Bring That Human Back!

In the space beneath the Lake of Life in the Star Dou Forest, Gu Yue sat with her eyes closed, regulating her breathing.

After absorbing some of Na'er's fragmented memories, she had been digesting those unfamiliar human emotions, trying to understand Na'er's obsession with that human boy.

Then she suddenly opened her eyes.

It wasn't a perception. It was a tearing.

Something deep in her soul had been ripped out by the roots, cleanly and decisively, without leaving even the slightest echo.

Her chest throbbed with pain, as though someone had carved out a piece of her. This pain wasn't physical. She and Na'er had been one to begin with, and the other half's disappearance was no less than being split in two by a single slash.

She clutched her chest, her knuckles turning white, her breaths quick and shallow. Her eyes were instantly veined with blood.

"Na'er... sacrificed herself."

Her voice was low, but the air throughout the entire space shuddered with her words.

The shock was tangled with too many things.

Anger, astonishment, and a trace of emptiness she didn't want to admit was there, but was all too real.

Di Tian and the others appeared before her almost instantly and dropped to one knee. They had never seen Gu Yue in this state. Her face was frighteningly pale, her eyes so red they seemed ready to drip blood.

"My lord?" Di Tian ventured.

"Lin Qingzhou." As Gu Yue spoke the name, each syllable sounded as if she were grinding it to pieces before spitting it out, blood tangling with her words.

"That human whelp! He used the Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art to absorb my other half as a sacrifice!"

Gu Yue sprang to her feet and slammed her palm against the stone wall. Web-like cracks burst across the entire surface.

"I should have killed him back then. I can't believe I let Na'er talk me out of it."

Di Tian lowered his head, not daring to respond. He remembered that night at the villa, when Na'er had stood in front of him. The little girl had been so small, so stubborn.

Back then, she had had a bargaining chip. She was still alive, and Gu Yue needed her alive. Now that bargaining chip was gone.

"Di Tian." Gu Yue's voice suddenly went flat, so flat that it frightened them all the more. "Go and bring him here. Alive. I want to see with my own eyes what a human who survived by relying on my other half looks like."

Di Tian glanced up at her. A smile curled at the corner of Gu Yue's mouth, but it didn't reach her eyes. Its chill sent shivers down his spine. He didn't dare say another word. His figure blurred, and he vanished from the spot.

In the living room.

Lin Qingzhou was still kneeling in front of the pile of pajamas.

He had tried several times to stand, but his legs felt as weak as if they didn't belong to him.

So he stayed on his knees. It wasn't as if he had any strength to spare. The silver specks of light on the floor had nearly all gone dark. The last one hovered above his palm for a few seconds, flared once, then vanished.

The living room grew dim again, while the blood-red sky outside the window began to pale.

His mind was blank.

Not figuratively. It was truly blank. No matter how desperate he had been before, there had always been a voice turning over and over in his head.

What to do next. How to survive. How to protect her.

Now it was gone. That voice had fallen silent.

He was alive. He had a Martial Soul now, and cultivation. He could feel Soul Power raging through his body, coursing along the meridians that had once been withered and dry.

But the softest place in his heart had caved in.

He reached out and touched the little blanket draped over the sofa armrest. It was the one Na'er had covered herself with during her afternoon naps. A few strands of silver hair still clung to it.

He clutched the blanket until his knuckles turned white. Something clogged his throat. He couldn't cry it out or swallow it down.

"Silly girl." His voice was hoarse. "Your brother didn't even get the chance to say he was sorry."

The air beyond the door suddenly grew heavy.

It wasn't pressure.

Ordinary pressure could still make someone want to resist. This was pure oppression, like a mountain crashing down from the heavens. The whole house creaked and groaned.

Fine cracks spread across the windowpanes. The glass of milk on the coffee table wobbled twice, toppled over, and spilled across the cover of the Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art.

Lin Qingzhou didn't try to right it.

He knew who had come.

He was too familiar with this aura. Di Tian had felt the same that night, only this time it was heavier—so heavy it could nearly crush his bones. But he still didn't get up. It wasn't that he wasn't afraid of dying. At that moment, he genuinely felt that dying wouldn't matter much.

Di Tian pushed open the door.

"Pushed" was generous. He merely touched it with one finger, and the entire door flew off its hinges, slammed into the opposite wall of the living room, and shattered into several pieces.

Every step he took cracked and caved in the floor tiles. His golden beast eyes fixed on the curled-up figure on the floor, murder churning in their depths without the slightest attempt to hide it.

"Human."

Di Tian's voice didn't sound like speech. It was more like a low-frequency roar that made one's bones tremble.

"Do you know what you've done? My master ordered me to bring you before her. But I think..."

Di Tian raised a hand. The Dragon Claw Phantom gathered at his fingertips. "There's no difference if I break all four of your limbs before taking you back."

