used her divine power to bring down meteorites of flowing fire, gently setting them atop the cloud to press it flat — thus removing it without harming the world below.

At first, it worked.
The mushroom cloud sank slightly under the weight — but soon, to her astonishment, it quivered and rose again, swelling even larger than before.

She tried everything: crushing it with boulders, scorching it with wildfire, lashing it with storms — but the gray mushroom cloud held firm.

Frustration turned to stubborn pride.
At last, she summoned her life-bound divine artifact, a jade-colored bowl.
Like a thunderous canopy, it poured forth floods and stone-filled torrents, crashing down upon the cloud — the wrath of a goddess unleashed.

At first, the cloud withstood it, trembling under the deluge.
But as she poured in more power, its form began to shrink — from the size of a bowl to that of a cup, until it became a tiny gray nub, rooted stubbornly in the earth like a nail.

In the end, Ying Lei put away her divine artifact. It was clear that in this contest, the mushroom cloud had won. She was unwilling to accept defeat and personally descended to the mortal realm to see what exactly this thing was — how could such a tenacious anomaly exist in the world?
But when she saw it for herself, she nearly broke down.

The “mushroom cloud” that had been resisting her divine power all this time… was none other than her beloved, the one she had been desperately searching for. That cloud was a barrier that Liu Wuhuan had sustained with his own divine power.

After leaving Jingyu, he wandered among the lesser worlds. When he came upon this one, he found it strange — as though it had been abandoned by the gods. Fire rained from the heavens, the ground spewed endlessly, floods struck every three days, and sandstorms raged every five. He had never seen a world so cursed.
And yet, amid all that destruction, there was still a small group of humans struggling to survive.

Moved by compassion, he decided to help them. Using his divine power, he erected a barrier to protect them. But as the God of Plague, his duty was to seal away the evil and corruption within him; the power he could release outward was limited. Even so, he did what he could.

The humans noticed him and began to worship him as their savior. They carved his statue from stone and clay, built him a temple of mud bricks, and prayed to him. For the first time in his existence, he had believers. It was a strange, moving experience — and as his followers’ faith grew, his divine power strengthened. The mushroom-cloud barrier he held up grew larger and stronger with it.

Then one day, without warning, the disasters worsened. Again and again, he barely managed to hold the barrier against falling boulders, wildfires, sandstorms, and floods. Each time he endured, his followers’ faith deepened — and his power grew — but the strain on his body was immense. He could no longer move.

When the final, world-destroying flood came, he used every last drop of strength to resist it. He couldn’t retreat — and wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer, but for the people behind him, he had to stand firm. His feet slowly fused with the earth; his body hardened into rock — until he became a towering pillar, holding up the sky and sheltering his people beneath that mushroom-shaped cloud.

Even at the end, a spark of his divine power remained, spreading over his believers like a small, fragile umbrella of protection.

When the floods finally ceased, the people survived — but Liu Wuhuan had turned entirely to stone. His divine body and mortal form were both gone. Now he was only a colossal pillar, reaching toward the heavens, forever silent.

Ying Lei looked upon the lover who could no longer answer her and nearly went mad. She collapsed at the foot of the pillar, weeping uncontrollably. Then, from behind it, a human emerged — then another, and another — the people Liu Wuhuan had saved. Yinglei covered her face and sobbed, overwhelmed by guilt and grief.

At that moment, the Water God descended lightly from the heavens and looked down at his disciple. With a sigh, he said softly:
“Love — such things belong to mortals, not to gods. For the sake of your desire, you disregarded human lives, ignored the ruin your power brought to this world, and acted recklessly. You are unworthy of the name ‘god.’”

Ying Lei knelt before him and bowed deeply. She admitted her sin. Her arrogance and blindness had killed the one she loved. In front of all the mortals, she swore an oath: she would never again neglect her duty. From that day on, she would become the guardian of the heart cleansing spring, maintaining the order of Jingyu and spending eternity atoning for her sins.

When Xi Che finished hearing the story, he was utterly shaken. For a long moment, he couldn’t utter a single word of reproach.
At first, he had thought the Water God’s manipulation and schemes were beneath a deity’s dignity — but now he realized, perhaps, that was his way of teaching an extreme lesson.

Still, he frowned. “The Water God’s methods were far too cruel,” he muttered. “But I suppose… fate itself was crueler.”

Liu Wuhuan let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
“Bullshit. You think the Water God is so noble? He wanted me dead from the start. Do you know why that world was flooded? Why the Heavenly Pool suddenly cracked open? It was him. He broke the pool himself while cultivating. All that disaster was his doing. I was the only one who saw the flood pour down from the Heavenly Pool — so to silence me, he tried to kill me, and used Ying Lei’s love as an excuse to make her give up on me. A neat little plan, isn’t it? Two birds with one stone — only someone as vile as him could come up with that.”

He sneered, his eyes dark with hatred.

“But he didn’t stop there. After dragging Ying Lei back to Jingyu, he told those very humans — the ones I had saved with my life — that I was the God of Plague, and that their suffering had begun only because of me. He appeared before them in divine form; of course they believed him. They smashed the temple they had built for me, destroyed my statue, and ground me into the mud beneath their feet.”

“The hatred in me was too deep to fade. I was born from the world’s filth and resentment — and in death, I became the Demon God.”

“I wanted to destroy the Heavenly Ladder, to bring down Jingyu itself — to show everyone the hypocrisy of the so-called gods.”

Xi Che stared at him. “Then why target me? Since I became King Shen, I’ve done nothing but help you. Why did you set me up like this?”

Liu Wuhuan gave him a sidelong glance and said lazily, “Why? I didn’t target you. You never offended me. You — like Yue Tongqing, like the entire Gou Tu clan — you were just tools. Hahaha… Asas, you have to admit, you were the sharpest blade in my hand. Powerful, but stupid — impulsive, soft-hearted. Without you, I could never have sparked the war between gods and demons.”

Xi Che suddenly understood. His throat tightened; it was hard to swallow.
Liu Wuhuan had destroyed everything Xi Che cherished, driving him into madness, so that he would take his revenge on Jingyu — all exactly as planned. The war that shook the Three Realms had begun with that one act of manipulation.

Xi Che staggered back, nearly losing his balance. In the past, he would have tried to kill him upon learning the truth — but now he didn’t even have the strength. Liu Wuhuan had nothing left to lose. He had achieved his goal. The Heavenly Ladder was gone, Jingyu was in chaos. What did death matter to him anymore?

He had been betrayed, deceived, and abandoned — so he no longer loved gods, demons, or men.

After Ying Lei’s fall, he had become a complete madman.

Just then, Xi Che felt a hand on his shoulder. Chu Yan’s voice came quietly from above him:
“That’s enough. Let’s go.”

Xi Che looked one last time at Liu Wuhuan, then nodded wearily.
This matter was no longer his to handle. It was better left to the Masters of Jingyu.