However, upon careful reflection, Cui Xiaoxiao gradually understood: the demon lord Wei Jie, who should have fought to the death with the four great sects and been severely injured, had instead fled without fighting because of her interference.
Also, because the two of them had fallen together with excessive weight, they had smashed the eggs in the earthen pit, causing the Po Hun two-headed snake to be drawn out early.
Then, with her assistance, Wei Jie was able to prepare leisurely and, with the aid of the Soul-controlling Talismans, killed the Po Hun Snake without a scratch, never being poisoned by the snake.
This… hadn’t she inadvertently changed the events of two hundred years ago?
If he wasn’t bitten, how could he be poisoned? How could he develop divine skills to resist the demonic nature? And how could he be destroyed by his disciple Qin Lingxiao? How could Master Tang Youshu leave heartbroken and establish the Talismonger Sect?
This… where would these changed world events lead?
Cui Xiaoxiao painfully closed her eyes. She seemed to have accidentally interrupted this demon lord Wei Jie’s path to becoming a demon.
She wondered how Heaven would punish her for interfering with heavenly secrets. Would ten million lightning bolts strike down to chop her into noodle threads?
However, Wei Jie misunderstood Cui Xiaoxiao’s pained expression as regret for accepting a disciple.
So he slowly straightened his body, looked down at the girl covering her face with cold laughter, and casually teased, “What? Does Master regret accepting me as a disciple?”
When he said this, although his bewitching deep eyes contained a smile, the smile wasn’t genuine—it was more the coldness of someone who had seen through the world’s fickleness.
When Cui Xiaoxiao looked up at his jade-carved handsome face, her heart shuddered. She thought: inadvertently accepting such an evil demon was truly the Talismonger Sect’s misfortune!
But if she immediately regretted it now, this fellow might hold a grudge.
Although she didn’t particularly mind his birth, she very much minded his future evil reputation. She absolutely couldn’t let the Lingshan Talismonger Sect’s reputation be tarnished by his evil deeds.
But to dismiss an evil disciple, one had to withdraw gradually, not tear off the facade all at once. After all, this was the future leader of the demonic path, an extremely evil person!
She was now alone and probably no match for this demon lord who could single-handedly kill the Po Hun Snake.
With this thought, Cui Xiaoxiao blinked, took a deep breath, smiled, and said insincerely, “How could that be? You’re intelligent and talented, clearly a once-in-a-generation genius. Good boy, in the future… you’ll surely achieve great things! This master accepts you… is truly blessed for three lifetimes!”
After hearing this, Wei Jie suddenly fell silent, widening his handsome eyes and staring at Xiaoxiao silently.
He could tell this little girl was being insincere, but he didn’t know why she hadn’t immediately regretted it. Didn’t she know that once contaminated, there would be endless trouble?
His earlier discipleship wasn’t sincere. Kneeling on one knee was merely a superficial ceremony, purely to tease this little girl who didn’t know her limits.
After she learned of his background, she would naturally regret it and make a fool of herself trying to distance herself from him.
This was nothing unusual. After all, he had received enough cold looks since childhood to make his heart lake waveless. He treated it as an amusement to pass the time.
But he never expected this little girl who called herself the Lingshan Talismonger Sect leader to not play by the rules, actually being stubborn and refusing to immediately abandon her disciple…
Fine, since he was bored anyway, he’d play along with this little benefactor master of his.
With this thought, Wei Jie slowly smiled, bowed to Xiaoxiao, and said, “Being able to bow under your tutelage is also my blessing for three lifetimes!”
As for Cui Xiaoxiao, after dryly praising her eldest disciple, her heart was burning with anxiety.
After all, she didn’t know how she had returned to two hundred years ago and interfered with heavenly secrets, not knowing what consequences there would be.
However, what made Cui Xiaoxiao secretly amazed was Wei Jie himself—this demon lord, who was said to be completely evil in legend, didn’t seem so bad. At least when the monster snake attacked at that critical moment, he hadn’t abandoned her and fled alone.
Just as Cui Xiaoxiao was troubled and confused, she heard Wei Jie ask casually again, “Master, I still don’t know your name. This year… you’re sixteen, right?”
Cui Xiaoxiao sighed slightly, thinking that accepting disciples and bowing as master without knowing each other’s identities—she and Wei Jie were truly unprecedented!
