Chapter Ninety-Eight: Baili Mo, Rise

“Forget it. No matter what, this is still a good thing. As long as I can freely use the First Transformation of the Ancient Demon, even without the Nine Purgatories, it is far stronger than before.”

Yu Daoyi smiled faintly, feeling the power surging through his body.

Compared with before, the power within him was pitifully weak, but he could clearly sense that this strength now belonged entirely to him.

“Yaoyao, I don’t know how long I can hold out, so I’m counting on you from here on!”

After speaking, Yu Daoyi rushed out, blocking every maddened villager outside Yaoyao’s reach.

Yaoyao nodded. Her slender frame carried Xiaoqian on her back as she watched Yu Daoyi fight desperately at her side. She bit her lip, quietly sensing something, then suddenly broke into a run in one direction.

There lay the core of the blood formation.

There lay the burial place of the hundreds of souls and bodies of Peach Blossom Village.

The old peach tree had said that the one called Baili Mo had used Yaoyao’s love to refine her into the formation’s core, while the old tree demon had been forced to become the yin object within the array. The only way to save everyone was to find the core, destroy it, and sever the blood formation. As the yin object produced by the blood array, the old peach tree would then no longer be able to remain in this world.

The old peach tree had said that as long as the blood array existed, then regardless of whether it lived or died, the illusion array could still subsist by relying on it. But once the blood array was lost, along with the old peach tree’s power, the illusion would inevitably collapse of its own accord.

No matter how it was done, setting aside how to find the core, Yu Daoyi simply could not bring himself to make plans for other people’s bones. Moreover, if he, an outsider to the array, were to do such a thing, no one could guarantee there would not be some accident. Baili Mo might have left behind some other trick as well.

But if Yaoyao, as the core itself, made the move, that risk would be reduced to the absolute minimum. What he was doing now was protecting her, helping her rely on her own perception to find her own physical body. At the very least, on that front, even Yu Daoyi, a mere array master, could not help much at all.

A stick of incense later, at the foot of a rather large rear mountain behind Peach Blossom Village.

Yu Daoyi stared at the mountain before him, panting heavily. “Damn it, I hate rear mountains the most!”

Behind him, waves of villagers still surged forward without end, as if they knew no fatigue. Yu Daoyi, however, could only use the First Transformation of the Ancient Demon. If he used the Nine Purgatories, there was no telling whether his own body would collapse once again, and then all he had done before would be wasted.

What was more, the First Transformation of the Ancient Demon was still constrained by his cultivation and by the influence of the illusion array. Without a real physical body, its power was greatly diminished. Against these villagers, unless he could strike them down in one blow and leave them unable to move, any lesser injury they suffered would heal rapidly under the influence of the blood moon. That made things even more difficult for Yu Daoyi.

“The rear mountain?” Yaoyao said in slight bewilderment.

“What is it?” Yu Daoyi asked.

“Nothing. I was just remembering how Xiaoqian often went up the rear mountain and said that when the peach blossoms were in full bloom here, it was very, very beautiful.” A faint smile surfaced on Yaoyao’s pale face, as if she had recalled something.

“Hey, when all of this is over, let’s watch the sea of peach blossoms together, all right?” Yaoyao turned her head and asked him.

“Yes. We already made that promise.”

Yu Daoyi answered with great seriousness.

No matter what happened afterward, and no matter whether Yaoyao would disappear in the end, at this moment he wanted to stand with her and look once more upon this beautiful Peach Blossom Village in daylight.

“It should be here. I can feel a faint connection. Before, I was always busy running for my life, so I had no time to care about any of this. I suppose all of this will come to an end tonight. Then everyone can stop being so tired, and Xiaoqian will surely be able to see the sea of peach blossoms with us again!”

Hearing Yu Daoyi’s answer, Yaoyao’s sweat-soaked face carried a trace of a smile. Then she looked toward the rear mountain, bit her lip tightly, and her face once again showed stubborn resolve.

You always wear that expression by habit, biting your lips hard, stubbornly forcing yourself to hide your weakness.

