Chapter 7
Edward Quan ·
Immediately afterward, the little energy I had left vanished as though sucked into an enormous whirlpool.
Instinctively, I clutched Yin Hai’s shoulders.
“Yin Hai, I… I just fought a terrible battle. I’m almost out of energy. Drink slowly…”
“Mo Jinghong, I told you not to come here, but you insisted!”
She ground her teeth and bit into my neck.
Her sharp fangs sank deep. Unable to get enough spirit energy, she began drinking my blood.
A cultivator’s blood contained concentrated energy.
She really was eating me.
I grabbed her white hair. “Yin Hai, wait…”
“Wait for what? I’m starving! Do you know how long we’ve been apart?”
“How long?”
Time flowed differently in different parts of the Lingtai Secret Realm. What felt like the time it took to drink tea on my side might have been days on hers.
Sure enough, she snarled, “Three days.”
My eyes widened.
Three days.
She hadn’t eaten for three days.
I was dead!
“Yin Hai, calm down first. Calm down!”
“I can’t!”
She pinned me to the ground and drank frantically.
Once again, death closed in.
I clung to the last thread of awareness. “Did you… eat your way here?”
“What else?”
“Did you… encounter any… high-level demon beasts?”
“What counts as high-level?”
“Demon beasts.”
“Don’t remember.”
“If you got the herbs they guarded, give me some. They can restore my energy quickly…”
At last, she raised her head from my neck.
“Herbs?”
“Yes…”
My consciousness was fading. I fought with everything I had not to faint.
She turned her face and licked the blood from the corner of her mouth, trying to think. After that large mouthful from me, she had finally recovered a little clarity.
“Do you mean this?”
She turned her hand, and a plant appeared in her palm, half light and half dark.
I stared.
“That’s the Yin… Yin-Yang Twin Lotus. Did you eat the Netherworld Twin Flood Dragons too?”
“What the hell are those?”
“Nothing.”
I struggled for breath. “Quickly… feed me that herb.”
She casually pushed it into my mouth.
The moment it entered, the lotus dissolved into a sweet, cool liquid that slid down my throat.
It had absorbed the essence of sun and moon and the realm’s spiritual energy for thousands of years. Its power surged through me like an ocean, rapidly healing every injury and forcibly widening my meridians several times over.
Even so, they couldn’t hold all that energy.
I offered Yin Hai the overflow, but she refused it.
She would only consume energy my body had already transformed.
Only energy that belonged to me.
So she held me and drank like a raging storm, while I desperately converted the lotus’s abundant power into my own.
“Slow down… I can’t convert it fast enough!”
“Shut up,” she snarled.
I fell silent.
She had been starving for three days. Being able to speak coherently at all was already consuming the last of her reason.
I didn’t dare provoke her further.
16
By the time I finished converting the entire Yin-Yang Twin Lotus, ten days had passed.
My junior sister’s group had long since fled.
As for the Serpent-Vine King, it knew Yin Hai and I were still on the ground above it. We hadn’t moved a step.
Yet it never dared attack.
It lay silently underground, playing dead as though it knew nothing of us.
At last, Yin Hai was full.
For the first time, she had truly eaten her fill.
She slumped over me and slept soundly.
Holding her, I breathed heavily, tears gathering in my eyes.
It felt as though a lifetime had passed, as though I had snatched my life back from death.
Gods, Buddhas, bodhisattvas!
She was finally full.
I had survived!
I hugged her and muttered, “Eat, then sleep. You’re a pig.”
She slept deeply, apparently hearing nothing.
I poked her cheek with one finger to vent my frustration.
“Pig. All you do is eat. Eat, eat, eat. Only pigs spend all day thinking about food…”
“Mo Jinghong, I’m choosing not to answer you. Don’t push your luck.”
Her eyes remained shut.
I jerked.
“You… you’re awake?”
“I’m not a pig. Why would I go straight to sleep after eating?”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Resting after a meal.”
I held her for a long while, then asked, “Have you ever had enough to eat before?”
“Rarely.”
“Oh…”
I pressed my lips together.
“Yin Hai…”
“What now? Can’t you let me have a moment’s peace?”
I gritted my teeth inwardly.
Who was refusing to give whom a moment’s peace?
She had just fed on me for ten days, day and night, without stopping!
And I hadn’t even started settling that account.
Suppressing my irritation, I smiled ingratiatingly. “Let’s find somewhere more comfortable to rest. There’s nothing here, and my backside hurts.”
She lazily opened her eyes, shifted her head on my shoulder, and turned toward me.
“You’re so troublesome.”
“Please. I’m exhausted. It’s hard to recover my energy when I’m this tired.”
She blinked and snorted heavily.
“Fine. Let me wait on you.”
After that sarcastic remark, she picked me up and tapped the ground twice with her foot.
The quiet wasteland shook violently.
A huge crack slowly opened.
The Serpent-Vine King’s enormous head emerged halfway through. Its vast pupils trembled as it looked at Yin Hai.
She said nothing. She only stared coldly.
Its pupils shook harder.
With a pitiful whine, it withdrew underground.
A little later, it emerged again and opened its mouth. A ball of red light floated toward us.
Yin Hai caught it casually.
As the light faded, I saw what she held.
The Ten-Thousand-Soul Ghost-Vine Root.
The Serpent-Vine King had guarded this herb for a thousand years, nourishing it with human lives. Every person it killed had their soul extracted and fed to the root.
After enough souls, the root became what it was now.
Anyone who ate it could gain power over the underworld.
“Want it?” Yin Hai asked.
I pressed my lips together and considered.
“It wouldn’t do much for me. I don’t want to become a Ghost King.”
“Then it’s useless.”
As she spoke, her cold gaze swept toward the Serpent-Vine King.
It trembled so hard the ground shook with it.
Only then did I understand.
“It’s useless” didn’t mean the root.
She meant the king.
Yin Hai laughed coldly.
“Useless thing. You’ve lived over a thousand years and haven’t collected a single decent treasure?”
Both the king and I stared at her in shock.
How could this monster say something so shameless with such righteous conviction?
She didn’t care what either of us thought.
“Since you’re useless…”