Chapter 20: The Blood-Eyed Rat of the Giant Eye

……

Under the night sky, Lv Cheng pushed Ye Xinxia out to stroll through the night market.

"Brother Cheng, since you know what Sister Mu Ningxue meant, why have you refused to forgive her all this time?" Ye Xinxia asked, puzzled.

"Forgive? I never blamed her, so where would the forgiveness come from?" Lv Cheng said with a laugh.

"Never blamed her?" Ye Xinxia was taken aback.

"Then why have you always..."

"Always ignored her?" Lv Cheng said.

"Mm." Ye Xinxia nodded.

Ever since that incident three years ago, everyone had clearly grown much more distant.

"Xinxia, it's not that I'm ignoring her; it's that everyone has grown up and has their own things to do. It's impossible to be like when we were little, hanging around together all the time for no reason," Lv Cheng said.

"I haven't been ignoring her, I just haven't had the time."

Mu Ningxue had awakened her Ice Element on her own at fourteen and entered into intense training; at fifteen, she was specially recruited by the Imperial Capital Magic Academy and left Bo City.

It wasn't that he ignored Mu Ningxue; it was that they had no opportunity to interact, and coupled with their previous conflicts and the fact that they had been in contact too frequently before, a sense of disparity had emerged by comparison.

But in reality, this was a normal change.

Everyone has grown up; how could there be so much time to stay together?

"Then will we also have no time like this in the future..."

Ye Xinxia lowered her head, feeling a bit worried.

"Of course." Lv Cheng patted Ye Xinxia's head.

"We will all grow up and have our own lives; it's impossible to be stuck together all day like when we were children."

"Everyone needs to maintain a necessary distance—a distance left for oneself and for the other person."

"Excessive closeness won't improve a relationship; it will only hurt others and oneself."

Ye Xinxia nodded. "I'll remember that."

"You'll remember?"

Lv Cheng changed the subject. "I thought you would be crying and begging Brother Cheng not to leave you. I didn't expect you to accept this cruel reality so easily. It seems I'm not that important in your heart after all."

"Ah?" Ye Xinxia looked blank.

"Brother Cheng, that's not what I meant. Didn't you tell me to be obedient?"

"If I tell you to listen, you listen?" Lv Cheng tapped Ye Xinxia's head.

"Then if I tell you to stab me with a knife in the future, will you do it?"

"When we encounter danger, if I tell you to run first, will you abandon me and run away alone?"

"I..." Ye Xinxia felt a tug in her heart, and her eyes instantly turned red; she was about to cry.

"Brother Cheng, I..."

"Don't cry." Lv Cheng crouched down in front of Ye Xinxia and extended his index finger to press against her lips.

"You are already a big kid; you can't cry at the drop of a hat."

"As for these two questions, I hope they never happen, but if they really do..."

Lv Cheng reached out to cup Ye Xinxia's small head and leaned in.

"I hope you can do as I say."

"Okay?"

"No!" Ye Xinxia refused.

"I don't want to stab you, and I don't want to abandon you and run away alone!"

"Not being obedient?" Lv Cheng frowned slightly.

"I won't listen!" Ye Xinxia said with red eyes.

"I'll listen to anything else, but I won't listen to this!"

"..."

"That's good." Lv Cheng pinched Ye Xinxia's small face and laughed.

"If you listened to such nonsense, I would really suspect that you were hoping for something bad to happen to me so you could fly off and be with your Brother Mo Fan."

"Brother Cheng!" Ye Xinxia glared at him.

"I'm angry!"

"Alright, alright, I was wrong." Lv Cheng leaned in close and tapped Ye Xinxia on the cheek.

"Can you forgive me?"

"No!" Ye Xinxia turned her head away huffily, revealing the other side of her face.

"Oh, so I can't favor one side over the other, is that it?" Lv Cheng laughed a little and tapped her other cheek.

"Is that better?"

"If you're still angry, then I..."

"No, I'm not angry anymore!" Ye Xinxia lowered her head, her face flushed red.

This scummy brother really would go for a kiss!

There are so many people here, no way!

If he wants to kiss, he has to wait until we get home!

"It's good that you're not angry. It's getting late; we should head back to the palace to rest." Lv Cheng turned Ye Xinxia around and headed back the way they came.

"My beloved consort, tonight..."

Boom!

A shop on the side of the road suddenly collapsed, and the street lamp seemed to be flickering due to a bad connection, its scarlet single eye blinking as a pungent, bloody stench drifted through the air.

A Giant-Eyed Rat!

"A monster!"

Seeing the Giant-Eyed Rat that had suddenly burst out, the bustling street immediately descended into chaos.

