Phoenix's Requiem

It was clearly beyond the spiritual master’s expectation that the Slaughtering King himself wasn’t human. He looked at Li Mo’s sharp, golden fingernails, dread welling up in his heart.

“As for vows and all that? Those are games that humans play. I’ve never once believed in such ridiculous nonsense,” Li Mo murmured, admiring his fingernails. “All I believe in is whose claws are longer, whose teeth sharper.”

The spiritual master’s eyes widened. As if he suddenly thought of something, he exclaimed in fright. “No, are you a beastkin?!”

And then he shook his head. “No, no, that’s impossible. You were the one who led the charge against the beastkin, killing tens of thousands of them by the border of the Li kingdom. But if you’re neither a demon nor a spirit, what else could you be?”

“Either way, the answer won’t matter to you.” As soon as Li Mo finished speaking, he extended his right arm and clawed at the spiritual master.

Each of his fingernails were half a foot long, and an icy aura danced around them. They were as sharp as adamantium, able to cut gold and steel with a single blow.

The spiritual master didn’t dare to defend against the attack; instead, he rushed back as quickly as he could—but the green sword under Li Mo’s feet was quicker. Soon, he caught up to the spiritual master, and those long claws of his were inches from skewering his neck.

At this point, the spiritual master raised a hand, his fingernails likewise extending into claws and blocking Li Mo’s attack. In just one hit, however, Li Mo’s claws broke two of his fingernails. Just as he was about to kill the spiritual master in one fell swoop, his prayer beads began to light up.

The Buddhist aura formed a shield in front of the spiritual master, one that was even sturdy enough to block Li Mo’s attacks.

“It looks like I’ve still underestimated you.” Li Mo narrowed his eyes as he looked at the centipede spirit in front of him. “Despite being a spirit, you’re somehow able to employ a Buddhist artifact…”

The spiritual master snorted. “Slaughtering King, do you think I’ve spent two hundred years cultivating for nothing? After gaining a human form, I entered a Daoist temple to cultivate. When my master died, I moved to a Buddhist shrine. When my master there also died, well, only then did I start roaming the human world, subduing demons to benefit the common people.”

“Oh? You make it sound so noble. Aren’t the prayer beads in your hands ones you forcefully wrested from your dead master’s hands? Your cultivation looks to be largely from sucking dry the spiritual vortices of your dead masters. It’s because you’ve used such deviant, vile techniques that your cultivation wasn’t able to progress after that!”

“Slaughtering King, you’re really quite impressive.” The spiritual master didn’t deny his accusations. “It looks as though we’ll have to have a fight to the death today.”

“Oh? You think you have a chance of killing me?” Li Mo’s dark eyes turned an icy blue, and his sharp claws became even sharper.

Not only did his claws become sharper, even his arm began to change form. It became thicker, more corded with muscle. Out of his fingers and the back of his hand grew silvery scales, spreading all the way into his robe.

“You, you’re—” The spiritual master’s voice quavered as he choked, “You’re a dragon, the son of the Beast King himself!”

When Li Mo revealed his true identity, the spiritual master lost all hope of surviving.

“Slaughtering King… no, Crown Prince,” he begged, “I don’t dare to contest you for that human furnace, but please, spare my life!”

“It’s too late, you fool!” As Li Mo exerted more and more of his strength, the shield of holy light slowly began to dissipate. “Die!”

As the beads flew apart, that shield finally vanished into nothingness under Li Mo’s claws. The claws sank into the spiritual master’s flesh as easily as they would impale a watermelon.

The spiritual master’s eyes and mouth opened wide, his dying scream choked up in his throat.

One of Li Mo’s hands was clutching the unconscious Yun Ruoyan, and the other was impaling the spiritual master’s head, with red blood sliding down his fingers. Flying on his green sword, he looked like both an indomitable warrior and a demon that had crawled out of hell.

The golden-yellow glow of sunset gave Li Mo’s inky robes a mysterious shine. He stretched out a leg and kicked the spiritual master’s corpse aside. As his body fell into the forests below, it morphed into a gigantic, black centipede, shocking a large group of birds into flight.

Li Mo took two deep breaths, cancelled his partial transformation, and continued hugging Yun Ruoyan in his embrace. Just as he was about to rush back to the Yun manor, his spiritual vortex started fluctuating wildly.

Li Mo was already injured. He’d been holding himself together all throughout the match, and the fight just now had undoubtedly worsened his injuries. His spiritual vortex had destabilized to such an extent that he was no longer able to hover on his sword, and he clutched Yun Ruoyan tightly as they plummeted into the forests down below.

Luckily, their landing was softened by the lush greenery. Li Mo and Yun Ruoyan landed on the branches of a large tree before falling all the way through the branches and into the shadowy undergrowth beneath.

As they fell, Li Mo positioned his back against the ground. Protected by his body, Yun Ruoyan didn’t suffer a single injury. On the other hand, the force of impact and the tremors running through Li Mo’s body caused him to spit out a mouthful of blood as he landed.

