Chapter 99: I Even Brought the Cage…
No, even an illusion couldn’t conjure up something this absurd.
That was Song Juanyu’s strongest thought after listening to her long-lost son recount his “history of love.”
But!
Regardless, her son had a Daoist companion!
She had a daughter-in-law!
Someone had finally taken this walking disaster off her hands!
Looking at her son, who was currently “trapped by love,” a thin sliver of maternal concern managed to squeeze through Song Juanyu’s freedom-loving heart. She offered a few words of playful comfort.
She even brought up some distant memories.
“Back then, your father said it was love at first sight. Even when he was poisoned so badly he was bleeding from all seven orifices, half-dead, he still clutched the hem of my skirt and said he wanted to stay by my side. He even carved a short flute out of his own broken pinky finger to play tunes for me.”
Song Juanyu could no longer remember the melody, only that the man’s bright eyes were always stealing glances at her while he played.
“It sounded absolutely terrible.”
“Stop talking about useless things.” Song Yilou didn’t care about his parents’ romance. He only wanted to know how to teach his Guanzhu to grow threads of emotion. His mother’s story offered zero points for reference.
“How were you the one being pursued?”
“Hmm? What are you so surprised about? Plenty of people pursued your mother. I just didn’t like any of them, so I sent them to hell. I even saw a few old acquaintances in the Ghost Realm.”
It was just that they had all moved on to new loves long ago.
As Song Juanyu spoke, her eyes swept over him with a half-smile, laced with a hint of disdain. “You don’t even know how to chase someone. What a waste of that face.”
Speaking of the face, Song Yilou instantly regained his confidence. “The Guanzhu likes my face.”
Song Juanyu stroked her own cheek, her confidence even higher than his. “That’s because I provided the good genes.”
“By the way, you little brat, how did you die?”
“The Guanzhu killed me!” Song Yilou replied with a joyful smile.
Song Juanyu could see he was genuinely happy. The killing intent that had just risen in her heart vanished into thin air. She sighed softly, her finger brushing her brow. “I almost forgot.”
It had indeed been too long; she had forgotten that her son had always been a bit “special” in the head.
There was bound to be a significant discrepancy between the words coming out of his mouth and the actual truth. She still needed to see the person for herself and hear what others had to say.
“Where is this Guanzhu of yours? Your mother needs to see him to help you.”
Hearing this, the signature bright smile on Song Yilou’s face faded. “You? Forget it. You don’t need to get involved.”
“What’s with that look?” Song Juanyu narrowed her eyes. She flashed behind Song Yilou and aimed a kick at his backside. “You little brat, you dare to look down on me?”
Song Yilou dissolved into Yin energy and dispersed, reappearing two paces back. “Stay away from the Guanzhu.”
Having been apart for many years, Song Yilou had also just remembered that his mother possessed a terrible personality that thrived on chaos. If he let her meet the Guanzhu, who knew what the woman would do?
“Oh? Is that a threat?” Song Juanyu’s eyes curved. She raised her hand, and a long whip condensed from Yin energy appeared in her grasp.
The whip didn’t need to be swung; like a sentient serpent, it lunged toward Song Yilou on its own.
Crash!
The target wasn’t hit, but a rift was torn through the roof.
The brief peace between mother and son was officially over. Buildings exploded, and Yin energy expanded.
As the two high-level ghost cultivators clashed, the surrounding houses were pulverized and disintegrated in an instant.
The ghost and demon cultivators stationed nearby felt two terrifying pressures hanging over their heads.
“Lord Ghost Lord, we are here to assist you!” Several Heaven-rank cultivators prepared to help Song Juanyu, only to be slapped away by her palm.
“I am disciplining my son. Get lost.”
The Heaven-rank cultivators scrambled up and looked at each other, staring up at the two people fighting while beginning to gossip.
“That’s the Ghost Lord’s son?”
“They certainly look alike.”
“I never imagined the Ghost Lord actually had a son!”
“Who is that man?”
“A role model for our generation,” said a cultivator who had once attempted to pursue the Guanyin Ghost Lord, only to be left with a psychological shadow.
After a brief silence, this statement received widespread approval from his companions.
“Makes sense.”
“Well said.”
…
Boom!
