“That old man Yun Zhenzi must have fled the Fentian Nether Abode immediately. Hmph. He values his life far too much to die here.” As Chen Yixin spoke, he turned onto his side and wrapped both arms around Wenren Li’s waist, his expression becoming noticeably more peaceful.
Compared with Wenren Li, who had never truly spent time with Yun Zhenzi, Chen Yixin’s judgment was much more accurate. That was exactly what had happened. The moment Yun Zhenzi saw Miao Yin detonate her divine soul, he used a forbidden artifact to escape directly from the Fentian Nether Abode.
“Mm.” Wenren Li freed one hand and gently stroked Chen Yixin’s hair. He knew Chen Yixin really was exhausted. Two consecutive thunder tribulations, killing people himself, then watching Wenren Li kill people—even though his physical body was unharmed, his divine soul had long since become weary.
“A-Rong should sleep. There’s no hurry.”
Miao Yin and Song Yuanzhi had both perished inside the Fentian Nether Abode, and the other Soul Transformation great cultivators would certainly sense that something had happened. Yun Zhenzi was hardly the only one who valued his life. The others did as well. By now, the only people likely still lingering within the Fentian Nether Abode were low- and mid-level independent cultivators hoping to stumble across some final stroke of fortune.
Hearing that, the corners of Chen Yixin’s lips lifted slightly, and he fell asleep in complete peace. Strictly speaking, meditating to restore his spirit would have been the better way for him to rest now, but when Wenren Li was beside him, Chen Yixin preferred sleeping like this, utterly defenseless.
“A-Rong, wake up…” Wenren Li lifted Chen Yixin from his lap, gently caressed his cheek, then stroked his hair before calling to him softly. “Wake up. We can keep sleeping on the way back.”
Chen Yixin had no idea how long he had slept. It had been a full ten days. Wenren Li had finished refining the pills long ago, but seeing how deeply Chen Yixin slept, he had not woken him. And so he had simply waited all this time.
Wenren Li continued touching him and calling gently for a while, but Chen Yixin merely rubbed his cheek against Wenren Li’s palm and went straight back to sleep. “A-Rong, be good…”
Before Wenren Li could finish coaxing him, Chen Yixin opened his eyes, stretched his neck upward, and gently bit Wenren Li’s lip. “A-Li disturbed my wonderful sleep. You owe me compensation.”
After saying that, Chen Yixin gave Wenren Li’s lips another loud smack of a kiss, then seemed to savor the taste before declaring, “There. That’s the compensation.”
Wenren Li’s breathing caught slightly. He lowered his head, found Chen Yixin’s lips, and exchanged a wet, sweet kiss with him.
Chen Yixin licked his own slightly numb lips, then watched Wenren Li lean closer and lick them as well. The swelling and tingling immediately transformed into a pleasant coolness.
Chen Yixin could no longer control his heartbeat. It pounded even harder than it had during their passionate kiss, perhaps because Wenren Li was being far too gentle. That tenderness made his heart race.
“Did A-Li wake me because you wanted to kiss me?” Chen Yixin wrapped both arms around Wenren Li’s neck, leaned into his embrace, and asked the question with complete seriousness.
Wenren Li was silent for a moment before honestly shaking his head. “No. There’s something else.”
As for the intimate kiss, emotion had stirred and desire had followed. It had not been something Wenren Li could entirely control, and by now there was no longer any need for him to exercise quite so much restraint anyway.
Chen Yixin’s eyes curved happily. Wenren Li like this was unbearably adorable. Unable to resist, Chen Yixin kissed him once more near the base of his ear before finally leaving his arms of his own accord.
They were no longer inside the palace where Wenren Li had refined the pills. They had returned to the entrance of the Fentian Nether Abode’s treasury, and Chen Yixin and Wenren Li were aboard the spirit boat they had used on the way here. The reason Chen Yixin had been able to sleep so comfortably, completely unaware of day or night, was the combination of Woven Cloud and Wenren Li’s familiar aura.
