Chapter 13 : Said to be Arch-Nemesis, Yet They Also Forged Each Other.
Several miles away, atop a stone platform, a cultivator with a square face slowly withdrew his divine sense. He was immediately helped up by the middle-aged cultivator from the Youyue Sect. “Senior Brother Hu, how is it?”
“They are heading this way.” The square-faced cultivator frowned. “That is indeed a great demon… and already at the Huiyang Realm. It seems there is indeed something strange about Jiuyi Mountain. After being submerged in the netherworld for so many years, it can still nurture a great demon of such cultivation.”
“To think it’s only the Huiyang Realm.” The middle-aged cultivator was overjoyed. “I thought he had already reached Qianyun. With the artifacts and formations we have, wouldn’t it be easy to subdue him? If we can capture such a great demon and turn it into a puppet, even if we can’t find other phoenix demons, as long as it’s a bird-type demonic beast, we won’t have to worry about not being able to cultivate new phoenix demons.”
“But then, the bloodline wouldn’t be pure enough… We’ll capture him first, then search Jiuyi Mountain for other phoenix demons.”
The group quickly made their decision. Hu Feiyue instructed everyone to start setting up the formation, then added, “We must take him alive.”
Yan Jingyu sat cross-legged in the flying boat, which floated like a cradle beside Liao Chen, following his slow advance.
There was a period of silence between the two. Yan Jingyu gradually sensed something was amiss. “Do you have other business to attend to here?”
Liao Chen had already reached the realm of shrinking the earth to an inch and moving through the void. Leaving Cangzhou was just a matter of a few teleports. Why was he now strolling around as if it were his own backyard, seemingly unable to leave?
“You’ll know soon enough.”
After walking forward for a while longer, Yan Jingyu started to feel uncomfortable sitting and climbed out of the flying boat to stretch his bones.
In this dead of winter, the wilderness was filled with the smell of decaying leaves. Yan Jingyu looked around but saw no scenery worth looking at. He awkwardly lifted his arms out of the thick black robe, but a pressure suddenly came from above. He immediately looked up and saw a golden birdcage descending from the sky, instantly trapping the two of them inside.
Yan Jingyu’s eyelid twitched.
Immediately after, several talismans flew in from all directions, simultaneously sticking to the eight corners of the birdcage. The pressure inside the cage intensified. Yan Jingyu’s knees went weak, and Liao Chen caught his waist, hanging the feather jade on him again.
At this moment, Yan Jingyu didn’t have the mind to ask when the feather jade had returned to Liao Chen’s hands. He straightened up slightly and saw several cultivators slowly walking out from in front of the birdcage. The leader had a square face, and on his otherwise righteous-looking face was a hint of avarice. Beside him stood the middle-aged cultivator Yan Jingyu had seen before, who was now beaming with joy. “This beast is just a beast. It has an empty Huiyang Realm cultivation but doesn’t know how to avoid traps. With this, when the Old Ancestor advances to the Formless Realm, we can draw its soul to resist the heavenly tribulation!”
Yan Jingyu’s face changed slightly, then his brow furrowed. “The Old Ancestor you speak of, is it Lü Fei?”
Hu Feiyue glanced at him and smiled. “It seems you are no ordinary mortal, to actually know the Old Ancestor of my Youyue Sect.”
“On account of the fact that this Lord had some dealings with your Old Ancestor when I first entered the martial world, quickly remove this thing, and I can spare your lives.”
He could see that Liao Chen had no intention of killing anyone at this moment. These few people were just playthings in his eyes.
“Hahaha.” Hu Feiyue said, “Junming, did you hear that? He’s so shameless as to ask us to let this demon go?”
Huang Junming joined in the laughter. “A mere mortal dares to call himself ‘this Lord’… It seems you don’t know the wonders of a phoenix demon. They are undying beasts. As long as their soul remains, they can be reborn continuously. Their entire body is a treasure. A single drop of blood can cure a hundred mortal diseases, and pills made from their blood can even increase one’s lifespan. The phoenix clan is almost extinct in the nine provinces now. Now that we’ve finally caught one, you want us to let him go?”
