What's going on?
Chen Kuang looked around warily, utterly bewildered. His first reaction was that he had entered some kind of illusion again.
Otherwise, how could he possibly have returned to Earth? Returned to that very moment of his death?
Yet even with all the countless passive abilities currently layered upon his body, he still couldn't discern whether the world before him was real or fake...
Chen Kuang reached out and touched his abdomen, a place that should have been pierced through by a bullet, but now, it had nearly fully healed. All he could feel was a coin-sized round scar.
Still, that wasn't a giveaway bug.
It was thanks to his "Flesh Reishi" passive, still active. The moment he awoke in this body, the wound had already been healed.
Chen Kuang took a deep breath and quickly assessed the state of his body.
The surroundings were nearly devoid of Spiritual Energy, and naturally, none flowed through his meridians either.
His Spiritual Consciousness was still intact, but he couldn't project it outward, its sensing range was limited to a radius of about thirty meters.
However, Wujian Between was still there, and could be opened at any time, even without using spiritual energy.
"Fortunately, the Demon Sword is fully fused with my consciousness."
Chen Kuang calmed his thoughts, took two steps back, and looked at the three corpses lying on the ground. He regained his composure.
"I don't know where Xiuzhu and those two heavenly demons went... for now, I should focus on staying alive."
Back then, when he called the police to turn himself in, he had simply known that he was going to die, might as well stir things up before the end.
If he managed to take revenge and survived, of course he had ways to walk away clean.
Right now, this moment seemed to be shortly after he had made that self-surrender call. Though the area was a sparsely populated villa district, and the villas were far apart, the sound of gunfire was still loud enough to be heard.
Sure enough, he could already hear faint voices and commotion outside.
Maybe it was the neighbors, or maybe someone had taken that self-surrender call seriously after all. In any case, he couldn't stay here any longer.
Chen Kuang recalled the escape plan he had laid out back then.
He immediately went up to the second floor, changed into a different set of clothes, and exited via the back road behind the villa.
He casually hailed a car from the roadside and instructed the driver to take him to a nearby bus terminal.
As for surveillance in the villa, he had already hired someone to hack and disable it long ago.
Once he arrived, Chen Kuang immediately spotted a familiar face.
"Chen-"
Before the tall, tattoo-covered Black man could say more, Chen Kuang grinned, stepped forward, and slung an arm around his neck:
"Balk, just in time. Pay the driver for me, will you?"
The man's brow furrowed, eyes cold and suspicious. But in the end, he still paid.
Balk turned back and asked:
"Chen... did you kill your enemy?"
Chen Kuang nodded.
He glanced around and saw several more familiar faces emerge from somewhere, all gathering around him.
"Screeech-"Several nearby buses reversed suddenly, boxing them in and cutting off the road behind.
And cutting off Chen Kuang's exit.
Ah, that familiar hospitality... such simple, wholesome folk.
Chen Kuang gave a wry glance at the guns in their hands, then reached into Wujian Between and pulled out a dust-covered Fire-Mark Gourd he hadn't used in ages. He recited the incantation softly:
"Though small the gourd, it hides Heaven and Earth; It journeys with me through ten thousand miles. Ghosts and gods cannot peer within;
But when used, within lies all under Heaven."
...
Three hours later, Chen Kuang checked into a shabby roadside motel.
Dragging a suitcase behind him, he kicked open the door.
The motel was small and rundown, but the good thing was that there was no ID check.
He flipped on the old television, tuned it to the news channel, then opened his suitcase and began inspecting the firearms he had "borrowed" from his former associates, swapping out the magazines one by one.
Though he had lived in a high-powered xianxia world for some time now, with the passive "Photographic Memory", he hadn't forgotten a single detail from this world.
At this point, he was certain:
He wasn't in an illusion.
He really was back on Earth.
Which meant, Earth was the Realm of Desire that gave birth to heavenly demons.
His passive "Bound by Nothing" was still effective, which meant that he could return to Cangyuan at any time, and he had already tested it.
Even more crucially, time on Earth had frozen the moment he entered Cangyuan.
The flow of time in the two worlds was not the same.
But then this raised an inconsistency.
If he could pause time when traveling between worlds, what about other heavenly demons?
Do they all experience time freezes too?
If so... isn't Earth just a little too absurd?
