Chapter 18

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Chapter 18: Wuchang Saint

Ji Yunhe ripped apart her outer jacket and wrapped her chest with a strip. Then she tied her hair up into a man's topknot.

Changyi sat on the grass with his back turned. Without her word, his neck remained frozen and did not move in the slightest. But his tail softly fluttered against the ground, one twitch after another, as if a bit bored.

"Done."

Ji Yunhe walked up to Changyi, not waiting for him to turn around. "How's this? Do I look like a man?"

He checked her up and down a few times and shook his head. "No. Neither the body shape, nor the facial features look like a man."

Ji Yunhe glared at him and said, "You go then."

He shook his head again. "No."

This fish had a pretty face that was good for nothing.

Ji Yunhe let out a hmph. "What else can we do? I'm going to just break the broken pot (A Chinese metaphor for when someone chooses to make things worse after having already done something wrong)." She turned around and marched away, like a soldier entering a battlefield.

She went with the expectation of getting thrown out after a good beating.

But it actually went smoothly.

Ji Yunhe walked to the wrecked cabin where the black bird was now in human form again. She seemed tired from all the thrashing and sat calmly in the middle of the pool, hugging her knees.

She was surrounded by withered lotus flowers and the stagnant water under her feet was as still as a mirror, drawing a perfect reflection of her. It looked like two different worlds seamlessly merged into one. No matter from which angle you looked, it was as beautiful as a painting.

Ji Yunhe's footsteps startled her, and she turned slightly.

The water beneath her feet was also disturbed, sending ripples across the reflected world. She saw Ji Yunhe and stood up. "Who are you?"

Had she already forgotten Ji Yunhe in such a short time?

This was good. It saved Ji Yunhe the trouble of having to explain why "he" looked identical to the demon master girl from before...

"I'm a scholar." Ji Yunhe already laid out a plan. If her disguise did not work she would immediately run away and think of something else. Otherwise, she would claim to be a scholar.

In the mundane storybooks that flowed in from outside the Demon Valley, female demons falling for scholars was a standard theme. Ji Yunhe had read a lot of them and knew the routine by heart.

She pretended to be a bit awkward, and said, "I saw you from afar and felt… attracted, so I came."

The attachment furrowed her brows and tilted her head to survey "him".

Ji Yunhe thought: oh no. She felt a bit silly, as fooling someone with a man's disguise was no simple task at all.

However, the demonic attachment studied Ji Yunhe for a long time. Just as Ji Yunhe thought she was about to get a beating, the attachment suddenly asked, "What is a scholar? Why are you here? And why are you attracted to me?"

So many questions, but none of them were -- how dare you claim to be a man?

Ji Yunhe did not expect her to be so gullible.

After calming down, this demonic attachment was like a mentally incomplete child.

Ji Yunhe cautiously approached her and answered, "A scholar is someone who studies. I accidentally barged in here and saw you sitting there in melancholy. What is the matter?"

To provide the right medicine for a wounded heart, one must first know the details. The drama between the jade phoenix and the Wuchang Saint had happened a hundred years ago, no one knew about it anymore. Ji Yunhe could only try to dig it out of the demon herself.

The attachment muttered blankly, "Melancholy? What melancholy do I have?" She hung her head as if in deep thought, and a moment later, looked at Ji Yunhe and said, "I was betrayed by a demon master."

Ji Yunhe waited quietly for her to continue.

The attachment seemed to have found an outlet. Words poured out from her mouth while she stared at Ji Yunhe with spiritless eyes. "His name was Ning Ruochu, and he was a powerful demon master. People called him the Wuchang Saint (Wuchang means unpredictable in Chinese). At first he wanted to abolish me. We fought and wounded each other, and fell down the cliff together... "

She turned away from Ji Yunhe and looked at their surroundings.

"The valley we landed in was very similar to here. There were flowers and grass, a small stream that converged into a pool of water, and a wooden cabin."

Ji Yunhe also looked around and thought to herself: this place should not be "very similar" to the original valley. It should be... exactly the same.

"There were ferocious beasts in the valley and we were both seriously injured. I had no demon power and he had no spiritual power. We used our raw strengths and worked together to fend off those beasts. Then we grew fond of each other... But I was a demon, and he was a demon master..."

No need to say more. Ji Yunhe knew that even a hundred years ago when demon masters ruled the world, such a relationship was not acceptable.

Demon masters and demons were natural born enemies.

"Later on we left the valley. I went back to my home and he went back to his. But several years later, his people wanted to kill the son of the cat demon king, Li Shu..." Upon hearing the familiar name, Ji Yunhe's interest grew.

Hundreds of years ago, well before the Green Feather Rebellion, the biggest headache demon masters faced was probably the cat demon king. The cat demon king liked to eat human hearts and killed countless people as a result. It was truly a sinful time. The world almost hated all cats to the extreme.

The cat demon king was later restrained by a hundred demon masters and beheaded in the sand-thorn mountain. His offsprings were also executed, all but the youngest son who had been displaced outside and never found.

No records of the cat demon king and his children were documented again since then.

Ji Yunhe realized now that Li Shu was the youngest son...

No wonder he displayed such amazing power breaking the Ten Square Formation.

Bloodline of the cat demon king after all.

The attachment continued, "They wanted to kill Li Shu, but I saved him and protected him, so they came after me. Ning Ruochu also came after me..."

Tears swelled up inside her eyes.

"I thought he was different from the others... I explained to him that Li Shu and I would never eat humans, and we only killed bad guys and in self-defense. But he did not believe me... Wait... he pretended to believe me. He lured me into the valley where we first met, where he had set up a Ten Square Formation. Then he combined the power of ten people to seal me, he... sealed me... "

Her tears fell like a broken string of pearls, once again causing the pool to stir.

"Ning Ruochu!" she shouted toward the sky. "You said you would come and join me! Where are you? Where?"

Hearing these words, it suddenly dawned on Ji Yunhe. Qing Ji's lingering grudge was not because she was sealed, but because the Wuchang Saint did not come to accompany her.

But he died during the formation of the seal.

Had Qing Ji been unaware of that...

"A hundred years of captivity, a hundred years of loneliness! Why didn't you come? Why didn't you come?"

The corners of Ji Yunhe's mouth moved as she deliberated whether or not to tell her the truth.

On second thought, telling her about his death was probably not wise. The goal here was to dissolve this emotional turbulence, not make it worse...

The demonic attachment was growing more and more agitated. Seeing the demon was about to turn again, Ji Yunhe quickly retreated and headed back to Changyi.

The giant black bird did not wildly thrash around this time. It just raised its head and repeatedly called to the sky, as if questioning the one who never came.

When Ji Yunhe returned with a troubled face, Changyi asked, "Your disguise failed?"

"No. But things have changed a bit." Ji Yunhe crossed her legs and sat down in front of him. "I think I can't pretend to be a scholar anymore. I probably have to be someone else."

"Who?"

"The Wuchang Saint, Ning Ruochu."

Proofreader: Gem, Joker