Chapter 219: So I’m the Protagonist After All (15)
The red thread wrapped around her slender little finger was like a silk cloth from a dyeing workshop, blown onto a chilly branch, gently kissing a white magnolia flower. The bright red formed a stark contrast with the pure white seen only on snowy plains.
Su Mingxiu’s movement of untying the red string suddenly paused.
She remembered that in her previous life, she had been poisoned by an aphrodisiac in this Zhenhai Tower secret realm.
Because that memory was too repulsive to her, she was even more reluctant to delve into it, especially given her already fragmented memories. But now, separated upon entering the secret realm, she reluctantly closed her eyes.
A moment later, she opened her dark eyes, the curve of her eyes traced with a cold light. She didn’t try to untie the red string again, but just pressed the end of the string. After a long time, she felt a slight tremor coming back, and the ice and snow accumulated in her eyes melted, revealing a sudden burst of spring light.
On the other end of the red string.
Sui Yihuan, noticing that there was no one nearby, pulled down the hood of her cloak and tried to look around carefully, but found herself in a hazy chaos. Only a distant light shone through, flickering on and off, like the Candle Dragon in ancient legends, who controlled the alternation of Yin and Yang.
But that divine creature had long since disappeared after the creation of heaven and earth. And that light only looked close, but it should actually be very far away because of its enormous size.
Sui Yihuan heightened her vigilance and unconsciously summoned her magical artifact. But when she touched the smooth handle of the silver fan, her fingertips suddenly cramped, and she almost couldn’t hold onto her weapon.
Before she could get closer, a ethereal voice fell into her ears, “Oh? There’s another one unaffected by the illusion… Hmm? A demon, what a disgusting smell… What’s in your hand? Oh, the Joyful Union Sect’s love entanglement, connected to a female cultivator on the other end? I wonder where this little girl got the guts. Aren’t you afraid of being swallowed alive by this demon in the future?”
As soon as the word “demon” entered her ears, Sui Yihuan’s expression turned completely cold, like she had accidentally swallowed a fishbone while eating fish.
She instantly lost interest in all the delicious food on the table. It was the same now. She had originally wanted to explore the secret realm with Su Mingxiu, which would also delay her return to the Qiangshan Sect. But after being judged by this unknown monster, an inexplicable irritability welled up in her heart.
Just like the Heavenly Demon had said at the Hundred Flower Sect—
“There will be no place for you in the nine continents and four seas.”
“I am not a demon,” Sui Yihuan said word by word.
The ethereal voice became heavier, carrying an irresistible pressure that suddenly made her knees weak, almost making her kneel on the ground.
“Little brat, I can smell the stench of demon blood in you from eight hundred miles away, and you’re still arguing with me?”
Because demons could cultivate by consuming the blood and inner cores of cultivators and spirits, their cultivation method was entirely different from that of the nine continents. Even the flow of their meridians was reversed, so there was no race in the nine continents that could be compatible with them.
“Let me think, how should I make you disappear… Oh right, those righteous cultivators hate evil the most. Although they are hypocritical, they are still useful when they see a demon…”
As Sui Yihuan forced down the blood that had welled up in her throat, she felt the gray fog in the air dissipate. Just as she was about to see clearly what the flickering object was, a sweet smell suddenly rushed into her nose.
It was like… candied strawberries.
Or honey.
At first, Sui Yihuan thought it was her own illusion, until she saw that the fog and clouds gathering around her were no longer gray, but a lovely pink. Her expression changed instantly, and she raised her hand to cover her mouth and nose.
But this couldn’t stop the fog. It still frantically flocked towards Sui Yihuan, getting into her cloak and sticking to her exposed skin—
A burning heat suddenly rose from her dantian. Sui Yihuan’s forehead gradually became covered with a thin layer of sweat, and she could no longer see the pink fog clearly.
When the forks in the red string disappeared, Su Mingxiu realized that she had walked out of that illusion.
