Chapter 276: A Perfect Puppet (4)
Ningyan inhaled sharply, his violet eyes flashing with suppressed anger. "I didn’t come here to be interrogated." His patience was rapidly fraying.
"I want to know how to recover my memories, and I want to..." He pressed his palm firmly against his chest, right over his racing heart. "....destroy the demon crystal inside me."
Old Beast Gu regarded him quietly, stepping down from the raised hearth platform. "You want to do many things." Her nine tails swayed slowly behind her, each tip glowing with a faint, iridescent spiritual aura. "But you refuse to accept even half of what you already know."
She stopped directly before him.
"You want your memories, you want the crystal destroyed, You want revenge against those you believe betrayed you." Her gaze hardened into cold steel. "And yet, you refuse to ask yourself the single most important question."
Ningyan’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "What question?"
Old Beast Gu lifted her slender hand. Before Ningyan could dodge or strike, her palm settled gently against the center of his chest.
The instant her spiritual sense invaded his body, her pupils contracted into tiny pinpricks.
She felt thousands upon thousands of fragmented auras intertwined within Ningyan’s soul. The demon tools she had once cataloged, now fused together into something that had burrowed into the very bedrock of his spiritual foundation.
Old Beast Gu’s breath caught in her throat. She immediately yanked her hand back, staggering half a step backward in shock.
Ningyan stared at her, his own heart pounding against his ribs. "What did you see?"
Old Beast Gu didn’t answer right away. She studied him as though he had suddenly morphed into a terrifying creature she could no longer comprehend. "What happened to you, Su Ningyan?"
Ningyan’s brows furrowed. "I don’t understand."
"When you first awakened as a demon beast. Where were you?"
Ningyan hesitated. "I don’t..."
"What do you remember?"
He shook his head. "I..." Fragments surfaced in his mind, scalding heat, heavy iron chains, unbearable pain....
"I woke up inside a volcano." His voice dropped into a quiet whisper. "I had been bound there for three hundred years."
Old Beast Gu’s expression turned gravely solemn. "You only awakened recently." She turned back toward the fireplace, staring blankly into the crackling flames. "There was a ritual..."
She fell silent for a long moment, then slowly looked back over her shoulder. "Are you aware of the ritual?"
"Yes." Ningyan’s voice hardened. "My kin told me that the divine beasts killed me. So they performed a ritual to transform me into a demon beast so I could..."
"Bring victory to the phoenixes," Old Beast Gu finished for him.
A small, cold, mocking smile returned to her lips as she fully turned around to face him. "You are the perfect puppet, Su Ningyan."
Ningyan’s heart skipped.
"A perfect war god." Her blue eyes gleamed with a chilling light. "A perfect destroyer."
She tilted her head, her voice dripping with dark irony. "A weapon powerful enough to tear through the Three Realms... and obedient enough to believe whatever story is placed inside his head."
Ningyan frowned. "I am not..."
"Tell me, Su Ningyan..." Old Beast Gu stepped close once more, leaning in until her whisper brushed his ear. "Who told you that your kin killed you?"
"I am no one’s puppet." Ningyan hissed. "I am the one ruling the Phoenix Clan. I am the reason they can finally live among the other beasts again without hiding! They have their freedom now. They are happier."
Old Beast Gu sighed softly. She returned to her grand chair and settled into it with an easy, unbothered grace that only served to irritate Ningyan further.
"You gave them what they wanted. But they still want more, don’t they?"
Ningyan’s expression tightened.
"They are filled with hatred," she continued quietly. "A hatred that they placed inside you, pouring it into your soul until you began carrying it as though it were your own."
"I don’t need any of this!" Ningyan’s composure finally broke, his voice cracking under the weight of his frustration.
The blackish-red veins beneath his skin pulsed faintly, rising like dark roots along his neck. "I just want my memories back! I want to be a normal beast again, without this corruption, without this crystal controlling every thought in my head!"
His breathing turned ragged, his chest heaving. "I just want to live somewhere quiet in the mountains, or somewhere far away from all of this, with my children and my husbands! I can just..."
"Do what?" Old Beast Gu’s question was soft, almost gentle, yet it cut through his words like a blade.
Ningyan stopped mid-sentence.
"You can do just what?" Her gaze pinned him to the spot. "Abandon everything?"
"I..." His voice faltered.
Old Beast Gu leaned back against the plush velvet of her chair. "You are declaring that you want freedom, yet every single choice you make is still dictated by someone else."
Ningyan’s fingers trembled at his sides.
"You hate the dragon king because you were told they destroyed your kin" her eyes narrowed. "You seek bloody revenge because your clan taught you that revenge is justice. And now you want to run away because you believe that is the only escape from the role they carved out for you."
Ningyan stared at her, frozen.
Old Beast Gu’s guarded expression softened. "You need to stop being a puppet, Su Ningyan. Do something simply because you want it."
Something deep inside him snapped.
Black veins crawled up his neck and cheeks. His clear violet eyes ignited into twin pools of dark blood. A terrifying wave of demonic qi erupted from his frame, sweeping through the vast chamber like a tempest as he stormed toward her, white robes whipping wildly around him.
"I came here of my own accord! I chose to come here!"
Old Beast Gu didn’t even flinch.
The exact moment Ningyan’s aura rushed toward her, an invisible suppression descended over the entire chamber. His explosive demonic qi vanished beneath it, swallowed completely by the room’s defensive arrays.
Outside the chamber doors, the air remained entirely undisturbed. No one below would sense a single whisper of the storm.
Old Beast Gu calmly met his furious, blood-red gaze. "You need to stabilize the demon crystal first."
Ningyan froze.
"Blood will temporarily stabilize it," her voice remained eerily composed. "But eventually..." Her blue eyes sharpened. "You must give the crystal what it truly needs."
Ningyan’s anger faltered, replaced by a sudden, creeping chill. "What does it truly need?"