Li Mo’s back was wracked with pain, and his spiritual vortex was frothing. He lay on the ground a little before trying to stand up once more a few times, to no avail. In the end, he could only give up.

He reached out and touched Yun Ruoyan’s face, checking to ensure that her right cheek was no longer swollen, before sighing in relief. Clearly, the high-grade antidote had an almost-miraculous effect.

“Alright, stop pretending,” Li Mo suddenly began while pinching Yun Ruoyan’s cheek. “It’ll be dark soon. We’re in the middle of the forest of dead souls, five hundred miles from the capital. At night, there’ll be all sorts of ghouls and spirits showing up. Right now, my body’s heavily wounded and I can’t use any spiritual energy, so we have to find a safe place to rest.

Yun Ruoyan was lying on Li Mo’s chest, and she could feel his failed attempts at getting up. When Li Mo finally spoke, she was still debating whether to keep pretending to be unconscious or to miraculously wake up. Slowly, she opened her eyes and sat up straight.

“Wh—where are we?” Yun Ruoyan looked as though she had just awakened as she rubbed at her eyes. “Why am I here?”

“Don’t you remember?” Li Mo responded, playing along with her act.

“I… All I remember is that a demon bewitched me in the great hall of the Yun manor.” Yun Ruoyan looked all around her. “Where did that demon go?”

“I killed him!”

“You killed him? That’s great!” Yun Ruoyan was so excited that she jumped up and bowed toward Li Mo. “Slaughtering King, you’re truly a legend of the ages. I’ll be forever impressed!”

Yun Ruoyan said all this in order to hide the agitation in her heart. She had awoken while Li Mo and the spiritual master were fighting, and had even opened her eyes a crack at that time. Coincidentally or otherwise, that was right when Li Mo was partially shapeshifting, and it shocked her so much that she closed her eyes immediately.

When she heard the spiritual master call him a dragon, the son of the Beast King himself, Yun Ruoyan’s clever mind came to a standstill. Even now, she didn’t know what to think. How could the emperor’s little brother, a marquis of the Li kingdom, the Slaughtering King himself, not be human? Was he really a dragon, the heir of the Beast King?

But if that were truly the case, then why was it rumored that he’d slaughtered tens of thousands of beastkin to quell the beastkin rebellion?! Allegedly, the beastkin’s blood had dyed the rivers bordering the Li kingdom red, and the iron tang of blood had been blown all the way into the capital!

Could Li Mo have betrayed his own kinsmen? Or were the rumors false to begin with?

“If you have any questions, you need only ask,” Li Mo said outright when he saw Yun Ruoyan display her confusion on her face.

“Ah!” Yun Ruoyan hesitated for a moment before realizing what had to have happened. “No, no, what questions could I have?” She scratched her head: why was it that this man could always make her so expressive?

“If you really don’t have any questions, then help me up. It’s going to be dark soon, so if we don’t hide, we’ll both be in danger.”

Yun Ruoyan helped drag him up and began traipsing through the forest. Despite some effort, they couldn’t find a single safe place. Unlike a valley where they could hide in a cave, there were only trees in a forest. As they walked, the sun set.

She was somewhat anxious. It was summer: the days were long, the nights short. However, the sky would darken rapidly as soon as the sun had set, and then all sorts of nocturnal and darkness-loving creatures would show up. Although Yun Ruoyan wasn’t particularly timid, she didn’t want to be hounded by ghosts and the like.

“There’s a large tree up in front,” Li Mo began, his voice weak.

Yun Ruoyan knew that he urgently needed to sit down and rest, so she hurried onward. The tree trunk was wide; about five or six men would be needed to encircle it at its base. While the treetop was luxuriant with growth, she couldn’t see where they would be able to hide. Were they expected to climb up the tree?

Of the two of them, one was gravely injured, and the other’s spiritual energy was sealed by poison. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an easy task, but now…

“Turn to the back of the tree,” Li Mo reminded after noticing that Yun Ruoyan kept on looking at the treetop.

With an “Oh,” Yun Ruoyan moved to the back of the tree, where she was excited to find a hole wide enough for both of them.

“I really hadn’t expected to find such a large cavity, especially in a tree that looks so lush.” Yun Ruoyan helped Li Mo into the hole and asked, “How did you know that there’d be a hole here?”

Li Mo had already sat down, his eyes closed and preparing to rest. When he heard Yun Ruoyan’s question, he replied without opening his eyes, “Most of the trees in such ancient forests will have holes.”

Neither in this life nor her past life had Yun Ruoyan ever gone out into the wilderness. The farthest she’d gone was probably the imperial territory on the Kongming mountain, and that was only a ten-day adventure. As a result, Yun Ruoyan knew very little about the outdoors.

“Oh, it’s not a natural cavity…” Yun Ruoyan felt at the edges of the hole, finding some scratch marks left on the bark. But surely there weren’t that many people living out in the wilderness? How could so many such trees be hollow, unless… unless…

“Are these hollowed-out areas where spirits and demons reside?!”