Reborn As A Villainous Cannon Fodder

After Yino and Yuyan finished their daily morning routine, they got up feeling thoroughly satisfied and started tidying the bed and freshening themselves up.

Since returning to Ranmo Peak these past few days, they hadn’t had any urgent tasks, it was basically like coming home for vacation.

During the day, Yino would head down the mountain to hang out with Yunjin around the sect, while Yuyan, as the famous Sword Leader and Eldest Senior Sister, rarely took the time to personally teach some of the junior cultivators.

At night, Yino and Yuyan would return to this little cottage on Ranmo Peak to play chess and study game records.

And every night before bed, Yino would get to work marking Yuyan with his demonic curses.

Thanks to Yuyan’s complete trust in Yino, she willingly dropped all her defenses, so the curse-marking process went extremely smoothly. In about three days, with their combined efforts, the curses had been catalyzed to take deep, unshakable root.

Though when the curses first branded her lower abdomen and burrowed into her body, the cool-faced beauty’s expression twisted slightly in pain, letting out a few pitiful, soft moans.

Yino found it hard to watch.

If it wasn’t necessary, he wouldn’t have wanted to curse Yuyan at all. Sure, he had possessive tendencies, but he didn’t have some twisted need for control, he never planned to use his demonic energy to bind Yuyan’s body or soul.

But…

The more he deciphered Mo Yiqing’s diary these past days, the stronger that ominous feeling grew. And he already knew about Yuyan’s darkening arc and ending from the game, how could he just let that go?

Rather than let his woman face that risk later, better to strike first himself and personally corrupt her into a demon!

With three years of demonic corruption training on Yuyan’s body, she’d naturally build up immunity to all kinds of evil influences. Hell, if Yino trained her right, Yuyan might end up more demonic than those final bosses! She could unlock the late-game’s Evil Sword Immortal form, completely under his control!

Every time he thought about this, Yino put even more effort into refining the curses.

…

Between refining curses and daily life, three days flew by in the blink of an eye.

Yino didn’t go down the mountain to see Yunjin today, she still had one last minor task to finish this morning.

He’d thought it would be hunting demons, so he wanted to tag along, but when he heard it was just helping a few families in town treat their cats and dogs, he couldn’t be bothered.

Judging by the time, Yunjin should be back this afternoon.

Once she wrapped up her work completely, Yino planned to take her and Yuyan to the Dragon Palace.

With nothing to do, Yino decided to continue teaching Yuyan chess on Ranmo Peak.

Yuyan brought over afternoon tea and pastries. They smiled at each other, then sat down in the courtyard for a long-overdue game to exchange pointers.

While Yino appeared to be playing chess, his mind was already wandering.

These past few nights, aside from refining the demonic marks on Yuyan’s lower abdomen, he’d been working with Lily and Wangxue to decrypt Mo Yiqing’s diary.

As usual, he hadn’t reported all his progress to Yuyan.

Fortunately, even though Yuyan learned very little, she wasn’t anxious. She believed whatever Yino told her. She’d just stay obediently by his side, and only after he exhausted himself each night studying would she rest her head in her husband’s arms and tentatively ask about the progress.

If Yino didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t ask. It was like Yuyan didn’t really care about those old matters anyway.

But Yino knew, Yuyan just didn’t dare show how desperate she was to know.

This dynamic worked well enough. Compared to the hatred of her clan’s extermination, Yuyan now treasured every moment of the present. She was so understanding it made Yino feel guilty every time he kept the truth from her.

As for the diary’s contents, Yino had already deciphered about half.

It mainly detailed Mo Yiqing’s psychological journey researching formations.

The Mo Family had been a major power within the Wuji Sect, passing down formation techniques through generations. All the family’s disciples were quite accomplished in formations, with Mo Yiqing being an exceptionally gifted formation master.

When his formation research reached a certain peak, Mo Yiqing gradually began exploring the fields of astrology and prophecy.

Then one day, several elders from the Wuji Sect came looking for Mo Yiqing.

At the Immortal Ancestor Shrine in Wuji Sect’s back mountain, a mysterious crane-haired woman stepped forward from among the elders.

