The night rain is deep, the night sky is dark and thick, an endless dark ink stains the horizon, it is the night of the new moon.
After waking up, Sang Dai felt a sharp pain in her head. It seemed like she had been asleep for a long time, her whole body lacked strength. She struggled to sit up, put on her shoes, and staggered outside, opening the door.
The moonlight shone on her, but there was no shadow.
In front of her was a small courtyard surrounded by a fence. There was only one bamboo hut, which was the entire room. Around it, some bamboo had been chopped down to make a railing, and a lantern hung under the eaves.
In the corner, there was a swing, and in the courtyard stood a stone table. This place looked somewhat familiar, and someone was sitting on the swing.
The person was dressed in all black, wearing a mask, holding a wine jug, drinking slowly. The lips beneath the mask were pale.
Sang Dai shook her head, leaning against the wall and sitting beside the stone table, rubbing her brow.
“How long did I sleep this time? My head is spinning.”
The young man in black laughed and said, “What are you dizzy for, you’re dead. It’s been over thirty years since you last woke up.”
His tone was familiar, as if they had known each other for a long time.
“Has it been that long…” Sang Dai murmured softly, “I’ve slept for so long… Why haven’t I dissipated yet?”
The man in black shifted slightly, bending one leg on the swing and leaning against the rope.
He tilted his head back and drank from the jug. The wine flowed down his jaw, but he didn’t mind. After drinking most of the jug, he said, “You exist because of obsession. Someone’s obsession has not yet dissipated, so naturally, you cannot leave.”
“…He hasn’t let go yet?”
“No, he’s almost gone mad.”
Sang Dai’s hand curled slightly, and her throat felt inexplicably tight. “How… how is he doing now?”
“Miss Sang cares about him?” The man in black glanced at her, the pale corners of his lips curling slightly. His gaze was mocking and deep. “He’s been going crazy for a hundred years. In the war between the immortal and Beast Realms, he, a Beast King, is tangled in inner demons, his murderous intent growing stronger each day. Naturally, you should be concerned.”
“Do you have any way to help him?” Sang Dai whispered. “He should have his own things to do. He shouldn’t waste his life because of me. If he continues like this, his killing karma will grow heavier, and the Heavenly Dao will kill him.”
The man in black stood up, his tall and straight figure, his lips curving into a light smile.
“How about you come with me to a place? See if you can figure out a way yourself.”
The man grabbed her wrist, and her sleeve was also gripped, the coldness was bone-chilling.
A crack appeared in the void, and he dragged her into the crack. In the blink of an eye, they were in another place.
It was all blood. Sang Dai could only see thick blood everywhere.
The ground was covered with corpses, severed limbs, and arms. Hellfire burned across the mountains and fields, wild dogs gnawed at the flesh.
A child sat on the ground crying, an old woman holding her dead child, crying. The sky was dim, and blood water spread across the entire land.
A figure walked from the distance.
The wide black robe trailed behind him, golden patterns adorning the hem. His silver hair was loosely tied, and his handsome face was proud. He walked towards them with his hands behind his back.
The bloodstains dyed his black robe, and dirty blood hung on the golden threads, but the usually fastidious man didn’t care at all.
He lowered his head, coldly glancing at the boy sitting on the ground crying in the distance. The boy appeared young, about thirteen or fourteen years old, crying as he held a female cultivator, seemingly his mother.
In the distance, a demon beast charged towards the boy.
Sang Dai instinctively drew her sword. “Get away!”
Even though she was dead, her heart still remained in protecting the citizens of the Immortal Realm.
This place was too far, but the boy was so close to Su Xuan.
He simply lowered his head and watched, his eyes calm and indifferent, without the slightest emotion.
Sang Dai’s sword light passed through the demon beast as if it were nothing. She screamed, “Su Xuan, Su Xuan, stop that demon beast!”
Su Xuan couldn’t hear her voice and let her scream in panic.
He just stood there, indifferent, watching the demon beast pounce on the boy, biting off his neck in one bite.
“Su Xuan!!”
Sang Dai stood with her sword in front of him.
Su Xuan couldn’t see her. Blood splattered on his face, and he raised his hand, with knuckles like jade, to wipe it off gently. His expression remained calm, as if seeing a cultivator die was an extremely pleasant thing to him.
Su Xuan suddenly raised his gaze, and Sang Dai was caught off guard as she locked eyes with him.
His glass-like eyes were filled with coldness, not a trace of warmth to be seen.
