Chapter 0: 54. One Person
Li Yuanzhen jumped back in fright but reacted quickly, immediately putting on a pitifully charming smile. “A’Qin, did you miss this humble Daoist?”
Qin Gou’s smile remained unchanged, and he didn’t speak, letting the little gambler have her way.
As someone who understood Qin Gou well, Li Yuanzhen feared this the most. Who knew how many terrifying bad ideas were brewing behind the Demon Master’s smile?
Seeing this, Li Yuanzhen, deciding to go all in, unhesitatingly pinched her ear and shouted, “You want me to shout louder? This humble Daoist isn’t afraid! Watch me… Woof woof woof woof woof!”
Qin Gou was stunned. This incorrigible Saintess was becoming more and more uninhibited.
Seeing this, Li Yuanzhen, quite pleased with herself, winked at Ao Banwei beside her, and with a proud flick of her small sleeve, said, “Problem solved! See? It’s handled! You’re so shocked you can’t even speak to this humble Daoist now! Banwei, watch and learn.”
“Are you shameless?” Qin Gou held his forehead, shaking his head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Just then, two dark, small, pointed horns suddenly emerged from the front of Li Yuanzhen’s top. Qin Gou could have touched them, but since they were sensitive parts of the little gambler, he immediately warned her, “Li Yuanzhen, you have something on you.”
“What?” Li Yuanzhen’s beautiful eyes widened in alarm.
“I’m not a bug!”
Suddenly, Mo Ning sprang out from Li Yuanzhen’s embrace, her small body suspended in the air.
“You are…” Qin Gou stared intently at Mo Ning.
Mo Ning’s eyes, however, revealed uncontrollable surprise. “I know you! You must be Lord Qin Gou, the Celestial Master of Arc-Moon Mountain.”
Li Yuanzhen glared angrily at Mo Ning. “Little Dot, what are you doing? This humble Daoist hasn’t even performed the magical dice cup trick with A’Qin yet, and you’ve already revealed yourself.”
“Little Dot?” Qin Gou examined Mo Ning’s familiar appearance and the pair of evil-looking demonic horns on her head, then said in a deep voice, “The Grand Princess?”
“Indeed.” Mo Ning clasped her hands, her voice polite. “Mo Ning greets the Master of Arc-Moon Mountain.”
“Little Dot, she…” Li Yuanzhen stared blankly at everything before her.
Qin Gou gave her a strange look. “How did you end up mixed up with this Grand Princess of the Abyssal Demon Race?”
The little gambler didn’t answer Qin Gou’s question directly. Instead, she said with an innocent look, “In this Abyss, would raising their Grand Princess like a little dog be considered a particularly grave offense?”
“Cough, cough, cough…” Qin Gou coughed heavily, unsure how to commend the little gambler’s audacity.
At this moment, Mo Ning said with sincere earnestness and a gentle voice, “Lord Qin Gou, it’s wonderful to see you. Mo Ning begs you to help Kong Ling. She has been greatly influenced by me, her temperament has changed significantly, and she lives through great pain every day, believing only death can bring release. In the past, I might have been happy to see her disappear, but now I hope we can both live well. Therefore, I am willing to cooperate with you at all costs, to go together and save your disciple, my other half.”
Qin Gou looked at Mo Ning in surprise. He hadn’t had much contact with Kong Ling after her memory awakened, but Mo Ning, the rumored ‘Whip of the Demon God,’ would never have said such a thing.
“Little Dot, you keep mentioning Kong Ling and calling yourself Mo Ning now, which I find very strange,” Qin Gou said with a deep gaze and significant meaning. “Mo Ning and Kong Ling are one and the same, from beginning to end. You are not two souls squeezed into one body, but merely two sets of different memories. It is fundamentally impossible to separate them.”
“What do you mean?” Mo Ning suddenly froze in mid-air, her face rapidly turning pale.
Qin Gou calmly stated, “Kong Ling was born among the Human Race and grew up by my side as Mo Ning, while Mo Ning was born among the Demon Race, the honored Grand Princess of the Abyss, Kong Ling. It’s just that due to receiving different educations and encountering vastly different things, their temperaments became diametrically opposed. But from beginning to end, it was always the same person. No one can change this fact, so…”
“Xiao Ling’er, calling yourself Mo Ning in front of your Master is rather absurd.”
However, Qin Gou’s words seemed to press an invisible button on Mo Ning, causing her expression to suddenly become extremely panicked and lost.
Mo Ning suddenly clutched her small head with both hands, her eyes filled with panic and fear as she screamed, “I am not Kong Ling, I am Mo Ning! I am the daughter of Mo Qingyang and Lu Zhili, the Grand Princess of the Demon Race, Mo Ning. I don’t want to disappear!”
“Everything is mine, why does it feel like I’m the sinner?”
Mo Ning completely broke down, tears streaming down her face, her voice rapid and chaotic as she wailed, “Kong Ling has loving family and friends! Doesn’t Mo Ning have any?! Am I, Mo Ning, destined to die! Mother, Mother, tell me, I just want to live. What did I do wrong? Decades of Kong Ling’s memories and decades of Mo Ning’s life, where is the right or wrong between us?”
Suddenly, Mo Ning’s head snapped up again. Her gaze was filled with longing and dependence as she looked at Qin Gou, extending a small hand, sobbing uncontrollably, “Master, I miss you so much. I miss Daddy and Mother. The Demon Emperor wants me to marry, but I’d rather die than marry a Demon Race man I’ve never met. I… I just want to go back to when I was little.”
Qin Gou was about to reach out and embrace Mo Ning when she suddenly dodged, screaming hysterically, “Mo Yu, Sister Ning will not disappear! Sister Ning will also watch you become a man of integrity! Mother, you’ve been in seclusion for so many years, and you won’t even come out to see Ning’er and little brother. How can you be so heartless!”
“Li Yuanzhen!”
Qin Gou immediately sent a look to the little gambler. “Sever this wench’s memory and erase what I just said from her mind. This girl is acting very strangely right now!”
At that, Li Yuanzhen didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the silver sword Invisible Slash from the wind and thrust it in Mo Ning’s direction.
The familiar crisp shattering sound rang out. The frantic Mo Ning instantly quieted down and fell from the air. Qin Gou caught her in his palm, and she fainted.
Li Yuanzhen’s sword brows furrowed. She asked, completely confused, “A’Qin, what exactly is going on with this Little Dot? She was fine just now, how could one sentence from you make her like this?”
“Because I accidentally spoke the truth, a truth she deliberately tried to forget.”
As he spoke, Qin Gou took out a slender silver needle from his Nas void ring and carefully pricked Mo Ning’s small hand.
As expected, not a drop of blood flowed out, and the needle hole quickly healed.
She was remarkably similar to the Stone Spirit puppet within Qin Gou’s Nas void ring.
Qin Gou nodded slightly, his voice filled with pain. “Kong Wench, you’ve truly put the skills I taught you to the ultimate use.”
