Chapter 216: Settling the Rewards—The Houtu Boots

Zhang Yuanqing smoothed over a flash of irritation. Seriously. It's always the dead of night with this thing. Does it want a man to sleep or not...?

He threw off the covers, pulled open the desk drawer, took out the Cat King Speaker, and slipped into Night Wandering. The whole routine was done with his eyes shut, practiced to the point it was almost sad.

Beneath the crackle of static coming from the Cat King Speaker were a woman's low moans, a man's ragged breathing, and the slapping of bodies coming together.

This is the real classic you, huh. Demon Lord and his everchanging parade of women, Zhang Yuanqing grumbled inwardly, doing his best to keep his mind as still as a pond. No ripples, no stray thoughts.

Even so, the fantasies came. There was no stopping them. Who is Demon Lord bedding this time? She's guaranteed to be pretty. And if she's got a little curly pig's tail on her backside, well, that would be best...

Midway through his musings, his face went stiff. Right at that moment, he had a powerful urge to bury his face in his hands and sob out loud.

I have to find a chance to sell off the Straw Doll. That thing is completely unusable. Keep this up, and I'll be ruined like Zhu Rong.

There was no question this was the cost of using the Straw Doll. Having been backed into a corner during the tournament, he'd used it a few more times, and so the pig's tail curse had reared its head again.

The Straw Doll's corruption was irreversible, and not even a purification ability could scrub it out. Previously, after he'd tossed the Straw Doll into the guild warehouse, the pig's tail symptom had eased off, which meant its corruption hadn't yet reached the point of flipping his innate preferences.

He'd dumped it into the guild warehouse again after using it a few times in the arena, yet the curse still surfaced. That meant the corruption was penetrating deeper.

Storing it in the guild warehouse won't cut it, he realized. The second I'm in danger, I won't be able to stop myself from reaching for it considering how strong it is.

Zhang Yuanqing thought it over and decided to find a chance to sell it to Mr. Bill.

Somewhere in there, the audio, buried under the crackle of static, skipped forward, past the shameless part. All he caught was Demon Lord breathing hard and laughing.

"Baby, does it feel good?"

The woman gave a soft, gentle moan.

"Does it feel good? Say it, come on!" Demon Lord teased.

"You're awful!" the woman said with a tone of reproach.

This one seems a little different. A little reserved and a little shy. Not like the last few, who were all shameless little minxes, Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself.

As a university student who'd never known a woman, he had a soft spot for the demure type and a hard aversion to the loose sort.

The audio suddenly went quiet, then the sound of very soft breathing. The two seemed to be kissing.

A moment later, Demon Lord murmured, "I liked you calling me Big Bro just now. Go on, say it a few more times."

The woman said nothing. Only after the Demon Lord kept at it, relentless, did she shyly manage, "Big Bro."

"Baby!" Demon Lord responded, thrilled.

Ugh, this is so sappy it's making my skin crawl.Do you two ever think about how your audience feels? Zhang Yuanqing thought. Lucky for you, Demon Lord died early, or I would have made sure you were socially dead in a heartbeat.

"Why you... You're so much younger than me, yet you just have to hear me call you Bro," she chided him. "We can't linger here too long. Elder Hongying will come looking soon."

"That old hag never quits," Demon Lord snapped irritably. "Once I become a Sovereign, she'll be the first one I kill."

"She's my superior. She's been like a mother, like a teacher to me..." the woman trailed off, then sighed. "Who's to blame for the fact that your name's been dragged through the mud? Of course she'd never let us be together."

When Zhang Yuanqing heard that, something went off in his mind. He instantly knew who the woman in the audio was.

The Taiyi Sect. Yin Ji!

He couldn't help but picture her. In the arena, she'd worn a veil that hid her face, but a true beauty gave herself away by her form and the way in which she carried herself. One could always tell. Yin Ji was a top-tier beauty.

She's wasted on the Demon Lord, Zhang Yuanqing thought indignantly.

