Chapter 138: Isn’t it Junior Sister that you love?

Mo Cunzhi, severely injured and unconscious, was carried by Yu Le onto the golden carriage and flamboyantly taken back to the demon realm.

After having his bloodstains and wounds cleaned, Yu Le placed him in his own palace, though the pale and handsome man never once opened his eyes.

Two days passed like this, and Mo Cunzhi finally woke up to the sound of women whispering.

“The king only wants to humiliate the immortal cultivator, surely he doesn’t really like him!”

“But he is so handsome! I’ve never seen such a beautiful man. Just one more glance, and my heart is racing.”

“Hmph, what good is a handsome face?” Another woman’s playful voice carried a hint of jealousy. “He’s still a man! Our king definitely prefers women. He’s always been the gentlest with us sisters!”

“That’s true, but the king personally said he would make him queen. We can’t disobey the king’s orders.”

“Even if he becomes queen in name, there’s no way he’ll ever receive the king’s affection!”

Mo Cunzhi didn’t catch all of their conversation. The moment he opened his eyes, he was still lost in the endless slaughter of his previous dreams, and his body instinctively tensed up.

The empty feeling in his hand and the memory of what had happened before he lost consciousness resurfaced at the same time. Mo Cunzhi sat up in bed.

The blood-red haze before his eyes faded, and he saw a gilded sword rack in front of the bed, where his sword lay. The bloodstains on the blade had been wiped clean.

It was only then that he noticed the luxurious and exotic decor of the room, filled with vibrant colors and large patches of gold, quite unlike the serene elegance of the immortal sect.

The room was grand and bright, the thin quilt covering him was cool and silky, and a light fragrance wafted through the air from an incense burner in the corner.

Mo Cunzhi was only wearing his undergarments. He pulled back the quilt and sat up. On a nearby stand, there was a red robe, but apart from that, there were no other clothes in sight.

Outside the hall, a few maids were talking. Suddenly, they heard the door open, and a man in red stepped out.

The maids were all momentarily stunned, including the one who had been complaining that the king would never like such a man.

They stood there, staring blankly at Mo Cunzhi, and he, in turn, stared back at them.

There were six women, each one beautiful in her own way—like spring blossoms and autumn moons, innocent yet alluring.

But Mo Cunzhi’s first impression wasn’t of their beauty. What he noticed instantly was the demonic energy emanating from them.

Years of demon-hunting had trained him to almost react instinctively, raising his sword to strike. Yet that impulse was quickly suppressed.

Times had changed.

Perhaps his killing intent was too strong, for the women snapped out of their daze, their expressions turning to alarm. They adopted defensive postures and warned him:

“D-don’t try anything! You’re on demon territory now! If you dare kill anyone in the palace of the Kingdom of Bliss, the king will never let it slide!”

Mo Cunzhi gripped his sword tightly and walked past them.

The women’s eyes widened, and they hurriedly followed him, trying to block his way. “Where are you going? You can’t just wander around like that!”

“Queen! Please return to the hall. The king said you need to rest and recover, Queen!”

One of the maids called out.

Mo Cunzhi stopped abruptly. “I am not the queen.”

The maid muttered softly, “The king said you are, so you are the queen.”

Another maid scoffed, “Quit playing innocent. There are plenty of others who’d love to be the queen if you don’t want the position. Stop acting so high and mighty, you shameless vixen!”

Shameless vixen.

Mo Cunzhi was silent.

In his life, no one had ever used such words to describe him.

Without a word, he drew his sword.

*

Meanwhile, Yu Le was on the golden platform, dealing with a few unruly demons.

Back at the Wuyue Immortal Sect, he had swiftly deposed the rulers of two nations. The other two, forced by the circumstances, had acknowledged him as their lord. However, now that they were back in their own territories, many of them began to harbor rebellious thoughts.

Yu Le welcomed their defiance—it gave him the perfect excuse to openly absorb their demonic energy.

After all, when his subordinates had already submitted to him and weren’t causing trouble, Yu Le couldn’t just drain them dry without reason.

Among the four nations, most of the cultivators at the Xuandan realm had surrendered to him on the surface. Some had fled to Yeyuan City, while others, for various reasons, refused to acknowledge him as their new king and wanted him dead.

