A thunderclap suddenly burst in the sky, lightning illuminating the rainy night bright as day. The night rain grew urgent, crashing into muddy puddles on the ground and splashing up droplets.

Zanxing’s mind went blank, and she instinctively replied: “What did you say?”

“It seems you’ve lived in the mortal world for so long that you still don’t know your own identity. No wonder—at first, even I didn’t discover you were of demon blood. If we hadn’t encountered each other in Li’er Kingdom and the Demon Lord’s bloodline hadn’t resonated, I wouldn’t have been able to confirm you were my noble sister.”

A thought flashed through Zanxing’s mind as she suddenly looked up: “It was you who was spying on me in Li’er Kingdom at night!”

At that time, she thought it was a merman’s probe, but later it didn’t seem right—Yinying couldn’t yet freely restrain his demon aura. Zanxing said, “You made Yinying impersonate Rong Yu. You wanted him to infiltrate the secret realm, find Qinghua Xianzi’s portrait, and obtain her inheritance. It was you who tampered with the teleportation array, causing us to be mistakenly sent to Wufan City. It was also you who ambushed the Xiangling Sect people in the secret realm and killed their disciples.”

That mysterious figure behind everything, the cultivation world, had suspected from the beginning that it was related to demons. Now it seemed they were right.

Zanxing glared at him angrily: “What exactly do you want to do?”

“What do I want to do?” The smile on Gui Yansheng’s face slowly grew cold. The night rain was cold and urgent, wind blowing slantwise. His umbrella wasn’t large, yet his golden camel-colored robes couldn’t be dampened by the rain in the slightest.

The youth looked down at Zanxing from his superior position, slowly saying: “Humans live in the mortal realm, demons dwell in the demon realm—but what about half-demons?”

Zanxing was stunned.

“Neither belonging to the human race nor the demon race—are we destined to be bullied, expelled, treated as freaks and executed, more lowly than ants?”

Zanxing asked: “You’re a half-demon?”

His gaze swept contemptuously over Zanxing on the ground: “You are the Demon Queen’s son, with pure celestial demon bloodline—naturally, you wouldn’t understand. This world is just so unfair. Why should I be born inferior while they are noble? Heaven’s Way is unjust—I refuse to accept it.”

Gui Yansheng extended one hand, rain threads gently falling into his palm before he grasped them. The youth closed his eyes and inhaled deeply with intoxication. Finally, he opened his eyes and said quietly: “This world is beautiful—I like it very much, but I don’t like the current rules.”

“They always say that Heaven governs all things with its own rules that cannot be forcibly broken.”

“That’s because the rules benefit them, so they obey.”

“I’m unwilling, so I will break them.”

The youth lowered his head, looking at Zanxing, slowly and deliberately saying: “I want to rewrite these rules.”

Zanxing suddenly understood something. After a moment of silence, she asked: “You want to defy Heaven?”

“Why not?” His golden pupils glowed with strange colors in the darkness: “You know we are demons—demons are born to stir up trouble and bring calamity to all living beings.”

“What is the Heavenly Way?” He laughed lowly: “I am the Heavenly Way.”

This person was simply insane! He wanted to become the world’s master, making everyone do as he said. If it were just a strong desire for control, that might be tolerable, but he had killed hundreds of Chihua Gate disciples without discrimination and didn’t spare even defenseless civilians—truly terrifying.

The severe pain in her body hadn’t disappeared. Zanxing forced herself to endure the weakness and asked: “Then why did you frame me?”

Upon hearing this, Gui Yansheng fell silent.

“Sister, I knew of your existence very early.” After a long time, Gui Yansheng spoke: “All these years, with the Demon Lord already dead, I thought you had died long ago too. But I never expected to encounter you again in Li’er Kingdom. You and I both carry the Demon Lord’s bloodline—we flow with the same blood after all. I recognized you at first glance.”

His voice was full of emotion: “Later, when you entered the secret realm and found that portrait, I learned that you had gone to Gufeng Mountain and become a sect disciple.” Speaking of this, he suddenly laughed, laughing so happily he nearly shed tears of joy: “A demon joined a sect and became a member of the cultivation world. Chosen by your father’s killer to become an inheritor—is there anything more ridiculous in this world?”

Zanxing looked at him coldly.

“At that time, I felt that fate, sometimes, isn’t so boring after all.”

The wind on the mountain grew stronger, but the light from the lantern on the ground didn’t waver at all.

“More interesting still, I discovered that the Xiaoyuan Pearl was actually on you.”

At these words, Zanxing’s heart tightened. She looked up to meet a pair of beautiful golden eyes that seemed to see through everything. His voice was meaningful: “Sister, you’ve hidden it very deeply indeed.”

“The Demon Lord’s supreme treasure—something the cultivation world and demon realm spent decades searching for without success—was actually on you. It seems the Demon Lord truly cherished his bloodline, giving such an important thing directly to you.”

He seemed to have misunderstood something. Zanxing’s acquisition of the Xiaoyuan Pearl had been purely accidental, but she couldn’t tell Gui Yansheng this.

“What do you want to do?”

“What else can I do?” He sighed: “Take the Xiaoyuan Pearl, of course.” As soon as he finished speaking, the snow-white paper umbrella in his hand suddenly transformed into a beam of white light, stabbing directly at Zanxing.

Zanxing quickly gripped the Wuyou Stick and held it horizontally in front of her, but having lost all her Yuanli, she couldn’t control the supreme spirit artifact at all, much less resist a demon’s attack. The umbrella suddenly opened before Zanxing, and one hand thrust directly into her heart, pulling out the fiery red pearl. Then the snow-white umbrella surface suddenly became a pitch-black abyss, from which came the chaotic cries and wails of men, women, old and young, as if countless arms from the infinite hell were reaching out to drag Zanxing down with them.

She felt her soul seemed to be uncontrollably separating from her body, falling toward this dark abyss, her body gradually growing cold.

With a “thud,” the woman in the mud fell backward, her face pale as paper, no longer showing any sign of life.

The umbrella surface returned to its original appearance, held lightly and propped overhead.

The smile had completely disappeared from the golden-robed youth’s face. He just quietly looked at the corpse on the ground, lost in thought.

Rainwater crashed to the ground, the splashing mud seeming ready to bury the entire mountain forest.

After a long time, a subordinate beside him spoke quietly: “Demon Lord, she’s already dead.”

“I know.” The youth frowned, his gaze lingering on Zanxing’s face for a moment. After thinking, he said: “Throw her into the Extreme Ice Abyss.” After saying this, he picked up the lantern from the ground and walked into the rain curtain with his umbrella.

“What about this spirit beast?” The subordinate looked at the black cat beside Zanxing. The black cat was already very weak, unable even to stand, pressed tightly against its master while emitting low whimpers.

The youth’s steps paused slightly, then he said, “Throw it into the Extreme Ice Abyss too.”