The recorded dialogue continued to play. It was Yin Ji's voice.

"Enough about her. Bro, you're Level 6 now. My advice is, don't join the year-end slaughter dungeon yet. Spend another year or year-and-a-half consolidating your power at the Saint tier, fully master your Astral Envoy Power, or reforge your Power of the Dark Moon. My point is, don't rush your rise into the Sovereign tier."

"Why's that?" Demon Lord asked in surprise.

"Elder Hongying once told me the Nocturnal Specter class is a strange one. To progress further beyond the Sovereign tier, you have to specialize in one kind of power. Of the three powers, Dark Moon, Astral, or Diurnal, you have to pick one. If you reach the Sovereign tier, then your only choice will be the Diurnal Spirit. But whatever you do, whatever you do, you can't pick the Diurnal Spirit."

"This is the first I'm hearing of this. So, why can't you pick the Diurnal Spirit?"

"Elder Hongying didn't say."

"Then what does the Taiyi Sect Master specialize in?"

"Have you forgotten his title?"

"Reads the stars. Looks down on rivers and mountains. All-knowing...? Hmm, I see."

The dialogue dissolved into the crackle of static. Zhang Yuanqing exited his Night Wandering state and sat at his desk, sinking into thought.

Dark Moon, Astral, and Diurnal Spirit. And you have to specialize in one? And that choice ties into the stage beyond Sovereign?

Suddenly I get why Zhao Chenghuang kept himself at the Transcendent tier. He chose to specialize in the Power of the Dark Moon... which means I've got to give some thought to which one I want to specialize in as well. Going by what Yin Ji said, as long as you make the choice before the Sovereign tier, it comes down to either the Power of the Dark Moon or the Astral Power. I'll advance to the Saint tier first and see what abilities an Astral Envoy gets.

Then I can decide between the Dark Moon or the Diurnal Spirit. Come to think of it, what did Demon Lord end up picking?And why can't you pick the Diurnal Spirit? Feels like it suits Demon Lord perfectly...

Reads the stars. Looks down on rivers and mountains. So the Taiyi Sect Master specializes in Astral Power.

Just then, he heard Demon Lord's voice come out from the Cat King Speaker again. This time, it wasn't a conversation, but a recording of him alone.

"I've met a girl. A girl I'd give up a whole forest for. Her name is Yin Ji. She knows full well I'm a servant of Ghost Eye Judge, knows full well I'm contaminated by the Fallen Holy Grail, and yet she still wants to follow me, to stay by me. But how could someone like me ever deserve her?

"Starting today, I'll listen to the audio recordings of myself from the early Transcendent tier once a day and become the good man I used to be. I'll fight off the Fallen Holy Grail's corruption. And I'll cut things off with the other women, all of them.

"Heaven above, you gave me nothing. So don't you dare take her from me too."

The Demon Lord really was different when it came to Yin Ji, Zhang Yuanqing realized. In the earlier audio recordings, back when he'd hit the Saint tier, he was all "little tramp" this and "little tramp" that when he was bedding the other women, showing no respect for them at all.However, at that same Saint tier time period, the way he treated Yin Ji was like a man deeply in love. Every other word was a sappy "Baby."It's clear that the guy was genuinely in love with Yin Ji.

Zhang Yuanqing sighed. It was a shame the past couldn't be rewritten, or he'd have said a prayer for the man.

In the end, Elder Hongying had taken Yin Ji back to the Taiyi Sect. The two went their separate ways, strangers, without any future contact ever again.

Demon Lord fell completely, giving himself up to ruin.

And yet, despite that, Demon Lord never did kill Elder Hongying in his later years. With the strength he came to have, killing her should have been no great feat. The reason, most likely, was the speech Yin Ji had made.

Another crackle of static came from the Cat King Speaker, and then a low singing drifted out of the speaker grille.

