"Going back to Earth, it must be Mr. Zhang's first time in centuries. You'll see that the people of earth change by a lot!"
Yuan Hai took a large swig of wine from his gold tumbler. "Since time is kind of endless for us, all of us have given up on changing our old ways."
"It's too stressful."
"Yeah! Tradition is the way!"
"Kind of endless…." Yutao rolled the words around his tongue. He was still hidden behind the column. If all goes well then there would be no need for him to interfere. Within an hour or so he would be tucked in to wear off this extremely long day from his mind and body.
If all goes well....
Zhang Xiyu did not waste his time on perfunctory banter. He walked towards the crack and his pale hand extended out from the long sleeve of his black robe, asking Yuan Hai for the transmission stone. Yuan Hai warily placed the stone in his palm and moved back, as if he was giving him space.
Zhang Xiyu clasped the stone lightly in front of him, and a concentrated ray of energy burst through the stone and into the space-time fabric's tear.
"Is he not afraid that this unnecessary contact with the stone would shake his focus?"
"Shake it? Did you not look at the strength behind that conscience thread? He's going to get us fucked. We are all getting sooo fucked." The demon cried.
"If he lets the Heaven know about this, I won't let it slide!"
"Oh? What will you do then?"
"...follow the curfew, but I won't let it slide!"
Meanwhile, Zhang Xiyu had already reached another pathetic ritual. This time it was at the end of a forest. The tall trees caved in ghastly upon a large summoning circle. Unlike Yuan Hai, Zhang Xiyu did not care enough for stealth and had no problem manifesting a physical body in the mortal realm. If the demons weren't scared before, they were now shitting bricks in their pants.
Yet, they couldn't stop watching nor could they stop Zhang Xiyu. The once boisterous crowd which belonged to a wedding, remained silent as if in a funeral procession.
In the mortal realm, Zhang Xiyu looked around at the group of dancers that danced around this ring of blood, in which he was currently standing. In a way their summoning was indeed successful, they just hadn't realized it. And so, his arrival put no dent on their sincere enthusiasm.
Zhang Xiyu thought that this was a bit troublesome. Among these masked dancers that show no sign of stopping, he needed to find the chief summoner. He needed to stop this pointless dance.
He resolutely gathered his robes and walked out of the bloody circle. To create this huge pool of blood, just how many men and beasts had died? Well, not enough. To summon a true demon this petty bloodshed is equivalent to dangling a penny in front of a treasurer. His shoes left bloody footprints on the ground as he walked towards the intoxicated drummer.
"We vow to you our kin and gold, kneeling down as slaves. For your majesty we give our soul and bones on blades-"
The drummer's wretched singing ceased abruptly and the drumsticks slipped from his hands. The dancers finally noticed that something was wrong and stopped dancing.
The dancers gasped, not in shock but pure delight as they saw the drummer hang in the air, ten feet above, getting choked by some invisible force, and beneath the flailing drummer stood a tall figure clad in luxurious black robes. The man turned around and smiled at the audience.
"Where's your sacrifice?" Zhang Xiyu asked. His face bore a charming smile which did not match his cold tone.
The summoners stood like a statue, momentarily dazed. Feeling that their god was growing a little impatient, the group kneeled down on the bloody floor.
"The virgins have been submitted to you already, your highness." The man on the left end stuttered.
"But- but whatever else you take a liking to, we sacrifice!"
"We sacrifice!" The group yelled in unison.
The pause was filled with the sound of flickering flames and distant howls from the dark forest. The drummer's choking stopped as he passed out. Zhang Xiyu was in no mood to hold a deadweight midair and so the drummer sharply landed on to the ground. His head burst open and his ribs shattered, his blood inching towards the larger pool of dried blood. But he still wasn't dead. His breathing turned uneven and his eyes shot open. The dancers were fixated on the whimpering drummer.
The figure in the middle quivered with excitement. Her Lord could have taken his life himself but he wanted their sacrifice. It was his kindness to keep the drummer alive, and now she had to perform well for her lord.
She stepped out of the group as she whipped out a dagger from her waist. She kneeled down towards the drummer and raised her dagger in the air. " Amon! Accept our sacrifice!"
The dagger swung down and a head rolled away from her feet. That head did not belong to the drummer.
Zhang Xiyu kicked away the headless corpse of the chief summoner which then plopped right onto the quivering drummer. He calmly grabbed the chief summoner's soul and stuffed it inside his sleeve.
While ignoring the noise the humans made he disintegrated his manifestation and pulled back his conscience, or at least he tried to. This entire "game" required an immense amount of concentration going in and out. There are many cases where amateurs try to get in on it and end up losing their entire sanity, not even getting close to a mortal realm. While that might not be a problem for these top guns, it requires a whole nother level of focus to not let the Heaven detect them.
So when Zhang Xiyu recalled his conscience to Hell and found himself trapped in an illusion, he knew that someone wanted him dead.
Zhang Xiyu cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. Who could it be?
Yuan Hai? That's a bit too obvious given their history. And for that exact reason he knew that Yuan Hai needed him alive. Yuan Hai finally came this close to the Blue Lotus, he wouldn't give up on it now. Then who is it?
