Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I dreamed of He Qiong again. In the dream, he asked me, “Do you really love me? Will you truly never betray me? Dig out your heart and let me see.”

A demon’s heart turned bright red only before the person she loved and served with absolute loyalty. Ever since the Goddess of the Nine Heavens, Feng Jue, deceived him, He Qiong had suspected everyone around him of false affection and hidden designs.

I could hardly blame him. The first woman to stir his heart had tricked him so thoroughly that his soul was destroyed. I had hidden the fragment of his soul I managed to steal away, fled from place to place, and fed it with my heart’s blood for five hundred years until I rebuilt him. In a way, I was glad he had become so suspicious.

At least no woman would fool him a second time.

Obediently, I reached into my own chest and closed my fingers around the fragile heart beating inside. Without changing expression, I tore it free and held it in my palm. The dripping organ dragged strands of blood vessels after it, and blood slid along the lines of my hand to patter against the ground. A muffled groan escaped me. Admittedly, I was a lowly creature with many hearts. Lose one, and another would grow. Tearing one out was no great matter to me.

Yet a heart was still the seat of a demon’s life. No matter how many I possessed, having one cut from my chest hurt beyond words. But when He Qiong saw the living, scarlet heart pulsing in my palm, the corners of his mouth lifted. I knew he was reassured.

I smiled faintly too.

I woke in the middle of the night, curled in a cave while dripping water rang clearly outside. The pain from the dream seemed to merge with the pain in my waking body. I pressed a hand to my chest, where old wounds overlapped new ones. He Qiong was hunting me across heaven and earth, determined to use my heart’s blood to bring his little phoenix back. I doubted I had much longer to live.

With no other choice, I returned to my true form to recover.

My true form was hideous. To be honest, even I did not know what sort of creature I was. He Qiong had rescued me a thousand years ago from a mountain inhabited by cultivators. Demons had been vanishing in the area, and when he followed their trail, he found me. I… I was an experiment made by a Daoist cultivator. He had fused countless demons into me. My body carried pieces of snakes, foxes, spiders, wolves, rabbits, and other things I could not name. The trait that let me grow new hearts probably came from an earthworm.

My true form was therefore very, very terrifying.

From the moment I became conscious, I lived in a cramped cave. The strange, raving Daoist stared at me as if I were some peerless treasure and constantly forced me to swallow the cores of lesser demons. I did not know which demon my mind had come from, nor which creatures had provided my heart, organs, and limbs. In my confusion, I guessed that he meant to refine me into a body through which he could ascend to immortality. Amid agony and the stench of blood, I endured one day after another, one year after another.

Then one day the cave door was kicked open, and light poured in like a flood. He Qiong stood against that radiance, a folding fan in one hand while he lifted the other. A tongue of flame danced above his fingertips, rings of light spreading from it. Instinctively drawn toward the glow, I raised my head from the corner and gazed hungrily at that spark. Shock crossed his handsome face as he stared at me and asked, “What are you?”

I could not speak then. At the sight of a person, I shrank in terror into the deepest darkness of the cave until there was nowhere left to hide.

He cornered me and studied me closely. “Did you kill those demons? Did you eat their cores?”

Just then, the Daoist returned and roared from the cave mouth, “Who dares touch my immortal cauldron?”

Only much later, while I nourished He Qiong’s soul fragment each day with fresh heart’s blood, did I understand. Cultivation had proven too difficult for that Daoist, so he intended to raise within me a body capable of ascending. The finest heart’s blood was the single purest drop at the very center of a heart. Each heart held only one drop-but that did not matter, because I was a monster who could continually grow new hearts.

What I had in greatest abundance was heart’s blood.

Before the Daoist could consume me, however, He Qiong saved me.