But the master of this illusion must have already reached the Tribulation Transcendence stage. Otherwise, even she wouldn’t have been unable to detect that she had entered an illusion for so long.
The illusion was fake, but many of the people inside were real. It was just that the real and the fake were mixed together, and many cultivators had lost their lives in this “ghost catching” game.
Then she suddenly realized that in her previous life, she had also entered this floor. After all, at that time, she was still the Child of Heaven, with the luck of the small worlds. As long as she came here, the best opportunities would surely await her.
But at that time, she had the “Serene Realm Fruit” on her, so she wasn’t affected by the illusion and easily walked out… Then, she encountered that particularly nasty demon.
In the previous life, Su Mingxiu’s cultivation level was too low, and she couldn’t see through this senior’s cultivation. So she could only be toyed with, and even got caught in the aphrodisiac fog.
But this time, what made the other party change their mind?
Su Mingxiu quickly found out the answer. The moment she saw the fog, she raised her sleeve, and a small watering can flew out, spraying a light green mist with the scent of herbs.
Learning from her past mistakes, after suffering from these inexplicable love poisons, Su Mingxiu devoted herself to studying pharmacology in her previous life. She wasn’t good at anything else, but her interspatial bag was filled with pills and artifacts that could counteract these disgusting things. This time, when she left the Hundred Flower Sect, she brought this artifact with her just in case.
Unexpectedly, it came in handy—
This senior had once swallowed a disciple of the Joyful Union Sect, who happened to cultivate in toxicology, so this pink fog was created this way. As everyone knew, the Hundred Flower Sect countered the Joyful Union Sect, and the sect had many formulas to break these things.
Su Mingxiu, having learned her lesson, wasn’t affected. But on the other end of the red string, the person she cared about was not in a good situation.
Before they met, the string tied to her little finger only transmitted a slight tremor. After she dispelled the pink poisonous fog and saw the figure become clearer from the haze, with skin that had turned a faint pink as if poisoned, Su Mingxiu suddenly quickened her pace.
She pulled the person who almost fell to the ground into her arms, “Are you alright?”
Sui Yihuan’s deer-like eyes were now filled with mist, like the morning dew condensed on branches. If one shook it even slightly, these crystals would shatter. Her cheeks were flushed, and even the summer peaches were not as tempting as her appearance, making one eager to take a bite and let the sweet juice flow through their lips and teeth.
Her eyes were unfocused, and she could barely recognize who was in front of her. Even so, she instinctively raised her hand to push.
Su Mingxiu thought that she didn’t want to be forced, so even the kiss only landed on the hair on top of her head. She said softly, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid… I won’t hurt you…”
She took out many pills from her interspatial bag and fed them to Sui Yihuan one by one. Calming pills, detoxifying pills, Su Mingxiu remembered that she had done the same in her previous life, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to escape Xiao Xingwei’s seduction.
“That’s why I said I hate the hypocrisy of these righteous cultivators…” That ethereal voice reappeared, with condescending arrogance.
Hearing this voice, Su Mingxiu didn’t respond, as if she hadn’t heard it. The other party was puzzled for a moment, “But this little girl has already reached the Great Ascension stage. Interesting, are you both playing pig to eat the tiger?”
“Alright, little girl, don’t bother. There’s no antidote to my love poison. Unless someone is willing to transfer it into their own body, otherwise, it will act up every ten days… If no one relieves it, your meridians and dantian will burst, and you will die.”
Perhaps it was because it hadn’t encountered anyone who could talk for a long time, this voice was chattering, especially verbose, and would take the initiative to speak even if no one paid attention to it.
Sure enough, not long after taking the pills, the subsided passion on Sui Yihuan’s face was quickly swept up by the pink wave again. Just as she got up from her arms, she fell back weakly. Unconsciously, her eyes turned as red as a rabbit’s.
Impossible.
Su Mingxiu remembered that she had relied on these pills in her previous life…
The fragmented memories, because of being repeatedly checked and touched, caused a sharp pain in the depths of her brain, like shards of glass piercing into her mind. She couldn’t help but gasp.
