Is the Demon Sovereign Still Undercover in the Cultivation Sect Today? - Chapter 1

At the great tournament of the cultivation sects, I stood near the back, half asleep, with a buzzing in my ears.

“Hah. Trash. Trash… Hah, another piece of trash…”

“Hah. A whole bunch of trash.”

I muttered impatiently, “So noisy.”

Everything around me fell silent.

Senior Sister Su elbowed me in the waist, and I blearily woke up.

The tournament was already over. Senior Brother Yinghua had taken first place.

As the foremost disciple of Myriad Swords Mountain, he possessed exceptional talent and had performed countless good deeds. The cultivation world respectfully called him Lord Yinghua.

A moment earlier, he had been on the platform saying gently, “Thank you, fellow disciples, for going easy on me.”

And I, a junior disciple who had only just reached Foundation Establishment, had stood below and complained that he was noisy.

Under the sympathetic or reproachful gazes around me, my brain worked at top speed.

“So noisy. Can’t you all be quiet and listen properly to Senior Brother Yinghua?”

My voice was perfectly steady. No one could have guessed my knees were giving way.

When I finished, the silence grew positively terrifying.

The eyes that had been fixed on me turned away.

Senior Sister Su discreetly gave me a thumbs-up. That’s our girl.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had bluffed my way out of it.

Lord Yinghua was famously compassionate. Surely he would not mind such a tiny offense.

The next second, I heard a sinister voice.

“She dares call me noisy?

“I’ll lock that little runt in the Netherworld Blood River, with the souls of the dead for company day and night. Then she’ll learn what noisy means.”

My neck stiffened as I looked toward Lord Yinghua on the raised platform.

He was as gentle as fine jade, as cool and remote as an immortal.

The eldest senior brother everyone in our sect praised.

His gaze rested on me, mild and concerned.

He looked nothing like a man who would know anything as frightening as the Netherworld Blood River.

But the voice sounded in my head again. “Hah. That runt even dares look me in the eye.

“If this were the Demon Realm, anyone who dared stare directly at the Demon Sovereign would have her eyes gouged out.”

I shivered.

That cold, contemptuous little “hah.”

I had heard it countless times in what I thought was a dream.

So I hadn’t been dreaming. I had been hearing Lord Yinghua’s thoughts.

There he was, smiling pleasantly, thinking one moment about the Netherworld Blood River and the next about gouging out someone’s eyes.

Worse still, Lord Yinghua—the most upright and honorable man in the cultivation world, the undisputed leader of the righteous path—

was the Demon Sovereign.

I lowered my head, pretending to be calm. My nails had already left deep red marks in my palms.

I was doomed.

If he found out I knew what he was thinking,

he would kill me to keep me quiet.

And yet, I also kind of wanted to laugh.

The ruler of the Demon Realm had spent twenty years undercover in a cultivation sect and ended up the sect leader’s foremost disciple, next in line to inherit the whole sect.

Talk about career ambition.

Give him a cracked bowl and he’d turn it into a publicly listed company.

Senior Sister Su noticed something was wrong with me and gave me a concerned look.

I looked back at her with even greater concern.

Senior Sister, never mind me for now.

Your idol, Lord Yinghua, that noble, untouchable flower on the highest peak,

doesn’t just call his opponents trash while he’s fighting them.

He’s also a double agent from the Demon Realm.

Do you realize your idol has crashed and burned?

After the tournament, Senior Sister Su was still going on about how magnificent Lord Yinghua had looked.

I had no choice but to swallow the words, “There’s something wrong with Lord Yinghua.”

At Myriad Swords Mountain, fans as hopelessly obsessed with him as Senior Sister Su were everywhere. That was no exaggeration.

If an outer disciple of meager talent like me announced that our sect’s greatest disciple was the Demon Sovereign,

with nothing to back it up, I’d be the one accused of wrongdoing.

The thought filled me with misery.

Eighteen years after transmigrating into the cultivation world, I had finally acquired a special power—and all it did was deal me a devastating blow.

Senior Sister Su walked me home. “Ruyi, you’ve just had your eighteenth birthday. You’re growing up, and now you have worries of your own.”

She stroked my hair as she had when I was little. “But you’re our little junior sister. You don’t need to worry about anything. Whatever happens, your senior brothers and sisters will stand in front and shoulder it for you.”

Warmth filled my heart. I leaned against her shoulder and murmured, “Senior Sister…”

I had been reborn here as a baby, with no parents, and the sect had taken me in. Of everyone who had raised me, Senior Sister Su had been the kindest.

For a moment, I wanted to tell her everything.

Then her next words made me shut my mouth.

“Besides,” she said proudly, “Lord Yinghua was born with sword bones. He’s a genius without equal. There’s nothing he can’t take care of.”

Senior Sister, what scares me is that he might take care of me. Permanently.