Chapter 55: Luo Li’s Identity?
Crack, crack, crack!
A series of brittle pops rang out from her bones. That once alluring, full-bodied figure, so suggestive and captivating, suddenly began to shrivel and collapse like a punctured skin.
In the span of only a few breaths, the peerless beauty from a moment ago had turned into a bark-skinned, white-haired crone on the verge of death, like some eighty-year-old hag at the end of her life.
At the sight of that horrifying transformation, so abrupt it was like a face-changing opera trick, Chen Guan felt his stomach churn and nearly threw up last night’s meal.
“Damn it! So after all that, it was just an old demon hag pretending to be young!”
Right then, from within that rapidly withering body, a length of gray, translucent vine suddenly shot out, tearing through the air with a shrill whistle as it flew straight at him!
“What’s this?” Chen Guan was momentarily taken aback.
Yet the target of that transparent vine was not him at all. Instead, it brushed past his shoulder like a cold venomous snake and lunged straight for Luo Li’s face behind him!
Luo Li had been watching this side nervously the whole time. Seeing that gray thing writhing toward her, she immediately turned deathly pale and instinctively threw up an arm to shield her face.
But the cold, clammy sensation she had been expecting never came.
After waiting for a moment, she peeked through her fingers.
Only then did she see that Chen Guan had somehow already reached back and caught that gray, snake-like thing in his hand.
“This is... a demon soul?” Chen Guan frowned.
The moment those words left his mouth, a line of text that only he could see surfaced before his eyes.
[Demon Spirit Compendium: Collecting...]
[Name of Demon Spirit: Vine-Hurling Old Mother]
[Reward: Weapon Enhancement Points +10]
[Horse-Cleaving Saber: Level Four, 310/500]
“Is that supposed to be an insult?”
Chen Guan scratched his head in puzzlement as the demon soul in his grasp dissolved into a wisp of blue smoke.
This sort of demon spirit had never appeared in his Demon Spirit Compendium, nor had he ever heard of such a thing before.
When his system had first activated, the Demon Spirit Compendium it granted him had automatically recorded the overwhelming majority of known demon and fiend species in this world.
Any demon or fiend not recorded within it was either a newly born “variant”...
or else not something that properly belonged to this world at all.
And for unrecorded creatures like these, once he killed them, their information would be added to the compendium, rewarding him with Weapon Enhancement Points to raise the grade of his weapon.
Over the years, he had slain no fewer than eighty or a hundred such variant demons.
But most so-called “variants” at least had some trace of folklore attached to them among the people.
He generally knew their names already. If he happened to run into one, he simply treated it as farming a bit of experience.
Yet the thing before him now was something he had never heard of and never seen before.
Still, once he read the brief explanation given by the compendium, he immediately understood.
So that was it. This old demon hag’s lifespan had run dry, and unwilling to simply turn into a handful of dust, she had taken a shortcut. She had entered into symbiosis with a vine-type demon and forcibly prolonged her life, refining herself into a mongrel thing that was neither fully human nor fully demon.
That counted as a kind of artificially created “variant.”
No wonder her method of attack had been whipping her hair around. The name Vine-Hurling Old Mother truly did suit her.
It was Chen Guan’s first time seeing a human turn into a demon.
Every other demon spirit took pride in transforming into human form, yet this old hag had chosen the opposite road. She was a disgrace to the human race.
That name truly did fit her perfectly.
“Scared the hell out of me. I nearly thought some outland demon had shown up.”
Once Chen Guan understood the truth of it, he could not help spitting again.
People turning to the demon path was said to violate the harmony of heaven.
In Chen Guan’s view, that sounded far too grand and lofty.
To put it simply, when a human took the demon path, the one most damaged was their own body.
After all, the structure of a human body and that of a demon beast were utterly different. Even the meridians through which true qi circulated while cultivating were worlds apart.
For a human to forcibly cultivate demonic methods was equivalent to twisting and reforging their own meridians into the circulation pattern of a beast.
That kind of pain was not something an ordinary person could endure, and after turning demonic, most wound up looking neither human nor ghost.
Still...
this Senluo Hall was clearly no simple faction. After becoming part demon, this old hag had not become ugly at all. On the contrary, she had remained astonishingly beautiful, which meant they clearly possessed a special path when it came to demonic transformation.
“Looks like this Great Zhou isn’t simple at all.”
“Ah—!”
Just as Chen Guan was muttering to himself, a shriek suddenly rang out behind him!
He whipped around at once.
One of the black-clad men, who had been reduced to only half a body, had somehow not died yet!
Dragging his blood-soaked lower half, he lunged wildly toward Luo Li not far away, clearly intending to drag someone down with him before he died!
Chen Guan had just been about to intervene.
Then suddenly, a huge shadow descended from the sky!
Boom!
A massive body came crashing down butt-first onto the black-clad man who only had half a body left, smashing the already loose ground into an enormous crater!
It also produced an earth-shaking impact.
Once it was done, the huge creature shook the dirt from its body, then immediately dropped to its knees and slid all the way to Chen Guan’s feet. Flopping down on the ground with a thud, it spoke in an absurdly fawning tone.
“Master, rest assured. This old ox has already exterminated the enemy to the last!”
