The Widowed Demonic Lord Remarried Again?! - Chapter 6

“Hand Bai Ruogu over to me.”

Seeing that Ye Tang’s brows were tightly knitted and his complexion looked grim, with the brilliance of the Moon Shadow still shimmering in his hand, Ruan Yeibai hurriedly stepped in front of his little disciple, offering a courteous and flattering smile: “Celestial Immortal, please don’t lower yourself to the level of a child; it wouldn’t befitting your status!”

Ye Tang glanced askance at Bai Ruogu: “A child of several hundred years old?”

Tsk tsk, look at that little appearance, that little frame, that pitiful little look in his eyes, and the way he hid behind his master and clutched the corner of his clothes after being frightened, even if he was hundreds of years old, a child was still a child!

Ruan Yeibai smiled and said, “Whether he is a child depends on who you’re comparing him to. To others, he might already be the peerless, invincible Bone King of the Fanhua Nine Realms who commands winds and clouds, but to you and me, isn’t he still that clear-eyed and naive little crown prince of the Baijing Kingdom from back then?”

It was unclear which of Ruan Yeibai’s words touched Ye Tang, but his expression relaxed slightly. He then retracted the glowing light of the Moon Shadow in his hand and said to Bai Ruogu, who stood behind Ruan Yeibai, “Release Su Wanxing first.”

Although Bai Ruogu felt some fear toward Ye Tang, the moment he saw Ye Tang, he reacted almost by reflex and hid behind Ruan Yeibai.

Yet, remembering what Su Wanxing had just done to Ruan Yeibai, his stubborn temper flared up instantly, and the little fellow argued stubbornly, “I won’t let her go! She almost used her immortal ribbon to strangle my master just now!”

Ye Tang paused, then suddenly stepped forward and pulled apart Ruan Yeibai’s collar. Sure enough, there were strangle marks left by Xiangsi visible on his neck. The brows that had finally relaxed instantly furrowed again.

Then, Ruan Yeibai watched as Ye Tang used his backhand to add another layer of barrier around the Jialan Bone Mirror.

[System: Ah, this… The original three-day cooldown was almost up so he could come out automatically, but now he might not even be able to get out in seven days.]

This move was truly ruthless!

“I warned her not to stir up trouble.” Ye Tang gently stroked the strangle marks on Ruan Yeibai’s neck, and under his touch, those varying depths of marks gradually faded, restoring the originally fair and smooth skin. “Let her reflect on herself inside.”

Ruan Yeibai took a step back, grabbed Bai Ruogu’s hand, and dragged the child backward as he said, “Then we won’t disturb the Celestial Immortal in disciplining his subordinates. My disciple and I will take our leave first. May we meet again if fate allows!”

Hmph, it’s best we never meet!

Before he could take another step, he heard Ye Tang say from behind, “If you dare to take a step, I will execute Bai Ruogu immediately.”

The step Ruan Yeibai was about to take shrank back.

Using my obedient disciple to threaten me, too vicious!

I curse you to not have a son in this lifetime!

If this were the past, he wouldn’t care about such a threat at all. After all, who could harm Bai Ruogu, who had become a Bone King, under the hands of Sword Demon Bai Ye?

But times had changed.

A real man knows when to bend and when to stretch!

At worst, he would just win back this grievance when his spiritual power returned in the future!

[System (with emotion): I see it now, Host. Your previous job must have had a sky-high level of stress, right? An adult’s compromising under pressure has truly been brought to the peak by you.]

“What is this talk of killing or not? You are the peerless Celestial Immortal of the Lanquey Sky, Ah no, you’re already a Heavenly Sovereign now; bullying a little brat casually will just ruin your reputation if word gets out in the future.”

Ye Tang said in a flat tone, “Are you sure that obliterating the Ten Thousand Bones Law Phase is the kind of thing that would ruin my reputation?”

Heh, of course not; you’d probably be extolled in songs and praises, with people eager to carry you around the city three times to showcase your heaven-defying strength.

