He lifted his head and glanced at the night sky. Then his figure blurred as he prepared to act.
Yet just then, a faint voice reached his ears. "Cutting off someone's livelihood is like killing their parents. So what would you call destroying the place where someone makes their home and earns their living?"
The voice had come out of nowhere, yet carried a hint of teasing.
But the shadow had no way to tell. His scalp prickled, and only one thought remained in his mind...
Who was it?
He had been cautious. Not a single person had been lying in wait or following him all this way.
And before acting just now, he had used his spiritual sense to inspect his surroundings. The Founder's Shrine had been absolutely empty.
How had someone suddenly started speaking right beside him?
If that were all, he would not have been so afraid.
The key was that the moment the faint voice reached his ears, he discovered that his concealment technique had suddenly stopped working.
It was as if a bug hidden in the shadows had been forced into the light of day.
That left him shocked and terrified.
His heart sank to the very bottom.
He was a Demon Cultivator, after all. The concealment he had used wasn't a spell—it was an innate supernatural ability he had awakened!
Even Ancestor Tongxuan would have struggled to break it.
Much less a faint sentence?
Who could possibly do such a thing?
Could the Feathering Sect have a Mahayana Ancestor sitting in its ranks?
Or perhaps someone even more powerful...
The shadow felt his whole body go limp, his mind utterly blank.
He didn't run.
It wasn't that he didn't want to. He simply couldn't...
At that moment, he was like a puddle of mud, nearly scared into collapsing on the ground.
"This... how is this possible?"
The shadow himself found it unbelievable.
Among the Demon King's subordinates, he wasn't the bravest Demon Cultivator, but he was the boldest. Otherwise, he wouldn't have dared risk venturing alone into the Feathering Sect, this dragon's pool and tiger's den.
What had let him do it wasn't just his ability to conceal himself. It was his courage, too.
But now, he hadn't even seen the enemy. Just hearing his voice had scared him half to death.
The shadow himself found it unbelievable. When had he become such a coward?
But there was no reason.
He was simply afraid.
Like a mouse caught in a cat's paw, all he could do now was tremble!
Yet he was unwilling to accept it.
Even if he had to die, he wanted to understand why.
But he didn't even have the courage to ask where the other person was.
All he could do was huddle there, trembling.
The Demon Cultivator was utterly bewildered, his mind hazy.
He began to wonder whether a Mahayana Ancestor could truly possess such imposing might. An outrageous thought even rose in his heart...
Could I have run into a True Immortal?
But it seemed too absurd.
Time dragged on like years.
The Demon Cultivator felt he was going mad.
Just then, footsteps reached his ears. At last, he mustered the courage to raise his head.
Then he saw a young man in his early twenties, with ordinary looks and the green robe of a Qi Refining Realm disciple.
The Demon Cultivator's expression instantly turned as vivid as if he'd seen a ghost.
Although he had been terribly anxious and cowering just now, he had also been racking his brains, trying to figure out which powerful figure he had encountered.
He had considered all sorts of possibilities.
From Mahayana to Tribulation Transcendence Realm, all the way up to True Immortals and beyond...
Yet he had never imagined this result.
Could it really be this seemingly ordinary young man before him?
The other man looked as he did, wearing a warm smile and seeming completely harmless. But the Demon Cultivator could sense that he was the one who had brought him this nightmare-like terror.
Thud!
The Demon Cultivator fell to his knees of his own accord, tears streaming down his face. The young man had no spiritual pressure about him, yet he felt as though he were facing a towering mountain—no, the weight of all the worlds in the heavens!
"Tell me, why exactly did you come to the Feathering Sect?"
Lin Xiaoyao wore a warm smile.
An ordinary cultivator would have used a soul-searching technique in this situation.
But he, of course, had no need to be so crude or go to so much trouble.
He could simply let the other party tell him.
"Y-you... if I tell you, could you let me go?"
The Demon Cultivator's hoarse voice reached his ears. It seemed that merely saying those words had used up every last bit of his strength.
"No."
Lin Xiaoyao's voice remained as calm and gentle as before. He didn't like lying to people, so he told the truth.
If anyone else had witnessed this scene, it would undoubtedly have seemed absurd.
If you wanted the other party to confess, shouldn't you offer him a little hope, a little sweetness? How could you simply tell him that even if he came clean, you would still kill him?
If he would die whether he spoke or not, then in despair he surely wouldn't confess. Even if he did, he would probably make things up...
Yet Lin Xiaoyao seemed not to care about that at all. He didn't appear to have considered that the other party might lie to him out of desperation.
But what happened next was simply unbelievable.
Though he knew he would die, the other party was indeed terrified, yet he didn't dare show even the slightest trace of resentment. He still obediently laid out every detail of what had happened, bit by bit, for Lin Xiaoyao.
He concealed nothing, recounting everything in painstaking detail, just like a minister answering his ruler's questions.
Half an hour later.
"Black Python Mountain, and a Demon King?"
Lin Xiaoyao nodded.
At last, he looked back at the shadow. "Though Heaven has a virtue of cherishing life, I have no interest in releasing a tiger back into the mountains. How about this? Take your own life."
"Thank you. Thank you, my lord."
The Demon Cultivator thought he ought to be furious that he was being told to kill himself.
As a proud and powerful member of the Demon Race, how could he surrender meekly before an enemy?
Even knowing he couldn't win, he should still fight to the death, engaging his foe in a grand battle. And even if he ultimately lost, he should make the other party fight to the bitter end.
In short, he absolutely shouldn't let the other party have his way so easily.
After all, if he wasn't even afraid of death, what in this world could possibly make him feel fear or hold him back?
For all these years, the Demon Cultivator had always thought this way and acted accordingly. On several occasions, he had even fought his way out of danger and survived against the odds.
So deep down, he felt he ought to fight to the death now, too. So what if the other party was a True Immortal? Even if he died, he would take a bite out of him!
Yet the truth was that he wanted to resist, but some invisible force seemed to tell him that he mustn't, that he couldn't resist.
How could you defy this great lord?
Even if he told you to die, it was still a kindness. You should obediently do as you were told...
Why?
The Demon Cultivator couldn't understand. Tears streamed down his face.
Yet his body obeyed without hesitation. He not only refrained from resisting, but even thanked the other party before dying, then kowtowed three times.
The Demon Cultivator thought he must have gone mad.
And after saying his farewells and offering his thanks, he really did end his own life, passing away right there.
Before you continue