Chapter 44 Xiao Huaiyuan... Upon seeing him again, he only thought his senior brother would run away...
In that instant, Fu Ming felt as if he had been hit hard with a hammer several times, his head spinning and feeling like mush.
They were all words, but he couldn't understand them when they were put together. He still hadn't figured out when Xiao Huaiyuan had discovered his identity, so what was he trying to say by suddenly revealing it now?
After pondering Xiao Huaiyuan's words several times, he realized another problem.
Wait, what do you mean by "you really like it"?
What do you mean by wanting to hold the covenant ceremony at the Headmaster Peak?
At this moment, Fu Ming, who knew nothing about love, suddenly had an epiphany. Perhaps, maybe, perhaps, Xiao Huaiyuan had been plotting against him for a long time. His unusual behavior was not anger, but excitement.
Xiao Huaiyuan, I'm straight.
So you weren't straight all along?
Only heavy breathing came from the other end of the jade slip; Xiao Huaiyuan was waiting for his reply.
Fu Ming's teeth chattered, but he couldn't bring himself to utter the accusation: "Xiao Huaiyuan, you..."
With a tearing sound, a sharp blade pierced through the glass window. In this critical moment, Fu Ming only had time to slightly turn his head before his sideburns were completely severed and fell down in a flurry.
Fu Ming covered the deep, bone-revealing wound on his right cheek, but bright red blood seeped out from between his fingers, dripping onto his clothes.
He's disfigured.
You really can't get distracted during a battle.
Immediately following were five or six more sword energies slashing straight down, shattering the glass and sending frost flying everywhere.
This room must have been an attic, not very large. Fu Ming had nowhere to hide, so he could only parry with his sword and use the raging fire to melt the frost, leaving the floor covered with slippery liquid.
However, thanks to his injured body, he was able to temporarily forget about his gay rivalry with Xiao Huaiyuan.
Amidst his busy schedule, Fu Ming took a moment to communicate with the remnant soul residing in the mirror: "Senior True Immortal, please say something. How long are we going to have to waste this time with him?"
Getting back to the main point, Fu Ming dared to fight the crippled body alone with only the early stage of the Golden Core realm, not because he wanted to be a hero and die in vain, but because he had something to rely on.
The remnant soul could see that he possessed the Primordial Devouring Heaven Record, so it devised a plan with him to survive in a dangerous situation. First, it would try its best to delay and deplete his defenses, then take advantage of his unpreparedness to devour his spiritual power, and finally detonate the golden core to return the soul to its original position.
To gain Fu Ming's support, the reward was set at a fixed price. Fu Ming originally wanted to take the Xuanyuan Mirror as a deposit, but the remnant soul refused outright, saying that people in the mortal world would get lost in the intertwined causal lines if they saw too much of it, and their souls would not be able to return.
Thus, Fu Ming eventually obtained the control core of the Immortal Palace, which was an exquisitely crafted Luban lock capable of freely manipulating spatial transformations. With a thought, he absorbed it into his divine consciousness, placing it alongside the dormant system.
"Heh, I thought you were going to reminisce with your prospective Daoist partner. Let's stall for another quarter of an hour." The remnant soul emphasized the word "prospective," making it sound very sarcastic and disrespectful to an elder.
"This is all a misunderstanding. Hey, do you ancient cultivators really have no problem with homosexuality?"
The white-robed remnant soul with an air of otherworldly grace stared at him with an extremely surprised look: "Don't you know that my Daoist partner is a man?"
Fu Ming choked up.
How could he know this? He skips his early morning classes every day and never listens to the history of cultivation.
It turns out that if the upper beam is crooked, the lower beam will be crooked too; if the ancestors are not upright, the descendants will be crooked.
He was truly losing hope in this cultivation world filled with gay men!
"Senior brother, watch your back." Xiao Huaiyuan's fanaticism, which had been as if he had been possessed, finally subsided, and he returned to a state where he could communicate with Fu Ming.
Someone reminded him that Fu Ming had dodged quickly this time, but the wound on his face was difficult to heal and was still oozing blood, making him look quite disheveled, like a cat with a smeared face.
