After learning that Hua ChunMing had written all of the manuals on the floor, Shuang gathered his robes and left through the door, too angry to return.

Yuan Xia sat alone at his bed, an incomprehensible scroll in hand, trying in vain to decipher the characters carved in bamboo. The more characters he traced, the less he understood. The scroll almost felt like a joke, something Hua ChunMing wrote to spite his Demon Lord-like disciple.

Frustrated, Yuan Xia grabbed his sunbrella and stabbed the tip onto the floorboard, then swung the sunbrella left and right to find the exit. Firmly believing that even without the sunbrella, he could still make out the door’s location, Yuan Xia despaired for a while and lamented at his miserable state.

Eventually, Yuan Xia made his way down the branch, segwaying to the main tree, but paused after a couple of minutes.

He didn’t know how to get anywhere in Heaven’s Law Sect on his own, and refused to take the risk. With a brisk turn of his heel, Yuan Xia traced the way he came, all the way back onto his indigo bed.

Sighing, Yuan Xia tossed away the scroll in his hands and sat in a cross-legged position.

From what he remembered, the cultivation he’d learned in the past taught him up to the final stage of  ‘foundation building’. The most beginner step in the ladder of cultivation, ‘foundation building’ allowed him to move the surrounding energy, or ‘qi’, any way he wanted.

After the foundation building stage, at the request of the Demon Queen, Yuan Xia had deviated into Demonic cultivation. From there, he lived out a tragic and unfulfilling past, dying to his only friend’s blade.

Yuan Xia didn’t want to repeat his mistakes. But he didn’t know how to avoid them, either. Hesitant, he reached towards the ground and grasped Hua ChunMing’s cultivation manual once more.

Expecting a string of nonsense, Yuan Xia closed his eyes as he unfurled the scroll. But to his surprise, this time, the characters flew directly out of the page, rearranging themselves to reveal a technique.

When Yuan Xia examined the scroll, he noticed a black stain at the tip. Glancing down, he could make out a jade green brush.

The Brush of Changing Springs.

No wonder Hua ChunMing’s handwriting magically rearranged itself. Shuang had done it, by forgetting to bring the brush on his way out.

But although the characters had become organized, Yuan Xia still couldn’t quite see what they spelled. His fingertips traced the air as he reached out for the globs of light.

‘巳’, ‘已’ or ‘己’? The characters, all with just a one-stroke difference, looked the same to Yuan Xia.

In the end, Yuan Xia gave up. He decided to reach the final level within the foundation building stage before deciphering Hua ChunMing’s technique scroll.

Curling up on the bed, clasping his hands together, Yuan Xia closed his eyes. He could easily circulate qi, no matter what position he was in. Even if he fell asleep, his many years of cultivation would guide his new body in the right direction.

What would taking a little nap stand to lose?

—

Yuan Xia awoke to burning pain. His heart felt aflame, and his entire body seared with a dangerous heat. Even when he tried to stand, he couldn’t support his own weight and fell miserably instead.

What happened?

Forcing his eyes open, Yuan Xia looked to the window… but he couldn’t even find its silhouette.

His world had become enshrouded with darkness.

The expanse before him triggered a wave of anxiety, and Yuan Xia trembled. He remembered the darkness of his past life: the lack of movement, the lack of light.

But he’d always thought nothing of it. Why was he so scared now?

Before Yuan Xia could work through his emotions, a figure materialized before him. In Yuan Xia’s blurry vision, the figure resembled his former self—long, blonde hair, and a fitted outfit of white. Situated behind a curtain of fog, it turned to him, revealing a soft side-profile.

Yuan Xia reached out, grasping nothing. The veil was too far away.

Amidst Yuan Xia’s growing restlessness, the figure began to walk. And just as it disappeared from sight, Yuan Xia woke up.

“....”

Had he just awoken twice? The fever permeating his body remained, alerting Yuan Xia that his vision was not an illusion.

But then… who was that figure?

It looked exactly like the Demon Lord Yuan Xia.

All of a sudden, Yuan Xia grew aware of the rich spiritual energy circulating through the air into his body. During his short nap, he’d already reached the last stage of foundation building!

Disbelief painted itself across Yuan Xia’s face. He sat up, ignoring the sticky sweat clinging to his hair and clothes. Crossing his legs, he brought his hands together once more, diving into his newly-formed sea of spirituality.

An abundance of energy surged in his mind, threatening to push past foundation building to reach the next level. But something kept it from advancing—a bottleneck.

When the excess energy churned, Yuan Xia’s stomach would cramp in pain. His shoulders hunched over, but he had to understand where the bottleneck came from. Furrowing his brows, Yuan Xia concentrated….

And saw the veiled silhouette of himself.

Confused, Yuan Xia’s eyes fluttered open. He grasped his stomach and forced his swelling energy down.

The darkness he saw, the figure he reached out for…. None of these triggered Yuan Xia, he believed with all his heart, but they had stopped him from progressing past that amateur stage of cultivation.

Something was wrong.

With a sigh, Yuan Xia rose to his feet. He stumbled as he searched for new clothes—his sweat had turned cold, clotting at the seams of his indigo robes.

Perhaps his bottleneck had manifested for his own good. If he’d cultivated unconsciously for any longer, he might have fallen into demonic cultivation again.

In this life, Yuan Xia had promised to befriend Hua ChunMing… though that wasn’t going too well. But if he became another Demon Lord, wouldn’t that just waste his last chance?

Even though Hua ChunMing was probably still deciding how to best execute him, Yuan Xia swore to himself that he wouldn’t run away anymore. He was once truly the Demon Lord. And Hua ChunMing just so happened to be looking for this Demon Lord.

Why? Yuan Xia couldn’t be sure. But the Righteous Leader wouldn’t go so far as to kill the weakened him publicly, right…?

 Wondering whether he’d made the right decision to come to Heaven’s Law Sect, Yuan Xia tugged on new robes to take a short bath.