The Beautiful Demon Lord’s Disciple Won’t Pretend Anymore - Chapter 5

If time could be rewound, and if he had known how important those rabbits were to Hua Yao, Xu Chengbi would have sworn to the heavens that he would rather starve to death than touch those Rabbit-Tail Flowering herbs.

But the youth in green would hear none of his explanations. Convinced that Xu Chengbi had intentionally sought to retaliate against his precious Master, he picked up his sword and chased Xu Chengbi all over the courtyard.

In truth, it wasn’t that Xu Chengbi couldn’t defeat him. It was simply because he felt guilty, so he didn’t dare to fight back.

Driven to distraction, Xu Chengbi’s temper began to flare, yet he had to patiently figure out the current situation. He pondered it over and over, unable to make sense of it.

“I only ate a few of your Master’s rabbits. Is it really that big a deal?”

Were all cultivators this petty?

“It’s not because of that at all!” The youth in green was actually tearing up. “It’s because the Master released the great demon lord from the Forbidden Land. The Sect Leader calculated that the Master has incurred karma and owes a debt of emotion because of it, causing the Path of No Emotion he cultivates to hit another bottleneck. The Sect Leader was furious, which is why he wanted to punish him!”

“Now that the Master is injured and has no spiritual herbs, if something, if something were to happen…”

Before the youth in green could finish his sentence, he had already imagined a string of terrible outcomes. He choked out his words, his tears falling freely.

“…How bizarre.”

Xu Chengbi didn’t fully understand the logic of the Path of No Emotion in this world, but to him, owing a debt of emotion and hitting a cultivation bottleneck were two completely unrelated things. How did it end up linked to him?

Furthermore, even if the Sect Leader was Hua Yao’s superior, wasn’t it a bit excessive to constantly call for violence and punishment?

As the two of them were squabbling, the barrier surrounding the Hall of Absolute Emotion flickered like a faulty electrical connection. The semi-transparent films, which appeared fragile but were in fact incredibly tough, suddenly cracked like shattered ice. A few seconds later, they exploded into millions of light fragments. The crashing sound made the youth in green and Wang Zitong instinctively cover their ears. As the barrier vanished, a pressure akin to Mount Tai crashing down unleashed a gale, blowing their clothes so violently that they couldn’t even open their eyes.

“Oh no, it’s the Sect Leader’s pressure!” The youth in green stabbed his sword into the ground, trying in vain to steady himself, but his retreating figure proved the failure of his attempt. “The Sect Leader is angry!”

“What’s wrong with your Sect Leader?”

Since he was mostly the source of the trouble, Xu Chengbi darkened his expression and forced himself to look up. Squinting his eyes, he followed the source of the pressure and indeed saw two figures in white battling fiercely in the sky. One was retreating as he fought, a trail of blood quickly running from the corner of his mouth; it looked like he was about to reach his limit.

Xu Chengbi frowned, braced his stance, and forced himself to stay steady. He took a deep breath, reached out, and snatched at the empty air. A teal whip appeared in his hand. Before he could even register what he had grabbed, he swung his arm with force, and a biting gust of wind surged toward the figure in the sky.

Hua Yao hadn’t even had time to react when his waist was suddenly tightened, and then he was pulled backward. The next second, he landed against a chest that was not particularly broad.

He was stunned. When he looked up, his lips were deathly pale. The youth in his vision was handsome, with fair skin and red lips, looking incredibly impatient. With one arm around his waist, the other hand ignited with teal flames.

The fire resembled a soaring dragon, roaring and dancing wildly as it surged toward the Sect Leader.

“Just picking on someone when they’re down, how annoying!”

Since coming to this world, Xu Chengbi’s temper had grown, for some reason. The thought that Hua Yao was getting beaten because of him made him feel inexplicably uncomfortable, as if he owed Hua Yao something.

He glared irritably at the man in the large hood whose expression was unreadable. He gave a blunt middle finger to the man, accompanied by an eye roll.

“Can’t you wait until someone is healed before you fight? Is bullying a patient that fun?”

The man in the hood didn’t seem to realize he had appeared. The covered half of his face remained unreadable, but his thin lips tightened. After a long silence, he said in a low voice, “Xu Chengbi?”

His tone sounded quite incredulous.

“It’s your grandfather, me. What of it?”

Xu Chengbi felt the voice sounded somewhat familiar, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He looked down at Hua Yao, whose pale face was trying to push him away, and assuming he was uncomfortable with the hold, he decided to scoop Hua Yao up in his arms in front of everyone and shout to the Sect Leader:

“He had his reasons for letting me out. If you have any issues, come at me! Don’t… don’t make things difficult for him.”

Sect Leader: “…”

Hua Yao hadn’t been held like this by anyone in hundreds of years. His eyes went wide, which made Xu Chengbi think of some sort of startled rabbit. Yet, the words that came out of his mouth were far from pleasant:

“Presumptuous!”

“Yes, yes, yes, I’m presumptuous.”

Xu Chengbi gave a perfunctory reply. Seeing the faint redness at the corners of Hua Yao’s eyes—whether from anger or shame—he paused, feeling inexplicably guilty. He coughed a few times, as if wanting to explain that he hadn’t intentionally caused such a misunderstanding:

“I actually…”

A violent gale, fueled by fury, suddenly struck toward Xu Chengbi. He spun around, holding Hua Yao, and backed away. When he looked back, the smile on his face had vanished. His body acted before his mind, and he placed Hua Yao onto a floating cloud before turning to engage the Sect Leader.

Hua Yao was burning with anxiety, but he was currently injured. He clutched his chest, spat out a mouthful of stagnant blood, and felt utterly powerless. He could only watch with worry as they traded blows.

