The White Deer's Cry - Chapter 2

I’d left home young and returned old.

After several hundred years, the demon realm was scarcely the place I remembered.

I heard that someone else had long since taken over as Demon Lord.

They marched me into his hall.

At its head sat a young man in black, buried in paperwork. He didn’t even look up.

I studied him. He looked familiar.

Wasn’t that Jing Ziyan, the nuisance I’d been fighting with since we were little?

The stingy dragon who had once fought me over a piece of candy had grown into an elegant young nobleman: refined, courteous, and utterly out of reach.

Only after hearing his subordinate’s report did he slowly lift his head. The first thing he said was:

“Where are your antlers?”

There was a distinctly gleeful note in his voice.

Dirty and bedraggled, I stood there without a word.

One of the soldiers beside me, clearly enjoying the show, answered for me. “The Celestial Emperor cut them off! To make tea for his favorite consort!”

Good news never left the house. Bad news traveled a thousand miles.

The amusement slowly faded from Jing Ziyan’s face.

“Lu Bai, I don’t take in people from the celestial realm.”

But outside the demon realm, I had nowhere to go.

I raised a hand and began cutting at my antlers. “Then I’ll leave these as collateral. Just let me stay a few days.”

Cutting them hurt. After a while, though, you got used to it.

Jing Ziyan shot to his feet. In a flash, he was in front of me, gripping my wrist, his expression awful.

“Why don’t you cut off your head and give me that?”

Mortified, I said, “If I cut off my head, I’d be dead.”

That seemed to make him even angrier. He suddenly pushed me away, and warmth flooded every part of my body.

“Go and make them answer for what they did. Otherwise, don’t ever come back.”

He had actually transferred his power to me.

During my years in the celestial realm, Yuhua had always urged me to give up the demonic path. He would help me become an immortal, he’d said.

But I could never get the hang of celestial cultivation. I’d made no progress at all.

Now, brimming with demonic power, I felt wonderfully confident. I formed a spell and headed straight for the celestial realm.

This time, I would make Yuhua apologize!

Yet the moment I passed through the Celestial Gate, the power inside me stalled. I fell to the ground, and a guard sliced through my antlers with his halberd.

Yuhua appeared beside me. I hadn’t seen him arrive.

“I knew you wanted to come back. But the celestial realm can no longer keep you. Take this opportunity to go to the demon realm for me.”

“All you need to do is cry to the Demon Lord about how badly you’ve been treated here. I will arrange the rest.”

I sat there, stunned.

Did he have any shame at all?

Yes, I’d been terribly wronged. Yes, I had intended to do exactly that. But I wasn’t stupid.

He plainly meant to do the demon realm harm.

I tried circulating my power and found it sluggish, weighed down by something that wouldn’t let me use it.

My grand expedition had failed before it began.

Now I couldn’t go back to the demon realm, either.

I decided to return Jing Ziyan’s power, then wander the world.

When I entered his hall, he glanced up from his work and asked casually, “What happened? Lose the fight? You haven’t even got all your antlers anymore.”

The broken stumps wobbled on my head. The demons around us were turning red from holding in their laughter.

I wiped my face.

“I’m leaving.”

“Where?”

“To wander the world.”

He didn’t seem especially moved. “Oh.”

Afraid he hadn’t taken it seriously, I added, “Yuhua means you harm. Be careful. If I stay here, I’ll only give him an excuse to come after you.”

I thought Jing Ziyan had understood.

Instead, that very night, I was locked inside the Demon Domain.

The next day, word came that Yinyin had suddenly died.

The celestial and demon realms were at war.