NOVEL WEB Ch.107: The usual customer of the ward
He woke up in the medical ward. Again.
“This happens too often”, he complained quietly to himself, blinking against the light. It had been a while since he was that weak to get hurt all the time.
“It certainly does”, he heard a furious voice.
Wincing, he struggled to sit up and face his master, whose face was darker than anytime he had seen it in this life.
He had his arms and legs crossed and his finger was tapping against his arm.
“Master”, Xie Yi called out weakly, blinking his large eyes. He knew that this time, Shi Yue was genuinely angry at him.
“Melted patches of skin. Partially corroded lungs”, Shi Yue counted, the gnashing of his teeth obvious with each pause. “Further cracks in your core. Ripped channels. Lightning burns. Oh, and did I mention the worst of it?”
He leaned over and grabbed Xie Yi’s chin, pulling the other close and locking their eyes.
Stunned, Xie Yi stared into the clear violet. The grip on his face hurt where Shi Yue’s fingers were digging into his jaw, but he could feel the soft tremble of it.
“Where in the world did you get the idea to consume a beast core directly, Xie Yi”, Shi Yue pressed out. “And how do you know how to do it?!1You can't just eat a beast core. You need to watch certain things that Xie Yi was aware of and did.”
Xie Yi felt his stomach churn.
“What… what happened because of it?”
“It almost killed you! Xie Yi, this is no better than the blood-arrays! It’s worse! Much worse! Humans cannot take in beast parts like this!”
Shi Yue was quietly swearing and let go of Xie Yi. He placed his head in his hands.
“It causes serious mutations if you can endure it, but most of the time it is just going to dissolve you inside out. The only reason why we could save you at all was that the sect leader went ahead and dragged three other sect leaders over here to help with healing you.”
“Oh… I guess it was a close call”, Xie Yi responded awkwardly. Shi Yue glared at him.
Alright, he knew he should be more worried about almost dying again! He was trying, okay?! His brain was humming and he could not think clearly.
“I imagine that this idea is something the Demonic Sect planted in your mind”, Shi Yue lamented. “I trust you that you have nothing to do with them anymore, but now a number of people are informed of this. They won’t let it go easily.”
Xie Yi lowered his head. Hearing Shi Yue say those words, he felt very comfortable and did not worry about anything else at all.
Because, he said he trusted him.
“What will happen?”
“Do you remember the array from all those years ago, right after you joined the sect? They will use it on you while you are asleep so that you can’t struggle. That, and there will be a hearing as to what happened - the place I found you at was a mess. Well, I’ll manage that part.”
Xie Yi stiffened, his face twisting.
His body was numb with whatever drugs they used on him to keep the pain away but now he was filled with discomfort.
Shi Yue sighed and placed a hand over the fist he had curled on the bedsheet.
“Xie Yi”, he said quietly, looking right into the red eyes again. “I will be going along with them. I will make sure that nothing will happen to you. I won’t let them snoop around. Can you trust me?”
Xie Yi opened his mouth but stopped himself to think.
Then he directed his gaze to the side and bit on his lip.
Finally, he gave a small nod.
“You won’t leave me alone there, right?”
Shi Yue smiled softly. Although his eyes were still clouded with worry, he appeared happy that Xie Yi was trusting him with this.
“I promise I won’t”, he solemnly said.
Xie Yi held onto the words. It was a challenge to force himself to accept Shi Yue’s words - not as an order, but because he wanted to believe that Shi Yue would indeed watch out for his safety.
“Once you’re feeling better, you can go out. With all of us working together, you are pretty much healed”, Shi Yue explained. “Although I should warn you that your little partner is furious.”
Xie Yi’s face twitched.
Ah, whoops. MingMing… Was he going to die, after all?
Shi Yue glanced around before he redirected his serious gaze to Xie Yi. “Now tell me, what happened? I have a feeling that we will have to come up with a fake story?”
Xie Yi obediently narrated what happened; from the several Fog Serpents to Yao Ming appearing. Him eating the beast core as he was not aware it would cause problems, and Yao Ming using the Heaven’s Wrath to attack him.
“How exactly did you get the idea that nothing would happen?”, Shi Yue questioned darkly.
