Silence, then silence again.
The white dragon swore to Heaven that since meeting Qin Shu, it had fallen silent more times in a single day than it ever had throughout all those years trapped on a human body.
At this point, it could neither determine whether Qin Shu truly was the legendary Xiezhi nor understand what terrifying creature the eagle-bodied evil thing before it was—something that resembled a ghost without being one and resembled a yao without being one.
What it did know was that its entire belly was filled with murderous intent, and that there was one question it wanted to ask more than anything else.
The question had already risen to its mouth, yet the murderous intent in its heart suddenly went out like a tiny flame doused in water, inexplicably transforming into a nauseating instinct to retreat.
It was Ao Wang, Fourth Prince of the West Sea; even after a thousand years of imprisonment, it remained a supreme true dragon, so how could it once again experience fear so intense it nearly made it vomit?
That damned blood contract; it had to be the blood contract restricting it, and there could be no other explanation.
“…Is Xiao Zhu still alive?” After struggling for a long time, the white dragon finally forced out the question and realized that its voice had become hideously hoarse. Its breathing was chaotic enough to send the long whiskers on either side of its snout fluttering helplessly, leaving it looking utterly wretched.
The reason was visible on the other side of the bronze mirror: the vast and desolate corpse of the ancient centipede had somehow begun changing color.
It was no longer merely cold, lifeless black. Great swaths of brilliant blood-red now adorned it. Blazing flames drifted across the body, magnificent long feathers dancing between them as the phoenix painted wildly across the Cave God’s towering corpse, leaving cluster after cluster of strange, vivid hell-red lotuses in its wake.
It appeared to be some kind of special formation, both aesthetically elaborate and capable of transmitting energy, thoroughly characteristic of the phoenix race.
As for those threads… those sticky, soft, grotesque foreign things had dimmed beneath the unbearably brilliant firelight until they could barely be seen.
An unprecedented anxiety made the corner of Ao Wang’s eye twitch. It manipulated the Karmic Mirror, enlarging the reflected details as quickly as possible, while wave after wave of cold dread rose inside it, like a rock suspended over a cliff by a single thread, never knowing when it would finally plummet and shatter.
“She’s definitely going to die.”
Bang—!
The rock fell and shattered into pieces.
Qin Shu’s eyes remained fixed on Xu Qian, as though he had not noticed the white dragon’s breathing suddenly stop. He said quietly, “I borrowed a power that probably shouldn’t be abused. In your terms, perhaps it’s some special kind of rule-based power. Maybe I’ll have to pay a heavy price for using it—such as the eternal hatred of a prince of the West Sea.”
His tone remained unhurried, yet listening to him made Ao Wang’s head spin.
The white dragon said nothing. Instead, the body coiled around Qin Shu’s waist slowly loosened, and its tail violently smashed against the bronze mirror.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
The blows grew increasingly hysterical. The bronze mirror remained completely unharmed, while the dragon’s own scales were smashed apart, releasing cold streaks of gold-and-red blood that wound slowly downward.
After that pointless outburst, Ao Wang lowered its head and fixed its strongly inhuman golden eyes on Qin Shu. “I’m too weak. So I won’t kill you. But you can’t kill me either.”
“You’re right. I don’t dare risk killing you now either, but why aren’t you killing me?” Qin Shu actually sounded somewhat eager to try.
Coalball had recently learned how to speak, though only a few simple words. Inside Qin Shu’s mind, it stammered a message. Can. Try.
And Xu Qian appeared to be trying to make herself stronger too. Her power had originally come from the mad dragon, which meant the mad dragon could also become her source of power.
Qin Shu did not consider his relationship with Xu Qian one of master and servant, so he generally did not investigate what she secretly did in private. As long as everyone remained emotionally stable and refrained from randomly killing people, that was enough for him. Come to think of it, this increasingly plump gray-white eyeball might be far more powerful than he had imagined.
Unfortunately, Ao Wang’s emotions were fairly stable as well. Its dragon jaws tightened, every breath carrying freezing air. “I’m going to watch you grow stronger, Qin Shu. I’ll wait until you’re finally powerful enough and can hardly wait to accomplish whatever it is you truly want. Then, once you finally relax your guard, I’ll destroy your hopes, kill the people you care about, and die together with you.”
“You’ll endure all this humiliation just because I killed a mad dragon that wanted to destroy the world?” Qin Shu laughed.
“I know, I know. Falling in love with someone insane is itself insane. What can I do? I only like female dragons stronger than me. Besides… I was imprisoned for almost three thousand years, unable to move or speak, parasitizing boring humans like some disease. Nobody could communicate with me. Nobody even knew I existed. It was mind-numbingly boring. That kind of punishment was excessive, don’t you think?”