He did see Liu Lei wandering around but he knew his strength. Liu Lei was utterly weak. All he knew were the ways of debauchery, he had long given up on cultivation and is nothing more than a dog. He would never be able to pull off an illusion in the space-time fabric without alerting the Heaven.
Zhang Xiyu decided to not make any huge movements and explore the illusion. If he were to use his full strength to break the illusion he would no doubt be escorted out in cuffs by the angels. That leaves him with only one option, get to the center of the mirage array. What he would do after getting there was something he left to his mood.
As of now this place looked like a blank canvas with a few wildflowers popping out of nowhere. There was no direction in this abstract place. When Zhang Xiyu turned around he met with a certain change in this boring illusion.
Gold. Tons and tons of gold which was attempting to blind him, appeared out of thin air. He vaguely recalled reading such tales where the bandits would go through an epic adventure in search of some treasure.
This scene was probably their wet dream.
Zhang Xiyu was a bit curious at first, but then shrugged his shoulders and walked over the heap of gold coins as if they were nothing but dirt. The illusion had started to take place. Instead of wasting time by avoiding it he decided to walk even deeper inside it.
After walking for a while he finally saw a person lying in the middle of the gold rubble. The woman was covered by a pink veil from top to bottom. Her posture was akin to a person on a beach vacation. Through that veil, he could feel her beautiful doe eyes bore into him provocatively.
Zhang Xiyu's movements did not stop, he kept walking till he reached the woman and with no hesitation crossed over her slim body. The woman could only stare at his boots which were getting further and further away.
"Where do you think you're going?" Her delicate voice was filled with panic.
When Zhang Xiyu turned around to look at her, the environment had changed completely. Light laughter and floral perfumes filled the air. He seemed to be in a dim lit hall, surrounded by countless beauties who wore nothing but long colorful veils. They didn't approach him directly but twittered around him, throwing coy glances. The woman from before stood right in the middle of this crowd with a pitiful expression. Someone from behind seemed to have pushed her. The woman didn't stabilize herself and fell towards him.
Zhang Xiyu dodged to the left and continued to study his surroundings. The woman in the pink veil didn't land on the ground and just simply vanished from the illusion. A thin hand wearing priceless gems suddenly tried to slip under Zhang Xiyu's robes. The count of hands roaming up and down his chest increased as the scent of clashing perfumes engulfed him.
"Are you looking for some fun, my lord?"
"We are here to serve you all night…"
He suddenly felt some lingering pain in his bones. He couldn't understand a word coming out of these ladies, his mind stuck at that point in his past. The white villa, the acid drilling into his bones, and him clutching onto a dagger desperately.
Do I regret stabbing her?
The memory of her blood spilling on top of him as he dug his dagger deeper down her naked chest slowly relaxed his nerves.
I regret…
In his daze, he didn't notice the numerous women around him fading away. The array discarded the elements that failed to work and worked on producing another. He was left to stand there alone silently.
I regret something but I don't regret stabbing her.
While he did remember that incident faintly, he couldn't recall the exact reason behind his action. All that was left was a psychological scar, giving him a body ache whenever a demoness with intentions approached him.
"Are you alright?" A magnetic voice cleared his head.
He looked up to find a man up close. If he had to describe the guy in one word it would be beautiful, almost like a woman. The scene was the same as before, but this time multiple men surrounded him with concerned expressions.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me." Zhang Xiyu growled with frustration.
One such man held his shoulders "Your body looks so stiff, let me give you a massa-"
"Oh my god stop it." he snatched his arm back. The men looked confused and kept a safe distance from him. A nerve twitched on his forehead as he turned around in a general direction and yelled "Change it!"
If the illusion had sentience it would have felt like an assistant under a tyrannical director on the film set. Even if it didn't, the array still complied with his demands.
The men vanished and so did the entire place. Soon thick fog started to engulf the area and that was it. Zhang Xiyu walked aimlessly inside the thick fog for what seemed like hours but were mere minutes. As he kept on walking he realized that this was not some normal fog. Since breathing was no longer a necessity for him, he had stopped doing it to block off the sweet perfumes from before. He took a small whiff.
It was smoke. Judging by its spread there had to be a large fire behind it. He narrowed his eyes and determined the direction of the smoke. He made his way to the opposite direction and hoped to find the array's center there.
Laws of nature dictated that as you get closer to the source of fire, the smoke intensifies as such. But this illusion had decided to screw those laws. The closer he got to the fire, the faster the smoke thinned away. Soon a burning house reached his sight. The house looked like it was built in the previous generations. With three buildings surrounding a large courtyard, the place looked like it belonged to a rich person. Zhang Xiyu's life, which had turned stagnant for quite a few centuries, didn't fail to keep with the modern trends of an apartment the size of a matchbox.
In front of that burning house he felt that he had traveled back in time, a strange nostalgia crept in.
Soon a girl covered in soot arrived at the gate. Her hair resembled a straw nest while her night clothes singed by flames. She limped towards him slowly, sparing no glance at her injuries.
"A-Yu….?"
A way of addressal that implied their familiarity with each other. The night didn't help him figure out the girl's identity.
