Chapter 224: So I’m the Protagonist After All (20)
When Su Mingxiu was swept into the embroidery by Sui Yihuan’s black wind and reappeared, she was already inside the tall tower of Black Stone Dock. Seeing the dark decorations around her, even the thin curtains separating the space were dark red and black, she felt that this room was really stuffy, making it hard to breathe.
The Demon Lord herself, who had just been taken advantage of, showed no change in her expression, as if nothing had happened. At that time, there was no one else in the room. She coldly announced to Su Mingxiu, “From today onwards, you will clean this room for this Lord, acting as a cleaning maid. Food will be delivered, and you are not allowed to step out of this room.”
Her words were also cold, just like the small snowflake still worn on her left ear.
If Su Mingxiu didn’t know that half of that snowflake had been turned into a beautiful spring scene and hidden in Sui Yihuan’s forbidden area, she would really think that she had locked her heart away from love.
Hearing these words now, the cultivator wasn’t annoyed. She just looked towards the long table, leaned against it, glanced at the demon stones recording images and the Demon Abyss’ communication letters, and looked away disinterestedly, turning her gaze to the standing figure, silent like a pine tree in a snowy night.
“I see no one else in this room. Your Lordship brought me here specifically, could it be that you’ve also fallen for me and want to keep me as your hidden beauty?”
Sui Yihuan: “…”
She had already suspected that Su Mingxiu might have remembered something. Now, seeing her acting so playfully, the suspicion in her heart became even stronger.
But, if she really remembered what happened before, why wasn’t there any questioning, anger, or confrontation?
She had to admit that from the first time they met until now, she had never understood this person.
Ignoring Su Mingxiu’s words, Sui Yihuan asked, “This Lord didn’t introduce myself just now, how did you know my identity?”
“Your Lordship’s bearing, since I entered the Demon Abyss, I haven’t found anyone else who can compare to you. It makes people submit at first glance…”
Sui Yihuan didn’t listen to the rest of the words.
Her gaze swept over the other person’s proper face. Because of this fake face, all of Su Mingxiu’s original advantages were erased, even the mole at the corner of her eye was hidden.
So no matter what the other person did, Sui Yihuan wouldn’t lose her composure. At this moment, she let her talk nonsense and turned into a wisp of black smoke, disappearing.
After she left, the smile in Su Mingxiu’s eyes also disappeared.
Sui Yihuan had lost a lot of weight.
And her complexion was also pale.
She didn’t know if it was because of the cultivation technique she practiced or because she had lived in the dark Demon Abyss for many years, but she didn’t look healthy at all.
Sui Yihuan didn’t say when she would return, so Su Mingxiu wandered around the room alone, thinking about a question: In her previous life, she hadn’t seen the Heavenly Demon after coming to the Demon Abyss. According to her master’s arrogant and conceited manner, it didn’t make sense that after washing the Hundred Flower Sect with blood and slaughtering the Thirteen Schools, she would be so low-key after returning to the Demon Abyss.
But she just didn’t see her “kind master” again. Since infiltrating the Demon Abyss, the ruler of the Demon Abyss she saw and heard was Sui Yihuan… this human demon created by misfortune.
Where did Ye Qingbai go?
Moreover, judging from the aura she felt during their brief contact earlier, Su Mingxiu couldn’t figure out Sui Yihuan’s current strength.
She still remembered that when they parted half a year ago, Sui Yihuan had paid a great price to put on such a grand show for the righteous sects. But now, although Su Mingxiu had lowered her cultivation, her divine sense perception was still at the peak of the Great Ascension stage—
So, what was Sui Yihuan’s strength?
What kind of evil technique had she practiced in just half a year?
Thinking of this, Su Mingxiu unconsciously stopped by the bookshelf in the corner. After sorting out these clueless threads and finding no answers, she was like a cat trying to untangle a ball of yarn, only to make it even messier. She simply started rummaging through the room.
Not only was she searching for the Demon Lord’s reading preferences, she even found a small wooden box hidden by a formation.
