The woman in the screen of light was, unsurprisingly, the beautiful Older Sister Lou Yunxiao had met in the Demon Abyss...
The person who had seized his hand and saved him after he fell into the Demon Soul River and lost his sight had also been a form Ning Ke had taken...
When Lou Yunxiao realized this, his mind went blank.
Only when his hand unconsciously pressed harder, hurting his own body, did the excruciating pain bring him back to his senses a little.
Then he saw everything Ning Ke had done to save him.
He saw where that missing quarter of the demon core had truly gone.
And the flame that had protected him and allowed him to cultivate demonic aura had never been an otherworldly flame at all.
It had been foxfire shared with him by Ning Ke...
To rid him of demon poison, Ning Ke had dug out his golden core and destroyed his cultivation, only to return all of it to him that very same day.
Without those things protecting him and aiding his cultivation, he could never have resisted the Great Demon, much less reached his current level and killed his true enemy, Nan Lou.
And what had he done?
Before his mother's grave, he had dug out Ning Ke's demon core with his own hands, thrusting his fingers into that hideous wound. Ignoring every struggle and every pang of pain, he had asked him:
"Does it hurt?"
"Do you know that when you dug out my golden core, this was how much it hurt?"
A beast.
He was the true beast who repaid kindness with cruelty.
No wonder that bloodstained demon core had felt familiar to him.
The demon core fused into his body had been resonating with Ning Ke's.
Yet that day, he