Chapter 22: The Devil Cultivator Part 2

Yi Xuefeng tossed a branch into the fire, watching the youth across the flames through the blaze, eyes lowered.

“Qieyun. Are you certain he’s not a devil cultivator?”

Qieyun was thoroughly puzzled too. “No. The aura on him is strange—I can’t make it out. If someone with cultivation like Ning Yu’s were here, maybe he could see something.”

Yi Xuefeng frowned. “But we’ll be here a full year. I can’t wait that long.”

And Yi Xuefeng did not dare imagine what Ning Yu’s reaction would be, should he ever lay eyes on someone wearing a face identical to his.

Ye Fangcao had been chatting with the youth all the while, and the youth was remarkably docile—when Ye Fangcao asked questions outrageous past all propriety, he took no offense at all, answering each one mildly and in good temper.

The longer Qieyun watched, the angrier he grew. Secretly, he took an enormous breath and blew it straight at the fire before them—the flames whooshed up and rolled bodily toward the youth across the fire.

The youth cried out in alarm, scrambling back two steps on braced hands, staring, shaken, at the roaring flames, his small face paler than paper.

Ye Fangcao hurried to steady him—but the moment his hand touched the youth’s shoulder, it was like grasping a block of ice; he snatched his hand back with a jolt.

The youth’s long lashes trembled faintly as he gazed up at him anxiously, a residue of fear still in his eyes.

“A-ah—a wind. A gust of wind.”

Ye Fangcao only then came back to himself. Seeing the youth trembling in fright, he rounded on Yi Xuefeng, snarling, “Lin Fuyu! What the hell are you playing at?”

Yi Xuefeng had been staring blankly into the fire; startled by the snarl, he froze and looked up, lost.

“What did I do?”

Ye Fangcao looked at him the way one looks at a misbehaving child of the household, and said crossly, “Don’t think I don’t know—you’re the one who fanned the flames just now. Even if you can’t stand someone, you can’t throw tantrums like a toddler. Are you three years old?”

Yi Xuefeng looked at the flames still leaping fitfully, heard Qieyun’s badly stifled snickering—and understood at last. Caught between laughter and exasperation, he saw no point in arguing, and only said, “My apologies. It wasn’t intentional.”

Ye Fangcao huffed. “Not to me—apologize to Xuefeng.”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

In the span of mere moments, the two of them were already on given-name terms.

Yi Xuefeng looked half smiling at the “Xuefeng” across the fire. When the youth’s fawn-like gaze met his, there seemed—just barely—a flicker of crimson, gone in an instant, leaving only limpid brightness behind.

“No need, no need.” The youth waved a hand, faintly embarrassed. “Nothing was harmed. There’s no call for all that.”

Ye Fangcao glared at Yi Xuefeng, his eyes screaming look at him, and then look at yourself!

Yi Xuefeng, several hundred years of age, did not stoop to spar with a teenager. Good-tempered, he shook his head and said nothing more.

All around was quiet; only the roars of distant Spirit Beasts and the crackle of the fire before them. Ye Fangcao and “Xuefeng” exchanged the occasional murmur, their voices soft as breath.

Yi Xuefeng leaned against the tree, elbows on his drawn-up knees, chin propped in his hands, lazily watching the gently smiling youth.

Qieyun watched for a long while before managing, with difficulty, “Dad, he…”

Yi Xuefeng: “Hm?”

Qieyun ventured carefully, “He’s just… too much alike.”

Though he couldn’t finish, Yi Xuefeng understood him perfectly.

Too alike.

Every smile, every glance, every gesture—even the little habit of tapping two fingertips lightly, bit by bit, against his knee when he didn’t wish to deal with someone—was identical to Yi Xuefeng down to the finest degree.

Yi Xuefeng’s brow knitted tighter and tighter; as he thought, his fingers kept pinching and worrying the fabric at his cuff.

The more Qieyun watched, the more his hair stood on end. “Dad… who is he? Who could know Yi Xuefeng down to such fine detail?”

