Chapter 72
Yu Tai: […]
[Don’t you think this feels a little familiar?]
System: [If I’m remembering correctly, this is exactly what you did when you told him to kill Mo Xiaowei.]
Yu Tai had to hand it to Shu Li’s twisted sense of humor. Wasn’t this saintly hero repaying kindness with ingratitude?
Unlike Shu Li’s hesitant dawdling back then, Yu Tai’s hand paused for only a few seconds before suddenly tightening. Without the slightest hesitation, she strangled her former self to death.
The little girl’s face grew increasingly distorted and turned deep purple. Her breathing and movements felt utterly real.
Anyone else might have lost the heart to continue.
But unfortunately for the girl…
The person killing her was Yu Tai.
The moment the little girl stopped breathing completely, Yu Tai tossed aside the corpse in her hand. The scene before them suddenly began to distort.
After one last glance at the dead little girl curled up in the corner, Yu Tai looked away.
In the next instant, a warm palm enveloped her slightly chilled hand.
Then the formation disappeared completely.
When Yu Tai opened her eyes again, a young man had already thrown himself into her arms.
He buried his head against Yu Tai’s neck and nuzzled her frantically. “Yu Tai! I’m so hungry!”
Shu Li moved his fingers and pushed the panda’s obstructive head aside. Then he told Yu Tai, “He swore just now.”
Yu Tai’s gaze sharpened. The tips of Xia Mo’s hair trembled as he stared wide-eyed at Shu Li.
Bastard! He actually tattled on this panda!
Having just emerged from the formation, Yu Tai pulled her lips into a smile and rubbed her knuckles.
“Xia Mo,” she called gently.
Xia Mo pouted. “Maybe you should go back inside- Aah! Yu Tai is killing a panda!”
Xia Mo’s screams echoed through the cave as he fled in every direction.
Watching one figure chase the other, a gentle smile appeared in Shu Li’s eyes. In the next instant, however, he lowered his head to look at his fingers, and his gaze abruptly darkened.
He needed to find an opportunity to visit the Demon Realm.
Before leaving, Yu Tai asked Shu Li whether he had seen the sect leader of the Zuiyin Sect, but Shu Li shook his head.
When she saw the fragments on the altar that had clearly once belonged to a sword, Yu Tai’s expression became peculiar.
“Is this… the Qingguang Sword?” Yu Tai raised an eyebrow.
Shu Li nodded, looking somewhat dejected. “It was already like this when I arrived…”
Xia Mo: […]
Yu Tai patted Shu Li on the shoulder. “If you want a sword, I’ll find you one even better than this.”
Light seemed to shimmer in Shu Li’s eyes as he pursed his lips in a smile. “Mm. All right.”
Xia Mo immediately grew unhappy. Having apparently forgotten the beating he had just received, he leaped onto Yu Tai’s back. “This panda wants one too.”
Yu Tai sneered. “I think a Beggars’ Sect staff would suit you.”
“Next time we visit the Lower Realm, I’ll trade an old beggar a spirit stone for one.”
Xia Mo imagined a handsome young man magnificently pulling a staff from behind his back in the middle of a fight, then wrinkled his nose. “No.”
Yu Tai pulled Xia Mo off her back like an unwanted ornament and looked at Shu Li. “I promised to help you find your sword, but things didn’t work out. Is there anything else you want?”
Shu Li blinked and had just moved his lips when Yu Tai poked them with one finger, a dangerous smile curving her own. “If you want me, it won’t be that easy.”
Caught out before he could answer, Shu Li took her finger and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Then what price should I pay?”
Pulling her hand free, Yu Tai turned and walked toward the exit. “We’ll talk about it later. I haven’t decided yet.”
Shu Li watched her indulgently. “Tell me the moment you decide.”
Watching the two of them exchange cryptic remarks right in front of him, Xia Mo rolled his eyes.
You two have already done everything you should and shouldn’t have, yet you’re still fussing over this.
Xia Mo bounded after Yu Tai, then looked back and waved to Shu Li. “Shu Li! Hurry up!”
“Walk more steadily. If you fall…” Before he could finish, a wave of dizziness suddenly struck him.
Damn it!
As the scene before his eyes grew increasingly blurred, he gave the figure ahead of him, whose back was turned, one long, meaningful look. With a flick of his sleeve, a blood-red pearl fell out.
In the next instant, he closed his eyes and let his body pitch forward.
“Shu Li!” Xia Mo roared, sprinting toward the man who was about to hit the ground.
At Xia Mo’s shout, Yu Tai looked back.
Xia Mo barely managed to catch the man with a flying tackle. Shu Li’s face was deathly pale, his eyes tightly shut.
“Shu Li?”
…
“Yu Tai!”
A black-haired young man with white-tipped hair emerged from the water. Droplets slid over his chin and down the smooth lines of his neck, passing over his abdominal muscles before disappearing beneath the V of his waist.
The young woman meditating by the river lifted her eyelids and glanced at him. “Did you catch a fish?”
Xia Mo nodded and climbed ashore, holding a fish that thrashed incessantly in his grip.
Looking at the lively fish, the two exchanged a glance. After a moment’s thought, Yu Tai said gravely, “It’s your turn to roast it today.” Then she added, “Make sure you remove all the innards this time!”
Xia Mo pouted in grievance. “I know.”
“If Shu Li were still here, this panda would definitely be able to roast a tastier fish.”
At the mention of Shu Li, Xia Mo abruptly stiffened and cautiously raised his eyes to look at Yu Tai.
Yu Tai showed no expression. At first glance, it seemed as though those two words had caused no emotional reaction whatsoever, but Xia Mo could feel the change in the oppressive air around her.
Three full years had passed since Shu Li lost consciousness in the cave.
His body was clearly still alive, but the vital soul within it was missing.
When Yu Tai tried to take him to a spirit healer, she discovered that she had been declared wanted throughout the Three Realms.
She was a demonic cultivator, and a rare female one at that.
As soon as the news spread, Yu Tai became the target of an unimaginably relentless manhunt.
It took no thought at all to know this was Shen Zhiyou’s doing.
What she hadn’t expected was that Shen Zhiyou would be deranged enough to offer a reward of eighty million supreme-grade spirit stones for her capture.
Once the bounty was announced, Yu Tai was left with almost nowhere to hide in the Three Realms.
Fortunately, she still had Xia Mo.
No matter how bloody and perilous those three years became, they had endured them together.
Yu Tai looked up at the sky, now dense with dark clouds, and rose to her feet. “Let’s go. It’s going to rain.”
Xia Mo knocked the fish unconscious with one punch, then quickly picked it up and left with Yu Tai.
They were going to the Demon Realm.
To the Demon Realm that everyone regarded as forbidden ground.
It wasn’t because they were being hunted.
Yu Tai had learned that a witch doctor in the Demon Realm possessed an exceptionally profound understanding of souls.
If they could find that witch doctor, Shu Li might be able to wake up.
Yu Tai had never said any of this aloud.
But Xia Mo knew everything.
During the first year after losing Shu Li, Yu Tai seemed unchanged apart from being quieter than usual. But Xia Mo knew that in the dead of night, once she thought he was asleep, she would take out Shu Li’s body and sit alone beside him in a daze.
By the next morning, she would have returned to normal.
Touching the blood-red pearl hanging from her neck, Yu Tai’s gaze darkened.
Shu Li, did you know this would happen to you? Is that why you deliberately took out the high-grade Demon-Concealing Pearl?
Why did you have something like this?