The box only had an ordinary lock. Even though the style was complicated, Su Mingxiu still opened it with the thin hairpin in her hair. But she was stunned by what she found inside—another wooden box.
Because she had seen the wooden box inside before.
It was the one she had bought from the merman in the fishing village by the sea.
…Su Mingxu thought she had lost it again.
A special thought suddenly occurred to her. Could it be that this wooden box had already been in Sui Yihuan’s hands in her previous life? After all, she rarely lost things, and this was the only one she had ever lost.
Touching the patterns on the wooden box, for a moment, Su Mingxiu wanted to forcefully break the formation set by the merfolk and see what the unique mermaid pearl inside looked like.
But before she could make a move, she felt the curtain beside the bookshelf suddenly being blown open, revealing a wooden face standing outside, “Is this how you clean the room for this Lord?”
Although it was a wooden face, it was still the most beautiful wooden face in the world.
Su Mingxiu propped her chin on one hand, shook the box in her hand, and smiled at Sui Yihuan, her eyes curving, “Look what secret of Your Lordship I’ve discovered? Using such a complicated formation just to hide such an ordinary little thing, let me guess, this couldn’t have been given to you by your beloved, right?”
Asking knowingly.
If it were any other person in the Demon Abyss who appeared here at this moment, holding the wooden box and shaking it so audaciously, Sui Yihuan would have twisted their head off and shaken it like this. But it just so happened to be Su Mingxiu.
She suddenly regretted bringing the other person here, because it was simply asking for trouble. With Su Mingxiu’s current cultivation, as long as she didn’t blatantly expose herself in the Demon Abyss and didn’t act too high-profile, few people in the Demon Abyss could do anything to her. She had been blinded.
“No.” Sui Yihuan calmly denied it, and just stretched out her palm, her five fingers closing together, and snatched the box back into her hand out of thin air.
—It wasn’t given to her by her beloved, she stole it.
“You are too disobedient,” the Demon Lord, dressed in luxurious black clothes, said, her gaze sweeping over Su Mingxiu. Suddenly, she grabbed something out of thin air, taking out a well-hidden interspatial bag. After a pause, she said, “You are not allowed to eat today, reflect on your actions.”
She used the method Su Mingxiu had taught her after they left the Zhenhai Tower secret realm to easily erase the divine sense mark on the interspatial bag. So she knew that it was filled with delicious food.
But the person who was considered a glutton, upon hearing such a punishment, still replied with a smile, “Your Lordship is too kind. Why not punish me by making me watch you eat? Wouldn’t that be more cruel?”
But Sui Yihuan didn’t answer. She came and went like the wind, like a casual owner, bringing her pet home. As long as it didn’t cause too much trouble, she wouldn’t interfere.
After leaving again, Sui Yihuan set up a formation outside the house. After instructing people to keep an eye on the two cultivators in the Black Stone Mine and report to her regularly, she headed towards the bottom of the tall tower.
That was hidden under the blood pool. The closer it was to the surface of the pool, the more ordinary the black stone prison, which held the former Demon Lord’s enemies. The further down, the more unfathomable the strength.
And on the bottom floor—
The person imprisoned there was almost completely immersed in the black blood pool. Compared to the vast pool outside the Black Stone Dock, the color here was far too deep, and no blood color could be seen at all. It was more appropriate to call it ink-black.
If anyone could see the black water in this pool, they would have an absurd thought, that the dark, surging blood pool outside was just the diluted evil, completely incomparable to the intense killing intent here.
Blood-locking chains that could seal demon meridians crisscrossed, revealing the tip of the iceberg above the blood pool, intertwined with countless demon patterns, showing that the formation was running non-stop.
“You are already at the end of your rope. Those cultivators from the nine continents will find a way to break the seal sooner or later. When the immortal-demon war restarts, even if you manage to perish together with me… those demons outside will be leaderless, do you want to let them be slaughtered by the righteous path?”
“The demon race is deeply sinful, and their cultivation methods are even more heinous. They are inherently incompatible with the nine continents,” Sui Yihuan replied expressionlessly, standing outside the blood pool.
