After Transmigrating To The Villain’s Lowest Point - Chapter 3

Lian Xingsong was a famously sickly invalid.

Even the Manor Lord of Yuning Manor, the number one medicine sect in the Three Realms and the person most skilled in medicine, had been unable to completely cure His Third Highness’s congenital deficiency. He could only be sustained with countless spiritual medicines, and the cost was enormous.

Even after falling out with Hongpan and Taifu Dao Sect, Tao Xiao had never let His Highness suffer any grievance. In order to buy medicine for His Highness, he had nearly sold himself.

Tao Xiao carried the brewed medicine into the bedroom. His Highness was currently trying to pinch the air with his bare hands. Seeing him come in, he immediately withdrew his hand and pretended to lean elegantly against the soft pillows like a beautiful flower.

“Your Highness, it’s time to drink your medicine.”

Lian Xuehe took the bowl and drank a spoonful.

The medicinal soup was comparable to chewing raw gallbladder, and it was mixed with a strong, foul, fishy stench. Lian Xuehe felt as if he had just drunk a mouthful of thousand-year-old zombie blood and nearly let out an “ao” as he mutated on the spot.

This person cared far too much about face. Such an outrageously bitter medicine, offensive to both gods and men, merely made him pause slightly.

Only 024 saw a 【HP-1】 flash over his head after that one sip.

…The medicine was so disgusting that it had begun attacking what little remained of Lian Xuehe’s HP bar, yet he was still pretending.

Without changing expression, Lian Xuehe casually asked, “What medicine is this?”

Tao Xiao said, “Medicine brewed from the medicinal human’s blood. Does Your Highness not drink it every day?”

Lian Xuehe’s hand paused as he stirred the medicine with the spoon.

Yin Cai’s blood?!

HP-1.

Lian Xuehe restrained his trembling claws, slowly and unhurriedly set the medicine aside on the table, then frowned and said, “Don’t take his blood for medicine again. It smells fishy.”

Tao Xiao was even more surprised. “But Your Highness, this medicine cannot be stopped so easily…”

Lian Xuehe said, “No need to say more. Do as I say.”

Tao Xiao was obedient. When it came to His Highness’s orders, he would at most object once and would not continue asking. He obediently answered yes and withdrew.

Once there was no one in the bedroom, Lian Xuehe almost retched with a “blegh.” He rinsed his mouth for a long while before barely washing away the taste of blood.

024 could not help running its mouth: 【How many months along?】

Lian Xuehe leaned over the edge of the bed and panted a few times, then said sickly, “Are you asking about the remaining time before you’re scrapped and recycled? Say three more sentences, and I’ll tell you personally.”

024 quieted down.

Ever since Lian Xuehe had transmigrated, his nerves had been tense. Now that there was finally no one around, he relaxed and collapsed limply onto the couch, his black hair spilling all over the bed.

He raised his hand to look at the black flower on his wrist. For some reason, the tiny flower bud had shrunk a little, leaving only a thin black line coiled around his wrist bone.

The life-threatening “Flowers Born from Bone,” the villain who could wake at any time and come claim his life, Shuncheng Manor plotting with malicious intent…

The more Lian Xuehe thought about it, the angrier he became. Just as he was about to call 024 out and scold it to vent his anger, a faint “ding” suddenly sounded by his ear.

Wind blew in through the half-closed window. The intricate mechanism astrolabe on the table rotated several times, and a tall black shadow slowly walked in from the outer room.

Lian Xuehe listlessly lifted his eyelids.

It was that mentally deficient puppet.

Candlelight flickered. Without any command, the medicine attendant puppet automatically walked to the bedside. Its mountain-like shadow fell over him, almost covering half the bed, enveloping Lian Xuehe perfectly.

Lian Xuehe frowned.

The medicine attendant puppet reached out toward him, seemingly carrying out the task Tao Xiao had given it during the day: 【Send His Highness back to his room】.

Lian Xuehe said, “Mm. Puppet IE?”

024: 【……】

It rather admired the host’s ability to roast something with perfect accuracy.

The medicine attendant puppet seemed to have been humiliated. All of a sudden, without warning, it violently lunged forward.

Bang!

Caught off guard, Lian Xuehe had his mouth covered, the back of his head hitting the pillow.

Lian Xuehe: “?”

The puppet’s large palm was even bigger than Lian Xuehe’s face. It seemed to want to choke his neck, but its hand could not be controlled. Its tall, heavy body pressed straight down onto Lian Xuehe, bringing with it the bitter scent of divine wood.

In that instant, Lian Xuehe felt as if he had been stuffed into a freshly made coffin.

024 screamed: 【I told you you’d die from that mouth of yours sooner or later! Even an AI robot can’t stand listening to you and wants to kill you!】

Lian Xuehe was being crushed so badly he could barely breathe. He desperately reached out to push it. “What are you standing there for? Hurry up and get it off me!”