Seeing that this method wasn’t working, Ruan Yeibai turned around to stand beside Ye Tang, turned his back to him, and began earnestly lecturing Bai Ruogu.

“Stupid disciple, look at you, this is your fault. Although I know you didn’t do it on purpose, you still inadvertently caused damage to so many high-rise pavilions, halls, flowers, and plants in Lanquey Sky, No wonder you made your Brother Ye Tang angry, come, come quickly apologize to your Brother Ye Tang! Your Brother Ye Tang is magnanimous and won’t lower himself to bicker with you!”

Bai Ruogu blinked blankly, blinked again, and just as he understood and was about to open his mouth to apologize, Ye Tang unceremoniously interrupted, “Ah-Ruan just reminded me—Bai Ruogu’s destruction causing massive losses to Lanquey Sky is a crime compounded.”

Wait, hold on, were there other crimes to begin with?!

Can’t you see the child is almost crying?!

[System: Let me guess, maybe the Heavenly Sovereign thinks that coming to abduct you is the primary crime?]

Seeing his little disciple looking at him with a helpless expression, his clean and cute face on the verge of tears from Ye Tang’s intimidation, Ruan Yeibai patted Bai Ruogu’s shoulder earnestly and said with a straight face, “Alright then, since the Heavenly Sovereign has spoken, you should just confess your guilt and submit to the law.”

Bai Ruogu looked aggrieved: “Master, I.”

“Shut up, everyone saw it with their own eyes, what are you arguing about?” Ruan Yeibai said with a solemn expression. “Let me tell you, don’t even think about running away; absolutely do not run to the westernmost Broken Intestinal Cliff of Lanquey Sky, and definitely do not climb down along the cliff face! Especially don’t think that after climbing ninety-nine steps, a smooth rock wall will appear there, and rubbing against the rock wall three times will cause a miracle to happen!”

“There’s impossible to be any unknown opening leading to the human realm, and it’s even more impossible you’d just slip away by such coincidence! I’m telling you, this kind of thing is completely impossible to happen, and abducting people from the human realm to shake things up in the Fanhua Nine Realms is purely daydreaming!”

Ruan Yeibai made frantic faces at Bai Ruogu with his back to Ye Tang: “What are you looking at? Why aren’t you hurrying off to atone for your sins, waiting for the Heavenly Sovereign himself to come and escort you?”

Just as he finished speaking and was about to push Bai Ruogu, who was still dazed and hesitant, someone behind them chimed in with a very timely, admiring sigh.

“I, Shang Xingyun, have been in Lanquey Sky for several hundred years, and only now do I know there’s such a way to take a shortcut to the human realm! As expected of you, Sovereign!”

Ruan Yeibai trembled all over from this tone of pleasant surprise and admiration, feeling as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head. His teeth hurt from the cold, yet he still had to chew on ice shards!

He stiffened his neck and turned back, and sure enough, he saw Shang Xingyun, the Heavenly Lord of the Wind and Moon Pavilion of the Five Peaks Pavilions, holding a Title Sequence brush, writing and copying away with dancing eyebrows and glowing spirits.

This old irritant, after all these years, he’s still writing and writing?!

Shang Xingyun, the Heavenly Lord of the Wind and Moon Pavilion under the Five Peaks Pavilions, was handsome, graceful, and possessed an extraordinary bearing. He had a vermilion mark between his brows, and his hair was like ink spilled from Langhuan. Externally, he looked gentle and observant of etiquette, but in reality, he wrote a hand of thought-provoking, lustful peach blossom romance.

His natal immortal artifact was a brush named Title Sequence.

Aside from serving as a weapon, its greatest ability during peacetime was writing stories. Furthermore, once it started, it never ran out of ink, never got writer’s block, and never botched the ending, instantly boosting the holder’s inspiration to a level that could blow off their skull!

The crucial part was that it could also generate exquisite illustrations for you, with each illustration placed just right and hitting the exact pain point, making people unable to stop reading and chasing after updates endlessly!

