Chapter 16: The Illusory Demon

The moment Li Hanguang forced himself back into reason, he understood what had happened.

He had believed he'd seen through the illusion. He hadn't understood that the killing itself — one after another, each feeling real and righteous — was the illusion. If Xi Jiuge hadn't appeared, if his need to hide that side of himself from her hadn't been stronger than anything else he was feeling in that moment, the demon would have had him completely.

This thing didn't just reach into memory. It found the darkness and made it larger. Li Hanguang had survived both the god realm and the demon realm, had clawed his way up from nothing and stood at the top of both — and it had still nearly taken him. Whatever this was, it wasn't an ordinary monster.

"We may have underestimated this demon," he said to Xi Jiuge. "The legend says this place formed from Pangu's lungs and entrails. Be careful."

As he spoke, he noticed a thread of mist curling around her arm. He remembered: the demon in Xi Jiuge's form, when he'd struck it, had broken apart into white vapor and scattered. He'd assumed it had fled.

He moved in front of her immediately, drove his palm through the mist like a blade. The ambush failed. The demon, exposed, stopped pretending — dozens of mist-tendrils spread outward and attacked from every direction.

Xi Jiuge fought at range; her reaction time in close quarters was slower. She sensed the demonic energy and reached for her sword, but Li Hanguang was already in position before she could move, deflecting the first wave.

She had resolved countless trials for other people. No one had ever done this for her. She stood briefly stunned: he was doing this for her even after she had tried to kill him. His injury would have benefited him. Why?

There was no time to work it out. The demon's attacks kept coming, hidden in the shifting mist — real tendrils and false ones intermixed. One moved silently until it was almost upon her; she caught it at the last moment and cut it clean through.

Her sword was divine-forged; where it struck, the mist broke apart. But the severed tendril released a grey, viscous spray. Li Hanguang registered this before she did. She had no close-combat experience — she wouldn't know that you moved away from a demon when you struck it, to avoid the poison. At this range, she wouldn't have time to dodge.

Xi Jiuge hadn't even thought about dodging. Her previous encounters with monsters had been during daylight, wide terrain, summoning the Sun God's Fire and burning everything before it reached her. She didn't know that some monsters weaponized their own blood.

She saw the slime coming and decided her thousand-year spirit silkworm silk could probably take it. She was already accepting the sacrifice when a hand came from behind, gripped her shoulder, and turned her.

She looked up. Li Hanguang's jawline, sharp and defined. His upper lip, thin and slightly compressed. Then his arm around her, raising his other arm to take the slime himself.

It clung to his sleeve and burned through immediately.

He didn't react. His eyes stayed level. In the same motion he flicked a hidden weapon from his palm — a few drops of blood fell from the mist, hit the ground, and the fog around them thinned considerably.

The demon retreated.

Li Hanguang rolled his arm to check his fingers still moved freely, then lowered it. His other arm was still loosely around her. She could be enclosed in one arm — he had been right about that. He didn't do anything with the observation. When he confirmed the demon had withdrawn, he stepped back.

"This demon hides in the mist and strikes without warning. Its liquid is corrosive. The blood in the abdomen is red and non-toxic — that's where the natal demon core is. Next time you encounter it, aim for wherever you smell blood."

He paused.

"But that's secondary. The most important thing for the goddess is to protect herself."

She'd been sheltered her whole life. Even her combat was elegant and distant — spells from a safe position, enemies neutralized before contact. She had never been in a fight this primitive and close.

After he released her, Xi Jiuge tugged at her sleeve and glanced at his arm. "How bad is it?"

He cracked his knuckles. "Doesn't affect movement."

In the Demon Realm, you fought through anything — deep wounds, bone showing, and you stayed ready. This burn was nothing. Xi Jiuge noticed the blackened patch on his sleeve, the fabric aged and eaten away. If the slime had landed on her—

"I have magical treasures and elixirs," she said, with something that wasn't quite comfort. "My self-defense capability is stronger than yours. I didn't need your help."

