After a long while, Lu Zhixing slapped himself across the face. He did not hold back at all, and a red mark quickly appeared.
Yet he seemed unable to feel the pain. His gaze was unfocused, his eyes numb and hollow.
After Xi Yu returned to his room, he quickly ran into the shower room.
He looked at himself in the mirror and abruptly turned away as though he had been burned.
How could he have been so improper?!
His neck and shoulders were a complete mess from being bitten.
Xi Yu did not dare look at the mirror again. He quickly stripped off his clothes, only to discover in horror…
Xi Yu tremblingly looked downward. As though he had seen a ghost, he suddenly reached out and slapped it, gritting his teeth.
“You, go get some rest!”
That slap had been nothing more than an instinctive reaction born of panic. But the moment his hand came down, a piercing pain made him suck in a sharp breath.
That hurt like hell.
But the effect was obvious.
Right. How could he possibly have… lustful feelings?
That thing wasn’t something a person could control anyway. This was normal. Normal…
Warm water streamed down his body as Xi Yu vigorously rubbed his neck.
So itchy… Why was it so itchy?
Xi Yu kept rubbing at it, while the tip of his tongue unconsciously slipped out to lick his lips.
When Xi Yu realized what he was doing, he immediately slapped his own mouth.
“Bad mouth! What are you doing?!”
It was out of control. This was bad.
It had to be because he had lost too much blood and given too much spiritual power.
His body was completely out of control.
Xi Yu’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He didn’t dare continue showering.
He needed to rest. He needed a lot of rest. He had to replenish his spiritual power so that his body would stop behaving so strangely.
Xi Yu crawled into bed, pulled the blanket completely over himself, and tried to sleep.
His breathing was shallow. The room was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. The tightly shut windows and thick, elaborate curtains turned the room completely dark.
It was an environment extremely suitable for sleeping.
That’s right. Sleep.
He needed to sleep.
Xi Yu pushed all the chaotic thoughts out of his mind and began to sleep…
Sleep his ass. He couldn’t fall asleep at all!
Xi Yu suddenly sat upright and covered his ears.
What was going on? Why was his heart still beating so fast? It was so fast that he couldn’t sleep at all.
There were also wisps of indescribable emotions spreading through his chest, like a fine golden thread net wrapping around his heart, slowly tightening bit by bit, then drawing blood and blooming into clusters of tiny flowers.
He was going crazy!
Xi Yu’s expression was dazed as he raised a hand and touched his slightly cool lips.
The wound hurt badly, but it wasn’t only pain. There was more heat.
It was the scorching heat left behind by Lu Zhixing’s burning lips. It wasn’t heat on the surface—it was the kind of heat that had sunk deep into his flesh and blood.
That heat seemed to want to burn all the moisture from his body, bringing with it an urgent thirst.
So thirsty.
Irritated, Xi Yu raked a hand through his hair, turned on the light, and got out of bed to pour himself a glass of water.
But someone who had apparently been crouching in the corner for who knew how long startled him so badly that he fell back onto the bed.
“What the hell—you, you, you…”
Xi Yu stared at Lu Zhixing.
“When did you get here?!”
………………………..
Lu Zhixing was curled up in the corner, his face buried in the crook of his arm. When he heard the voice, he stiffly raised his head.
Soft, tousled hair rested against his forehead. His nose was tall and straight, his lips a vivid red, and those long, narrow eyes were wet with tears as he gazed at Xi Yu.
He said nothing.
Xi Yu only felt a buzzing in his ears, as though something had struck him directly in the heart.
Xi Yu was standing, and he lowered his eyes to look at Lu Zhixing, almost giving him the feeling of looking down from above.
But the panic that flashed through his eyes diluted the sharpness of that posture.
The room was too quiet. This kind of silence made people restless.
Xi Yu thought Lu Zhixing was acting very strangely. Why had he come here? Why was he looking at him with such an abandoned expression, as though Xi Yu had committed some unforgivable crime?
It was clearly Lu Zhixing…
Xi Yu felt that everything was too strange. Everything was so strange, as though something had suddenly become uncontrollable while he wasn’t paying attention.
But strangely enough, he wasn’t unhappy about it.
He was just… very flustered.
“Are you feeling unwell—”
“I’m sorry,” Lu Zhixing said.
The two spoke at the same time, but Lu Zhixing finished first.
His words were extremely short.
Only three words: I’m sorry.
Xi Yu froze for a moment.
“Sorry for what?”
Xi Yu was wearing pajamas. He liked being comfortable, so his pajamas were always a size too large. He habitually left the first button undone, exposing his neck and half of his collarbone. The mottled red marks there were extremely conspicuous against his jade-white skin.
His lips were still swollen, and the wounds on them had not healed.
Lu Zhixing’s gaze lingered over these places, the corners of his eyes red like crushed rose petals.
Feeling his gaze, Xi Yu suddenly realized what Lu Zhixing was apologizing for.
His heartbeat skipped a beat.
He hurriedly circulated his spiritual power, and the red marks on his neck and the wounds on his lips quickly healed without leaving a trace.
Only the redness at the tips of his ears could not be dispelled by spiritual power.