Relying on the immortal artifact Title Sequence, Shang Xingyun became the most popular writer in the Three Realms back then, hailed as the “Wind and Moon Master.” He boasted millions of book fans, and colluded with Murong Yan of the Pochen Pavilion, one wrote, the other sold, using serial publication to draw in countless serial-chasing masses. He made a fortune back then; the two of them were the only ones who didn’t let immortal cultivation delay their money-making!

Initially, these two scoundrels hadn’t caught Ruan Yeibai’s attention. At that time, he was still busy with his own affairs in the imperial palace, until he accidentally discovered that many people in the palace were secretly passing around a serialized pulp fiction titled The Banquet of Life and Spring. Then gradually, many people often whispered behind his back, and the looks they gave him grew increasingly strange…

Could it be that this fiction contained some content about him?

Driven by curiosity, he flipped through that book.

He wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t looked, but upon looking, he discovered that the protagonist in the fiction was actually himself, albeit with a changed name! But the fact that he was a imperial concubine marrying two generations of human emperors was practically stamping his ID number right onto the protagonist column, right?!

Looking at the author, Shang Xingyun!

Changing my character’s name with this thin veil of disguise, are you afraid I’ll sue you for copyright infringement, or are you afraid I’ll sue you for copyright infringement?!

Normal fiction would have been one thing, but this was actually a super R-rated novel with millions of luxury sports cars driving through it! Just how many cars were there? Placed on a modern website, it would directly get locked red and struck down across the entire text, making it impossible even to click in, and the book title would have to be marked with XX; if placed on Weibo or LFT, it would directly get censored, and even if you rotated it 180 degrees and mirror-reversed it to put it in the comment section, you’d still be hunted down and censored to the extreme!!

Even placed in ancient times, it would undoubtedly be a forbidden book! That is, Xuanwu State had an open folk custom, where such vibrant books could be openly sold, and even such palace secrets, son succeeding father’s concubine, forcible seizure… Let alone the common people finding it delightful, the entire Three Realms was ing it with gusto, alright!

But the problem was, although he had indeed married two successive human emperors, he had never had relations with either of them. All the YY plots in the book were fabricated, pure, unadulterated fabrication!!

It’s just that people outside didn’t think so; isn’t unofficial history much more savory than official history?

When telling a story, the romantic, stunning, and quirky widow caught in a bitter-sea love triangle between royal father and son vs. three grown men engaged in purely commercial, mutually beneficial interactions, which one would you choose to watch?

He couldn’t be bothered to explain either. Even if he issued a ban on forbidden books, it would only make others think he felt guilty and uneasy, and that because he was hit right on target, he was impatient to destroy the books and eliminate the evidence, which would only make the rumors spread even wilder and more feral in the future.

People only believe what they are willing to believe, and don’t care what the truth is.

What’s more, compared to the thousands of envious gazes when one reaches the pinnacle in a single step, people look forward even more to the filthy wretchedness when you fall from your pedestal.

Ruan Yeibai’s reputation had long been ruined, tattered and a complete mess…

He still remembered the most absurd passage in the book, which stated that Ye Ling, of course, also under an alias, forced himself upon him while he was wearing mourning clothes right in front of civil and military officials in his late father emperor’s mourning hall. Even though it was nothing more than sheer nonsense, you had to admit, the description of that scene was truly superb!

It wasn’t the kind of smut written just to cram things in; it was genuinely a gorgeous, exquisite feast of gluttony, a chaotic collision between court and ethics, with extreme pull overflowing with sexual tension. Regardless of your personal tastes and whether it triggered your minefields, anyone who finished reading it would have to say, “Damn, that’s delicious!”

And precisely because of this, many gossiping onlookers firmly believed in the unofficial history, considering Ruan Yeibai to be a black widow who wreaked havoc in the imperial court and was born to charm masters!

Therefore, Ruan Yeibai’s grievance toward Shang Xingyun could probably rank second on his lifetime list of grievances.

