WPCID 25: Can the Sect Master’s Cultivation Partner Be a Demonic Cultivator?

Shen Zhou yanked the person up from the bed. Remembering this was Lu Buzhuo’s body, he loosened his grip slightly to let him breathe.

“How do you know what happens three years from now?”

His wolf ears leaned forward menacingly to match his tone.

“I know, naturally… cough cough, naturally because he knows.” The spring-willow-like eyes curved into a crescent as he spoke in a soft whisper. 

“He knows everything. He remembers every single detail, but he doesn’t dare tell you.”

Shen Zhou froze for a moment, then let go. He glanced at him, then lowered his eyes as if in thought.

“Lu Buzhuo” slowly propped himself up, leaning weakly against the cushions, but the smile never left his face. 

“He still remembers you coming for revenge, how you gouged out his eyes on the Biancheng city tower, cut out his tongue, and subjected him to death by a thousand cuts… mmph mmph…”

His words were cut off by a hand covering his mouth.

“Be quiet.” Shen Zhou didn’t fall for his trap; he just found him noisy.

Afraid of smothering the man, he loosened his grip slightly, hovering his hand over the mouth instead. His expression remained cold as he pointed out the inconsistency he’d just thought of: “How do you know that I have memories from three years in the future?”

“Lu Buzhuo” faltered.

The memories he had spied on were incomplete, the details fuzzy, but a mix of truth and lies was enough to drive a wedge between the two.

Without letting a trace of guilt show on his face, he dodged the question and continued, “…He saw you activate the ancient time array and guessed a thing or two.”

“You’re full of shit,” Shen Zhou retorted, his wolf ears immediately standing up stiffly. 

“When I activated the ancient array, his… your… your bodies were still hanging from the Biancheng city tower. Your eyes were blind—I dug them out myself. What did you use to see?”

“…”

“As I thought, you have no idea what happened in the Myriad Bone Caves.” Shen Zhou was now certain this “Lu Buzhuo” was trying to stir up trouble, his gaze growing more menacing. 

“If Lu Buzhuo really did those inhuman things and remembered me chopping him to pieces, why would he still be willing to be my cultivation partner?”

“He didn’t remember at first.” “Lu Buzhuo” still wouldn’t give up, his tone flippant and laced with contempt. 

“Who knows what happened later? He’s always been a bit abnormal. Maybe he just has a thing for surly, stubborn half-demons. Or maybe he likes to chop himself up for fun…”

His voice trailed off.

He suddenly realized his words seemed to be having the exact opposite effect.

Never mind the fact that the corner of the other’s mouth had inexplicably quirked up before being quickly straightened—a very clumsy acting job—the pair of wolf ears on the half-demon’s head had already started to dance.

“Lu Buzhuo”: “???”

Shen Zhou glanced at him a couple of times. He felt that at least some of what this “Lu Buzhuo” said was worth listening to, but he didn’t want to expose his feelings, so he reached up to press down his troublesome ears.

But his lips curled up again, and a single phrase echoed in his mind:

“Maybe he just has a thing for surly, stubborn half-demons…”

“…a thing for surly, stubborn half-demons…”

“…a thing for half-demons…”

He couldn’t hear anything else.

“Lu Buzhuo” watched, dumbfounded, as the half-demon wrestled with his own ears for a good while before finally giving up in defeat. With his wolf ears twitching wildly, he went to ladle another large bowl of white porridge.

“Open your mouth.” Shen Zhou was in a good mood, his only thought to feed him the porridge he’d made for Lu Buzhuo and, in the process, get rid of this guy sooner. 

“Eat up.”

“Lu Buzhuo”: “You—mmph mmph mmph…”

The half-demon’s strength was astounding.

By the third spoonful, “Lu Buzhuo” passed out.

Inside the spiritual altar, a certain unlucky soul who had been thrown out and then dragged back in finally awoke.

His first act upon waking was to toss the shadow, which he hadn’t had time to seal away again, back into the sea. Then, he roughly estimated the time he’d been unconscious and was immediately filled with despair.

It’s over, Lu Buzhuo thought miserably. It’s been long enough for every secret to be spilled. Even if I went to eat shit, it wouldn’t be fresh.

…Wait, if I go out now, I might just catch that fresh mouthful of shit.

How would Shen Zhou react? Shock and anger? Resentment? Would he want to kill him on the spot, just like that other day?

The worst part was, he had indeed done those things. A twist of fate, but irrefutable.

Lu Buzhuo sat in his spiritual altar for a while before deciding to go out anyway.

The moment he opened his eyes, he got a mouthful of white porridge, his mouth glued shut.

Lu Buzhuo: “?”

Shen Zhou noticed the bamboo scent had returned and immediately fed him with even more enthusiasm.

“You’re awake,” he said, leaning closer. 

“I cooked porridge. Eat more.”

Feeling guilty, Lu Buzhuo didn’t struggle much. When told to eat porridge, he ate porridge, obediently finishing the whole bowl.

He then turned his head and gently rubbed his feverish cheek against Shen Zhou’s wrist. 

“Thank you,” he said.

Shen Zhou was so pleased his ears were about to fly away.

Upon waking up, Lu Buzhuo found himself neither submerged in water nor thrown on the floor, and he had even been fed a bowl of porridge. He was baffled, completely unable to guess what the shadow had said.

After a moment, he cautiously began, “Just now… what happened to me? I seem to have fainted, but I heard someone talking.”

Shen Zhou was arranging pastries on a plate. His movements paused slightly.

“Just now?” he said, turning around. 

“Just now, you were delirious from the fever and said a few things in your sleep.”

“…What did I say?” Lu Buzhuo looked at him. His eyes were somewhat hazy from the fever, but they were not soft. They were like the mist exhaled on a winter’s day, carrying a trace of detached indifference that kept others at arm’s length.

