Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Born a Devil Creature
The Bai Family school sat west of the Bai Manor. Step out the east door and you’d reach the manor’s side gate; head west and you’d run straight into Azure Cloud City’s largest market.
Bai Meng Jin didn’t go home.
She went to the market instead.
Contrary to what the righteous path liked to believe, Yu Mo, Your Excellency, had a steady mind and no inner demons. Her youth had been miserable. So what?
It was over.
Her cultivation was unmatched now. One stomp, and the Cultivation World would tremble. The people who’d once bullied her in the Bai Family had long since died and turned to dust.
So why did this feel strange?
Illusions had two common purposes.
One was to strike at a cultivator’s weakness and shatter their Dao heart.
The other was to show them what they craved most, tempting them to sink deeper.
This slice of Bai Family history was neither.
That was what bothered her.
The Reincarnation Mirror was an ancient supreme treasure. It was said to move mountains and seas, to defy fate itself.
Surely it didn’t drag her into the past just to watch her beat up Bai Meng Xing.
Azure Cloud City was large—immortals and mortals living together beneath the same sky. The more people there were, the harder it was to fake every detail. Flaws showed in crowds.
So Bai Meng Jin walked into the market and let her gaze sweep across the street.
Merchants shouted. Shoppers brushed shoulders. The air smelled of fried dough and incense and the damp bite of winter. Laughter rose and fell like waves.
And everything looked… real.
Too real.
Her brows drew together as she walked.
She couldn’t find a single crack.
Could it be this wasn’t an illusion at all?
Then what was it?
A self-contained world inside the Reincarnation Mirror?
Annoyed by the lack of answers, Bai Meng Jin chose a tea stall at random and sat, letting her thoughts sharpen like a whetstone under pressure. She took a few absent-minded sips—
—and a sweet young woman’s voice floated over from the next table.
“Senior Brother, we’ve been walking all day. Let’s rest for a bit!”
A familiar male voice answered, teasing. “You just saw those tea cakes and wanted to eat them, didn’t you?”
“Come on,” the girl whined. “Okay?”
A laugh, affectionate and helpless. “How could I say no after you ask? Order whatever you want. Senior Brother’s treating.”
The girl cheered and called for the waiter.
Bai Meng Jin turned her head.
At the next table sat a young man and young woman in matching apricot-colored robes.
The girl was fifteen or sixteen, pretty and still faintly childish. The young man sat with easy posture, bright eyes, and an expression so open it almost hurt to look at.
It was Huo Chong Xiao.
Not the Hall Dean who’d stood at the Zi Wei Ruins with a blade in his hand and ice in his voice.
This was him, younger by years—so young that even the lines of sorrow hadn’t yet found his face.
Bai Meng Jin’s first instinct was to cover her face.
If Huo Chong Xiao had entered this strange realm with her and decided to turn hostile, she’d be in trouble. Her cultivation still hadn’t returned.
But as she listened, her hand paused halfway.
The girl was familiar too.
Yue Yun Qiao—Huo Chong Xiao’s junior sister.
They’d grown up together. They’d been close enough that their laughter matched.
And then, not long after Bai Meng Jin joined the sect, Yue Yun Qiao died on a devil-hunting mission. Huo Chong Xiao had been devastated. His personality had changed completely afterward, as if some vital piece of him had been carved away.
If this was truly Huo Chong Xiao, seeing the junior sister he’d missed day and night would have torn him open.
He wouldn’t be sitting here, smiling like the sun hadn’t learned how to set.
So what was this?
Did he remember nothing?
Or was he part of the illusion—if it was an illusion?
Bai Meng Jin kept her expression blank and listened harder.
“Senior Brother,” Yue Yun Qiao said, voice turning serious, “we’ve been investigating for days and still haven’t found anything. Does Azure Cloud City really have a Devil Creature?”
Huo Chong Xiao took a sip of tea. “The people who disappeared were either teenage boys and girls, or little children. Those are the kind of sacrifices a Devil Creature prefers.”
“But it could also be human traffickers!”
“You’re not wrong,” he said, patient. “But if it were traffickers, the compass wouldn’t react.”
He tapped the table lightly with one finger, thoughtful. “A devil hunter reported it. That makes it more likely to be real.”
In the Cultivation World, besides sects and clans, there were countless independent cultivators. Many made their living hunting devils. When they ran into something beyond them, they sought help from sect disciples.
Bai Meng Jin hadn’t known Huo Chong Xiao had ever been to Azure Cloud City. She’d never heard of a Devil Creature appearing here either.
