After My Death, the Immortal Venerable Became a Demon for My Sake - Chapter 2

Song Wangxiao didn’t know why she had turned back. She was a fugitive herself, yet by the time she realized what she was doing, she was already standing by the woman’s side.

The woman’s white robes were blooming with crimson; her wounds were still sluggishly weeping blood, making her already fair skin look deathly pale. Wangxiao’s brow furrowed.

It’s been this long, and she’s still bleeding?

Wangxiao knelt and retrieved the Spirit-Stabilizing Pills she had scavenged from her storage ring. She lifted the woman gently, coaxing a few pills past her lips. It was only then that she saw the true extent of the carnage.

The woman’s brow was knit in pain, fine beads of sweat dotting her forehead. She was covered in various blade wounds, some so deep the bone peeked through the red. Her internal energy was a chaotic, freezing mess, leaking out of her in uncontrolled, jagged waves of frost. Whoever had hunted her down had been utterly ruthless.

Wangxiao performed some basic first aid. The worst injury was a jagged gash across her waist, stretching nearly twenty centimeters toward her back. Wangxiao stemmed the bleeding as best she could and, fearing the worst, fed her one more pill.

Throughout the process, the only response she received was the bite of the woman’s haywire spiritual energy. Being near her felt like falling into an ice cellar; the cold was bone-deep.

Can she even survive this much corruption to her spiritual veins?

Even with the medicine stabilizing her breath, the rate at which her energy was dissipating made it a coin toss whether she’d ever wake up. Wangxiao reached out to check the woman’s pulse, but the moment her fingers brushed the stranger’s wrist, a violent backlash of energy slammed into her.

Wangxiao let out a muffled groan, clutching her chest as her own damaged dantian nearly fractured again. She looked at the unconscious woman in shock. To be able to injure me so easily while unconscious… her cultivation must be worlds beyond mine.

Still, Wangxiao wasn’t entirely worried about the energy depletion. In every Xianxia novel she’d read, masters didn’t just “run out” of energy and die like a battery.

“You’re badly hurt,” Wangxiao whispered to the silent air. “I’m taking you somewhere safe.”

She felt like a fool. She was fleeing for her life, yet she was dragging along a mysterious, high-level liability. What did this woman’s life have to do with her? But she’d already committed. She would wait until the woman woke up, then figure it out.

Besides, Wangxiao reasoned, if they ran into the Xiyi Sect, having a high-level master, even a wounded one, offered better odds than being a lone Foundation Establishment “noob” who only knew how to use basic magical trinkets.

After a brief rest, Wangxiao hoisted the woman onto her back. She moved as carefully as possible, circulating her meager energy to maintain a steady, rapid pace.

The Xiyi Sect was located to the southeast. Wangxiao ran for two days straight without sleep. Fortunately, a cultivator’s body could subsist on spiritual energy rather than food for a time. When no pursuers appeared on the horizon, she finally allowed herself to slow down.

The consequence of two days of exertion hit her instantly. The moment she stopped, a tidal wave of exhaustion nearly took her off her feet.

The woman on her back hadn’t moved once, save for her shallow breathing. Wangxiao checked her again; the smaller cuts were beginning to knit together, and the deep gash wasn’t infected. However, the woman was still shivering violently, her internal frost refusing to melt.

Wangxiao pulled a thick quilt from her storage ring, the one she’d packed during her escape, and tucked the woman in. She offered her more water and medicine, and only when the woman’s condition seemed to plateau did Wangxiao finally let her guard down.

Noticing that the stranger’s sword hummed ominously whenever she moved too close, Wangxiao placed the blade between them as a makeshift alarm system. She found a dry patch of ground, sat down, and was asleep before her head even hit the dirt.

*****

Jiang Cishuang was pulled from the depths of unconsciousness by the incessant, rhythmic buzzing of her sword-spirit. Her blood loss beckoned her back to sleep, but the sword was persistent.

She forced her eyes open and sat up. Her right hand formed a fist, and in a flash, the Fuming Sword, which Wangxiao had been clutching like a stuffed animal in her sleep, vanished from the ground and appeared in her hand.

Jiang Cishuang’s gaze swept over the sleeping girl nearby, her eyes sharp and predatory as she surveyed their surroundings.