She called herself a Celestial Master who governed the world’s fate. She took a liking to Mo Yiqing’s formation talent, so she gave him a bottle of immortal parasite and promised that as long as he helped her with a few tasks, she would eventually arrange for him to become the Wuji Sect Master, let the Mo Family rise to glory, and truly claim a place in the cultivation world. She even vowed that if he performed well, she’d introduce him to the Divine Gate to glimpse even more of this world’s hidden heavenly secrets.

However…

Mo Yiqing didn’t accept those tempting conditions that night.

The diary, according to Lily and Wangxue’s spirit translation stopped there.

Yino read through it all with zero surprise.

A white/silver woman with golden eyes in white robes…heh…. I wonder who that could be…

He closed the diary. The rest of the plot was obviously no mystery to Yino.

Still, two things in the diary caught his attention.

First, what kind of prophecy did Mo Yiqing glimpse when studying those star charts?

Second, back at the Immortal Ancestor Shrine, what exactly did Iris want Mo Yiqing to do? What made him unhesitatingly refuse despite such enormous incentives?

Because Lily and Wangxue’s energy was limited each day, Yino could only wait for them to decrypt more of the second half of the diary.

“Based on Jinyue and Yuebai’s descriptions before, I always thought the Heaven-Defying Pavilion was the hidden super-villain…”

“But now it looks like we were too ignorant and wrongly blamed them. After all, Ye Chaerin and Changli are both Celestial Masters in the Heaven-Defying Pavilion, clearly they’re not the same type as Iris.”

“The truth is, Jinyue and Yuebai only saw Iris’s identity as a Celestial Master, but they didn’t know she also held a core position as an elder in the Divine Gate.”

“Obviously those two weren’t high-ranking enough to earn Iris’s real trust, she just used them as disposable pawns.”

“But that man and woman from the Divine Gate who showed up chasing me at the Liuli Sect, they’re Iris’s true personal disciples! They can access Divine Gate secrets and know her real plans!”

“So looking at it now, the Divine Gate is the real mastermind…”

“But ironically, the Divine Gate destroyed the entire Mo Family behind the scenes, and they’ll probably be the ones to drive Yuyan insane in the future. Yet in the game, the protagonist who Yuyan saved countless times, her own personal junior brother who inherited her sword path, ended up joining the Divine Gate as a disciple in the late game…”

Thinking about this, Yino, as a player from his past life, felt an indescribable nausea. Even the hand holding his chess piece trembled slightly.

“Yino…”

At some point, Yuyan spoke softly.

Yino snapped back to attention. Realizing he wasn’t focused on the game, he rubbed his temples and sighed. “Sorry, I was just thinking about some unpleasant things.”

“It’s not that…”

Yuyan’s beautiful face gradually froze, her voice trembling with tension.

Yino looked up, only to realize that while his mind had been wandering, the white-robed beauty sitting across the stone table had lifted her face, her eyes staring nervously behind him, unable to speak.

Her hand clutching the chess piece curled into a fist. Her flawless face was shadowed by a tall figure blocking the sunlight.

Yino had never seen Yuyan this nervous and uneasy, like she’d been caught doing something wrong, a fear from deep in her heart surging to the surface.

“….Huh?”

Suddenly, Yino raised an eyebrow, seeming to realize something.

He turned around, only to discover that at some point, that kindly smiling old Daoist, who used to be so amiable, was now standing behind him with a dark expression.

Holy shit!

Unlike Yuyan’s nervousness, Yino nearly jumped out of his skin.

He leaped up from the stone stool. This terrifying oppressive feeling, it was exactly like when you were a kid playing on your phone in class and suddenly turned around to find your homeroom teacher glaring right at you!

“M-M-M-Master…”

“What wind blew you here today?!”

Yino turned to face Mu Daosheng, so nervous his voice trembled.

He’d been living with Yuyan on Ranmo Peak for a year now, but in all that time, this was the first time he’d seen Mu Daosheng show up in the courtyard without knocking.

All along, Yuyan had never been shy about playing chess in the courtyard. Whenever Mu Daosheng came by, he’d knock at the gate, giving Yuyan time to casually wave her hand and put away the chess board.

So Yino figured Mu Daosheng had been turning a blind eye to it all along.

After all, Yuyan wasn’t that little girl from ten years ago anymore, she had her own private space.

Mu Daosheng didn’t really want to control her. Otherwise, as the sect master of Wuji Sect, he had plenty of ways to monitor what Yuyan did every day.

But today… For some reason, Mu Daosheng seemed to be breaking their unspoken agreement.