The Villainess Always Tries to Seduce Me - Chapter 25

A faint glimmer flickered in her eyes as she suppressed the tremor in her voice. “This Seat knows not what you speak of,” she said.

In the pitch-black darkness where no one could see, Yun Chuanzhi mimicked her words, contorting her features into a comical imitation. She then pouted, saying nothing more.

Yun Chuanzhi’s stamina was failing. Even after drinking the Phoenix Tears, she couldn’t maintain this pace for long, especially with an adult woman, taller than herself, in her arms. Her legs soon began to buckle.

No, I can’t keep going like this. Panting, she stopped, found a wall to lean against, and gently lowered Bai Fenghuo to the ground. Squatting down, she wiped the sweat from her brow. “How vast is this Immortal Palace? I’ve been running along these corridors for ages. We should have found an exit by now.”

“It’s not large,” Bai Fenghuo replied weakly, shaking her head. She slowly pushed herself upright, brushing aside her disheveled hair. “Don’t run anymore. Even if we run until dawn, it won’t help.”

Yun Chuanzhi had already suspected as much. She collapsed in exhaustion. “Have we been deceived by the Shadow Demon again? But there hasn’t been any light along the way. How could it have followed us?”

“Ordinary Shadow Demons can only cling to shadows. But if they grow powerful enough, darkness itself becomes their greatest shadow,” Bai Fenghuo said softly.

Yun Chuanzhi’s bl00d ran cold at these words, every hair on her arms standing on end.

“You mean… we never escaped the Shadow Demon from the very beginning?” She gazed up at the sky. “Then it’s over. We might as well just wait to die.”

The silence around them was as heavy as the underworld, broken only by their breathing. Yun Chuanzhi’s breaths were rough and labored, while Bai Fenghuo’s were so faint she had to strain her ears to hear them.

“You little slave doesn’t seem to fear death at all,” Bai Fenghuo remarked.

“It’s tolerable,” Yun Chuanzhi replied, picking up the cold, stone figurine from the ground and clutching it tightly. “If living is worse than dying, then there’s no reason to fear death. But if every day brings food, drink, and sleep, if I can frolic with flowers and birds in carefree joy, then dying would be a bit of a shame.”

“So you live only for food, drink, and sleep?” Bai Fenghuo frowned.

“What else is there? I have no family, no attachments, no grudges to settle. Isn’t eating, drinking, and relieving myself enough?” Yun Chuanzhi laughed, her voice tinged with longing. “It’s just a pity I didn’t finish that bowl of red bean Ice Brand.”

“It’s been a night. It must have melted by now.”

Her tone grew wistful when she spoke of the Ice Brand. Bai Fenghuo listened in silence for a long moment, puzzled and amused.

Even as death approached, she was still thinking about a bowl of Ice Brand. Such a provincial from the lower realms, Bai Fenghuo thought, shaking her head, though her lips unconsciously curled upward.

He quickly realized her lapse and frowned, suppressing her smile.

Silence descended once more. The two leaned against the icy wall, side by side, each lost in their own thoughts.

“Master, my head’s falling off!” Blackie exclaimed, agitated. She flailed her limbs, struggling to pull herself free from Yun Chuanzhi’s embrace with a pop. Her short arms reached for her head.

He let out a sharp, panicked cry: “Master, my head’s falling off!”

Yun Chuanzhi jolted at her shout and shoved the head back into Blackie’s arms. “Here, here. Shut up, you’re so noisy.”

As the puppet and her master bickered, a faint breeze stirred beside them. Yun Chuanzhi’s smile vanished, and she turned her head toward the darkness.

The night remained as silent as before, yet somehow even more still. Yun Chuanzhi reached out, but her hand grasped only cold air.

“Sect Leader? Bai Fenghuo?” She sprang to her feet, stretching her arms out to search up and down, but found nothing.

Damn it, I lost Bai Fenghuo! Yun Chuanzhi slapped her thigh and hurried forward.

