Chapter 361 - Scheming With Demons (1/2)
Xiao Chen turned around and gently helped Su Xiaomei to her feet. “Senior Su, don’t be sad. I promise I’ll get Senior Xiao Ning out of here!” The restrictions here were too great, he thought. The Barrier wouldn’t let any object with a soul pass through it. The only thing he could do now was to return and find another way.
Su Xiaomei was still sobbing. She slowly walked up to the entrance of the passage and stared at the sleeping Xiao Ning inside. In a choked voice, she said, “Brother Ning, you have always stood aloof from worldly affairs, yet you fell for a trap…” Tears began falling from her eyes as she spoke, tumbling down like pearls.
“Koo-chee! Koo-chee, Koo-chee! Wuu…” The Koo-chee beast ran up to her and gently nudged her with its head, indicating for her to return.
In that choked voice of hers, Su Xiaomei said, “You two can go back. I want to stay here and accompany Brother Ning. I want to talk to him once he wakes up…”
Xiao Chen looked inside the passage. With the eight ancient statues of Buddha and eight magic tools dominating Xiao Ning, rare would be the time when he would be conscious. Xiao Chen didn’t know when he would be awake next. Moreover, the Devil Repressing Tower could inflict severe damage to souls. “Senior Su, please listen to me. When Senior Xiao Ning wakes up, what he wants to see most would be you safe and sound, not your current wan and sallow self…”
After a lengthy persuasion, Su Xiaomei finally agreed to return to the Frigid Jade Pendant. Back on the second floor, Xiao Chen was in a heavy mood. Su Xiaomei loved Xiao Ning so profoundly that she defied death. For thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, thousands of thousands of years, what did it matter if the world around them had transformed completely?
Unfortunately, what did the wooden monks of Wuyin Monastery know about love? They imprisoned Xiao Ning here for more than a thousand years and separated the pair. The more Xiao Chen thought about it, the angrier he became. He got up, pressed two fingers together, and wrote a line of words under the scripture on the wall:
A lifetime of infatuation, an unconcluded love,
A lifetime of worldly servitude, yet who has ever shown pity,
Since there is no mutually beneficial approach in this world,
Rather betray the world than to betray love!
Xiao Chen took a deep breath after he finished writing and sat back down on the floor. He exhaled a long sigh. Many spent their entire lives being infatuated with another, yet how many would refuse to reincarnate for their beloved? They would always go their separate ways after reincarnation, who would still remember their once-beloved? Suddenly, he thought of Hua Weiyang. Back then, his soul was sealed. Perhaps Hua Weiyang had also waited for thousands of years…
“Koo-chee! Koo-chee!” The Koo-chee beast’s large eyes stared at him. Xiao Chen forced a smile. “Sometimes, it’s better to be a demon than a human. A demon can love and hate freely without caring about the entire world.”
“Koo-chee! Koo-chee!” The Koo-chee beast nodded hard.
“Hehe,” Xiao Chen chuckled. He then heaved a sigh and started lying on the ground with his hands behind his head. The seal of mystic arts on the ninth floor would intercept any object with a soul. What kind of soul-less object would be strong enough to break the seal? The mystic arts could withstand any external attack so that it could be broken from within. Was there anything so strong…
“Corpse Puppet!”
Xiao Chen suddenly sat straight. That was right! Corpse Puppets had no souls so that they could pass the seal of mystic arts. He recalled Yu Yangzi that he met in the Changyin Mountain Range. Yu Yangzi said that the Corpse Refinery Sect possessed a Divine Corpse that became dormant after suffering damage. The Divine Corpse would surely be powerful enough to break the seal!
But the thought quickly died in his mind. Never mind whether he could steal a Corpse Puppet from the Corpse Refinery Sect, it was a significant problem in itself whether he could leave this place.
Xiao Chen contemplated for a long time. During the past year, he had noticed that the Devil Repressing Tower would replenish its spirit energy every once in a while. Two days before this replenishment would be the time when the tower was at its weakest. The next replenishment would come ten days later, but a monk with fearsome cultivation would be guarding outside. That was the most difficult problem of all.
Two hours later, he caught hold of the group of small demons that looked up to the Siberian weasel as their leader and interrogated them about the prisoners in the floors above. It turned out that the prisoners up there were comparatively stronger demons, and they were forced to seek refuge on the second floor. On every floor above was a “boss” like the Siberian weasel, but all of them swore their allegiance to the Old Demon of the Black Mountain on the ninth floor or thousand-year-old Tree Demon on the eighth floor.
Xiao Chen decided he would gather the demons’ strength and try to create an opening in the mystic domain of the second floor. He had no plans of asking those devils imprisoned underground. Besides the Great Devil on the sixth underground floor, the rest looked like vicious devils. They would surely go on a rampage as soon as they were let out. The world might come to an end then.
Once his mind was made, he walked up to the third floor of the tower. From the Siberian weasel’s words, the situation up there was foul, so he didn’t take the Koo-chee beast with him. The Barrier on the passage here wasn’t as strong as the one underground, so he easily split it open. After all, even a small demon in the Foundation Building Realm like the weasel could do it.
When he arrived at the third floor, Xiao Chen’s vision suddenly brightened. It wasn’t a foul place as the weasel had described, but a place with lush green grass and towering trees with numerous orange-red and bright purple fruits. Under the trees was a carpet of exotic flowers and rare herbs. It was a paradise compared to the rocky terrains on the second floor.
“Where did a small demon like you come from? Didn’t I ban inferior demons like you from coming up here? You must be courting death for daring to come and steal fruits!”
Two wolf demons emerged from the distance and walked over with a vicious expression. Next to them was a leopard demon covered all over in spots. The leopard demon was alarmed to see Xiao Chen. “Not a demon! It’s a human!”
The moment the wolf demons heard the word “human,” their mouths immediately salivated. Xiao Chen, who had his hands clasped behind his back, frowned and reached out with his left hand. An incorporeal force pulled the wolf demon on the right to his hand. He said coldly, “Where’s your boss?”
These demons bullied him when he got here a year ago. He didn’t like them much, so he didn’t bother being polite. His fierce appearance scared the three demons so much that they became speechless. The leopard demon was momentarily dazed before swiftly returning to his original shape and ran off like a bolt of lightning.
Before long, a menacing Ox-head Monster ran over with a group of demons in tow. The trembling leopard demon hemmed and hawed before saying, “L-Leader, it’s this despicable human! Not only is he here to steal fruits, but he dares to hit us!”
The vicious-looking Ox-head Monster had a scar on his left cheek, two spired horns, large ears, an iron ring between his nostrils, and widened eyes. He glared at Xiao Chen. “Where are you from, kid? How dare you run rampant in the Ox King’s territory!”
Xiao Chen threw the wolf demon to the ground and returned his hand to his back. He glanced at the Ox-King indifferently. “Are you the boss here?”
“Precisely!” the Ox-head Monster cried. He ran up to punch Xiao Chen, moving so quickly that wind rose. The whizzing of wind resounded, yet his fist couldn’t move forward when it was a foot away from Xiao Chen’s Body-protection Qi. This alarmed the group of demons.