“Half an hour has passed, and he hasn’t made a sound.”
“I think he must be coveting the beauty of Lady Yan. Think of who Lady Yan is. How could she possibly have anything to do with a mortal like him?”
A pair of hands gently massaged Li Lanxiu’s temples, and a sweet female voice said in his ear, “Yes, who knows where this wild boy came from? How could he compare to you, young master?”
Li Lanxiu opened his eyes. A mountain breeze caressed his face, and in the distance, white clouds rolled over green mountains.
He gazed at the beautiful scene before him. The wind felt cool and refreshing on his face. It felt real, not like a dream.
After a long while, the strange memories in his mind gradually became clear.
This was Violetstage Peak, one of the twelve peaks of Conundrum Sect.
Conundrum Sect was one of the four great sects in the world.
In the Three Realms and Nine Continents, there were demonic cultivators and Daoist cultivators, as well as monsters making chaos and ghosts wreaking havoc.
Some of the place names were familiar. They were similar to the setting of a novel he had read.
Li Lanxiu raised his hand to touch his cheek, feeling a cold metal mask. The mask, with its green face and sharp teeth, was rough to the touch.
He suddenly sat up from the couch. Conundrum Sect, Violetstage Peak, Li Lanxiu, who had the same name as him, and he wore a mask — wasn’t this the unlucky cannon fodder in that novel from Qidian with an invincible protagonist?
In the novel, the protagonist, Chu Yue, was a born genius at cultivation, a prodigy who rose from the rank of an outer disciple of Conundrum Sect. Going through countless adventures and stepping over countless corpses, he ascended to the peak, becoming the world's strongest man.
Touching his mask, Li Lanxiu remained silent. The servant girl guessed at his mood and said cautiously, "Young Master, don't believe the rumors. You're a celestial being. That little flirt is just a pretty boy. How could Lady Yan possibly look at him?"
Li Lanxiu hadn't yet sorted through the memories in his head. He looked at the servant girl and asked, "Pretty boy?"
"Ugh! I misspoke," the servant girl, Miaosu, corrected herself quickly. "I meant to say, he can't possibly be as handsome as the young—"
Her gaze fell on Li Lanxiu's green-faced, fanged mask, and her face turned pale. She lowered her head and dared not continue.
Everyone on Violetstage Peak knew that Li Lanxiu forbid anyone to discuss his appearance.
In the past, a few disciples on Violetstage Peak had gossiped, saying that Li Lanxiu had been disfigured by a fire when he was young and was so hideous that he couldn't bear to be seen, and that was why he wore a mask all day. In fact, they said he was even uglier than his mask.
When Li Lanxiu heard this, he had those disciples beaten until they were covered in wounds.
If his eldest shixiong Chuxuan hadn’t pleaded for them, Li Lanxiu would have cut out their tongues as a warning to others.
Li Lanxiu walked towards the mirror in his room. The frame where the copper mirror usually hung was empty. He sat in front of the mirror and unfastened the silver hook behind his ear.
The two servant girls suddenly widened their eyes and looked at him in horror as he removed his mask.
The young master was sitting with his back to them, so they could only see him take a copper mirror from a drawer. He seemed to say, "Hmm?" in a puzzled tone.
The copper mirror reflected Li Lanxiu's own face. In his previous life, he had died of illness, and for the last few months, his cheeks had been thin and pale, lacking any color.
This body was just as healthy as he used to be. As a cultivator, his skin was cool, white, and transparent, and his eyebrows and eyes were dark and thick. He pinched his cheek, quite satisfied that they hadn't given him a different face.
He put on the mask and turned around, asking, "Continue. What about the little flirt?"
Miaosu quickly lowered her head and said, "The little tease who Young Master captured in Wei City yesterday, someone saw him together with Lady Yan. She seemed to favor him, but that must be a rumor. How could Lady Yan favor a mortal?"
Li Lanxiu remembered. The original owner had a childhood betrothed, Su Shiyan, a peerless genius of the sect, as beautiful as a celestial being.
There was a sect called Sevenstar Tower in the cultivation world. The disciples of the Tower were spread throughout the Nine Continents and Three Realms, specializing in gathering secret information. There was no news in the world that you couldn’t buy from Sevenstar Tower.
From rankings of cultivation strength to rankings of beauties in various sects, they omitted nothing.
Sevenstar Tower recognized Su Shiyan as the number one beauty in the cultivation world.
No one who had seen Su Shiyan disagreed with this ranking, proving that her beauty was genuine. She was beautiful, but her temperament was cold and aloof, and she was indifferent to the world.
In a typical overpowered protagonist novel, this kind of character would be the love interest of the protagonist—definitely not someone a cannon fodder could touch!
One of Chu Yue's passive abilities was to make women of a certain level of attractiveness feel a sense of goodwill towards him. From celestial maidens from Jade Terrace to female ghosts in the underworld, their hearts would involuntarily tremble when they saw him.
Su Shiyan was no exception. When she saw Chu Yue, it was as if she had seen an old friend. She couldn't help but pay attention to him and want to get to know him.