As the two of them pondered, a cry sounded from the night sky—Ye Fangcao’s Spirit Beast came fluttering lightly back and landed on his shoulder, calling several times.

Ye Fangcao, mid-way through roasting a snake, gave a violent jerk of his hand, overjoyed. “You found Senior Brother Jiang?”

The Spirit Beast called again.

Ye Fangcao’s expression grew graver and graver. He shot to his feet and said to Yi Xuefeng, “Senior Brother Jiang and the others are trapped in Sword Ravine, to the northwest. No one’s hurt, luckily. I’ll take Yinghong to fetch them—back before you know it.”

Yi Xuefeng made to rise. “Then I’ll come with—”

Ye Fangcao waved it off. “Forget it—you’d only add to the mess. Wait here; a quarter hour and I’m back. Ah—and no throwing your weight around like you did back at Cold Huai River! I’m off.”

After a few hasty parting instructions, he leapt onto Yinghong’s True Form and roared away into the night.

Once the bird’s cries had faded into the distance, nothing remained but the crackle of the burning fire. Yi Xuefeng looked at the youth, head hanging in silence, tilted his own head slightly—and spoke first.

“Who exactly are you?”

The youth startled, lifting his head gently, blinking in apparent confusion, docile as ever. “I… my name is Yi Xuefeng.”

Yi Xuefeng suddenly found it funny, and said, half smiling, “Is that so. ‘Yi Xuefeng’ has been dead in the Flame Sea of the Savage Wilds for a hundred years. Are you, then, some lonely wandering ghost drifted down from the Savage Wilds?”

The youth’s body shivered; two fingers twisted unconsciously at his cuff, kneading and kneading, as though he were somewhat rattled.

Qieyun very nearly screamed. “Dad, that is entirely you!”

He realized his blunder only after the words were out—because Yi Xuefeng’s hand had already, without his willing it, closed around the Qieyun Sword’s hilt, his whole body tensing without his notice.

Qieyun scrambled to repair the damage—but before the words could leave, Yi Xuefeng said, “If he is me, then…”

He rose slowly and stepped forward, gazing down at the youth so perfectly his own mirror, his hand clamped white-knuckled around the hilt.

“…then who am I?”

Though Qieyun, too, wanted nothing more than to swallow this impostor whole, the youth’s behavior—so nearly identical to Yi Xuefeng’s—had left him inexplicably shuddering; he transmitted, unbidden: “Dad, calm down. He… something is wrong with him. We can’t kill him yet… Dad!“

Yi Xuefeng didn’t wait for him to finish. He drew the Qieyun Sword outright—and after one muffled ring of blade through air, the cold edge came to rest a single inch from the youth’s neck, the sword wind blowing a strand of hair from the youth’s shoulder drifting backward.

The youth hung his head, shoulders trembling faintly.

Yi Xuefeng stared straight at him without blinking, his wide sleeves billowing in the wind.

Moments later, Yi Xuefeng raised a hand and brushed the long hair at his brow back behind his ear—and upon Lin Fuyu’s coldly gorgeous face, a smile abruptly bloomed.

Qieyun could make no sense of it.

The youth, who had hung his head looking so very nervous all this while, felt his shoulders stir—and a faint sound rose in his throat. Louder and louder, until, hearing it clearly, one realized with a start: he was laughing, low, under his breath.

When the youth laughed in that low register—in Yi Xuefeng’s docile, gentle voice—Qieyun broke out in goosebumps despite himself.

“Yi Xuefeng” slowly lifted his head. Upon that exquisite, startling face bloomed a smile like some lingering ghost—pale lips half curved, eyes bent in crescents—the smile and the manner identical to moments before, and yet it very nearly frightened Qieyun right out of his human form.

Yi Xuefeng’s own smile only deepened.

“Yi Xuefeng” tilted his head slightly, smiling with a terrible eeriness. “Of course… not.”

The Qieyun Sword was trembling faintly, its blade pressed against “Yi Xuefeng’s” smooth neck—and though it touched skin, not a single drop of blood welled forth; instead a wave of cold spread out from the point of contact, frosting the blade in a thin layer of ice.

