I Swear I’m Not a Demonic Cultivator - Chapter 46
Chapter 46: The Fall of a Great Benefactor
Space was a swirling vortex of shattered colors.
Fang Zheng plunged into it headfirst, like a stone hurled into a chaotic whirlpool.
No direction.
No purpose.
With each tumble, his Divine Soul was torn apart by the turbulent spatial currents, searing with pain.
But he didn’t care.
Only one word echoed in his mind:
Escape!
Escape! Escape as far as possible!
But he couldn’t escape.
Every time a spatial rift opened and closed, what flashed before his eyes wasn’t the stars, but hell.
The Righteous Dao Alliance cultivators’ faces, shifting from shock and confusion to venomous hatred!
The Demonic Path Holy Maiden Yun Shuishui, her fervent devotion twisted into madness as she prostrated herself in worship!
The Heavenly Sword Sect Elder, his Dantian pierced by crimson chains, his body rapidly withering, his mouth forming a silent plea!
His Righteous Dao comrades, their dying curses burning like poison into his soul!
Devil!
Welcome, Holy Son!
Save me…
May the Holy Son live forever!
These images, these voices, were like countless red-hot steel needles churning wildly in his brain.
Each one, each event, repeatedly carved into that thing he called his “Dao Heart.”
What have I done?
Why did it come to this?
Fang Zheng couldn’t understand.
Nor did he want to.
Twenty years of faith, that plaque bearing the words “Heaven Rewards Diligence,” shattered in that moment into a grand, cosmic joke.
Diligence? Justice? Guardian?
Utter bullshit!
A devastating, violent force erupted from the deepest, darkest recesses of his heart, instantly engulfing him.
If this world can’t tell right from wrong!
If doing good only brings evil!
Then…
I’ll destroy it!
Destroy it all!
BOOM—!!!
The moment this thought crystallized, the Haoran Demonic Essence within his body boiled over, completely spiraling out of control!
He no longer tore through space.
Clenching his fists, he hurled himself against the spatial barrier before him with brutal force!
BANG!
Spiderweb-like cracks fractured the space, and a torrent of chaotic energy surged back, instantly tearing half his body apart.
Oblivious to the pain, he plunged headfirst into the unstable rift, drenched in blood!
Smash!
Escape!
Like a maddened beast trapped in a glass maze, he brutally carved his path to freedom through self-inflicted torment.
Just as he was about to be completely consumed by this destructive impulse, transformed into a chaotic demonic entity driven solely by annihilation—
Ding!
The cold, mechanical System notification rang in his mind with an uncharacteristically sanctimonious and solicitous tone:
【 New Mission: Teach by Example 】
【 Mission Description: Demonic Path Holy Maiden Yun Shuishui is still young and has strayed onto the wrong path, her heart deserving of pity. Host, with your magnanimous spirit and noble character, you must tolerate her childishness and ignorance, guiding her onto a righteous, positive, and beneficial path for the world. 】
Mission Progress: 0%
Mission Reward: ???
These golden lines, overflowing with false “benevolence,” poured into Fang Zheng’s already shattered heart like a ladle of scalding oil.
Leading by example? A broad heart? A path of light?
“Get the hell out—!!!”
A roar, inhuman and primal, erupted from the depths of his Divine Soul, exploding within his sea of consciousness!
With every ounce of his will, he frantically slammed against the golden mission panel, desperate to tear it apart, shatter it with his voice, grind it to dust!
Yet the panel remained unshaken, radiating a compassionate and holy golden light.
This unshakeable “benevolence” became the final straw that broke him.
Fang Zheng surrendered.
He completely abandoned all resistance.
He allowed the destructive force to breach the last dam holding back his rationality.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Dozens of self-destructive spatial collisions finally drained the last dregs of his Haoran Demonic Essence.
His meridians shattered inch by inch.
Within his Dantian’s Qi Sea, the towering Nascent Soul let out a mournful wail. Its radiant glow dimmed rapidly until, with a final crack, it collapsed into a cracked, dark-gold Golden Core.
His Realm plummeted from the Nascent Soul Stage to the Initial Stage of the Golden Core in a cataclysmic avalanche.
Pfft—
A massive mouthful of black blood, mixed with fragments of internal organs, gushed forth.
Fang Zheng could no longer maintain his form. Like a burnt-out meteor, he plunged headfirst through the final spatial fissure he had torn open, vanishing into the void.
His consciousness was swallowed by boundless darkness and bone-chilling cold.