Wenren Li had also finished preparing the trap needed to subdue the strange beast. He had awakened Chen Yixin because the final step required Chen Yixin to personally establish ownership while fully conscious and acting of his own volition.
“Where is it? What does it look like?”
Chen Yixin walked out of the spirit boat’s cabin and looked around, but saw nothing unusual. The only thing there was a pale-silver mass spread flat across the wooden deck at the front of the boat. It looked like an exquisitely soft fur rug, so much so that Chen Yixin felt an urge to take off his shoes and walk across it a few times.
Wenren Li followed him outside, his gaze falling on the shapeless strange beast as well. He took Chen Yixin’s hand, pricked his fingertip, and sent a drop of blood floating outward. Then Wenren Li began chanting a passage of obscure, profound words before directing the blood toward the beast.
Before it could reach the beast, however, a silver membrane of light swelled upward and repelled Chen Yixin’s drop of blood.
Wenren Li tried several more times, but each attempt was rejected in exactly the same way.
“Did you say the incantation wrong, or am I supposed to recite it myself?”
Chen Yixin asked Wenren Li. After so many failed attempts, something in the process had clearly gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Abode Spirit who had supplied the method had already fallen dormant, leaving them with no one to ask.
“I’ll teach you.” As Wenren Li spoke, he used divine sense to transmit a passage of obscure writing directly to Chen Yixin. Neither the script nor its pronunciation belonged to any language commonly used in the Taixuan cultivation world, and Chen Yixin did not even understand what the words meant.
After transmitting it, Wenren Li was just about to explain when Chen Yixin closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he began chanting immediately, not making a single mistake. In fact, the same contract incantation sounded somehow even more profound and solemn when spoken by Chen Yixin.
When Chen Yixin finished, he lightly touched the drop of blood hovering at the tip of his index finger. The blood fell directly onto the strange beast. Silver radiance immediately erupted, enveloping Chen Yixin completely.
Two breaths later, the silver light dispersed, and the strange beast that had covered more than half the spirit boat had shrunk until it was only the size of a meditation cushion.
It had consumed the Soul Transformation cultivator’s soul together with Wenren Li’s pill and had been asleep for two days already. Now that the contract had been established, it was about time it woke up.
Chen Yixin lightly nudged it with his foot. The sleeping silver-skinned beast visibly puffed upward, transforming from a flat rug into something resembling a round, flattened cushion.
The beast had no obvious head or body, but suddenly a pair of perfectly round eyes opened. Its silver pupils were cold, severe, and dangerous—until, in the very next moment, all that menace vanished. An enormous tear welled up in one eye.
It began to cry.
“Mother, Yinzi is hungry. Yinzi is so thin from starving.”
It looked down at its flattened belly and cried even harder.
Chen Yixin was utterly thunderstruck by the performance. The strange beast spoke with a thick northeastern drawl, yet somehow it was still trying to act adorable—and on top of that, it was calling him Mother.
“Who is your mother? I’m your master. Remember that. Call me Master. If you don’t like calling me Master, then call me Young Master.”
The cushion-shaped Yinzi froze, while enormous tears continued rolling down its face. It rolled forward, and two long tendrils suddenly stretched from its silver hide and wrapped themselves around Wenren Li’s foot. “Father, Mother is being mean to me again.”
Wenren Li ignored Yinzi entirely. After thinking for a moment, he released a pulse of spiritual power. Yinzi’s tendrils instantly recoiled, and the beast turned its back on them, continuing to shed tears pitifully while whining.
“Mother doesn’t like Yinzi anymore. Father doesn’t like Yinzi either. Nobody wants Yinzi. Yinzi is going to starve to death…”
Chen Yixin narrowed his eyes, then turned and glared at Wenren Li. “Is it your son?”
Even if Wenren Li had somehow had a son behind his back, surely it should not look like this. Besides, from Chen Yixin’s own personal observations, Wenren Li was very obviously still a virgin. There was no possible way he could have a son—unless someone had secretly plucked his flower without him knowing?
Chen Yixin’s eyes narrowed further, and the look within them became distinctly dangerous.
