Blow Up With Them!

Beside the stream and the campfire, Xu Fang slept soundly, his snores rumbling like thunder.

[Disturbing your peace, snoring louder than a pig! Why are Body-Refining Cultivators just like pigs? You immediately pick up a watermelon knife and bring it down, putting on a pig-slaughtering demonstration!]

With a sigh, Ye Wuyou curled up a little where he lay beside a tree.

Lin Qingqing was counting on her fingers, her face full of distress.

"I thought this would take a few days at most. Instead, we spent a whole week muddleheaded in that village, lost four horses, and now we need another two days to get back. We only brought back the Demon Fox's corpse, too. This mission wasn't worth it. Not worth it at all."

Bai Changzai lay nearby. He should have been fast asleep, but now he spoke with his eyes closed. "Forget it. It's enough that we survived."

"You're awake?" Lin Qingqing paused in surprise, but Bai Changzai made no further sound.

A rustling came from nearby.

Seeing Ye Wuyou get up from the ground, Lin Qingqing was about to ask if he was awake too. But when she caught sight of the crude bandage covering the side of his face, the words reached her lips without coming out.

"Is your eye all right...? I mean, there are so many people in our Heavenly Prison. We could ask around when we get back. Maybe someone has a Divine Ability that could restore it?"

There was a trace of apology in her voice.

The three of them were all in the Second Realm. At first, she had thought this mission was as good as in the bag, and Ye Wuyou was just there to fill out the numbers.

Yet once they entered the mountains, they had all lost their wits in the village. In the end, he had been the one to lead them out, and he had lost an eye because of it.

Should I give him all the pay for this mission when we get back? But I can't. The captain needs medicinal ingredients to heal his soul, too...

Ye Wuyou did not take Lin Qingqing's words to heart. He shook his head slightly and walked off to one side.

"It's too noisy. I'm going for a walk," he said casually.

"Then I'll come too."

"And taking a piss while I'm at it."

"Oh..."

[Don't! A moonless, windy night, a man and a woman alone-surely you should go together?]

Fuck. What a creep.

Having sent Lin Qingqing away, Ye Wuyou passed through the little grove, following the sound of running water to the nearby stream.

Standing at the water's edge, he reached up and rubbed the bandaged side of his face. It felt a little itchy.

What was going on?

The sensation of some unknown foreign object in his eye seemed to be growing stronger.

After a moment's hesitation, Ye Wuyou untied the strip of cloth.

Looking at his reflection in the flowing water, at that pitch-black eye socket in his face, Ye Wuyou smiled helplessly. He reached for the cloth, intending to wrap it back around his face.

The cloth slipped from his hand and fell into the water, drifting away with the current.

Ye Wuyou stood motionless, a strange expression on his face.

His sole remaining eye slowly turned toward his hand, toward the left hand that had just grasped the cloth.

An empty sleeve hung limply, fluttering gently in the night breeze.

At last, a trace of shock and bewilderment appeared on Ye Wuyou's face.

His left hand was gone.

But in the next instant, it was not just his left hand.

His hands, his legs, his waist, his chest... all the way up to his head.

The man standing on the bank suddenly collapsed like a pile of building blocks, leaving only an empty set of clothes to drift slowly to the ground.

"Hah, hah..." Ye Wuyou lay sprawled on the bank, cold sweat beading on his forehead. The skin of his face kept twitching as though seized by spasms.

He kept taking deep breaths.

The scene from moments before resurfaced in his mind like a dream.

Was that a dream, or something else?

He splashed river water onto his face. The sting of the icy water traveled from his skin into his mind, and Ye Wuyou felt a little calmer.

But the very next moment, the icy water before him tore that calm to shreds.

In his reflection, an eerie, blood-red eye now occupied what had been a pitch-black, empty socket.

It was the very same eerie eyeball he had chewed up and swallowed that day.

A strange feeling rose within Ye Wuyou.

This eye was examining him.

Although it had grown on his body, replacing the eye he had lost, Ye Wuyou could feel it looking at the river, at his own reflection in its surface.

As though to confirm his suspicion, the scarlet eye even rolled, shifting to one side.

Ye Wuyou immediately felt his vision shift with it, beyond his control.

At this, Ye Wuyou hurriedly tried to control his eyes-or rather, this one eye.

A moment later, he managed to make his reflection go cross-eyed, and Ye Wuyou breathed a sigh of relief.

He rolled his eyes around. His vision felt completely normal, several times clearer than before, even.