After a series of transformations, several interconnected study rooms and storage rooms were deliberately recessed into a U-shape, where Fu Ming and the mangled body engaged in a chase-and-escape game reminiscent of the Qin King circling a pillar.
This required far less effort than a direct confrontation. Fu Ming nimbly jumped over the windowsill, diverting his attention to figuring out how to deal with Xiao Huaiyuan.
Fortunately, as long as his junior brother didn't mention it, he could pretend not to know that his junior brother harbored feelings for him. After all, once his clone died, the two of them wouldn't have another chance to meet.
But one lie leads to a hundred more, so Fu Ming had no choice but to continue making up stories, while also trying to soothe Xiao Huaiyuan's emotions: "Junior brother, actually, there's no need to make a big fuss about how we understand each other. Remember to keep it a secret, we'll talk about it later."
"But will you return to Tianyan Sect, Senior Brother?"
Xiao Huaiyuan keenly sensed his little scheme, but there was a hint of resentment in his words, and his deep, questioning voice sent a chill down Fu Ming's spine.
"Hmm... It's alright, I'll leave the Immortal Palace soon, almost there." Fu Ming replied irrelevantly, his little finger fidgeting back and forth on the hilt of his sword. Someone could immediately see the tension in his small gesture.
The dark robes fluttered in the white jade palace, like an eagle spreading its tail feathers in a snowfield, and then the hunter in the forest suddenly turned around.
After such a long struggle, Fu Ming finally sensed... the spiritual energy fluctuations of the broken body, which meant that he had transformed from an immortal into a human.
After blasting open several bronze doors, the man with the broken body, sword in hand, chased after the main hall. He could no longer see, but he could still sense the dense and scattered spiritual energy points here, though he couldn't discern their shapes.
Suddenly, a lithe figure swooped down from the palace lantern hanging from the beam, its momentum concentrated on the tip of the sword, and attacked the mangled body.
He raised the slender sword from the mangled body, easily blocking the sharp blade's edge. It wasn't difficult. He didn't understand why such a weak prey didn't run away but instead attacked him, but he still intended to devour it.
His mouth stretched from ear to ear, and his tongue was gone. The deep red and black lips made the handsome face of the True Immortal instantly look as terrifying as some kind of evil demon or Asura.
Fu Ming's black hair danced due to the suction force, but he did not resist. He simply pressed his palm gently against the dantian of the mangled body.
In that instant, the dantian of the mangled body silently shrank.
Fu Ming's pale, golden eyes turned bright red at this moment.
The remaining disciples, who had been sent outside the Immortal Palace, had not yet encountered any other powerful enemies and seemed rather drowsy. To ensure the best possible broadcast, the cameraman combined the remaining ten or so mirrors into one large mirror, focusing on broadcasting the battle between Fu Ming and the broken body.
"Xiao Huaiyuan, the move your disciple used is—Fu Ming's Hunyuan Devouring Heaven Record?" Yang Pei, the Palace Master of Rihua Palace, turned around and raised her voice to interrogate Xiao Huaiyuan.
This man didn't even sit with them; he stayed alone by the window to communicate with his dear disciple, and even set up a soundproof barrier.
What exactly is it that's shady and we need to be wary of them?
When Fu Ming massacred Qingyue Palace, he completely drained all the spiritual energy from the palace, leaving the dantian of every corpse empty. This still evokes a sense of unease throughout the Immortal Alliance.
Now that they see the Devouring Technique reappear, they are naturally nervous.
Xiao Huaiyuan removed the soundproof barrier and said calmly, "My disciple has just received the inheritance of a True Immortal. It is an ancient technique, and it is not impossible that it happens to be similar to the Devouring Technique. Moreover, the True Immortal's body can still move, which is not a sign that its spiritual power has been drained."
As expected, words came true. The balance of power reversed, the immortal's broken body regained its footing, and Fu Ming, who had been so imposing just moments before, was sent flying by a sword and crashed into the wall.
The veins on Xiao Huaiyuan's forehead bulged, and he erected a soundproof barrier again.
