Chapter 5: I Raised a Monster

Two years passed in the blink of an eye.

Azure Cloud Peak was as quiet as ever. I still drank tea, read books, and took naps.

Only one thing had changed.

I no longer had to cook.

Gu Chen had learned. His cooking was a hundred times better than mine.

He remembered that I liked osmanthus cake, that I liked snow-mountain tea brewed with spring water from behind the peak, and that I hated being woken from my nap. He remembered all of it, without missing a thing.

At the end of the first year, he reached Foundation Establishment.

In the second year, Golden Core.

At the start of the third, early Nascent Soul.

The whole sect was shaken. Elders came all the way to Azure Cloud Peak to ask what secret technique I’d used.

I hadn’t used any secret technique.

For two years I’d turned the Scripture Pavilion upside down, reading everything the ancients had left about the Heavenly Demon Bone, until I finally understood.

The Heavenly Demon Bone wasn’t an evil thing. It was a rare kind of foundation that could absorb demonic qi and convert it into its own strength.

It was just that ordinary meridians couldn’t bear the process. Force it open, and it backlashed. Open it slowly and correctly, and it was like carrying a river inside you.

I revised the Azure Cloud Heart Method dozens of times before I found a circulation route that let his spiritual power and demonic qi run in the same loop, neither swallowing the other.

For the first half year, he laid the foundation. Once the route was open, all the demonic qi the bone had kept locked away for fifteen years came rushing out like a burst dam, except this time there was already a riverbed waiting for it.

Fast, but not because of luck.

【In the original, by year two the villain had already turned demonic.】

【In this one, by year two the villain is… baking.】

【Am I reading the wrong story?】

At the end of the second year, Gu Chen asked to go down the mountain and train alone.

I wasn’t comfortable with it, but I let him go.

A young bird has to fly on its own.

He was gone for a full half year. He crossed the northern border, passed the ruins of the Mo family, which the imperial court had razed to the ground, passed through many cities, and met many people.

I heard a fairy from some other sect even asked to become his Dao companion.

He refused.

Then he came back up the mountain and set a box of osmanthus cakes from the town at the foot of the mountain on my table.

“Master, you like this kind.”

I looked at him.

He was already half a head taller than me. His features had sharpened. His gaze was calm and steady.

The skinny boy dragged out of the sect gate that year was gone.

“You really are the best disciple in the world.”

He smiled. “Just because of a box of cakes?”

“Also because in two years you haven’t once collapsed my cave.”

He laughed out loud.

I was briefly lost for words.

Just two years ago, this child had looked at the whole world like it was his enemy.

【AAAH, the master is staring!】

【Hey hey, they’re master and disciple, stay sane.】

【I’ve been sane since chapter one, and I ship it.】

The better Gu Chen became, the more one worry grew in me.

Qin Lang.

After the back mountain incident, he went into seclusion for a year. When he emerged he was at Golden Core, and all of Heavenly Sword Peak threw a banquet.

Then he got stuck at peak Golden Core and couldn’t move another step.

An Innate Sword Heart is too rigid. To form a Nascent Soul, he needed a life-bound sword strong enough to hold his sword heart.

And in the original story, the only thing strong enough was a Heavenly Demon Bone.

For months I secretly searched the ancient records, until I found a single line in a rotting history book.

Five thousand years ago, the Demon Emperor Cangming was sealed beneath the Demon Abyss. Before the seal closed, he tore off a sliver of his own remnant soul and hid it inside a black iron ring, which was lost among mortals.

What he needed in order to escape: a body that carried a Heavenly Demon Bone.

I closed the book and sat still for a long time.

So that was it.

In the original story, the “patriarch in the ring” encouraged the master to dig out the demon bone, but not to help Qin Lang forge a sword.

It was so that Gu Chen’s bones would be dug out, the seal would break, and he would go mad.

A madman, full of hatred, carrying a Heavenly Demon Bone, was the perfect body for the Demon Emperor to possess.

I took the book to Wen Changfeng.

He read it, was silent for a long time, then sighed. “Junior sister, a rotten history book and an old ring. You want me to search my own disciple over this?”

I didn’t blame him.

In his place, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

【Wait… so the Demon Lord Gu Chen in the original was…】

【The Demon Emperor wearing his skin?!】

【Author, your timing for dropping the story is impeccable.】

I looked out the window. Gu Chen was practicing his sword beneath the bamboo.

From that day on, I made him carry a heart-protection talisman I had refined myself.

He asked what it was for.

I said, “So your master can nap in peace.”