Just as Jua Gu felt the next attack coming, he heard something—soft footsteps, perhaps, or the faint sound of someone running toward them. His mind was too muddled to tell. Then, in the next second, the man looming over him suddenly collapsed.
Ying Di's body went limp and fell heavily onto him.
Jua blinked, but the room refused to come into focus. Everything was blurred at the edges, shifting and swimming before his eyes. He could hear someone shouting, though the voice seemed distant, as if it were coming from the other side of a thick wall.
A familiar face slowly appeared above him.
Ying Mao…?
The boy was crying. Jua could see his mouth moving, but the words reached him in broken pieces. Cold droplets splattered across Jua's face, and only then did he realize they were tears.
Ying Mao… Leave…
His thoughts moved sluggishly, struggling to form a complete sentence.
This bastard… might really kill you…
Jua tried to raise his hand and push the boy away, but even that small movement felt impossibly difficult. His arm trembled as he lifted it, and his fingers barely managed to brush against Ying Mao's shoulder.
Instead of leaving, the child grabbed his hand tightly.
"Help! Somebody help!" Ying Mao cried, his voice cracking with panic.
His little hands were stained red and sticky. Jua stared at them for a moment, unable to understand where the blood had come from. Then he felt something warm spreading across his chest.
Blood.
He lowered his gaze, though the motion made the room spin. His clothes were soaked through, and a thick, metallic smell filled his nose. On him, Ying Di lay motionless, his head turned to one side. The back of his skull had been badly wounded, and blood continued to seep from the injury, running down his neck and spilling onto Jua's body.
Ying Di's blood…
The realization came slowly.
The treacherous man's blood was pouring onto him, but something even stranger was happening. The warmth against his chest began to fade. Not because the blood was drying, but because it was disappearing into his skin.
Jua stared blankly as the blood was drawn into his body through his pores.
For a moment, he thought he was imagining it. His head had been struck too many times. Perhaps he was already dying, and this was simply another strange hallucination.
But the sensation was real.
As a demonic cultivator, one of the most unorthodox and dangerous ways to cultivate was by absorbing the blood of a living person. Jua had never used such a method in his previous life. He had considered it vile, unstable, and far too easy to lose control of.
Yet now, in this desperate moment, his body had begun the process without his permission.
He tried to stop it.
Nothing happened.
Ying Di's blood continued to seep into his skin, flowing through his meridians and gathering somewhere deep inside him. The sensation was strange and almost frightening. His body seemed to have become a starving beast, greedily drawing in every drop it could reach.
Slowly, the world around him began to sharpen.
The ringing in his ears faded little by little. The pain in the back of his head, which had moments ago felt as though his skull had been split open, started to recede. His aching limbs grew lighter, and the crushing weakness that had kept him pinned to the floor gradually disappeared.
A strange heat gathered in his lower abdomen.
His dantian.
Jua's eyes widened slightly.
The warmth there grew stronger, spreading through his body in slow waves. It felt as though he had swallowed an entire pool of elixir, except the energy was rougher, darker, and far more difficult to control. His exhausted body was being filled with strength at an alarming rate.
What… is happening to me?
His thoughts remained hazy, drifting apart before he could grasp them. He knew something was wrong. He knew he should stop it. But his body refused to listen.
By the time the last traces of blood vanished from his chest, Jua could finally move again.
He pushed Ying Di away and sat up, though the sudden motion made his vision darken. He swayed for a moment, breathing heavily, one hand pressed against the floor to keep himself upright.
The blood had completely disappeared.
It had been absorbed into him.
Jua stared at his own hands, then slowly pressed one palm against his lower abdomen. The strange heat inside his dantian was still there, pooling and churning beneath the surface.
He swallowed, his mind finally piecing together the truth.
In this world, where demonic cultivation should not have existed at all, he had somehow become a demonic cultivator once again.
"Jua-ge!"
Ying Mao's voice suddenly broke through the fog in his mind.
The boy threw himself into Jua's arms, sobbing so hard that his entire body shook. Jua barely had time to steady himself before Ying Mao wrapped both arms around his waist and buried his face against his chest.
"Ahhhhh… Jua-ge!" he cried. "I thought you were going to die!"
Jua looked down at him, still trying to understand what had happened. His head was no longer pounding, and his body felt strangely light, but his thoughts remained scattered.
He slowly lifted one hand and placed it on Ying Mao's trembling back.
"I'm… not dead," he murmured, his voice rough and faint. "Why are you crying so loudly…?"
"Ahhh Jua ge…." Ying Mao sobbed. "I… I killed brother di… I killed brother…waaaa."