As if he were prepared to be discarded at any moment.

For once, the wolf ears were still, standing straight like sentinels, their emotion unreadable.

Shen Zhou picked up a piece of sweet rice cake, popped it into his own mouth, and mumbled, “You said…”

Lu Buzhuo’s eyelashes lowered slightly as he listened attentively.

“You said you have a thing for surly, stubborn half-demons,” Shen Zhou announced.

The wolf ears started dancing.

Lu Buzhuo: “?”

Lu Buzhuo: “??????”

Lu Buzhuo pinched himself. He wasn’t dreaming.

He went back into his spiritual altar to ask the shadow but couldn’t find anything amiss, so he had to drop the matter in confusion.

From that day on, Shen Zhou no longer went out, staying by the bedside almost every second.

Moreover, he would enter the spiritual altar every few days, as if looking for something, though not too obviously. Most of the time, he would stay with Lu Buzhuo in the cave—he would consume demonic energy, and Lu Buzhuo would play with his wolf ears.

The wolf ears of his consciousness-form finally stopped disappearing so frequently and remained perched brazenly on his head.

However, they did vanish for an hour one day because the man surnamed Lu had asked him why he didn’t have a tail.

Shen Zhou glared at him and made his ears disappear too.

Lu Buzhuo had to coax and wheedle him for a long time before the wolf ears finally came back.

…

The illness wasn’t major, but it wasn’t minor either. After the fever subsided, Lu Buzhuo remained extremely weak.

He would doze listlessly all day. When awake, he would mutter and wander around aimlessly. When forced back into bed, he would start calling for Shen Zhou. At night, the fever would return.

Shen Zhou decided to buy an old hen to make him some nourishing soup.

Xie Xianqing had been waiting outside the residence every day for so long that he was about to grow moss.

He finally saw Shen Zhou go out.

He vaulted lightly into the courtyard, expecting it to take some effort. To his surprise, the protective array didn’t even show itself, and he reached the main house’s entrance with ease.

Just as he pushed the door open a crack, he heard a listless voice from inside, “You again?”

“It’s me.” Xie Xianqing dropped the act and took off his mask. 

“You let me in on purpose? Then why didn’t you let Chu Xuan in?”

“He is the Sect Master of Kunlun Xu, after all,” Lu Buzhuo said, grabbing a soft pillow and sitting up lazily. He half-joked, “It would be a bit tricky if we really fought.”

“…” Xie Xianqing pointed at himself. 

“Are you saying I’m a pushover?”

Lu Buzhuo hummed noncommittally.

“Still the same old bastard,” Xie Xianqing tutted. 

“Enough nonsense. Hurry up and come with me.”

Lu Buzhuo’s refusal was blunt: “I’m not going.”

Having come prepared this time, Xie Xianqing’s voice was a few decibels louder. 

“You think a physician has no tricks up his sleeve?”

Lu Buzhuo glanced at him. 

“I don’t think you do. And even if you did, you wouldn’t be faster than me.”

Xie Xianqing: “………”

Damned array cultivator.

He gently pinched the packet of powder in his sleeve. Just as he was about to make his move, he heard that infuriating voice speak again. 

“Let me ask you something. Why are you and that Sect Master trying so hard to take me back?”

Xie Xianqing paused, slightly relaxing his fingers on the powder packet.

“To take you back and take good care of you,” he said. 

“Your body has been eroded by demonic energy for years. Without my medicine, you probably can’t even sleep properly.”

Lu Buzhuo’s breathing stilled.

After a long moment, he asked softly, “Isn’t Kunlun Xu irreconcilably opposed to demonic cultivators? Knowing that I have demonic energy, why…”

“Irreconcilably opposed?” Xie Xianqing interrupted, a look of shock on his face. 

“So that’s why you’re messing around with a demonic cultivator and refuse to come back to Kunlun Xu with us??”

Lu Buzhuo blinked, feeling he might have gotten something wrong.

“What are you thinking? You are Chu Xuan’s Senior Brother, the former Sect Master of Kunlun Xu!” Xie Xianqing suddenly grew agitated, his voice rising as if he wanted to shout right into his ear. 

“My dear ancestor, what kind of demonic cultivator are you! The Sect Masters of Kunlun Xu guard the Myriad Bone Caves generation after generation. Over time, it’s inevitable to be tainted by demonic energy. It’s an injury, an injury!”

Lu Buzhuo paused, then suddenly said, “What about Chu Xuan?”

“He has it too, suppressed entirely by his cultivation base and my medicine.” Xie Xianqing took a breath, dragged a stool over to sit, and huffed with his arms crossed in anger. 

“My dear ancestor, my goodness, what on earth have you been through all these years? To have forgotten so completely, even thinking that Sect Master Chu is so bored that he’d personally come down the mountain to capture you and clean up the sect. That’s your only Junior Brother!”

“To put it another way, even if a Sect Master really did fall into demonic cultivation midway—and I’m saying if, it’s never happened in Kunlun Xu—at most, they’d be locked up on Little Hidden Peak, looked after by their junior or senior brother. Demonic cultivators don’t live long anyway.”

“…”

This time, Lu Buzhuo was silent for a very long time, so long that Xie Xianqing thought the tricks he’d prepared were no longer needed and that he could joyfully welcome the man back to the sect.

Then he heard his ancestor say, “Your sect’s rules are quite humane.”

Xie Xianqing nodded repeatedly, snapping open his fan with a shua. 

“Guarding the Myriad Bone Caves is for the sake of all living beings. Naturally, we can’t let people become too disheartened…”

His ancestor added another line: “Then, can the Sect Master’s cultivation partner be a demonic cultivator?”

Xie Xianqing: “………”