WPCID 28: A Hard-to-Raise Demonic Cultivator

Lu Buzhuo felt a light bite on his lip.

It didn’t hurt, there wasn’t much force behind it. It felt more like being gently ground by teeth, breaking the skin just a little—a sensation that was both itchy and satisfying.

As he was thinking this, he was bitten two more times.

Lu Buzhuo: “.”

He pulled his lips away, carried the man back to the couch, and brought over a basin of clean water. He washed Shen Zhou’s hands, then applied medicine to each of his injured fingers, wrapping them thickly in gauze.

The spell’s effect had worn off. As Lu Buzhuo was putting away the ointment, he was scratched. Fortunately, the gauze prevented any real damage.

The other party seemed to become even more enraged, glaring at him fiercely.

His eyes were utterly turbid, unfocused and blank, showing no sign of sanity. A primal, beast-like fury and hatred burned within them.

Lu Buzhuo frowned slightly, recalling Chu Xuan’s words.

“…The way that half-demon looked just now, his sanity has been completely devoured by demonic energy. He is beyond saving.”

He thought for a moment, then stood up and drew a formation circle around the couch, temporarily containing Shen Zhou. Then, his consciousness sank into his spiritual altar.

The shadow was once again kicked and tumbled out.

The shadow: “…What do you take me for??”

“I have a question for you.” Lu Buzhuo cut the nonsense and went straight to the point. 

“If a demonic cultivator loses their sanity, how do you wake them?”

The shadow was taken aback, then began to laugh. 

“Oh? That half-demon has been devoured by demonic energy? And here I thought you cared so much for him. Turns out you were just luring him in day after day to cleanse your demonic energy, even tricking him into bed to satisfy your own lust. Now that he’s useless, you put on this hypocritical… Oof!”

Lu Buzhuo rewarded him with a kick.

The shadow was sent rolling into a stone pillar and couldn’t get up for a long moment. It said wretchedly, “You… are so crude!”

Lu Buzhuo rolled up his sleeves and casually summoned a knife.

“Wait! Don’t… don’t, I’ll talk, I’ll talk. It’s just a small matter, there’s no harm in telling you.”

“Speak.”

“A demonic cultivator who has been devoured by demonic energy is no different from a wild beast. They can only be fed with human blood until they regain their senses on their own.” The shadow’s lips curled into a corner, revealing a trace of undisguised malice. 

“The former Sect Leader of Kunlun墟 was noble and righteous, willing to be shattered like jade rather than become a demonic cultivator, even abandoning a piece of his soul. And now, for the sake of a demonic cultivator, he’s going to kill people for their blood, hahahahaha…”

“Why do you talk so much?” Lu Buzhuo glanced at him. 

“He’s already lost his senses. If I kill a chicken and get its blood, do you think he can tell the difference?”

The shadow: “…”

The shadow: “@Me%!*** You just try it#&! …%#￥@…”

Lu Buzhuo raised a hand and sent him tumbling away again.

He then left his spiritual altar, reinforced the formation around the bed to ensure Shen Zhou couldn’t escape, took some money from his storage ring, and went out to buy a chicken.

Half an hour later.

Lu Buzhuo stood in the kitchen, holding a freshly killed chicken and a bowl of chicken blood, staring in silent communion at the other plucked chicken.

The wok still contained some cold scallions, ginger, and garlic, seemingly what was originally intended to be cooked for him.

Shen Zhou’s cooking skills weren’t great. For this dish, a cookbook he had swiped from Lu Buzhuo lay open beside him, covered in many strange markings.

Lu Buzhuo set down the chicken and the blood and flipped through the cookbook out of curiosity. By the third page, he suddenly realized that Shen Zhou probably couldn’t recognize all the characters.

These strange markings were his own makeshift method for learning characters, pieced together from what he could figure out.

…Because no one had ever taught him. Asking would only earn him a round of scolding and abuse.

Lu Buzhuo lowered his eyes. He brushed his fingers over the markings, gently closed the cookbook, and carried the bowl of chicken blood back to the room.

Shen Zhou was crashing wildly within the confinement formation Lu Buzhuo had set.

Lu Buzhuo dispelled the formation, sidestepped a lunge, and grabbed his opponent’s wrist. With a skillful twist, he pulled him close and smoothly brought the bowl to his lips.

“Want to drink this?”