"I know," Li Hanguang said evenly. "Consider it unnecessary. Don't worry about it."

A silence settled between them.

He looked at the Moonlit Night-Blooming Jade Flower nearby. No time for anything else. "The demon uses this flower's fragrance to move — they may be symbiotic. The flower only blooms for an hour. If we're still in the illusion when it withers, I don't know what happens. At least half of that hour is gone. Let's put the rest aside and share what we know."

Xi Jiuge's silence he read as agreement. "What did you encounter after we separated?"

"Pangu."

He looked at her. "What?"

"You heard correctly." She herself found it strange. "I entered a dreamscape — the landscape exactly as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. A voice claiming to be Pangu said I was the first person to reach this place in all that time. It had seen my mother and, out of respect for their history, would grant me one wish."

He absorbed this. Then, at a moment when he knew he probably shouldn't: "Forgive the question, but — what did you wish for?"

She glanced at him, mildly puzzled by the interest. "What else would I wish for? Peace throughout the world."

He stopped.

"Peace throughout the world?"

"Obviously." She seemed genuinely uncertain why this required clarification. "If one were truly fortunate enough to encounter Pangu's remnant consciousness, would one ask about the people of the Three Realms and seek cultivation techniques or divine artifacts — or would one ask Pangu to bless lovers to be together for all eternity?" She paused, searching for a tactful word. "That would be short-sighted."

Li Hanguang raised an eyebrow and said nothing for a moment.

This was an absurd answer that was, coming from her, completely consistent. No one else in any of the Three Realms would have wished for world peace, and she thought she was being the obvious one.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Should there have been?" She was equally puzzled. "After the cabin I entered the mist. The demon must have distorted my sense of time — I felt I'd been walking in it for over a month, constantly on guard, but nothing attacked. Then I entered the Pangu illusion. Wasn't that how it was for you?"

"Did you see anyone else? After you entered the illusion?"

She hadn't. She'd heard a voice, but voices were easily fabricated. Pangu had been dead for an incomprehensible length of time; no one knew what his voice had actually sounded like.

She shook her head slowly.

Li Hanguang was quiet.

He understood, now, what the demon actually was. It reached into memories. It took what was there — joy, anger, grief, fear, longing — and amplified it, used it to trap people inside their own minds. For Xi Jiuge's heart to have been completely opaque to it, she would have to be— he pushed the thought aside. Too absurd. He needed to verify it slowly.

"The demon works from memory," he said, as though he hadn't been thinking anything unusual. "It must have learned your mother is Xihe, so it used Pangu's authority, hoping to lead you toward asking about your parents."

She was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: "I know."

She had sensed it in the illusion — the deliberate mention of her mother, the attempt to exploit her orphanhood. But it had miscalculated: Xi Jiuge couldn't feel love, or familial longing, the way it assumed she would. Instead of asking about her parents, she had made three unrelated wishes, and the voice had been audibly displeased.

Sometimes she thought she was genuinely strange.

He noticed the shift in her expression. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head, closing off that direction. "It can only ambush us because we can't see it. I have an artifact that forces demons into visibility — but it can't be separated from its operator."

"Then I'll trouble you to manage the artifact while I kill the demon."

She exhaled. That was exactly the arrangement she'd been calculating. She knew ancient supernatural arts, Kunlun immortal techniques, ancient and modern formations, every kind of magical treasure — but close combat wasn't her strength. She couldn't deal with this demon alone. She needed someone to coordinate with.

Minutes ago she had been planning to kill him.

She extended her palm. "Then we're allies. Trust and cooperation."

He looked at her hand. Smiled. "Weren't we allies from the beginning?"

She withdrew it immediately. "Yes. Forget I said anything."

He leaned forward, caught her hand just as she pulled it back, and tapped her palm lightly. "It's a deal."