But what did this kid mean? “Sixteen, right?” Was he disdaining his master for being too immature?
She glared at him sideways: “My name is Cui Xiaoxiao, I’m seventeen this year… next year I don’t know how old I’ll be…”
Heaven bless her to safely pass through the heavenly tribulation, or else next year there would be no birthday, only a death anniversary.
“Oh…” Wei Jie heard his master’s incoherent words and slowly raised his head. His eyes under his sword-like brows seemed to ripple with light. He extended his long finger to slowly calculate, asking with an exploratory tone, “Seventeen… a good age. Master is two years younger than me… that would be a gui-chou year birth… It’s a yin year. I wonder when Master’s birthday is?”
Cui Xiaoxiao saw his probing gaze fix on her, then slowly smiled and said, “What? Does my disciple also know fortune-telling? Are you trying to divine whether your master’s birth date is good?”
Her extreme yin birth date, two hundred years ago, would be a deadly, ominous talisman. She absolutely couldn’t let this demon lord know!
Seeing that she answered his question with another question, Wei Jie wasn’t too bothered and just smiled slightly, “I was thinking of asking about Master’s birthday so I won’t miss celebrating your birthday in the future… Master’s fate doesn’t need divining—it must be good. At least after this disciple met Master, I seem to have continuous good luck, always able to turn danger into safety…”
Cui Xiaoxiao also nodded approvingly, “It seems my horoscope matches well with yours, my disciple…”
Wei Jie had a bewitching feminine beauty, but when he smiled, his mouth corners showed pointed canine teeth, making him look like an eighteen or nineteen-year-old young man.
If she hadn’t traveled back from two hundred years in the future, Cui Xiaoxiao would never have imagined that this man who smiled so purely would become a demon lord who made people tremble with fear in the following decades.
The master and disciple smiled at each other with mutual appreciation.
Cui Xiaoxiao stood up, preparing to take advantage of this harmonious atmosphere to talk to her disciple about how mountains are high and waters long, that there’s a kind of master-disciple fate called chance encounters, and then going their separate ways.
She wanted to bid farewell to her disciple here, letting her good disciple cultivate alone from now on. She wasn’t from two hundred years ago, and staying too long by Wei Jie’s side might interfere with too many heavenly secrets. It was better to part for now.
But just then, voices calling from above their heads: “There was movement down there just now. Wei Jie must be hiding in the valley below. Come on! Let’s hurry down and see!”
It seemed that after the four great sects’ people searched everywhere without results, they heard fighting sounds from the valley below and planned to come down to investigate.
After Wei Jie heard this voice, he said to Xiaoxiao, “Let’s leave quickly, or we won’t be able to go.”
But… Cui Xiaoxiao looked at the snake corpse lying on the ground and suddenly had an idea: “I heard this ancient giant snake’s poison has miraculous effects. Should we take some with us? It might be very useful in the future!”
According to the original trajectory of events, Wei Jie had to be poisoned by the snake to become possessed by fire and become a generation’s demon lord. That is, as long as he was poisoned by the snake, everything could return to normal, and the world would be peaceful!
She could also escape suspicion of interfering with heavenly secrets and calmly find a way to return two hundred years later.
So she wanted to encourage Wei Jie to touch the snake’s head again to see if there was any hope.
Unfortunately, her newly accepted disciple wasn’t stupid either. He looked at the snake’s head and refused, “A dead snake’s head is still dangerous. Taking snake poison now probably isn’t appropriate…”
Cui Xiaoxiao hadn’t expected the great demon lord to be so easily fooled. She could only stand up reluctantly, thinking about her next plan.
Wei Jie kept watching his master’s face, seeing her small face seemingly full of disappointment, looking quite pitiful…
He thought for a moment, untied his wine gourd, and suddenly walked toward the male snake head. Cui Xiaoxiao’s spirits lifted as she silently cheered for the snake head: “Come on! Don’t die completely, go! Bite him hard!”
As if sensing Sect Leader Cui’s call, when Wei Jie had just pried open the snake’s mouth with his sword, the snake’s scattered pupils seemed to focus, bursting with killing intent, suddenly opening its mouth wide and biting viciously toward Wei Jie’s extended arm.
