"Ba Ke. Ba Ke! Ah, it doesn't work. WAKE UP, YOU STUPID JUNIOR BROTHER!"
Baotian was mercilessly woken up by a large slap.
"Ouch! You-"
Baotian stopped himself, looking around. In a short moment, his face went from being pale to nearly losing all colors, except for his reddened cheek.
"What is this?" he asked.
"I have no idea" Zi Moyan replied, pale too. "I woke you up because it'd be dangerous for you to stay unconscious here. Any idea of what to do?"
Baotian, before replying, tried using his spiritual sense to gather more information. However, he soon came to notice that his senses were limited to sight, hearing, touch, taste and touch. An ominous premonition came to him as he tried using one of the Crazed Demonic Blood Burial Mantra, without success. He then tried to use a basic fire spell to lighten their surroundings. No success either. Even trying to channel his spiritual power resulted in failure, making the use of storage bags impossible. His Qi Pieces were still there, but they had become impossible to use.
"Ah, you noticed? In this place, besides being a bit stronger, we're not much different from mortals" Zi Moyan said.
Hearing this, Baotian began to nervously bite his fingers. His cultivation, his precious cultivation he struggled to accumulate for so long… And now, he was just unable to use it.
"Do you have any idea about what to do?" she asked him.
Left without the product of all his efforts, Baotian quickly reached a critical stress level, dangerously close to a panic attack:
"N-no, I'm sorry, senior sister" he said. "I-I can't really think correctly right now"
The demonic cultivator looked at her comrade with strange feelings inside her. For as long as she had known him, she had never seen him like this. Even when he was having a mental breakdown against the might of the Core Formation realm, he never looked so vulnerable.
"I see, it's alright" she said, trying to calm him down. "For the moment, follow my lead. That's only normal for a junior brother to follow his elder sister, right?"
Baotian, looking slightly more calm, but still on edge, nodded, and they started cautiously exploring their surroundings, each having a sword-sized wooden stick in hands, in case they needed to defend themselves. Before long, the two of them arrived at the entry of a large village.
Some mortal children who saw them, rather than looking stressed or hostile due to their clothes, typical of cultivators, seemed to be excited at their sight, as they ran back to the village laughing, likely to warn their parents?
"You think they're happy because they'll get to eat some tasty cultivator meat, Ba Ke?"
"..."
"Forget what I just said, junior brother"
Trying to ignore how her comrade had subtly changed to a more defensive sword stance, Zi Moyan tried to pay as much attention as possible to her surroundings. She saw two women, seemingly in their mid thirties, walking toward them alongside an old man, probably the chief of the village:
"It seems that today will be dedicated to celebration" the village chief said. "It made a very long time since the last time honored guests came to our villages, so we don't really have enough preparation planned to correctly welcome the two honored ones, but at the very least, we can offer you a decent meal while preparing a house for you. Would you make us the honor to accept"
Zi Moyan shortly looked at Baotian but, seeing that he wasn't planning to intervene, she nodded:
"Fine then, we'll happily accept your kind offer" she said.
Barely a few minutes later, led by the village chief, the two of them were confronted with what could only be qualified as a mountain of food. What was more, each dish that they ate had a taste that was surprisingly good, near the level of spiritual food:
"Haha, Ba Ke, when you think about it, maybe the cultivators who died after entering the death zone just had their stomachs exploding because they ate too much" Zi Moyan joked, trying to cheer Baotian up.
"Or maybe the food was simply poisoned" he replied, sipping on wine anyway as a means to calm down.
Her tentative turned back against her as she nearly choked on the food, something that actually cheered Baotian up as he watched the hilarious scene. Soon after that, they both finished eating and, before they could realize what was happening, they were given a clean, spacious house to live in, with two separate beds.
"Have a good night, honored guests" the village chief said.
"It's night already? The sky doesn't seem to have gotten any darker, though" Baotian said.
He seemed to have finally recovered a bit. The village chief laughed heartily before providing an answer:
"Yes, honored one, I cannot say about the place you came from but here, this beautiful purple sky is the only one we know" he said. "Don't worry, however, after so many time, our village has developed very efficient ways to know the time, so just tell me how many hours you want to sleep, and I will be making sure someone come to wake you up after this time"
Zi Moyan hesitated: on one hand, they needed to find a way to leave fast, so they could reach the Void Hurricane in time, meaning they had no time to lose resting. On the other side, the two of them were effectively exhausted like never before, and a bit of sleep seemed like a necessity…
"Nine hours" Baotian interrupted, remembering the recommended sleeping time back on Earth, between eight and nine hours. "Please, wake us up in nine hours"
"Are you alright with this?" the village chief politely asked, turning toward Zi Moyan.