“Yi Xuefeng” laughed low and soft. He raised one slender hand to his lips and tapped them lightly—and his crescent eyes snapped open, slowly revealing a pair of scarlet, wicked Devil Eyes.

“To think that after all these years, someone still remembers that name,” the devil cultivator said flatly. “And a youth not yet twenty, no less. Lin… Lin Fuyu…”

He rose slowly, paying the keen edge at his throat not the slightest mind; Yi Xuefeng had no intention of killing him yet, and his sword-hand rose in easy follow of the man’s movement.

The devil cultivator watched him with evident interest. “Truly worthy of Cold Huai River’s Little Immortal Lord.”

Yi Xuefeng looked at the frost blooming along the Qieyun Sword’s blade, and his eyes went cold.

“You are of the Savage Wilds, then?”

The devil cultivator only shook his head, regarding him with gloomy, feminine eyes, and said with perfect calm, “You have not yet the ability to learn of My origins. Lin Fuyu—in this world, the more you know, the faster you die. You are a clever one. You should understand My meaning. Mm?”

That low, humming “mm”—strange, and yet so familiar—struck a sudden ache in Yi Xuefeng’s chest. He stepped back a pace without willing it, gazing at the man, somewhat lost.

The Qieyun Sword in his grip was lightly pinched along its edge by the devil cultivator’s fingers; ice crept outward, slowly spreading.

Yi Xuefeng: “You—”

The next instant, the Spirit Beast gave a piercing shriek and Ye Fangcao came plummeting out of the sky, roaring, “Lin Fuyu, put that sword… put it—DOWN!“

Qieyun: “Dad! Look out!”

He transformed to human form in an instant, tackling the still-dazed Yi Xuefeng by the waist and hauling him aside—narrowly evading Ye Fangcao’s strike.

Upon landing, Ye Fangcao threw himself bodily in front of the devil cultivator, a long feather in his hand shooting toward Yi Xuefeng like a tearing blade, clearly meaning to sweep him away.

Having been tackled by Qieyun into a narrow footing, Yi Xuefeng’s body moved almost on pure instinct—his hand closing around the instantly-restored True Form Qieyun Sword’s hilt, he slashed without so much as a blink.

There was only a flash of sword light—and he sliced the oncoming feather smooth and bare in a single stroke, leaving nothing behind but a stripped, naked quill.

Ye Fangcao: “…”

Ye Fangcao had never meant to hurt him—he’d only meant to shove him back a few steps so they could talk properly. And now a perfectly good Magical Artifact had been shaved bald by Yi Xuefeng in the blink of an eye.

Master Ye clutched the stripped-bare artifact, fingers trembling, tears very nearly falling.

Yi Xuefeng carried his sword with flamboyant ease at the small of his back—and only belatedly registered what exactly he had just done.

Perhaps because he now knew the man was a devil cultivator in disguise, the great stone that had hung over Yi Xuefeng’s heart finally dropped away. An unnoticed breath of relief left him.

Ye Fangcao finally came back to himself, cursing furiously. “Lin Fuyu! Are you insane?!“

Yi Xuefeng said flatly, “He’s a devil cultivator.”

Ye Fangcao raged, “I didn’t ask you that! Why did you go and shave my artifact bald without so much as a by-your-leave? This was the finest feather on Yinghong—now that you’ve shredded it, I… wait. Who did you say is a devil cultivator?”

Yi Xuefeng pointed at the devil cultivator behind him.

Ye Fangcao turned to look.

“Yi Xuefeng’s” face was deathly pale; his shoulders hunched and trembling faintly, the scarlet Devil Eyes had reverted at some unknown point, and his amber eyes were brimming to overflowing with tears—he looked thoroughly, terribly frightened.

Looking closely, there was even a wound on that slender neck, beads of blood seeping out fine and dense, faintly staining the collar of his white robe red.

—The very picture of a pitiful little thing set upon by a bully—compounded by that heartbreaking face of Yi Xuefeng’s, enough to make anyone’s chest ache with sympathy.

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

This devil cultivator… changed faces rather quickly, didn’t he.