“Why waste words with him?” Hu Feiyue said. “He’s a dead man walking. Just kill him.”
“Heh.” A voice came from his ear. Yan Jingyu’s expression was complex. Liao Chen’s smile could be called gentle, although his eyes were full of ridicule. He asked with curiosity, “Yan Qi, do you wish for this Lord to let them go?”
At this point, Yan Jingyu understood. This was a bait personally laid by Liao Chen.
“Yan Qi…?” Huang Junming’s hand, which was forming a seal, paused briefly. “Why does that name sound a little familiar?” he asked with confusion.
Hu Feiyue was also confused for a moment, then glanced at Yan Jingyu again. “Why does he look a bit like the painting hanging in our academy?”
“That’s Immortal Lord Dufang…” Huang Junming suddenly paused and said in a low voice, “Impossible. Not to mention that he has been dead for a hundred years, even if he were still alive, how could he be a waste?”
“Since he is a waste, he is not the Immortal Lord!”
“Well said.” Liao Chen’s eyes were cold. “How could Yan Jingyu be a waste… This Lord will be merciful today and leave you with a whole corpse.”
“It seems you don’t know the power of the Phoenix-Catching Cage!” Hu Feiyue was provoked by him, his face darkening. In an instant, thorns rapidly grew around the Phoenix-Catching Cage. “This is the Flame-Sealing Thousand-Thorn Grass, one of the greatest nemeses of the phoenix clan. As long as it touches you, you won’t be able to use any…”
“Sizzle—” The rapidly growing Flame-Sealing Thousand-Thorn Grass was suddenly ignited, withering and decaying in an instant.
“Flame-Sealing Thousand-Thorn Grass… It’s been many years since I’ve seen it.”
The golden Phoenix-Catching Cage suddenly shattered. Liao Chen took a step forward, his astral energy invading, the earth shaking. Hu Feiyue’s face changed dramatically, his voice suddenly changing pitch. “You’re not just at the Huiyang Realm!!! You are…”
A crimson longsword shot out from behind him, wisps of black energy condensing into a tangible form. Huang Junming instantly summoned his flying sword, saying in a panic, “It’s the demonic sword ‘Lian Feng’! He’s the demon lord Liao Chen—!”
Hu Feiyue’s eyes were full of disbelief. “How could Liao Chen be a phoenix demon…”
“Run!!!” Huang Junming flew into the air like lightning, but suddenly his whole body trembled, and a spray of blood scattered. He was pierced by ‘Lian Feng’ and fell with his flying sword in front of Hu Feiyue.
Sounds of panic erupted around them. The young disciples behind Hu Feiyue all turned pale. Not until he came back to his senses did he suddenly look at Yan Jingyu. “Immortal Lord, save me—”
“Pfft!”
‘Lian Feng’ turned back, taking seventeen lives in one go, and returned to Liao Chen’s side, its tip pointing to the sky.
One after another, the bodies fell.
Liao Chen flipped his hand, and a shadow-recording pearl condensed in his palm. A smile played on his lips. “A gift for the Youyue Sect, and the Old Ancestor Lü Fei.”
The shadow-recording pearl sped away. Liao Chen clasped his hands behind his back and looked back. “Immortal Lord Dufang, do you have anything to say?”
Yan Jingyu’s face was unchanged. “What do you wish for me to say?”
Liao Chen slowly walked back, the crimson demonic energy on his body gradually receding. Only when he was beside Yan Jingyu again did he say, “Curse me for being cruel and bloodthirsty, for deserving a terrible death. Accuse me of being ruthless and slaughtering the innocent.”
Yan Jingyu smiled. “You deliberately revealed the traces, wasn’t it to tell me that they died of greed, that they brought it upon themselves? A group of cultivators actually moved to kill me, a mortal… You’ve left me speechless, so why say these empty words?”
“Don’t look at me with that ‘this child can be taught’ look.” Yan Jingyu used the words he had just said as a response. “Just because I say this doesn’t mean I completely agree with you. There’s no need for you to play this kind of trick in front of me. You can kill whoever you want. To go to such great lengths to show me how reasonable your actions are, it makes me not recognize you anymore.”