Wenren Li took Chen Yixin’s hand and led him back inside the spirit boat. The boat changed direction and began flying toward the exit of the secret realm while they continued talking. “No.”
“Waaah! Mother won’t acknowledge Yinzi, Father won’t acknowledge Yinzi either! Nobody wants Yinzi! Yinzi is going to starve to death…”
The strange beast cried even harder, with such heartbreak that it could practically be called soul-rending.
Chen Yixin thought for a moment and tried to awaken the Abode Spirit, but the old fellow had probably anticipated exactly this situation and was sleeping with extraordinary determination. Chen Yixin could not wake it no matter what he did.
“Yinzi, come here.”
Chen Yixin suddenly called to the little beast, his tone softening slightly. Yinzi, who had been howling as though its heart were breaking, immediately rolled over.
“Mother, Yinzi is here.” The ingratiating tone was practically that of a shameless little lackey.
“Tell me why you call us Mother and Father. If you don’t explain it clearly, how are we supposed to acknowledge you?”
Yinzi was astonishingly familiar with them. It squeezed itself between Chen Yixin and Wenren Li’s feet, turned its pancake-like face upward, and continued speaking in its damaged voice with exaggerated sweetness. “Because you really are Yinzi’s Mother and Father.”
“Mother and Father didn’t forget Yinzi, did you…? Waaah—”
“No crying.” Chen Yixin’s tone became stern. Yinzi immediately cut off its howl.
“Be good and tell us where we… gave birth to you, and how you used to live with us.”
As he spoke, Chen Yixin could not help touching his stomach. There was absolutely no possibility he could have given birth to such an ugly child. No—he could not give birth to children at all.
Yinzi blinked its round eyes and thought for a while before shaking its head. “I can’t remember either. But you are Yinzi’s Mother, and he is Yinzi’s Father.”
The moment the beast finished, Wenren Li suddenly touched one finger to its forehead. A scattering of fragmented images appeared before both him and Chen Yixin. It seemed to be somewhere within the Fentian Nether Abode. Chen Yixin was holding Yinzi in his arms, then reclining against Wenren Li’s chest with a smile so alluring it could steal a person’s soul.
Chen Yixin’s pupils contracted slightly and his heartbeat abruptly accelerated, but when he tried to search his mind for anything more, he found only blankness. Perhaps there had truly been some previous life, but he had drunk Meng Po’s soup before reincarnation. There was no way for him to remember it now.
“Could I have been the original master of the Fentian Nether Abode?” Chen Yixin frowned slightly as he spoke. He had no particular interest in grand origins or mysterious identities. If anything, such things merely brought more burdens. Living cleanly and freely suited him far better.
Besides, this former master had apparently lived miserably. His residence had been destroyed, his Abode Spirit was in tatters, and his son had starved until he was practically a sheet of skin… Who had done this to him—or rather, who had done this to them?
Wenren Li did not immediately decide whether the idea was true or false. He was equally confused by the other version of himself in those images, because there was nothing like that scene anywhere within his thirty thousand years of memory.
“A-Rong doesn’t need to think too much about it. It has already formed a contract with you, so it cannot harm you… We can raise it for now.”
Chen Yixin did not understand the meaning of the contract incantation he had spoken, but Wenren Li did. The contract Chen Yixin had established with Yinzi went even beyond an ordinary master-servant contract, and the beast itself was probably no ordinary creature either.
The strange beasts that inhabited the void were known for being savage and bloodthirsty. Wenren Li had never heard of one possessing intelligence, much less one capable of acting cute. Yinzi’s position among such creatures was clearly anything but ordinary. Of course, the fact that immortals had apparently raised it as their son said enough by itself.
Yinzi understood Wenren Li perfectly and nodded furiously. “Mm, mm, mm! Father can relax. Yinzi won’t fight with Father over Mother anymore…” Because it could not win anyway.
It had forgotten many specific events, but certain facts and little habits remained firmly lodged in its memory.