She looked at him, then down, and turned her attention to the brocade pouch at her side. She drew out a small mirror. It expanded to the size of a disc in her hands.

"The Guiyuan Mirror uses a great deal of spiritual energy. My magic is still returning, so I'll have to run it on Spirit Storage Pearls — I didn't bring many to the banquet. Roughly one incense stick's worth. Be quick."

Wherever the mirror touched, the mist dissolved. He swept through the clearing in one pass. "That's enough."

With the Guiyuan Mirror running, the demon had nowhere to hide. He found its weakness on the first approach and moved immediately. She tracked the demon through the mirror from behind; wherever it fled, the light found it.

She watched his fighting style through the glass. The demon's slime was corroding his weapon — ordinary blades were dissolving in its wake. She freed one hand, took out her divine sword, and threw it. "Catch."

He was mid-dodge; he turned just enough to take it out of the air.

Cold, sharp, cutting the air with every move. He thought, again, that it was a remarkable blade.

Not long ago she had used this blade to ambush him on the ship. Now it came from behind again, thrown from the same hands — purpose entirely changed.

The turns of things.

The White Emperor's divine forge held. Every strike drew blood. The demon's vital point was exposed; he drove the blade through it cleanly.

She put away the mirror and walked over. "How is it?"

"Dead." He wiped the blade with care, sheathed it, handed it back. She looked at the body. His fighting style was different from hers — precise, economical, wounds small and exact. Even the demon's fur was intact. No cut was a single stroke more than required.

She thought, privately and with some guilt toward the demon: it was almost beautiful. Like work.

The demon died. The mist cleared. Above them, real sky and a real moon emerged, the light returning gradually. She felt her divine power flowing back, slowly and then steadily. She summoned flame at her fingertip and held it up with something close to joy. "Finally."

She flicked her finger at the corpse. The Sun God's Fire hit it and the demon was gone in moments.

Li Hanguang clicked his tongue.

"What?"

"The demon core," he said, choosing his words carefully. "It hadn't been removed."

Xi Jiuge blinked at him. "Why would you remove the demon core?"

He looked at her for a moment. Smiled. Shook his head. "It's fine. Go ahead."

She had been born into a world where money was an abstraction. She would never need to understand otherwise. That was fine.

The fire was fiercer than any alchemical flame. In moments, the demon was ash, carried off on the next breeze. He watched it close-range and thought: no wonder she had no close-combat experience. With that kind of power, what could possibly get near enough to require it?

"The demon is dead. Ji Shaoyu and the others should be able to come out now." She was already scanning the field ahead. "Where are they?"

Their cooperation had ended. She spotted a figure in the grass and moved toward it. He followed at a short distance behind her. Moonlight between them, a breeze through the petals on both sides.

One step apart. Somehow it seemed farther.

She recognized Ji Shaoyu in the grass and quickened her pace. He followed — and caught, at the edge of his vision, a patch of flattened flowers some distance away. Roughly the shape of the Illusion Demon's body.

Empty.

He stopped.

Ji Shaoyu and the others were capable cultivators. They had faced this demon without their full powers and still managed to subdue it. But the signs of a fight were here, Ji Shaoyu was unconscious, and the demon's body was gone.

He began working backward.

The illusion couldn't penetrate Xi Jiuge's heart, so it had fabricated a landscape from hundreds of thousands of years ago. But Xi Jiuge was barely a thousand years old — that landscape should not have been in her memory. And if the illusion wanted to manipulate her, hundreds of people had seen Xihe; why specifically invoke Pangu? Pangu had appeared too many times tonight, in too many forms.

He thought about the legend: when Pangu fell, his lungs transformed into the Northern Sea of Destruction. He thought about the way the demon had moved — inhaling, expelling, the viscous spray.

He thought about the flowers.