“Mm, maybe a little? Even the Great Sage Equal to Heaven was only trapped for five hundred years.” Qin Shu considered it. “But you really did kill a lot of people. Wukong didn’t.”
“They might as well have chopped my head off with a dragon-head executioner! You wouldn’t understand. During those three thousand years before electronic devices were invented, Xiao Zhu was all I had.”
Ao Wang’s blood-covered tail rested against the bronze mirror and slowly settled over one shattered fragment, stroking the distorted dragon body being swallowed by flame.
It murmured, “I didn’t know her real name, so I gave her one myself—Xiao Zhu. Precious like a pearl, but stupid like a pig, hah. All these years, she was the only one who discovered that I existed. So she stayed in Phoenix Village, used me as a shield against the Cave God’s perception, and filled my ears with her madness, cruelty, brutality, and strange hatred…
“She used me, mocked me, tortured me, and at the same time made me understand exactly how fortunate I was… She was in so much pain. More pain than I was. And yet I was always dissatisfied.”
Elio’s Notes: Ao Wang’s nickname Xiao Zhu is a wordplay. 珠 (zhū) means “pearl,” while 猪 (zhū) means “pig”; he explicitly frames the name as both affectionate—“precious like a pearl”—and insulting—“stupid like a pig.”
Qin Shu was silent for a moment. “If her madness was incurable, don’t you think letting her die sooner and reincarnate sooner, starting over again, would actually be the greatest release you could give her?”
As he spoke, Qin Shu was studying the mad dragon’s head conjured by Coalball.
Even though it was only an illusion, it had perfectly reproduced the severity of the mad dragon’s current mutations. Qin Shu gently touched the ruined scales and felt a powerful aura of decay and death. Beneath them, cold white flesh was tangled with extra compound eyes that should never have existed, making the creature resemble a host body consumed by some monstrous parasite.
She was almost equivalent to an elderly human who had been bedridden for years: the brain had not yet died, but the body had already begun rotting and collapsing, while the distinctive stench of a corpse spread across the skin, soaked into clothes and bedding, and refused to disperse.
Qin Shu meant what he had said. Death was genuinely kinder to her.
“Of course I know Xiao Zhu doesn’t have long to live, but what chance does she have of reincarnating? Hmph. Her sins are so heavy that even throwing her into the Mincemeat Hell would be too light a punishment.” Ao Wang exhaled deeply, making the paper window creak. “And haven’t you noticed? Something is wrong with the underworld. Seriously wrong. King Qin Guang’s Court is completely empty. There isn’t even half an underworld constable around.”
“Of course I noticed, but I didn’t realize it was this serious. Not long ago, I encountered a ghost that had actually been taken back out of the underworld and sealed inside a paper effigy…”
Qin Shu noticed that Ao Wang’s attention had shifted again, inexplicably locking onto the abnormalities of the underworld. He immediately seized the opportunity and gave a broad summary of what had happened with the Blackhearted Paper Effigy Shop before the dragon’s attention could turn back.
The incident had remained a thorn in Qin Shu’s mind. Logically speaking, the underworld was unlike anywhere else: the living had no path in, and the dead had nowhere to escape.
If Zhang Cong could casually pull a soul undergoing punishment out of an underworld prison, then there had to be many other cultivators more powerful than Zhang Cong who could do the same.
That uncertainty genuinely made Qin Shu anxious.
After listening to the whole story, Ao Wang shook its head and clicked its tongue. “Just as I thought. Ever since Empress Houtu disappeared, order and oversight in the underworld have deteriorated year after year. That’s why we could exploit a loophole and sneak in here, heh. They’re desperately understaffed. Even that damn gay bastard Fan Wujiu has disappeared somewhere, and nobody else would dare come arrest a dragon soul. Then maybe after my Xiao Zhu dies…”
Elio’s Notes: Fan Wujiu is traditionally associated with Black Impermanence, paralleling Xie Bi’an, who is associated with White Impermanence. Ao Wang’s crude wording reflects his own speech.
Qin Shu rapidly made mental notes, gathering every piece of information from Ao Wang’s rambling: Empress Houtu had disappeared, the underworld’s order was in chaos, there was a severe shortage of personnel, and Black Impermanence Fan Wujiu apparently liked men… Qin Shu had no idea whether that last part was merely Ao Wang being vulgar or an actual bombshell.
Unfortunately, there was no time to investigate further because the very thing Ao Wang was worried about was happening right before them.
