Chapter 113: Exhausting All Schemes

“Don’t look back!”

Yu Menglan called out repeatedly, forcing Huiyan’s body to keep running forward through clenched teeth.

“In the presence of a man who has awakened to his fate, every tear of pity is an insult to him! What we must do now is fulfill his wish and escape with everything we have!”

“But—!”

Unable to hold back the tears burning in her eyes, Huiyan looked toward Ye Dong as he ran in the opposite direction. Though the body before her was not Ye Dong’s, she could still see his soul raising its arms and shouting:

“Huiyan, I am Ye Dong!”

“Let’s go!”

Huiyan turned her head and, drawing upon Yu Menglan’s spiritual power, raced desperately down the mountain.

“Trying to run?”

Guangqi had never expected Ye Dong, even with death staring him in the face, to have so many tricks up his sleeve. Furious and anxious, he scattered the spirit talismans in his hand into the air and hurriedly began chanting:

“Heaven and Earth, boundless—”

Before Guangqi could finish the incantation, Ye Dong’s hand lunged toward him.

This was the final blow he had delivered with what people called the last of their life force—the author would rather describe it as the power of will.

Strangely, Ye Dong’s attack did not target Guangqi’s vital points, nor did it strike at his younger brother. Instead, it went straight for Guangqi’s mouth.

“Cosmos—”

Ye Dong’s surprise attack was meant to stop Guangqi from completing the spell.

“You bastard!”

Humiliated and enraged, Guangqi punched Ye Dong until blood burst from his head, then viciously stamped down behind him, where Bone Plum Blossom lay.

“Ahhhh!”

Ye Dong’s scream echoed through the forest, sending a great flock of birds flying from the trees.

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“You’ll never catch up with her!”

Ye Dong laughed wildly, his blood-covered face filled with triumph.

“Guangqi, you’ve lost. You’re dead this time!”

Guangqi knew Ye Dong was deliberately provoking him to buy time for Huiyan to escape. He ignored the taunt, lifted his foot, and prepared to pursue Huiyan.

“Don’t even think about it!”

Ye Dong rolled over and seized Guangqi’s lower leg from behind, still laughing.

“If you want to get away, you’ll have to kill me first!”

“You really think I don’t dare to kill you?”

Guangqi glanced at the time on his watch. The rage on his face suddenly turned to wild delight, and he threw back his head and laughed.

“Ahahaha! The time limit for the body exchange is over. You can die now!”

With that, he truly drew a dagger from his waist and thrust it at Ye Dong.

Facing the oncoming blade, Ye Dong hurriedly released Guangqi’s leg and gripped the deadly knife with both hands.

“Die!”

A vicious, exhilarated grin spread across Guangqi’s face. Slowly, the dagger pierced the skin over Ye Dong’s heart, its tip inching into his flesh.

“Ah!”

The blade drove into him, and Ye Dong let out a low growl of unbearable pain. Yet his hands did not loosen in the slightest. He continued to resist with the last shred of strength he possessed.

“Why keep struggling? Isn’t this the death you wanted?”

Determined to kill Ye Dong, Guangqi stared fixedly at his heart.

“Yah!”

Suddenly, a sharp pain struck the back of Guangqi’s head. The blade that had been aimed at Ye Dong’s heart shifted slightly and plunged into his abdomen instead.

“Ah!”

Ye Dong grunted and smashed his head into Guangqi’s face.

After being struck from both sides, Guangqi rolled away. Only then did he realize that Huiyan had somehow turned back.

“Ye Dong, what happened to you?”

Huiyan pressed both hands tightly over the wound in his lower abdomen and cried out:

“Hold on! You have to hold on!”

“Huiyan, why did you come back?”

Ye Dong glanced at the dagger buried in his abdomen and gave a bitter smile.

“If you hadn’t come back, I’d probably be reporting to the King of Hell by now.”

“You won’t die! You can’t die!”

Huiyan burst into tears and was just about to embrace him when Guangqi kicked her away viciously.

“Damn you, you wretched woman! How dare you ambush me!”

Without a second thought, Guangqi yanked the dagger from Ye Dong’s abdomen and drove it toward his heart.

“Don’t!”

Huiyan screamed and thrust out both hands, gripping the blade tightly.

“Mm!”

She let out a muffled groan. Blood poured from her celestial hands, and the blade cut deep enough to expose bone.

“Huiyan!”

