Shen Shuyun stroked her abdomen, her expression growing gentler. “Muli-jiejie, she’s slandering me. I never said that. I just told them Ye family bloodlines are especially sweet and helpful for demons’ cultivation. I truly never killed a single Ye family member myself. They’re your descendants, and I’m their elder. I wouldn’t do that—especially Ye Tan… I’ve saved her several times…”
A sudden retching sound interrupted Shen Shuyun’s self-indulgent emotion. Her sharp, cold gaze fell on the source: Shen Mingjin.
Shen Mingjin’s skin flushed with an unnatural pallor, her lips even whiter than the wall.
She had bitten her lower lip, blood seeping from the wound, making her look even more frail.
Clutching her abdomen, she squatted on the ground, retching sounds spilling endlessly from her lips. Clearly, Shen Shuyun disgusted her thoroughly.
Not just Shen Mingjin wanted to vomit; Ye Xi felt like throwing up too.
Ye Xi bent down to lightly pat Shen Mingjin’s back, but before her hand reached, Shen Mingjin dodged away.
The blatant avoidance dimmed Ye Xi’s gaze. She wanted to ask why Shen Mingjin had forgotten her words so quickly, but she knew now wasn’t the time.
Shen Shuyun watched Shen Mingjin’s unrelenting retching, her eyes growing dangerous. “Mingjin, what did I say that was wrong?”
“Auntie, this should be the last time I call you that,” Shen Mingjin said, tilting her head up stubbornly with her neck held high. “There’s no such thing as resurrection from the dead in this world! And certainly no logic in sacrificing your loved one’s entire clan to prove your love!”
Her stomach churned violently, but nothing came up.
Shen Mingjin felt a visceral disgust toward this blood-related kin, a disgust that extended not only to Shen Shuyun but also to herself for sharing the same blood. “You’re utterly ridiculous. Everything you’ve done is just self-indulgent nonsense. You… the Ye Clan ancestors won’t forgive you, the Ye Clan won’t forgive you, and even I find your so-called love repulsive!”
Shen Mingjin was usually soft and without sharp edges, so this statement carried the weight of her utmost severity.
Ye Xi completely agreed with her words.
Before Shen Shuyun, she had never imagined that someone could express love by slaughtering their beloved’s entire clan.
Even if Ye Muli was a ruthless clan leader indifferent to her people, she wouldn’t have wanted to see the family line severed. And according to Ye Tan and the others, Ye Muli had been a gentle and kind leader who valued others’ lives above all.
Was this how demons showed love to their partners?
A flash of fear passed through Ye Xi’s heart, quickly fading into a sense of powerlessness.
Shen Shuyun was thoroughly enraged. She had no intention of wasting more time on Shen Mingjin and Ye Xi. A thick red light flashed, and Shen Shuyun’s body underwent a dramatic transformation. She no longer appeared as a young girl but became a mature, glamorous beauty, her features sharing about thirty percent similarity with Shen Mingjin’s.
Even the claim of consuming her life force to shrink her body had been a lie from Shen Shuyun.
Ye Xi suddenly felt that her own deceptions paled in comparison—Shen Shuyun was the true master of profound deceit.
Shen Shuyun wasn’t some lovesick madwoman.
She was shrewd and self-serving, scheming with others’ lives while protecting her own meticulously.
Nor was Shen Shuyun any kind of savior.
When she had gone to the Embracing Snow Clan to take Shen Mingjin and Shen Minghuan away, it might not have been to save the clan at all—likely just an excuse to scout for collaborators in person.
The Night Clan of the Dawn Eclipse Clan, the Yin Family of the Qingdu Clan… these were top-tier great clans. Besides them, other clans surely had families working for her, and even within a single clan, more than one family might be doing her bidding.
The Ye Clan had tens of thousands of members. To rapidly decline such a prosperous clan—to have most of its people devoured—would require far more demons on Shen Shuyun’s side than just a few.
To those who didn’t know Ye Muli was Shen Shuyun’s lover, they might think the two had a deep-seated grudge worth exterminating a clan over.
