I picked up the torch and pressed it against his neck with murderous intent: "This is the fire you use to cook. As far as I know, this is no ordinary fire. Only the true fire of demons, monsters, or immortals and gods can use such a fire. Mortals would never use such a fire."

Are you a demon, a monster, or a fairy? Confess now, or I'll burn you alive!

That's right. We kept a close watch on his every move day and night and discovered that the fire he used was very different from ordinary fire.

Ye Chen smiled knowingly and said dismissively, "Just because of that? I never said I was a mortal."

He was so frank that I didn't know how to respond: "Also, I had someone investigate your background, and there's no such person as you. All that talk about being anxious to save your mother is just nonsense!"

"Uh, you knew all along?"

Ye Chen, however, remained fearless, unusually abandoning his playful demeanor and becoming serious.

"So, who exactly are you?" Zhou Lang couldn't suppress his eagerness to know his background and asked him.

"Lord Wenheng, do you not even remember whether we are enemies or old friends? What a pity. Little Flower Fairy, why don't you guess who I am?" Ye Chen's words were once again accompanied by his usual playful and wicked smile.

This person is truly serious; he can't even say three sentences straight.

"The only people who call me 'Little Flower Spirit' besides that brat Wen Heng are that devilish thing that bewitched me into stealing Wen Heng's spiritual power." Actually, I had guessed that it was related to him, but I wasn't quite sure.

"Naughty~ What the hell? My name is Ye Chen. How can such a meaningful name as Ye Chen be called a ghost?"

Ye Chen's eyes were full of amusement, yet he made no attempt to hide his background from me, which made me feel even more uneasy and uncertain.

Zhou Lang and I are now mortals without any magical powers, and we have no idea what this bastard's true nature is. Judging from his calm and composed attitude, it seems as if he has already seen through us.

I held the fire to him with even greater caution: "If that's the case, then I'll burn you!"

"Oh dear? No, no, no, Miss Ahua, how can I put it? I never intended to harm you. What happened last time was purely a misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding? You put such poison in my steamed bun, tricked me into going to the alley where Zhou Lang and I were beaten by a mob, and used puppetry on Zhou Lang while he had old injuries, trying to seal his soul! Weren't all these things done by you alone? I'm afraid my father and mother were also killed by you using puppetry! You should just die! You monster!"

Having said that, I raised the torch to set him on fire.

"The poison in that cornbread, the person who tricked you into being beaten by a mob in the alley, the person who used puppetry on Zhou Lang, the person who harmed your father and mother—none of them were me. It was all Ye Ling'er's doing!" Under my coercion, Ye Chen finally blurted out the truth.

"Who is Ye Ling'er?" I asked, pausing halfway with the torch in my hand.

"Naturally, he's an old acquaintance of your young master. Lord Wenheng, do you really not remember your old acquaintance, Ye Ling'er?" Ye Chen looked at Zhou Lang with a meaningful expression and said sarcastically.

Hearing Ye Chen's words, Zhou Lang lowered his head and muttered, "Ye Ling'er... Ye Ling'er... who is she?"

He clearly doesn't remember.

But I do recall that on the mountaintop that day, a ghost with a distinctly female voice possessed Zhou Lang's body.

They also set up an array to recall a fragment of Wen Heng's divine consciousness, attempting to seal him within his immortal body.

From their conversation at the time, it seemed that the two of them did indeed have a deep and unbreakable bond.

Could it really be that Wen Heng's romantic entanglements?

What made that woman hate him so much? That's why she kept harassing him and threatening to kill him and seal him away.

"No, that's not right. Didn't they say she was transformed from the Demon King's son into a female spirit? That means her original form was a man! Who exactly are you?" I asked him coldly, my eyes sharp.

"That's right, I am the son of the Demon King. Ye Ling'er is now a woman who is a manifestation of my lustful spirit and is infatuated with the God Wen Heng. It all started with the ancient Demon King..."

"The King of the Demon Realm is my father, and the King of the Monster Realm is my mother." Ye Chen felt inexplicably proud.

"Nonsense! I know the Demon King is your father, the Monster King is your mother! And you're a little turtle born of the King of Kings! Get to the point!"

Ye Chen, unusually, turned his playful smile into a dark expression and continued, "They gave birth to me, but never raised me, and now their whereabouts are unknown. They're probably dead."

"The son of a demon king, brimming with demonic energy, was nurtured from childhood within a piece of the old Yama King's Soul-Controlling Jade to temper his demonic aura. Just as I was about to emerge from seclusion and become a human, the old Yama King threw me into the Reincarnation Well of the God Wenheng."