The original owner had a deep affection for Su Shiyan, treating her as his future wife, and he was madly in love with her. How could he tolerate this?
Li Lanxiu raised an eyebrow. Based on what the two maids had just said, he guessed the progression of the plot. "Where is he now?"
One maid, Miaosu looked up in confusion. "He's in the dungeon right now. He's been locked up since yesterday and still refuses to confess. He's as silent as a stone."
The other maid, Baozhen, said, "Young Master just had him whipped. Our men used an iron whip. It could smash a stone to pieces, but his bones must be hard. He was beaten half to death but didn't make a sound."
"He must be guilty and that's why he's pretending to be dumb."
"Young Master is kind-hearted to bring him here for questioning, but he acts like we're bullying him. It's like a dog biting his master, he can’t recognize a good heart!"
Li Lanxiu was silent for a few seconds, calmly accepting the fact that things had already happened.
Now that it had happened, he had to figure out how to end it and save his own life.
How could someone who dared to steal a woman from the overpowered protagonist have a good ending?
The original host was born into a renowned cultivation family. His father, Li Yanbi, was the master of Violetstage Peak and a famous swordsmanship expert.
If you compared him to Chu Yue, who was burdened with blood feuds and was currently unknown, one was heaven, the other, earth.
In the book, the original host appeared several times, each time arrogant and overbearing, relying on his family's power to bully others.
Later, he Chu Yue repeatedly slapped him in the face. Enraged, the original owner, like a cornered dog, decided to kill Chu Yue.
In the end, Chu Yue gouged out his eyes, pulled out his tongue, ruined his cultivation, severed his tendons and imprisoned him in a dark and gloomy medicine hut. He then dug several bloody holes in his body to cultivate medicinal herbs.
A cultivator's body was a treasure. The herbs grown absorbed the spiritual energy from the dantian and had excellent medicinal properties. Herbs grown in his body could also be replenished, allowing his spiritual energy to be endless and the herbs to be inexhaustible.
As for why Chu Yue didn't make him deaf, it was simply because it was "interesting" this way.
To have sex with his beloved fiancée in front of a man who couldn't move and couldn't die, while he listened to the frantic and seductive moans of his heart's goddess while she was conquered—such an interesting thing was rare in this world.
Li Lanxiu had been terminally ill in his previous life, and so he died. Having been reborn in the original host’s body, he had to accept the original host’s fate. Li Tingbi was his father, and Violetstage Peak was his home.
For the sake of their lives, and for the future of this family, he couldn't just sit back and wait for death.
Should he cling to Chu Yue's thigh and beg for mercy?
Offer him opportunities, give him magic treasures and wag his tail just to stay alive?
That would be disgusting.
He might as well kill him now!
According to the book's plot, Chu Yue's good fortune was about to arrive. Tomorrow would be the start of Li Lanxiu's misery.
He was going to see Chu Yue today.
On the other side of Violetstage Peak.
The most senior disciple, Chu Xuan, was grinding cinnabar in his cave, with a bronze sacred bell tied around his waist.
The bell rang without wind.
He untied the bell, and a female voice came from the other end, saying, "Master, the young master said he wants to see that pretty boy."
Chu Xuan held the pestle and ground the cinnabar, "Oh? He hasn't died yet, so my shidi wants to kill him himself?"
"I don't know, Young Master seems very calm..."
The pestle paused. Chu Xuan looked up, his face as inscrutable as water. "I understand."
He put the Sanqing bell back around his waist, finished grinding a dose of cinnabar and pushed open the door. Several white-robed disciples of Violetstage Peak were waiting outside the cave.
Chu Xuan sighed and said, "Come with me to take that young man to see my shidi."
In a palace shrouded in clouds and mist.
There were exquisite lanterns hanging from the eaves, illuminating the place until it was as bright as day.
Chu Xuan paused and turned back. There was a patch of darkness standing out against the backdrop of his white robes. The boy stood out like a figure painted in ink and wash, possessing an ethereal and elegant demeanor.
His black shirt clung to his lean and upright figure. His flesh was torn open, revealing bloody wounds. The thick blood stained his clothes, so that he wore a blood-soaked garment.
The smell of blood was pungent.
An ordinary person would have been crying out in pain and rolling on the ground.
Chu Yue, however, had a calm expression. His eyes were closed, and his gaze was unreadable.
Chu Xuan took out the jade pendant he carried with him and inserted it into a small square hole on the door.
After a moment, the double doors opened automatically. Inside the spacious hall, night pearls illuminated the room, and crimson curtains billowed.
Li Lanxiu was reclining on a soft couch, reading a book. Two beautiful maids stood behind him, holding tea trays.
His loose robe was unfastened at the waist, revealing his collarbone. His long black hair was loosely tied up, with a sparkling ribbon and a peacock feather dangling from it.
One of his bare feet rested on a footrest, tangled in the loose hem of his robe, bearing a gold anklet.
Li Lanxiu glanced at Chu Yue and lowered his head to turn the page of his book. "Come here and kneel down for me."
If you like this translation, please consider encouraging me on Ko-fi! Extra chapter for every ko-fi 💛
Comments
Post a Comment