024: 【I’m only an assistance system. I can’t interfere with plot development. Host, don’t be afraid. Tao Xiao will be here soon.】

Lian Xuehe’s ultimate move had been sealed, but his mind was still active. “Aren’t you afraid that once Tao Xiao gets here, the three of you will be wiped out directly?”

024: 【?】

Before the secondhand system could make another sound, the golden bracelet carved with twin lotuses on Lian Xuehe’s wrist automatically protected its master. A burst of purple-gold light suddenly erupted from it, charging forward with unstoppable force.

Rumble—!

Such a huge commotion shook all the lights in Zhiji Tower awake.

Tao Xiao finally arrived late. “Your Highness!”

Lian Xuehe sat on the couch with his hair disheveled. A few damp strands clung to his cheeks. The true essence from the golden bracelet on his wrist had not yet dispersed, reflecting an eerie purple-gold in his eyes.

Ten steps away from the bed, a pile of vines lay scattered everywhere.

The medicine attendant puppet’s body had already been blown apart, and the black-character mask had fallen to one side.

Still shaken, Lian Xuehe’s throat was tight. He straightened his wrinkled robe and hid his trembling fingertips in his sleeve. “It, it, it… cough. What madness is it up to now?”

Seeing that he was unharmed, Tao Xiao let out a breath of relief. “The medicine attendant puppet has not yet acknowledged a master. It must have mistakenly thought Your Highness had fallen unconscious and came to check your breathing, only to be misjudged and heavily injured by your protective artifact.”

That posture did not look like it had come to check his breathing. It looked more like it had come to send him to the afterlife.

【HP-1】 kept flashing over Lian Xuehe’s head, with an occasional critical hit of 【HP-10】 appearing. He tried hard to remain calm, unwilling to expose the fact that he had been frightened by a pile of broken wood.

“Can it still be repaired?”

Tao Xiao once again attempted to show it off. “Your Highness, this puppet is special. When Minggui City made it, they spent an immeasurable amount of manpower and resources. One liang of Kunlun wood is worth ten thousand gold stones. The runes carved into its meridians were personally written by an elder of Taifu Dao Sect. One drop of talisman gold ink costs thirty thousand gold, and seven drops were used in total.”

Lian Xuehe: “?”

A mere idiot was actually this expensive?

“Such a precious object naturally would not be destroyed so easily. Wood is born from water. As long as even one piece of wood remains, it can restore itself to its original state… Look, it’s fixed.”

Not to mention, expensive things did have their reasons for being expensive.

The wooden puppet that had just been torn into pieces quickly became like a tree meeting spring. Starting from the heart, it slowly condensed into a new body. Upon closer inspection, its five viscera, six bowels, twelve meridians, two hundred and six bones, and nine spiritual bones were all there without the slightest error, just like a real person.

The medicine attendant puppet grew out from a pile of rotten wood and slowly stood up. In those gray gemstone-inlaid eyes, there actually flashed a cold, hostile viciousness like that of a human.

Tao Xiao said, “Come here.”

The spiritual talisman on the medicine attendant puppet’s body flashed. It lifted its leg and took a step.

Bang.

Its left foot tripped over its right foot, and it fell straight to the ground face-first.

Lian Xuehe: “?”

Tao Xiao: “??”

Lian Xuehe was silent for a while, then clapped in praise. “A uniquely exquisite creation in this world? Mo Chunxu truly lives up to his reputation.”

Tao Xiao: “…………”

The medicine attendant puppet lay stiffly on the ground like a thousand-year-old zombie unearthed from a grave. Tiny vines sprouted from the tip of its nose, repairing its body.

It seemed to want to climb up again, but like a newborn calf, it temporarily did not know how to balance its limbs and body. After trying three or four times, it still slapped face-first onto the ground every single time.

It was unbelievably clumsy.

Tao Xiao lowered his head and explained, “Your Highness, City Lord Mo’s mechanism arts are the best in the Three Realms. The puppets he makes cannot be faulty. It must be because it suffered heavy damage just now and its spiritual talismans are unstable. It should soon recover as good as new.”

Bang. Bang. Bang bang.

Amid the nonstop sound of the medicine attendant falling onto the ground, Lian Xuehe nodded and said mildly, “Mm. I believe you.”

Tao Xiao: “…………”

Fortunately, something so expensive was only temporarily foolish.

Before long, the medicine attendant puppet finally managed to stand successfully. Lian Xuehe applauded it again, celebrating its evolution.

The moment 024 saw his expression, it knew he definitely would not say anything nice, and hurriedly advised him: 【Host, Tao Xiao has followed Lian Xingsong since childhood. He understands his personality completely. If you keep cursing people this recklessly, be careful that he sees through you and kills you with one strike.】

Lian Xuehe gave a soft scoff. “With how fragmented his brain matter is, do you really think he can notice anything wrong?”

024: 【……】

Tao Xiao looked like an intelligent person, but in truth, he was heartless and simple-minded. Even after being scolded by His Highness in roundabout ways several times, he still had not realized Lian Xuehe’s core had changed. He was still enthusiastically summoning the medicine attendant puppet over.

