Inner Demons

Chapter 172: A Chaos of Demons Share Comments

When a slightly tipsy Old Daoist Liu returned from the front yard, he saw Li Yunxin sitting alone in the dark corridor.

The old Daoist had no idea what had happened in the courtyard just now, but he could tell that Li Yunxin seemed to be in low spirits. He didn't think Li Yunxin was upset because he had been left behind to have a meal by himself. He knew that Brother Xin wasn't always a fan of excitement or solitude. But he certainly wouldn't have been happy to join Mister Li's kind of crowd.

He pulled up a wicker chair next to Li Yunxin, smelling of wine, and turned his head to let out a burp. "What's wrong, Brother Xin?"

Li Yunxin gave him a distant look in the darkness. "That Yue Yunzi has taken the bait."

Old Daoist Liu was stunned. The fine wine made him feel comfortable, but it had also dulled his mind a bit. He paused for a moment, then laughed. "Ah, Brother Xin, your divine calculations are incredible..."

"Uh, he was here just now?!"

After a moment of surprise, his mind turned to another thought. "But you seem... still troubled? Did something else happen?"

Li Yunxin touched his folding fan and let out a light sigh. "When we were outside the city, I told you that Yue Yunzi was a smart man, that he would use the matters of cultivating good and evil wishes to scheme against me. Now it seems he is indeed a smart man. He even found some suspicious points on his own, which saved me a lot of trouble. And he did follow the path I designed, making a big deal out of the matter of good and evil."

"He even told me a bunch of things I didn't even know... Honestly, he's a true mentor."

"Then... why are you still troubled, Brother Xin? Is it because his cultivation is too high?" Old Daoist Liu asked with some hesitation."Because he's too smart. He's not just a smart man, he's an ambitious smart man. It's truly a hellish encounter..." Li Yunxin tapped the back of his hand with the fan. "Why would a perfectly good cultivator want to be an Agriculture Minister? He even knew about soybean seeds."

Then, with the night breeze and the scent of wine, he told Old Daoist Liu everything that had just happened.

After he finished speaking, the old Daoist also frowned, thinking for a long time, and asked, "This... this story of his..."

"It sounds a bit unbelievable, but when you think about it carefully, it seems reasonable. As a Daoist Orthodoxy cultivator, he now wants to scheme against the Daoist Orthodoxy and harm his fellow disciples. Harming innocent disciples is a grave sin. If he wanted to set up a trap, using this kind of story... would be counterproductive. So, saying it this way... it sounds like it might be true."

Li Yunxin sighed softly. "To deceive a fool, you can make up any excuse. To deceive an ordinary person, you can make up a reasonable excuse. To deceive a smart person, even if you make it reasonable, the smart person will still have doubts. At this point, you make up an unbelievable reason to deceive them, and the smart person will think just like you did."

"But a smart person will also know what I said above, and they will become suspicious again. Therefore... whether the reason is reasonable or not is no longer important. For a smart person, whether they can be deceived or not can only be decided by the smart person who is being deceived. It's about whether they believe it or not. This is a kind of return to simplicity, in a sense."

Old Daoist Liu, having drunk some wine, was a bit confused. After thinking for a while, he still felt he hadn't grasped the true meaning. He had no choice but to ask, "Then... Brother Xin, do you believe him or not?"

Li Yunxin glanced at him, seemingly finding the matter very amusing. "Yue Yunzi is indeed a smart man. All the things I did back and forth in Dongting and Weicheng before, some I did deliberately for him to see, and some I didn't want him to know."

"But he saw through all of them. He even came up with reasonable explanations and made them sound self-consistent for some of the things I delayed or did wrong. What a terrifying, what a smart man. I wouldn't believe a single punctuation mark of what a smart man like me says."

"Or rather... this guy made me scared." Li Yunxin frowned in dissatisfaction. "He startled me."

"Imagine you're sitting happily fishing by the White Sand Dam of the Weeping Willow, and suddenly the big fish you've hooked almost drags you into the water. Then, this big fish starts negotiating with you, telling you to help him accomplish something, and he'll let you off the hook."

"Tsk, tsk, just think about what he said. 'Then, you are seeking death.' " Li Yunxin's eyes widened in astonishment. He looked at Old Daoist Liu, then pointed to himself. "Only I have the right to speak to others like that. He actually dared to say that to me!"

He looked at Old Daoist Liu for a long time. The slow-witted Old Daoist Liu hurriedly said, "Uh... yes, yes, that's too arrogant. How can you tolerate that?"

Li Yunxin put down his hand in satisfaction and turned around again. Looking at the dark courtyard, he pouted childishly. "In a small city like Weicheng, there are actually two smart people. It's truly a case of 'a small temple has powerful demonic winds, and shallow waters have many big turtles.'"

"I must kill him."

Old Daoist Liu really wanted to ask, "Brother Xin, how do you plan to kill him?"

But he knew this was not a good time to ask. If Li Yunxin hadn't figured out a way, he might be in a bad mood all night. He was also afraid that Yue Yunzi had used some technique and left spies in the courtyard.

So he said nothing and just sat with him quietly. After a while, he felt a wave of fatigue. Although it was very inappropriate to be relaxed at such a tense and uncertain time, he was indeed feeling sleepy because of the wine.

A strange contradiction arose in his heart. The situation was already at a breaking point...

But he still...

Didn't feel very worried.

Li Yunxin was silent for a while, as if he had just remembered that he had forgotten about Old Daoist Liu. He waved his hand at him. "Ah, you can go back to sleep."

The old Taoist priest Liu wanted to stay with him for a bit, but he knew that Li Yunxin didn't like having other people around when he was thinking, unless he was planning to share his thoughts and try to get inspiration from others.

So he said nothing, nodded slightly, and went back into his room.

Li Yunxin stayed in the courtyard alone for a while longer, sighing from time to time. After about half an hour, the wicker chair creaked as he stood up.

He walked around the courtyard for a while, then muttered to himself in a very low voice. The confident and relaxed air he had shown in front of Old Daoist Liu was completely gone. "Smart man, smart man, smart man... What would a smart man like you do..."

His voice was so low that it was almost covered by the rustling of the lush trees in the courtyard, blown by the night wind.

But under the albizia tree, in a pile of fallen flowers on the ground, a half-withered albizia flower trembled slightly. It caught the fleeting sound in the wind and quickly transmitted it to a certain place.

This single albizia flower continued to tremble slightly. However, having been cut off from the nourishment of the tree, the longer it trembled, the more it seemed to decay and give way, dropping a few more petals.

And Li Yunxin did not speak for a very long time. After pacing for another half an hour, he finally lowered his voice, and with a vicious tone, as if speaking to some presence somewhere or to himself:

"Heh... a smart man? Humph. You are a smart man, but I am a madman."

"A little person in the True Realm... betting that I won't dare to enter the True Realm directly! Heh!"

"You really don't know what a peerless great demon is!"

"Tsk, tsk... it's a pity this beautiful face of mine is going to be ruined."

After he finished speaking, the half-withered albizia flower finally dropped all its petals and stopped trembling.

Li Yunxin let out a low hum and walked back to his room with a flick of his sleeve.