Li Yao looked as if he had been stung by a venomous scorpion. He almost jumped to his feet. Dumbfounded for a long time, he rubbed his hands and asked curiously, "Come on, Brother Guo. Tell me your story! You didn't know it all the time, did you? "
Guo Chunfeng wiped his face hard and managed to put on a smile that was even uglier than crying. Holding the kettle, he said, "Of course I didn't know. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been named Abyss. Until … one night three months ago!
"Before that night, I had always thought that I was a human Cultivator named 'Guo Chunfeng'. My past was as simple and clear as the ink spots on a white paper. My present was full of joy and satisfaction despite all the troubles. If possible, I hoped that my days would go on like that. Nothing would change in my future!
"My name was Guo Chunfeng. My hometown was on the Grand Desolate Plateau. My parents were both Cultivators. When I was young, my hometown was completely destroyed in a massive beast tide outbreak. My parents and family were all killed in the fierce battle. But I survived with the deepest hatred for the demon race. After a few ups and downs, I grew up and joined the Secret Sword Bureau. I received the harshest training and carried out the most dangerous missions. I traded the heads of thousands of demons for the position of supervisor of the Demon Execution Division of the Secret Sword Bureau!
"I don't remember much about my hometown and my parents. My head hurts when I think about them. I've asked a lot of brain specialists and Meditation Healers to examine them, but they all said that it was because I was too frightened during the beast tide when I was young. My brain automatically erased the horrible memories in case my soul was heavily wounded.
"It was a very normal phenomenon. Many war orphans who experienced beast tide outbreaks suffered from short-term amnesia. Even many adults suffered short-term amnesia after experiencing the terrifying beast tide outbreaks!
"I am adept at the techniques of the four fields myself, and I know a lot about the development of the brain and the arts of meditation. I know that the doctors and the Meditation Healers are not wrong, and there are no good treatments for such amnesia. Besides, it does not affect anything. Therefore, I do not think too much about it. I simply take out the pictures of my parents and myself when I was little and fabricate a childhood in the mottled pieces of light and shadow in my head as consolation!"
"All in all, three months ago, I never had the slightest doubt about my identity as a human being, nor did I have the slightest grudge against the demons! As the supervisor of the Demon Execution Division, I've seen too much damage caused by the demons. I have a strong belief that the evil demons must be eliminated! "
"Hehe. Had it not been for the cautiousness in my nature that made me reject Lu Zui once or twice habitually, I would've joined the Patriots Partnership if he had tempted me a few more times!"
"In the end, that night three months ago …"
The muscles on Guo Chunfeng's face were cramping. Half in confusion and half in fear, he mumbled, "As I recall, it was a few days after the 'beast tide outbreak in the capital city'. The entire capital city was in chaos, and a curfew was imposed. The best forces of the police and the military were stationed at every node, and the operation teams of the Demon Execution Division of the Secret Sword Bureau were searching for the demons who might have escaped or lurked in the city.
"That night, we did discover a heavily wounded demon king through the scanning of demonic energy. After several rounds of fierce battles, we successfully slew him!
"I didn't sleep for days, and I was too exhausted after the fierce battle. So, I took a nap in the temporary command shuttle. It was supposed to be a nap, but I was caught in a very weird state. It was like — like my soul had been extracted from my shell and swallowed by a bottomless swamp. I was caught in a bizarre dream!
"It was like a dream, but not a dream. In a trance, I felt that a life of more than ten years had expanded deep inside my soul!
"In the 'dream', I am no longer Guo Chunfeng, a young human being born and raised on the Grand Desolate Plateau, but a young demon who grew up in an underground city in the Nether Spring Kingdom in the Blood Demon Sector. I have a brand-new name, which is Ye Yuya. I also have a brand-new, hideous face!
"In the horrible world that was filled with the smell of sulfur, the underground miasma, and all kinds of demonic fungi and plants, I was polishing myself with secret medicines, fighting demon beasts, and learning the usages of all kinds of weapons, demonic artifacts, and magical equipment! In the world, I had no partners but prey, enemies, and … my father. But every time he showed up, he would bring more prey and enemies, which meant harsher training, crazier battles, and crueler tortures!
"You must've guessed it. In the dream, the father of the young man Ye Yuya was Elder Nether Spring!
"The dream seemed to have lasted only one moment, but it also seemed to have lasted more than ten years. All in all, at the end of the dream, I swallowed a certain kind of stinky and spicy liquid. Ointment and secret medicines were smeared all over my body, and I was sent into something that looked like a 'cocoon'! When the last shell was sealed, I saw that Elder Nether Spring looked at me with a complicated expression and said, 'Sleep well.' Then, I was completely swallowed by the darkness, as if I had died just like that!
