Chapter 31: I Am Not Him, And You Certainly Aren’t…
【Sigh. I’ll come find you again once you’ve remembered everything.】
Yun Wuxiang called out to stop him. “Leaving so soon? I still have things to say.”
“If I am the Heart Demon, why is it me undergoing the tribulation in this illusion right now, and not you?”
【Because you are independent. You are the most unique Heart Demon to ever exist.】
【This is my fault. Heart Demons are born from unsatisfied desires. I wished to go home. I wished for everything before my eyes to be fake—that if I just slept, I would wake up back in my own home.】
【I hoped to change all of this, to alter this hellish world, but I could see no hope.】
【This is the root of your birth, and it is also what trapped you inside my body.】
“It sounds like I, as a Heart Demon, am basically a genie, existing solely to grant the main body’s wishes.” Yun Wuxiang’s voice shifted, his tone carrying a calm yet bone-chilling mockery. “Have you ever seen a Heart Demon treat its host this well? You call this a Heart Demon?”
If there were truly Aladdin-style Heart Demons who worked tirelessly to fulfill their host’s every wish, please, give him a dozen. Even Song Yilou could split his soul; why couldn’t he?
【That is why I treat you as a brother, Xiao Yun.】 The person in the mirror sighed helplessly. His words carried a gentle indulgence, as if looking at a stubborn younger brother whom he couldn’t bear to scold.
Yun Wuxiang felt as though a thousand bugs controlled by Song Yilou were crawling over his skin—an unspeakable discomfort and awkwardness.
【Continue your recollection. I will watch over Song Yilou and ensure he doesn’t disturb you.】
Yun Wuxiang let out a soft chuckle. Watch over Song Yilou? Even if the person saying this was his own Heart Demon, he found it laughably absurd.
The voice of the person in the mirror faded, and the memory illusion before his eyes resumed.
In the illusion, Ah Yun had temporarily calmed down from his breakdown. He stuffed that half-piece of dried radish into his stomach and returned to Shen Yueqiu and Shi Qiao like a walking corpse.
As the journey continued, Shen Yueqiu’s illness worsened. Eventually, Shi Qiao and Ah Yun had to take turns carrying him.
All the vegetation along the road had been stripped bare; even weeds were scarce. They followed the stream of refugees blindly, not knowing where they were going or how long they would have to walk before finding hope.
The refugee column was massive, yet strangely silent. When people are starving, they have no energy to speak.
Some collapsed midway, some gradually fell behind, yet the scale of the group grew larger as new refugees constantly joined.
“We’re here! We’ve reached Yu’an City!”
“Finally!”
“Yu’an City has disaster relief grain issued by the Imperial Court! We’re saved!”
“Food… I smell rice soup…”
“To eat… I want to eat!”
The exhausted column, upon seeing the city walls in the distance, went into a frenzy, rushing forward as if injected with adrenaline.
Ah Yun, carrying Shen Yueqiu, was jostled several times by the people around him. He nearly fell, but a hand grabbed him just in time.
“Ah Yun, I’ll take Mr. Shen. You run fast—go grab two bowls first. The court is handing out porridge; if we’re late, there’ll be none left.” Shi Qiao held Ah Yun back, his voice weak and urgent.
“Okay!” Ah Yun gritted his teeth. He handed Shen Yueqiu over to Shi Qiao, squeezed out every last ounce of strength in his body, and sprinted forward.
When Ah Yun squeezed through the crowd with a broken wooden bowl and finally received a serving of porridge, he struggled to suppress the urge to drink it all in one gulp. However, the moment he turned around, countless eyes stared at the bowl in his hands like starving wolves.
Those eyes told him one thing: either drink the porridge immediately, or it would be spilled in the ensuing snatch-and-grab. It wouldn’t last until Shi Qiao and Shen Yueqiu arrived.
In the end, with the hot soup in his stomach, the warmth spreading through his abdomen made Ah Yun fall even more silent.
“How am I going to explain this to Brother Shi Qiao?”
Soon, he didn’t need to think about that problem. He realized he couldn’t find Shi Qiao or Shen Yueqiu at all. There were too many refugees. People pressed against people, shoulder to shoulder; there were people everywhere.
Ah Yun’s daily routine became squeezing in to get porridge, then searching for them in the crowd.
“They must have gotten relief porridge too.”
“Mr. Shen is a wealthy merchant. As long as he reveals his identity to the officials and promises a reward, someone will help him get home.”
“If he goes back, he’ll come back for me, right? I carried him the whole way. He will, won’t he?”
Ah Yun curled up under the eaves, staring blankly at the sky.
“I want to go home.”
He closed his eyes, wanting to sleep, but was constantly woken by the coughing around him.
So noisy. Why are so many people coughing?
Ah Yun startled awake, opening his eyes wide.
Looking around, seven out of ten people were coughing.
Of the remaining three, two were lying on the ground unable to get up. The last one left standing was him.
“The city gates are closed!”
This shout seemed to confirm his premonition. Ah Yun scrambled up, climbed a high wall, and looked toward the city gate.
