Nine Star Hegemon Body Art (WN)
chapter-1202

Zi Yan had understood at that time the true meaning of a devil star. A devil star was not purely an enemy, but an existence entangled with feelings of love and hatred.

Back in the Eastern Wasteland, Zi Yan had only felt Long Chen to be a confused youth. She hadn’t particularly had that much faith in her devil star matter, but she had been curious, so she had begun secretly watching Long Chen. That was when she had seen Long Chen encounter an assassination trap.

Despite clearly knowing the doll-carrying child had been an assassin, he hadn’t been able to kill her and had rather allowed her poison needle to stab him through the heart.

He had gently rubbed that girl’s head without the slightest resentment. Instead, he had treated her warmly and caringly.

Now, several years had passed. Being focused on the Music Dao, Zi Yan had intentionally hidden these memories, gradually forgetting about her devil star.

But when she once more encountered Long Chen, all those suppressed memories reappeared, as vivid as ever in her mind. The first time she saw Long Chen again, she hadn’t been able to stop her heart from pounding.

Furthermore, she had even felt delighted as if she had been expectantly waiting to see him again. Last night when she had been drinking wine with Xia Youluo, she had heard Xia Youluo’s story about how Long Chen had swindled all this wine. She had actually laughed until she had swayed back and forth, causing the other Illusive Music Immortal Palace’s disciples to be shocked.

Music cultivators had to separate themselves from the seven emotions and six desires. Joy, anger, worry, pensiveness, sorrow, fear, shock, each emotion could disturb a music cultivator’s heart. That was a taboo for music cultivators.

At that time, even Zi Yan had grown afraid. She had forcibly suppressed those emotions. But on the trip to the Wine God Palace with Long Chen, she found that everything she had done was futile. Each glance, each movement from Long Chen affected her heart. No matter how she tried, it was all useless.

Now, Zi Yan understood the true meaning of a devil star. And in front of Long Chen’s questioning, she finally revealed the whole story.

Long Chen looked into Zi Yan’s eyes. They were completely clear, and he felt like he could see all her secrets. Now he finally knew the whole story.

“Sorry, I can’t go with you. I still have many things I need to do.” Long Chen shook his head.

He wasn’t able to do this. He not only had his lovers and hot-blooded brothers, but he also had to find his own biological parents. There was too much on his shoulders.

Tears slowly dripped down Zi Yan’s face like pearls. They slowly fell to the sides of her lips. This was Zi Yan’s first time experiencing the taste of tears.

An indescribable feeling of sorrow and grief filled her. She stared at Long Chen blankly, unable to say a thing.

“Sorry,” apologized Long Chen.

“You don’t need to say sorry. This was all fated. If a day comes that your corpse lies before me, I ask you not to hate me. In the same way, if there comes a day when your saber cuts off my head, please don’t feel grief. I won’t hate you.”

After saying this, Zi Yan’s tears gushed forth. She suddenly held Long Chen and began to bawl. The tear-streaked face of this beauty pained Long Chen’s heart.

“Sorry, Long Chen. I am the Illusive Music Immortal Palace’s successor. I absolutely cannot betray them. So when we meet again, either you die or I die. I won’t show mercy on the battlefield.”

After saying this, Zi Yan left without giving him a chance to say anything. Her scent still remained around him, but she had vanished.

Long Chen stood there, unable to comprehend things for a long time. How did such a contrived plot happen to him? Shouldn’t it only happen in the melodramatic stories of the Grand Han?

Fate? Decided by the heavens? Long Chen had never believed in such nonsense things only used to con others.

But when Zi Yan had completely opened her heart to him, he had seen the karma. That karma involved Zi Yan’s master who had told her that she would encounter a devil star in her life, and that she had to kill him.

“When we meet again, either you die or I die? What kind of bullshit is this?” Long Chen burst into curses. He found it inconceivable that such a melodramatic thing could happen to him. The sudden resentment and blessing had come and gone too quickly. He hadn’t even had a chance to clearly feel it before the heavens suddenly slapped him in the face.

The most infuriating thing to him was that he didn’t doubt Zi Yan’s determination to kill him at all. In the end, Zi Yan was a member of the Illusive Music Immortal Palace, and she was loyal to her own Heavenly Dao inheritance. Well, the main thing was, just how had she decided that he was definitely a fiendish devil?

“Fuck, how did I end up provoking a killing star?!” Long Chen felt like he was going crazy. It couldn’t be that the heavens had decided that since it couldn’t kill him through heavenly tribulation, it decided to arrange such a terrifying opponent for him?

Long Chen sensed extremely terrifying energy within Zi Yan’s body. If Zi Yan had decided to kill him right here and now, he probably wouldn’t have been able to beat her.

But even though Zi Yan wasn’t killing him now, she would quickly break through to the Jade Core realm to become a King. As for Long Chen, he was still stuck at the fourth Heavenstage of Foundation Forging. When he encountered her in the future, she would be even more terrifying.

Zi Yan directly led her people to leave, without even saying goodbye to the Grand Xia’s royalty. Theoretically, that was very rude, but Long Chen knew that Zi Yan’s mental realm was too chaotic right now to care about such things.

After she was gone, Long Chen forcibly calmed the ripples that had appeared in his mind. In any case, there were plenty of people who wanted to kill him. One more didn’t matter.

