Chapter 832: Yin Wei’s Side Story (end)
Many people say that my origin is unknown.
In fact, I don’t even know my own origins.
Since the moment I became conscious, I have been living in a place full of hostility and evil things called demons.
But unlike those things, I am human with flesh and blood.
Human. That’s what they called me.
I lived in a small cave with only a stone platform that could be used as a bed and nothing else.
At first, I didn’t dare to leave my cave because there were those things outside, waiting for me to come out so they could eat me.
But I succ.u.mbed to hunger eventually and had to go out, else I’d have starved to death there.
The first time I went out, I didn’t even make it five meters away from my home before I was forced back. To survive, I had to try again and again while protecting myself, until I found food.
I don’t know how much time I spent there, but even when I was starving, somehow, death never came for me.
However, such hunger was hard to endure.
Finally, one day, I successfully managed to leave home[1] but the situation outside was completely different from what I had imagined–it was barren everywhere, with evil spirits visible everywhere. There was no food. There were no humans. There was nothing at all.
So my only choice was to retreat back into my little safe haven.
Apart from feeling hunger without dying if I was unable to find food, boredom would set in since I spent every day staying put in one spot.
No one taught me how to enhance my strength so I had no choice but to learn on my own by fighting against those creatures outside. Despite getting injured every single time, my fear towards them slowly diminished as I grew stronger and they started fearing me instead.
It was also during this period of time that I began having recurring dreams which felt incredibly real, like they had actually happened: I dreamt of a girl whose face couldn’t be seen but she made me feel intimate and warm in a world of darkness.
I started looking forward to sleeping everyday, because only then could I see something different from my own world.
By chance, I overheard a conversation that the Abyss was just a small place with an even wider world outside.
I wanted to go out.
I wanted to find her.
Find that **********[2], get her, possess her.
That’s all I could think about at that time.
In order to leave this place, I began asking around. Initially, none of the demons would tell me anything until I taught them a lesson and scared them into submission. They revealed one secret: Find Yong Sheng.
Yong Sheng was a demon from whom the existence of all other demons stemmed.
The first time I met Yong Sheng, he had no form. But I could feel his power; I could tell that he was stronger than all the beings that did have physical forms.
“Human?” His tone sounded strange when he spoke; shocked yet excited.
“Can you take me away from here?”
“Heh…who told you?” As he spoke, Yong Sheng wrapped himself in a cloud of black smoke and flew towards me. “You dare come alone?”
“Why wouldn’t I dare?” I retorted back.
He circled around me while speaking with a fluctuating voice, “Do you know where this is?”
“I don’t know.” There were many places in the Abyss that I didn’t know about.
“You still dare come despite not knowing?”
“I want to leave.”
Suddenly Yong Sheng floated right up close before my face. Although he clearly had no eyes, I still felt as if he was watching me, staring until my blood ran cold.
“Wanna leave…” He stayed there for quite some time before he made some strange noises. “Okay, make a same-life contract with me.”
“What kind of same-life contract?”
“One to live together, and to die apart.[3]”
To live together and to die apart.
Whoever is stronger has the chance to devour the other.
Of course, abilities can also be shared.
My ability to manipulate s.p.a.ce was shared from him.
I agreed to make a covenant with him.
I had to get out.
Yin Wei was the name he gave me. When he told me this name, there seemed to be hatred in his tone. A hatred that wanted nothing more than to crush it into dust and ashes.
I was at a disadvantage, and reason told me not to argue with him.
Getting out of the Abyss went smoother than I thought. Yong Sheng seemed to have known all along that it would happen like this and wasn’t surprised at all.
“You are human, I am a demon. The Demon Realm only affects demons; it’s useless against you.”
That’s what Yong Sheng told me then.
“Are you plotting against me?”
“Plotting? So what if I am? Without my guidance, you wouldn’t have been able to get out either.”
He was right. Without his guidance, even if I wasn’t restricted by the Abyss, I still wouldn’t have been able to get out.
Yong Sheng had ambitious plans; he was arrogant and conceited. His first order of business upon leaving was wanting control over the continent. My goal wasn’t about unifying anything on such a grand scale as much as it was to become powerful enough that we could fight each other on equal footing one day.
But I still wasn’t strong enough to confront him in a fight. I could only progress slowly, one step at a time, until I had gone from not having anything at all, to becoming the State Teacher of the Cang Lan Empire.
“The time is ripe now, Yin Wei. It’s time for you to take action.” Yong Sheng had said this line to me many times before, but I always brushed him off.
This time, however, he had probably sensed something was amiss and thus decided to take action against me first.
Although I was ultimately victorious in our battle, I had been trapped in the National Teacher’s residence, doomed to never be able to leave for long. He couldn’t harm me, but neither could I him.
I spent a long time searching for that girl from my dreams, but to no avail. None of them were who I was looking for.
Every hope represented another disappointment.
The more disappointments one experiences, the easier it is to fall into despair.
I went to Demon Flame Ridge hoping to obtain that divine object and use its power to destroy Yong Sheng. Although there was a high chance of dying as well, I couldn’t let him grow stronger day by day and risk having him take over my body or do whatever he pleased with it.
But what surprised me was that obtaining that divine object wasn’t easy at all; not only did a Blood Qilin guard it, but there were also many other mystical beasts around as well.
A Blood Qilin could command all the mystical beasts in Flame Ridge; this fact had never been disclosed before when she negotiated with those few divine beasts back then. Though I suspected Blood Qilin might have given some sort of signal behind their backs, I didn’t have any evidence.
From the first moment I laid eyes on her…I knew she was who I’d been searching for all these years.
But at that time, while she shone brightly like a star…I looked like an absolute mess. So much so that even if I wanted to reveal myself out of embarra.s.sment or something else entirely–fear, perhaps–it just wouldn’t happen.
So instead, I endured the backlash brought upon me by leaving the State Teacher’s residence and followed her every step of the way. But in the end, I couldn’t hold on any longer and so I set off on the journey back.
What surprised me, however, was that she followed me back!
Even more surprising was that she didn’t seem to feel any rejection toward me. In fact, she seemed to…
Like me?
I will always remember the words she told me at that time.
Two simple words that made me want to embrace her tightly and never let go. She was the girl I had been searching for all these years.
But I couldn’t do it.
I ran away in a panic.
When she appeared outside of the National Teacher’s residence again, looking at those two Qilins…I impulsively gave them to her without thinking twice about it.
‘I have already given myself over to you.’
– Yin Wei[1] – I’m not too sure about this one. The raws say 我成功走出了它们的包围圈, but I have no idea what he’s breaking out of. I’m keeping it simple and saying it’s his home until someone tells me I’m wrong.
[2] – It’s censored in the raws too. Use your imagination, I guess.
[3] – The raws say 同生不同死, which literally means “same life different death,” but I took it in a little more poetic direction.