Xu Zirong decided he really did need some peace and quiet to think over the sudden changes, so he lay down on the bed.
Xu Ziyan thoughtfully tucked the blankets around him and casually asked, “Little Rong, is there anything you’d like to eat?”
A faintly impatient Xu Zirong was about to answer, “Whatever,” when he abruptly remembered the role he was playing. He softened his voice. “I want meat.”
Xu Ziyan frowned, immediately imagining another string of scenes in which Xu Zirong had been deprived of affection. His heart aching, he said, “All right. We’ll have meat for dinner. Lots of it.”
Xu Zirong gave a bashful little smile and burrowed under the covers. His big eyes blinked up at Xu Ziyan, as if he were embarrassed to have asked for anything.
Xu Ziyan smiled and pinched his cheek. It was smooth and tender, even softer than silken tofu.
Xu Zirong was smiling outwardly, but inwardly he had entered another mark against Xu Ziyan. Damn that bastard! He actually dared touch his face. In his previous life, his appearance had attracted no shortage of unwanted attention. Once he had established himself as the Blood Demon, however, anyone who dared touch him, or even make a suggestive remark, had been destroyed so thoroughly that not a trace remained.
After waiting for quite some time, Xu Zirong realized Xu Ziyan had no intention of leaving. He frowned slightly and said in a small voice, “Big Brother, you should go see to your affairs.”
Xu Ziyan shook his head. “There’s nothing I need to do. You’re in an unfamiliar place, though, so you might have trouble sleeping. Having someone nearby could make you feel better.”
That strange sensation rose in Xu Zirong’s heart once again. It felt faintly sour, faintly bitter, and, somehow, a little warm.
He pushed the feeling away, lightly bit his lower lip, and said plaintively, “Big Brother, when you keep watching me like that… I… I can’t fall asleep.” Then he lowered his head with an expression of guilt.
Xu Ziyan immediately reproached himself for being thoughtless. He had been so busy worrying that Xu Zirong would struggle to adjust to his surroundings that he had forgotten he himself was now part of what was unfamiliar.
Both the original Xu Ziyan’s memories and the novel had filled him with pity for Xu Zirong, a character whose life had been so tragic.
As the child of an extramarital affair, Xu Zirong had received not the slightest affection in the Xu family, only suffering. To put it dramatically, if Xu Xiao had never brought him back, perhaps Xu Zirong would never have grown into that twisted Blood Demon.
According to the novel, the Blood Demon was cruel and merciless, utterly lacking in compassion. Later, in a bid to control the entire cultivation world, he had supposedly unleashed a vast swarm of bloodsucking insects from the demon realm. They were extraordinarily numerous and bred with frightening speed; the swarm could only be eradicated completely by gaining control of its mother insect.
Bai Hua had originally entered the Blood Demon’s demonic palace to persuade him to abandon that plan. But the Blood Demon had refused to acknowledge any involvement and detained Bai Hua instead.
This act had utterly enraged Lin Xiaotian, sect master of the Tianyu Sect; Mo Ziyuan, owner of the Moyulong Pavilion; and Xu Ziyan, successor to the Xu family’s leadership. The three men, Bai Hua’s paramours, joined forces to launch an assault on the demonic palace.
By the end of the novel, the Tianyu Sect, the Moyulong Pavilion, and the Xu family that Xu Ziyan had expanded all commanded immense power.
With those three forces leading the attack, aided by smaller sects, schools, and clans, they had lost nearly ninety percent of their people before finally managing to enter the Blood Demon’s palace.
There was little need to recount the battle that followed. Surrounded and attacked by all three men, the Blood Demon, Xu Zirong, was decisively defeated. His soul fell into Xu Ziyan’s hands. To avenge Bai Hua and soothe his anger, Xu Ziyan roasted that soul in the Nine Yang True Fire until it disintegrated utterly.
Later still, the three men and Bai Hua used Xu Zirong’s blood essence to lure the bloodsucking insects’ mother insect and annihilate them all at once. The four were thereafter hailed as the Four Great Venerables, gaining complete control of Xuanyu Domain, one of the middle domains.
Since Bai Hua was the novel’s protagonist, it naturally sang his praises. Besides celebrating his supposedly moving romances with Lin Xiaotian, Mo Ziyuan, and Xu Ziyan, the story extolled his character and virtue. It ended with the four of them ruling Xuanyu Domain and living happily together.
It looked perfect. Yet it was also utterly false…
Because the memories Xu Ziyan had inherited from his predecessor revealed an entirely different set of events.
For one thing, the bloodsucking insects’ invasion of Xuanyu Domain had had nothing whatsoever to do with the Blood Demon. He had never intended to control the entire swarm through its mother insect.
In other words, Xu Zirong was completely innocent of that particular charge. Yet neither Lin Xiaotian, Mo Ziyuan, nor the original Xu Ziyan had shown the slightest intention of clearing his name.