The tightly closed gates seemed to block out the light of the entire world, airtight and suffocating.
He saw the area in front of the gate packed with people. He saw many coughing until they were bent double. He saw someone trying to climb over the city wall to leave.
The first person climbed the wall. Before he could even steady himself, a feathered arrow flew from the distance, piercing his chest. The blurred figure, whose face couldn’t be seen clearly, fell like a bird with broken wings, smashing heavily onto the ground.
That single arrow completely extinguished the hope of everyone inside Yu’an City.
The Imperial Court hadn’t left; they had abandoned them.
“They want to trap us in this city to die!”
“Plague! It’s the plague! Hahaha, everyone is going to die!”
“You damned outsiders! I said long ago we shouldn’t have let you into the city!” The original residents of Yu’an City turned their hatred toward the incoming refugees.
It was unknown who started fighting first, but under the encroaching shadow of death, the entire city began to go mad.
Panic, violence, insanity.
amidst the chaos, Yun Wuxiang took over the body once again. The people around him were no longer fighting just for food. As he walked down the street empty-handed, people would rush at him with sticks, or simply swing their fists.
After he beat a few attackers to death, the number of people daring to move against him decreased significantly, but they still came in a steady stream.
The long knife he had seized from an attacker pierced another chest—he had lost count of how many times this had happened. The eyes of the dying man held no resentment. His lips moved slightly, and then he slowly closed his eyes.
Ah Yun: “What did he want to say just now?”
Yun Wuxiang: “Ask the next person who comes to die, and you’ll know.”
He had done exactly that. And the next attacker told him: “It was probably a thank you.”
“Your reputation has spread. The people coming to find you are those who want to die but don’t have the guts to kill themselves.”
The attacker in the illusion repeated words from the past memories: “We’ve all caught the plague. There’s no saving us. But if we commit suicide, we’ll be punished in the Underworld.”
Feudal superstition, Yun Wuxiang thought to himself, flipping his hand to send the man on his way.
The people after that… they all came seeking death.
In chaos, where some seek death, others desperately want to live—especially those who haven’t caught the plague yet.
Yu’an City split into two factions again. One half consisted of the uninfected, who occupied the relatively prosperous southern district and drove all the sick to the north.
Yun Wuxiang’s clean and efficient killing methods made Ah Yun famous among the infected. This bit of fame allowed Shi Qiao to find him.
When they met this time, Shi Qiao’s face had a few more scars, and the spirit in his eyes had scattered significantly. He looked even more like the middle-aged Shi Qiao now. “Ah Yun, you’re not sick. Why didn’t you go to the south of the city?”
By this time, Ah Yun rarely came out. The body was controlled by Yun Wuxiang most of the time. But when Shi Qiao appeared, Yun Wuxiang lost control of the body again.
He heard Ah Yun ask, “Where is Mr. Shen?”
Shi Qiao: “I was just about to tell you. Cough, cough… Mr. Shen has great fortune. He didn’t catch the plague. His previous illness was just a severe wind-chill. Once he had food, he recovered a lot.”
“But the people in the south won’t let him pass. I heard you’ve developed some skills now. It’s perfect—the two of us can work together to sneak Mr. Shen over there.”
Take him over for what? To be someone’s rations?
Yun Wuxiang’s consciousness closed its eyes. When they opened again, they were a pure, crimson red.
Soaring blood-lust and baleful aura tore through the void, causing the entire illusion to stutter and distort like a glitching video.
【Xiao Yun, I don’t want to recall what happens next either, but I’m going home soon. I can’t let you continue living in my shadow.】 The voice of the person in the mirror appeared again.
Yun Wuxiang: “Shut up, Heart Demon.”
【You must recall that memory. Remember who you are. Otherwise, we will both be trapped in this Heart Demon Tribulation forever.】
Time in the illusion began to flow rapidly. Not long after, the city gates opened. But it wasn’t the soldiers letting them out; instead, another batch of refugees was herded in.
The explosive increase in refugees broke the balance within the city. These people, driven mad by hunger on the road, rushed directly to the government office to search for the disaster relief grain left behind.
During the looting, grain sacks spilled open. A shower of sand and stones froze everyone in place.
“Stones… sand… where is the grain?! Where is the food?!”
People frantically tore open all the remaining sacks. It was all stones and dirt. There wasn’t a shadow of a single grain of rice.
“What kind of relief grain is this?!”
“Hahaha! ‘Disaster Relief’… what a way to relieve the disaster!”
Famine and plague shrouded the city.
When humans are starving to the extreme, they are no longer humans, but hungry ghosts wearing human skin.
More and more white bones appeared by the roadside and on the ground. The smell of rotting boiled meat floated in the air. Even blocking his sense of smell couldn’t stop the phantom scent within the illusion. In Yun Wuxiang’s mind, a rope pulled to its absolute limit was about to snap.
“Ah Yun, they are eating people! Ugh!” Shi Qiao bent over, dry heaving, but he only retched up some sour water. His stomach was empty; there was nothing to vomit.