Shen Zhou stopped. He looked at the chicken blood, a bit dazed and confused, then leaned in to sniff it. His expression immediately soured, and he swatted the bowl away.

Lu Buzhuo: “.”

This hard to fool?

Suddenly, a pain shot through his wrist.

Looking down, he saw Shen Zhou hesitantly biting his wrist. He tested it with his teeth a couple of times, broke the skin, and tasted blood.

His eyes instantly lit up. He buried his head and began to suck greedily. His wolf ears tensed as well, twitching back slightly, the tips quivering. His mood seemed to improve considerably.

Lu Buzhuo didn’t pull his hand away. He watched for a moment, then leaned down and bit one of the wolf ears in retaliation.

The wolf ear, likely also tainted with demonic energy, was quite fierce. It impatiently slapped him across the tip of his nose with a thwack.

Lu Buzhuo rubbed his nose. After a moment, he said, “Don’t choke.”

The wolf ear paused, then wagged forward, as if to say it understood.

In a daze, the sweet blood flowed down his throat and into his stomach. The restless agitation that had been screaming throughout his body finally quieted down a little.

Shen Zhou remembered what he needed to do again.

The bamboo-scented person was very close. He released his mouth, licked his lips, and then suddenly lunged, grabbing the other’s neck with the speed of lightning. The demonic energy in his eyes was astonishingly dark.

Before he could exert any force, he heard a few muffled coughs from beneath his hands.

Shen Zhou froze.

He felt that he should be doing something right now, like… like…

He couldn’t remember.

But he had finally caught the bamboo-scented person, he had to… had to…

He couldn’t remember that either.

Once confusion set in, his aggression vanished. He sat on the edge of the couch in a daze, blinking, looking at Lu Buzhuo hesitantly. After a moment, he leaned over with a hint of concern.

Lu Buzhuo was pushed back, his head hitting the hard pillow. He almost couldn’t catch his breath. After a long moment of dizziness, he slowly opened his eyes—

A pair of furry wolf ears were wagging in front of him.

Lu Buzhuo: “…”

His gaze shifted down slightly to Shen Zhou’s clouded, dazed eyes. Right now, however, they held a flicker of contemplation, though it was unclear what he was thinking about.

It seemed the shadow’s words were true. Shen Zhou hadn’t completely lost his mind; there was still a chance for him to recover.

He relaxed slightly, coughed a few times, and slowly sat up, leaning against the pillow to recover. He casually stroked the young man’s head.

“You haven’t achieved bigu yet, so you can’t live on blood alone. You need to eat something else. Do you want some chicken soup?”

Shen Zhou looked bewildered. He hesitated, then nodded. His gaze froze for a second, as if a bad memory was struggling to surface, and then he shook his head instinctively.

Lu Buzhuo, completely lacking self-awareness, said, “I’ll go make some for you.”

Before leaving, he expanded the confinement formation to encompass the entire main house and closed the doors and windows to stop Shen Zhou from constantly lunging at the light.

After a few soft thuds, the room darkened.

Plagued by demonic energy, his vision was already blurry. Now, Shen Zhou could barely see at all.

He instantly grew anxious. He opened his mouth but couldn’t figure out who he wanted to call. He unconsciously made the gesture to summon his life-bound sword, but nothing appeared.

He stumbled around, fumbling, and touched a wooden door that could be opened. Inside seemed to be filled with the soft scent of bamboo, so he kicked off his shoes and crawled in.

Lu Buzhuo was in the kitchen, working his magic on the two chickens.

An incense stick’s time later, one chicken was deceased, along with a collateral loss of one kitchen knife, one cutting board, and one iron wok.

Lu Buzhuo: “…”

He took out the communication jade slip. He was about to knock on it directly but paused, vaguely remembering something. He tried writing a few characters on it.

The characters slowly faded, reappearing on another jade slip.

At that moment, Chu Xuan and Xie Xianqing were discussing what to do with Shen Zhou.

To be more precise, they were only discussing how to “get rid of” him.

“In any case, that demonic cultivator has lost his mind and won’t live long. Why not just indulge your Senior Brother and let him quietly keep him for a while? Once he’s dead, the problem’s solved.”

“No,” Chu Xuan disagreed. 

“Setting aside the fact that Senior Brother’s safety cannot be guaranteed, what if this demonic cultivator escapes and hurts someone? This matter cannot be known to the Taiping Bureau, and I cannot stay in Biancheng forever.”