Chen Kuang rubbed his chin, falling into thought.
"Why didn't I think of just coming back to Earth before? It's a place I've been to, after all."
The inertia of linear thinking can be deadly.
He had subconsciously assumed that since he had already "crossed over," returning would be impossible. Otherwise, with those world-shattering cultivators' powers, wouldn't someone have figured out where he came from?
Now that he thought about it, maybe this whole "transmigration" thing... had just been his own assumption.
"Turns out... the heavenly demon... was me all along?"
What Chen Kuang most wanted to know now was a single question:
"What exactly are 'Heavenly Demons'... in relation to Earth?"
These beings had ranks and purpose.
There were cannon-fodder Night Barbarians, true heavenly demons like the Three Great Chan Masters, and even more powerful existences like the Demon King.
If they had ranks, they likely had a social structure.
Which meant... Heavenly Demons might be part of human society.
Were they born as heavenly demons?
Or were they like Chen Kuang, ordinary people who accidentally fell into another world and only then discovered their true nature?
Chen Kuang narrowed his eyes, looking at the gun in his hand.
"Still... with no Spiritual Energy, even with my Upper Third-Grade level spiritual consciousness,
I'm reduced to a thirty-meter range on Earth.
That probably means the other heavenly demons aren't that powerful here either."
"Guess the times really have changed..."
Suddenly, the TV broadcast was interrupted:
"Breaking news: A woman in unusual clothing, approximately 25 years old,
was seen opening fire in public, killing three. Police have issued a wanted bulletin with a reward for her capture.
If you have any information, please contact local authorities."
Then, a video was played.
Along with a reconstructed frontal image using AI software, due to a lack of real records.
Chen Kuang's expression suddenly cracked.
On the TV screen, a woman in a black dress, her long hair jet-black like ink, her features cold and elegant, looked exactly like someone who had stumbled out of a xianxia drama set and into the real world.
But she wasn't holding her usual sword.
She was holding a handgun, firing it with practiced ease.
Chen Kuang's lips twitched. His expression turned downright fascinating.
"Shen Xingzhu?! What is she doing here?
And... she doesn't look like she's in great shape..."
Though it was only a brief clip, Chen Kuang could tell: Shen Xingzhu looked pale, injured, and, critically, not using any Spiritual Consciousness at all.
Even those three gunshots were slightly off. They didn't hit any vital points; those people probably died from blood loss, not instant kill shots.
Chen Kuang thought for a moment. The incident had taken place several hundred kilometers away, a three-hour flight, give or take.
In her current state, she wouldn't last long before being caught by the police.
If Xiuzhu and the other two demon lords saw this news, they definitely wouldn't sit back and watch. They'd come running, too.
Originally, Chen Kuang had only turned on the news because he figured someone might try to stir up trouble to draw him out.
He hadn't expected such an interesting bonus.
He casually stopped a man in the hallway and used his Spiritual Consciousness to briefly take over the man's mind, instructing him to look up the latest flights.
His luck was good, there was a flight departing from a nearby airport in one hour.
"Thanks."
Chen Kuang smiled and patted the man's shoulder. The latter looked utterly confused but replied, "No problem," and wandered blankly back to his room.
Chen Kuang grabbed his suitcase, hailed an unlicensed taxi, and headed to the airport.
On the way, he noticed a car trailing him. But he didn't care.
Back when he was alone overseas, preparing his revenge, he'd done all sorts of things and made plenty of enemies. If he'd died in that villa, quite a few people would've slept easier at night.
But he hadn't died.
In fact, he'd even turned around and killed his own people.
Getting hunted now was... pretty much par for the course.
After arriving at the airport, Chen Kuang of course didn't bother with tickets.
He used his Spiritual Consciousness to manipulate a security officer and passed through screening easily.
Then he mugged a passenger for their boarding pass and sauntered onto the plane. The trip was uneventful.
Coincidentally, the airport TVs were also playing an update on the same news.
"The suspect has fled into the city and is reportedly seen loitering near an abandoned construction site.
Police have dispatched snipers and are on standby.
Citizens in the area are advised to stay clear..."
"Heh. Live coverage now, is it?"
Chen Kuang raised an eyebrow. Now that he had confirmed Shen Xingzhu's location, he "borrowed" a car from a friendly bystander and drove straight there.
