Chapter 55: Chapter 54
The jagged, black obsidian path winding down the Heavenly Furnace Mountains was completely silent, save for the soft crunch of their footsteps.
Tantai Zhi walked with a light, almost skipping step. She hummed a cheerful, off-key melody, her arm tightly linked with Yan Shuo’s. The terrifying, apocalyptic rage that had consumed her just moments ago was entirely gone. Her husband was safe, her hand was in his, and they were going home to eat dinner. To her, the world was perfectly right again.
"I was thinking about making braised pork, Husband," Tantai Zhi beamed, leaning her head against his shoulder as they walked. "Or maybe a clear spirit-fish broth? You just broke through to the Nascent Soul realm, so you need something nourishing to soothe your stomach."
Yan Shuo smiled his usual, lazy, picture-perfect smile. "Whatever you make will be delicious, Zhi’er."
His voice was smooth, warm, and completely steady.
But internally, Yan Shuo was currently experiencing a level of agonizing, catastrophic pain that would have caused a normal Grandmaster to scream until their throat bled.
I am an absolute idiot, Yan Shuo thought, keeping his expression perfectly serene while his vision subtly swam with black spots.
His fifteen-year-old body was strong. His newly forged Nascent Soul was dense and terrifying. But he had just channeled the absolute, unadulterated limit of the Abyss into his bare hand to physically crush a Heavenly Dao Relic. He had forced mortal flesh to overwrite the supreme laws of space and time.
The backlash was not delayed; he had just been forcefully suppressing it through sheer, demonic willpower so his wife wouldn’t panic on the mountain.
Right now, his meridians felt like they had been scrubbed with crushed glass. The pitch-black Abyssal Star-Core in his dantian was spinning erratically, leaking chaotic, violent energy into his veins because the "vessel" was severely cracked. Every single step he took sent a jagged spike of agony shooting up his spine.
Just hold it together until we reach the boat, Yan Shuo ordered his failing body. If I collapse here, she is going to turn around and refine this entire volcano into a crater out of sheer panic.
"The fish sounds wonderful," Yan Shuo added, forcing his breathing to remain slow and even. "Perhaps with a little ginger..."
They reached the base of the mountain, stepping off the hot obsidian rocks and onto the cool, ash-covered grass where they had parked their small, luxurious violet-wood boat. Su Mei was waiting by the boarding ramp, her fox ears twitching nervously.
They were finally safe. The Faceless Scholar was defeated. The Righteous Alliance was crippled.
Yan Shuo let out a very small, very quiet sigh of relief.
The moment his iron-clad demonic willpower relaxed, the suppressed backlash hit him like a falling mountain.
Yan Shuo stopped walking.
"Husband?" Tantai Zhi paused, looking up at him with a curious, sweet smile. "Did you forget something?"
Yan Shuo opened his mouth to reply, intending to say he just wanted to look at the sunset.
Instead of words, a wet, sickening cough tore out of his throat.
A heavy mouthful of dark, abyssal-tinged blood violently splattered across the pristine white silk of his robes and dotted the green grass at their feet. The color instantly drained from his handsome face, leaving him as pale as a ghost. His knees simply gave out, completely unable to support his weight any longer.
Tantai Zhi’s sweet smile froze.
Her mind, which could process the trajectories of a thousand flying swords in a microsecond, went completely, utterly blank. Time seemed to stop. The blood on his lips was the most horrifying, earth-shattering thing she had ever seen in her entire century of life.
"Husband!"
She didn’t even think. She dropped to her knees, catching him before he could hit the dirt. She gathered his collapsing body into her arms, pulling him tightly against her chest.
"Lord Yan!" Su Mei shrieked from the boat, her face turning pale with terror as she rushed down the ramp.
Yan Shuo lay in Tantai Zhi’s lap, his breathing shallow and ragged. He looked up at her beautiful, terrified face, trying to force his usual reassuring smirk, but he only managed another weak, bloody cough.
"I think... I might need to sit down for a moment, Wife," Yan Shuo rasped, his voice barely a whisper.
"You lied to me!" Tantai Zhi cried out. Tears instantly spilled from her golden eyes, tracking down her porcelain cheeks. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she cupped his face, smearing his blood across her own pale fingers. "You said you were fine! You said they were just bugs!"
She pressed her forehead against his, desperately sending a thread of her spiritual sense into his body to check his condition.
What she saw inside his spiritual sea made her blood run entirely cold.
His meridians were covered in microscopic, terrifying fractures. His Nascent Soul was dim, the terrifying dark gravity spiraling out of control and actively tearing his physical body apart from the inside. This wasn’t a wound caused by an enemy’s sword. This was the catastrophic toll of an impossible, heaven-defying exertion.
He hadn’t ’swatted bugs.’ He had literally broken the Heavenly Dao with his bare hands just to pull her out of the void. And his mortal body was paying the price.
"You reckless, stupid idiot," Tantai Zhi sobbed, her voice breaking with overwhelming heartbreak and fierce, protective rage. "Why did you do that?! If your body shatters, what am I supposed to do?!"
