Yuan Jue quietly wagged his tail. He didn’t stop at tightly holding Qiuqiu’s hand. He also carefully and deliberately touched her hand with his slender fingers. Every time his fingers touched her hand, his fingers immediately bounced back, and then he went back to touching her hand with a blushing face and feeling extremely guilty.
En, Qiuqiu’s hand was very small. It couldn’t be compared to his. Her hand was very soft too, not as hard as his bones.
When Yuan Jue touched her palm again with his finger, the sleeping Ruan Qiuqiu finally couldn’t stand it anymore. In her dream, it felt as if something kept tickling her palm. The itchy sensation was very light like a dragonfly skimming the water.
The palm was an inherently sensitive part. After Yuan Jue had done that several times, Ruan Qiuqiu just wanted to pull her hand away and scratch that spot. Thus, the foggy with sleep Ruan Qiuqiu did just that.
“Mmm…” Ruan Qiuqiu pulled her hand back and wiped her incredibly itchy palm against the animal skin before slipping it under her animal skin blanket. She curled up into a ball and fell back to sleep.
The wolf who was depressed that she had wiped her hand: “…”
He slowly clenched the hand that had been Ruan Qiuqiu’s hand. In an instant, his face grew pale and sweat exuded from his forehead again. It took him a long while until he could fake calmness. He chuckled.
In the moment she pulled her hand away, the spiritual energy she had left in his body, which was about to dissipate, also left.
Pain and hunger swarmed up again. Warmth left him and the boundless darkness rushed up like an unbreakable spiderweb that engulfed him. Even if Yuan Jue was slow in his reactions, he knew that the light and warmth he felt earlier was from Ruan Qiuqiu.
A bitter pain gradually appeared in his throat. Yuan Jue took a deep breath and clenched his jaw. He didn’t allow himself to fall into despair. Instead, he took advantage of his clearheadedness to repair his demon core again.
However, fate seemed to be against him. Even as he endured the pain that was coming from every part of his body and absorbed spiritual energy from the air, the fiend energy hiding in his blood immediately devoured it.
The fiend energy surged up. In the moment when he was about to lose the fight against the fiend energy, Yuan Jue gave up absorbing the spiritual energy to focus on fighting off the fiend energy.
He endured the blood that gushed up and suppressed the desire to cough so that only a hoarse muffled sound came from his throat.
Things had already developed up to this point. No matter how much he didn’t want to admit the truth and wanted to return to his former majestic wolf demon self, the reality of his situation laid itself before him.
The fiend energy that was raging in his body came from his blood. He had dirty fiend blood.
Yuan Jue’s eyes dimmed, and his eyes gradually filled with a scarlet light.
Most of his childhood memories were blurred with time. He didn’t know who his parents were and only vaguely remembered a dark abyss that he couldn’t see the end of.
He slowly clenched his hands. No matter how special his wife’s spiritual energy was, she might not be able to cure him.
Perhaps, the only way she could remove the fiend energy from his body was if he bled out all of that dirty blood in order to sever the source of the fiend energy and become the wolf jerky she had mentioned.
Realizing that even if he kept dragging on like this, he still wouldn’t be able to return to a healthy wolf demon, Yuan Jue curved his lips into a self-mocking smile.
He sketched Ruan Qiuqiu’s appearance in his mind and thought about how she hadn’t been willing to eat much in order to feed him. He thought about her frozen red palms and how her injuries might be from those wolf demons bullying her…
As for him, he could only lie on the stone bed like a waste, watching her run haggard and struggling to survive. It felt as if his heart was being gouged out, bit by bit. He had never felt so bad before.
With reddened eyes, Yuan Jue tried his best to welcome the fiend energy in his blood for the first time.
The fiend energy, which seemed to have a life of their own, instantly became aware of their master’s call. In high spirits, they condensed into a ball, each vying to be the first to do Yuan Jue’s bidding. In the end, they obediently separated out a strand of fiend energy that Yuan Jue wanted, which merged with the back wound that was about to bleed again.
There was a numb and itchy feeling. It was similar to when Ruan Qiuqiu used her healing water on him. Almost instantly, the wound was healed enough that the bleeding stopped.
Translator Ramblings: “Perhaps, the only way she could remove the fiend energy from his body was if he bled out all of that dirty blood in order to sever the source of the fiend energy and become the wolf jerky she had mentioned.”
I think the author does a good job showing Yuan Jue’s self-loathing towards his fiend ancestry by having him entertain the idea of suicide to purify himself and how hard it is for him to accept that part of himself. If it wasn’t for Ruan Xia’s presence, I think he would rather die than accept it. So far the author has shown good and bad humans and demons. I wonder if that means the author will resolve Yuan Jue’s issue of viewing fiends as innately evil by having them meeting kind fiends later in the story.