Chapter 61
"The Twin Dragon Empire..." he muttered softly.
His eyes reflected the lights of the capital.
"...is truly magnificent."
No matter how many times he looked at it-
It never became ordinary.
The two men now stood within the heart of the capital itself while crowds moved endlessly around them, unaware that moments ago one of the most terrifying names in existence had passed through the heavens above their heads.
Wei Yi's voice broke the noise of the capital quietly.
"Do you want to know an interesting fact about the Demonic Cultivator?"
Shayu immediately looked at him. "Of course."
The streets around them remained alive with movement while lanterns slowly brightened one by one beneath the darkening sky. Vendors shouted across the roads, children ran through crowds, and somewhere distant, music drifted softly through the evening air.
Yet Wei Yi walked through it all as though none of it existed.
His gaze lifted slightly toward the horizon.
The sun had almost disappeared now.
The moon continued rising.
Half light.
Half darkness.
"The ten thousand titles..." Wei Yi said calmly, "...were not given to him by historians after death."
Shayu blinked.
Wei Yi's eyes reflected the pale moonlight faintly.
"He earned every single one while he was alive."
The words settled heavily.
Shayu slowed his steps unconsciously.
"What?"
Wei Yi continued walking without looking at him.
"The Demonic Emperor lived for over a millennium."
For a moment, even the noise of the capital seemed distant to Shayu.
A thousand years?
No cultivator should have been capable of surviving that long.
His brows furrowed deeply. "I... never knew that."
His eyes narrowed suspiciously afterward.
"How do you know something like that?"
Wei Yi finally glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
Cold green eyes.
Empty.
Calm.
"I only allowed you to know a small truth about the Great Demonic Emperor."
His deep voice remained indifferent.
"I never said I would share the source of my knowledge with you."
Shayu stared at him for a second.
Then clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"Fair. Fair." He waved his hand dismissively. "You mysterious people are all the same."
The estate grounds lay silent under the cold silver wash of moonlight. Not a torch flickered at the gate. Not a silhouette moved along the perimeter wall.
Wuming noticed.
He always noticed.
He walked the stone path toward the great doors at an unhurried pace, hands clasped behind his back, posture unbothered — the kind of stillness that didn't come from safety but from the certainty that nothing ahead of him was worth rushing for. His dark hair swept back in the evening breeze. The last amber bleed of sunset had already surrendered to the moon by the time his palms pressed flat against both doors and pushed them inward.
Empty courtyard. Empty corridors visible through the archways.
Maids gone after sundown — expected. His eyes moved across the swept stone tiles, the dormant lanterns, the potted plants flanking the inner gate. But guards?
His hands returned behind his back.
Interesting.
He walked deeper in.
The bushes along the estate wall trembled.
Not the wind.
Two shapes exploded from the greenery — small, fast, blades catching the moonlight. Steel knives, gripped tight in young hands. They hit him in a cross pattern, left and right simultaneously, the kind of coordination that suggested practice. The blades found flesh. Blood spattered the pale stone.
A boy and a girl. Neither older than six or seven.
The boy grinned. "Ning — well done."
The girl pulled her knife free from the fallen shape, one boot planted against it for leverage, grimacing slightly at the resistance. "You too, big brother Kai."
She stepped back, turning to admire their work —
"What a cheap trick."
The voice arrived from *behind* the direction they were facing. Low. Unhurried. Carrying the particular weight of someone who found the situation less dangerous than tedious.
"Punks."
Both children froze.
They turned.
Nothing.
"Up here. Idiots."
Their eyes lifted.
Wuming stood atop the curved roof of the blue-tiled pavilion above them — one foot slightly forward, hands still behind his back, hair swept back by the height's draft. His golden eyes caught the moonlight and held it, burning faintly in the dark like something that didn't entirely belong to the human register of expression.
Ning took a step backward without meaning to.
"He's..." she whispered. "Terrifying."
Kai's jaw worked silently for a moment. "...Is that what his face looks like?"
They had wanted to kill a man whose face they had never even seen. The irony might have been poetic if it weren't so profoundly, completely stupid.
Wuming's gaze moved between them once — a brief assessment, the way a man looks at something he has already decided about — and then he stepped off the roof.
He didn't fall. He descended. Unhurried, almost weightless, the drop carrying him downward in a long arc that closed the distance between them with horrible patience. The children stumbled backward. Ning's voice cracked —
"Gege—"
"Oh shit—"
He was within arm's reach before they could turn.
Two hands shot forward. Each caught a fistful of collar.
Kai left the ground.
Wuming pivoted, swinging the boy into a full rotation through the air — "I'm certain," he said pleasantly, "this was your pathetic idea" — and as Kai spun at the apex of the arc, Wuming's foot drove straight into his stomach with the clinical precision of a man who had done this to people considerably larger.
The impact detonated through the courtyard.
Kai's face collapsed into something beyond pain — a brief, total erasure of all expression — and then he was *moving*, horizontal, crossing the courtyard in a straight line before the wall opposite caught him and kept him.
The silence that followed lasted exactly one breath.
"Don't hurt my brother—" Ning's voice shook, but she held her ground. Barely.
Wuming looked at her.
"You know," he said, his tone conversational, almost reflective, "I have a principle. I never hit a woman. Never touch one with my hands." He paused. "Never raise my hand at one. It's simply not done."
He caught her by the back of her collar, swung her up —
His foot connected with the side of her face.
"I said *hand.*" He watched her trajectory with mild interest. "I'm a gentleman, after all."