But for some reason, the Sect Leader, whose cultivation should have been above his, was currently fighting Xu Chengbi to a standstill. Their figures became so intertwined that Hua Yao eventually couldn’t tell who was who.

…Strange. How was Xu Chengbi fighting the Sect Leader to a draw without showing any signs of losing?

Also, why did Xu Chengbi, after escaping the Hall of Absolute Emotion while he was too weak to maintain the barrier, not leave directly, but instead rush over to protect him?

A whirlwind of thoughts tangled in Hua Yao’s mind. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. He could only furrow his brows tightly. Before he could reach a solid conclusion, his vision suddenly went black. The cloud beneath him lightened, and he began to plummet.

In the moment before he lost consciousness, he saw Xu Chengbi and the Sect Leader stop fighting simultaneously. Their expressions shifted drastically, and both reached out, lunging toward him.

It took Hua Yao only two hours to regain consciousness, but it was enough to keep his disciples in a state of high anxiety and unease.

However, the moment his rationality slowly returned, what greeted his eyes was not the familiar face of the Sect Leader, nor the worried expressions of his disciples, but Xu Chengbi, who was sprawled out beside him, bored to tears, and even attempting to reach out and play with his eyelashes.

Xu Chengbi: “…”

Hua Yao: “…”

After staring at each other for a moment, Xu Chengbi stopped his movement. He curled his fingers into a fist against his lips, coughed to mask his embarrassment, and slanted a glance at Hua Yao’s speechless expression. He suddenly rubbed his hands together, his expression excited:

“Wow, that look on your face… are you disgusted by me?”

Although he had only known Hua Yao for a few days, this icy beauty seemed to have no other expression besides that cold, dead-faced mask. So, when Hua Yao instinctively wore a look of disgust while dazed and even turned his head to avoid him, Xu Chengbi’s first thought wasn’t anger, but an inexplicable sense of achievement:

Look, I’m the first person he’s ever been disgusted by!

Hua Yao: “…”

He instantly wiped away the bewildered, child-like expression from when he had just woken up. He gave Xu Chengbi a cold look, his white teeth and a sliver of his pink tongue visible when he spoke, which made Xu Chengbi want to sneak another peek:

“Get out.”

“Want me to leave? That’s only happening if you want to die.”

Xu Chengbi stared at the icy, freezing face of Hua Yao and grew unhappy himself. He spoke with a sarcastic, mocking tone:

“I don’t know if you feel it, but are you feeling parched and weak right now?”

Hua Yao sensed his body carefully: “No.”

Xu Chengbi choked. After a while, he decided to stop beating around the bush and go straight to direct mockery:

“To save your disciples, you exhausted your spiritual power while killing the Mie Shi, and now you’ve taken a palm strike from the Sect Leader. Your meridians are damaged, and your cultivation has regressed. Only by consuming the Rabbit-Tail Flowering herb, watered with human blood for a hundred years, can you protect your heart meridian. But now…”

Xu Chengbi spread his hands: “The Rabbit-Tail Flowering herb has already been eaten by me, so the only way is to drink my blood.”

Hua Yao frowned deeply, stared at Xu Chengbi for a long moment, then shook his head, stood up, and said coldly:

“Unnecessary.”

Xu Chengbi, who had expected to see Hua Yao begging him not to leave, was dumbfounded. It took him a while to regain his senses, and he said hesitantly:

“Your meridians are shattered. Are you not afraid of dying?”

“To live has no joy, to die has no fear.”

Hua Yao maintained his icy composure. He didn’t even furrow his brow at the comment:

“If I die, then so be it.”

In all his years, this was the first time Xu Chengbi had met someone more pessimistic than Hua Yao. The key was that this person’s pessimism wasn’t the “this-f-ing-world-is-not-worth-living-in-just-destroy-it” brand of giving up, but…

It was as if he truly felt that being alive was meaningless.

Xu Chengbi watched as Hua Yao changed into another white robe embroidered with lotus patterns, flicked his sleeves, and hurried toward the door.

He was so weak, yet he still remembered to change his clothes? What kind of vanity was this?

Xu Chengbi stared at Hua Yao’s wobbling frame, feeling a bit lost.

He closed his eyes, intending to sleep, but a moment later, the room became quiet. Xu Chengbi dozed off for a while and was surprised to realize he hadn’t heard the sound of the door opening.

He felt drowsy and assumed that, given Hua Yao’s cultivation level, he could walk through walls without making a sound. He opened his eyes in a daze, only to discover that where Hua Yao had been standing, there was now a pile of clothes, and Hua Yao himself was nowhere to be seen.

Xu Chengbi was stunned. He bolted upright in bed. For some reason, he felt a sudden panic:

“Hey, who was that?”

He pondered for a long time, finally dragging Hua Yao’s name out from his memory:

“Hua Niu? Niu-Niu? Are you still there?”

The pile of clothes suddenly shifted.

Xu Chengbi’s heart tightened. A whip appeared in his hand, and he stared vigilantly at the pile of clothes, as if afraid a beast was about to emerge and devour him:

“Who’s there?”

No one spoke.

The air seemed to have thickened with glue; it was heavy, and the silence was suffocating.

Xu Chengbi gripped the whip tight and swallowed hard, his heart racing. Just as he steeled himself to destroy the pile of clothes if necessary, the pile moved again.

Xu Chengbi’s heart leaped into his throat.

He tiptoed off the bed, prepared to investigate, when suddenly—perhaps it was the killing intent he was radiating that made it sense danger a tiny figure, no taller than a calligraphy brush, struggled to peek out from the waistband. With soft, fluffy hair and a fair, delicate face that looked exactly like a soft white jade dumpling, it was too far away to see its expression clearly. It tightened its chin and said:

“My name is Hua Yao.”

The tiny figure was very small, its expression flat, but its tone was fierce:

“It is not Niu-Niu.”

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