Chapter 27: The Demon

Teaching Liu Yunxi to read and write was not as difficult as imagined; perhaps due to the Mouth Seal, her memory was quite strong, and memorizing the sounds and forms of characters by rote posed no great challenge—though mastering reading and writing would still take some time.

Moreover, this teaching process had its benefits: after merely three days, Feng Xue found his mental fortitude had risen another notch, with both his speed of entering meditation and his precision in controlling Qi showing significant improvement.

One could only say that teaching students was indeed a test of patience.

Another morning arrived, and Feng Xue slowly awakened from his meditation. Many imagine cultivation as sitting cross-legged with five points touching the ground, but the method of Visualization requires no specific posture—lying down was fine, even standing on one’s head or mid-activity, as long as one could enter meditation, one could visualize.

Feng Xue belonged to the type who didn’t even need to maintain posture, for the amount of Qi he could extract at once was too great, while his soul’s absorption efficiency was too low—he could spend ten minutes squeezing out more Qi than his soul could absorb in a night, then immerse his soul in it and fall into infantile sleep in that state.

Waking up felt refreshingly clear-headed, even leaving his soul slightly swollen.

If there was a drawback…

“Gurgle… gurgle…”

Ah, right—he got hungry easily.

“Still so much Qi left over… feels like a waste.” Feeling his soul bloated as if overfed, Feng Xue confirmed he couldn’t absorb any more and let the excess dissipate.

Stepping out of his bedroom, he saw Liu Yunxi placing breakfast on the table.

Though three days weren’t enough for her to read a recipe, she had at least learned the few breakfast dishes Feng Xue had taught her step by step.

Holding a steaming bun in his hand, Feng Xue blew on it and said:

“You’re making good progress, I see?”

“Mm, at this rate, it’ll take about ten years to cultivate the Yin Inner Core,” Liu Yunxi nibbled her bun slowly, her eyes half-closed into crescents. The Yin Inner Core—something even a thousand-year demon dared not dream of. Thinking of it this way, her life of repaying karmic debt didn’t seem so bitter after all!

As Liu Yunxi quietly reassured herself, Feng Xue, still eating his bun, suddenly asked: “By the way, you truly can’t use human Qi at all?”

Liu Yunxi, who had been savoring the flavor on her tongue, froze instantly, then shook her head firmly:

“Can’t use it, absolutely not! Any demon who cultivates with Qi is an evil one that devours humans—I intend to achieve true enlightenment!”

“Oh…” Feng Xue shook his head, considering asking about cultivating a True Weapon—but then remembered he couldn’t yet finely control his Qi and had no suitable material to serve as a weapon’s core, so he shook his head again.

Seeing Feng Xue’s disappointed expression, Liu Yunxi’s eyes darted. Though the house was now large, Feng Xue’s overflowing Qi during cultivation still disturbed her own practice; now, every night she had to ascend to the rooftop diagonally opposite his room to avoid the Qi interference. This was only the beginning—within a few years, she might have to run miles away just to escape the tidal surges of Qi.

As for fleeing? She had never even considered it—after all, she was bound by the Mouth Seal!

The Mouth Seal, in essence, was like a loan: humans, under the witness of [Human Dao’s Spiritual Mechanism], lent their “Spiritual Mechanism” to demons to assume human form; in return, the demon must repay this karmic debt through various means. When a mortal borrows money and runs off, the creditor seeks the guarantor—but [Human Dao’s Spiritual Mechanism], as the guarantor, didn’t even need to be prompted—it simply went straight to the debtor demon to collect!

Moreover, this “karmic debt” accrued interest over time. It’s not hard to understand: if you borrow a sliver of fortune from a young person, even a tiny amount, the benefits they would have gained along their path due to that fortune are diminished, and the karmic debt grows ever larger. Liu Yunxi had even heard from her Fox Immortal grandmother of a poor soul who still hadn’t repaid his debt even after his benefactor’s natural death—only to find himself owing even more because the benefactor had been reborn.

Repayment methods varied widely: orthodox ones included performing good deeds and secretly protecting others; darker methods involved repaying with wealth; some even gave up their bodies entirely, bearing child after child to settle the debt.