Those who wanted him dead were now lying on the golden platform.

Bright red blood flowed steadily from the platform, winding its way into the golden peony patterns etched into the floor, blooming into vivid crimson flowers.

Yu Le’s boots stood atop these blood-red blossoms, his luxurious robes stained with blood.

“You wanted to kill me. I gave you the chance, but unfortunately, you didn’t take it.”

A demon, his body nearly drained of blood, glared with bulging eyes from where he lay on the ground. His face, full of hardened muscle, twisted in a vicious snarl.

There were a dozen or so like him, all collapsed on the ground.

Yu Le walked over to him, placing the tip of his boot on the demon’s face—a hulking figure as big as a small mountain—and fiddled with a baby’s skull earring dangling from the demon’s ear.

“What a unique earring,” he remarked, then shifted his foot to the demon’s nose, leaving a bloody footprint. “But what an ugly face.”

The demon bellowed, shaking his head. “I, General Dalai, only serve King Juyun! I’ll never take orders from a whelp like you!”

Yu Le didn’t get angry. He smiled and said to the surrounding demons and demonic cultivators, “Did you hear that? General Dalai here is so loyal and honorable! I hereby name him the most loyal general of the Demonic Path!”

The crowd around him burst into laughter.

Yu Le raised a hand to signal them to quiet down, his expression innocent yet cruel. “I admire his loyalty. Take him to the fighting pit and treat him well.”

By the time Mo Cunzhi arrived, most of the demons who had been bleeding out on the golden platform had already been carried off by the onlookers, leaving only a few behind.

One moment, the demons were eagerly discussing whether they could get a piece of the generals’ corpses to use as materials; the next, they all fell silent, curiously eyeing the queen whom their king had brought back.

Their first thought upon seeing him: What a striking appearance!

Their second thought: He doesn’t look like a queen at all, especially such a tall and cold man. Standing next to the king, he’s even taller!

Most of the demons in the Kingdom of Bliss were low-level cultivators. Only a few had been taken by Yu Le to the Wuyue Immortal Sect, so many of them had never seen an immortal cultivator before, and some hadn’t even heard of Mo Cunzhi’s reputation.

This time, the grand spectacle of the Demonic Path kidnapping someone had made the name of the Wuyue Immortal Sect’s chief disciple well-known throughout the demonic world.

They said he was an unparalleled beauty, and that the King of Bliss had been so captivated upon seeing him that he promised peace with the Wuyue Immortal Sect in exchange for Mo Cunzhi alone.

When Yu Le’s golden carriage brought him back to the palace, countless men and women across the Kingdom of Bliss had been heartbroken at the thought that their king would now have a queen.

“Is that the queen the king kidnapped?”

“Let me see! How does he look?”

“He’s handsome, but… hey, stop pushing!”

“Damn it, whose pet bug just bit me?”

Led by a few terrified, tearful maids, Mo Cunzhi arrived at the golden platform and was immediately the focus of everyone’s attention.

The sheer number of demons and demonic cultivators made his body tense. He had to suppress his long-ingrained instincts and force himself to remain calm as he walked through their midst.

It was a strange feeling. Rather than hatred or rejection, the gazes of the demonic cultivators held curiosity and… envy.

Mo Cunzhi gave them only a brief glance before turning his attention to Yu Le, who stood on the golden platform.

Yu Le had noticed his arrival as well. With a smile on his face, he turned to look at him and descended the platform with long strides.

His blood-soaked robes billowed around him, giving him an oddly captivating air of vivid beauty.

“My queen has finally awakened,” he said with a smile.

Yu Le’s tone was teasing as he casually shrugged off his blood-stained outer robe and tossed it behind him, where two maids quickly caught it.

Now dressed only in a silver-white narrow-sleeved robe, his figure, somewhere between a youth and a young man, looked elegant and slender as he approached Mo Cunzhi.

Mo Cunzhi stood still, watching him intently, letting Yu Le take hold of his arm.

“We’ll stop here for today. Send the rest of them to the fighting pits,” Yu Le ordered, then gripped Mo Cunzhi’s arm and led him away.

Some of the demonic cultivators cheered and rushed toward the golden platform, eager to claim the demons who were still clinging to life, while others craned their necks to watch the departing figures of the king and his so-called queen.

