After Escaping From Death, He Went Even Crazier By Criticizing Black Lotus Chapter 35

Xiao Jianming followed closely behind him, like a…

Su Huan’s expression showed no sign of pain; he looked merely to be sleeping peacefully, completely unresponsive to the outside world.

Xiao Jianming wanted to reach out and touch him, but Su Chao blocked him.

“If not for Huan’er insisting on protecting you, I would never let you off. But what about you? How have you treated him? You’ve hurt him again and again!”

“…You don’t love him at all.”

Su Chao suppressed his anger, took a deep breath, and said, “When we return, I will inform Master of everything and ask him to dissolve the Spirit Contract between you two.”

“Fellow Daoist Xiao, please let him go.”

Xiao Jianming suddenly looked up, his pupils contracting sharply, a flash of pain crossing his face.

A torrent of emotions abruptly surged in his heart.

How dare they say he didn’t love him? He had searched for so long to find Brother Buhuan.

He would never let go.

He had already lost his mother; must he lose Brother Buhuan too?

Absolutely not.

The thoughts in Xiao Jianming’s mind twisted into a painful knot.

Gradually, desire crept over his clear rationality, his eyes darkening, a rich, inky black silently and rapidly spreading to cover his entire eyeballs.

…It cannot be.

Xiao Jianming’s nearly crushed heart suddenly gave a powerful thump, followed by a booming drumbeat pounding heavily in his ears—

No one could separate them!

Xiao Jianming slowly raised his head.

Su Chao shielded the young man in his arms. “What are you doing? I won’t hand him over to you again…!”

Xiao Jianming suddenly unleashed a sword strike, his figure vanishing from the spot.

Ning Zhou rushed to intercept, but unexpectedly, Xiao Jianming reappeared directly in front of Su Chao, striking out with a palm and snatching the person away.

Ning Zhou was too late to protect him, and Su Chao, caught off guard, was struck and fell to the ground. Sensing the change in Xiao Jianming’s aura, he said in disbelief, “You dared to use the Garan Life Burning Secret Art to forcibly raise your cultivation level? This is cutting off your path to ascension! Are you insane?!”

Xiao Jianming remained silent and unleashed another sword strike.

Ning Zhou flew forward, wielding his sword to neutralize the attack, but in the next second, he saw Xiao Jianming carrying Su Huan and speeding away.

He couldn’t help but curse, “…Lunatic!”

…

When Su Huan regained consciousness, he found himself lying in the arms of the black lotus, his hand still clutching several spirit herbs.

The two of them were resting together in a dark cave, their posture intimate.

The pitch-black cave was punctuated by the sound of dripping water, making it cold and damp, with an indescribable fishy stench.

Xiao Jianming held him tightly, his eyes closed, his cheek resting against Su Huan’s head, his breathing steady.

Su Huan looked down and saw that the spirit herbs in his hand were brimming with spiritual energy. Golden veins ran through the leaves, continuously emitting a spiritual aura identical to his own, as if they shared the same origin. This characteristic—it was Soul Nurturing Grass.

Xiao Jianming had actually managed to gather the Soul Nurturing Grass for him?

Su Huan had absolutely no memory of it.

He couldn’t help but feel utterly bewildered. What had happened?

After putting the spirit herbs into his storage pouch, Su Huan extended his divine sense around and found that the cave walls were narrow, barely accommodating two people.

At the same time, he noticed that the spiritual power they had both contained was now dispersed throughout the cave. The golden and blue spiritual energies were intertwined, filling the entire space and feeling quite dense.

He couldn’t help but gasp.

Had he and the black lotus performed dual cultivation again?

Just as he was about to move, the iron arm around his waist tightened further. Su Huan winced in pain and tried to wake the human “cushion” beneath him, whispering, “Wake up…”

Xiao Jianming suddenly opened his eyes.

The next second, Su Huan froze.

A cultivator’s strength is not limited by darkness; they can see clearly even at night.

And what Su Huan saw was that in the silent darkness, Xiao Jianming’s exposed eyes were entirely saturated with black ink, without a trace of white, staring fixedly at him.