“I can help keep an eye on him,” Xie Xianqing said with a flick of his fan.

Chu Xuan looked him up and down. 

“…You?”

Xie Xianqing grew annoyed, waving the fan in front of his face. 

“What’s with that look, Sect Leader Chu? The medical cultivation lineage of Shuyu Peak is a single-heir tradition and does not easily accept disciples. I have taken care of you, your master, your Senior Brother, and even your grandmaster. A mere… Sect Leader Chu?”

Sect Leader Chu wasn’t listening to him. He had looked down, distracted by the communication jade slip.

After a moment, he looked up with a solemn expression. 

“I’m going to Senior Brother’s residence.”

Xie Xianqing thought something had happened. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Senior Brother says he doesn’t know how to cook a chicken,” Chu Xuan said. 

“I’m going to have a look.”

Within half a day, the three of them were gathered in the kitchen again.

Chu Xuan silently looked at the remains of one chicken on the floor and the other chicken that was about to meet a terrible fate. After a long pause, he squeezed out, “I don’t know how either.”

Xie Xianqing said nothing.

Lu Buzhuo looked at him. 

“You do?”

Xie Xianqing: “I don’t…”

Chu Xuan: “He does.”

Xie Xianqing stopped fanning himself and snapped his fan shut. 

“It’s been decades since I last cooked…”

“You made pastries in the small kitchen just last month and insisted I come over to try them,” Chu Xuan said. 

“They were quite good.”

Xie Xianqing fell silent again, slapping his fan repeatedly, nearly breaking it.

After a long moment, he snapped back to his senses and said, feigning reluctance, “Fine, fine… I’ll do it, I’ll do it. You two get out, both of you go wait outside.”

Lu Buzhuo didn’t leave. He stood by with his hands tucked in his sleeves. 

“I want to learn.”

“…What do you need to learn for?”

“To cook for Shen Zhou once I’ve learned.”

The other two stared at him as if they’d seen a ghost.

In the end, it was Chu Xuan who managed to get him out, pulling him into the courtyard. 

“Senior Brother.”

Lu Buzhuo once again felt his Junior Brother was being clingy. He patted his sleeves, signaling for him to let go. 

“I don’t really know you yet.”

Chu Xuan: “… …”

Sect Leader Chu was, after all, Sect Leader Chu. He quickly recovered from the massive blow and said seriously, “A demonic cultivator is still a demonic cultivator. Keeping him for a day or two is one thing, but it can’t be for long.”

“Didn’t I tell that Doctor Xie that I was using…”

“Those words might fool Xie Xianqing, but they won’t fool me.”

Lu Buzhuo smiled faintly. He casually broke off a tree branch and began to slowly strip off its leaves, one by one.

After a long pause, he said softly, “I don’t remember. I don’t remember Kunlun墟, nor do I remember who I used to be. The first person I saw when I woke up was Shen Zhou. He didn’t like me, and I was wary of him. We stumbled along, and unexpectedly, we ended up becoming dao companions. It wasn’t an easy journey, so I want to keep him. Is that reason enough?”

“…”

“I promise you, Shen Zhou has a pure heart. With me to restrain him, he will not harm anyone wantonly.”

“No matter how pure his heart is, he is still a demonic cultivator,” Chu Xuan refused to yield. 

“Senior Brother, do not remain obstinately blind to reason.”

“…And if I insist on keeping him?”

“Why?” Chu Xuan grew a bit agitated, his grip on his sword so unsteady it clattered slightly. 

“Why? Senior Brother.”

Another stretch of silence.

“In the past… I was not good to him.” Lu Buzhuo finally spoke, snapping the branch and tossing it to the ground. 

“He suffered a lot. Now, I want to protect him a little more.”

Chu Xuan: “If I, in my capacity as the Sect Leader of Kunlun墟—”

Lu Buzhuo looked up at him and smiled gently, just like he used to back when he was still at Kunlun墟.

“I have forgotten many things, and I don’t know what sort of etiquette I should observe towards the Sect Leader. But I imagine that asking for a favor is more or less the same everywhere.” As he spoke, he gently lifted the hem of his robe.

Chu Xuan’s pupils shrank abruptly. His hand, which was so fast at drawing a sword, failed to catch him, grabbing at empty air.

Lu Buzhuo knelt before him.

“I beg the Sect Leader to spare Shen Zhou.”