Red Rose [Never Let You Go, Again Book 3]

37: Before You Go

"WEI WUXIAN!"

"Chang'e..."

"I am a goddess! I have NEVER shouted in all my immortal life! Tell me what you DID!"

Wei Wuxian sighed and shook his head.

Chang'e shook his shoulders fiercely, making him look up. "TELL ME!"

"Fine, fine, stop shaking me!"

Chang'e let go of his shoulders and sat back, crossing her arms, anticipating what was to come.

"I... I knew that what he was going to do to me would be a core transplant... I knew he would want to use my demonic immortal's core... I also knew I couldn't let that happen..."

Chang'e nodded along.

"And I knew I had to figure out a way to prevent him... I knew I couldn't stop him from cutting my chest open and extracting the core... I knew I couldn't stop him from accepting the core... So the only way was.............." He shook his head again, tears streaming down his face as he clawed at his chest out of the pain.

"Speak!"

"I cracked my core!"

Chang'e's pale hands fell to her sides, angular jaw dropped open, eyes swelled in horror. "YOU WHAT?"

"If my core is damaged, then it won't be of much use to him. He won't be able to manipulate its powers to the fullest extreme. So the night before the transplant, I built up all the resentment I could, summoned in all the energy in my meridians, and just let my core burst. It didn't really burst as in, explode. Though that's what I hoped for. But it did get cracked. Unbroken, didn't shatter–"

"Of course not, it's the core of an Immortal!"

"But there was a crack along the side. That Doctor Liu saw it but Nie Jiuyue didn't mind, he had no other option anyway. The crack meant my core is damaged, so Nie Jiuyue won't be as powerful as he hoped to be," Wei Wuxian explained, rubbing his chest as the pains of bursting his own core throbbed through his body. "We... might have a chance of defeating him." 

"You... I... I don't know what to say... Why... Wei Wuxian... Why are you like this?"

"Chang'e..." Wei Wuxian grinned through the agony. "Goddesses don't stammer."

"You're making me insane at this rate! Why did you do that? To yourself? It's worse than suicide! It's... self-torture! And you gave up your core once, tried so hard to cultivate Mo Xuanyu's one, and now you're back to square one? Thank goodness at least your being is immortal!"

"Yes, but without my core, I don't think I'm as powerful as I once was."

"Any exertion might harm you terribly, Wei Wuxian, you need to take care of yourself. Is this man letting you off now?"

"I don't think he'll let that happen until he dominates the world."

"But any other way?"

"There is. Once I gain consciousness, I can do something."

"What's that?"

"Well, now that he got what he wanted, he's going to lift the barrier around his camp so that he can call on demons and corpses and whatever. Which means I can call on LanGui and get my chains broken."

"Fantastic!" Chang'e clapped. "Then you call on your bunch of helpers and get out of there!"

"No. I'm not a runaway. I'm a fighter. The battle will begin. I don't need my core for demonic cultivation, so I can call on my demons, but I will use them to finish that bastard off. It might take a day or two for me to fully regain stability enough to call on LanGui, and I'm guessing by then Jin Ling's Fairy would have brought A-Zhan and the rest to the place by then. The battle would have begun. I'll help as far as I can–"