In his first confrontation with a Lord of Tribulation, Song Yilou ended up being whipped by his mother and hammered into the ground.
Song Juanyu: “So what if the Love Gu won’t take root? Are you going to let go and give up this Daoist companion?”
A smile that could be described as arrogant and wicked curled on the Ghost Lord’s bodhisattva-like face, forcefully transforming the “Avalokiteshvara” into a fierce ghost of the Nine Underworlds. “You little brat, if you want something, grab it tight. Don’t let him run.”
Song Yilou looked up, the smile at the corner of his lips an exact replica of hers. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“As for you—did you catch him?”
Blood stained Song Juanyu’s pupils, the exposed ghostly eyes swirling with a dark reality. “Soon.”
As the two malevolent ghosts stared at each other, their eyes were filled with nothing but greedy malice and paranoid obsession.
Seeing the intent in Song Yilou’s eyes, Song Juanyu mocked him. “If it’s already like this, why bother with a Love Gu? Do you actually care about that?”
Song Yilou scrambled up from the ground, casting a sidelong glance at Song Juanyu. “What do you know? The Guanzhu is willing to let me plant it.”
“Now that is rare.” Song Juanyu adjusted her loosened veil.
“A Love Gu makes a person lose their reason, clouds their self-awareness, and turns them into another person’s puppet. Even couples with deep affection and harmonious souls wouldn’t agree to let their partner plant a Love Gu in them.”
“If your Love Gu hadn’t failed to take root, I would have really thought he was devoted to you. But he actually lacks threads of emotion.”
She couldn’t understand that brain of Song Yilou’s, which had been broken since birth, but part of his personality was inherited from her. If the other party were truly so heartless that no sincerity could be perceived, Song Yilou wouldn’t have even entertained the thought of planting a Love Gu.
Expectation leads to disappointment, then to anger, and then to this constant cycle.
Lacking threads of emotion, unable to take root with a Love Gu, yet still capable of making Song Yilou believe “he likes me” this entire time.
How on earth was he doing it?
Song Juanyu arched an eyebrow. “I really want to meet this Guanzhu.”
Had her son luckily found true love, or was he being led around by the nose by a cunning, heartless person?
“Hmm?” Song Juanyu suddenly looked up toward a certain spot. Her figure vanished and reappeared high above Zhuiyin Well.
With a wave of her hand, surging Yin energy erupted like a giant wave toward the sky, colliding with another powerful force and creating a massive boom.
The clash of Yin energy and Immortal Qi whipped up clouds of clashing colors, permeating the space between them.
Looking at the purple-robed figure appearing from behind the clouds, Song Juanyu’s crimson lips parted slightly. “I recall Bailing Xianjun is a man. And who might you be?”
“Bailing Sect, Ning Ye.” The woman in the elegant purple dress wore a veil, her phoenix eyes tilted upward. Looking at people with those eyes felt like a noble bird staring at ants on the ground—a superior perspective carryng natural pressure and provocation.
“I am not in the habit of exchanging pleasantries with opponents, but you are a Lord of Tribulation. You have the qualifications to make me say a few more words.”
Song Juanyu laughed, her tone filled with novelty. “To think someone is even more arrogant than me.”
“What an eyesore.” Before her voice faded, her whip had already lashed out toward Ning Ye.
The battle between two Lords of Tribulation was Earth-shattering. The sun and moon dimmed as the entire sky became their battlefield.
The other demon and ghost cultivators of Zhuiyin Well proactively avoided the war zone.
Every long-lived cultivator in the cultivation world knew to run as far as possible when high-level cultivators fought. If you were clipped by even a stray aftershock of their battle, it was game over. What a pathetic way to die.
But they soon discovered that they couldn’t escape.
“Which bastard set up a barrier?!” The fastest妖修 slammed into an invisible wall and cursed loudly after being bounced back.
“This is an array! There are other enemies!”
“Where are the array masters? Break the array, quickly!”
On a distant cliff, the Immortal Envoy Luo Yue placed a piece on the chessboard before him. Inside the barrier, a pattern that a ghost cultivator array master had just broken was replaced in the blink of an eye by a more complex array.