He was not looking at Sang Dai. He couldn’t see her. He was simply looking through her…
At the stacked corpses in the distance, the desperate cries of the human cultivators, and the bloody scene where the demon soldiers and human cultivators fought.
The Beast King curved his lips slightly, and someone walked up behind him.
The red-clad demon cultivator asked, “The city of Dingbei has been captured, the prisoners—”
“Kill them.”
The peacock remained silent for a moment before replying, “Understood.”
Dingbei City was a city under the jurisdiction of the Sword Sect.
In the battle between the two armies, it was a rule in the four realms not to kill prisoners. However, whenever Su Xuan captured a city, he killed all the cultivators there.
She watched the figures of Su Xuan and Liu Lixue leave.
She felt unfamiliar, terrified, and most of all, cold.
“Do you now know what has happened over these years? You’ve slept for too long. The last time you woke up, Su Xuan was not this mad, but now he is. The Sword Sect controls over a hundred cities, and countless sects have almost all been killed off.”
The young man in black came to her side, and they both watched as Su Xuan departed.
“Well, you might not know, but after Su Xuan entered the tribulation, his inner demons became even worse. He’s no longer human. Look at the Immortal Realm now, being beaten back step by step, with heavy casualties. Do you think Su Xuan is still a cultivator?”
The young man in black pointed to Su Xuan’s back. “Miss Sang, look at the blood-red spiritual energy fluctuation around him. You can see it. What do you think that is?”
That was the aura of evil.
The inner demon had turned him into an evil being.
A cold voice came from beside her ear, asking, “Miss Sang, his Four Sufferings have already consumed him. In at most a year, he will completely lose his humanity and become an evil entity driven by the Four Sufferings.”
“You tell me, how many people will die if an evil entity at the Tribulation stage goes mad?”
Thousands, tens of thousands of people will die, and the Four Realms will bring down a catastrophe upon him.
The Four Realms will encircle and kill him. Either he dies, or the Four Realms perish.
Sang Dai trembled, covering her eyes with her hands. “No… How could he… He clearly isn’t that kind of person…”
“Miss Sang, come with me to another place.”
He pulled her, and the scene before her changed again. They arrived at another place.
Sang Dai raised her eyes in confusion.
It was very cold here, everywhere was ice. It was clearly a magnificently decorated sleeping hall, but it was so cold, as if it were the extreme northern demon domain.
Behind a pearl curtain, there was a large ice bed. The young man in black lifted the curtain, leading her into the inner room.
She saw a familiar face.
It was her face, her body, lying on the ice bed.
“Your body hasn’t decayed yet. This mysterious ice relies on Su Xuan’s soul power to sustain it. Every day your corpse exists, his soul power weakens. Until the inner demon completely overwhelms his weak soul power… then he becomes like that.”
Sang Dai blinked, looking helplessly at the corpse on the bed.
This time, the man in black made her stop for a long while, not taking her away until nightfall.
At that moment, the door opened, and footsteps sounded. Someone walked in, seemingly just finished bathing, with silver hair dripping down his back. He didn’t care about the water.
His sleeping robe was loose and thin, yet still luxurious and delicate.
Su Xuan couldn’t live frugally, no matter when, he was always like this.
The Beast King lifted the curtain but didn’t see the two figures standing by the ice bed. It was as if they were in two different spaces, unable to touch or see each other.
Sang Dai instinctively called out to him, “Su Xuan.”
He did not respond.
Su Xuan stood by the bed, looking for a moment, before skillfully pulling out a sharp blade and stabbing it along the recently healed wound on his chest.
“Su Xuan!”
She rushed forward but couldn’t touch him.
The man in black behind her lazily laughed. “You’re dead. The two of you can’t touch each other.”
A drop of blood fell onto the ice bed, quickly sinking into the solid ice. He put away the dagger without caring for his wound, turning into a small fox and jumping onto the ice bed. The little fox used its paws to scratch at the corpse.
The little fox’s head rested on her face, its eyes closed as if it were tired.
A quarter of an hour later, it suddenly opened its eyes, glancing at the person beside it.
A hint of mockery flashed in the fox’s eyes.
“If you’re going to die, die cleanly. Leaving a corpse behind for me to protect… Sang Dai, I really hate you.”
The man in black leaned against the railing, raising an eyebrow at Sang Dai. “You see, he says he hates you.”
Sang Dai was speechless. How could she not know that Su Xuan hated her? Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sought her out for fights so often.
The words were harsh, but the little fox’s paws protected her corpse, pulling it closer into its embrace.
