Volume 5
261 One Scheme After Another
“So, Gaoqin Jiuye and Jiao S were miracles to begin with, and Nie Zun was a miracle within the miracle. Instead of a miracle, it should be called illogical. Logically speaking, there isn’t any possibility that he could have arrived here with a complete consciousness when he does not have a soul splitter and when it wasn’t his dreams which took him here.”
Du Yue looked serious. It did not look like she was lying about this.
Her words were swimming in my mind. If what Du Yue said was true, Nie Zun did not have a soul splitter. Then how did he end up here…?
Si Luo had been standing by the side, not making a sound.
Du Yue did not seem to mind Si Luo’s presence either.
“According to what you’ve said, there’s no plausible reason for Nie Zun to have arrived here?”
Du Yue smirked. “No, it’s the exact opposite. Because it’s impossible under normal circumstances, his uniqueness was caused by his arrival under abnormal circumstances.”
I frowned. “Can you just say everything at once?”
“Audacious. How dare you talk to owner like this!” The older sister in the brown robe called out loudly.
I glanced at her quickly before ignoring her.
Du Yue raised a hand, signaling for the woman not to interrupt. The woman stared at me, but retreated quickly.
All of the standing females looked extremely upset, but I couldn’t be bothered to look at any of them.
“Li Shen, don’t be too presumptuous. I didn’t reveal everything at once because I considered the fact that you might not be able to take everything in.” Du Yue was taller than me, and she liked to stick her chin out when talking to me, as if she was talking to somebody lowly.
“Haha, stop joking now. When have you ever thought about my feelings? Be quick about it and stop wasting everybody’s time.”
A smug look appeared on Du Yue’s face. That look appeared way too suddenly.
Her lips turned up at an angle as she continued, “No one captured Nie Zun, so this means that his consciousness wasn’t brought here. And if he isn’t dreaming, it means that he didn’t come here voluntarily. Eliminating all other possibilities, there’s only one possibility left, which in fact seemed rather impossible. That is, you brought him here.”
What does that mean?
Seeing me confused, Du Yue continued her explanation. “This means that although Nie Zun didn’t come here on his own volition, he wasn’t against it either. The situation then might have caused him to lose all hope and abandon all rational thinking, and during that time – I’m not aware of what kind of relationship you had with him then – but you brought Nie Zun together with you when you were captured by Gaoqin Jiuye.”
She made it sound so simple. I brought him over just like this?
I couldn’t accept such an explanation. “You’re saying that Nie Zun’s consciousness was weakened to the point that I could take him here?”
“Nie Zun’s mental prowess is very strong, and he wouldn’t be such a unique existence if it wasn’t. Because of that strength, it made sense if he had voluntarily arrived here with you. It’s because of that strength that he was able to follow you through the spaces and arrive here. As for you, it’s a coincidence that you have double identity disorder, and that potential power you have within you is also a factor that allowed for Nie Zun to arrive here in the Split Zone.”
I had a thousand and one questions in my head, but I felt that asking Du Yue about them wasn’t a good choice.
I glanced at Si Luo. He looked like he had been listening to everything intently, but he hadn’t said a single word. Jiao S was opposite us, her eyes going back and forth between me and Si Luo. She wasn’t saying anything either.
It was difficult to describe how I felt exactly. I wanted to cry, but there was no use in doing so.
Du Yue seemed to be surprised at how calm I was as she regarded me with suspicion.
Actually, this was just me not knowing how to react.
In the beginning, I hated Nie Zun. I was terrified of that restriction where we couldn’t be more than 500 meters apart. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t Nie Zun’s fault at all. I shunned him all because of that strange restriction which induced a foreign fear in me.
I even got mad at him when he told me he saw me at the hospital. I blamed him for not stopping me.
It’s your own life, who would be able to stop you if you decide to go and kill somebody?
No matter how I thought about it, the only thing I could be sure about was that I really owed Nie Zun in the past.
I buried this guilt deep within me, afraid that it would muddy the feelings I had for him someday in future.
This is why I’d rather not feel guilty about it at all. I believed that I loved him, that there was no right or wrong and that nothing else mattered. But what should I do if everything changed, if everything turned topsy-turvy?
Du Yue was telling me that Nie Zun did not have a soul splitter, that he came here because he was affected by me, that he hadn’t been captured by anyone.