Seeing her suffer such torment, Ye Dong’s heart twisted with pain. Tears streamed from his eyes like a broken spring.

“Are you really that much of a fool?”

Infuriated that Huiyan had used her hands to shield Ye Dong from the blade, Guangqi struck her hard across the face and sent her sprawling. He raised the merciless dagger once more.

“Don’t!”

Huiyan shouted through a face wet with tears.

At that critical moment, an intense wave of dizziness surged into the minds of both Ye Dong and Guangqi.

“Ah—cough!”

As the world spun around them, both men suddenly spat out mouthfuls of blood.

“What—what is happening?”

Guangqi felt dizzy and disoriented. His former view from above had somehow become an upward gaze from the ground. And the face of Ye Dong—the body he had possessed for an entire day—now appeared clearly before him.

The sudden reversal caught Ye Dong equally off guard. Lying beneath him was a blood-covered man staring up in terror.

That man was none other than Guangqi’s true body, someone both familiar and strange to Ye Dong.

“Master succeeded! They succeeded!”

A possibility flashed through Ye Dong’s mind.

“We won!”

How could Guangqi, lying on the ground, have anticipated such a sudden turn of events?

“Hadn’t the Dragon-Turns-to-Phoenix method already been completed? How could this have happened? Impossible!”

Guangqi tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover that his legs no longer obeyed him. Agonizing pain stabbed through his abdomen and head.

“Have I really returned to my ruined body? Impossible! Impossible!”

Even after the pain returned to him, Guangqi still refused to believe that he had lost at the very last moment.

“Your legs are broken, aren’t they? You can’t run now, can you?”

Ye Dong wept with joy and cursed him furiously.

“You brought this upon yourself! Go to hell!”

His gaze fell upon the dagger in his hand. He poured all his rage into the blow and plunged it mercilessly into Guangqi’s abdomen.

“No! Don’t!”

Guangqi watched helplessly as the dagger disappeared into his stomach. Though his heart was filled with a thousand grievances, all he could cry out was:

“Don’t!”

“Why did this happen? The spell had clearly succeeded!”

Guangqi vomited mouthful after mouthful of blood.

“Why? Why would Heaven do this to me?”

All the power and influence had clearly been within his grasp, yet in an instant they had vanished into nothing. Despair surged over him like a flood breaking through a breached dam, while terror and unwillingness devoured the last of his will.

“Why? Why? Cough, cough!”

Guangqi cursed hysterically, for he knew that, having been stabbed twice, he was about to die.

Ye Dong, whose spiritual power was almost completely exhausted, did not release the dagger.

“Guangqi, the body-exchange spell never fully succeeded. In the final few seconds, the reversal spell took effect instead. Because I was never fighting alone!”

Those words struck Guangqi like a blade.

“You—you…”

“This watch, the phones on our bodies, and the clocks in my villa—we set them all one minute fast. When you saw that the appointed time had arrived, you thought you had won, didn’t you?”

As he spoke, Ye Dong raised the watch on his wrist before Guangqi’s eyes.

“One wrong move, and the whole game is lost.”

Guangqi coughed up more blood. Suddenly, with all the strength left in his body, he reached into Ye Dong’s trouser pocket and pulled out a yellow talisman.

Ye Dong thought Guangqi intended to make one final desperate attack, but instead Guangqi wept and cursed:

“Even if I die, I won’t let the Yellow Impermanence torture me!”

Ye Dong froze. The talisman in Guangqi’s hand had already burned to ash.

“Ugh!”

The powder scattered on the wind, and Guangqi’s shattered heart finally stopped beating.

Though gifted beyond measure and cunning enough to calculate every possibility, in the end he had been defeated by his own boundless ambition.

The mountain wind shifted once again.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!”

Huiyan had never imagined that the situation could change so quickly. When she saw the familiar man reveal that familiar smile, she could no longer restrain her emotions. She threw her arms around Ye Dong and burst into helpless sobs.

Lying on the grass, Ye Dong gently stroked her flowing hair. Through the branches, he gazed up at the sky, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

“So this is how beautiful it is—to lie on the grass, embrace the one you love, and gaze at the blue sky.”

“Thank you for never abandoning me, Huiyan.”

Tears of emotion slipped uncontrollably from the corners of Ye Dong’s eyes. He drew a deep breath.

“Master, Officer Li, and all my brothers and sisters—thank you. It’s wonderful to still be alive.”