As far as they were concerned, it made no difference whether Xu Zirong had been responsible. They had never intended to let him survive after using his blood essence to attract the mother insect. Dead was dead. What was the point of talking about innocence? Countless people died unjustly in the cultivation world. Besides, the Blood Demon had once abused Bai Hua. That alone was reason enough, in their eyes, to tear Xu Zirong limb from limb!
Xu Ziyan had felt thoroughly disheartened when he saw that memory.
From what he could tell of the book as a whole, Xu Zirong had become twisted in his later years, but he had never slaughtered people indiscriminately without cause. Most of those he killed had old grudges against him. Occasionally, someone who coveted his looks or his cultivation techniques had also died at his hands.
Which meant Xu Zirong had never truly crossed Xu Ziyan’s own bottom line. The one apparent exception was the catastrophic bloodsucking insect invasion, which had cost so many lives. But in the end even that had turned out to have nothing to do with Xu Zirong.
An innocent child had been driven, step by step, into becoming a demonic cultivator, then killed for something he had never done. Even after his death, his soul had been dragged out and tortured further. To Xu Ziyan, that was simply too much.
Xu Ziyan was no saint. He had a fiery temper and was fiercely protective of his own. Now that Xu Zirong was under his wing, he absolutely would not let anyone bully his younger brother as they pleased.
At heart, he was also transferring a little of the affection he felt for Xu Ziyu onto Xu Zirong. Every time he looked at Zirong, he thought of his own younger brother, who had once been a delicate, fair-skinned boy too. He could not stand by and watch another child be driven toward such a desperate end.
“All right, Big Brother will go outside. Have a good rest and sleep without worrying. I’ll come wake you in a little while.” Xu Ziyan smiled at Xu Zirong and left his own bedroom.
He called over a maid and asked her to show him to Xu Zirong’s room.
The maid was pretty, with slender, slightly upturned phoenix eyes and an alluring air. Unfortunately, Xu Ziyan had always been slow to notice romantic signals, and he completely missed the flirtatious looks she was casting him.
Liushang Courtyard was enormous. Apart from Xu Ziyan’s main bedroom, there were dozens of empty rooms. Realizing that her flirtation was falling on blind eyes, the phoenix-eyed maid bit her lip and cursed inwardly. Damn that vixen Ruoqi! If not for her, why wouldn’t the Young Master even glance at me?
She led Xu Ziyan along the corridor beside his bedroom and past a small practice ground. Walking gracefully ahead of him, she swayed her figure in another attempt to catch his attention.
Xu Ziyan was slow when it came to romance, but he was no fool. When a woman kept posing and preening right in front of him, it was difficult to ignore.
“Ruohua, don’t you know how to walk properly?” he asked icily.
The maid, whose name was Ruohua, stiffened. She lowered her head, her eyes reddening.
Xu Ziyan felt no impulse to comfort a beauty in distress. Although he had never been in love himself, he believed strongly in romantic fidelity. He admired the relationship his parents had shared and hoped to meet a woman who would truly make his heart race.
His extraordinary gifts meant he would inevitably attract many women’s attention, but until he met the one who stirred his heart, he wanted no romantic entanglements with anyone else.
Perhaps in this world it was perfectly ordinary for a man to have three wives and four concubines. Even the protagonist of the novel had three exceptional men at his side. But to Xu Ziyan, love would always be a matter between two people. Adding a third would only shatter an otherwise complete relationship.
He genuinely could not understand how the three men in the novel tolerated sharing their beloved with one another. In their place, he would sooner abandon the relationship than allow his love to be treated so cheaply.
“We’ve arrived, Young Master,” Ruohua said softly, her voice carrying a hint of grievance and her face looking pitiable.
An ordinary man might have felt compelled to take such a distressed beauty into his arms and comfort her. Unfortunately for her, after inheriting his parents’ business, Xu Ziyan had been something of a wealthy, handsome catch. He had encountered far more aggressive attempts at seduction, including women who had climbed into his bed without a stitch of clothing. Her little performance scarcely registered.
“This is it?” Without so much as looking at Ruohua, Xu Ziyan surveyed the surroundings coldly.
They were practically at the edge of Liushang Courtyard, a good two or three hundred meters from his own bedroom. Such a distance meant nothing to cultivators, but what mattered to him was the attitude this arrangement revealed among the servants toward Xu Zirong.
Contempt.
“Who arranged this room?” Xu Ziyan demanded.
Ruohua jumped and stammered, “I-it was Sister Ruoqi…”
“Ruoqi?” Xu Ziyan immediately remembered the beautiful woman, and his expression turned exasperated.
Fuck. Wasn’t she the maid who was supposed to initiate the original Xu Ziyan into sex?