That very afternoon, he received a list from the Wine God Palace’s disciples. All their wine formulas were written down there.

In total, there were 128. Long Chen realized the Wine God Palace only had 128 true disciples.

Not only did they send the wine formulas, but also the raw materials to create them and equipment for the winemaking process. Each one of them had also sent a large batch of their wine.

Long Chen got to work. In order to show his sincerity, Long Chen searched through his memory to find at least three ways to combine it with medicine, over five ways to refine it, and over ten ways to merge the Pill Dao into it from the beginning for each wine.

This would make it easier for these disciples to comprehend the Heavenly Daos during the winemaking process. They would be able to comprehend the Heavenly Daos from the two angles of both the Wine Dao and the Pill Dao.

In truth, Long Chen was only able to use a couple dozen wines these disciples gave him. The others weren’t useful to him. But Long Chen couldn’t possibly only exploit those few people while ignoring the others. That wasn’t honest.

After all, he was getting a huge advantage. All he gave them was theories, and in the future, he would be able to get as much medicinal wine from the Wine God Palace as he wanted. He had to do this matter perfectly, or he would be too embarrassed to take their wine.

The next day, when Long Chen brought the new formulas he had made to the Wine God Palace, all the disciples were shaken. The Wine God Palace went into complete seclusion, saying that they were no longer accepting any visitors. They had begun researching the formulas Long Chen had given them.

They were quickly infatuated with this way of merging the Pill Dao with the Wine Dao. They found that this new winemaking process allowed their realms to rapidly advance.

Long Chen’s methods immediately won the High Priest’s trust. He told Long Chen that the medicinal wines he needed would be supplied limitlessly by the Wine God Palace.

As for Long Chen, he was truly brazen. He even gave the High Priest dozens of medicinal formulas for his own wine. Although the High Priest’s wine was basically flawless, which person who had reached the pinnacle didn’t want to continue taking another step forward? Long Chen wrote out top tier medicinal formulas he had in his Pill Sovereign memories in accordance with the particularities of the High Priest’s wine.

Although it was very likely that none of these medicinal formulas would work out in the end, testing their luck was good too. What if it really did work?

Furthermore, the High Priest was old and bored. He wouldn’t mind researching this.

Due to the Wine God Palace becoming busy with Long Chen’s matter, Han Wenjun was unable to wait any longer. He had been waiting for the news from the Wine God Palace this entire time, because the High Priest had told him that he would think about it.

But after seven days of constantly inquiring about the state of things, even the welcoming disciple at the gates was irritated. He sent a message higher up, and he got a direct reply: the Wine God Palace had no intention of opening a branch within the next ten years. They could ask again after ten years.

They had pushed him off for ten years in one go. Han Wenjun’s expression became unsightly.

He had had two goals in coming here. One was to seduce Xia Youluo in hopes of forming a deep relationship with her. Originally, this matter was supposed to be a cinch, but Long Chen had ruined things.

Now, although Xia Youluo didn’t hate Han Wenjun, he could no longer sense that intense passion from back then.

Although Han Wenjun invited Xia Youluo to go out to play and Xia Youluo always agreed, she would bring along the other princesses as well, making it so he couldn’t use his melodramatic pick-up arts.

As for his second goal in coming here, that was to form a good relationship with the Wine God Palace, using his wine arts to win their favor and invite them to his Grand Han in order to spread the culture of wine. If the Wine God Palace joined the Grand Han, the entire nation would grow.

This was also a good thing to the Wine God Palace, but it had also been stopped by Long Chen. How could Han Wenjun possibly wait ten years?

In the end, the next day after the Wine God Palace gave him this reply, Han Wenjun and Li Wanji chose to return to the Grand Han. Long Chen was in charge of sending them to the gates, completely finishing his duty of receiving them.

“Pavilion master, both my goals were ruined. What about your side?” Within the carriage, Han Wenjun was facing Xuan Jizi, who had been missing this entire time.

“I’ve handled everything on my end,” said Xuan Jizi.

“Good. This humiliation the Grand Xia gave me, I’ll make them pay the price within the Four Nations Ancient Remnant.” Killing intent burned in Han Wenjun’s eyes.

…

After finishing off his duty of receiving the Grand Han’s delegation, Long Chen spent the majority of his time in the Wine God Palace. The disciples needed guidance during the winemaking process.

Although Long Chen knew nothing about winemaking, when it came to refining pills, he could be rated as unmatched beneath the heavens. Living in the Wine God Palace was convenient, and he would occasionally go drinking with Tu Qianshang. These days were very comfortable.

On this day, Xia Youluo and Xia Yunchong came to the Wine God Palace. They saw Long Chen and Tu Qianshang bare-chested, covered in sweat, both of their eyes red.

“Men in the country wander! Who doesn’t carry a blade? With one slash I’ll kill you, with three slashes I’ll kill you… Hahaha, you’ve lost, drink!” Long Chen laughed crazily.

Xia Yunchong was speechless. Long Chen really was a monster. Looking at the fatty’s expression refusing to admit defeat, Xia Yunchong truly doubted whether he really was a legendary figure.

He braced himself and announced, “Long Chen, that’s about enough. The Four Nations Ancient Remnant will open tomorrow, so prepare yourself. We’re moving out.”