"Yes, that sounds like a good period of sleep" she replied.
"Fine, then I wish you a good night" the village chief said, quickly bowing before leaving the house, leaving the pair alone.
"Are you alright?" Zi Moyan asked from her bed.
Baotian, laying down in his own bed and looking at the ceiling with tired eyes, sighed:
"I wouldn't exactly call it okay, senior sister" he replied. "I lost the usage of everything I worked for, and I feel that the only reason the [thing] that brought us here still allows us to feel our Qi Cubes is because it wants to nag us, as if to say that it doesn't feel the need to cripple us to remind us that, in comparison to [it], we're no different from mortals"
"Is that how you feel about it? It sounds to me like you interpret too much here, Ba Ke"
"Maybe you're right. I just have this strange feeling that [something] is watching us with malice, like you would watch a play that you know will end tragically for the characters you don't like"
"You're always like this. Acting strange, like there are things you know that I don't know. Like you're different. And yet, when push comes to shove, you always end up reacting in function of your emotion at the moment. Ba Ke, I bet deep inside you think you're different from us, right? Better than us filth of the demonic path. But no, you're not. Even if you know things we don't, you're still like us. You do things the dirty way too, you hide cowardly when righteous cultivators show up too, you hate yourself too, and beyond everything else, you're scared of death too, probably more than any of us, and that's the only reason you keep advancing"
Baotian frowned:
"Senior sister, do you really want to make me believe that you don't feel this way, too?" he retorted. "Just like you said, I know things you do not: for instance, I know that despite what a demon says, if this demon actually dares to scold others for walking the path of demons, it means that this demon, too, thinks it is better than others. So let me ask you back: you think you're better than us because you're more talented, right?"
He scoffed bitterly:
"Well then, let me enlighten you. Someone already said similar words to me, and it was the same person as the one that was chasing after us earlier, who was an entire major realm above you, and even more superior in terms of power. He was once my junior brother. Someone that is an entire thirty years younger than the two of us" he said, enjoying the shock that appeared on Zi Moyan's face. "Do you understand better, now? What you said earlier was right, but you, a toad at the bottom of the well, did not understand just how right it was.
Our little advantages, our strengths, our uniqueness, none of this matters in front of a true heavenly talent. That's unfair, but that's how the world is and, if the only way for lower people like us to cope with the rules of the world is the demonic path, then you don't have any right to judge anyone"
Baotian, realizing he got angry for a moment, managed to calm down. But before he could try to deescalate the situation, Zi Moyan replied, her voice calmer than usual:
"You said that this freak of nature was your junior brother right? Then, that means you must've grown up in a relatively important clan" she guessed. "Then you are luckier than me: I was born from the union of two average demonic cultivators, and I grew up as nothing but an object of jealousy for them. Regularly, they would torment me for not being as mediocre as them. And so, I killed them when I was able to"
She continued:
"Following that, I too became a demonic cultivator, and killed many more people, mortals and low-level cultivators, to gather resources and make myself a name. Most of these people were innocent, and killing them was indeed a horrible deed, but some others, including my parents, were simply worthless trash that wasn't worth living, and there was absolutely no evil in killing them. I, Zi Moyan, can fully recognize my wrongdoings, but I won't hesitate to defend my honor against those claiming that killing my parents was just as evil of a deed.
Many demonic cultivators believe that using mortals as livestock is no evil because they weren't granted talent by heavens, and were already condemned to short, miserable lifespans, and many righteous ones believe that no matter what, harming those tied by blood is an evil act. But for me, the objective value of a life is the same for every individual under heaven, the weakest mortals like the mightiest cultivators, and the evil of ending one's life is only dependent on the victim's karma.
And according to my principles, I've always acted in a way where only my life had more value than the others, burning everything that needed to be burnt to advance, in a subjective way, but without ever forgetting the 'objective' facts. That is my Dao path, Ba Ke"
Baotian, hearing this, tried to argue, but he realized he couldn't. After all, in the end, wasn't what she said precisely what he thought?
"Your Dao path is one I can only agree with, senior sister" he said. "I admit my defeat, so let us sleep, now"
He closed his eyes, letting the intense exhaustion naturally pull him toward sleep.
'Yes, in the end, every life is equal beneath my own. That is the rule of the demonic path'.