Its long tendrils curled around one ankle each, linking Chen Yixin and Wenren Li together as it whined, “Mother, Father, Yinzi is hungry. So hungry, so hungry…”
Chen Yixin suddenly developed a very real concern that he and Wenren Li might eventually be eaten into poverty by this creature.
“A-Rong can feed it Duo-Duo Fruits.” Wenren Li swept an arm backward and guided Chen Yixin into a seated position.
Chen Yixin still had several hundred Duo-Duo Fruits left in his storage space. He could already feel that after forming his Golden Core, their effect on him had diminished. From this point onward, he did not need to rush every breakthrough anyway. Accumulating his cultivation little by little and advancing steadily was the proper path.
Chen Yixin fed Yinzi ten fruits in succession before the little beast finally curled up contentedly at their feet and fell asleep.
Once its eyes closed and it sank into deep sleep, silver light flashed around its body. Yinzi transformed into a silver sigil and imprinted itself upon Chen Yixin’s ankle.
Chen Yixin pulled up his trouser leg and examined it carefully. The mark was round and silver, and not particularly ugly. For all his usual pickiness, he did not actually feel much aversion toward the strange beast. Before he could lower his trouser leg again, Wenren Li stood, crouched before him, lifted Chen Yixin’s foot, and began examining the mark himself, even reaching out to touch it.
Chen Yixin had been thinking quite seriously, but when he looked at Wenren Li crouching in front of him, concentration became rather difficult. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Wenren Li’s neck.
“A-Li doesn’t need to worry. Whatever connection we may have had in the past, I only know that right now, I am A-Li’s Dao companion.”
Besides, in the fragment of Yinzi’s memory, his relationship with Wenren Li had clearly been just as intimate. Even if there truly had been some previous life, he and Wenren Li had loved one another then too. Thinking of it that way, Chen Yixin found himself far less bothered.
“Mm.” Wenren Li nodded. He lowered Chen Yixin’s foot, carefully pulled his trouser leg back into place, then stood, bent down, and lifted Chen Yixin into his arms before carrying him toward the bed inside the cabin. “I’ll keep sleeping with A-Rong.”
“All right.” Chen Yixin answered, turning his head to kiss Wenren Li’s cheek.
After sleeping for ten days, Chen Yixin had rested more than enough. Lying down again, he could not fall asleep at all. He turned onto his side and carefully studied Wenren Li with his eyes closed, then lifted a hand and touched the center of his brow.
In Yinzi’s memory, Wenren Li had looked somewhat different. There had been a silver mark here as well, a slender point resembling a star in the night sky, and it had been extraordinarily beautiful. Still, Chen Yixin thought Wenren Li looked even better with green hair and green eyes. That appearance really was dangerously seductive.
Wenren Li caught the hand that was wandering across his face and opened his eyes, turning onto his side as well. “A-Rong isn’t sleepy anymore?”
“No.” Chen Yixin answered and shifted closer until the tips of their noses nearly touched. The presence of every breath they exchanged suddenly became overwhelmingly clear.
Chen Yixin’s eyes curved slightly. A trace of surprise appeared in Wenren Li’s gaze, and then Chen Yixin caught the tip of his nose between his teeth. A gentle bite soon became a soft, lingering lick and kiss.
Chen Yixin kissed upward over Wenren Li’s brow and then his eyes. His hand settled on Wenren Li’s shoulder and pressed lightly, guiding him onto his back while Chen Yixin straddled his body.
“But I still want to lie here with A-Li like this.” Chen Yixin said it without the slightest shame. His kisses continued covering Wenren Li’s face, his eyes smiling and the corners of his lips raised. In every movement, he looked far more like a seductive yao spirit than Wenren Li, who was half yao himself.
His lips slid past the corner of Wenren Li’s mouth and continued downward. He gently caught Wenren Li’s Adam’s apple between his lips, while one hand slipped beneath Wenren Li’s clothes and began exploring whichever places he found most pleasing to touch.
Wenren Li’s aura suddenly rippled outward. Cultivators flying far in the distance were knocked from the air. The spirit boat shot through the exit of the Fentian Nether Abode, appeared for only an instant, and then vanished again. Wu Fei, Nan Ke, and the others carrying the sedan opened their mouths but did not even have time to call out a greeting.