Though Du Yue did not say it very directly, I understood everything.
She felt that an impossible miracle had happened because of the uniqueness of my second personality. My second personality was extremely strong. She appeared in the hospital when I happened to meet Nie Zun, who also had strong mental prowess. She then brought him into the Split Zone.
This meant that I was the one who had dragged Nie Zun into this.
But there was another question in my mind. Why did Nie Zun have a splitting key and a split symbol when he didn’t have a soul splitter?
The split symbol contract cannot be established without a soul splitter, and if the split symbol isn’t formed in a pair, how was Nie Zun able to borrow the power of the split symbol?
How did Nie Zun obtain his split symbol?
Mr Blond was the one who would be able to answer that question. But…he was missing.
“What are you thinking about?” Du Yue interrupted my thoughts.
“Nothing. You can continue. I’m sure it’s not only Nie Zun’s story you wanted to talk about.”
Du Yue smirked. “That’s right. What I was trying to get at is that Nie Zun’s unique existence is caused by various factors, and such an existence is exactly what Ghost King Huai Du is looking for. He set many traps to reel Nie Zun in and to make Nie Zun loyal to him.”
My brows furrowed.
Du Yue thinks that Huai Du’s goal is to control Nie Zun, since Nie Zun was a unique existence. But I didn’t think that his goal was this simple.
According to Li Qing, Nie Zun’s blood had been changed. Huai Du had an ability called soul transference, and he used it on Nie Zun, enabling him to be able to gain control over Nie Zun for a period of time every day.
If Huai Du’s goal was just to control Nie Zun, he would have already succeeded. However, that did not seem like cultivating a demon. It was merely a change of blood.
What Du Yue said was incoherent with what I actually saw.
Du Yue was extremely careful and such a loophole did not look like something she would have missed. This meant that Du Yue did not know that Huai Du had the ability of soul transference, and she wasn’t aware that it was only Nie Zun’s blood that was changed, and that he had not actually been cultivated as a demon.
I tried to probe further. “But why would he want to control Nie Zun? According to what you’ve said, Huai Du’s goal is to control Nie Zun because he is a unique entity. Why would he want to do such a thing though?”
Du Yue said, “This is why I want to work with you guys on this. You know Nie Zun best, and I want to know why Huai Du did this. Si Luo, you’re the only one in the Split Zone who had gone against Huai Du before, so you should understand him better than all of us here. Huai Du had been the king in the Gate of Ghost for a long time, and no one had been able to do anything about that.
“I hope you can help me beat him. Of course, you’ll definitely be rewarded for it. Li Shen, if I can send Song Lu and Yu Liang back, I can do the same for you too. I’ll let you leave as long as you’re willing to work with me to achieve my goal.”
I raised a brow. “Let me leave? You already know that Gaoqin Jiuye is my soul splitter, so how would you let me leave? You’re willing to let Gaoqin Jiuye take such a risk?”
Du Yue smirked. “This isn’t a problem for you to solve.”
She still got upset whenever Gaoqin Jiuye is mentioned. Women. If they can’t have something for themselves, they won’t let others have it either.
Si Luo spoke suddenly. “You’re telling us that by working together, all you want Li Shen and I to do is to tell you whatever we know?”
A trace of a smile hung on Du Yue’s lips as she turned to Si Luo. “What do you think? What else do you think I’ll get you guys to do apart from this? How about you tell us, Si Luo? It’s been so many years since you’ve left the Gate of Heaven. To be honest, I’ve missed you quite a bit in this time, since we were both under Feng Zhu in the past. I could never understand you, but I don’t think there’s a real need for us to become enemies, is there?”
When they were talking, I suddenly thought of Du Yue’s experiments. I had always thought that her goal was to get rid of Bian Ying, that it was all because of Ta Lai. But looking at it now, that did not seem like the case at all. I had definitely underestimated Du Yue.
But what was her goal then, if it wasn’t for Ta Lai?
Now, she wants us to help her out in defeating Huai Du. Was Huai Du her goal since the beginning?
That couldn’t be though. If it was, she wouldn’t have had to spend so much time and effort on those experiments.
Or did this mean that… Huai Du was not her only goal? Did she want to destroy the Gate of Ghost?
This sounded plausible. But what if the truth wasn’t any of those scenarios, and it was a third possibility that I couldn’t have possibly imagined? What should I do then?