“Because Tiankong could eat them”, Xie Yi whispered honestly. He wanted to give as much information possible without revealing himself. “Even demonic beast cores, there was no problem.”
His master’s face twisted painfully.
“Oh, Tiankong…”, he groaned, leaning into his hands again and rubbing them over his face. His voice was both sad and hurt.
He breathed in deeply, then blinked several times and motioned for Xie Yi to speak again.
When he didn’t continue for a while, Shi Yue waited patiently until Xie Yi also added the words that Yao Ming had used when talking to him.
Shi Yue hummed and looked at the floor in a daze. “A demon spawn? Does he believe you are one? That’s weird, he shouldn’t even be aware they exist…”
The number of cultivators who knew about them was very limited for a number of reasons. For one, they did not want the general public to panic at the thought of a human-eating monster in human skin, and the other worry was that people would replicate it on purpose.
Their existence was tightly guarded from the Demonic Sect. If those people knew about it, there’d be an army of demon spawns in years to come.
While tendentially more intelligent than humans at childhood, demon spawns were violent and savage creatures. Even if they could survive on a vegetarian diet or animal meat, they'd specifically choose humans to hunt with a preference for younger ones. The longer the lived, the more would they be able to control themselves and hide within humans to bait their prey without getting noticed.
Coupled with their growing resilience, they were a pest.
In the first place, demonic beasts were not interested in humans. It went against their nature to try and reproduce with something that would result in mostly stillbirths.
It was a lucky fact that demon spawns had a very small chance to be born, or they would have been discovered already.
“What are they?”, Xie Yi asked confusedly but Shi Yue shook his head.
“For your own sake, forget about that name. You have never heard of it before. The fewer people know, the better.”
Xie Yi pulled a face. He simply didn’t like how it sounded like something he might be, considering how he was.
Possibly sensing his unrest, Shi Yue gave him a soothing pat on the shoulder.
“You aren’t one. I know that. In case they come to ask you, you absolutely must not mention anything about this conversation. As for Yao Ming, keep the story the same and change it so that it was a masked cultivator. On how to consume beast cores… We will say that someone tried to introduce that method to you. Give some hints that it might have been a demonic cultivator.”
“Okay”, Xie Yi agreed quietly. “Uhm, can we call MingMing in now?”
Ugh, he kinda wanted to get over it.
Shi Yue chuckled in amusement and went to the door.
The array that was placed over it turned like a lock and the door opened - revealing a little beast with his fur on edge and a killing aura around him.
“Don’t kill your partner, Mingtian”, Shi Yue warned and let the beast walk past him. He closed the door for the two of them - even if it was going to be a one-sided conversation, listening in was rude.
And now, he needed to go deal with those troublesome visitors.
The black-haired young man on the bed gave a very wry smile when Mingtian didn’t join him on the bed but rather sat on the chair.
“Tonight you will get a lesson on all those things that you did in the old sect that you can’t do here”, Mingtian growled so darkly that Xie Yi could barely make out his words. “And eating cores is one of them!”
“I’m confused”, Xie Yi admitted with pursed lips. “I never had any problems doing that. Whether it was human, demonic or common beast, I was fine with it. Is it because my strength was higher?”
Mingtian showed his teeth. “...No. But there’s no need to think about it. Just don’t do it again!”
“I won’t, I swear”, the cultivator readily agreed. “But can you not keep secrets from me? I feel like I keep on realizing that things were bad the last time. Like with the wine - you never told me.”
“I can’t tell you all at once”, Mingtian forced out. “It’s... It’s too much! If you realize what they have done, in full, you’ll… It’s more important that you adjust here first.”
“Is it really that terrible? So terrible that you worry I can’t take it?”, the young man muttered, his face paling a bit.
The beast lowered his head, his ears flattening. “Even if the thing with Shi Yue hadn’t happened, I… I’m glad you left that world sooner rather than later. Little brother, I always regretted that I couldn’t protect you and now I’m making the same mistakes again.”
“That’s wrong!”, Xie Yi shouted at him. “We said it, didn’t we? I have to make my own mistakes. This time ended badly but in return, I now know something very important and am, in the end, still fine. You can’t keep me caged up and protected like a little bird. If I suffer to learn, so be it. Just be there to catch me when I stumble.”
Mingtian looked at Xie Yi with a complicated feeling in his heart.