Rain fell from the sky, damp mist curling over the pavement.
Shen Xingzhu leaned against a concrete pillar. She touched the wound on her arm, which tugged painfully at the injury on her shoulder.
Her expression hardly changed. She simply took a long breath in... and slowly exhaled.
She reached out and "pried" her sword out from the pillar where she had hidden it earlier. Dust and grit tumbled to the ground.
She was a spell cultivator, a sword cultivator, but definitely not a body cultivator.
Without Spiritual Energy, her body was only around Innate Realm, roughly the equivalent of a first-rate martial artist by mundane standards.
She could feel herself gradually weakening, as if this world was rejecting her, stripping her back down to the level of an ordinary human...
Still, she was far stronger than a regular person.
So when a group of men who looked like Night Barbarians approached her, speaking in an unintelligible tongue, her instincts took over.
A casual wave of her hand, pure physical force, and one of them was blown apart.
To her, these people, human or not, were no different from ants, easily crushed and not even worth a glance.
And yet... something was off.
They looked like human–Night Barbarian hybrids.
(Though how could humans and Night Barbarians even produce offspring...?)
Shen Xingzhu had underestimated this strange world.
But this time, her mistake wasn't letting someone read her heart.
It was underestimating the world itself.
This strange world.
Her Spiritual Consciousness range was limited to just ten meters. She couldn't even fly her sword anymore, and had been forced to hide her blade in this abandoned building, just to avoid accidentally exposing herself.
She'd already learned her lesson after getting shot the first time. She stole a few guns herself, but her enemies just kept increasing in number and firepower.
That was when she finally realized,
She had severely underestimated this world.
These weapons... are everywhere?!
One wrong move had now led to a cascade of errors.
She had originally planned to stay hidden, slowly explore this unfamiliar world with her spiritual sense.
But that was no longer possible.
Worse, those surrounding her now weren't just mortals.
They were Heavenly Demons.
That's when she finally understood.
This seemingly ordinary mortal world...
was the Realm of Desire, the world of the Heavenly Demons.
She couldn't be blamed for reacting slowly. Those civilians had none of the demonic aura, ate food instead of people, and dressed in modern clothes. They didn't resemble anything from the legends.
How could this possibly be the same Realm of Desire she had heard about?
And yet... this was clearly their home turf.
She had already fought one Heavenly Demon who had hidden among the crowd.
Only for a moment.
Their Spiritual Consciousnesses clashed, a mutual blow. Both were injured.
And then she got shot in the shoulder by a sniper.
The wound should've been minor.
But oddly... it wouldn't heal.
"There's something wrong with the bullets...
These 'Heavenly Demons' must've studied how to hunt cultivators in this strange world long ago."
"Others must've come here before me."
Her expression remained calm, but her voice was a quiet murmur:
"Hesitation brings disaster.
I must break through immediately..."
"Don't even think about it.
They've got rocket launchers lined up out there."
A familiar voice spoke up with exasperation.
"If I were you, I wouldn't go charging out to block an RPG with my body."
Shen Xingzhu's eyes snapped into focus.
"Who?!"
"It's me."
Chen Kuang emerged from the stairwell nearby.
"Chen Kuang?"
Her brows furrowed. Her expression darkened even more.
It was clear she'd rather face a battalion of cops than see him here.
Chen Kuang spread his hands:
"I know, I know, I'm not the face you want to see right now.
As the saying goes, 'Enemies meeting, eyes blaze with hatred.'"
Shen Xingzhu spoke coldly:
"Why are you here?"
Chen Kuang ignored the question and continued:
"But as another saying goes:
'There are no eternal enemies, only eternal interests.'"
Shen Xingzhu fell silent.
Chen Kuang said:
"I know you're confused.
Frankly, I don't know much more than you do.
What matters is, there are three Heavenly Demons out there, and only two of us."
"Even if I wanted to rescue you, brute force isn't an option."
He smiled faintly:
"So, simply put, I need you to cooperate."
Shen Xingzhu pressed her lips together, stared at him for a long moment, then said:
"What do you want me to do?"
Chen Kuang said:
"Simple. Just pretend you've already been controlled by me."
Shen Xingzhu: "..."
Chen Kuang added:
"You know... the puppet technique.
Spiritual mind control.
Got it?"