"That was the end of the dream.
"I leapt up from the abyss. I felt that I was in a trance, and I had a splitting headache. It felt both like a dying struggle and a resurrection from the dead!
"But a hideous face popped up inside my head. It was Elder Nether Spring!
"He grinned hideously and said that now that I knew who I was, he asked me to be prepared and that he would come to me in a few days. By then, I would naturally know the whole plan!"
Holding his head, Guo Chunfeng's face was pale, as if he were dwelling in the horrible night again. After catching his breath for a long time, he struggled to say, "The dream and the words made my head go blank. I couldn't come back to myself for more than ten minutes!
"My first feeling was not that I had awakened my real self but that I, as' Guo Chunfeng ', had been possessed by a guy named Ye Yuya!"
Li Yao nodded in agreement. He had once been possessed by Ou Yezi, a master of refining forty thousand years ago. He had experienced the uncanny dream, too, which was dozens of times longer than Guo Chunfeng's dream.
Therefore, Li Yao could understand his reaction after he broke free from such a state.
"My hands were groping around my body subconsciously," Guo Chunfeng continued. "Suddenly, I touched the remains of a demonic insect that had been crushed. Some bright green mucus was flowing out of it. When I sensed it more carefully, I discovered its mouthpart behind my head. It was obvious that it had injected something into my head!
"As the supervisor of the Demon Execution Division, I knew the forms of all kinds of demonic insects like the back of my hand. Even the rarely-seen demonic insects could not have escaped my eyes!
"Also, it was the peak period of the beast tide invasion. In my position, it was very easy for the demons to assassinate me. Therefore, I automatically opened my spiritual shield and deployed alarm rune arrays when I was sleeping. I was a light sleeper, too. There was no way that a tiny demonic insect could have approached me!
"But the demonic insect penetrated through my spiritual shield and injected something into the back of my head without waking me up!"
Li Yao was deep in thought. "Let's assume that the demonic insect was probably sent by Elder Nether Spring. He could have grasped your traces through other Children of the Nether World! The liquid that the demonic insect injected into your head was probably the 'activation drug' that activated you from the 'hibernation state' to the 'awakened state', right? "
"Yes."
Guo Chunfeng took a deep breath and tried to keep himself calm. "I pushed away all my subordinates and staggered to the underground district. I found a garbage dump and crouched there for half a night, thinking about the whole thing carefully. Then, I reached the same conclusion as you did, too.
"As it turned out, I was not 'Guo Chunfeng'. The real Guo Chunfeng died decades ago, and I was just Ye Yuya, a demon who took his place! Everything that I thought was true was false. It was all part of Elder Nether Spring's careful plan!
"I was disgusted, angry, and scared. I crouched on the garbage dump and vomited!
"After I vomited, I was confused again. Elder Nether Spring would come for me in a few days. What should I do?"
Li Yao's eyes suddenly shone. "You don't want to help him?"
"Of course not!"
Guo Chunfeng shook his head heavily. "For me, the life of the young demon Ye Yuya was just a dream. However real it was, could it be more real than my life in the past decades?
"Yes. Maybe everything in my life is fake. My identity is fake. My appearance is fake. My form is fake. Even the accomplishments and the position that I earned by killing my way through were mostly delivered to me by Elder Nether Spring!"
"Even if everything was false, my wife and my daughter were at least real! Elder Nether Spring is my father. So what? Yao Li is my wife, and Guo Xiaohe is my daughter! "
Li Yao slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Well said!"
Guo Chunfeng smiled bitterly. "Well said does not mean a damn thing. Right now, Elder Nether Spring has a great weakness that can be used against me. If my real identity is exposed, not only will my reputation be ruined, my wife and my daughter will be implicated, too. What should I do?
"If I refuse to cooperate with Elder Nether Spring, he will definitely do such a thing! He doesn't need to kill me. It will be enough for him to deal with my wife and my daughter!
"Besides, for some reason, when his words popped up in my head, I couldn't help but have the urge to obey him!"
Li Yao was dazed for a moment. Pondering for a moment, he said, "Is it possible to interpret it this way? Elder Nether Spring has a certain secret art that can make other people obey him unconditionally. Of course, from what I can tell right now, he is indeed experimenting with such a method! In the early years decades ago, the secret art was still immature and could not be performed on everybody. It could only be performed on one's own blood relatives, preferably their children, right?
"It's easy to understand. Parents have a natural authority over their children. As long as the authority is strengthened with the secret art, everything will be fine!
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