The irony wasn’t lost on Ye Xi alone; Shen Mingjin felt it too, beside her.
Shen Mingjin watched Shen Shuyun’s appearance change with cold eyes, rubbing her arms as a sudden chill set in.
Shen Shuyun touched her face, and her aura surged upward in waves.
Her eyes turned into blood-red vertical pupils, and a blood-red snake tail emerged.
With a forceful flick forward, the tail lash carried the oppressive pressure of a Great Demon, leaving Shen Mingjin and Ye Xi no room to even struggle.
Shen Mingjin leaped toward Ye Xi, her similar bloodline prompting her to release her own tail. It swiftly wrapped around Ye Xi and the pink fur rabbit, shielding them within its coils and taking the blow in their stead. Her body was sent flying.
She hadn’t recovered enough power to handle a demon of Shen Shuyun’s level. Her body crashed heavily into the ground, denting it, and a metallic sweetness surged in her throat.
“Sister!” Ye Xi cried out upon seeing Shen Mingjin cough up blood. She struggled desperately to break free and help, but Shen Mingjin’s tail held her fast. All she could do was shout to divert Shen Shuyun’s attention. “Shen Shuyun, if you wanted to harm me, why did you deliberately set me up with my sister?”
Ye Xi remembered that her move across from Shen Mingjin had been facilitated by Shen Shuyun’s involvement.
Shen Shuyun was different from a true madwoman; she could analyze what was most beneficial to herself. She didn’t stop attacking Shen Mingjin, but she did answer Ye Xi.
“Blame Ye Tan. She said all of us from the Spirit-Devouring Snake Clan are lunatics unworthy of love. I wanted her granddaughter to fall for my niece. I wanted to prove to her that you Ye Clan people are born to fall for demons from our Spirit-Devouring Snake Clan. Muli-jie loved me, you love…”
“Enough!” Shen Mingjin interrupted Shen Shuyun. Her body was smacked flying again, but her voice showed no weakness.
Shen Mingjin glanced down at her arm, where the mark circled in red ink by Ye Xi still lingered on her skin. She bit her index finger and pressed it to the mark. “You won’t succeed in tormenting Vice Director Qin or killing Ye Xi!”
Shen Shuyun saw Shen Mingjin’s action, and her brow twitched wildly. “Mingjin!”
She shouted Shen Mingjin’s name in panic, then quickly changed her tune. “Mingjin, Auntie doesn’t want you to die. Kill her, and Auntie will take you home!”
Shen Mingjin ignored Shen Shuyun. Her bitten finger pressed firmly against the red-inked scale, blood flowing from her fingertip to form a thin thread on her skin, which rapidly spread throughout her body.
Bright red scales with tiny locks emerged swiftly, the blood thread unlocking them wherever it passed, making the little locks vanish.
“Sister, don’t!”
Shen Mingjin had two ways to unlock the seals on her body: one forced open by overwhelming desire, the other voluntarily activated to gain power.
The first plunged her instantly into the torment of her heat period upon unsealing. The second required sufficient demon power to release the seals and offered a buffer before the heat period hit, as long as her demon power didn’t spiral out of control first.
Previously, Shen Mingjin lacked the demon power to unlock all seals at once, so she could only release them gradually or wait for desire to break them.
After several rounds of lovemaking, nearly thirty of the thousand seals had come undone. Now she had enough power to release them all and ensure short-term control. She was betting on that buffer period.
But partially unlocking left room for resealing; fully unlocking meant inevitable erosion by desire. For Shen Mingjin, this was devastating—losing control would burst her apart from within, no need for Shen Shuyun to finish her off.
It was no different from staking her life.
Moreover, a Great Demon like Shen Shuyun couldn’t be defeated just by fully unsealing.
As Shen Mingjin’s seals broke one by one, Shen Shuyun’s expression changed. She tried leveraging their relationship. “Shen Mingjin, I’m your aunt. Are you going to kill your own family for an outsider?”