Sui Yihuan saw her red eyes from the reflection in Su Mingxiu’s eyes and thought that Su Mingxiu was thinking about how she was controlled and hurt her in the Hundred Flower Sect. She subconsciously closed her eyes and apologized helplessly, “I’m sorry… I, I’m not a demon… I didn’t mean to hurt you…”
Su Mingxiu gritted her teeth, enduring the churning pain in her mind, but still focused her attention on her. Hearing the little girl’s mumbled apology, she just hugged her tighter, as if she wanted to rub her into her bones.
She finally remembered what exactly was connecting these fragments—
In the previous life, in the Hundred Flower Sect, she thought that she had escaped Ye Qingbai’s pursuit with her own abilities. But it turned out that it was Sui Yihuan who saved her and hid her in the back mountain, leaving her pills and letting her stumble back to strength. She had wanted to save the disciples of the mountain gate, but when she returned, she found that it was a sea of fire, and her little garden had long since been reduced to ashes.
After she went down the mountain with her surviving junior sister and wanted to look back, she realized that she was being wanted by her sect and had become a traitor who killed her master. In order not to implicate her junior sister, Su Mingxiu hid from the righteous path alone, fleeing all the way to remote places, and finally forced to hide in the secret realm of Zhenhai Tower.
She wasn’t affected by the illusion, but she was hit by the love poison. Xiao Xingwei was also poisoned by the same poison, but she used her magical artifact to force him away and stumbled into an even more remote place.
Then.
Someone saved her.
She drew the poison away from her body. Perhaps because she wasn’t very familiar with it, she felt hot and cold for a while. Later, the two of them rolled into a ball, outside the illusion that no one could escape from, in this Zhenhai Tower filled with evil beasts and their howls.
They were each other’s antidote, time and time again, lost in passion, even ignoring the surrounding danger.
But Su Mingxiu had forgotten all about it.
She thought that her fate with Sui Yihuan ended at the Hundred Flower Sect and never saw her again. So she treated Sui Yihuan as the white moonlight in her heart, forever hanging in the sky, because she was too difficult to reach.
But in fact, this moon had long been pressed into the deep pool by her, and she had touched every edge and corner, every ravine. The moonlight had been shattered by her shaking in the pool water.
And she still didn’t want to stop, wanting to scoop up the pool water, wash the moon clean, and carefully hold it in her arms.
Su Mingxiu had already obtained her white moonlight, but she had forgotten everything.
She even remembered that she later entered the Demon Abyss… A demon lord had come to see her. Those memories were locked deeper, and she couldn’t remember, but she clearly remembered what she had said—
With a clear voice, sharper than the teeth of the Demon Abyss’ beasts, a simple sentence that could shatter the heart of the demon race.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t remember ever having anything resembling a relationship with you damned demons.”
She had forgotten.
She had held that bright moon, letting its cold white light stain her body temperature, but after waking up, she casually abandoned the moon. When the moon hung high in the sky again, shining only on her, she had a troubled look in her eyes, feeling annoyed, wishing that the moon would shine on the gutters instead.
“Hahaha, little demon, if you don’t run, you’re going to die in her arms.”
Seeing Su Mingxiu’s reaction and Sui Yihuan, whose eyes were deep red but full of despair and disgust, waiting to be killed, the monster was greatly satisfied, wishing she could sing and dance for this wonderful show.
Sui Yihuan heard it, but she didn’t run. Moisture fell from the corners of her eyes, and she said softly, “I owe her once. If she wants to kill me, I have nothing to say.”
This was to repay the debt of being controlled by the Heavenly Demon and attacking her in the Hundred Flower Sect.
At this moment, Su Mingxiu opened her eyes. Her eyes had never been so cold before. If Xiao Xingwei were to escape from the illusion and see this, he would be afraid that the light from the Tai’e Sword was not as sharp as the killing intent in her eyes, like the light reflecting off the cliff, or like the streak of white on the snow-capped peak at noon—
“You… should… die…”
Su Mingxiu had never shown such emotions before, but when she said these three words one by one through gritted teeth, it was like a spell. Those thin lips uttered, condensing a terrifying killing intent, causing Sui Yihuan, facing her directly, and the monster lurking in the dark to freeze.