With the first place undisputed, Ye Tang!

[System: Tsk, listening to your description, Host, if this Wind and Moon Heavenly Lord were placed in modern times, he’d definitely be an early-generation car god of ours.]

Seeing Ruan Yeibai looking at him with a guarded expression, Shang Xingyun stopped his brush and said with a smile, “Sovereign, long time no see. I’ve missed you so much.”

Ruan Yeibai was just one “bah” away from spitting it out.

Shang Xingyun spun his brush and sighed with emotion, “Without you, my inspiration dried up quite a bit.”

Ruan Yeibai smiled: “Shopkeeper Shang is joking. With the Title Sequence in hand, how could your inspiration dry up? I’m afraid that in the all these years I’ve been away, you’ve gone off to corrupt someone else, haven’t you?”

Hearing this, Shang Xingyun glanced at Ye Tang, who stood beside Ruan Yeibai, then suddenly nodded and smiled: “Sovereign understands me well. Speaking of which, back during the days when you were still around, the most popular character persona in the Three Realms was the stunning, enchanting black widow who coveted the world. That The Banquet of Life and Spring was revered as a classic among classics, reprinted every year with endless dividends. But guess what the most popular character persona in the Three Realms has been over the past century?”

Ruan Yeibai was curious: “What is it?”

Shang Xingyun smiled meaningfully.

Before he could speak, Murong Yan, the Pochen Heavenly Lord who had been strolling over leisurely while waving his folding fan, chimed in, “Naturally, it’s the handsome, affectionate widower who steadfastly guards his lover’s corpse for a hundred years out of love.”

Tsk, the duo of scoundrels had appeared.

But nowadays people’s tastes had grown bland, and they actually liked an affectionate widower persona? Wasn’t that just a lonely, old man who remained chaste after his wife died?

He had only been gone for twenty-five years, and everyone had switched to eating vegetarian?

Ruan Yeibai looked at Shang Xingyun a few times; could it be that the Car God had reformed? The guy who used to write million-car smut had turned over a new leaf?

Seeing Ruan Yeibai looking at him in confusion, Shang Xingyun couldn’t help saying, “What is the Sovereign thinking? It’s written plainly all over your face.”

Ruan Yeibai chuckled dryly.

Murong Yan smiled: “So, the Sovereign thinks this persona lacks selling points?”

Ruan Yeibai shook his head and joked: “There are selling points, but it seems to lack explosive points. Shopkeeper Shang is a car god, a wind and moon master; back then, any scene was a breeze for you, but this persona must have limited Shopkeeper Shang’s performance, right?”

Shang Xingyun said, “Doesn’t the Sovereign think that guarding the uncorrupted corpse of one’s beloved for a hundred years is already a madman in itself?”

Ruan Yeibai thought about it: “Indeed so.”

“Then what if one lives day and night side by side with this corpse, whispering murmurs, and even sharing the same couch?”

“Then that would probably be a madman among madmen.”

So the explosive point was being a lunatic; that sounded a bit more appetizing than the original, though to an old driver of Shang Xingyun’s caliber in the luxury car world, it still seemed a bit PG.

“What if, even these are not enough?”

Not enough?

This still not enough?!

Help, I thought he was going to retire and live a peaceful old age, but instead he’s overtaking on a bend!

Unwittingly induced by Shang Xingyun and mentally filling in a bunch of explosive plots, Ruan Yeibai’s face instantly turned pale.

Damn pervert!

A pervert among perverts!

Shang Xingyun casually tucked the Title Sequence into his hair bun, pulled out another book with utmost courtesy, and said, “Sovereign, would you like a first-edition The Banquet of Life and Spring: Sequel with my personal signature at a friendly price? You can’t even buy a revised edition outside anymore; I specially kept the out-of-print copy for the Sovereign! Aren’t I being very loyal?”

Ruan Yeibai: “…”

Who would want to read this, go away quickly!!!