Yan Jingyu walked past him. When his gaze fell on Hu Feiyue’s corpse, he paused slightly and said faintly, “Can we leave this place now?”
“I just wanted you to know how deserving of death the human race is.”
With that, he raised his hand and summoned the spiritual bodies from the corpses. Among all the corpse spirits, only Hu Feiyue’s soul showed a look of pain. Liao Chen, whether he truly didn’t know or was pretending not to, said with a surprised tone, “To think there’s still a fish that slipped through the net.”
Yan Jingyu had already boarded the flying boat. He didn’t turn around when he heard his voice.
To cut the grass and remove the roots, to kill to the last one, this was Liao Chen’s style. This person either did nothing or did it to the extreme. When Yan Jingyu was fourteen, he was finally allowed by his parents to enter the world to cultivate. Before leaving Hutian, his mother had specially listed for him all the masters in the martial world. Liao Chen was the grand finale. The Liao Chen in the shadow-recording pearl was only a little over ten years old, yet he killed thousands of cultivators with a wave of his hand. Flying swords and corpses fell from the sky like a torrential rain. That was the first time Yan Jingyu understood what it meant to treat human life as if it were grass.
It was also the first time he knew that besides himself, there was another person in the world who had reached the Huiyang Realm at only ten years old, and whose moves were strange, far more cruel and bloodthirsty than Chi Yuan.
“A-Yu.” His mother’s hand was on his shoulder, her voice heavy. “This person’s talent is extraordinary, a rarity in the world. I’m afraid even you might be slightly inferior… With your current cultivation, you can rank among the top three on the Immortal Registry as soon as you enter the world. Even if you encounter some old geezers, you don’t need to be afraid. But only this person, you must pay attention to. Remember not to provoke him.”
Yan Jingyu had been mischievous since he was a child. He said obediently, “Your son obeys.”
He straightened up and looked at the scene in the shadow-recording pearl again, gazing at the particularly small figure in front of a group of adults, his heart full of contempt and indignation. So what if he’s a ten-year-old at the Huiyang Realm? How am I any worse than him? It’s decided. The first thing I’ll do when I go down the mountain is to kill the little demon lord Liao Chen. The old geezers of the Immortal Realm can’t do anything about him, but that doesn’t mean I, Yan Jingyu, can’t.
On the other side, his mother was still sighing. “This child is so young, yet he is already covered in blood debts. I’m afraid he will grow up to be a world-destroying demon even more terrifying than Chi Yuan…”
The Yan Jingyu of that year had thought to himself that he would never let him live to adulthood, and even thought of using Liao Chen’s head as a prize for his coming-of-age ceremony. Times had changed, and his mother’s words had actually come true.
Hu Feiyue’s corpse spirit was quickly wiped of its consciousness and drawn into his spiritual abode, becoming a part of what nourished his body.
Yan Jingyu used to disapprove of these cultivation methods of the Demon Realm, but he now understood that many so-called immortal sects also still passed down this kind of cultivation method. In order to break through bottlenecks, cultivators would do anything. To be fair, it was he who had been too narrow-minded back then.
Watching as Liao Chen looted all the Qiankun Pouches of these young disciples, his eyelid couldn’t help but twitch. “You’re already a Demon Lord, and you still care about these things?”
“The reason this Lord is where he is today is all thanks to being thrifty and managing the household well.”
The flying boat took to the air. Yan Jingyu quickly sat back inside, covered his head with the black robe, and wrapped himself up tightly. He peeked at Liao Chen standing at the bow of the small boat through a gap in the black robe.
The wind in the air should be very strong, but the hem of his clothes was not filled with wind, only arcing backwards slightly, following the flight path.
Perhaps it was because the next time he met the other, he was already a Demon Lord. Whether it was the Cuiwei Pill he casually took out, or the thousand-year-old white sandalwood burning in the hall, or the exquisitely carved incense burner made of ebon gold, or the Sumeru Mustard Seed he carried with him… all were treasures that cultivators could only hope to encounter. He had almost forgotten that back then, no matter how many people Liao Chen killed, he would casually clean up the battlefield.
