So long as Tieshan could remember, she'd always been a prize. Even the ill-intentioned Heart-Wrenching Demon Noble treated her with surface-level courtesy. But in Xinzi's world, she went from prize to tool and from tool to discardable afterthought. Any illusion of control that Tieshan might have had collapsed here, the reality of this new relationship striking her like a thunderbolt.
Xinzi pulled off his goat mask, revealing a bald, square and handsome face embellished by rich luster. Instantly, Tieshan recognized that face, one that in recent years, never failed to haunt her dreams.
"So it was really you. Abbot Xinzi of the Liberation Temple and White Immortal Sect. Indeed, no wonder you know all my lines. We've met before through Shui Haoyue," for the first time since she made her entrance, Tieshan's lips curled into a bitter smile. A part of her had wanted Xinzi's face behind that mask, but another dreaded the prospect of being face to face with the only person that, had not only seen through her biggest secret but also terrified her so completely that she dared not confront him again.
"The first time that Shui Haoyue and you met was in the Purple Wind Palace's garden. Back then, your master and you had already sensed something amiss. Neither one seemed to care, and left me to my own device. Haoyue was smitten. From the start, Shui Jiankang had bigger plans for her than the White Immortal Sect, but she managed to convince him to let her join—all so that she'd be closer to you.
I tried to influence Haoyue so that her path wouldn't cross yours again, but I had to be careful about Xue Lin seeing through my concealment, so ultimately, I couldn't stop Haoyue from finding her way back to you. What a pity; the two of us are too similar, so it was doomed to be a tragedy." Tieshan lowered her eyes, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as waves of memories washed through her.
"But I'm confused, why did my existence never faze you in the slightest?"
"Because, Niu Haoyue, I'm only too familiar with that kind of trick. From where I'm from, it's a routine that the mighty use to have some fun and play the fates of their inferiors.
You've made a rookie mistake. Instead of incarnating yourself in the fetus and turning her into your avatar, you should have directly incarnated yourself in the womb and triggered the pregnancy. This would have granted you absolute control over the child's future, regardless of what path they took, or how much they grew. But I guess you were too weak to consider that," Xinzi said, and for a second, he too drifted back to past events.
From the moment that his eyes had laid on Haoyue, Xinzi had noticed her Extreme Yin Soul, and since said souls were never the product of natural forces, knew that foreign powers played tricks on Haoyue's soul. After she joined the Liberation Temple, Xinzi used Soul Melding as an excuse to peer into her soul and locate the troublemaker that doomed her to death: Xue Lin.
But at the same time, Xinzi sensed another existence, one that had turned Haoyue into an avatar, and remained hidden from even Xue Lin: Tieshan. This ability to notice her, when even the returning Xue Lin couldn't see through her concealment, convinced Tieshan that, more than anyone else, she had to be wary of Xinzi.
But at the same time, his resourcefulness piqued her curiosity, making it so that she no longer attempted to lead Haoyue away from him—not that this would matter in the long run.
"I may be a demon, but I'm not heartless. The only reason why I used that girl in my plans...is that from the start, she was always doomed to death. Powers that you can..."
"I know."
"Huh?" For reasons that she couldn't make sense of, Tieshan tried to explain herself. However, Xinzi cut her mid-explanation, invalidating the need for additional words.
"I might actually know more about this than you do. This goes back to the Great Desolation War and Yongye's schemes. The Snow Empress, Xue Lin, was always a part of Yongye's plans, a tool that she aimed to use to control Qiu Meng. On the day she was born, Yongye had her right-hand woman, the Sovereign Moon Goddess, Chang'e, establish a celestial connection to Xue Lin, and take her as a nominal disciple.
When Xue Lin reached Supreme Clarity, Chang'e started teaching her skills unique to the ladies of the Moon Pantheon—including the horrifying Thousand Preys of the Moon Fly. That cruel technique enables a dying cultivator to preserve a strand of their soul upon death and store it in their world's moon. That soul strand later becomes a firefly that fuses with a woman born on the full moon, at the same time as the deceased cultivator, and equipped with a Water Spirit Root.
The Moon Firefly settles in the host's soul, alters its nature, and drains it seamlessly till the soaring imbalance of yin and yang ends the host's existence. Then the firefly returns to the moon, digesting the gains and remodeling the soul as it waits for its next target. Rinse, repeat, and after the 1,000th victim, the cultivator returns to life." Xinzi started, shocking Tieshan who didn't expect him to have such detailed knowledge of Moon Pantheon techniques and events that occurred 10,000 years ago.
Better, Xinzi even seemed to know details that Tieshan didn't have access to, like the involvement of the legendary Primeval of the Night Pantheon: Yongye.
"How do you know all this?"
"Irrelevant. At first, Xue Lin didn't want to survive by relying on such a cruel technique. But Chang'e convinced her that Qiu Meng wasn't dead and that so long as she used the Thousand Preys of the Moon Fly. The day that she returned to life would mark her reunion with her husband. As expected by Yongye and Chang'e, Xue Lin couldn't let go of that hope and used the Thousand Preys of the Moon Goddess to start her reincarnation process.
In that 10,000 years span, Shui Haoyue was only the last of 1,000 victims. On the day that she dies, Xue Lin returns to this world—or at least, that's how it should have been, but you joined the chat, and fucked everything up," Xinzi said, and his lips arched into an impish smile.