Had this case been created by the Reincarnation Mirror?
For no reason at all, a prickling unease crawled up her spine.
“Either way,” Huo Chong Xiao said, setting his cup down, “this is strange. We should be careful.”
He paid and rose. Yue Yun Qiao followed, bright and trusting at his side.
Bai Meng Jin tossed a couple coins onto the table and trailed after them at a distance.
The senior brother and junior sister left the market and headed toward the southern district, where the streets were tight and crowded and all kinds of people lived stacked together like kindling.
Huo Chong Xiao stopped before a plain door and knocked.
A woman with swollen, red eyes opened it a crack. She stared at them, wary and confused. “You two are…?”
“Auntie,” Huo Chong Xiao said gently, “Immortal Master Liu recommended we come.”
The woman’s face shifted as understanding hit. She pulled the door open wider, hands trembling. “Immortal Master, please—please come in. Our home is simple. I hope you won’t mind.”
Huo Chong Xiao smiled, polite enough to ease a frightened heart. “Of course not. Thank you for troubling yourself, Auntie.”
They stepped inside. The door shut.
With Bai Meng Jin’s current hearing, she couldn’t make out their voices through the thick wood.
After a moment’s thought, she reached into her sleeve and drew out the stack of talismans Bai Meng Xing had stolen—her homework, returned to her by the simple expedient of not bothering to ask.
She chose one, folded it into a paper crane, and breathed into it.
“Go.”
Spiritual light wrapped around the paper crane. It blurred, shrank, and turned into something like a tiny flying insect. It crawled into the crack beneath the door.
The voices inside seeped into her ears.
“Da Ya disappeared that night,” the woman sobbed. “It’s my fault. I knew it wasn’t safe outside, but I didn’t go pick her up. She never came back.”
“Which route did she usually take?” Huo Chong Xiao asked, calm and careful. “What time did she usually get home?”
“Ramhorn Street. There are restaurants there, so it’s livelier.” The woman swallowed hard. “Da Ya was obedient. She’d come back right after work. At the latest, she’d be home by the second watch.”
Huo Chong Xiao asked several more questions. At last, he requested one of Da Ya’s personal belongings.
Hope—thin and desperate—shook the woman’s voice. “Immortal Master… can my Da Ya still come home?”
There was a pause long enough to feel.
“We haven’t found out yet,” Huo Chong Xiao said finally. “I don’t know.”
The woman’s sobbing rose again, raw and hopeless. “People say my Da Ya was taken by a demon and eaten…”
Huo Chong Xiao offered a few words of comfort, then left with Yue Yun Qiao.
“Senior Brother,” Yue Yun Qiao asked once they were outside, “what do we do next?”
Huo Chong Xiao looked toward the darkening sky. “When it gets dark, we’ll try summoning her soul.”
School had let out at dusk. Night was already gathering.
Bai Meng Jin followed them.
They walked Ramhorn Street once, slow and deliberate, then stopped in a secluded corner where no one lingered and the shadows gathered thick.
“Senior Brother,” Yue Yun Qiao whispered, uneasy, “I feel the yin energy is heavier here.”
“Then we’ll do it here.” Huo Chong Xiao’s voice was firm. “Take the things out.”
“Okay.”
Yue Yun Qiao pulled out brush and ink. Huo Chong Xiao drew a simple soul-summoning array on the ground with quick, practiced strokes.
Night fell fully.
He took out the handkerchief he’d gotten from the woman and burned it in the array.
Black smoke rose.
The array reacted. Something invisible seemed to gather around them, pressing in like damp fog.
They waited.
And waited.
Nothing came.
Huo Chong Xiao’s expression tightened, grim creeping in around the edges of his composure.
Bai Meng Jin frowned as well.
The array had sensed a presence.
That meant Da Ya was truly dead.
But if a complete soul still couldn’t be summoned after this long, the problem was serious.
The Cinnabar Cloud Palace’s soul-summoning array could call a mortal soul as easily as breathing. If it failed, then either the soul had been devoured—or someone was suppressing it.
There really was a Devil Creature in Azure Cloud City.
How outrageous.
With a great devil fiend standing right here, what Devil Creature was blind enough to show its face?
A flicker of movement cut across the wall behind Yue Yun Qiao.
Neither of the young disciples noticed.
In the span of a heartbeat, Bai Meng Jin formed a hand seal and drew an invisible talisman with a finger of spiritual light.
“Watch out!”