"Kid, you only lasted this long before giving up. He still has most of his spiritual energy left. Keep going!"
Fu Ming, who forced himself to swallow the blood in his throat, was ridiculed by the remnant soul of a True Immortal. He began to miss the system that didn't like to argue with him.
This is obvious; spanning two major realms, of course you can't possibly draw them all.
But it doesn't matter, he has already achieved his goal.
Suddenly, a cold, gray-blue hand gripped Fu Ming's slender white neck, and the mangled body lifted him up in mid-air with one hand.
The lack of oxygen made Fu Ming's brain even more dizzy, and he saw bluish-purple spots of light in front of his eyes. But what he was thinking at that moment was: Luckily, Xiao Huaiyuan was not here, otherwise he would have gone crazy with anger again.
"Senior brother."
"Senior brother!"
"Cough, I... am here." Fu Ming managed to squeeze out a few words, realizing his mistake; he had forgotten to hang up the phone with the Immortal Realm.
He raised his hand shakily, as if trying to grasp something, and slowly closed his five fingers.
Asgard disintegrates.
The jade-white bricks that made up the entire Fox Palace gradually became transparent, and Fu Ming felt a lightness under his feet and around his neck, and began to lose his weight.
Unexpectedly, the final location of the celestial palace was in mid-air. He had the blue sky above him and his back to the ground, with the sky and earth hanging upside down and his slowly moving, mangled body coming into view.
He wants to... detonate the golden core outside the celestial palace.
With a thud, the soft meadow supported the rapidly falling Fu Ming, the slender blades of grass separating him from his mangled body, sending a powerful, circular shockwave into the distance.
This was the fairy island, Daiyu, where he landed on his first day.
"Junior Brother Ming!" A familiar, rough voice seemed to come from afar, but Fu Ming couldn't tell if it was Li Xiang or Jiang Jie.
Amidst the rustling and scraping sounds, the mangled body that followed him rose faster than he did, but did not approach him. How unlucky he was! The Grand Competition Secret Realm had so many deserted areas, yet he fell right into the place where the participating disciples were gathered.
Oh no, the mutilated body is trying to devour a living person to replenish its spiritual power.
"Don't come any closer!"
Despite his vision being blurred by blood, Fu Ming rushed toward the mangled body and tightly locked its throat with his arm.
Well, it's good that I can use this shell to do good deeds before I die, so that my good deeds and bad deeds will be balanced out.
Fu Ming calmly calculated the benefits of self-destruction.
His fair and beautiful face seemed born to be stained with blood, making him look like both a martyr and a vengeful ghost crawling out of the deepest hell.
A ray of sunlight happened to illuminate his eyes, revealing a touch of tenderness.
"Junior brother, take care of yourself... goodbye." He smiled at the other end of the jade slip.
Fu Ming's golden core absorbed too much spiritual energy that did not belong to him, and it was currently being compressed and circulated wildly. It only needed to be ignited by a single spark to explode.
Boom!
The flat grassland collapsed with a roar. Fu Ming sacrificed himself to blast a giant hole through the floating island, leaving the two of them nowhere to be found.
"Fu Ming!!!"
Xiao Huaiyuan's heart was throbbing with pain. He had only thought that his senior brother would run away, but he never expected such a tragic and sorrowful farewell.
But that wasn't the end of it. In the next few milliseconds, the five immortal islands shook one after another, and the Formless Sea beneath the immortal islands suddenly burst into flames. The Grand Competition Secret Realm seemed to be decaying from its very roots, revealing its decaying and dying interior.
The tremors, one after another, not only shook this secluded little world, but also extended their reach to the vast Three Realms.
The Lingxing Gate standing in the Tianyan Sect Square was also shaking violently, and the passage within it seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Xu Yan shouted at Xiao Huaiyuan, who was still immersed in grief, "Xiao Huaiyuan, come and see! The Grand Competition Secret Realm has reopened!"
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Author's note: I lost, so I wrote a bit slowly and ended up not having enough water to shower in the dorm after midnight, waaaaaah TT
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