“If I had a choice, I’d choose Ye Xi as my family,” Shen Mingjin said without pausing. She had no path left; this was the only way she could ensure Ye Xi survived. “Auntie, you’re a demon of the Spirit-Devouring Snake Clan too. You should know we’re all mad enough to do anything for love. The moment you pushed Xiao Xi toward me, you should have realized—I won’t kill Xiao Xi. I’ll only kill you for her!”
The seals broke rapidly. Ye Xi struggled fiercely and finally broke free just as the blood threads neared the tip of her tail, grasping Shen Mingjin’s tail.
The snake tail’s scorching heat was alarming. Ye Xi tightened her grip. “Sister, stop unlocking them.”
Shen Mingjin’s gaze met Ye Xi’s, and the spreading blood threads halted near the tail tip.
Without a word to Ye Xi, she charged straight at Shen Shuyun.
In the instant before reaching Shen Shuyun, Shen Mingjin’s body transformed into a massive red python, its fiery crimson scales like molten lava with the power to melt all.
A close look revealed a few missing red scales at her tail tip.
Her dark red vertical pupils rotated slowly, firing several light blades from the pupils—flaming blades hurtling straight at Shen Shuyun’s face.
Shen Shuyun was nearly driven mad with rage, her gaze toward Shen Mingjin turning dangerously cold.
She stomped the ground hard, her body lifting upward as she too transformed into a red python in an instant—slightly larger than Shen Mingjin’s but slower.
The moment Shen Shuyun fully transformed, her vital seven-inch spot was struck by Shen Mingjin’s snake head.
Her snake body twisted, vertical pupils locking onto Shen Mingjin.
Her gaze fixed on the spot missing red scales. She bared her massive maw and lunged toward the tail, her sharp fangs grazing it and drawing a trail of blood.
Shen Mingjin darted away swiftly, ramming her snake head into Shen Shuyun again.
Shen Shuyun retreated quickly, a low, raspy voice emerging from her snake mouth. “Shen Mingjin, get a grip. Do you think stopping me benefits you? If Ye Tan learns I caused the Ye Clan’s decline, do you think she’ll let you and Ye Xi be together? How about this: I won’t kill her. I’ll turn her into an idiot instead. You clean up this mess for me. I’ll still be the top leader at the General Bureau, you’ll still be the Embracing Snow Clan’s princess. As long as Ye Xi forgets everything, you can still be together!”
Shen Mingjin’s body twisted in midair, blood tears dripping from her lowered snake head. “So you knew… How vile your crimes truly are.”
“I’m not wrong!” Shen Shuyun snapped at the word “wrong,” her tone shifting instantly. “Muli-jie is dead. Why should these people sharing her blood live on? Ye Xi must die, and so must you! No one can stop me!”
This was Shen Shuyun’s truest inner thought.
She knew the dead couldn’t return; she simply refused to let others thrive after losing her own love—especially not the Ye Clan, who shared Ye Muli’s blood.
The tragedies in Ye Xi and the others’ eyes brought Shen Shuyun exquisite pleasure. Watching Ye Clan members’ partners suffer from loss, frantically searching for corpses like headless flies—she might even hide in the shadows, chuckling.
Chuckling that others shared her pain from losing Ye Clan members, reveling in the tragedy she had orchestrated.
This darkness wasn’t from her bloodline; she was simply that extreme a demon herself.
The madness of the Spirit-Devouring Snake Clan harmed others and self alike; hers harmed others while benefiting herself—a fundamental difference.
“Creak… creak…”
High in the air, the two giant snakes continued to clash. Building Eight, already split by the massive pit, had its walls and bricks shattered by their impacts, filling the air with dust and splintered furniture. Floor after floor crumbled under their bodies, widening Ye Xi’s view.
The half-demons, pacified by Shen Shuyun’s arrival, stirred back to action. Still mindless with eyes shut tight, they crawled toward Ye Xi, jaws working in chewing motions as if devouring even a chunk of her flesh would lead to her immediate dismemberment…