“Blackie, have you seen Sect Leader?” she asked, her hand still groping through the darkness. Blackie, perched on her shoulder, replied with equal seriousness, “No, Master.”

“What about you?” she asked the cloth dolls, who were frantically running around with their heads buried in the ground. Unable to speak, Blackie shook her head for them.

Yun Chuanzhi rarely panicked, but at this moment, she couldn’t help but feel flustered. She had promised Ling Shui and Cheng Jinshu, and she couldn’t break her word. Kneeling on the spot, she lit a lamp with one hand and bit her other hand to draw bl00d, using it to draw a formation on the ground.

I’ve already been corrupted by the Shadow Demon anyway. Having a shadow won’t make a difference now.

Empowered by the Phoenix Tears, the formation activated much more easily. The bl00d-drawn lines glowed with an ethereal light.

“Stars shift their palaces, heaven and earth align in four directions. Southeast forms the trigram, northwest marks the cardinal point,” she chanted the Heart Incantation at lightning speed. Gathering spiritual energy in her palm, she slammed it into the formation’s core. The lines twisted violently, coalescing into a tiny spark of light that settled between her eyebrows.

Following this guiding spark, Yun Chuanzhi rose and sprinted into the darkness, running until her throat burned with dryness. The spark floated ahead, disappearing into a wall.

The silence shattered as faint, mournful cries echoed from within the wall. Yun Chuanzhi took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and passed through the barrier.

When she opened her eyes again, Blackie, perched on her shoulder, clapped a hand over her mouth. Yun Chuanzhi froze in place, her heart pounding with shock.

She was no longer in the Immortal Palace, but standing on a vast battlefield strewn with corpses. Beneath her feet lay countless bodies of demonic fiends and Evil Spirits, piled high like mountains. Above, ten thousand demons howled as swarms of malevolent creatures filled the sky, stretching endlessly into the horizon.

The heavens offered no trace of clarity. A colossal, bl00d-red sun hung low on the horizon, dyeing the sky with crimson. It was impossible to tell if the color came from the sun itself or from the overwhelming bl00d mingling in the wind.

Amidst this demonic horde, beneath the crimson sun, stood a lone figure atop a floating sword. Her dark hair and black robes merged into a single, billowing mass behind her. She wielded no weapon, relying solely on spiritual energy to defend herself.

Countless demonic fiends circled her like vultures eyeing a dying prey, eagerly awaiting the moment she breathed her last to tear her apart and devour her flesh.

“Master, that’s Sect Leader Bai!” Blackie, with her sharper eyes, cried out shrilly. Yun Chuanzhi shielded her eyes from the glare and looked up, a sudden chill running down her spine.

Facing the woman in black was Bai Fenghuo. Her wind-tossed hair radiated an eerie aura, her brows arched sharply, and her crimson lips curved into a wild, mocking grin.

“Master, I’m your most beloved disciple!” she called out, her voice piercing through the demonic horde and echoing clearly in their ears, like the cry of the most savage fiend, sending shivers down their spines. “Just let me have this one thing—what harm could it do to grant me life?”

“Master, is that the Sect Leader Mingcun in black robes over there?” Yun Chuanzhi’s vision blurred as she watched her stride across the mountain of corpses. Just as she was about to approach for a closer look, she caught a faint sound of weeping.

“No, Master! That’s Sect Leader Bai too!” Blackie shouted, having spotted the crying figure first.

Amidst the stench of bl00d and rotting flesh, a corner of deep violet fabric fluttered in the wind. Yun Chuanzhi hurried closer, only to find a woman kneeling on the ground, her jade-like fingers buried deep in the mud, the tips stained crimson.

“Bai Fenghuo!” Yun Chuanzhi immediately understood what had happened. She called out her name and crouched down beside her. “This is the Shadow Demon’s illusion. Wake up!”