"After the lover is gone, never again to return, sitting alone in silence, gazing past the mortal world~

"Flowers may wither, but they bloom once more, the love of a lifetime dim and far, out beyond the white clouds~

"A sea of bitterness, love and hate churning up~

"In this world, no escaping fate~"

Annoyed, Zhang Yuanqing brought a palm down flat on the Cat King Speaker. You're pulling the heartstrings too, you son of a bitch?

With a burst of static, the song cut out, and the Cat King Speaker went still.

Zhang Yuanqing waited a moment, and when no more audio played, he put the Cat King Speaker back in the drawer, burrowed under the quilt, and slept like the dead.

***

The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke early. As he sat at the dining table enjoying his breakfast, he opened the official forum out of habit.

The post from the previous day, the one that was gushing over him, was still up, though it was no longer the top post. In its place was a notice.

【#The Saint-tier Arena Bout Begins at 2 PM#】

The date was June 10th. The slaughter dungeon would open in late June, which was about a week or so away. The tournament had to wrap up before that, so the gap between the Transcendent- and Saint-tier bouts couldn't be long.

So I can watch the Saint-tier matches this very afternoon.

The thought got Zhang Yuanqing pretty worked up. Saint-tier fights weren't something one got to see any old day.

Watching two Saints fight would help him understand what Lawful-class Saints were about, so that if it ever came to blows down the line, he'd know both his opponent and himself.

Washed up and ready, he shouldered his backpack and pretended to head off to school, then flagged a cab outside the complex and set off for Fu Family Bay. He was going to Fu Family Bay to collect his yin corpse and pick up the Houtu Boots.

He had no need to go to school anymore. Thanks to the Demon Eye Heavenly King, Water God Palace's Elder Luoshen had learned his true identity and agreed to sort out his truancy problem, promising he'd graduate without a hitch.

It was the morning rush hour, and the roads were congested. The cab crawled forward then stopped, again and again. He'd left his home at eight, but didn't reach Fu Family Bay until half past nine.

Luckily, he wasn't short on money, or the one-hundred-and-fifty-yuan fare would've hurt bad enough to knock the breath out of him.

When he arrived outside Fu Qingyang's villa, a bunny girl met him and led him to the study.

The first thing he saw was Corpse No. 1, toppled over on the carpet, writhing without pause, a brutal, savage madness flickering in its pupils. Clearly, it wanted nothing more than to hack the one living man in the study, Fu Qingyang, into eight pieces.

But it couldn't.

Oh, right, Zhang Yuanqing realized belatedly. I forgot to cancel the order.

He reached through his sea of consciousness to find the mark representing the yin corpse, and smoothed over its agitation. Then he stepped forward, drew the Bloodthirsty Blade, and cut through the vines binding the yin corpse.

That done, he finally looked over at the two Fu Qingyangs at the far end of the red carpet—one hanging on the wall, the other seated behind the desk.

"Thank you for retrieving my yin corpse, Centurion," Zhang Yuanqing said, and he ordered the yin corpse perform a curtsy.

The memories of the day before came right back to Fu Qingyang.

"If you'd left a heartbeat later yesterday, the Taiyi Sect's Nocturnal Specters would have jumped you en masse," he told his subordinate flatly.

He wasn't one to waste words, and continued, "The match rewards have been handed out. You've been given the Houtu Boots and a C-rank Merit."

As he spoke, he fished out a pair of tall boots from his inventory.

Zhang Yuanqing's eyes lit up, his gaze going straight to them. They resembled court boots of old: high-topped, thick-soled, woven from earthen-yellow silk and embroidered with exquisite cloud patterns.

Also, they looked extremely heavy. Fu Qingyang was holding them in both hands, and his arms were trembling faintly.

"They're yours," Fu Qingyang said.

Excited, Zhang Yuanqing hurriedly took the boots.

Thud!

Zhang Yuanqing dropped flat to the floor, both arms "glued" fast to the ground. As he fell, he heard the sound of his own arm bones snapping.