The Hero Who Became a Monster Girl Will Never Fall to Evil

“All taken care of...”

In the chaotic forest, vast swaths of trees had been snapped clean in half. The ground was riddled with trenches and craters, and the stench of scorched earth and blood lingered without fading. It was nothing less than a hellscape ravaged by war.

Counting the one they ran into in the cave earlier, and Xubing as the leader, there had been a total of fourteen people sent this time to intercept them.

Fourteen—none survived.

Including the leader, eight died by Vieya’s hand. The remaining six were killed by Aislin and Tiya. Frankly speaking, when it came to combat experience alone, even the two of them together couldn’t compare to Vieya—and once you added the unfailing Holy Sword into the mix, the gap only widened.

Only...

Vieya’s gaze tightened slightly as she studied the Makko Upper River Scroll floating in midair. It seemed the vague sense of foreboding she’d felt on Xubing earlier, that faint hint of danger, had all come from this painting.

What exactly was this thing?

A scroll capable of taking living beings in and imprisoning them—it reminded Vieya of the Purple-Gold Gourd used by the Silver-Horned Demon King in Journey to the West: call someone by name, and if they answered, they’d be sucked into the gourd and melted into pus and blood.

But just now, the one facing the scroll’s terrifying suction hadn’t been Vieya—it had been some mirage demon whose name and lineage no one even knew.

“So it can absorb things like this too... definitely a treasure. What a pity. We could’ve left a few alive for interrogation, but that demon grabbed them all and refined them into blood energy.”

Vieya muttered to herself. ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ Behind her, a rather disheveled Aislin and Tiya closed in, one on each side.

They had naturally noticed the sudden twist in the battle as well, but everything had happened far too fast—like lightning flashing and sparks flying—on top of the blood mist blotting out their vision.

They’d just heard Xubing’s smug, triumphant laughter and thought something terrible had happened to Vieya, only for the next instant to see Xubing beheaded by a single strike, his blood spraying across the sky.

“So this is the weapon that bad guy used? Creating attacks we couldn’t even see... that’s seriously sinister,” Aislin said, her expression odd. This was the first time she’d encountered something like this. “Hard to believe it came from a painting of little bridges and flowing streams.”

“Not quite.” Vieya shook her head and explained softly. “The attacks hitting you should’ve been the divine ability mastered by the ox-demon-masked man. Once he died, the ability automatically lifted. This scroll itself doesn’t have offensive power—only absorption and sealing effects...

“...Earlier, I used a substitute to avoid being absorbed and sealed by the scroll, then killed him with one strike once he relaxed his guard. But after he died, the scroll’s sealing effect didn’t disappear. Look...”

Following her voice, Aislin looked over to see a small white pearl rolling around frantically inside the scroll’s world. It looked anxious, and its colors were steadily fading, starting to blend into the gray-white of the painted realm.

It didn’t look good.

“Then... maybe after we get back, we could ask the Queen?” Aislin suggested.

“Mmm...”

Vieya was just about to nod and put the scroll away when, all of a sudden, fierce winds howled through the sky. A massive, fire-red bird with a beautiful trailing tail hovered above them, beating its wings and blotting out the clouds. Its enormous shadow, dozens of meters wide, loomed overhead.

The fire-red bird, Phoenix, spoke. “Young ones, I’ve already dealt with what lay ahead. I also saw the battle you ran into—well done. Next, you should return first... no, wait.”

She paused abruptly. Her gaze fell on the headless corpse on the ground, and her previously pleased voice grew solemn.

“This is Life Substitution. He used Life Substitution. I swear by the name of the Undying Bird— that vile, shadowy vermin is not dead yet! His true Life-Substitution body must be nearby!”

“Life Substitution?” Vieya froze.

At that very moment, beneath a stretch of grassland a hundred li away. Underground had been completely hollowed out; in a dim space like a cellar, a crisp crack rang out—the sound of a stone statue splitting apart.

Whoosh!

A dim yellow lamp flared to life, illuminating the cramped space. The neatly seated stone statues ahead split open, and in the next instant, Xubing crawled out.

The moment he landed, he hurriedly scanned his surroundings. Only after confirming that the terrifying white slime girl was nowhere in sight did he finally let out a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“What a terrifying opponent... even with information so wildly uneven, she still managed to screw me over.”

Thankfully, his cultivation was deep, and his mastery of the Life Substitution divine ability was profound. The downside was its limited activation range—but he had hidden many stone puppets across the world, and before battles he would also set up puppets in advance to leave himself an escape route.