Every blade of grass and every tree across the river stood out clearly to him in the darkness.

The good news was that his eye had recovered.

The bad news was that this eye occasionally had ideas of its own.

"What is this supposed to be? I chewed it up and swallowed it back then, and it can still reappear on my body?"

Ye Wuyou silently watched his reflection in the river, taking in the absurd sight.

He knew far too little about these uncanny things. He truly had no idea what changes had taken place in his body.

"Maybe this eyeball is like Ghost was back then. I swallowed it, so I gained control of it?"

[It was a utterly useless relic of great Dao aura to begin with. So what if you swallowed it? If you hadn't gone blind, would this thing even deserve to appear on your body?]

Tch. Barking like a dog, as always. Me, fucking blind?

Wait. I really did fucking go blind.

As he thought this, Ye Wuyou reached up and touched his eyelid, as though trying to feel whether the eye was real.

But the absurd spectacle did not end. Like a midnight theater, each scene that unfolded grew stranger than the last.

Ye Wuyou silently examined his left hand, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Perhaps because he had already seen enough ridiculous things, his eyes no longer held their earlier horror. Only bewilderment and doubt remained.

His left arm seemed to have swollen from the forearm down and turned a spectral blue, with mottled blood vessels coiling over it. Blue tendons covered the back of his hand, and inch-long fingernails gleamed with an eerie, razor-sharp light.

Had anyone else been present, they would have seen only a man sitting beside the river, examining the empty clothing before him with a demonic, scarlet eye.

Ye Wuyou knew very well what this was.

He had used it many times.

Ghost's ghostly hand.

Now it had appeared on his own body?

Was this good or bad?

Ye Wuyou's expression gradually darkened.

His restored eye might have looked eerie and frightening with its scarlet iris, but as long as he kept it covered in everyday life, Ye Wuyou did not really consider it a bad thing.

But having this ghostly hand appear on his body left Ye Wuyou with a very bad feeling.

That dreamlike scene from moments before was still vivid in his mind.

Ye Wuyou froze slightly, seeming to recall something.

In the Illusion Realm at the bottom of that well, the narrator had apparently said something.

[Bullshit. What fucking use could this broken great Dao remnant have? It's just a dog-skin plaster, the sort of thing that sticks to someone and won't come off. Every so often, it'll even harm...]

He had wanted to ask more back then, but the situation had been urgent, and the narrator's remarks were always erratic anyway.

So, would a great Dao remnant-this uncanny thing-harm people?

[What the hell is there to fear? Given enough time, this bullshit remnant will merely covet your body. Why would you worry about that? These remnants are nothing but defeated foes, things you could crush to death with a casual pinch...]

Stop barking! Speak like a person!

But the narrator fell silent.

Ye Wuyou held his head.

His head really did hurt now. It was not that this damned narrator never helped him, but its help was completely random. There were plenty of things he had to figure out on his own.

Useless bastard. It wasn't even as good as that old Sixth Realm remnant soul Lu Caiwei had!

If Xia Anmeng were within me, I'd have cultivation methods whenever I wanted them, Divine Abilities whenever I needed them. I could ask about anything I didn't understand in cultivation, and there'd be a whole world of secret realms waiting for me to explore. We could even have a friendly chat when there was nothing else to do.

[Utter fucking bullshit! Does that shitty remnant soul deserve you? You immediately reflect on how such a foolish thought could have entered your mind.]

[These great Dao remnants have lingered until now, neither truly alive nor truly dead. When they encounter someone as supremely gifted as you, of course they'll try every means possible to covet your body. First, they offer a little sweetness so you keep using them. Then, once you're delighted with them, once repeated use has deepened your connection, these bastards start harming you.]

Ye Wuyou naturally understood what the narrator meant.

In other words, every time I use Ghost's power, I actually deepen my connection with this thing, and after enough time, it'll start taking over me?

Then how do I stop it?

This time, the narrator answered his thought.

[Stop it? You chuckle softly, finding your own thought utterly foolish. Why stop it? Better to wait until these damned remnants have completely taken over your body. After all, if you could devour it once before, you can devour it a second time...]

Ye Wuyou thought that was complete bullshit.

How were those situations the same? Back then, I borrowed Xia Anmeng's power. And if things really reached that point, my body would already have turned into that uncanny form. Could I really repeat what happened last time?

"If it really comes to that, what should I do?" Ye Wuyou asked with absolute sincerity.

[Blow up with them!]