“I really hate you, I hate you to death.” The little fox closed its eyes, crystalline tears wetting the fur around its eyes. “But I can’t let go, I can’t let go.”
“Sang Dai, I’m going crazy. You must hate me even more now, right? You didn’t like me when I was sane, and you definitely don’t like me now that I’m a madman.”
The little fox paused for a moment and then sneered. “That was a useless thing to say, you must hate me. I’ve killed so many of your Immortal Realm people.”
The little fox licked her ear, asking, “I shouldn’t have killed them, right?”
But a corpse could not respond.
Su Xuan answered for himself, “No, I had to kill them, kill them all. I had to kill all the cultivators of the Sword Sect, and all the sects under them. The Sword Sect that you protect, I had to kill them. Your father had to die, your mother had to die, Shi Yao had to die, Shen Ciyu had to die.”
“All of them had to die. The people you want to protect, I’ve killed them one by one. The people you want to guard, you will never be able to protect.”
He seemed to have gone mad, muttering one thing after another, and Sang Dai’s throat was dry. She didn’t know what to say.
The man in black behind her laughed and cursed, “Madman.”
Sang Dai tried to reach out to touch him. “Su Xuan…”
Su Xuan didn’t respond. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, he shoved the corpse in his arms aside.
He jumped off the bed, turning into his human form, and furiously smashed the vase on the table.
“Why don’t you say a word! You don’t speak when you’re alive, and you still won’t say anything after you’re dead! If you had the guts, you wouldn’t even leave me a corpse! What’s the point of hanging around me like this!”
“I killed your father, your mother died under the teeth of my demon beast, Shen Ciyu was severely injured by me several times, your Sword Sect is almost wiped out, why don’t you come and protect them! Don’t you care about them so much!”
“Sang Dai! I’m going crazy too, are you applauding? You hate me this much, you hate me so much…”
Sang Dai couldn’t say a word. It was as if she had been frightened, standing still in place, her expression complicated, her eyes heavy.
She watched Su Xuan lose control, while outside the door, the demon servants said nothing, as if they were used to it.
The man in black leaned closer to her and whispered, “Oh, he has to go mad like this once every day. Don’t worry, after a while, he’ll calm down and clean up after himself.”
He was right. After going mad, Su Xuan coldly stared at the motionless body on the bed, suddenly curling his lips into a mocking smile.
“Death isn’t so bad for you. At least you’re by my side now. You never would’ve imagined that after you died, I’d be holding your corpse and sleeping with you every night, right?”
“Disgusting, right? But it feels great to me. I like bullying you. Isn’t that how you always look at me?”
The little fox waved its paw, cleaning up the mess in the room, and then transformed back into a fox, leaping onto the couch.
The wound on its chest still dripped blood, and the blood fell onto the ice bed, intensifying the coldness of the mysterious ice.
The little fox’s head rested on her shoulder.
The room was very quiet, and Sang Dai thought it had fallen asleep.
But after a while, it suddenly spoke again.
“Sang Dai, let’s get married. You have no choice, I’m unreasonable. I found a way, I molded a strand of soul and placed it in your body. We’ll form a marriage contract, and I won’t live much longer anyway… I won’t live much longer…”
“When your body turns to bones, by then I’ll be mad, I won’t remember you, and I won’t protect your corpse anymore. But it doesn’t matter. When your body completely decays, I’ll follow you.”
“I’ve always clung to you, whether you live or die. The person I want, even if it’s just a corpse, must stay by my side.”
As the night turned to day, the little fox opened its eyes and licked the side of the sword cultivator’s face.
“Wait for me to come back tonight, and we’ll make our marriage contract. Even if I go mad and forget you, even if your corpse rots, I’ll still accompany you. You won’t be alone.”
It stood up, put on its clothes, and left the palace.
Sang Dai stood all night. Her body felt as though it wasn’t her own, her legs stiff.
The man in black yawned, walked up to her, and asked, “Have you finished watching? During all these years you’ve been asleep, Su Xuan has lived like this. Do you have any ideas on how to solve it?”
Sang Dai kept her head lowered.
The man in black tugged at her sleeve. “Hey, if you can’t think of anything, let’s go. You won’t be awake much longer. He’s going mad. When he’s completely consumed by the Four Sufferings, he’ll have no more obsession, and you’ll be completely dead. Don’t you want to take this chance to see the ones you want to see?”
Sang Dai suddenly said, “Can I borrow a bit of your spiritual power?”
The man in black raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”