Chen Yixin knew nothing about any of that. He had already pulled open Wenren Li’s robes and become thoroughly addicted to taking liberties with him.
By the time Chen Yixin had teased Wenren Li until his breathing was unsteady, Chen Yixin himself was not doing much better. He caught Wenren Li’s hand and guided it to the place that had already reacted, then lowered his voice. “Does A-Li still want me to keep enduring?”
He really had started with nothing more than teasing, but once his own desire was stirred, he found he no longer wanted to stop.
The hand Wenren Li held around Chen Yixin’s waist tightened slightly. The world spun, and their positions abruptly reversed. Then Wenren Li gathered Chen Yixin into his arms, stepped out of the spirit boat, and descended from the sky. When they landed, they had returned to the courtyard in the small town on the Xiguang Plains.
Chen Yixin rested against Wenren Li’s chest, his expression becoming quiet as Wenren Li carried him all the way to the only bed in the room.
Wenren Li removed Chen Yixin’s outer robe and steadied his shoulders. Only then did he remember there was still something he needed to explain. “A-Rong, remember this: when my yang essence enters your body, circulate your cultivation method. Also—”
Before Wenren Li could finish, Chen Yixin stared at him with wide eyes and sealed his mouth with a kiss. Wenren Li could say such indecent things with a perfectly serious face, but couldn’t he hurry up and actually do something?
Fully understanding what Chen Yixin’s expression meant, Wenren Li showed a hint of helplessness between his brows. He swept a hand across Chen Yixin’s body, and all their clothing disappeared. The scene before them now looked almost exactly as it had on their wedding night inside the illusion.
A faint flush appeared on Wenren Li’s face. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his hair and eyes had turned green. A small amount of spiritual liquid gathered at his fingertips to aid their dual cultivation.
Chen Yixin was once again struck speechless by how beautiful Wenren Li looked like this. He pressed their bodies closer and kissed Wenren Li’s eye. “A-Li looks beautiful this way. Don’t change back.”
Wenren Li nodded and found Chen Yixin’s lips. The gentle kiss lasted only a moment before passion exploded between them like oil meeting water. Their lips and tongues tangled, skin rubbing against skin, everything unfolding as naturally as flowing water.
Wenren Li’s jade-green hair tangled with Chen Yixin’s black hair. Their fingers interlocked above Chen Yixin’s head, while clear beads of sweat slowly gathered across their bodies, lending the scene a beauty both powerful and sensual.
No matter how sturdy the bed in the main room was, it still creaked intermittently, its sounds blending with low moans and roughened breathing into a single rhythm.
Outside in the courtyard, plants broke through the earth one after another and flowers opened into bloom. It did not stop with their courtyard. Every household in the town experienced the same thing, and even the ruined City God Temple beyond the town was soon smothered beneath flowers and greenery.
Clouds gathered over the Xiguang Plains and rain poured down in sheets. Beneath that rain, a wilderness of rampant new growth spread outward.
Wu Fei, Nan Ke, and the others had only just arrived nearby when they descended to a lower altitude to watch. Having personally cleared away the overgrown plants in the Demon Palace before, they already knew exactly what their Demon Lord and Demon Consort were doing. Fortunately, none of this vegetation was growing inside their own Demon Palace, so at least they would not have to clean it up afterward.
“A-Rong,” Wenren Li reminded him. At the same time, he lowered his head until their brows touched. His divine soul entered Chen Yixin’s sea of consciousness together with his yang essence.
The Chen Yixin inside his sea of consciousness looked little different from his physical self, his expression hazy with desire.
“A-Li,” he called softly, then voluntarily opened his arms. His human outline disappeared and transformed into the most fundamental form of a pale-golden sphere of light. This was Chen Yixin’s soul form.
