The Immortal Lord and the Demon Venerable Are Both My Vests - Chapter 16

“A massive outbreak of demonic qi within the sect? Heavy casualties among high-level cultivators?”

This bolt from the blue struck him in the face, and Xu Rong’s expression twisted as if he’d been trampled by a herd of green-haired turtles.

He’d only gone out to practice martial arts for a bit—what on earth had happened to this world!

Oh wait, according to Lin Xinqiao’s account, he’d been missing for a full two days.

His martial arts practice had been two days ago. And during that time, someone must have done something to him, causing him to lose his memories of those two days.

Perhaps… he really had been involved in this incident? Otherwise, why would there be any need to erase his memories?

Xu Rong tried to extract from Lin Xinqiao’s recollections what exactly he had missed. After listening, he fell into deep thought.

A massive explosion from the direction of Tianji Peak? A demonic qi outbreak with suspected demon cultivator infiltration?

In his previous life, none of these things had happened. Even the annihilation of the Jihe Alliance had been moved up.

What had caused this chain of changes? Could it be… he wasn’t the only one who had received such an opportunity?

Once this thought emerged, it couldn’t be stopped.

Xu Rong had always regarded his rebirth as being favored by the Heavenly Dao—a chance for him to see through those malicious people’s true faces and change his originally unfortunate fate.

But if he wasn’t the only one to receive this opportunity…

Xu Rong suddenly laughed neurologically twice, his laughter making Lin Xinqiao’s hair stand on end.

“Are you sick, laughing so creepily!” Lin Xinqiao swallowed and unconsciously stepped back, forcing herself to stay calm. “Did you hear what I just told you?”

Xu Rong smiled. “Naturally I heard. Miss Lin can rest assured—whether for the young lady’s sake or for Xu Rong’s own, the small secret realm expedition absolutely cannot have any mishaps.”

“That’s good then.” Seeing him return to normal, Lin Xinqiao also breathed a sigh of relief. Forcibly ignoring the creepy feeling in her heart, she advised, “I’m telling you about the sect’s disturbances only to make you careful and avoid unknowingly violating some taboo. Don’t get yourself mixed up in it without understanding—this isn’t something small disciples like us can interfere with.”

Xu Rong naturally agreed.

****

“After Martial Uncle Gu took you away, I followed the Sect Master up to Tianji Peak and led him to discover the three demonic core fragments you had hidden in advance. The Sect Master looked very shocked. After strictly ordering everyone present not to spread word of this matter, he took the demonic core fragments away.”

“As for what happened after, you should already know.”

Qin Xun followed closely behind Yin Lang, summarizing the key events that occurred after he lost consciousness.

“However…” He looked quite confused. “Whose demonic core fragments were those left behind? Although the aura felt like Venerable Yan’s, Venerable Yan is only at the Tribulation stage. And besides…”

In nearly a century, he’d never heard of Yan Guihe’s demonic core shattering.

Yin Lang leisurely paced along. “They truly are Yan Guihe’s demonic core, but mixed with something else.”

“What?” Qin Xun clearly sensed that his master was in a good mood right now.

The person before him suddenly stopped. Before Qin Xun could react, his cheek suddenly felt warm as someone exhaled lightly by his ear. “It’s…” The following words were extremely soft—apart from the master and disciple in close proximity, no one else could hear the content.

Qin Xun: !!!

He jerked his head up. “You actually dare—”

“Shh.” Yin Lang raised a finger to his lips, eyes full of mirth, and winked at him. “Keep it secret.”

Qin Xun instinctively closed his mouth and followed along in a mental daze.

This truth was too shocking. He was so startled he even forgot to ask when Yan Guihe’s demonic core had shattered, and how Yin Lang had obtained such an extremely private item.

Walking unsteadily all the way to the vicinity of the red flower field, Qin Xun finally recovered from the tremendous shock and stammered, “Those… those three demonic core fragments… what should we do? Just let the Sect Master take them?”

Those were tenth-rank treasures, rare in all the world!

“If he takes them, he takes them.” Yin Lang didn’t care at all. “We can’t use them anyway, so consider it waste utilization.”

Qin Xun couldn’t achieve this level of nonchalance and looked unwilling. “But those are tenth-rank…”

This was typical demonic cultivator thinking: even if I can’t use something good, even if it’s lost or destroyed, I can’t easily give it to others.

After muttering for quite a while, he finally recovered.

“The reason the Fourth Venerable’s planted spy exposed himself was because on Tianji Peak he sensed a familiar aura. He mistakenly thought the Sect Master deliberately set a trap to capture him, so he hastily detonated the crystal stones and tried to escape while ninety percent of Taihua Immortal Sect’s forces were tied up.”

“Too clever by half.” Yin Lang’s comment was concise.

Qin Xun was somewhat speechless. “Master, aren’t you forgetting…” How many things you swindled and deceived from the other nine Venerables are hidden in Tianji Peak’s little storage room?

The Fourth Venerable’s spy was exposed in such a frustrating way.

Yin Lang found this interesting and asked, “Then how was Jiao Yuyu’s spy exposed?”

“You clearly know the Tenth Venerable hates it most when people call him by his full name…” Qin Xun sighed. “That Spirit Transformation cultivator… purely because at the time only Xie Lan and Ji Chang’an were guarding you, he thought it was a great opportunity to gain merit, so he…”

“One stupider than the last.” Yin Lang’s summary was incisive.

“However, it’s also good. With all their commotion, they’ve basically cleared ninety percent of the suspicion from our master-disciple pair. At least for the next century, as long as no major incidents occur, Tu Feng won’t suspect us again.”

Qin Xun paused, deciding to be honest.