Lin Qingzhou finally turned his head, slowly, and looked at Di Tian. His eyes were hollow, as though shrouded in a layer of gray mist. His voice was so calm that even he found it surprising.

"When she left... did it hurt?"

Di Tian froze. He had expected the boy to beg for mercy or explain himself, or at least say something in his own defense.

But there he was, kneeling on the floor and clutching a little blanket, asking that one question. Di Tian didn't know how to answer, and had no intention of doing so.

"Ask my master yourself when you see her." The Dragon Claw Phantom clenched sharply. The surrounding air compressed into a visible sphere, giving off a muffled hum.

Just as the blow was about to land...

"Abnormal host vital signs detected. Threat level: Critical. Defense protocol initiated."

A blue light screen appeared out of thin air before Lin Qingzhou, perfectly blocking the punch.

The Dragon Claw Phantom smashed into the screen, bursting into a blinding white light. The shockwave swept through the room, overturning every piece of furniture. Di Tian's pupils contracted. He had used seventy percent of his strength in that punch. Even a Ferocious Beast of the same rank wouldn't dare take it head-on.

The light screen began to warp—not shatter, but bend as if kneaded, then spring back into its original shape. Di Tian's force was completely absorbed, converted, and then reflected back with equal strength. He grunted and slid half a step backward, carving two furrows across the living room floor before his heel smashed through the threshold.

He looked down at his hand. His knuckles ached faintly.

"What is this?"

Lin Qingzhou was stunned too. He looked down at his chest. At some point, a small pendant had appeared there.

It hadn't been there just moments ago.

The pendant was shaped like a miniature planet, its surface rippling with flowing blue light. It was growing slightly warm; he could feel the heat through his clothes.

When had this thing... He quickly retraced his memories, then suddenly remembered. He had seen it many times whenever he was pulled into the Ruins of the Divine Realm each night...

At the very center of that battlefield, a core that had already gone dark had floated in the air. He had always thought it was just part of the scenery, another piece of the ruins.

"Emergency protection protocol activated. Preparing to teleport. Countdown: five!"

The voice rang out again. It didn't come through his ears; it sounded directly inside his mind, cold and devoid of emotion.

"Trying to run?"

Di Tian took a step forward. Lotus-shaped patterns of light spread beneath his feet, and black dragon scales instantly covered his entire right arm.

He held nothing back. His claw came crashing down, tearing five pitch-black fissures through space itself. They carried an aura of destruction as they hurtled straight toward the light screen. He had used his full strength in this strike. Even a Limit Douluo would have to give way before it.

The blue patterns on the light screen flickered wildly, and fine cracks appeared across its surface.

"Two."

"One."

The light screen exploded. The Dragon Claw Phantom pierced through the spot where Lin Qingzhou had been kneeling, blasting a deep crater into the floor and sending shattered stone spraying against the wall.

But there was nothing in the crater. No blood, no remains. The air warped slightly. A streak of blue light flashed in midair, then vanished completely.

Di Tian stood at the edge of the crater, his expression so dark it seemed ready to drip. He had sensed that spatial fluctuation... It wasn't a Soul Skill or a teleportation formation. It was a system of power he had never encountered in his eight hundred thousand years of life.

Cold and precise, like a machine in operation.

He raised his hand and punched the air again. Cracks spread through the space above the living room. The shockwave shattered every window, and glass shards clattered across the floor.

It was useless. The man was gone.

Di Tian stood motionless, an emotion close to wariness appearing in his golden beast eyes for the first time. He had lived far too long and seen more powerful beings than fish in a river, but that moment just now...

The way the light screen had appeared. The way its energy had moved without the slightest fluctuation of Soul Power.

He didn't recognize it. That made him deeply uncomfortable.

After a moment of silence, he retracted his dragon scales. His figure blurred and vanished, leaving behind a house on the verge of collapse and a deep crater blasted into the floor. Wind poured through the shattered windows, making the curtains flap wildly.

Far away, in the Star Dou Forest.

Gu Yue sensed Di Tian's aura vanish, then reappear in an instant, bringing back a result that made her expression turn utterly grim.

"He's gone."

Di Tian knelt before her, his voice carrying a rare note of defeat.

Gu Yue didn't lose her temper. She simply remained silent for a long time, then slowly turned to look in the direction of Aolai City.

That human whelp had lived under her watch, grown in the palm of her hand, and now, just when she thought she could finally settle accounts, he had been rescued by a power completely unknown to her.

She closed her eyes. What surged through her mind wasn't anger, but a faint trace of emotion that had reached her just before Na'er disappeared... fear, reluctance, and a kind of acceptance so calm it made her heart tighten.

"Go find him. Track him down. No matter where he's hiding."