Chapter 7: I Don’t Need Anyone’s Bones to Forge a Sword

At the bottom of the Demon Abyss Palace, Cangming stood on the sacrificial altar, wearing Qin Lang’s body.

With every breath he took, the black lines beneath his feet glowed one layer brighter.

I struck with my sword.

The sword light pierced the demonic qi and stopped at his throat.

It wasn’t blocked.

I had stopped it myself.

That body still belonged to Qin Lang. If I cut it down, Cangming would only lose a shell, and Qin Lang would lose his life.

Cangming laughed loudly.

“Can’t bring yourself to do it? He hates you this much, and you still can’t?”

“Whether he hates me is his business.” I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth. “Not killing people on your behalf is mine.”

He swept his hand. The demonic qi came crashing down like a giant palm.

I dodged with half my body. The other half was flung into a stone pillar. My chest felt like it had split.

I hadn’t been this badly hurt in two hundred years.

And I knew why.

Every time I circulated my spiritual power, the lines beneath our feet drained some of it away and sent it straight into him.

The more I fought, the stronger he became.

【It’s hopeless… she dies if she fights, she dies if she doesn’t.】

【”Whoever she picks, she dies.” Is chapter one coming true?】

I leaned on my sword and stood up.

“Do you know what I hate most?”

I knew they couldn’t hear me. I said it anyway.

“People who think someone else’s life is just a line of text in a story.”

“I am nobody’s cannon fodder.”

“And my disciple is nobody’s villain.”

At that moment, the whole Demon Abyss shook.

The lines beneath Cangming’s feet changed color, one by one.

The spiritual power flowing into him stalled. Then it reversed.

It was being drawn toward a single point, at the top of the abyss.

I recognized that aura.

Gu Chen.

That brat. I told him not to.

The wall of demonic qi at the palace gate crumbled.

Gu Chen walked in.

His robes were in tatters. Blood ran from the corners of his eyes and his lips. But his steps were steady.

Around him, two forces, one white and one black, ran together in a single closed circle. Neither swallowed the other.

When Cangming saw him, his eyes lit up like a starving man who had seen food.

“The Heavenly Demon Bone… it’s open!”

He discarded Qin Lang’s body like a torn coat.

A pitch-black remnant soul shot straight for the center of Gu Chen’s brow.

【POSSESSION!!!】

【It’s over, it’s the original story all over again!!!】

The remnant soul touched his brow.

Then it rebounded, as if it had slammed into a wall.

On Gu Chen’s chest, the heart-protection talisman I had refined blazed with light and burned to ash in an instant.

But what truly stopped Cangming wasn’t the talisman.

It was the circle.

There were no gaps left in the demonic qi inside Gu Chen. It was no longer a caged beast waiting for its owner to slip so it could break free. It was his. From beginning to end.

No gaps meant nowhere for anyone else to crawl in.

Cangming howled. “Impossible! How can a human control demonic qi!”

Gu Chen raised his sword.

“I don’t control it.”

“I just don’t let it control me anymore.”

The sword in his hand was the low-grade spirit sword I gave him when he was fifteen. Not a divine weapon. Not a life-bound sword forged from anyone’s bones.

Its light split in two, half white and half black.

I raised my Azure Cloud Sword as well.

Two swords struck down together.

The five-thousand-year-old remnant soul shattered in midair.

The black iron ring on Qin Lang’s hand cracked in two, fell to the ground, and turned to dust.

At the bottom of the abyss, the seal closed with a rumble like a sigh.

The Demon Abyss fell silent.

The first thing I did was grab Gu Chen’s wrist and check his meridians.

His spiritual power was completely drained. His meridians were cracked in several places. But not broken.

I let out a breath.

Then I rapped him hard on the forehead.

“I told you not to use the demon bone!”

“This disciple knows he was wrong.”

“You knew it was wrong and did it anyway?”

“If I hadn’t, everyone would have died.” He lowered his head. “You would have died.”

The words stuck in my throat.

It took me a long time before I could say, “The older you get, the better you are at making me angry.”

He looked up, his eyes red, but smiling.

“This disciple is sorry.”

I didn’t have the heart to scold him anymore.

Qin Lang woke up as the Hall of Discipline elders escorted him out of the abyss.

His Innate Sword Heart was still there. But after seven years as host to a demon soul, his meridians were damaged at the root. To cultivate again would take decades of hard training.

The crimes of breaking the formation eye and harming his fellow disciples couldn’t be erased. He was stripped of his status as a personal disciple and confined to the Cliff of Reflection to await judgment.

As he passed me, he stopped.

“Back then, if you had taken me as your disciple…”

“Then the one led around by that ring would still have been you,” I said, looking at him. “The only difference is that the one holding the knife to dig out a child’s bones would have been me.”

He stood frozen and said nothing for a long time.

Then he lowered his head and let them lead him away.

Nobody stole Qin Lang’s future.

He handed it over himself, to a voice, just because that voice told him what he wanted to hear.

【…The original story is over.】

【There’s no script left.】

【From here on, even we don’t know what happens next.】

I looked up. Above the Demon Abyss, the sky had turned light.

I turned to my disciple.

“Let’s go home.”

“Yes, Master.”