“The king seems to really like this queen. He’s taking him away right after he woke up.”

“Wasn’t it said that the queen was brought back just to humiliate the Immortal Sect?”

“What’s so hard to understand? A man that good-looking—if I were the king, I’d like him too.”

“But looking at them now, doesn’t it seem like the king is the one who looks more like the queen?”

“Shh! Do you have a death wish, saying something like that?”

The maids who had been terrified by the queen earlier—reduced to tears by his sword—followed them, feeling resentful that the king hadn’t even asked about them or acknowledged their distress.

Just as they caught up, they heard Yu Le teasing the queen, “You just woke up, and already you came looking for me. Senior Brother, you’re so clingy.”

“And I only prepared that one set of red clothes. I thought you wouldn’t want to wear them, but look at you, wearing them so obediently. How sweet.”

Yu Le’s gentle tone nearly shattered the hearts of the listening maids, but the queen, still cold in his response, simply asked, “Why did you bring me here?”

Yu Le blinked, confused. “What do you mean, why did I bring you here? Didn’t I already explain?”

Mo Cunzhi remained silent for a long time. When they returned to the opulent palace, he finally asked with a trace of confusion, “Isn’t it Junior Sister that you love?”

Yu Le froze. “…” He had nearly forgotten that he once lied to his Senior Brother, telling him that he was in love with Senior Sister Shuang.

“Did you bring me here because of Junior Sister’s request?” Mo Cunzhi recalled how, after discovering his identity, his Junior Sister had urged him several times to join the Demonic Path.

Yu Le looked at him curiously, circling around him twice, clicking his tongue in wonder.

“Senior Brother, oh, Senior Brother, should I say you’re a fool or just not very bright?”

He spun around and sat on the nearby couch, kicked off his boots, and rested his feet on a jade footstool. “I’ve deceived you so many times already, and you never once stopped to think—when I said I was in love with Senior Sister, wasn’t I lying to you too?”

After he said this, he seemed to find it quite amusing. Propping his chin on his hand, he laughed, his eyes curving into crescents.

It was almost too funny, especially realizing that Mo Cunzhi seemed to be jealous of his junior sister? The very junior sister he’d grown up with, the one he used to have a childhood crush on—did his senior brother even realize what he was thinking?

It was just too entertaining.

Mo Cunzhi’s expression shifted several times before he finally said, “I want to leave this place.”

Yu Le leaned back against the cushions, listening without a trace of anger, and asked curiously, “To return to the Wuyue Immortal Sect?”

“I can no longer return there,” Mo Cunzhi replied. “I want to see what the Demonic Path has to offer.”

“Alright,” Yu Le agreed easily, without hesitation.

“If you can win tomorrow on the golden platform, you’ll be free to leave.”

Mo Cunzhi looked at him intently. “Alright.”

No matter what challenge Yu Le threw at him, he would accept.

“But since Senior Brother is leaving tomorrow, stay with me tonight,” Yu Le added with a smile.

The way Mo Cunzhi looked at him made it clear that he understood exactly what Yu Le was asking for.

“With your current cultivation, you no longer need the demonic energy from my body,” Mo Cunzhi said as calmly as he could, turning his head to watch the smoke rising inside the palace.

“I don’t stay with Senior Brother just for the demonic energy.”

“…Which of your words are true, and which are lies?”

Everything Yu Le had said before seemed false, as if even his emotions—whether real or fake—were ambiguous.

Yu Le, now barefoot, stepped closer, pressing a hand against Mo Cunzhi’s chest and pushing him toward the couch. “Whether it’s true or not, Senior Brother will have to figure that out for himself.”

Unlike Mo Cunzhi’s outwardly cold demeanor, the heart beneath Yu Le’s palm was beating fiercely. He wasn’t sure which part of their conversation had triggered that reaction.

“Enough talk. Since Senior Brother is on my turf, I have to treat you well,” Yu Le said softly, his voice laced with a subtle intimacy. Wrapping both arms around Mo Cunzhi’s waist, he rested his chin on Mo Cunzhi’s chest and looked up at him. “How about I play the queen for you tonight?”

Mo Cunzhi’s Adam’s apple bobbed slightly.

But he seemed unwilling to confront his own desires, turning his head away evasively.

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