But Bai Fenghuo clearly couldn’t hear her. The usually arrogant and venomous woman was now sobbing uncontrollably, her ink-dark features streaked with tears like a water-stained painting.

Blackie climbed onto Bai Fenghuo’s head and frantically hammered at her skull with her tiny stone fists, but it was no use.

What should I do? Yun Chuanzhi felt truly helpless. Just as she was at her wits’ end, the demonic fiends overhead suddenly let out a deafening screech that shook the heavens. Yun Chuanzhi jerked her head up.

She saw Bai Fenghuo’s sword pierce Xie Cun’s chest.

At the same moment, the Bai Fenghuo beside her also witnessed the scene. Her face was tilted upward, her eyes vacant, as silent and still as a statue.

For a fleeting moment, Yun Chuanzhi thought she had breathed her last. But before she could cover Bai Fenghuo’s eyes, a gale of spiritual energy erupted from her body with the force of a collapsing mountain.

The gale swept away everything—the mountains of corpses and seas of bl00d, the myriad demonic fiends in the sky—all dissolving into smoke and vanishing without a trace.

Yun Chuanzhi was struck head-on by the gale, her body slamming against the ceiling like a fragile insect before tumbling to the ground. Darkness swam before her eyes, and for a long while, she couldn’t see clearly.

After what felt like half an incense stick’s time, she managed to crawl to her feet, cursing heaven and earth and her ancestors for good measure. Stumbling toward Bai Fenghuo, she grumbled, “You’re the Sect Leader of Mount Everlasting! I’m fine after that Shadow Demon’s illusion, so how did you end up like this?”

Yun Chuanzhi felt like she was falling apart. She desperately tried to pull Bai Fenghuo up, but the other woman lay limp on the ground like waterlogged dough, impossible to grip.

“You fell for it, you idiot!” Yun Chuanzhi’s head swam dizzily as she yanked at Bai Fenghuo’s hair, pulling the silken strands into a tangled mess.

“If I weren’t so weak right now, I’d slap you twice!” Yun Chuanzhi had completely abandoned all restraint, cursing whatever came to mind. “If you don’t wake up soon, I’m going to die here too!”

The lamps flickered to life, revealing the vast, empty hall beneath them. The night breeze, carrying the scent of grass and trees, brushed against Yun Chuanzhi’s face, and she suddenly lost all strength, collapsing sideways with a thud.

Panting heavily, she wiped the sweat from her face. “Fine. They’re here. I guess I’ll be buried with you after all.”

The approaching figure seemed confident in their victory, making no attempt to conceal their presence. Footsteps echoed through the hall, growing louder until they stopped nearby. Yun Chuanzhi glanced up.

The person was completely shrouded in a black robe, not even a toe visible. Their build was unremarkable—neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin—making it impossible to discern their identity.

Even the voice was altered by Immortal Arts, shifting between raspy and shrill. After a grating laugh, the figure extended a hand toward Yun Chuanzhi.

“Sect Leader Bai, so arrogant in peacetime, turns out to be nothing but a pretty face. Can’t even handle a mere Shadow Demon, you foolish woman,” the figure sneered, opening its palm. Yun Chuanzhi was lifted into the air, her neck falling into its grasp.

“What a pity such a loyal servant followed you. No matter, she’ll take the first step. Soon, master and servant will be reunited in the underworld.”

As the figure’s fingers tightened, Yun Chuanzhi gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and braced for the crushing of her throat. But just as the pressure was about to shatter her windpipe, the oppressive force vanished. When she startled her eyes open, she found herself hanging against Bai Fenghuo’s body.

Their positions had been reversed. A warm, strong arm now encircled her waist, effortlessly holding her in a one-handed embrace.

The Bai Fenghuo who had been moments ago consumed by grief now stood proudly beneath the lamplight, her handsome face twisted into a wild, sinister grin. “Guess who fell for the trap?”

“You self-righteous fool.”