Shang Can had always had a weak constitution.
For a long time, she had to take a large amount of medicine just to barely maintain the normal function of her body. She was someone who was terrified of bitterness, yet over the years, she gradually became accustomed to it. In fact, she didn’t like fighting with others at all—it was painful and hard—though perhaps she began to dislike it after becoming known as “Can.” After all, each encounter was a mysterious life-and-death struggle, as if her so-called reputation as a “demon cultivator” was an original sin, luring countless cultivators to seek fame by eliminating her.
Her hands weren’t clean; they were stained with the blood of cultivators, and even more likely, her own blood that she had coughed up. She was already in a state of disrepair, barely hanging on, yet she had to maintain some semblance of dignity, barely covering her always pale complexion with a white jade mask.
But now, she felt fantastic.
Whether it was her body or anything else, Shang Can’s ability to summon heavenly fire had become increasingly adept. With just a glance, she could call forth a stream of fiery meteors from the sky, pursuing Qin Yi with unmatched ferocity, wanting to consume her entirely. Her eyes felt a bit swollen and hot, as if they were filled with quietly burning fire. But beyond that, Shang Can felt an unprecedented lightness in her body. Watching Qin Yi, who could only flee in a panic, her mood was surprisingly calm and unaffected.
She suspected that with each use of her spiritual power, she was indeed losing something, but she had no intention of caring about that anymore.
This was not a fair battle; Qin Yi had no backup, no traps, no ambush. She was simply facing Shang Can alone, struggling to survive amidst the unextinguishable heavenly fire. It was a one-sided crushing situation, and it was only a matter of time before Qin Yi collapsed under the heavenly flames.
Shang Can didn’t understand what this person was thinking, nor did she grasp what Qin Yi wanted. She had come here early, seemingly just to place the Heart Lotus Seed into the ghost realm’s barrier and wait for Shang Can to arrive. It was as if she had already prepared herself to die at Shang Can’s hands.
Qin Yi seemed to only want to see Shang Can in pain; it had always been so, a person who stayed true to herself.
Of course, Shang Can couldn’t let her have her way.
Years ago, the land had suffered a second calamity after being burned to the ground. The heavenly fire mercilessly swept away every inch of visible land. Qin Yi finally couldn’t evade it, collapsing on the ground, barely alive.
Shang Can stood silently not far away; the area around her was clean for a few meters, starkly contrasting with the scorched earth still steaming before her. She slightly moved her fingers, halting the next wave of heavenly fire in midair, contemplating whether she should deliver a fatal blow to Qin Yi now.
“…Can, Shang Can…”
Qin Yi’s hoarse voice came from afar, perhaps injured her vocal cords due to the heavenly fire. Her voice was muffled and hard to discern, but Shang Can could still hear her strange laughter, rasping, “The barrier… you haven’t broken it yet, have you?”
Shang Can remained silent, raising her eyes to look in the distance. She hadn’t deliberately avoided anything while using heavenly fire; she had been focused solely on attacking Qin Yi. But it seemed that the complex spiritual power trajectories of that barrier were indeed still barely holding on, not directly destroyed by the recent barrage.
Not hearing her response, the half-ghost, whose body was damaged and could no longer regenerate spiritual power, mumbled something indistinctly, struggling to raise her head. Her sightless eyes stubbornly turned in Shang Can’s direction, seemingly trying to say something. Shang Can couldn’t hear clearly and was going to ignore it, but for some reason, Qin Yi repeated it over and over until Shang Can finally understood a bit.
“The lotus seed… you… yourself…”
“I just… break the barrier…”
Qin Yi kept repeating these two sentences. Shang Can didn’t quite understand but stood in silence for a while before slowly stepping toward her.
Perhaps hearing Shang Can’s footsteps, Qin Yi trembled at her approach. It was difficult to read her emotions from the half-ghost’s face, and Shang Can didn’t bother trying to guess. She walked up to Qin Yi, looking down at her.
“Qin Yi.”
Her voice was calm, yet it stirred a quickened breath from the person on the ground. Shang Can summoned the heavenly fire, condensing it into a needle-like form, hovering before Qin Yi’s forehead.