But no matter the method, all generally followed the rule of “giving coal in the snow.”

If you repay a poor farmer with gold and silver, you dramatically improve his life—this counts as heavy repayment. But if you give gold and silver to a wealthy man, you repay only a fraction of the interest.

And Liu Yunxi, clearly, could no longer turn back—

Because she had borrowed far too much!

Though Liu Yunxi didn’t understand why Feng Xue could endlessly increase the loan, the fact remained: when she realized this talent wasn’t free, the debt tower she’d built was already so high she could barely pay the interest!

Why had she resisted helping Feng Xue cultivate so fiercely?

Perhaps at first it was merely because she didn’t want to become a furnace, didn’t want her hard-won cultivation to become fuel for his advancement—but now, she wished she’d agreed to be his furnace long ago!

Consider this: with her current debt, if she agreed to help Feng Xue cultivate to repay it, it wouldn’t be enough to merely become his furnace—even if she were flayed, her tendons stripped, her marrow extracted, and her soul refined, it still wouldn’t suffice!

So Liu Yunxi could only maintain her stubborn refusal while still obeying every call, doing chores to pay off a little interest—hoping to survive until she achieved true enlightenment, when she’d surely find a way to repay this karmic debt.

Before then, she absolutely could not seek anything beyond the Mouth Seal’s terms—because if she took even cultivation resources (Qi) from Feng Xue, even if she achieved enlightenment, her enlightenment position would carry a portion of his claim, rendering it useless for repaying the debt!

For a mere forty-four-year-old demoness to bear a debt heavy enough to crush even a thousand-year demon, Liu Yunxi could only sigh inwardly and continue slacking—after all, she’d already borrowed it, couldn’t repay it, and it was better to borrow more and achieve enlightenment sooner than face bankruptcy and forced execution by [Human Dao’s Spiritual Mechanism].

Still, this Qi problem truly needed a solution…

After a moment’s thought, Liu Yunxi suddenly had an idea and said at once:

“If you really have more Qi than you can use, why not raise a ghost? They love Qi the most—those two back at the Fox Immortal Temple were quite good…”

"Good idea, but those two won’t do! I have a spiritual aversion to using public property for private gain." Feng Xue said something Liu Yunxi didn’t understand, but internally he was assessing the plan’s feasibility.

Among the spells he’d obtained from Ninth Aunt, [Spirit Binding] and [Nightmare Invocation] both required raising ghosts; [Summon Object] would require ghostly aid to achieve instant summoning—and if he had a ghost, he could at least repurpose the Qi he wasted.

As for not capturing the two evil ghosts from the Fox Immortal Temple, it wasn’t really due to any “spiritual aversion”—it was simply because they had strayed too far off course.

According to the [Spirit Binding Spell], the ideal ghost to bind was a weak, solitary wandering soul, marked with a seal, then nurtured like training a hawk—fed only the binder’s own Qi and magical power, so it learned to recognize his aura, ensuring control and minimizing backlash.

Ghosts that had already tasted flesh and devoured humans, no matter how much training or reeducation, could never be truly tamed.

The specific mechanism of the Mouth Seal is irrelevant, so it was not elaborated in the main text.

First, “Spiritual Mechanism” should be understood as a composite of concepts like vow-power, faith-deity, spiritual essence, and fortune—all bundled together. Explaining it is complex; treat it as a black box. In essence, any mystical phenomenon with autonomy and complex composition can be called Spiritual Mechanism.

In principle, it’s roughly the sensation of borrowing the wisdom, talent, and fortune of the one granting the Mouth Seal.

Thus, in stories, those who seek Mouth Seals from scholars or virtuous people are usually positive examples, while those who seek them from ordinary farmers or woodcutters often end in disaster. Of course, from the author’s perspective, everyone knows this is just literati self-aggrandizement—but when the story becomes a world, the author must provide a plausible explanation.

In short, scholars possess greater wisdom, virtuous people have enduring fortune—these are easier to borrow from and lend more. Farmers and woodcutters barely have enough for themselves; if you borrow from them, you deprive them of fortune and lifespan, and when you try to repay, you can’t—thus you accrue karmic debt.

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(End of Chapter)