The Demon Race had ambushed her path; she had wiped them out, but the price had been steep. Her hand instinctively went to her waist, expecting to feel the wet heat of a shredded wound, but her fingers met layers of clean, firm fabric.

She froze. She probed her body with her internal sense and realized the lethal damage had been stabilized. She looked back at the girl, her eyes dark and unreadable.

Using her sword as a crutch, Jiang Cishuang stood up. The quilt slid off her shoulders, releasing a faint, delicate fragrance. She suppressed her leaking energy and walked toward the sleeping figure. She gripped her sword, her pupils narrowing.

Her spiritual sense told her something impossible: the location of her “Heart Tribulation” had overlapped with her current position.

She raised her hand. The cold edge of the Fuming Sword came to rest against Wangxiao’s pale, vulnerable throat. The tip was mere millimeters from the skin; a single flick of the wrist would end this life.

The sword vibrated, almost as if complaining about how Wangxiao had cuddled it during the night. A frigid aura rolled off the blade, matching the woman’s icy demeanor.

Wangxiao, deep in a dream, felt a sudden, creeping chill. It started at her toes and surged through her body, turning her dreams into something twisted and dark.

“So cold…” she matted. She blinked her eyes open, only to find herself staring directly into the frost-filled eyes of Jiang Cishuang.

The woman was hauntingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that felt like a landscape of untouched snow—breathtaking, yet lethal.

Wangxiao’s breath hitched. Her eyes darted instinctively to the sword at her throat and the blood-stained white robes. Her heart did a somersault.

Well, Wangxiao thought, her hand twitching toward her storage ring. This is it. I’m getting silenced.

But the woman merely retracted the blade and looked away, as if the killing intent from a moment ago had been a mere hallucination. Sensing she wasn’t about to be decapitated, Wangxiao let out a shaky breath.

She stood up, brushing the dirt from her clothes, and cast a worried glance at the woman’s waist. The sight of the blood soaking through the white bandages prodded her conscience.

“It should be safe here for now,” Wangxiao said tentatively. “But your wound is still bleeding. It needs a fresh dressing.”

Jiang Cishuang turned, her gaze armored in suspicion.

Wangxiao cursed her own big mouth. Great, now I sound like a creep. She quickly added, “I mean… I have medicine and clean silk in my ring. Your injury is serious. It needs care.”

Jiang Cishuang watched her. Her posture remained guarded, but she sheathed her sword. Her eyes narrowed slightly, a gesture that was dangerously captivating, yet impossible to read.

“Who are you?” Her voice was like the first crack of ice on a winter lake: clear, cold, and beautiful.

“My name is Song Wangxiao,” she replied, pulling another Spirit-Stabilizing Pill from her ring and offering it. “If you won’t let me dress the wound, at least take this.”

Jiang Cishuang looked at the pill. “Why?”

“You’re bleeding. If you don’t take it, the wound will fester.” Wangxiao marveled at the versatility of these pills; they were like a magical Swiss Army knife for health. Thank god the “original” Wangxiao had cleaned out the sect’s supply before she bolted.

The woman took the pill and swallowed it under Wangxiao’s expectant gaze.

“Aren’t you afraid it’s poison?” Wangxiao asked, curious.

Jiang Cishuang gave her a flat look before sitting down to meditate. “With your level of cultivation, you wouldn’t need poison to try.”

Wangxiao: “Point taken.”

*****

While the two women were navigating their uneasy truce, a hundred miles away, the Xiyi Sect was in a state of absolute chaos.

Two days had passed, and Sect Leader Wu Qianshan’s search parties had found nothing. In a fit of rage, he crushed a jade slip and swung his arm, cleaving a massive stone statue in half with a wave of energy.

Zongyue entered the hall to find this carnage. He felt a cold sweat break across his back and dropped to his knees. “Sect Leader, forgive me! It was my failure as her master. I beg for your punishment!”

Wu Qianshan sneered. “A girl escaped from my dungeon without a sound? You certainly have a ‘talent’ for teaching, don’t you, Zongyue?”

