DDT - Chapter 173
Chapter 173: Immortal Venerable × Meow Meow Cat (28)
The scene was a little awkward. The demon cultivator was still caught in a rage from being toyed with, the malice in his eyes almost tangible. He wished he could tear the people who had just watched his humiliation to pieces. In this world, he was always the one who played others! This was truly infuriating for the old demon cultivator!
Immortal Venerable Qingyun was in a bit of a daze. The demon cultivator before her, whom she had mistaken for a member of the Demon Race not long ago, was unprecedentedly powerful—an existence that could surely overturn the three realms. As an elder of a major righteous sect, a prodigy among the younger generation for a thousand years, and one of the few top-tier cultivators in the entire cultivation world, she absolutely could not allow this demon cultivator to seize another's soul and body under her watch and leave triumphantly. She had to find a way to deal with this world-ending, disaster-level old monster.
And then there was that legendary ancient divine beast, which now looked so majestic. The source of her fear and anger cleverly coincided with that of her little disciple, whose whereabouts were currently unknown. But her little disciple was still a young girl, and her voice was completely different from this divine beast's. Although the beast's voice felt incredibly familiar, she couldn't recall where she had heard it. Besides, the current situation left her no spare mental capacity to think it through. The most urgent task was to resolve the massive problem before her!
The dignified Demon Prince, Yun Qian, had never felt so insignificant in his entire life!
His heart like dead ashes, he leaned against a small tree, his head and face covered in the sunflower seed shells he had just cracked. He stared blankly up at the three figures high above—no, one person, one demon, and one beast. The little cat demon he had considered his plaything had been snatched away by the demon cultivator who appeared out of nowhere. The woman he loved had pursued them all the way here to save that wretched cat, putting herself in grave danger and getting trapped in mid-air by the demon cultivator! And that wretched cat had put on a grand performance, humiliating the demon cultivator in turn! From beginning to end, the woman he loved hadn't spared him a single glance! She hadn't even asked why he was here!
Yun Qian clutched his slightly cold heart in sorrow. It was supposed to be a story for four people, yet his name was nowhere to be found! He, the Demon Prince, was unworthy! That was why he didn't belong in the sky, but only at the feet of those three with their tangled relationships!
In the end, his love had been misplaced!
As the saying goes: either erupt in silence or perish in silence.
The small world shrouded in demonic qi had been quiet for a long time. Finally, it was the demon cultivator who couldn't hold back. What had just happened had infuriated him. To reclaim his shattered pride and dignity, he decided to strike again, and quickly. The cultivation world was all about strength; the higher one's cultivation, the stronger one was. Having recently refined the remnant souls from a large number of divine beast remains and the soul power of the only living Nine-Tailed Cat divine beast, he was already halfway to ascension. No one in the three realms could contend with him anymore. He had simply been too careless.
The demon cultivator waved his hand upward, and the vast demonic qi began to surge wildly once more. For someone of his realm, creating an array no longer required spirit stones or other materials. He could simply manipulate demonic qi to form any array he desired. The demonic qi transformed into long black chains that combined on the haze-covered forest floor below, forming a massive array—the very same ancient Soul Refining Forbidden Curse that had malfunctioned earlier. In the blink of an eye, the array was complete, and the black demonic qi chains that formed it began to emit intense energy fluctuations. And the closest person to the array, or rather, the person sitting directly on it, was Yun Qian, who became the first to have his butt burned by the Soul Refining Forbidden Curse.
The three in the air were still in a standoff when a sharp cry came from the ground. Yun Qian, the Demon Prince who had always been handsome, suave, and dashing in public, now arched his body forward, clutched his rear, and shot into the air in an extremely undignified posture. As the first creature directly targeted by the Soul Refining Forbidden Curse, the moment he felt his soul being violently ripped outward through his point of contact with the array, he realized just how powerful and dangerous it was. Just now! He had nearly "pulled" his soul out of his body!
Once he was free from direct contact with the array and had stabilized himself in mid-air, the suffocating sense of danger finally subsided a little. Yun Qian looked down at the array, which was now glowing with a dark red light, and breathed a temporary sigh of relief.
But why did he feel like he was being watched?
He came to his senses, quickly resumed his elegant posture, and looked up to see the woman he loved most staring at him with an utterly indescribable expression. Besides her, it seemed two other gazes were also sizing him up.
Yun Qian suddenly remembered something. He flexed the muscles above his buttocks, and his long, powerful, scale-covered tail—one of the marks of the demon royal family—whipped through the air with a whoosh.
Yun Qian: "…"
He turned his head to look at the large tail now curled in front of him, then belatedly reached up to touch his head. As expected, he felt two large, furry, pointed ears standing erect. Only then did he realize that the shock to his soul had caused him to lose focus on maintaining his human form, revealing his true demon self. He scratched his ear with a hand covered in shimmering, cold scales and gave his beloved woman—his master from the Xianyuan Sect these past few years, Immortal Venerable Qingyun—an awkward yet polite, apologetic smile.
In Chi Junluo's sea of consciousness, the Heavenly Dao, acting as the chief gossip, used some popular internet slang from a certain technological world to summarize Yun Qian's constipated expression—Perhaps this is the legendary "social death"?
Immortal Venerable Qingyun sensed the demonic qi binding her had loosened slightly. She secretly gathered her spiritual energy, but her mind, just as it had long ago, suddenly produced some unfamiliar words. Although she had never heard them elsewhere, she knew what they meant. Her eldest disciple had just had his "cover blown." As the master of this disciple whose disguise was now gone, Immortal Venerable Qingyun was a little surprised, but now was clearly not the time to ponder his motives for infiltrating the Xianyuan Sect. The greater crisis was right below her feet.