Fortunately, Wei Jie was quick with his hands and eyes, immediately pulling his arm back, then picking up a large stone nearby and continuously smashing it hard against the snake’s head.
After a while, when the snake’s head was motionless, he continued to pry open the snake’s mouth with his bare hands, held it open with his sword, pressed the gourd against the snake’s sharp venomous fangs, and forced out the flowing snake poison.
Cui Xiaoxiao held her breath and watched intently, hoping for a miracle that the not-quite-dead snake head would bite Wei Jie once, so everything could get back on track.
But Wei Jie’s strength seemed incredibly great. He forcefully held the snake’s head open with his sword and managed to extract the snake’s poison without incident.
After he retrieved the snake poison, he handed the gourd to Cui Xiaoxiao: “Here!”
Cui Xiaoxiao was stunned, not understanding what Wei Jie meant.
Wei Jie pursed his thin lips: “Didn’t Master want it? I extracted some for you. Keep it safe, but be careful not to accidentally get poisoned, or even the greatest immortals couldn’t save you.”
So he had earlier misunderstood that Cui Xiaoxiao wanted snake poison, which was why he risked his life to personally extract a gourd full.
Cui Xiaoxiao felt her cheeks burning. Despite all her scheming to get Wei Jie bitten by the poisonous snake, he turned out to be so filial, risking danger alone just because his master wanted it…
She had wandered the martial world since childhood, and except for her adoptive father and master, no one else had treated her so well.
But now, for no reason, she owed Wei Jie a favor.
In such circumstances, hoping for her beloved disciple to be bitten by a snake would be worse than a beast.
Fortunately, she had the snake poison in hand and could remedy the situation anytime, giving him a few drops of poison to get Wei Jie’s path to becoming a demon back on track.
For now, she could only take it one step at a time, waiting for this Wei Jie to show his true ugly side so she could return the demon lord to his original form without guilt…
Wei Jie led her along the path the Po Hun Snake had taken, with the overturned earth road seeming to extend to the valley entrance.
After walking for a while, they seemed to enter a secluded winding path that left one confused about direction.
However, Wei Jie seemed very skilled at identifying directions, always able to find inconspicuous paths in the unusually dense forest.
Cui Xiaoxiao was somewhat puzzled about why he was so skilled at finding his way.
Wei Jie said frankly, “…I lived in Qilao Mountain for a few years when I was young, so naturally I’m familiar with it.”
After hearing this, Cui Xiaoxiao was so angry her teeth itched: “So you knew there was a Po Hun Snake in the valley below, yet still jumped down?”
Wei Jie cleared the thorny branches blocking his little master’s path while smiling casually, “I said not to jump, but Master insisted on jumping. To preserve life and limb, I could only give it a try.”
Listen to that—now it was the master’s fault.
Looking at the tall man walking ahead, Cui Xiaoxiao grew increasingly annoyed: worthy of someone who would become a demon lord, truly cunning! Knowing those people were chasing him but not saying so, and knowing there was a snake in the valley but not warning her, deliberately wanting to drag her down with him—his heart was condemnable!
No, she had to guard against him. There were still pursuers from the four great sects outside. At the very least, she needed to leave herself an escape route… With this thought, Xiaoxiao’s gaze fell on the cloth pouch containing Golden Cores at his waist.
She casually followed him, and in the blink of an eye, that pouch was skillfully transferred into her bosom…
Because Wei Jie knew the way, in no time they had exited the valley, leaving the pursuers far behind.
The four great sects seemed to hate the thief who stole the Golden Cores extremely. Not only did they send people up the mountain to chase him, but they also stationed people below the mountain.
So when Wei Jie and Cui Xiaoxiao emerged from the canyon together, someone immediately blocked their path.
“Wei Jie! Where are you going?”
Cui Xiaoxiao looked up and saw that the four great sects wore white, azure, black, and brown colored robes respectively, with a group of people in white robes standing at the front.
Looking coldly, these white-robed people’s clothes… were the same as the Jiuxuan Sword Sect’s attire from two hundred years later. No wonder she had mistaken them earlier, thinking the Jiuxuan Sword Sect had come chasing.
However… the one leading these white-robed people at the front… wasn’t that Qin Lingxiao?