“Your Highness, do you want it to acknowledge you as its master?”

Lian Xuehe thought briefly. “Mm.”

His legs were not convenient for walking, and he hated excessive intimate contact. Having a high-end bionic humanoid like a wooden puppet attend to him personally was exactly what he wanted.

The medicine attendant puppet adapted to its limbs and walked expressionlessly to the couch.

For some reason, Lian Xuehe felt a chill around his neck.

“Use fingertip blood to dot its eyes. The spiritual talisman will let it develop a ‘false soul’ and turn into the puppet most suited to Your Highness’s wishes.” Tao Xiao took out a storage pouch. “Inside is the spiritual marrow used to feed the medicine attendant. One pill every half month.”

Lian Xuehe nodded. “Come.”

The medicine attendant puppet fell silent… or perhaps its CPU had short-circuited. In any case, there was no movement for quite some time.

Without a teacher, Tao Xiao mastered the ancient art of reviving old electrical appliances and smacked the back of its head twice.

And oddly enough, it really worked.

The puppet finally moved.

It stepped forward, knelt on one knee by the couch, and met Lian Xuehe’s eyes. Its exposed gray eyes were inlaid with stone. When it stared directly at someone, there was a chilling pressure and viciousness to it.

Lian Xuehe gave a soft “Mm,” secretly thinking that it was worthy of being a puppet made by Mo Chunxu. It truly seemed human.

“Take off the mask.”

The medicine attendant puppet obeyed the order, raising its hand and slowly removing the wooden mask marked with black characters.

Candlelight swayed, and his vision suddenly opened up.

As far as the eye could see, Lian Xuehe’s black hair was scattered like spilled ink. He looked down from above with lowered eyes.

He had the face of someone heartless and short-lived, his sickly bones frail. When his feathery lashes lowered as he gazed at someone, it was as if he were bestowing alms while looking at a dog unworthy of his attention.

Beneath that gorgeous, dazzlingly beautiful exterior was the heart of a venomous snake or scorpion.

The medicine attendant puppet… Yin Cai stared at him sinisterly.

The folk customs of the Nine Wild Realms were simple and honest, and they did not communicate with the lands of Hongpan. Countless secret and evil techniques existed there. Before Yin Cai died, he had forcibly activated “Flowers Born from Bone,” attempting to perish together with the evildoer Lian Xingsong.

Once this physical body died, his divine soul should have returned to the Wild Realms to rebuild his body.

…Yet for some unknown reason, by sheer accident, he had possessed this wooden puppet.

Who knew what kind of miraculous ability Lian Xingsong had? Under the poison curse’s self-destruction, he had actually remained completely unharmed, still wearing that same hateful damned look.

Tens of thousands of spiritual talismans were carved inside the medicine attendant puppet. No matter how much Yin Cai hated him, he could not disobey.

Lian Xuehe bit his fingertip and reached toward his eyes. The medicinal fragrance soaked deep into his bones rushed over from his entire body, brushing past Yin Cai’s jaw.

Yin Cai was forced to expose the vital point at his neck and looked at him coldly.

Completely unaware, Lian Xuehe used his fingertip blood to dot two strokes on the puppet’s eyes. The blood-red color quickly sank into the wood like snake patterns, turning into tiny blood-colored chains that wrapped around the puppet’s limbs and bones.

The binding formed.

This was a contract pattern that reached deep into the bones. Once the puppet made any move that intended to harm its master, the master-recognition contract pattern would make him wish he were dead.

Lian Xuehe took out a crystal-clear, lustrous piece of spiritual marrow. “Open your mouth.”

Yin Cai remained unmoved.

Lian Xuehe was very patient. “This is an order.”

The two words “an order” crashed down on Yin Cai’s back like a mountain. Yin Cai still wanted to pretend he was deaf, but the blood threads flowing through his body suddenly trembled, shocking him so badly his body shook violently. He could only be forced to part his lips.

Lian Xuehe pinched the spiritual marrow between two fingers and gently pushed it between his lips.

His cool fingertips touched Yin Cai’s lips and parted at once.

The medicine attendant puppet’s Adam’s apple moved slightly as he swallowed the spiritual marrow.

That thing seemed to be nourishment for Kunlun wood. After entering his mouth, it turned into an incomparably pure spiritual energy that flowed into his limbs and bones, repairing the hidden injuries caused by the destruction just now.

Sweat beaded on Lian Xuehe’s forehead. A few strands of his loose ink-black hair were damp with sweat and clung to the side of his face, showing a sickly yet vividly alluring beauty.

He looked down at the puppet from above and lightly patted the back of his hand against Yin Cai’s face. The movement carried an indescribable languid elegance.

“From now on, listen properly to what I say. Remember?”

Yin Cai did not speak.

Lian Xuehe was considerate of its stupidity and patiently taught, “Say, ‘Yes, Master.’”

Yin Cai stared straight at him, then suddenly revealed a strange smile.

“Yes, Master.”

One day, he would make this man kneel on his crippled legs and beg him to kill him.