“If I owe you any apologies,” Shang Can spoke in a flat tone, each word devoid of emotion, “then it would be that I didn’t take your life directly back then.”
“Though it wasn’t my intention, letting you survive in this half-human, half-ghost state for so many years is also my fault.”
With each sentence Shang Can uttered, the half-ghost shrank back further. Her hearing, astonishingly, still worked, and Qin Yi herself didn’t understand her current emotions. She struggled to catch every word with the fleeting moments of her life, and suddenly, she heard the sound of heavenly fire breaking through the air.
She thought she was going to die beneath this heavenly fire, but when she heard the deafening sound of it hitting the ground, she felt no familiar burning sensation on her body.
Qin Yi could no longer see, and unsure of what had happened, she felt a sudden chill coming from nearby. At first, it was just a few wisps, but it grew stronger. If it weren’t for the ongoing force of the heavenly fire, the entire place would likely have been consumed by this aura.
—It was ghostly energy.
Qin Yi suddenly realized what the heavenly fire had aimed for—it had forcibly broken through the barrier she had set up, re-establishing the connection between the realm of cultivation and the ghost realm. The footsteps of the person before her gradually receded, then returned slowly, as if they hadn’t been stirred by the scene before them.
“You opened the Heart Lotus Seed?”
Shang Can’s voice seemed to come from a distant place, her tone still as indifferent as before: “Quite capable.”
Qin Yi’s mind went blank. This person seemed to care about nothing anymore. Shang Can was becoming increasingly cold and ruthless at an astonishing rate. It was clearly a trap she had set herself; everything had gone according to her wishes, yet she felt no joy about the current situation. She couldn’t understand why.
“At this point, we’re even, right?”
The last thing she heard from Shang Can was spoken with an indifference akin to addressing a tree, a blade of grass, or a stone.
“Let’s not meet again.”
With a dull thud, a sharp but searing object pierced through her skull, and the half-ghost once again perished beneath the heavenly fire.
By the time Yun Duan arrived, the dust had settled.
She felt the biting coldness; her flawless celestial body was more sensitive to changes in spiritual energy than an ordinary person. She sensed that something very bad had happened, but she had no time or mental energy to care, rushing straight toward her destination.
The surrounding land was riddled with wounds, blackened, showing clear signs of being ravaged by heavenly fire. The once vibrant Smoke Sun outskirts paled in comparison to this. The aftermath of battle still lingered, and Yun Duan gripped Wu You tightly, not knowing how long she ran, until she finally saw that figure.
In the place where she had lost Shang Can in her memories, Yun Duan found Shang Can.
The person stood with her back to Yun Duan, alone in the area thick with ghostly energy. It seemed she was merely standing there, lost in thought. Her silhouette looked fragile, heavy ghostly energy swirling around her as if trying to pull her into the ghost realm. She stood quietly for a moment, then suddenly raised her hand to cover her mouth with her sleeve. Yun Duan saw her shoulders tremble silently a few times. When she lowered her hand, a dark red flower had bloomed on her white sleeve.
Yun Duan’s heart sank. She didn’t have time for formalities and rushed forward to disperse the ghostly energy, trembling as she said, “You’re hurt!”
“…”
The person facing away from her seemed taken aback, not turning around immediately. When she spoke, her voice was surprisingly calm: “How did you know I was here?”
Even though her concern for Shang Can’s injuries was overwhelming, Yun Duan still patiently answered her question: “…I cast a spell on Fei Wang to locate its position.”
A light laugh came from in front of her, the tone gentle: “After all these years, it’s still the same method in the end.”
Yun Duan couldn’t bear to hear those last two words. Even though she had finally found Shang Can, the unease and fear in her heart didn’t diminish in the slightest. Yun Duan pressed her lips tightly together, taking half a step forward, intending to grasp her hand, but the other person seemed to sense something and turned around.
Yun Duan gazed into two setting suns.
In an instant, she felt a strange illusion, and it took a moment for her to snap back to reality. The person before her had a dignified appearance, pale and refined; there was no doubt it was Shang Can. But those eyes… those eyes.