"Yu Ge!" she suddenly rushed towards him and grabbed his shoulders. Black tears dripped down her face as she screamed "Mother, father, everyone, they are still in there!"
"I'll go call for help. You need to save them! Go! Hurry!" With an unnatural amount of force, the girl shoved him in through the burning gate which immediately closed with a resounding bang.
Having no choice but to go "save" these characters he walked inside the main building. When he kicked open a random door, he found a young boy crying in the lap of a passed out woman. "Mommy get up, it's too hot here! Wake up! Leave!"
No matter how much the child wailed, his mother couldn't hear any of it. After noticing Zhang Xiyu's presence, the child threw himself at him, similar to the way the girl did from before. Zhang Xiyu found himself being vigilant of a child that barely reached his hips.
"Uncle! Mommy doesn't listen. Papa. Where is Papa?"
Probably out drinking in a tavern. . . .
Zhang Xiyu's body stiffened. Where did he get that thought from?
He left those concerns for later and his gaze swept the room uniformly. Weak veins of the array, which means that the center is…
He ignored the crying child at his feet and left the room. In a few seconds he had crossed the large courtyard and reached another room. When he kicked that door open he found himself in an ancestral hall. At first glance it looked like any normal ancestral hall. Only a citizen of hell was capable of recognizing the demonic scent coming from the altar.
Since Zhang Xiyu's actual physical entity was not in this shithole, naturally he didn't bring his sword. He channeled his manifestation to gather his cultivation's energy into a two-foot long arrow. Now that he has finally found its center he can decide what to do with it.
Suddenly an old couple barged inside the room and their momentum landed them on the ground.
Under his inquisitive yet impatient expression the disheveled old woman got up and caressed his cheek, the pale skin staining with the black soot made his eyes look even colder.
The woman cried "Son! Let's get out of here! Help me carry your father."
"What kind of array is this? You first push me in and then drag me out. Who are you and what is with this setting?" He swung an arm to point out the place.
"Is this how you talk to your mother you brat! Now is not the time for jokes- A-Yu! Xiyu!"
He had heard enough from these puppets who claimed to be his parents. Truthfully, he had no recollection left of his time in the mortal world, except for a strong sense of betrayal. The citizens of hell have often treated him as an outsider. But if he had to write down his roots, he would have no choice but to write about the Pit that birthed the current him.
A heavy bow materialized from his fingertips as he secured the long arrow in it. He then pulled out a strand of hair from his robe and tied it to the arrow. In the blink of an eye, the arrow shot straight at the ancestral tablet in the middle and pinned it over the shrine.
A strange howling sound came out of the tablet as the flames from outside surrounded the trio. The illusion was cracking under the invasion of a foreign demonic energy. Zhang Xiyu didn't wait for the entire place to fall over but quickly recalled his conscience out of the nearest crack in the array.
Back in hell, the demons were cursing the incompetence of Zhang Xiyu who had failed to return on time and showed no sign either recalling his conscience or dying.
Minutes passed by when Zhang Xiyu finally opened his eyes. The atmosphere was dead silent for a moment before cheers erupted from every side.
"He is back! No more curfew! We are so back!"
"I am never doing this again." a demon cried.
Zhang Xiyu first met the eyes of Yuan Hai who looked annoyed that he wasn't injured. But apart from annoyance there was no sense of defeat.
He didn't create the array.
Before he had the leisure to investigate his matters, a tall figure grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the crowd. The person also threw a cloak over him that dampens one's spiritual power.
"Let's get the fuck out of here." Yutao whispered with panic.
He stuffed his boss in the ready carriage and they immediately took off from this disastrous party.
"The Heaven has already arrived." Yutao held his own head.
Zhang Xiyu lay down deeper into the couch, utterly exhausted. But he still gave a sly smile to his depressed subordinate.
"Didn't I send you home?"
"You!"
"Don't worry. I have already laid down a ten year long plan for hell."
"What?"
On the other side, Liu Lei spat on the ground and gazed resentfully at the scene this game had caused. Above Yuan Hai's head was a halo. It wasn't nearly as angelic as it should be but was made of cold reinforced metal.
"You are being brought under detention for trespassing the mortal realm and exposing your powers which resulted in two direct and four indirect deaths. The Justice will now sentence your punishment tomorrow morning." A serious angel recited this standard information from a tablet while his partner tightened the halo over his head.
Yuan Hai resisted the urge to wince and bit his tongue to stay silent. Anything else said in this embarrassing situation would embarrass him even more.
The angel continued, "You are also being detained for opening up an array inside the time-space fabric without any permits."
"What the fuck?"
"As for the punishment faced by the demons who encouraged this act, we will act according to the protocol."
"The protocol mandates ten years of curfew including two dry years where alcohol supply would be stopped."
"Like father, like son! Only know how to ruin a good time!"
"I hate my life so much."
All this groaning and crying fell on deaf ears as the black carriage carrying the scheming bastards rolled far away from the chaos.
"Who could have trapped you in that array-"
A job proposal flashed inside Yutao's brain. "Oh."
Zhang Xiyu suddenly looked very curious and leaned forward with a smile, "Care to explain?"