Seeing that Immortal Venerable Qingyun was only briefly surprised before looking away, Yun Qian felt even more dejected. Over the years, he had imagined the scene of his true identity being discovered by the woman he had chosen many times. Perhaps she would be utterly shocked, pointing her sword at his heart. Or perhaps she would be heartbroken and despairing, demanding to know why her beloved eldest disciple was a notoriously evil demon. Just imagining her sorrowful, tear-stricken face, devastated by his true identity and their socially unacceptable status, made his heart feel like it was melting. Who could refuse a beloved woman crying a river of pearly tears?
He had even prepared his comforting words. "Woman, don't cry. Come back to the Demon Realm with me. I will conquer the three realms and give them all to you."
But now, his beloved woman had discovered his true identity, and forget crying a river of tears, she didn't even spare him the whites of her eyes… Yun Qian stared at the back of Immortal Venerable Qingyun's head, hearing only the sound of his heart breaking. Perhaps he would be the one crying a river of pearly tears.
The demon cultivator had no time to attend to everyone's emotions. Under his full control, a massive ancient Soul Refining Forbidden Curse had rapidly formed and was now operational. As the array's creator, he was unaffected by it. The ancient Soul Refining Forbidden Curse would induce fear in those within it. The more terrified they were, the faster the array could extract their souls. Yun Qian was a case in point. He understood that the array beneath him was the ancient Soul Refining Forbidden Curse, and though he didn't know its exact principles, his greatest fear at that moment was having his soul seized and refined. Seeing himself in direct contact with the array, he couldn't help but feel intense fear, which naturally made him feel his soul being pulled.
And now, the demon cultivator had added layers of illusion to the operating array. Anyone trapped within it would, under the combined effects of the array and the illusions, see the thing they feared most.
The demon cultivator's figure flickered and vanished into a spatial rift. All that was left was to wait for the soul extraction.
The demon cultivator's eyes were fixed on the black divine beast. Perhaps because its vitality had been greatly damaged and it had lost almost all its soul power, the nine-tailed divine beast now had only one tail left. But that didn't matter. Once he occupied that body, he could naturally restore it to its original power.
He rubbed his hands together like a greedy fly.
A bright white fog gradually filled their vision, and the visibility around them dropped lower and lower. The three figures in the air had no choice but to drift closer to the center. It was clear that the cat and the Immortal Venerable were much more intimate. Yun Qian flicked his tail. Knowing that this was not a good time for excuses or explanations, he automatically pulled away to avoid unnecessary friction. Seeing that the world's cheap male lead had some self-awareness, Chi-cat tilted her head back and let out a satisfied purr.
The Heavenly Dao was so overwhelmed by the tsundere cat's cuteness that he was rolling on the floor. He had a premonition that after today, he would probably never see such a lively, adorable, and tsundere Chi Junluo again.
Chi Junluo was standing quite close to her lady heroine when the illusion solidified. Hundreds, thousands of white-robed cultivators swarmed toward them from the distance.
Chi Junluo: "…"
Immortal Venerable Qingyun: "…"
Was it really okay to be this crude and direct?
As the white-robed figures were about to reach them, the person and the cat remained motionless, even feeling the urge to yawn. When the demon cultivator had used this trick to refine the divine beast's soul before, it had been unfailingly effective. It hadn't been that long; it was impossible for there to be no reaction. He hadn't separated the human cultivator and the divine beast because he wanted to see which of them would be stronger when the beast went berserk and they fought. It was merely to satisfy his final bit of wicked amusement before ascending from the three realms.
Chi Junluo, however, felt nothing. In her eyes, all she saw was a group of green humanoids flailing their arms and legs.
The group of illusions had already closed in on the two of them. Illusions, after all, worked by stimulating the deepest fears in a target's heart to break their spirit; they could hardly cause physical harm. Thus, the situation was as follows: a dense crowd of white-robed freaks were making faces and swinging illusory swords, trying to scare them to death from less than twenty centimeters away.
The illusions, Chi-cat, Immortal Venerable Qingyun: "…"
The demon cultivator's cultivation base was high, after all. He quickly discovered the trick with Chi Junluo's head. He swiped a hand behind him, and a burst of demonic qi struck her between the eyes. The array that Immortal Venerable Qingyun had personally placed there shattered instantly, turning into tiny specks of light that were then devoured by the demonic qi.
Immortal Venerable Qingyun watched with her own eyes as the array and the familiar-looking spirit tool hidden over the divine beast's eyes were shattered. Wasn't that the very thing she had personally made and placed on her little disciple not long ago?
Before she could react, Chi-cat felt something hit her forehead, followed by a crisp "snap." Her vision went white for a moment, and then she realized the filter was gone. She was now practically face-to-face with a horde of flailing white robes. This body's instinct was beyond her imagination. Her black cat-face twisted, and flames of fury gradually ignited in her eyes. It all happened in an instant. The next moment, Immortal Venerable Qingyun, who was standing beside Chi Junluo, heard a deafening roar from the divine beast. The big cat next to her, who had looked utterly disgusted just a second ago, shot forward and plunged into the vast white illusion. From a distance, she could only hear the divine beast's furious roars.
Immortal Venerable Qingyun slowly reached a hand out, fumbling at the spot where the array and spirit tool had just shattered. She couldn't be mistaken. That unique array design and application, that clever construction, and the fear and aversion to the exact same thing as her little disciple.
Following her eldest disciple's identity as a demon being exposed, not even a few minutes had passed before her little disciple's cover was also blown…
She was fine. She was okay. She could completely accept it. So what if her two beloved disciples weren't human? It was no big deal…
Not far away, Yun Qian, who had been watching everything, saw the woman looking crestfallen for a divine beast she didn't even know! He was so dejected! He frantically bit his handkerchief.
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