Watching the array master hopping mad in the water mirror, the Immortal Envoy leisurely raised a wine flask, filled a cup with immortal brew, took a small sip, and smacked his lips contentedly. “This is the life I should be living.”
“To think that Gu ghost and the Ghost Lord are mother and son. No wonder I thought that Gu ghost looked familiar.”
Luo Yue finished his wine and poured another. “If I catch that Gu ghost here, next time I face the Qingdi Guanzhu, I can make him wary of hitting the vase while trying to catch the rat. Or I could leave something on the Gu ghost and send him back. The future looks bright.”
“Wow, what a great idea.” Praise followed the sound of two claps.
Luo Yue responded with humble politeness, “Thank you…”
Wait, he was clearly the only person on this mountain!
Cold sweat erupted instantly.
Ghostly hell!
Song Yilou smiled as he pressed a hand onto his shoulder. “If I catch you, that Ning Ye woman will be the one wary of hitting the vase. Let me think, what should I leave on you before I send you back?”
“A meeting gift for a Lord of Tribulation shouldn’t be too shabby.”
Luo Yue raised his hands. “Let’s talk this out reasonably.”
The array patterns flashed, and Luo Yue’s figure vanished. Song Yilou’s hand met empty air as a dense thicket of arrays trapped him in place.
“A prepared array master is a sovereign within the scope of his arrays.”
Luo Yue walked past Song Yilou, picked up his fallen wine cup, and began wiping it with a handkerchief.
“I am not skilled in frontal combat, and I can’t compete with you in sinister methods.”
Luo Yue held up the clean wine cup toward Song Yilou and gave a confident smile. “But you shouldn’t have stepped into my array.”
He laughed, and Song Yilou laughed back, sounding much more cheerful than he did.
Luo Yue’s smile faltered. What was this ghostly thing laughing about? It was so unnerving. Did he have a backup plan?
Tap…
Amidst the flutter of a black robe hem, a slender leg stepped into the array. The array beneath the foot shattered instantly, only to be restructured a second later into a completely different formation.
Yun Wuxiang stepped out from the void to Song Yilou’s side. He raised a hand and brushed Song Yilou’s shoulder lightly, as if dusting off stray particles.
After that simple, casual movement, Luo Yue could no longer smile. His arrays had defected.
Someone not proficient in arrays wouldn’t have been able to see what had just happened. Every movement Yun Wuxiang made after appearing was destroying his array nodes and replacing them with his own.
In just a few seconds, more than half of the arrays Luo Yue had pre-set fell under Yun Wuxiang’s control. The very first step had even directly snapped the core of the teleportation array he intended to use for escape.
Luo Yue performed an encore of his surrender, raising his hands. “Gentlemen, let’s talk this out reasonably.”
The two men standing side by side ignored him completely.
Song Yilou keenly sensed the subtle change in Yun Wuxiang. “Guanzhu, what did you do to yourself again?”
“Nothing.” Yun Wuxiang set a new spatial teleportation anchor on him. “As you wished, they are all gone.”
Song Yilou stared at him, his fingers twitching. A moment later, the corners of his mouth drooped.
Looking at his changing expression, Yun Wuxiang knew what had just happened. “Failed again?”
Song Yilou was sullen. Of course it had failed again.
“That shouldn’t be. I clearly have a strong desire right now to lock you up, put you in a cage, and carry you with me everywhere.” Yun Wuxiang was quite puzzled. “Is that not love?”
Seeing that no one was paying him any mind, Luo Yue, who was secretly trying to escape, twitched his ears. What kind of love is that? Isn’t that just a perverted fetish?
“But it just won’t take root.” Song Yilou raised his hand, displaying the corpse of the dead Love Gu in his palm for Yun Wuxiang to see.
Luo Yue: Wait! Did you just admit to something you shouldn’t have?
“It must be a problem elsewhere. We’ll ask Master later; she might know something.”
Yun Wuxiang reached a conclusion. With a wave of his hand, he patched the hole Luo Yue had just dug, adding a sturdy reinforcement amidst the man’s quiet wails.
“We’ll talk about that later. For now—can I lock you up?” As Yun Wuxiang spoke, he retrieved the Qiutian Cage from his storage ring, his attitude exceptionally serious and sincere.
“I even brought the cage.”
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