At that time, he was just a minor Taoist priest who had gone through nine lifetimes and was only one life away from becoming an immortal after experiencing a love tribulation.

But I fell into his cycle of reincarnation and was reborn as a mortal woman in his world who admired him.

The two of them were initially deeply in love and inseparable.

However, at that time, their relationship was broken up by Wen Heng's mortal master.

Wen Heng, torn between the path of righteousness and love, ultimately chose the path of righteousness, abandoning his lifelong romance with Ye Ling'er.

Because of his betrayal, she eventually joined the demonic path, which was opposed to it, to wreak havoc on the human world.

The Dao and the Demonic are opposed to each other, and in the end, Wen Heng still personally killed the mortal Ye Ling'er.

The mortal Ye Ling'er died, and my seal was broken as a result.

But my lustful soul's resentment towards Wen Heng did not diminish in the slightest; on the contrary, it grew stronger day by day.

As a man, I am filled with admiration and resentment for another man, which not only makes me ashamed to face him, but also torments me day and night.

So I pulled out this lustful spirit of mine and discarded it.

Later, that lustful spirit possessed Wen Heng's heart again, tormenting him day and night, causing him unbearable pain.

Wen Heng was a cold-hearted and ruthless man after all. In the end, he even went so far as to ruthlessly cut out his heart and bleed out his blood to separate her from his body.

Later, the resentful spirit haunted you day and night, absorbing your spiritual energy and that of the Mountain God Seal, and tempting you to steal Wen Heng's divine power.

With her enhanced spiritual power, she was able to occasionally return into my body to devour the divine consciousness that controlled me, attempting to use my magic to cultivate herself into a woman.

Fortunately, I had enough willpower to prevent her from succeeding and threw her out again.

Later, she seemed to have been summoned by the girl Ahua. She tried to seize the immortal body of the god Wenheng and use his immortal power to cultivate herself into a woman, but she failed.

Obsessed with her delusions, she relied on absorbing the life essence of people to bewitch some lowly spirits and monsters, absorbing their spiritual energy to enhance her own spiritual power.

Gradually, I discovered that she had already been able to occupy half of my consciousness and body for half of the time.

So I agreed to her request and exhausted my spiritual power to cultivate her into a woman's soul.

But she was not satisfied with the status quo. Taking advantage of my weak spiritual power, she seized my body and tried to turn my demonic body into a woman's body.

How could I possibly obey such an arrogant and conceited person?

Lacking the spirit of passion, I can only rebuild my passion by finding a woman who can ignite my desires, so that she will not take advantage of me again.

But the day I saw you begging on the street, I realized that my feelings for you had begun to sprout.

To rekindle my lustful spirit, I learned some begging techniques to seduce you, hoping you would become my apprentice and increase our opportunities to spend time together. This was a plan I had long ago devised.

"You planned this all along to seduce me?" I stared in disbelief, my eyes wide with shock.

"Yes!" He looked at me with unwavering eyes.

"But unfortunately, Wen Heng, who was beside you, woke up Ye Ling'er again. He resentfully poisoned the cornbread you were eating, and conspired with that group of people to surround you and Zhou Lang in the alley and beat them up. He also took this opportunity to cast a puppet spell on Zhou Lang, intending to recall his consciousness and seal him away."

If she takes this opportunity to possess Wen Heng's body, she might turn my body back into a woman's.

"That won't do. I can only help you break through that formation."

"So it was you who helped me behind the scenes that day?" I suddenly realized.

"But when I saw you and Wen Hengling break the seal, my budding lust was in so much pain it felt like I was dying."

"I could only take advantage of Ling'er's weakened state that night, shamelessly finding an excuse to approach you. You know what happened next."

"You knew about my spiritual practice with Wen Heng?"

"Yes!" Ye Chen looked at me with some sorrow.

"You're a pervert!" I roared in fury!

"Ah Hua, is Wen Heng another version of me? You had spiritual practice with him?" Zhou Lang looked at me in disbelief.

"I...aren't those all you?" Why did Zhou Lang suddenly bring this up again?

“I remember you discussed with him how to abandon me!” Zhou Lang said angrily.

"Why can't we get over this? Didn't I choose you in the end?" I argued.

"But I didn't know you were having spiritual practices with him..."

"You don't know?" I pretended to be clueless.

It's a tangled mess, impossible to unravel.