Big sister, I caught you

Blind in both eyes, Lou Yunxiao had been thrown into the perilous Demon Soul River before he had even learned to use spiritual power to explore his surroundings. All he could sense was darkness and cold.

And the suffocating feeling of river water closing over his head.

Whenever he summoned his spiritual power and raised a protective barrier, the demon souls rushed to tear into it, shattering it and leaving him drowning again.

The demon souls were no fools. They sensed the danger of the foxfire Ning Ke had left in Lou Yunxiao's chest and avoided touching it.

Instead, they relentlessly gnawed at the rest of his body.

Like sharp-toothed piranhas, they seemed ready to tear Lou Yunxiao apart and devour him.

In the novel, Lou Yunxiao possessed an ice-aspected heavenly spirit root of the utmost purity, which was the fundamental reason for his astonishing cultivation speed.

But an ice spirit root like his naturally suppressed flames.

So although the foxfire Ning Ke had given him had saved his life, it also acted as a counterbalance to his ice spirit root.

It was like specializing in a particular field: mastering one subject could make someone a genius, but trying to master two at once could leave them excelling at neither.

Lou Yunxiao was now, in a sense, a living contradiction.

The Dao was yang; the demonic was yin.

Fire was warm; ice was cold.

They were inherently incompatible, yet he insisted on making them both obey and serve a young boy like himself.

The difficulty was easy to imagine.

Pain swept through his entire body. Lou Yunxiao opened his mouth to breathe, only for river water to pour in. He opened his eyes wide, yet could not sense the slightest light.

Demon souls crawled all over him, leaving only that tiny patch of warmth in his chest.

His hazy memories of the previous night instead grew clearer in this moment of extreme danger.

He remembered that big sister had given him this fire.

It was supremely yang and fiercely intense, sending waves of piercing pain through his ice spirit root, yet keeping the demon souls from acting recklessly.

It was a terrifying power comparable to an otherworldly flame born of heaven and earth.

Big sister had given it to him.

If he failed to use it well, he would disgrace this otherworldly flame.

He would betray big sister's kindness and expectations.

At that thought, a faint light seemed to kindle in Lou Yunxiao's vacant, lifeless eyes. His dark hair drifted around his handsome, youthful face, while the demon souls biting densely at him like black silk ribbons made him resemble a water spirit in the dark river.

His lips moved as he murmured, "The demonic is yin, so I'll use ice to aid you. The Dao is yang, so I'll use fire to aid you."

"I will never let such an extraordinary opportunity go to waste in my hands!"

With that, he tried to command the flames with his left hand, guiding them only through the meridians on the left side of his body, while his right hand drew on the spiritual power of his ice spirit root, channeling it only through the meridians on his right.

For a moment, ice and fire divided his world. His newly repaired meridians ruptured one after another. Beads of blood seeped through his skin, only to be greedily swallowed by the demon souls.

As one force waned and the other surged, Lou Yunxiao never once considered giving up beneath these layers of agony. He stubbornly held on, locked in a stalemate...

Seven days passed in the blink of an eye.

On the bank of the Demon Soul River, Ning Ke had already swapped his tea for refreshing spirit fruit juice. With one leg crossed over the other, he leisurely bantered with Xiao Yuan.

"Hey, Xiao Yuan, think about it. If I hadn't transmigrated here to do this mission, who would Lou Yunxiao's real unattainable love have been?"

[Who knows?] Xiao Yuan's voice had previously been affected and coy, but after spending several days with Ning Ke, it had grown just as nonchalant. [I'm just a broke worker following my master's orders to manage this novel world.]

[That question is beyond my clearance. I can't answer it.]

"Tch. Asking you is always a waste of breath." Ning Ke sipped his juice and shook his head. "Look at how innocent this little brat is now. Who would guess he'd turn into such a hypocrite later, accepting the female lead's confession while still keeping his unattainable love in his heart? Clearly, he's got a bit of a scumbag streak when it comes to romance."

"Still, I really envy how all those women will fall over themselves for him in the future. Unlike me. I spent more than twenty years single in the modern world, and even walking past the residential garden on my way home from work meant getting kicked while I was down by couples showing off their love."

Growing more bitter with every word, Ning Ke raised his cup. "Ah, a toast to all the singles out there. I'll drink this one fir-"

Boom-

An enormous blast jolted Ning Ke's entire body. Without his demonic power protecting him, the juice would probably have spilled all over him.

Furious, he spat out a curse and pulled down his sunglasses, looking toward the river's surface, which had begun bubbling after the explosion. The corner of his mouth twitched.

"What? Are we blasting the pond now?"

Before he had finished speaking, another boom- rang out.

The river bulged upward, then exploded three stories high.

It set the opening theme of the 1986 adaptation of Journey to the West playing on repeat in Ning Ke's head-the bit where the river exploded and Sun Wukong somersaulted out of the stone.

Dun-dun-da-da, dun-dun-da-da, dun-dun-da-da, dun-dun-da-da...

Unfortunately, the Monkey King he was expecting did not appear. Instead, a "water ghost" emerged, hair disheveled and clothes in tatters.

On closer inspection, who else could it be but Lou Yunxiao?

Ning Ke's eyes lit up. The kid finally lived up to my expectations. He got himself out in such a short time.

He was just about to greet him when the little water ghost swayed in midair for two seconds, then fell back into the river with a splash...

With his hand halfway raised, Ning Ke said, "Mm. He got out, but not entirely."

"Hard to say. Let's keep watching."

The river's surface still had not calmed, but within a one-li radius, the water was visibly forming a bizarre divide.

One side churned and boiled continuously, occasionally exploding; the other formed a thin sheet of ice, shattered into fragments, then froze again and broke apart once more.

The boiling side gave off pure Daoist spiritual power, while the frozen side exuded black demonic energy that had almost merged with the Demon Soul River.

Ning Ke dropped his joking manner and frowned.

Extending his spiritual sense to the riverbed, he could feel that Lou Yunxiao's physical condition was extremely unstable.

One moment, his body became unbearably cold; the next, unbearably hot.

By the principle of thermal expansion and contraction, Lou Yunxiao was very likely to become not the Monkey King, but the stone that shattered after the Monkey King sprang out of it.

One boom, and not even scraps would remain.

At that thought, Ning Ke set down his juice cup. His exquisite white satin boots stepped onto the river's surface, carrying him over the thin ice as though it were solid ground.

Not a single demon soul dared approach him wherever he passed.

His skirt, as pure as fresh snow, stirred gently in the breeze. His waist-length dark hair, held up with only a jade hairpin, brushed across his breathtakingly beautiful, cool face. As he walked, he looked like an immortal maiden descending into the mortal world.

Even heaven and earth paled beside him.

And just as this "beautiful immortal maiden" stopped at the edge of the ice, foxfire burning in his palm as he prepared to roll up his sleeves and haul Lou Yunxiao out of the water, a pale, slender hand suddenly grabbed the ice!

The disheveled boy raised his head above the surface and coughed up a mouthful of river water mixed with blood. His other hand swiftly, yet with extreme care, caught hold of Ning Ke's skirt.

He was clearly gazing at Ning Ke with those blind eyes.

Yet for an instant, Ning Ke had the illusion that the boy could see straight through him.

He heard Lou Yunxiao smile as he said to him.

"Big sister, I caught you."