No longer was it the pure and gentle hue of ink jade, but rather a dazzling golden color, radiant like molten gold at sunset, blindingly brilliant, exuding an air of preciousness and a chilling distance that made one reluctant to gaze too long.
Yun Duan felt momentarily dazzled, struggling to find her voice. A jumble of thoughts crowded her mind, coalescing into a fragment of a conversation she once had with Shang Can.
“Some demon clans are born in human form.”
“But they won’t be exactly the same as humans; there will always be some differences.”
Humans… whether mortals, cultivators, or even demonic cultivators—anyone from the world of cultivation—all had black hair and black eyes.
Yun Duan’s mind buzzed with confusion. She couldn’t understand why Shang Can, who previously had pitch-black eyes, now possessed a pair of golden ones. A fleeting thought crossed her mind that perhaps this was just a joke, but Shang Can gently parted her lips and broke that expectation with a calm tone.
“It’s true.” Without a hint of panic at revealing her identity, Shang Can fixed her gaze on Yun Duan, her voice soft, “I’m a… half-demon.”
Yun Duan’s breath caught. She heard Shang Can continue, “I know that beings like half-demons shouldn’t exist in this world… but the reality is as such. Wan Shao is aware of this as well.”
“I might be the only one in the world. When I first didn’t awaken, even Qing Yu couldn’t detect anything unusual; he thought I was just a human.”
Shang Can spoke in a flat tone, as if discussing someone else’s affairs, “It was only later that I awakened. After that, I had no choice but to escape before I could be eliminated.”
Certain memories intertwined with Shang Can’s words—two failed study trips to the Outer Heaven, the heavenly fire that could still be summoned even when spiritual energy was restricted at the debate forum, and the “light-fearing” eye ailment from days ago—
Suddenly jolted by this unexpected revelation, Yun Duan came back to her senses. She took a deep breath and softly asked, “…So you were covering your eyes the other day because your eyes turned golden and you didn’t want me to see?”
“…”
Seemingly caught off guard by her question, Shang Can tilted her head slightly, nodding in acknowledgment: “Yes. If I overuse my spiritual power, it can lead to this issue. I thought it would go away after a few days, but I don’t know why it hasn’t subsided this time.”
“It’s much more convenient being a half-demon. My demonic aura doesn’t show, but these eyes are easy to expose.” Shang Can’s lips curled into a brief smile before it faded away. “I initially planned to keep it a secret from you, but you always manage to find me.”
Yun Duan couldn’t articulate the complex emotions within her, but she had already recovered from her initial shock. Frowning, she said, “Why hide it from me? Do you think I would react differently just because you’re a half-demon?”
Her words clearly expressed that she did not care about Shang Can’s identity. Frowning, she maintained eye contact with Shang Can, finally catching a glimpse of the resigned smile that flickered on her calm face.
“…It’s precisely because I know you wouldn’t react differently,” Shang Can’s voice was soft, almost inaudible, “that I wanted to hide it from you.”
Yun Duan didn’t grasp her meaning. Just as she was about to ask, Shang Can suddenly seized her wrist, pulling her forward, nearly crashing into her embrace.
“I don’t know if you understand the meaning of my confession.”
Ignoring the way Yun Duan’s breath quickened with panic, Shang Can drew closer, raising her hand to brush Yun Duan’s ink-black hair off her shoulder, lazily watching the soft strands slip through her fingers like water.
“I’m a half-demon. I fully awakened ten years ago and escaped from here…” She paused, “and I hurt you back then.”
“Even though I only have half-demon blood, I still find you… very tempting.”
Shang Can’s voice was low, and Yun Duan suddenly snapped back to reality, forcefully pulling away from her embrace. Shang Can’s hand, which had just casually brushed her shoulder, now hung in the air, the evidence of her earlier intentions suspended as her golden eyes calmly regarded her.
“That’s more like it.” Shang Can’s tone was gentle, almost tinged with a sigh. “Next time you wake up, remember to be wary of half-demons, you flawless celestial being.”
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