Yan Jingyu still remembered his mood when he first saw the other’s behavior. He had received an orthodox education in Hutian since he was a child and was essentially righteous and upright. In his eyes, Liao Chen’s behavior was extremely shameful. But of course, he couldn’t accuse Liao Chen of disrespecting the dead; that would be praising him. So he sat lazily on a rock, his lips curled in a sneer. “What, Chi Yuan doesn’t give you enough to eat? The dignified head disciple of the Demon Lord actually has to make a living by scavenging?”
The young Liao Chen was also always dressed in black, his face gloomy, his eyes like a hawk’s, sharp and cruel.
Of course, Yan Jingyu wasn’t afraid of him. He straightened up on the weathered rock, his chin held high, looking down his nose at the bloodthirsty demon lord. “If you don’t want to die by my sword, then immediately return the things.”
“What are you…” Liao Chen’s figure teleported over with his voice, “to be worthy of pointing fingers at me?!”
Yan Jingyu had just entered the martial world then and hadn’t had much ‘interaction’ with him. How could he have expected him to start a fight at the slightest disagreement? He reflexively gathered his spiritual energy to resist, his body retreating like a floating leaf with the other’s attack, landing on another weathered giant rock, his expression surprised.
The young Liao Chen was also surprised. “You’ve already reached Qianyun.”
“Didn’t expect that, did you?” Yan Jingyu stood up straight on another rock, the Du Fang longsword floating in front of him, its silver light flashing, righteous and awe-inspiring. “I am the one sent by the heavens to slay you. If you know what’s good for you, you’d better surrender immediately. I can spare…”
“Noisy.” Liao Chen’s voice suddenly appeared in his ear. Yan Jingyu looked up and saw him rushing towards him like lightning. Yan Jingyu immediately cursed, “Why don’t you ever listen to people talk?!”
“Hmph.”
That was the first real battle between Yan Jingyu and Liao Chen. On the sand-filled battlefield, the bones of demonic beasts and humans were eroded by the sword energy. Under Liao Chen’s all-out attack, Yan Jingyu seemed a little clumsy. Before leaving Hutian, he didn’t have much experience in life-or-death battles. It was also with Liao Chen that he first felt what it was like to have his life hanging by a thread.
His neck had gone cold countless times. Under his occasional sneers, Yan Jingyu’s heart was gradually filled with anger. His mind became clearer and clearer. He finally found an opportunity. After a feint, he stabbed his sword towards the other’s dantian. Although Liao Chen twisted his waist in time to dodge, his side was still cut open.
He finally retreated briefly. Yan Jingyu also took the opportunity to adjust his breathing and quickly summarized the other’s fighting style in his mind.
Liao Chen wiped the blood from his side with his hand, then looked at him again. On his cold, fierce face, a rare hint of seriousness appeared. “Your name.”
“You listen well!” Yan Jingyu drew his sword across his finger, his words spoken one by one, “My name is Yan Qi, from the Yan Clan of Hutian. I have entered the world this time to slay you, Liao Chen!”
A drop of blood surged into the sky. In an instant, the sky changed color, and the yellow sand rolled. Liao Chen’s face finally changed. “You’ve been defending all this time, but you were actually setting up a formation… How sinister.”
“Thank you for the compliment.” Yan Jingyu formed a seal and flipped his palm, using himself as the eye of the formation. He said shamelessly, “I don’t have much combat experience, so I’m naturally no match for a demon like you. I just set up this formation on a whim. It doesn’t have a name yet. But if it can kill you, I’ll call it the ‘Yellow Sand Slaying Chen Formation’ in the future!”
His figure transformed into yellow sand, swept up by the hurricane, and pounced on Liao Chen.
The yellow sand surged. Although Liao Chen had many killing moves, he was not proficient in formations. He soon became covered in injuries because he couldn’t distinguish Yan Jingyu’s figure. Yan Jingyu had been quite frightened by him just now, so he naturally spared no effort to slash and stab, taking every opportunity to give him a hard time.