“They’re crazy… these people have gone crazy!”
Ah Yun looked at the knife in his hand. “Brother Shi Qiao, there’s no food left.” Swapping children to eat, cutting flesh for food—these were words he had only seen in books, but now they had become the reality before his eyes.
It was too disgusting. Too absurd. Was this the human world or hell?
But if they didn’t do this, what could they do?
There was nothing left to eat.
“I don’t want to live anymore. You and Mr. Shen… eat me. Live on.”
Ah Yun aimed the blade at his own neck. His eyes were dead, devoid of any desire to survive.
Shi Qiao grabbed the hand holding the knife and roared sternly, “What nonsense are you spouting!”
“Even if I, Shi Qiao, starve to death, I won’t live by eating people like those outside!”
Shi Qiao snatched Ah Yun’s knife, threw it aside, and grabbed him by the collar.
“You can’t die. You have to watch me. If one day I eat human flesh, you kill me first. Then, whether you live or die is up to you! Understand?”
Ah Yun responded numbly, “Okay.”
Shen Yueqiu just watched the two silently. The next day, he suddenly said, “Ah Yun, Ah Qiao, my home is in Deming Prefecture, Xinglin Town, the Shen Manor. My son should be born soon. If I don’t make it to that day, you two… go take a look at him for me.”
Ah Yun nodded silently, assuming he was just giving him a goal to live for, like Shi Qiao had.
However, that was the last time he saw Shen Yueqiu alive.
When Shi Qiao came back with him and half a bag of rice bran, Shen Yueqiu’s eyes were closed, sleeping peacefully.
Ah Yun’s dazed gaze fell on the head Shi Qiao was cradling in his arms. His pupils constricted into pinpricks, his voice dry and hoarse: “Where is Mr. Shen’s body?”
Shi Qiao looked like his soul had left his body. “He used himself… to exchange for this half bag of rice bran. He wanted the two of us… to live.”
In the illusion, Ah Yun’s eyes turned blood-red. He picked up the knife and rushed out, ignoring Shi Qiao’s attempts to stop him.
Ah Yun was human. No matter how good a fighter a single person is, they cannot defeat a horde of mad refugees.
Who will come… help me snatch Mr. Shen’s body back?
Who will come… and kill all these people!
Who will come… and live for me…
The manic crimson baleful aura was suddenly dyed with a heavy, inky darkness. Like an enraged, blackened beast, it tore the entire illusion to shreds. All sound ceased. People and scenery shattered like a broken painting.
The short-haired person in the mirror looked through the cracks of these paper-like fragments at Yun Wuxiang, whose demonic energy was boiling. “You remembered, didn’t you?”
Yun Wuxiang nodded slowly, walking toward the person in the mirror, gazing quietly at his face.
The person in the mirror asked with some confusion, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Yun Wuxiang’s blood-red eyes bore into him, making the person in the mirror feel an invisible pressure.
Demonic energy condensed in Yun Wuxiang’s hand into an inky black sword, which he abruptly thrust toward the person in the mirror.
The person in the mirror looked shocked, raising his hand to summon a talisman to block in front of him.
The instant before the long sword hit the talisman, a hand snatched the paper charm away. The mirror person’s pupils quaked. He tried to dodge in a panic, but it was too late. The pitch-black blade pierced his chest.
Yun Wuxiang drove the blade all the way through with ruthless force, his voice cold. “I am not him. And you certainly aren’t!”
The person in the mirror was incredibly shocked. “What are you saying?”
“He gave up on this world long ago. He wouldn’t even think about waking up.”
“You are my Heart Demon.”
Yun Wuxiang’s tone was firm. “And your acting is terrible.”
The person in the mirror coughed up a mouthful of old blood. His power was being devoured by Yun Wuxiang. Realizing he was completely exposed, on the brink of death, he said unwillingly, “I was created exactly according to the thoughts in your heart! How could I not be like him!”
Yun Wuxiang countered, “Do you think you look anything like the Ah Yun in the illusion?”
Heart Demon: “There’s something wrong with you! I’ve never seen a demon like you!”
Yun Wuxiang sneered. “You’ve only ever seen me, a single demon. No, wait. I am human. I am Ah Yun’s second personality.”
The Heart Demon glared, leaving behind the final words of his demonic life: “Screw you! You weirdo who lies to yourself and even lies to his Heart Demon!”
After the Heart Demon dissipated, Yun Wuxiang finally said, “Making me remember those memories was your biggest mistake.”
Ah Yun was never named Yun Wuxiang. Yun Wuxiang had been his name from the start.
“Sub-personality, let me give you a name. How about Yun Wuxiang?”
“My dad wanted to give me that name, saying that when roll was called in class, I’d definitely be the center of attention. But my grandma stopped him. So, I’m Yun Xinyang. The name Yun Wuxiang is yours now.”
“Yun Wuxiang, this place really isn’t fit for humans. I can’t live on.”
“I want to go home.”
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