However, only the Heavenly Dao knew that these words were not directed at the two of them.
But to it.
“You were the protagonist at the time. Since you received the favor of the world and me, you should have made the corresponding sacrifice. I gave you supreme glory. Do you think you shouldn’t pay the price?”
It was still calm, as if it didn’t find anything wrong with Su Mingxiu discovering the truth it had hidden in her previous life only now.
Countless grains of sand had flowed through the Ganges River of time, and it had existed for far too long. If there were gods in this world, they would also be its will. The Heavenly Dao bestows favors on things. After gaining consciousness, it also collects rewards from everything.
Su Mingxiu suddenly remembered the intense hatred she had felt when she first went to that world to do her task.
But she couldn’t remember what she hated, only that her instinct told her that she had to return to the original world. Only there could she achieve her goal.
Now she finally knew who she hated.
It was this Heavenly Dao, this damned fate, this unfair order.
She wanted to break through this boundless sky, to stop this cold wheel of fate that had no regard for emotions, to tear to shreds the red string between herself and the so-called male protagonist…
She wanted this sky to no longer be the sky, to have it fall into the mortal world as well, to shatter its will, and to teach it not to interfere with the lives of any living creatures ever again!
She wanted to tear off the hypocritical veil of this Heavenly Dao, so that it would never dare to look down on the mortal world with that condescending attitude again!
【You should die.】
Su Mingxiu still said so. This hypocritical Heavenly Dao had actually gouged out the person she loved from her heart.
Judging from the final ending, Su Mingxiu thought, this one time of sweetness was definitely not enough. It loved to repeatedly and tirelessly break up lovers it deemed unsuitable.
Until it felt that the protagonist’s heart had finally been sculpted into the shape it wanted, even in love.
She didn’t have her natal sword, but that still didn’t prevent her from condensing that deadly killing intent. Electric light flickered in the tower, the compressed thunder spiritual power. Used with her Great Ascension cultivation, it already had the power of a thunder tribulation, enough to make all spirits tremble instinctively.
Su Mingxiu slowly took the silver fan from Sui Yihuan’s hand, covered it with her spiritual power, and extended the end of the fan. It instantly became the shape of a spiritual sword. She closed the silver fan, pointing it at the void where light flickered on and off, “I’ll ask you one last time—”
“Will you hand over the antidote?”
The Heavenly Dao, having received her murderous threat, didn’t know how to retreat at this moment. It continued to provoke her, “Please leave the opportunity to the true protagonist, don’t forget the heart demon oath you made.”
Heart demon oath?
If it hadn’t mentioned it, Su Mingxiu would have almost forgotten about it. Thinking of the person standing beside Xiao Xingwei that she had seen in the illusion earlier, Su Mingxiu already knew the effect of this heart demon oath.
Xuan Chan, who had sworn at the back mountain of the Hundred Flower Sect not to reveal her location, was chosen as the next female protagonist.
So she didn’t receive any punishment for breaking her oath. The Heavenly Dao gave the green light for this, treating its words as fart.
It only wanted to restrain her.
Or rather, it used all its remaining power to restrain her.
“When you’re no longer the Heavenly Dao, this thing won’t matter anymore.” What was the point of a signed contract? As long as one party dies, the other party no longer has to fulfill their obligations.
Besides… Su Mingxiu could feel that restraining her to this extent was already the limit of the Heavenly Dao.
The heart demon oath, which the Heavenly Dao wanted to use to control her, was sensed by her in reverse. Su Mingxiu understood clearly that this time reversal could only be its last.
This broken, unsalvageable Heavenly Dao would no longer have the chance to regret and start over.
This was both the Heavenly Dao’s last chance and the only chance for her and Sui Yihuan.
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