Zongyue kowtowed repeatedly, his forehead hitting the floor with a dull thud. “I promise you, Sect Leader! She is only at the Foundation Establishment stage. My disciples will hunt her down!”

“She didn’t trigger the main gates,” Wu Qianshan said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low. “She likely used the Mount Xiling boundary. It’s weak there. A clever rat could slip through if she suppressed her aura.”

“Then I shall leave at once to—”

“Save your breath,” Wu Qianshan interrupted. “She knows we’re tracking her. She’ll have changed her route. But she’s forgotten one thing…” He smiled, a dark, arrogant expression. “Go to her courtyard. Bring me any item she used daily. I will open an altar and pin her location myself.”

Zongyue beamed with relief. “Brilliant, Sect Leader! She’s been here ten years and is still a useless Foundation-level brat. She won’t stand a chance against your art.”

A short while later, the disciple sent to the courtyard returned—empty-handed and trembling. He fell to his knees. “S-Sect Leader… there is nothing left in Song Wangxiao’s room.”

Wu Qianshan’s smile froze. “What?”

“The room is bare. No clothes, no trinkets… nothing but the walls. Even the plants in the courtyard are gone. The other disciples say that a few days ago, she chopped up her bed, chairs, and tables and sold them to the alchemy hall as firewood.”

The disciple didn’t say the rest out loud: Why are we going through all this for a ‘trash’ disciple? Is she that important?

Wu Qianshan was shaking with fury. He backhanded the disciple, sending him flying across the room. “Song Wangxiao… you little wretch!”

He refused to be beaten. He began to weave a complex series of hand seals, forcing a massive array to manifest in the air. “You think you can hide just because I don’t have your belongings? I am your Sect Leader!”

He poured his soul into the spell. A ball of black light erupted from the center of the array and shot into the sky like a homing missile.

*****

Back in the woods, Wangxiao was packing her things. She looked at Jiang Cishuang, who was still meditating.

“Hey, fellow traveler,” Wangxiao called out. “Since you’re awake and doing better, I should probably be going—”

Jiang Cishuang’s eyes snapped open. Her hands moved in a blur, weaving a complex white sigil in the air. A burst of brilliant white light erupted from her palm, flying straight at Wangxiao with lethal intent.

“Wait—!”

Wangxiao dived back, throwing her arms up in a useless defensive gesture. A deafening explosion rocked the clearing. The shockwave sent her tumbling back several meters.

When the dust settled, she looked up to see a ball of black mist trapped within Jiang Cishuang’s white light. The black mist writhed like a dying insect, trying to break free, until the white light constricted and swallowed it whole.

The sky cleared. Wangxiao looked back at Jiang Cishuang, only to see the color drain from the woman’s face. She clutched her chest and vomited a mouthful of dark blood.

“Hey!” Wangxiao rushed over, catching the woman’s swaying body.

Jiang Cishuang was ice-cold. She gripped Wangxiao’s collar with trembling fingers, her weight leaning entirely into the girl’s arms. Her pale lips parted, stained with red.

“Someone… was trying to find your location.”

Wangxiao’s heart sank. She looked at the spot where the black mist had died. That had been a tracking spell—likely from the Sect Leader himself. And this woman, wounded as she was, had intercepted it.

“Your wound opened up again,” Wangxiao said, her voice thick with worry. “Let me help.”

As she reached out, a slender, cold hand caught her wrist.

“We have to move,” Jiang Cishuang whispered, her breath hitching. “I broke their spell, but he knows we are here now.”

Wangxiao didn’t hesitate. She knelt and hoisted the woman onto her back. The cold emanating from the stranger was terrifying, like it was growing from her very bones, yet Wangxiao held on tight.

“I’m sorry,” Wangxiao whispered, suppressing her own rising panic. She turned and ran into the forest.

On her back, Jiang Cishuang bit her lip to stifle a groan. The backlash from the spell was tearing through her spiritual veins, but amidst the pain, she caught a scent—a faint, clean fragrance. It was the same scent from the quilt. It was light, yet strangely grounding.

Jiang Cishuang opened her eyes slightly. All she could see was the curve of Wangxiao’s worried face and the strands of her hair dancing in the wind.

She watched the girl’s profile for a long beat, then slowly let her eyes close.

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