Yan Shuo’s eyelids were growing incredibly heavy. The pain was fading, replaced by a dangerous, numbing cold. He weakly raised a trembling hand, using his thumb to brush a tear away from her cheek.
"Don’t cry, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo murmured, his eyes slowly slipping shut. "It ruins your pretty face..."
His hand went limp, falling to the grass. He lost consciousness completely.
"Husband! No! Wake up!" Tantai Zhi screamed, clutching his lifeless-looking body against her chest.
She turned her head toward the terrified fox maid. The heartbroken, weeping wife instantly vanished, replaced by a sovereign of absolute, apocalyptic authority. Her golden eyes blazed through her tears with a terrifying, zero-degree killing intent.
"Start the boat," Tantai Zhi commanded, her voice vibrating with a demonic resonance that physically shook the trees. "Burn the supreme spirit stones. Burn the core array! If we do not reach the Azure Sword Sect in two hours, I will slaughter the winds of this continent, and then I will skin you alive!"
"Y-Yes, Saintess!" Su Mei wailed, scrambling up the ramp on her hands and knees, frantically throwing handfuls of priceless spirit stones directly into the boat’s furnace.
Tantai Zhi gently scooped Yan Shuo into her arms, holding him as securely as a fragile glass treasure, and leaped onto the deck of the flying ship.
The small pleasure boat erupted with blinding spiritual light, rocketing into the sky with such explosive, reckless speed that it left a sonic boom echoing across the Heavenly Furnace Mountains.
Inside the master cabin, Tantai Zhi laid Yan Shuo carefully onto the center of the soft silk bed.
She didn’t waste a single second. She practically tore off her own heavy crimson outer robes to free her movements, leaving herself in her thin, white inner garments. She climbed onto the bed, straddling his waist so she could sit directly over his chest.
"I will not let you die," she whispered fiercely, her tears falling freely onto his pale face. "Even if the King of Hell comes to collect your soul, I will cut off his hands and drag you back!"
She pressed both of her palms flat against his bare chest, right over his heart.
She didn’t just cycle a little bit of Qi. Tantai Zhi opened her spiritual sea entirely, forcing the absolute, maximum output of her Ice-Heart Jade Maiden Art directly into his tearing meridians.
It was a brutal, desperate form of healing dual cultivation. Her pure, freezing Yin Qi flooded his body like a roaring glacier, aggressively hunting down the chaotic, burning Abyssal energy that was trying to rip him apart. She used her own flawless, century-old foundation as a physical cast to hold his cracking meridians together.
The process was exhausting. It demanded perfect concentration and massive amounts of her own life force. But Tantai Zhi didn’t care. She poured her energy into him endlessly, her face growing paler by the minute as the hours dragged on.
Outside, the flying boat tore through the clouds like a shooting star, rapidly approaching the eastern mountain ranges.
By the time the familiar peaks of the Azure Sword Sect finally appeared on the horizon, the chaotic energy inside Yan Shuo’s dantian had slowly, finally stabilized. The pure Yin Qi had frozen the fractures in his meridians, forcing his dark Nascent Soul back into a calm, steady rotation.
Tantai Zhi slumped forward, completely drained. Her arms trembled as she rested her forehead against his chest, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
It was strong again. He was going to live.
She let out a long, ragged breath, closing her eyes as fresh tears of absolute relief soaked into his robes.
A moment later, she felt a weak, warm hand gently rest on the back of her head.
Tantai Zhi gasped softly, lifting her head.
Yan Shuo’s dark eyes were open. He looked incredibly tired, his face still pale, but the terrifying, deathly shadow had left his features. He was looking up at her with an expression that was entirely stripped of his usual arrogant, lazy facade.
For the first time, the ancient, pragmatic Demon Lord looked genuinely, quietly vulnerable.
"You are very heavy, Wife," Yan Shuo rasped, a weak, teasing smile touching the corners of his pale lips.
"You ungrateful bastard," Tantai Zhi sobbed, though a brilliant, watery smile broke across her face.
She didn’t scold him anymore. She just collapsed fully against his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.
Yan Shuo slowly wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close. He felt the cold dampness of her tears on his skin, and the incredibly pure, gentle Yin Qi she had exhausted just to keep him alive.
He stared at the wooden ceiling of the cabin, his calculating mind entirely quiet for once.
He had crushed the Heavenly Dao to save her because she was his best weapon, his ultimate armor, his ticket to conquering the mortal realm. That was the logical, pragmatic truth of the Demon Lord.
But as she held him, trembling and weeping from the sheer terror of losing him, Yan Shuo gently stroked her dark hair.
If she is just a weapon, Yan Shuo thought silently, a strange, unfamiliar warmth blooming in his chest, then why did my heart stop when I saw her disappear? He closed his eyes, pulling her a little tighter against him. Perhaps his fifteen-year-old body wasn’t the only thing that was changing.
"I’m sorry I worried you, Zhi’er," he whispered softly into the quiet cabin. "I’m right here."