His breath hitched. “Xiao, Junior Brother Xiao?”

There was no response.

A sense of dread crept into Su Huan’s heart.

Was the person before him truly the black lotus?

At that moment, the other party spoke:

“Brother Buhuan…”

The completely black pupils stared at him. It was eerie, but undeniably the black lotus.

Su Huan’s heart leaped up, then slowly settled down.

“…I’m here.”

As soon as he spoke, the force around his waist pulled him even tighter.

Su Huan inhaled sharply, gritting his teeth to endure the pain, and negotiated, “How about you loosen your grip first?”

The arm around his waist paused. After a moment, it obediently loosened its hold.

Su Huan immediately slipped away to the side, letting out a sigh of relief.

He asked, “What exactly happened? Where did my brother and the others go?”

Xiao Jianming seemed not to understand, tilting his head, then trying to move closer. “Brother Buhuan…”

Su Huan: “…”

No matter how he asked, the only response was those four words, as if he were an idiot.

After repeated attempts, Su Huan had to admit that the black lotus had truly become simple-minded.

He gave up trying to get answers from him and began to examine the cave they were in.

Although he could hear dripping water, the two of them were lying on a raised platform, cushioned by dry grass. It was dry and clean, a decent temporary resting place in the wilderness.

However, Su Huan unexpectedly found a clump of animal fur in a corner of the stone wall.

Combining this with the strange fishy stench in the air, he looked at Xiao Jianming with a complicated expression.

Had this guy forcibly occupied a demonic beast’s lair?

Su Huan didn’t dare to dwell on the thought.

“Brother Buhuan…”

Xiao Jianming had approached him without him noticing, and held out his palm.

Looking down, as if to confirm his suspicion, a demonic core lay quietly in the rough palm.

Su Huan was speechless for a moment.

Seeing that he didn’t take it, Xiao Jianming pushed it forward again, refusing to put it down until he accepted it.

Su Huan had no choice but to take it.

When they left the cave, Xiao Jianming followed closely behind him, like a little shadow.

He didn’t know how long they had slept. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but as soon as they reached the cave entrance, Su Huan felt his stomach aching from hunger, and his limbs were weak.

“Grumble—”

His stomach let out a loud rumble.

Before Su Huan could react, Xiao Jianming flashed away, and when he reappeared, he was holding a pile of red berries, which he presented to Su Huan.

Su Huan carefully examined them: red skin with white spots, highly poisonous. He shook his head. “These can’t be eaten.”

However, Xiao Jianming was now simple-minded. Seeing that Su Huan wouldn’t eat, he actually grabbed a handful and stuffed them into his own mouth, then offered them to Su Huan, signaling him to eat.

“Hey, hey, hey, these berries are poisonous, don’t eat them!” Su Huan frantically urged him to spit out the berries, sweating with anxiety.

He only relaxed once he confirmed that Xiao Jianming hadn’t swallowed any.

Xiao Jianming looked at him with his black pupils. Although his expression hadn’t changed, Su Huan felt as if he sensed a hint of grievance.

“…”

Su Huan was afraid he would try to eat the red berries again, so he half-coaxed, half-lured him to a small river, intending to catch fish.

He pointed to the shimmering river surface and said, “Do you still remember how to use spiritual power? Concentrate an ice spike, stab it in, and then do this and that…”

Xiao Jianming blinked his black pupils at him, clearly not understanding.

Su Huan sighed in defeat and decided to try wading into the water himself.

The moment his foot touched the water, Xiao Jianming suddenly moved.

Crack—

The entire river was frozen solid.

Xiao Jianming turned to look at him, his black eyes sparkling, seemingly seeking praise.

Su Huan: “…That’s great.”

After laboriously smashing through the ice, Su Huan managed to pull out two fish, only to realize they weren’t the bright white spirit fish found in the secret realm, but two ordinary grass carp.

Su Huan then realized they were no longer in the Moon Ember Secret Realm, and he felt a little disappointed.

Xiao Jianming looked at the fish in his hand, tilted his head, picked him up, and set him down on the bank.

Su Huan was stunned.

