Ning Feiyan watched him calmly, her smiling eyes concealed a seriousness that made one’s heart tremble.
"If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, why do you think I could be so sure that the River Lord of our Demon World, is actually hiding under Ye Lian’s protection?"
The word "protection" painfully struck Su Xi’s heart; he leaned over the desk gasping for breath like a fish about to die of thirst, yet his eyes were alarmingly bright and hot.
Ning Feiyan narrowed her eyes and smiled: "As for the truth, why not transform into Jiachen yourself and verify it?
Ah, right, I still understand the reasoning that to make the horse run fast, one must feed it, if you become Jiachen, then he will be the redundant one in this world.
Luckily, he is still in the Demon World, I can help you eliminate him, and then the returner under Ye Lian can only be you, how about that?"
She was like a beautiful yet dangerous demon, leading one step by step into the Abyss without turning back.
Demons are inherently savage beings that live above instinct; they do not think that getting what they desire by any means is a deplorable act.
Su Xi, lying on the desk, was like prey caught in her web, unable to escape.
He took a deep breath, his eyes full of turbulent currents, and he looked earnestly at Ning Feiyan without any trace of disdain: "River Lord Ning being the fourth in the Mohe is truly a waste of talent."
Su Xi lightly tapped his forehead and finally showed her a devout, respectful posture: "This body and soul, I am willing to offer."
Ning Feiyan, satisfied, stood up to leave. Before leaving, she didn’t forget to smooth out the shadow puppet paper she held and placed it on the desk, sighing: "The Abyss is beside us, Hell follows us, unease fills our days, perhaps, living a befuddled life is not such a bad thing."
Once out of the grocery store’s wooden door, Ning Feiyan was about to return to the palace when she was stopped by an old shopkeeper crouching in the corner: "My lady, you forgot your umbrella."
Ning Feiyan glanced sideways at the old man half-hidden in the shadows, smiled, and said, "The rain has stopped; the umbrella is yours now, old man, after all, you need it more than I do, don’t you?"
The old man chuckled: "Old man, eh?"
Listening to this laughter, Ning Feiyan shook her head: "You’ve said ’live and let live’, but you drained his master’s blood completely, not to mention flaying and deboning to make shadow puppet material for him to cut, your actions are far more sinister than my tastes."
In the shadows, the stooped figure of the old man was no longer bent.
His shadow faded away as if merging with the darkness behind him, and a pair of white-gold eyes slowly brightened in the corner like Divine Fire.
The old man’s voice was no longer old and hoarse, but carried a robust, sexy tone: "Young lady, you really surprise me."
To call Ning Feiyan, who had lived for thousands of years, a young lady, this person must be an even more ancient and longstanding being.
Feeling the gradually changing aura of the person behind her, Ning Feiyan helplessly turned around and bowed: "It has been a long time, Lord Sikong."
The man, one hand crossed over his chest and the other propped against his cheek, looked at Ning Feiyan with an amused smile, his eyes showing great interest: "When did you recognize me?"
Ning Feiyan replied: "When I saw those shadow puppets, I knew Old Zhang had died."
She looked up, smiling slightly: "To flay so flawlessly, exquisitely like a work of art, in this world, I’m afraid only Lord Sikong could achieve that."
The man laughed heartily: "You really are amusing. I heard that within the Bronze Gate, a bunch of riffraff was bullying my dear Si Li.
Coincidentally, one of those riffraff was you. Today, I was planning to skin you too, to make a set of shadow puppets as a greeting gift for little Si Li, but I’ve changed my mind."
He took a step forward, smiling amiably, while his shadow surged towards Ning Feiyan like a boundless dark tide.
"Young lady, tell me, why do you have such a strong aura of my little Si Chen emanating from inside you? Such an aroma is truly mesmerizing, almost making one reluctant to act."
Ning Feiyan’s expression remained unchanged, although a fine sweat slowly slid down her forehead.
This man, though once a precious member of the Corpse Demon Clan, now referred to that silly cat with great affection.
Yet, Ning Feiyan knew, he had been stripped of his surname and banished from the Dark Continent by Corpse King Jiang Chen for violating the Corpse Demon Clan’s taboos ages ago.
Officially, he was closely related to the Corpse Demon Clan, but he was also responsible for the deaths of sixteen members of the Corpse Demon royal family in the Battle of the Burning Sea.
As an exile stripped of his surname, he had long been at odds with the lineage of Jiang Chen.
Unsure of his thoughts about Baili An, Ning Feiyan only knew that this man inherently had a cruel, sadistic temperament.
Even if Old Zhang had no quarrel with him, he could flay and brutally kill Zhang on a whim.
Now, if she could not provide a satisfying answer, Ning Feiyan felt that her fate would not be much better than Zhang’s.
Under the suffocating dark aura, the cold sweat on Ning Feiyan’s forehead gradually dried by the cold wind.
She smiled composedly and looked straight into those white-gold eyes emerging from the darkness, saying, "I am his woman."