Everyone had remarked on the nobility of the Moon-Tracing Epiphyllum. A flower that bloomed once every ten thousand years. They had assumed it and the demon were symbiotic. But a flower that bloomed so rarely — how did it reproduce? How did it sustain a field this large?

Unless it didn't rely on flower mechanics at all.

Unless the Illusion Demon was something the flower produced. A distraction, a lure. And the field itself — the flowers beneath their feet, since the moment they arrived — was the real predator.

They had killed the Illusion Demon. In the moment their bodies relaxed — the danger passed, the battle over — the flowers had them.

He reached for Xi Jiuge.

The scent hit him first. The fragrance of the Epiphyllum, which had been light and pleasant all evening, turned suddenly cloying — thick, sweet, filling every sense at once. He caught her hand.

Then the ground came up to meet them.

---

Moonlight through clouds, falling on two figures lying side by side in the white flowers. The blossoms shimmered faintly silver. It was peaceful. It looked like rest; it looked like a choice.

Further on, other couples lay the same way throughout the sea of flowers. They had lasted the longest. Arrived the latest.

Lovers hope for permanence. But the world changes, and in the flow of everything, what heart stays fixed?

Only the dead can.

---

Xi Jiuge opened her eyes slowly.

Where was she? Why was she here?

Who was she?

A voice — unhurried, neither harsh nor feminine, steady and calm: "This is the Demon Realm. You have no name. Three hundred years from now you will be called Xi Jiuge, but for now, you are not her."

"I'm in the Demon Realm. Am I a demon?"

"No. You are a god. But the divine artifact that sealed you has loosened, and a thread of your divine consciousness wandered and drifted here."

She had many questions. Why was she sealed inside a divine artifact? If she would be called Xi Jiuge in three hundred years, why wasn't she now?

Before she could ask, a woman appeared ahead, running toward a cave entrance: Sister, I forgot something — then, stopping at the entrance, Sister, what are you doing?

A sound from inside the cave. Then, very faint, a baby crying.

The woman's voice, uncertain and horrified: Sister, he is still the child you carried for three years. He knows nothing. How can you—

A pause.

Then a weak voice from inside, barely audible: Bastard. He shouldn't be alive.

---

Northern Heavenly Palace.

A breeze moved through the candlelight. Emperor Xuan stood at the window, hands behind his back, looking at the night sky.

"Have you found it?"

The shadow guard bowed. "Your Majesty, Li Hanguang's background has been verified. He is a descendant of the Jiuli tribe. His father is unknown. His mother is Li Xuan, daughter of the demon Chi You."

Few in the Three Realms still knew the Jiuli tribe. But the name of their former leader — Chi You — was one that certain people did not sleep easily after hearing.

Emperor Xuan had expected this. He still gripped the window frame tighter than he intended. After a moment, almost carelessly: "When was he born?"

"Seven thousand seven hundred and three years. Exact date unknown."

Seven thousand seven hundred and three. He made the calculation. A bastard child she'd had after going to the Demon Realm.

The Demon Realm was barren, cursed, dark. The Three Realms called it exile for sinners. She had been there a year and already — he pressed the thought down. That lowly place. Her.

His face stayed composed. The window frame did not.

"Keep watching him. Any unusual movement, report it immediately."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The guard was already withdrawing. "What happened tonight must not reach the Empress. If anyone speaks a single word—"

He didn't finish. The guard understood. He lowered his head further. "Your subordinate obeys."

"Where is the Crown Prince?"

"The Crown Prince accepted an invitation from Princess Shangjin to visit the Northern Sea of Chaos today."

Emperor Xuan's expression shifted. "Why did he go there? Call him back."

"The Goddess Mingjing also went."

Xi Jiuge was there. He couldn't pull Ji Shaoyu away in front of his fiancée without making an issue of it — Ji Shaoyu was grown, and had his dignity. Emperor Xuan exhaled. "Very well. Let them spend the time together. Send a message tomorrow — ask the Crown Prince to come see me."

"Yes."