Cold.
Bone-chilling cold.
This was Fang Zheng’s sole sensation as he regained a sliver of consciousness.
He forced his eyes open with immense effort. His vision was met by a perpetually twilight-like sky, gray and hazy.
Wind-whipped snow pellets, like countless tiny knives, lashed at his cheeks.
He lay sprawled across a boundless snow-covered plain.
The world consisted of nothing but monotonous black and white.
Deathly silence.
Am I… still alive?
Fang Zheng twitched his fingers, and searing pain erupted from every inch of his body.
He could clearly sense his internal state—utterly devastated.
His Dao Foundation had crumbled, his Cultivation Base was gone, and his Demonic Essence was as empty as a dried-up well.
Now, he was no match even for a strong mortal, let alone a Nascent Soul cultivator. A single stone could end him.
Good riddance.
Death would be a blessing.
An end to it all.
It’s only fitting to atone for the souls of those Righteous Path cultivators who perished in the valley.
Fang Zheng lay motionless in the snow.
He stared blankly at the gray sky, his eyes hollow, having abandoned both thought and the will to live.
Let it end here.
Buried by the wind and snow, vanishing cleanly from this absurd world.
Perhaps this was the best ending after all.
Just as his consciousness was about to sink back into darkness,
a series of crunching sounds, “crunch, crunch,” came from the thick snow underfoot, growing closer.
Then, a crisp, slightly wary female voice rang out above him:
“Hey, dead or alive?”
Fang Zheng struggled to move his eyes.
He saw a face.
A face flushed red from the cold, yet still strikingly beautiful.
The girl looked no more than seventeen or eighteen years old, clad in a thick white fur coat with a furry hood that framed a pair of obsidian-bright eyes.
In her eyes, there was no fear, no hatred, no fanaticism, no adoration.
Only a kind of… scrutiny and curiosity, like a hunter sizing up their prey.
Seeing his lack of response, the girl crouched down, drew a small boning knife from her waist, and tapped Fang Zheng’s forehead with the back of the blade.
“Hey, I asked you something! Still breathing?”
The icy back of the knife sent a bone-chilling cold through him.
Yet that sliver of cold sparked a faint ripple in the frozen lake of Fang Zheng’s heart, like a flickering match in the silent darkness.
His cracked lips parted instinctively, and with the last dregs of his strength, he rasped in a voice as hoarse as a wheezing bellows, “Don’t… touch me… I… am the Devil…”
With those words, he collapsed into unconsciousness.
Tie Yuyao glanced at the unconscious Fang Zheng, then at his Azure Cloud Sect disciple robes, now torn to shreds. She frowned, her beautiful brows furrowing.
“The Devil?” She curled her lip, muttering, “More like a fool, if you ask me.”
She reached out to check Fang Zheng’s breath. “Huh, still got plenty of air in him.”
“Injured this badly, he’d be wolf food by morning.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Tie Yuyao used her knife tip to pry open Fang Zheng’s collar. She examined his tall, sturdy frame, a calculating glint flickering in her eyes.
“Ah, forget it. Dad always says, ‘The Northern Territory doesn’t feed idlers, nor does it keep corpses.'”
“Still, given that build, if he survives, he’d make a decent worker—dragging sleds, hauling ice bears, that sort of thing.”
Resolving herself, she sheathed her knife, gritted her teeth, and dragged Fang Zheng’s massive body from the snow. As if hauling freshly killed game, she hoisted him onto her slender shoulders.
She didn’t notice.
The very moment she helped Fang Zheng to his feet…
Inside his body, the dark golden Golden Core, riddled with cracks, resonated in a strange way with the System’s unreasonable laws, triggered by a fleeting thought of “Guardian” in its Master’s heart.
The Golden Core began to slowly rotate and repair itself in a bizarre manner.
The energy it drew for this restoration wasn’t the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.
Instead, it came from… the purest essence of bone-chilling cold, deathly silence, and utter despair that permeated this realm!
Tie Yuyao dragged Fang Zheng, each step sinking into deep drifts, deeper into the blizzard.
She never looked back.
Behind her, in the patch of snow where Fang Zheng had lain, the snow didn’t melt.
Instead, it transformed into a patch of scorched earth, pitch-black and radiating an ominous aura, as if all life there had been instantly drained.
The blizzard seemed to intensify.
Tie Yuyao braced against the wind, adjusted the “cargo” on her shoulder, and continued toward the faint black speck in the snowstorm that represented “home.”