Wenren Li’s soul form, however, was neither the green of a tree spirit, nor the gray of a ghost cultivator, nor any of the Five Elements colors typically seen in cultivators. His was a sphere of silver light. When it collided with Chen Yixin’s soul form, multicolored radiance burst outward. Outside the sea of consciousness, the two bodies already entwined together simultaneously released low sounds they could not suppress.
Wenren Li supported the back of Chen Yixin’s neck and reminded him again, “A-Rong, concentrate.”
Chen Yixin blinked in grievance. Having to divide his attention and cultivate at a time like this was frankly inhumane. Still, he knew this was not the moment to act spoiled. Otherwise, all that time he and Wenren Li had spent enduring would have been wasted.
He began circulating the Ascendant Immortal Scripture. At the same time, Wenren Li’s spiritual power entered Chen Yixin’s body together with his yang essence and helped guide the circulation. After only one cycle, Chen Yixin’s cultivation at the second level of Golden Core had already reached completion. If they continued circulating it directly, Chen Yixin would immediately have to undergo another tribulation.
Wenren Li pulled back slightly. A trace of silvery-gray light gathered at his fingertip, and several restrictions entered Chen Yixin’s body. Then he resumed circulating the spiritual power, sealing it within those restrictions so Chen Yixin could release it whenever he needed it later.
Again and again, the spiritual power passed through the place where their bodies were joined and returned to Wenren Li. A faintly dazed look appeared in Chen Yixin’s eyes. He voluntarily began guiding Wenren Li’s spiritual power through a new circulation route—not the path prescribed by the Ascendant Immortal Scripture, but one that ran in the exact opposite direction.
Only after completing one cycle did Chen Yixin become somewhat alarmed. “A-Li, do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”
“No.” Wenren Li answered, and the silver radiance of his divine soul inside Chen Yixin’s sea of consciousness suddenly blazed brilliantly. Something seemed to shatter within him, and a cultivation scripture emerged directly into Wenren Li’s awareness: the Ascendant Demon Scripture.
The changes did not end there. Deep within Wenren Li’s sea of consciousness, his sapling spirit form suddenly stretched upward and grew noticeably taller. It still possessed only a single flower bud, but compared with the tens of thousands of years in which it had not changed at all, it had undeniably grown.
Wenren Li had spent nearly ten thousand years traveling throughout Taixuan in search of a cultivation method suited to himself, yet he had always come away empty-handed. By now he had already relinquished that obsession. He had never imagined that the cultivation method had been sealed inside his own sea of consciousness all along, much less that it would be unlocked in a way like this.
Wenren Li’s reaction lasted only an instant. The spiritual power completed another cycle through his body and returned to Chen Yixin, continuing onward. Inside the sea of consciousness, their divine souls became even more tightly entangled than before, and the resulting tremors were no less intense than the physical union of their bodies outside.
Once Chen Yixin adapted to the rhythm, he relaxed completely and allowed Wenren Li to guide his spiritual power without reservation, opening every secret of his body and divine soul to him. Chen Yixin continued kissing and touching him of his own accord, occasionally changing position when appropriate to better respond to Wenren Li.
Their dual cultivation continued for nearly an entire month. One day, Chen Yixin finally closed his eyes in exhaustion, curled into Wenren Li’s arms, and fell asleep.
Wenren Li lowered his head and kissed away the tear clinging to the corner of Chen Yixin’s eye. Completely satisfied, he held Chen Yixin close and closed his eyes to rest as well.
Their first dual cultivation did not ordinarily need to last an entire month, but Wenren Li had just obtained the Ascendant Demon Scripture, and Chen Yixin had actively cooperated with his cultivation. Before either realized it, a full month had passed—one month of passion, dizzying abandon, and pleasure that neither would soon forget.
Unfortunately, while the two of them happily dual-cultivated, they completely forgot about the little town they were staying in and the Xiguang Plains beyond it, both of which were being affected by their overflowing aura. Wu Fei, Nan Ke, and the others had once again progressed from astonishment to complete numbness.
Their Demon Lord and Demon Consort could casually dual-cultivate an entire forest into existence. There was really no reason to find that strange anymore—especially when they would probably be witnessing the birth of countless more forests in the future.
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