Chapter 775: Negotiation Without Words
"Now, no one will come to disturb us anymore."
After the Demon Lord said this, he began to cough.
His cough echoed like a waterfall reverberating through a deep valley—profound and distant—and the landscape painted on his face slightly warped with each sound.
Chen Changsheng looked at him and said, "Your injuries are much worse than they were in the Cold Mountain."
Countless years ago, the Demon Lord had lost to Zhou Dufu by a single move, suffering a severe wound that had never fully healed. That year, he had infiltrated the Cold Mountain precisely to drink Chen Changsheng's blood to treat his injury. Inside the Cold Mountain, he had confronted the Heavenly Mechanism Elder, depleting a great deal of his spiritual power. On his way back to Snow Old City, he had encountered the White Emperor on the snowy plains, who had been waiting in stillness for a long time.
That earth-shattering battle had left both the Demon Lord and the White Emperor gravely wounded, which indirectly led to the rebellion two years ago.
Afterward, he was struck down into the abyss by the Black Robe and the Demon General working together. Though Nan Ke had rescued him at great risk, his injuries had worsened.
For a thousand years, he had always been the Demon Lord. In truth, for a thousand years, he had also always been a wounded man—or rather, an invalid.
Now, his strength was barely a fifth of his prime. Earlier, when he flicked his sleeve to defeat Hai Di, it had seemed effortless, but if it had been in the past, why would he have needed to lift a hand? The crux of the matter was that his injuries were now so severe that he could die at any moment. That was why he was so eager to find Chen Changsheng… and devour him.
The Demon Lord said calmly, "Even if my injuries were worse, there are still few opponents for me in this world."
Chen Changsheng knew this was true. Looking at the sword sheath, he said, "But now, you have no way to threaten me anymore."
An Hua and that lieutenant had already been sent into the Zhou Garden by him. Even if he died right now, the Demon Lord would have no way to kill them.
This fact allowed him to temporarily set aside his worries about Zhi Zhi's safety, and his heart grew calmer.
Tonight, the Demon race had already lost a powerful figure like Hai Di. As long as he burned his own flesh and blood completely into green smoke before he died, then the Demon Lord would surely perish as well.
He was the Pope, but he was still extremely far from the sacred domain. By this calculation, it was a bargain—at least for the human race.
The landscape on the Demon Lord's face suddenly turned icy, as if it had shifted from watercolor to ink wash. "You want to kill yourself?"
Chen Changsheng looked at a terrified ant crawling out of a hole in the charred ground about three feet in front of his right hand and said, "That is the only option."
The Demon Lord pointed at the string of stone beads on his wrist and said, "You have other choices."
Chen Changsheng knew what he was referring to and shook his head.
At the start of the battle, he had considered using the Zhou Garden or the Green Leaf World to take temporary refuge, but he had now abandoned that idea.
First, it would be too easy for the Demon Lord to trace the traces of spatial traversal and follow him in.
This risk might not be great for others, but he was facing the Demon Lord. Many years ago, the Demon Lord had already entered the Zhou Garden and taken a Heavenly Book Stele—likely the broken stele Hai Di had just used, which had now reverted to the small stone seal hanging at the Demon Lord's waist.
Second, he had confirmed back in the Cold Mountain that, at such close range, attempting spatial traversal in front of the Demon Lord was extremely difficult.
Finally, Chen Changsheng was unwilling to take risks.
Even if there was only a slight chance of being captured alive by the Demon Lord, he could not accept it.
—There could only be negotiation. Of course, the foundation of negotiation lay in his genuine resolve to die, and he had to make the Demon Lord clearly feel that resolve.
Thus, he could not entertain even the slightest thought of using the Zhou Garden for refuge.
The Demon Lord said, "I won't let you die."
Chen Changsheng replied, "I have studied the Daoist canon since childhood and cultivated the Way for several years. It has been arduous, but at least I can now be certain that, though I do not know how I came, I know how to go."
The Demon Lord said, "Even if, after you die, I might kill many people to vent my anger?"
Chen Changsheng said, "I have said before that I never had the delusion of saving all living beings. I only care about every person I can see."
"Is that so? Then it seems you have forgotten something."
The night wind howled violently. A stretcher drifted out from the ruins by the lake, deftly weaving through the dense forest of thousands of swords forming a grim sword formation, and landed at the Demon Lord's feet. The young formation master on the stretcher was still unconscious, a faint greenish hue showing beneath his dark skin, as if he might die at any moment.
"This is a real, specific person you can see." The Demon Lord did not even glance at the stretcher, fixing his gaze on Chen Changsheng's eyes.
As he spoke, the darkness on his face deepened, yet the landscape on it gained a bit more color instead.
Chen Changsheng felt somewhat helpless.
He had thought this negotiation would be like what Tang Thirty-Six had once described—each side proposing terms and then seeing how things went.
He hadn't expected the other party to lay out their bottom line right from the start for him to see.
He truly was not good at negotiating, let alone handling such a complex problem while under threat.
Fortunately, this complex problem was a multiple-choice question, and he could use the process of elimination to solve it.
This question had four options.
He could not stand by and watch the injured man on the stretcher be killed by the Demon Lord—possibly tortured in the cruelest way—because he could not bear it.
Nor could he simply drop his sword and surrender, turning himself into a pill for the Demon Lord to consume.
That left only two choices.
Since he had not yet reached the final dead end, the option of suicide by burning his blood could be postponed. That left only one last method.
Draw his sword.
This was the activity that took place in his mind in a very short time. He used the simplest method to resolve this complex problem.
Draw his sword, fight, and then die. It was simple—far better than being tormented by indecision, feeling each day like a year.
He threw the short sword in his hand.
The sword was named Stainless, and it was truly stainless—absolutely smooth, absolutely sharp. Its blade could reflect everything.
The shredded frost and snow in the lake garden, the drifting flames everywhere, and the slightly distorted stars.
A flash of light tore through the night sky, heading straight for the Demon Lord.
Thousands of famous swords followed, like a dragon.
Watching this scene, Nan Ke's pupils contracted slightly. She naturally recalled the battle in the Zhou Garden back then.
At that time, she had merged her soul pivot with the Golden-Winged Roc's body, her realm comparable to the sacred domain, yet she had still suffered a crushing defeat beneath this sword dragon.
Now, Chen Changsheng was certainly much stronger than he had been back then, but circumstances had changed. This sword dragon was definitely not as powerful as it had been then. Still, she was somewhat worried—because her father had never truly recovered from his old injuries, and also because this sword dragon was clearly different from the one in the Zhou Garden.
Looking closely, one could see that the thousands of swords were all trembling slightly, poised but not yet unleashed.
This "poised but not unleashed" referred not to the momentum of the swords but to the sword techniques themselves.
The reason the thousands of swords trembled, giving a sense of being held back, was that Chen Changsheng had not yet truly struck.
He had assigned a corresponding sword technique to each sword in the night sky, and they were still in their starting stance.
When the thousands of swords simultaneously executed their own sword techniques, what kind of spectacle would that be?