Qin Shu had indeed told Ao Wang that the mad dragon was doomed, but even he had not expected the effect of his wish to be this efficient.
The mad dragon died quietly, without any collapse of heaven and earth, mountains shaking, anguished roar, or dragon cry. She lay within a magnificent sea of blood-red flame, gradually engulfed by wildly spreading red spider lilies, while the cocoon in her eye socket melted into a creamy, viscous mess before dissolving into a thin puddle of foreign matter.
Qin Shu could not even understand exactly how she had died.
But he knew that the mad dragon was dead.
And the mad dragon knew that he had made the wish.
A heavy, sinking sense of dread, almost like sudden weightlessness, surged abruptly from the depths of Qin Shu’s heart.
The countless eyeballs embedded throughout the mad dragon’s flesh slowly and uniformly rotated through the bronze mirror, then suddenly froze on Qin Shu. The immense divine pressure contained in that gaze immediately reminded him of the terrifying memory, not long ago, of being watched by a “deity.”
This time, however, the physical distance between them was much greater. Fengdu and Jin’e Mountain truly were two entirely different spaces governed by different properties and rules.
Qin Shu could still breathe. He did not experience the same overwhelming sensation of imminent death, nor did his mind stop working. Even as the dread intensified, he forced himself to remain alert and continued rapidly processing everything before him.
He sensed no hatred toward him in the mad dragon’s gaze, or at least none specifically directed at Qin Shu.
She seemed completely indifferent to him and equally indifferent to his wish. Instead, she was more interested in Ao Wang and Xu Qian, quietly observing them for a long while before finally placing her attention on Qin Shu.
Even then, the gaze she gave Qin Shu felt almost businesslike. It was as though, before dying, she merely wanted to see who had done this; there was no killing intent whatsoever, and then, without the slightest hesitation, she granted his request.
[I curse you to taste, again and again… the pain that belongs to you alone.]
Naturally, there was always a price. At the instant the mad dragon vanished completely into the flames, a cold, calm whisper slowly crawled across the back of Qin Shu’s neck like an icy claw stroking his skin before leisurely blowing a breath against it.
A curse, then, was the price. Qin Shu had already been mentally prepared.
Call him reckless or excessively bold, but he genuinely wanted to know what kind of price he would pay for using this shortcut under special circumstances.
Only after seeing exactly what the cost was could he judge future crises properly, knowing when he should immediately bend at the waist and make a wish—and when doing so would absolutely not be worth it.
Ao Wang did not know what Qin Shu was thinking. Halfway through speaking, it had already fallen completely silent. It curled its bloodied tail close, keeping one eye trained warily on the door in case anything abnormal appeared outside, while the other remained locked tightly onto the bronze mirror, unwilling to miss even the slightest movement.
But Qin Shu knew exactly what it was thinking.
It intended to track Xiao Zhu’s soul the instant she died and simultaneously watch for underworld forces coming to seize her. That was the real reason Ao Wang had been willing to bring Qin Shu into the underworld.
Even after the mad dragon died, the depth of resentment and obsession within her soul would inevitably be extraordinary. No true dragon in existence was easy to deal with. A living mad true dragon was dangerous, while a true dragon that died filled with hatred was something far more terrifying.
There was a strong chance that she could escape the underworld’s control and even use that overwhelming suffering and resentment to strengthen herself, completely overturn the rules of Jin’e Mountain and seize them for her own, legitimately establishing herself as a ruler of the region.
These were chaotic times. If she was dead, then she was dead—so what? The beginning of the spiritual energy resurgence was precisely the best era for prodigies from every path to rise and powerful figures to contend for dominance. Even the throne of the Emperor of Fengdu was not necessarily too ambitious a seat to warm for a while.
She could do it; she had the ability; she was ruthless enough.
Ao Wang’s imagination ran wild. Its intensely focused golden pupil had almost become bloodshot as it watched a vast, snow-white translucent silhouette rise slowly from the magnificent flames exactly as it had hoped.
That pale radiance was so pure and beautiful, releasing a silent aura of death strong enough to seem capable of crossing space and time, like the sudden descent of a great winter catastrophe. Inch by inch, it tore apart the rotting, extravagant sea of red spider lilies, proudly lifted its dragon head, and silently opened its eyes. Familiar yet unfamiliar cold vertical pupils instantly blazed gold toward the bronze mirror… Xiao Zhu was looking at it. Those were Xiao Zhu’s eyes.
Ao Wang could no longer control the quickening of its breath. Damp dragon breath swirled through the chamber as its excitement grew, and far above the River of Forgetfulness, white light suddenly tore through the eternal blackness before erupting into thunder.