“Master, forgive my bluntness, but the demonic path’s situation has become increasingly dire in recent years. Even Venerable Yan has begun making moves. You probably won’t have this much free time anymore.”

So this identity probably couldn’t be maintained much longer.

Yin Lang sighed and waved his folding fan, telling him to be quiet. “I’ll delay as long as I can.”

If not for this damned constitution, why would he have no choice but to get involved in the demonic path’s muddy waters?

Qin Xun knew his master disliked discussing such matters, so he changed the topic. “When I went northeast earlier, I encountered the ‘protagonist.’ His movement technique was very peculiar—he discovered me when I was releasing demonic qi.”

This was the master-disciple pair’s tacit understanding: whenever mentioning the original Xu Rong, they uniformly used ‘protagonist’ as a code name to prevent being overheard.

Yin Lang waited a while but no continuation came.

He looked at Qin Xun with bafflement, then suddenly had an epiphany and cooperatively showed an interested expression. “So what happened?”

How perfunctory.

But since his master was willing to cooperate, which was already quite rare, he said straightforwardly, “It was too urgent at the time, and I was rushing to find you, so I just used a Bewitching Spell to knock him out. Counting the time, he should be about awake now.”

Yin Lang: “…”

He said faintly, “Disciple, you’ve learned bad habits.”

And here he’d thought there would be some unexpected, surprising development.

Greatly disappointed, Yin Lang closed his fan and tapped it against his palm. “Since he doesn’t remember anything, we don’t need to worry about him. That boy’s determination to take a master is firm—let him stew a while longer. We’ll deal with it after the small secret realm.”

Qin Xun didn’t know about Yin Lang’s deal with the Heavenly Dao, and Yin Lang had no intention of telling him about it.

Qin Xun possessed all the fine qualities a qualified disciple should have. For example: he had good judgment and knew what should and shouldn’t be asked.

Like the suddenly appearing Primordial Jade fragment, or his master suddenly saying he wanted to take on a disciple.

“Speaking of which, haven’t heard much news about Miss Lin lately?” Yin Lang asked about this matter without the slightest guilt, as if he weren’t the one who annihilated her entire family.

Qin Xun replied matter-of-factly, “After the Jihe Alliance was annihilated, Lin Xinqiao’s status in Taihua Immortal Sect plummeted. Her fellow sect brothers and sisters aren’t very friendly to her. These days she’s been keeping to herself. Apart from occasionally visiting Xu Rong, she spends the rest of her time in her cave dwelling in closed-door cultivation.”

Yin Lang seemed to smile. “Wants to take revenge on me?”

Qin Xun didn’t answer this question, maintaining silence with eyes on nose, nose on heart.

“Ha.”

With no one responding, Yin Lang also found it boring. He strode to the edge of the red flower field, bent down to pluck a stem, and in the light of the setting sun, the slender petals reflected a blood-red color.

He admired it for a moment, then casually crushed the blooming flower. The scattered petals fell, drifting away with the evening breeze like the fresh blood that had dripped from the God-Slaying Spear’s tip that night.

“Let’s go. It’s time to see our Xiao Chang’an.”

****

Ji Chang’an knew she had developed an inner demon.

Nearly a century of cultivation, breaking through several realms—inner demons couldn’t be called commonplace, but they shouldn’t frighten her to this extent either.

Because she clearly knew they were false.

But this time, she was truly afraid.

Yin Lang. Shen Muxuan. Yin Lang. Shen Muxuan.

He should have been just a character in a book, a false image propped up by words.

He should have remained false forever.

But one day, he became real.

Ji Chang’an’s pupils were dilated as she hugged her legs, hiding in the corner of her room.

Only this way could it give her the slightest sense of security.

Originally, she actually hadn’t feared this person. Or rather, throughout decades of life, she had never truly connected that perpetually smiling snow-robed Daojun with the identity of ‘villain Demon Venerable.’

Until the day the Heaven-rank bounty board was updated.

The image and voice of Lin Xinqiao crying herself unconscious at the Mission Hall entrance forcibly woke her from that false peace.

She had to face this cruel truth—

Shen Muxuan was Yin Lang, the final boss from the novel who could destroy sects and annihilate families with a laugh, and in reality, the peerless demon who could massacre a million without changing expression.

They would die.

Everyone would die.

But she didn’t want to die, nor did she want to watch helplessly as anyone she knew died in that catastrophe that would engulf the entire Lantian Realm.

But it was already too late.

The villain had discovered her abnormality.

She knew everything, but she couldn’t speak of it. She had no way to tell anyone what she knew.

The intense pain when the blood mark on her spine flared was deeply branded into her soul—just thinking about it felt like dying.

From the moment she transmigrated into this world, she had been terrified of the ‘plot’ occurring.

She tried to force herself to forget everything, but the ‘villain’ appeared, the ‘male lead’ appeared, the ‘female lead’ appeared, the ‘female supporting character’ appeared… and finally, the ‘plot’ also appeared.

Ji Chang’an knew who the true mastermind behind this demonic qi outbreak was.

It wasn’t the Third Venerable Yan Guihe.

It was the Seventh Venerable Yin Lang.

If the deviations in Xu Rong’s path made Ji Chang’an hold onto hope and continue deceiving herself, then the occurrence of the Tianji Peak demonic qi outbreak incident made the fear she’d accumulated over nearly a century explode all at once.

Even the ‘plot’ had appeared—didn’t that mean she, as part of the male lead’s harem, would soon enter her destined fate? Didn’t it mean those who had laughed and joked with her would also be swept into their fated demise?

Ji Chang’an knew this was an inner demon.

But she couldn’t escape it.

Because this was ‘reality.’

Xie Lan’s worried voice came from outside the door. “Junior Sister, Martial Uncle Shen and Senior Brother Feng have come to see you. Are you… all right?”