Xi Yu was somewhat embarrassed, but that was all.
“You mean this?”
Xi Yu pointed at his neck, which was now completely unmarked. He deliberately put on an indifferent expression, as though he did not care much.
“Don’t worry about it. Weren’t you being controlled by demonic breath?”
There was Zhiyi’s spiritual power hidden inside Lu Zhixing’s body. Even this body itself was…
If he hadn’t been controlled by demonic breath, Xi Yu believed that Lu Zhixing absolutely would not have done something like this.
Lu Zhixing seemed not to have expected Xi Yu to react this way.
He repeated,
“What do you mean… don’t worry about it?”
Xi Yu walked back and forth around the room, looking somewhat busy, but he still answered Lu Zhixing.
“I mean what happened just now. You don’t need to worry about it. Demonic breath is originally a product of hatred and desire. When you’re controlled by it, it amplifies some of your negative emotions. That’s normal.”
Xi Yu picked a flower from beside the bed and toyed with it in his hand. His voice was clear and calm as he spoke, unhurried, as though nothing in the world could ever throw him off balance.
But his fingertips unconsciously pinched a rose petal, repeatedly grinding it between his fingers. His fingertips were stained crimson, as though a wound had opened and begun to bleed, yet he did not notice at all.
Xi Yu did not look at Lu Zhixing. He merely stared at his own fingertips—or rather, it could not really be called staring. His gaze rested somewhere without focus, yet he never met Lu Zhixing’s eyes, as though he were avoiding something.
Lu Zhixing, however, continued looking at Xi Yu, replaying his words over and over in his mind.
Don’t worry about it.
What did he mean, don’t worry about it?
Oh. That’s right.
Demonic breath was a product of desire and hatred.
His Master hated the demon race deeply. Naturally, he would never stand by and watch demons harm other people.
Much less give the demon race an opportunity to descend upon the mortal world.
In the past, he would rather perish together with them, abandoning everything without hesitation.
Now it was merely a kiss.
That’s right.
His Master had always merely ignored and kept his distance from those who offered themselves to him. How could that compare with something as important as preventing the Demon Venerable from descending into the world?
Lu Zhixing didn’t even know whether he should breathe a sigh of relief.
If he shouldn’t, then his Master truly had not blamed him or shown any intention of distancing himself from him.
But if he did breathe that sigh of relief, then his Master had been willing to endure such humiliation in order to suppress the demonic breath.
Then if his Master found out that he was a demon, even if he stripped away the demonic breath, would his Master be able to accept someone who had once been a demon?
The conviction Lu Zhixing had held all this time began to waver.
He had thought that as long as he stripped away the demonic breath, or perhaps knelt and admitted his mistake when his Master discovered him, then had his Master help him find the Prophetic Feather and wait for him to activate the Extermination Formation, returning Zhiyi to its pure, untainted state, perhaps his Master might be able to forgive him.
But would he?
Lu Zhixing felt that he had been thinking too optimistically.
He couldn’t help thinking of the war between gods and demons. Some of the weaker demons had wailed and begged for mercy, but his Master had remained unmoved and killed them on the spot.
He had always believed that after tens of thousands of years as his Master’s disciple, their relationship meant that he was different.
But what was different about him?
He was the one who deserved to be hated even more.
He clearly knew how much his Master detested the demon race, yet he had become exactly what his Master hated most.
Even if it had been for the sake of resurrecting his Master, he would not be forgiven.
His Master had rather died himself than allow the demon race to survive, yet Lu Zhixing had become the new Demon Venerable in order to save him, possessing the power to destroy Heaven and Earth.
It was a vicious cycle, an unsolvable question.
But at that time, he had had no other choice.
Now, the best thing would be for him to obtain the Prophetic Feather and activate the Extermination Formation before his Master discovered him.
But the two divine artifacts were in the same place.
Why did they have to be in the same place?!
Lu Zhixing’s Adam’s apple moved. His gaze fell on Xi Yu’s crimson-stained fingertips. Countless emotions became tangled together, until in the end, only resignation remained.
His Master was right.
There was no need to care anymore.
Actually, there was no need to care, because he had already obtained what he wanted.
From beginning to end, all he had wanted was for his Master to live.
It was only later, when he learned that there was a way to strip away the demonic veins, that he allowed himself to hope.
He had thought that perhaps he could remove the demonic veins before his Master discovered him, pretending that nothing had ever happened.
But how could there possibly be such a good thing in this world?
How could a person always get everything they wished for?
Perhaps the fact that the two divine artifacts were together was itself a warning to him.
A warning that he should not indulge in wishful thinking.
Since from the very beginning he had been prepared to exchange his life for his Master’s, and to be personally killed by his Master after his resurrection, he should never have allowed himself to hope for anything else.
But…
He couldn’t bear to.
He couldn’t bear to let go. He wanted so badly to return to the past. He wanted so badly to remain by his Master’s side forever.
So even though he knew he should not hope, he was still happy when the Prophetic Feather appeared.
Even now, although reason told him that he should resign himself to fate, he still couldn’t control himself. He still wanted to break the seal on the Prophetic Feather before his Master obtained Zhuohua.
Even if that hope was extremely faint, he still could not give it up.