“Don’t say things like that. You won’t die.” Jiang Huai stared blankly at the girl before him whose eyes had regained their clarity.
The unwavering resolve and will to die reflected in her gaze made his heart tremble fiercely.
He hurriedly spoke, his voice hoarse from pain and urgency.
He forced himself to endure the searing agony that tore through his whole body and took a sudden step forward.
With that movement, his wounds were pulled open again, deep sword scars splitting wide, and warm blood rushed out, racing down his arms and fingertips, dripping onto the scorched and shattered ground, spreading into a dark red stain.
“I won’t let you die…” he gritted his teeth, every word squeezed out through clenched jaws.
“I’ll never let anyone by my side leave me like this!” His gaze was locked unwaveringly on Zhu Siyao.
Those eyes, always gentle, now burned with an almost frenzied determination.
He ignored the protests of his body, ignored the loss of life itself, stubbornly, leaving a trail of bloody footprints with each step, walked toward the girl struggling within the whirlpool of her soul.
Zhu Siyao’s expression flickered violently like a dying candle in the wind.
At times twisted and ferocious—the Heavenly Demon roaring inside her—at times anguished and desperate, her clear eyes brimming with tears and hopelessness—the real Zhu Siyao fighting back with all her strength.
Her body trembled slightly; at moments her hands clenched into tight fists, nails digging deep into her palms, then fell weakly open again, showing the brutality of the struggle within her Recognition Sea.
“You’ll die! Fool! Aren’t you afraid of your body and soul being annihilated?!” The Heavenly Demon roared sharply and twistedly through Zhu Siyao’s throat, trying to break Jiang Huai’s will with fear, and at the same time, unleashing its fury at the stubborn consciousness still resisting inside.
However, as Zhu Siyao’s will burned the Origin of her Soul without reserve, cracks appeared in the previously unbreakable Sealing Shackles.
She began to slowly regain some sensation of her own body.
But Zhu Siyao paid no attention to the Heavenly Demon’s shrieks.
Her gaze pierced through the pain of her flesh, fastening longingly, greedily, on the figure stubbornly limping toward her with battered body.
Each of his steps seemed to tread on the very tip of her heart, bringing suffocating pain.
With great effort, she managed her facial muscles, squeezing out a smile uglier than weeping, carrying endless longing and entreaty.
Her voice was so light, it seemed it would be carried away on the wind at any moment:
“Jiang Huai, don’t come any closer.”
She paused, gathering all the strength she could muster, and spoke clearly, pleadingly:
“Kill me. Do it now.”
She could feel her own soul burning away like a candle in the wind, faster than she’d ever imagined.
The demon’s corruption was a maggot gnawing at the bone.
Even if she could drive it out now, her Origin was already gravely damaged—her days numbered.
Since that was the case, it was better to end it here, by his hand, swiftly—cutting off the Heavenly Demon’s schemes once and for all.
This… perhaps could also be called fulfilling the deepest wish hidden in her heart, one she could never voice aloud.
At least, she hadn’t truly dragged him into a pit of no return.
“I told you, I won’t let you die!” Jiang Huai’s low growl was laced with blood.
He forced himself another great step forward, leaving only a few feet between them.
Ignoring the churning blood in his chest, he forced his trembling hands upward, his ten fingers moving in an arcane, painful sequence to slowly and resolutely form a seal.
As the seal shifted, strands of chaotic energy began to gather and swirl at his fingertips.
Zhu Siyao watched those trembling hands form the seal, unstable from exhaustion and pain, yet still drawing each rune with unwavering precision.
Her heart felt as though it had been torn in two.
“Jiang Huai…” Her eyes turned unusually calm—a serenity that came only from seeing through life and death, letting go of all bonds.
Yet deep within that calm was endless sorrow.
“Promise me, take care of my mother.” Her words were soft, like final instructions before departure.
At the same time, the light in her eyes, which had been reignited by Jiang Huai’s arrival, faded visibly, as if the flame had reached its end, and the soul’s fire was about to extinguish.
“I wish I could hold you again…” In the deepest corner of her heart, she let out an inaudible, barely perceptible sigh.
It was too dangerous.
She couldn’t, mustn’t, get any closer to him. She would ruin everything, and he might die with her.
“This is the last time I’ll say it!”
Jiang Huai finally crossed the last bit of distance, staggering to stand right in front of Zhu Siyao.
His face was pale as paper, lips cracked from blood loss, but his eyes shone unbelievably bright, like the most stubborn stars in the night sky.
The seal between his hands was finally complete.
A complex, slowly rotating Taiji Phantom floated above his palms, exuding an ancient and vast aura.
He suddenly pressed both hands onto Zhu Siyao’s chest, at the meeting point of their vital energy.
“I won’t let anyone leave me like this!”
Boom!
The moment the seal touched, an unimaginable torrent of Yin-Yang Origin surged down Jiang Huai’s arms, crazily pouring into Zhu Siyao’s body.
This was not gentle nourishment, but an overwhelmingly forceful cleansing and purification.
Jiang Huai’s body shriveled visibly, as if all his energy and spirit had been drained away in that instant.
His throat tasted sweet, and he coughed up a mouthful of blood heavy with his very life force.
Yet the hand pressed to Zhu Siyao’s chest did not move a hair, as if welded in place.
This was the Forbidden Technique passed down by the previous generation’s Yin Yang Constitution.
It was far beyond Jiang Huai’s strength to wield, and he’d been unable to use it when facing the Heavenly Demon before.