“Uh...”
Luo Li stood where she was, staring blankly at the scene before her, her mind unable to catch up.
Had this Scarlet Flame Scale Ox not run away in the chaos just now?
Why had it come back again?
The corner of Chen Guan’s mouth twitched as well.
He had never seen a demon this prudent, this cautious, this good at reading the wind!
Clearly, this creature had never run far at all. It had hidden somewhere nearby and secretly observed the battle from a distance the entire time.
If Chen Guan had been killed by that group of black-clad men, it would have fled the instant the coast was clear.
If Chen Guan won, then it would come trotting back to profess loyalty, admit fault, and perhaps preserve its life.
“At least you know what’s good for you.” Chen Guan shot it a glare. Since he still needed it as transport to Peach Blossom Hollow, he could not be bothered to hold it accountable.
Seeing that Chen Guan had not lifted that terrifying saber, the Scarlet Flame Scale Ox secretly let out a long breath of relief.
That night before, when Chen Guan dealt with it, he had not even bothered using the blade. With nothing but those iron fists of his, he had beaten it half senseless.
He had also casually ripped off the pair of flaming ox horns it had been proudest of.
That was the true reason it had not dared run far just now.
It had no doubt whatsoever that if Chen Guan had survived those people, then sooner or later he would find it again.
And at that point, it would hardly be as simple as losing two horns.
Still, from the looks of it, betting that it still had some value had turned out to be the right choice.
When Luo Li saw Chen Guan walking toward her, she immediately went up to greet him with a face full of gratitude.
“Many thanks to Brother Chen for saving my life!”
“No, no, no! Absolutely not! I can’t bear that! A small fry like me can’t bear that!”
Chen Guan waved both hands repeatedly, his expression looking as though he had just seen a living disaster star.
Luo Li froze, the smile on her face stiffening awkwardly.
Yet for some reason, a strange warmth rose in her heart.
She truly had not expected that, in such a situation where death had been all but certain, Chen Guan would really stand in front of her and shoulder all the killing intent himself for nothing more than “double the price.”
And yet she still could not understand it.
If he would not abandon her, then why did he dislike her so much?
“Isn’t there something you haven’t explained clearly to me?”
Chen Guan suddenly pointed at the corpses strewn all over the ground, his face black as charcoal.
Luo Li’s expression straightened at once. Only then did she understand what Chen Guan had meant by “a small fry like me.”
She knew that some things could no longer be concealed. Lowering her head, she fidgeted with the hem of her clothing for a long while before finally forcing out a single sentence.
“I... I’m actually a princess.”
“A princess?”
Chen Guan’s face darkened.
So he really had guessed right after all. This troublesome girl truly was the illegitimate daughter of that old emperor of Great Zhou.
Twenty taels.
For twenty taels, he had been dragged into a struggle for imperial succession.
Damn it all, what a ruinous loss!
In this world, emperors were not divided by gender. In the Great Yun where he had grown up, the throne itself was occupied by a reigning Empress.
And now that this one was being hunted down, was it not perfectly obvious that her fine brothers and sisters were trying to stop her from returning and competing for succession?
The more Chen Guan thought about it, the more cheated he felt. The more he looked at this troublesome girl, the angrier he became.
“Good thing there’s the pay-raise buff. Otherwise, I’d truly be mad to death.”
This pay-raise buff could keep increasing the price indefinitely on top of the existing base, though it only worked when the task had exceeded his expectations.
At this point, however, there was basically no need to worry about lacking chances to ask for more money along the road.
But once you were dragged into a succession struggle, you still had to live long enough to spend it.
By then, if the extra pay climbed into the thousands, he might not even be able to bear giving up the task.
That would leave him trapped in a dilemma, unable to advance or retreat.
Luo Li still kept her head lowered, rubbing the hem of her sleeve, not daring to breathe too loudly.
“All right, don’t just stand there like an idiot.”
Chen Guan glared at her, and the Horse-Cleaving Saber slid back into its sheath with a crisp ring.
In the end, he still could not bear to abandon a task that clearly had the potential to keep going up in price.
“I’ve never taken a loss in my life. I refuse to take one because of this damned girl.”
“For now, I can only hope she’s telling the truth.”
Then Chen Guan tilted his chin toward the corpses littering the ground.
“Go strip the waterskins off them. We’re not stopping anymore. We head out immediately.”
“Oh! All right!”
The great stone weighing on Luo Li’s heart slowly fell away, and the worry that had hovered around her face for many days vanished in an instant.
Chen Guan had not grown angry, nor had he flown into a rage. That meant he had fully accepted her identity as a princess and had chosen, without hesitation, to protect her all the way to Great Zhou.
Only...
She looked at Chen Guan’s back, her gaze still somewhat evasive.
Taking advantage of the time while Luo Li went to loot the dead, Chen Guan turned and walked into the dim cave.
The moment he entered, he saw the two little tree spirits sitting listlessly in the corner, holding the completely withered little red flower in their hands. Their vacant eyes were fixed on the ground as they stared silently.
Hearing footsteps, the two little ones jerked and scrambled to their feet in panic.
“Big Brother... my grandmother... my grandmother, has she also...”