Relying on this move, he had escaped death more than once. Lie low, grow stronger, then come back for revenge.

A gentleman’s revenge can wait ten years.

Xubing rose from the pile of shattered stone statues. This place couldn’t be stayed in any longer—he had to leave at once.

Thinking that, he found a makeup case in the underground chamber and transformed himself from a broad-backed, burly man into a hunched, frail old granny. He put on a set of patched, tattered clothes, took up a walking stick, and left through a prearranged hidden passage.

Half a quarter-hour later.

The fire-red bird descended from the sky with the three of them on its back. Riding atop the bird, Tiya stuffed a tuft of hair she’d plucked from a corpse into a dried pufferfish, held it in her hands, shook it, and began chanting,

“Spirits and demons, show the way! Spirits and demons, show the way!”

What in the world was this? Just as Aislin looked at the slime with a face full of confusion and doubt, the pufferfish in Tiya’s hands actually lit up with a green glow, floated into the air, and pointed out a direction!

The force was so strong it nearly tore free from Tiya’s palm—clear signs of a spell cast with flying colors.

Meanwhile, Vieya stood proudly with her hands on her hips, eyebrows arched. Hero-certified—quality guaranteed.

“Below! The enemy is beneath the grassland!” Tiya said.

Rumble!

With a single claw strike, the fire-red bird tore open the turf, exposing the hidden chamber below, along with stone statues shattered all over the ground and a small, already-used teleportation array.

“He didn’t get far!” Tiya shook the pufferfish and looked toward Aydin City. “The teleportation array’s destination is Aydin!”

Vieya nodded and gestured for the fire-red bird to follow Tiya’s lead.

“Hold tight, youngsters. I’m speeding up,” Phoenix said briskly. With a direction set, she immediately beat her wings, dragging blazing feathers through the clouds and streaking across the sky like a crimson meteor.

Aydin City.

Xubing, leaning on his cane, blended into the crowd and headed straight for the “Tianyuan” outpost set up within the city.

He’d already seen that the First Prince’s outpost had been roasted into charcoal. Damn it—what a bunch of useless trash.

Idiots for teammates!

They’d not only left him severely wounded, but also cost him all his treasured artifacts. Even if he made it back alive this time, life wouldn’t be easy.

Soon, Xubing arrived at the entrance of a tile shop. After hesitating for a moment, he still went inside.

“Where’re you from?” The doorman glanced at the old woman in front of him and asked without lifting his head.

“Nine yuan down the side, three floating bridges, two checkpoints,” Xubing replied. It was the contact phrase—plainly speaking, organizational cant.

The doorman raised his head and continued, “What for?”

“Took a tumble,” Xubing said. “Came to get stamped.”

“Go in.” The doorman lifted his hand and waved him through.

In the tile shop’s basement, not a single lamp was lit, yet one could feel gazes everywhere in the darkness.

“What happened?”

Someone asked from the dark. The voice was gentle and melodious, like that of a shy young woman.

“...”

Xubing fell silent for a moment, his mind racing.

How was he supposed to answer this? Say that he’d led people with intelligence and treasures to ambush the Sword Master, failed to even hurt a single hair on her head, and got sent straight back to the respawn point? Was that a joke?

Besides, the Nine Dice Lords each acted independently. If the one on the other side—whose seat ranked just a bit higher than his—found out that he’d not only provoked a formidable enemy, but also deliberately dragged that enemy toward her nest...

That would really be the end of him.

“Hm?”

The voice in the darkness sharpened. A pair of fox-like, alluring eyes slowly appeared, crimson and chilling to behold.

Xubing felt a wave of cold wash over him, but his thoughts turned quickly. In the next instant, his voice broke into sobs, laden with grief.

“Waaah! Dice Lord Huangliang! I’ve suffered so badly! I was just doing a commission in the Elven Forest when that vicious Holy Sword Sword Master came knocking! Not only did she steal my treasures and money—she, she even threatened that sooner or later she’d hunt down every single Dice Lord and slaughter them one by one! You have to stand up for us low-ranking Dice Lords!”

“What?”

As soon as Xubing finished speaking, the voice in the darkness turned stern—but then the gaze grew unfocused, as if she were asking him, and also asking herself,

“What day is it today? What year, what month, what date?”

Hearing that question, Xubing froze as well. He looked up into the darkness, disbelief coloring his tone.

“Dice Lord Huangliang... you’re not still trapped in a dream and haven’t woken up, are you?”