"How did this thing run into the city district?" Lv Cheng pushed Xinxia and stood his ground, not following the crowd to flee.

In this kind of completely disorderly retreat, being rashly swept into the crowd is the most dangerous thing; one careless slip and a stampede could occur.

Moreover, the Giant-Eyed Rat is a monster with a very timid nature; it generally wouldn't enter a city district where humans live, and even if it did, it would only hide in the sewers to eat scraps, unless it was hungry to a certain degree, it wouldn't eat people.

Now, this thing actually ran onto the ground of a densely populated city district?

How is this any different from a social phobic voluntarily running onto an annual meeting stage to sing?

It's completely against the natural order!

"Squeak, squeak, squeak!!"

For some reason, the Giant-Eyed Rat looked extremely irritable!

Lv Cheng had already roughly guessed where this thing came from.

But, is it this early?

The experiment has already started now?

"Oh? Instead of fleeing, you choose to actively approach me?"

Lv Cheng had a further understanding of the brain-dead level of the Giant-Eyed Rat before him.

He possessed the True Dragon Aura of Shendu, which only monsters could sense; this kind of low-level Servant-class Demon should have been pissing itself and fleeing madly after sensing his aura, but now, this thing actually wanted to launch an attack on him?

It really didn't have a brain left at all.

Berserk, it can actually override even a creature's survival instinct...

"But that's all it amounts to." Lv Cheng waved his hand, and Xiaotian appeared out of thin air, crushing the Giant-Eyed Rat with a single claw.

The members of the Magic Association who were rushing over from not far away happened to see this scene, and their nervous expressions instantly froze.

A dragon?

Where the hell did this big shot come from?

"Brother Cheng?"

Xinxia, who had been asked by Lv Cheng to cover her eyes ever since the Giant-Eyed Rat appeared, tentatively opened her eyes, peeking at the situation outside through the gaps between her fingers.

"Ugh!"

Shocked by the exploded corpse of the Giant-Eyed Rat, Xinxia almost couldn't help but vomit.

Lv Cheng turned the wheelchair in a different direction with some amusement, letting Xinxia turn her back to this bloody scene, "Didn't I tell you not to look?"

"I... I was curious." Xinxia said, feeling wronged.

So terrifying! So disgusting!

The internal organs all exploded out!

The Giant-Eyed Rat's big eyes even rolled onto the side of the road!

Seeing that the people from the City Demon Hunter Team had arrived, Lv Cheng didn't linger any longer, turned and left pushing Xinxia, while Xiaotian transformed into the size of a parrot and followed behind.

"What's the situation?" Lv Cheng asked in confusion.

"Its previous size was inconvenient for moving around, and it didn't want to be sent back to Hell after being used by you, so it begged me to help it strengthen its ability to grow and shrink, so it could stay in the human world forever," Shendu explained.

"I see." Lv Cheng nodded.

That was indeed much more convenient; his summoning of Demons was different from other Summoning Mages—it only consumed Magic Energy when pulling a Demon out of Hell, and for the time the Demon existed in the human world, it consumed its own energy.

Once the Demon Qi or physical strength was exhausted, the Demon would automatically return to Hell.

Moreover, these Demons pulled out were all free entities!

Xiaotian would listen to him because it had been tamed by him.

Once other Demons left Hell, he had neither the ability to control them nor the ability to send them back to Hell; except for Shendu, all Demons could potentially become his enemies once they left Hell.

The previous Contract was merely sharing power, and he didn't understand this Contract; what if the Demons had the ability to terminate the Contract?

Eternal? He didn't believe such nonsense; these Demons even dared to tamper with the Book of Ages! What else wouldn't they do?

Even if he didn't consider the threat the Demons posed to Reality, he still had to consider his own safety, right?

If he rashly released the Demons, these Demons would be the first to deal with him!

He knew nothing about Demon Magic and wouldn't even know when he had been backstabbed.

Before finding a safe means of restraint, the only one he could barely trust was Shendu.

"..."

"It really is a sub-dragon... interesting."

Not far from the crime scene, an elegant figure was standing under the moonlight, watching the departing Lv Cheng with great interest.

"However, the first awakening wasn't the Psychic element..."

"My Lord, do you need us to dispose of this person?" the black-robed attendant beside her asked respectfully.

"Are you teaching me how to do my job?" Ye Chang said coldly.

"My Lord, calm your anger!" The black-robed attendant hurriedly knelt down.

"I will handle this person; don't be clever!"

As the words fell, Ye Chang disappeared into the darkness.

(End of this chapter)