Rumble—!
Bolt after bolt of lightning clawed at the daylightless sky like a savage beast, while Ao Wang’s breathing abruptly stopped and its voice rose into a shrill scream: “…No. No, what is that?! Qin Shu! Qin Shu, look! Your eyes are good, help me see… No… Xiao Zhu! Xiao Zhu!”
Qin Shu stood frozen, unable to respond to its collapse.
He was looking at genuine darkness.
No, it was chaos. It was as though every brilliant, dazzling color in existence had suddenly been shoved into a single compartment of a paint palette and violently stirred with a wet brush.
The mixture continued until its texture became so thick and soft that looking at it made the skin crawl, devouring every possible trace of light and color until only an indistinguishable, dark, viscous substance remained, neither alive nor dead, neither black nor white.
Indescribable was perhaps the most appropriate word.
As Qin Shu stared in fascination, he experienced the eerie unease that even the scarlet blood inside his own body might be twisted into that chaos. If he immersed himself in watching for too long, if that thing noticed him, perhaps every drop of blood in his body truly would be drawn away, leaving nothing but a shriveled, transparent shell.
Yet he could not stop himself from watching as the dazzling golden light suddenly disappeared, as the snow-white, deathly silent soul of the mad dragon met the quietly spreading chaos, and as it shattered instantly.
She had no power to resist, could not even release a single scream or make any meaningful attempt to struggle; the instant that irrational chaos touched her, the outcome was already decided.
True death, absolute nothingness.
The little phoenix folded its wings and hid inside the hollow severed neck of the Cave God’s corpse. Only after quite some time did it cautiously poke its head out and look around. Once it confirmed that the surroundings were sufficiently safe, it carefully spat out a tiny spark and resumed its tireless painting across the corpse.
After the void passed, the chaos withdrew, and the phoenix returned to its work, but on this side of the bronze mirror it left behind an impossibly long silence.
Qin Shu almost forgot to breathe until Xu Qian jumped back onto his shoulder. The grotesque eyeball, once gray-white, was now plump and full, its entire surface covered in a clear, pure snow-white sheen like a crystal ornament in an expensive department store.
“…Zhaozhao.”
The faintly cool touch brought Qin Shu abruptly back to himself, and he lowered his eyes as he murmured the name.
“What did you say?” Ao Wang’s enormous face instantly pressed close, its enlarged icy golden eye once again only inches away.
It stared at Qin Shu and asked a second time, “Qin Shu, what did you say? Who were you talking about?”
“I miss my little lover.” Qin Shu’s expression remained perfectly normal as his gaze fell on the trembling Coalball, lingering meaningfully on the mad dragon’s head it had conjured. “Take me back. If you don’t want to, I’ll ride Xiao Zhu’s head and have her take me.”
“I □□—ow!”
Elio’s Notes: The supplied raw contains 我□□……嗷！ in Ao Wang’s interrupted outburst. The exact missing characters cannot be established from context, so they have been preserved rather than reconstructed.
Before Ao Wang could finish, it suddenly screamed, and at the same time a wet schk of tearing flesh echoed between them.
Qin Shu had not done anything especially earth-shattering. He merely tilted his head slightly, changing the direction of his black horn just enough for it to slide smoothly into the golden dragon eye filled with collapse, obsession, and murderous intent.
It was Qin Shu’s first attempt at using his beast horn to attack another being, and the effect was outstanding.
Just like that, Ao Wang lost an eye, blood pouring continuously from the wound. Cold dragon blood brimming with immense vitality violently washed over the injury, repeatedly healing the deep, narrow hole pierced through the golden pupil by Qin Shu’s horn, only for the regenerating eye to be torn apart again and again, turning back into mangled dead flesh amid renewed agony.
Ao Wang rolled in pain, unable to speak, its tail frantically slamming against the floor of the empty chamber until it accidentally slapped Coalball across the face before the little creature could dodge, landing a solid hit directly on “Xiao Zhu’s” face and making the dragon freeze in horrified panic.
“You… you… You really are that monster! You’re that ancient savage god called the Xiezhi!” With no other options left, Ao Wang could only squeeze one eye shut and howl in despair. “Qin Shu, what the hell do you want from me?!”
Qin Shu’s face was expressionless. “I received a proper civic education growing up. Whether you’re human or dragon, the rules are the same: have manners, behave civilly, and swear less. Insult me all you like, but don’t drag my mother into it.”
“…Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
“Fuck!”
“That works.” Qin Shu picked up the pitiful Coalball, which had returned to its original form after being slapped, and stuffed it into his pocket. “One-Eye, take me out.”