The black shadow imprisoned in the blood pool laughed heartily, “If that’s the case, why don’t you just open the gates of the formation and let the nine continents’ cultivators enter the Demon Abyss? The fact that you don’t do that means you have a soft heart, doesn’t it?”
“You can see that for tens of thousands of years, my demon race has been suppressed in this sunless place. The lives of those low-level demons who can’t even awaken their bloodlines are worse than the most miserable mortals in the nine continents… You want to save them…”
“Ridiculous, you, who grew up accepting the concepts of cultivators, can’t go back anywhere. You can no longer be a human or a cultivator. You want to be a demon, but you’re not evil enough. You might as well open the Demon Abyss barrier now, and I’ll have a little more respect for you.”
“Do I need your respect?” The person standing at the edge of the blood pool, her robes clean, not stained by the filth of this prison.
Even though her face was pale, the contours of her features were even sharper, and her tone was the same, with five parts disdain and five parts contempt, “A defeated general, a prisoner.”
She had no more interest in communicating with the other party.
Countless red threads flew out from her fingertips hidden under her long sleeves, sinking into the black pool.
Instantly, the entire place was filled with red light, and the person imprisoned inside cursed loudly, “If I had known that I would raise a monster like you, I should have killed you at birth—”
“Why so excited? You’ve always had poor judgment. Besides, this isn’t the first time you’ve misjudged someone.”
Sui Yihuan deliberately used a cold voice to provoke the other party.
Sure enough, the demon, tormented by the forbidden formation, let out an even angrier voice, “That’s right! And that wretched disciple born with a Daoist constitution! If I can get out, I will definitely not let you two…”
“You’re too confident.”
Sui Yihuan sighed softly, “Half a year ago, when I returned to the Demon Abyss, you were so confident in locking me up in the demon outcast land, thinking that I would never be able to get out alive.”
“So, whether you’re a human or a demon, don’t speak too soon, it’s easy to get slapped in the face.”
The Heavenly Demon, who was being tormented by the formation and also being mentally attacked by her: “…”
When she returned to Black Stone Dock, Sui Yihuan felt the fishy sweetness welling up in her chest. She stood outside the room where Su Mingxiu was being held, paused for a moment, touched the arm under her sleeve, and after sensing that the suddenly bulging blood vessels had subsided, she hesitantly stepped forward and pushed open the door.
This person, when she was following her before, always liked to make delicious food. Although she had already reached the Great Ascension stage, she probably still had some appetite. After being hungry for a day, she wondered if she would be angry.
Thinking so, after entering, she didn’t see anyone at first glance. Sui Yihuan’s heart instinctively tightened, thinking that the person had escaped. But after turning around, her gaze passed through the gauze curtains in the room, and seeing the figure meditating on the bed, she put her heart back in her stomach.
But the next moment—
The person who was meditating suddenly opened her eyes and spat out a mouthful of blood.
Su Mingxiu had been too focused on investigating the gu in her body and didn’t notice anyone coming back. When a shadow fell over her, she wiped the trace from the corner of her lips and only then did she react and look up. The other person’s hand reached directly for her wrist.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Before being touched, Su Mingxiu quickly moved her hand away.
If one didn’t look at the marks on the floor beside the bed, no one would notice anything unusual about her, with her rosy complexion and seemingly excellent condition.
Not letting the other person touch her, the person who was now sitting on the Demon Lord’s bed had a smiling expression, but her words were somewhat barbed:
“It’s nothing, I’m just an ordinary prisoner and maid. Your Lordship doesn’t have to look like that. People who don’t know might think you care about me a lot.”
Sui Yihuan was stunned.
After a moment, she replied coldly, “You look like an old friend of this Lord. This Lord cherishes old friendships and doesn’t want to see you get hurt. You don’t have to think too much about it.”
Oh, if one didn’t know better, they would think that the Demon Abyss’ specialty was braised duck. Otherwise, how could they explain Sui Yihuan’s stubbornness?
Playing the stand-in card, was she?
The corner of Su Mingxiu’s lips curved upwards, very aware of her own seductive nature, “Oh, is Your Lordship’s old friend more beautiful, or am I more beautiful?”
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