She hit the wall beside her brother in a spray of coughed blood. Both children were embedded in the stonework, knives lying useless and bloody on the ground between them, the entire assault reduced in the span of thirty seconds to this — two small, broken shapes slumped against cracked masonry, and the man they'd tried to kill standing in the middle of the courtyard, hands returned behind his back, hair settling.
Wuming looked at them for a moment.
"How insolent," he said.
He turned toward the inner estate.
"Try something better next time. Punks."
The courtyard had finally fallen silent.
Only the distant rustling of trees and the faint hum of night insects remained beneath the pale moonlight spreading across the inner estate.
Wuming stepped past the cracked courtyard walls without another glance toward the two children behind him. His black robes shifted softly around his smaller frame while his silver-white hair drifted behind him in loose strands touched by moonlight.
Unlike the outer estate—
The inner grounds were alive.
A few maids still moved quietly between corridors carrying trays and folded fabrics. Guards stood stationed near the inner halls with disciplined expressions, spears upright beneath the lantern glow.
Wuming's golden eyes narrowed slightly.
So there are guards.
Then where were the guards at the main gate?
Interesting.
Very interesting.
His hands rested behind his back again as he walked deeper inside.
That was when he noticed them.
Three children stood outside the main pavilion beneath the long red pillars illuminated by hanging lanterns.
A boy.
Two girls.
The boy stood calmly between them, both girls holding onto his sleeves lightly as they waited near the entrance.
Wuming slowed.
The boy looked familiar.
Not directly.
But enough.
The sharpness in the eyes.
The shape of the brows.
The composed posture.
Katsuro.
A diluted resemblance.
So this is Xuan Ming.
Beside him stood two girls around five years old.
Both soft-faced and beautiful in a way that immediately reminded Wuming of Fang Meihua. One looked more timid, quietly hiding behind Ming's sleeve. The other stared openly at the world around her with bright curious eyes.
Then—
The curious girl looked toward him.
Her eyes widened instantly.
Without hesitation, she released Ming's hand and hurried toward Wuming with tiny hurried footsteps.
Wuming stopped.
Xuan Ming watched silently from behind.
Neither child spoke immediately.
Yet the moment their eyes met—
Recognition appeared.
Not affection.
Not warmth.
Recognition.
As if both instinctively understood the other existed outside normal expectations.
The little girl wasn't paying attention to where she was going and collided lightly against Wuming's robes.
"Ow…"
She stumbled backward slightly before quickly placing both hands over her forehead dramatically.
Then she looked up at him.
"…Are you Brother Wuming?"
Wuming stared down at her silently for a second.
Then he bent slightly and pulled her back upright carefully by the sleeve before releasing her.
No answer.
He simply walked past her.
Or tried to.
The girl followed him immediately.
Wuming eventually stopped near the stairs leading toward the main hall where Xuan Ming and the second girl still stood waiting.
The timid girl instantly moved behind Ming when Wuming approached.
Ming, however, remained calm.
"You look considerably better than before."
His tone carried no mockery.
No hostility either.
Just observation.
Wuming looked at him briefly.
So at least someone here has seen me before.
For a moment, he had assumed none of his step-siblings even knew what he looked like.
"Greetings, Ming."
Xuan Ming smiled faintly.
"It seems you only greet people who show you respect."
Wuming answered immediately.
"It is the right of every living being."
His golden eyes remained steady.
"Those who cannot understand respect are unworthy of being called human."
Ming's expression shifted slightly.
Wuming continued calmly.
"Respect is a two-way street. Humans simply turned it into a privilege instead of basic decency."
His voice remained composed despite his age.
"A lack of boundaries is merely an invitation for disrespect."
Then he looked directly at Ming.
"And even now… did I ask you to respect me?"
Xuan Ming blinked once.
Honestly—
The way this seven-year-old spoke was bizarre.
Not childish.
Not even mature.
It felt ancient.
Like listening to someone who had already lived through too many people.
Before Ming could answer—
"But what is respect between blood?"
The little girl had appeared beside Wuming again somehow.
She tilted her head upward innocently.
"If there's love, then you get everything, right, Brother Wuming?"
For the first time—
Wuming actually looked at her properly.
Then—
A faint smile appeared.
Very small.
Barely noticeable.
"Is that so, Mei-Mei?"
Xuan Mei's entire face brightened instantly hearing him say her name.
She raised both arms toward him dramatically.
Clearly asking to be carried.
Wuming looked at her silently.
Then said,
"I'll carry you only if you tell me what love is."
Ming looked mildly amused.
The timid girl peeked from behind him again.
But Mei answered immediately without hesitation.
"Love is the thing that makes every being weak."
Her voice remained soft and childish.
"But it also makes them capable of doing anything."
Wuming's faint smile deepened slightly.
"A curse and a blessing," she continued proudly, "it can destroy someone without weapons… just words."
Silence followed.
Then Wuming spoke quietly.
"…You truly resemble your mother."
Mei grinned immediately.
"Of course! I'm Mother's daughter!"
Wuming stared at her for another second.
Then slowly—
Almost awkwardly—
He loosened one hand from behind his back and lifted her into his left arm.
Carefully.
As though unfamiliar with holding children.
Mei wrapped both arms around his shoulders comfortably.
Behind them, the timid girl immediately looked jealous.
"Brother Ming… me too."
Ming laughed softly.
"Of course, Hua-Hua."
He picked her up easily.
Meanwhile Mei continued watching Wuming closely from his arm while he observed the pavilion ahead.
Inside, silhouettes moved faintly behind the paper screens.
"Both mothers are inside talking," Mei explained. "We've been waiting for them to come out."
"Can't we simply enter?" Wuming asked.
Ming shook his head.
End of 61