Clearly, for her, this was only their first meeting. Clearly, for him, it was full of nothing but bad memories.

And yet this feeling of two hearts drawing closer and closer, this wordless trust, was like a reunion with a cherished friend, like knowing each other for so long, so long.

As for memory, it never truly disappears. It only buries itself deep within the soul, then slowly, imperceptibly, reveals itself in another form.

That is the emotion that belongs to human beings.

“Foolish girl,” Yu Daoyi said to Yaoyao. Even now, the one she cared about was still those villagers. She always put herself at the very end.

“I’m older than you, you know!” Yaoyao said with dissatisfaction, pouting slightly.

Roars rose once more behind them. The villagers who had been thrown off surged back around them again, their faces hideous and twisted.

“I’m sorry.”

Turning his head away, Yu Daoyi spoke softly.

“What?” Yaoyao seemed to hear something, yet also as if she had not caught it clearly.

“Nothing! Idiot! Hurry up and run, I’m even afraid I won’t be able to hold on much longer!” Yu Daoyi said carelessly. Then he charged into the crowd and once again blocked the villagers before Yaoyao.

I’m sorry. I’m too foolish. I can only think of ending all this in this way.

I’m sorry. I’m too weak. I can only let you bring this to an end with your own hands.

I’m sorry. I can’t bear it alone. I can only choose to tell you everything, to make you remember that pain once more.

But at least, right now, I am behind you!

I don’t know whether I can last until it is all over, but even if I have to do it again, and again ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, I would still choose to keep going! This was our promise. I will help you, until death itself!

What my eyes see, what my heart feels, all of it is real! Every moment I stand here truly exists!

If the ending is not the one I want, then I will fight with all my strength before the dust settles and carve out the ending I desire for myself!

This time, I cannot lose! I do not want to cry in regret again!

Among the crowd, or rather among that band of vengeful ghosts, Yu Daoyi kept swinging his fists, forcing the villagers back again and again, while he himself was wounded repeatedly. Under the influence of the blood moon, he could only keep suppressing the rising negativity within him. Behind him was a girl. That girl needed him now.

A stick of incense later, Yu Daoyi was on one knee, blood and sweat mingling as they streamed down his face. He panted heavily as if suffocating, blood and sweat seeping into his eyes. Those eyes, slightly elongated after the Ancient Demon transformation, were filled with a faint red glow.

The villagers who had already fallen before him struggled one after another to rise from the ground, and the wounds on their bodies recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye beneath the blood moon’s light. That speed far exceeded Yu Daoyi’s own recovery after the First Transformation of the Ancient Demon.

“I can’t drag this out any longer. I don’t know how Yaoyao is doing on the rear mountain. I have to get to her as fast as possible, or it’ll be too late if something goes wrong.” Yu Daoyi murmured with his head lowered.

He slowly got to his feet, nearly stumbling and falling. Unintentionally, he lifted his head and looked at the blood moon in the night sky, only to suddenly realize that the eyes upon it were already gone, leaving the moon as red as blood.

“They’re gone?” Yu Daoyi exclaimed with a frown, then suddenly thought of something. “Damn it!”

As soon as the words fell, perhaps by coincidence, a sharp scream rang out from the rear mountain. With the heightened hearing granted by the First Transformation of the Ancient Demon, it was not hard to recognize Yaoyao’s voice.

Hearing that cry, Yu Daoyi stamped his right foot down hard. The ground instantly split outward in all directions, and Yu Daoyi, forcing his battered body onward like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, raced toward the rear mountain at top speed.

On the summit of the rear mountain, gusts of evening wind carried the smell of blood from all directions. At the wide-open peak, there was not a single blade of grass or tree to be seen, only a ground strewn with broken stones, desolate beyond measure. It stood in stark contrast to the thriving and prosperous Peach Blossom Village at the foot of the mountain.

In less than a quarter of an hour, Yu Daoyi had reached the summit. What met his eyes was only desolation, even a kind of bleak sorrow. At the center of the peak stood a lone tombstone. There was no name carved upon it, yet in the lower right corner there was a small line of writing.

Baili Mo, erected here.