But now, Zhu Siyao had given him the chance—he would not spare himself or let it pass.
Zhu Siyao’s whole body convulsed violently, her eyes flying open wide.
She could distinctly feel a power—warm, domineering, yet achingly familiar—bursting into her Recognition Sea, which was on the verge of freezing over. It rampaged through, but also carried a gentle touch.
Instinctively, she reached up and gripped Jiang Huai’s wrist pressed to her chest.
She lifted her head to look at the face, distorted in agony yet written with unwavering resolve, just inches away.
Her gaze filled with emotions too complex to name.
Heartache, gratitude, despair, and the happiness of being so cherished.
In the end, beneath the twin onslaughts of the Heavenly Demon’s counterattack and her burning soul, that complex gaze slowly lost focus, turning hollow and dim.
“Ah!!!”
From the depths of her Recognition Sea, the Outworld Heavenly Demon let out a scream of ultimate agony.
That impossibly pure Yin-Yang energy, to it, was like snow under a blazing sun.
Its demonic soul was scorched and torn, emitting a “chichi” sound as it dissolved.
“Yin-Yang Body! Damn it!!” The Heavenly Demon exploded with its last strength in despair, abruptly seizing back partial control.
“Get away from me!” it howled, wrenching Zhu Siyao’s body in a savage shriek, black light surging in her eyes.
The sword she’d held tightly was thrust without hesitation toward Jiang Huai’s chest at point-blank range.
Puchi.
The sickening sound of blade piercing flesh.
The sword stabbed through Jiang Huai’s battered robe and into his chest.
A low, deep dragon’s roar burst from Jiang Huai’s throat.
In an instant, jet-black Dragon Scales covered most of his body, two small yet imposing Dragon Horns burst from his brow, and a Dragon Tail flickered powerfully behind him.
He ignored the sword lodged in his chest, its blade still leeching away his life, and kept his hands pressed firmly to Zhu Siyao’s chest.
The Yin-Yang Origin flooding from him did not stop—if anything, it became even more violent and fierce.
“Ughhh!” The Heavenly Demon screamed even more shrilly.
It felt as if it had been thrown into the primordial chaos furnace at the dawn of heaven and earth—powers of utmost Yin and utmost Yang, opposite yet sharing the same source, dissolving its existence from the very foundation.
Every tendril it had embedded in Zhu Siyao’s soul was wrenched out one by one.
“Madman! You’re a madman!!” the Heavenly Demon cursed, finally sensing a true threat to its life.
This body, this host, had become a cage overflowing with a power that brought it unbearable pain.
“Jiang Huai! Even if you escape by some miracle this time, it’s useless!” The demon’s voice was filled with venom and unwillingness, echoing through the crumbling Recognition Sea.
“Despair is all that awaits you. You cannot escape, and neither can the Five Provinces Continent.” Its demonic soul crumbled under the rush of Yin-Yang power, turning to wisps of black smoke that were quickly purified into nothingness.
“We won’t let you grow strong. Next time, there won’t be any restriction on cultivation.”
“Next time, the Five Provinces Continent will be ours, and the gates to the Immortal Realm will forever close to you.” The last words, brimming with boundless malice and curses, grew faint and eventually vanished completely.
The Secret Realm fell into a deathly silence.
Jiang Huai’s Dragon Transformation faded swiftly, and he collapsed forward like a puppet with all its strings cut.
But before falling, he used the last of his strength to stretch out his arms and draw the hollow-eyed, limp girl before him into a tight, desperate embrace.
The sword remained buried in his chest.
Zhu Siyao’s body was ice-cold, but the faint heartbeat and lingering soul fluctuation in her chest told Jiang Huai she was still alive—he had succeeded.
He wanted to say something, but could only make gasping sounds in his throat as blood poured endlessly from his lips and chest wound.
His consciousness ebbed away like the tide, vision blurring, darkness closing in.
He held Zhu Siyao tightly, as though she were the world’s only treasure.
With the last scraps of his will, supporting legs that were nearly numb, and relying on the stubborn vitality of his Dragon Bloodline, he stumbled step by step toward the direction he remembered, toward a possible exit.
Each step left a bloody, resolute print on the ground.
He didn’t know how long he’d walked, nor if his direction was right—only that he instinctively pressed forward, forward.
Just before his vision was swallowed by total darkness, a blazing, anxious crimson streak shot over from the entrance of the Secret Realm like a meteor cleaving the night and landed at his side in an instant.
“Jiang Huai!”
Chi Lian’s figure appeared.
With a glance, she saw the boy who looked as though he’d been hauled out of a pool of blood, still clinging desperately to the girl in his arms.
Her heart clenched painfully.
Without hesitation, she hurried forward, carefully supporting Jiang Huai’s nearly shattered body, at the same time transferring a gentle wave of Red Dragon Vital Energy to him, trying to stabilize his fading life.
“I’ll take you out—both of you!” Chi Lian’s voice choked as she looked at the horrifying wound in Jiang Huai’s chest and the blood almost drained from his body, her eyes full of ache.
Without pause, she bent down, slinging Jiang Huai’s arm around her slender neck, and firmly supporting the unconscious Zhu Siyao with her other hand.
“I’m fine, I’m alright.”
“So long as I have a breath left, I won’t die.” Jiang Huai gasped, his voice ragged.
“She… let Qin Qingyue try to save her, have Wu Zhaohua bring White Dew here.”
“I have a bad feeling…”
The Heavenly Demon’s parting words echoed in Jiang Huai’s ears.