Then he saw a scorching flame suddenly erupt from Xiao Jianming’s fingertip and land on the ice, instantly sweeping across the entire small river.

One of the characteristics of a Heavenly Spirit Root is the ability to easily use spiritual power of all attributes, with talent no weaker than a single-attribute spirit root.

Xiao Jianming, however, had always lived under the sea in his youth, so he was particularly close to water-attribute spiritual power and habitually used water-attribute techniques.

This was the first time Su Huan had seen him use a technique other than water-based ones, and its power was indeed no weaker than that of a single-attribute talent.

In just a breath, the ice in the river melted into water, which visibly began to boil.

Then, Su Huan was nearly buried under a mountain of cooked fish, shrimp, crabs, and clams.

A vein throbbed on his forehead—

“Xiao! Jian! Ming!”

Xiao Jianming shrank his neck, slowly tugged at Su Huan’s sleeve, and mumbled, “Brother Buhuan…”

Su Huan instantly deflated.

Forget it. Why argue with an idiot?

*

After eating their fill, Xiao Jianming pulled Su Huan back to the cave, setting up eighteen layers of barriers at the entrance, hiding them completely.

Xiao Jianming, treating him like a hidden treasure, pulled him back to the deepest part of the cave. Once they were fully immersed in the darkness, Su Huan suddenly sensed a relaxed, peaceful emotion that was not his own emanating from the Spirit Contract deep within his soul.

The sudden emergence of this unfamiliar emotion startled Su Huan and further solidified his pre-sleep idea of dissolving the contract.

He turned to look at the now simple-minded black lotus, and a good idea suddenly popped into his mind.

With a shift in his eyes, he let out a sudden sigh of distress. Xiao Jianming’s attention was immediately captured.

Su Huan sighed again. Xiao Jianming grabbed his sleeve, looking lost. “Brother Buhuan…”

Su Huan cleared his throat and said mournfully, “Alas, a Spirit Contract suddenly appeared in my soul, making my head hurt so much, and my body hurts, everywhere hurts…”

Su Huan took his hand, looking at him earnestly. “Good Junior Brother, you know how to get rid of it, right?”

Unexpectedly, Xiao Jianming seemed to understand his meaning this time. His body stiffened like stone, and tears even burst from his eyes. He shook his head desperately. “No separate… no separate…”

Immediately after, as if suffering severe head pain, he covered his head and crouched down.

Su Huan was startled and quickly fed him various healing elixirs, but they were useless.

Xiao Jianming’s black eyes were filled with tears. He abruptly crashed into Su Huan’s arms, burying his head and sobbing softly, “Don’t separate…”

Su Huan was momentarily at a loss, so he just let him hold him.

After a moment of hesitation, he tried patting his back lightly. “It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, okay…”

After finally managing to soothe him, Su Huan wiped away a bead of sweat.

Well, it looked like he had to rely on himself.

He had a cheat ability; even without the black lotus, he should be able to dissolve it… right?

Thinking this, Su Huan mobilized the spiritual energy in his body, enduring the tearing pain in his Dantian, and gathered the spiritual energy in his eyes.

He then extended his divine sense toward the Spirit Contract deep within his soul.

At a glance, the Spirit Contract looked like a golden light surrounding his soul, but upon closer inspection, he could see it was formed by individual characters, all ancient, obscure, and unfamiliar script.

With the aid of his cheat ability, Su Huan saw a bright line of large text on the Spirit Contract—

Highest-level Dao Companion Contract, Indissolvable.

Su Huan: “?!”

Although the black lotus had spoken the truth, this was not quite what he had imagined.

After checking three times, Su Huan was completely certain: this was not the forbidden contract he had envisioned, but a genuine, highest-level Dao Companion Contract in the cultivation world.

So, the black lotus hadn’t treated him as a forbidden possession, but as a legitimate Dao Companion?

Just then, the black lotus, who had been hiding in his arms, raised his head. His black eyes were teary and hazy as he looked at Su Huan, letting out a painful whimper. “Brother Buhuan…”

Su Huan’s conscience suddenly hit him with ten thousand points of guilt.