A slap, a kick, a smack on the back of the head. He had finally vented some of his anger.
He had thought that with his ability, he could definitely wear Liao Chen to death in this formation. But soon, he discovered that the little demon from the Demon Realm that his mother had repeatedly warned him about was indeed not so easy to kill. Liao Chen wisely gave up resisting the formation. He sat cross-legged on the ground, waved his hand to set up a barrier, and completely protected his body within it.
At that time, he already had many sword wounds on his body, and even a few scratches on his face. His hair tie was nowhere to be found. He looked extremely wretched.
But he, just like that, in Yan Jingyu’s formation… began to circulate the small heavenly cycle and cultivate.
Yan Jingyu’s formation had been set up in a hurry. How could he have expected him to find a flaw so quickly? The figure transformed from yellow sand scratched his head. Yan Jingyu circled him a few times, unable to believe that he was actually cultivating right under his nose.
If he were to withdraw the formation just like that, he would inevitably be said to be afraid. Yan Jingyu paced back and forth, thinking of adding some attack methods to his formation. But Liao Chen, who was meditating behind him, suddenly opened his eyes.
Yan Jingyu felt a chill on the back of his neck. He swung his sword backhanded. With a clang, he blocked ‘Lian Feng’s’ attack. Although Liao Chen didn’t have many new tricks up his sleeve, he was a quick learner. He feinted, then struck Yan Jingyu’s abdomen with his palm. Yan Jingyu was sent flying on the spot. After landing, he vomited a mouthful of blood, his long hair in disarray.
Liao Chen stepped out, and the yellow sand formation gradually dissipated behind him. “Yan Qi, I’ll remember this.”
‘Lian Feng’ came speeding towards him, about to pierce his body in the blink of an eye. Yan Jingyu raised his hand and once again blocked the fatal blow.
Another reason Yan Jingyu had been allowed to leave the mountain to cultivate was that he had been stuck at the Qianyun Realm in Hutian for three years. For other cultivators, three years was a lightning-fast promotion speed, but for Yan Jingyu, who had been exceptionally talented since childhood, it could be considered a bottleneck. He had thought countless times about how he would break through to the Formless Realm, but the one thing he had never imagined was that his Formless Realm would be beaten out of him by Liao Chen.
Later, every one of his promotions, from the early, middle, and late stages to the Great Perfection, and then to the Taiqing Realm, was almost all thanks to Liao Chen.
The first time the young Liao Chen saw him ascend to the Formless Realm, he had said, “Even if you are Formless, you still must die.”
As for later, every time Yan Jingyu was promoted in front of him, the purplish-green hue of Liao Chen’s face…
Even after a hundred years, Yan Jingyu still laughed out loud.
The flying boat passed through the clouds, speeding over the mountain ranges. Liao Chen stood at the bow with his hands behind his back, his gaze cast over. “What? No longer afraid of heights?”
Yan Jingyu wrapped the black robe tighter around him. “I just suddenly remembered how you helped me break through back then.”
Liao Chen raised an eyebrow. Undoubtedly, every time Yan Jingyu benefited, it meant Liao Chen had suffered a great loss. Even if he hadn’t actually lost anything, he would psychologically feel that he had suffered a great loss. Back then, Yan Jingyu had also deliberately thanked him many times. The look in the young Liao Chen’s eyes was always terrifying, so every time they fought, he would be even more ruthless. As a result, Yan Jingyu would become more courageous with each setback, and his promotions would become faster and faster…
“Back then, if it weren’t for you teaching me the way of formations, I wouldn’t have been able to survive under Chi Yuan’s hand.”
Yan Jingyu had many crafty ideas when it came to fighting. Liao Chen learned a lot every time he fought him. It wasn’t that the Demon Realm didn’t have masters of formations, but those formations had long since formed their own systems and were difficult to mix. But Yan Jingyu’s formations were very different. He could always draw inferences from the smallest details, always giving Liao Chen a feeling of… Huh? Huh???
Between them, though said to be arch-nemesis, they had also forged each other.
…Even if neither of them had ever intended it.
