The Immortal Is a Yandere - Chapter 2

When you’re under someone else’s roof, you have to bow your head.

Since I couldn’t beat Xiao Yan, I could at least ask why.

“Your Excellency, what exactly made you drag a useless little ghost like me into the Underworld?”

It couldn’t really be because I had a lot of sneaky ideas.

There had to be a limit to the absurdity.

Xiao Yan considered it. “Over the years, I’ve been an aloof immortal and a ruler of my own domain. Both got a little boring. Recently, I read a few stories about yanderes. I’d like to try being one.”

“What?”

Was something wrong with him?

“I looked in the mirror and found that I meet all the requirements: beautiful, powerful, and a little tragic. Mostly beautiful, of course.”

The thing was, Xiao Yan wasn’t being narcissistic.

He really did have a face of peerless beauty.

Red lips, white teeth, eyes that could steal your soul.

Master had first mentioned him while discussing the ranking of handsome men in the Three Realms. Xiao Yan was number one.

Naturally, number one had plenty of admirers.

Master had no particular hobbies apart from gossip, especially romantic gossip.

If two ants in our Cangshan Sect fell in love, he would crouch in front of their nest to find out who’d pursued whom. For a while, I was convinced he hadn’t ascended because gossip had taken up all his cultivation time.

Xiao Yan’s many admirers interested him even more. He’d bought over a dozen unofficial accounts of Xiao Yan’s life.

Every single one agreed that Xiao Yan was dangerous and exceptionally petty.

Almost everyone who loved him had come away defeated. The only girl who’d actually had something going on with him had met a horrible death at his hands.

So after telling us the story of *Xiao Yan and His Two Hundred and Fifty Admirers*, Master had warned us, “Xiao Yan is a poisonous rose. Best never to meet him. If you do have the misfortune…”

He paused. “Remember not to mention my name. Thank you in advance for sparing my life!”

“…”

While I was remembering this, Xiao Yan picked me up and tossed me into the air.

“I recall the first rule of being a yandere: first imprison the person you want, then turn them into an object. Am I following the procedure correctly?”

“…”

Looking at his almost crazed expression, I thought: a poisonous rose, indeed!

If my life hadn’t been in his hands, I would have shouted, “Get fucking treatment!”

Xiao Yan refused treatment and really did commit to the yandere lifestyle.

Every day, he sat at the edge of Soul-Severing Cliff in the Underworld, playing chess and rolling me around in his hand. Every so often, for a little excitement, he’d throw me over the edge.

After a few rounds, I had a fairly good grasp of what lay below.

Not a blade of grass grew across the Underworld’s hundred thousand li, and Youdu was as bald as a Buddhist cultivator’s head.

But beneath Soul-Severing Cliff, ghost flowers bloomed in abundance.

One flower, one soul.

All of them malevolent.

The moment I landed, they tried to possess my body.

Hilarious. If I had a body, why the hell would I be stuck in a die?

The result was that I devoured countless malevolent souls instead.

I suspected Xiao Yan was using me as a trash can. He planted all the vicious souls he couldn’t control beneath the cliff, then sent me to clean up his garbage.

What puzzled me was this: the Underworld might specialize in taking in nasty souls, but there were far too many down there.

After swallowing nearly a hundred in a single day yet again, I humbly asked, “Your Excellency, did you kick over a nest of malevolent spirits?”

Where had he found so many?

Xiao Yan glanced calmly at the souls shrieking below the cliff. “When I first came to the Underworld ten thousand years ago, the King refused to submit. I used a few methods to bring the place under control. They were a little extreme. About half of his million underworld soldiers must have turned malevolent.”

“!”

Driving half a million soldiers into malevolence was “a little extreme”?

He’d probably bathed the Underworld in blood.

I silently rolled over to give him a six.

He pressed a finger down to stop me. “Their loss is your gain. Once you’ve devoured them all, you should become the sharpest blade in my hand.”

“…”

Devour them all? Fucking seriously?

Easy for him to say. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t finish in hundreds or even thousands of years.

Sure enough, a thousand years passed.

I was still being rolled around in Xiao Yan’s hand beside Soul-Severing Cliff.

I’d tried countless ways to escape. I couldn’t even get my soul out of his die.

That thing was no ordinary artifact.

Since escape had failed, I tried reasoning with him again.

“Your Excellency, yanderes aren’t in fashion anymore. Nobody likes them. Could we try being a normal immortal?”

“Impossible,” he said firmly. “My face can make anyone forget their principles. And if it can’t sway everyone, I can always beat them into being moved by my strength!”

He put particular emphasis on “beat.”

The threat was unmistakable.

I valued my life, so I tried another approach. “Your Excellency, yes, you’re the most beautiful and powerful being in the Three Realms. But even a business transaction requires consent, doesn’t it?”

Instead of answering, he asked, “Do you know why I’m so powerful?”

Unsure what he was getting at, I answered carefully. “Because you’re gifted and hardworking?”

He smiled, exposing a gleaming row of teeth. “Because I have no moral limits. Look: I wanted you, so I took you.”

“…”

Suppressing my anger, I asked, “What do you like about me? I’ll change it, all right?”

Without so much as lifting his eyelids, he said, “I like the way you’re half divine and half ghost after death. No need to change. I’ve already changed you for you.”

“…”

Fuck your mother!

Not only did he refuse to release me, he watched my escape attempts with interest from time to time.

Happy people were all alike. Deranged gods, on the other hand, were twisted in an astonishing variety of ways.

And so my daily routine in the Underworld became this: fail to escape, then fantasize about devouring every malevolent soul beneath the cliff, growing powerful enough to bring down the heavens, and finally killing Xiao Yan one glorious day. After scattering his ashes into the Western Sea, I would let out a villainous cackle.

Otherwise known as winning in my head.