Preemptive Strike

Night fell.

After a long day of pacification work, Chu Jinghong returned to the Changle Palace, physically and mentally exhausted.

Ye Xuan was slowly getting up to put on his clothes. On the bed behind him lay a palace maid.

"You saw it all?"

At this moment, Chu Jinghong's rationality completely collapsed!

Her Mahayana realm cultivation erupted like a raging volcano, reducing the entire Changle Palace to ruins in an instant.

In Chu Jinghong's sick and paranoid possessiveness, Ye Xuan's body was a holy relic that belonged to her and her alone. Anyone who dared to lay a finger on him must die!

But now, right in front of her eyes, this holy relic had been defiled by another woman!

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty, save me! It was the Regent... he forced me! I am innocent!" The palace maid was scared out of her wits. Ignoring her nakedness, she scrambled and crawled to kneel on the bed, kowtowing and begging for mercy.

However, before she could even finish her sentence.

"Slut! You dared to touch him!"

Chu Jinghong's eyes were bloodshot red, like a malicious spirit crawling out of hell. She abruptly reached out her hand and made a grasping motion in the air.

"Bang!"

The palace maid didn't even have time to let out a scream before her entire body was instantly crushed into a mist of blood by the terrifying spiritual power. Her physical body and soul were reduced to ashes in a split second!

Warm blood splashed across Ye Xuan's face, but he didn't even blink an eye.

Unfazed, Ye Xuan stood up and unhurriedly took a clean black robe from his storage ring, draping it over his shoulders. As he tied the sash, he spoke in an extremely casual tone:

"Good kill. This Qing'er was a spy planted by your side by the Nine Heavens Holy Land anyway. Keeping her alive would only be a disaster."

Saying this, Ye Xuan's hand paused slightly while tying the sash. He looked up and flashed a demonic, sinister smile at Chu Jinghong:

"She was wonderfully smooth."

Chu Jinghong flew into a furious rage. Her figure instantly vanished from where she stood, and in the next second, she teleported right in front of Ye Xuan. Her pale hands, like iron pincers, clamped tightly around Ye Xuan's neck!

"Why? Why would you do this to me? You said you only loved me! Why did you touch another woman?"

Chu Jinghong roared hysterically, tears and snot pouring out wildly. Her breathtakingly beautiful face was now twisted like an evil spirit's. The terrifying power of the Mahayana realm caused Ye Xuan's neck to emit agonizing cracking sounds.

Facing her near-manic questioning, Ye Xuan did not struggle. He didn't even activate his protective astral aura.

He simply let her choke him. His deep eyes revealed an indifference that saw through life and death, along with an extremely cruel sense of satisfaction.

Ye Xuan coughed up two mouthfuls of blood with difficulty, yet he still maintained his apathetic expression: "I had no choice... Before you could cuckold me with those eight wild men... I had to... cuckold you first!"

"No! It's not like that!"

Chu Jinghong cried in a breakdown, though the grip of her hands unconsciously loosened a bit. She shook her head desperately, trying to explain, "I really have nothing going on with them! I was only using them! I only have you in my heart, Ah Xuan, you have to believe me..."

"Don't treat me like a fool."

Ye Xuan coldly interrupted her. These words, like an icy awl, ruthlessly pierced through Chu Jinghong's heart.

Chu Jinghong's face instantly turned as pale as paper. Her entire body trembled violently as she opened her mouth, but she couldn't utter a single word.

All her lies and excuses seemed so pale and ridiculous in the face of this man's resolute revenge.

Ye Xuan slowly pried open her fingers, which were stiff from extreme agony, and straightened his collar. His voice was like a freezing wind blowing from the Nine Nether Abyss:

"Moving forward, you have two paths."

"Either you sign the divorce papers immediately, and we part ways amicably."

"Or, you don't sign. As long as these divorce papers remain unsigned for a day, I, Ye Xuan, will not stop seeking out women for a single day. Tomorrow it will be the top courtesan of a brothel, the day after tomorrow a demoness from the Demonic Sect, and the day after that... it might just be one of your female generals."

"I will make you watch with your own eyes how I trample our three thousand years of affection, along with your ridiculous possessiveness, into the mud on the beds of one woman after another!"

These words completely crossed Chu Jinghong's ultimate bottom line as a yandere.

"You dare..." Chu Jinghong jerked her head up. In those eyes that were originally filled with tears, there was now only a chilling, extremely paranoid resentment and madness.

"Since you are so ungrateful... then I have no choice but to lock you up."

Chu Jinghong's voice became incredibly soft, as gentle as a lover's whisper. "I will cripple your cultivation, sever the tendons in your hands and feet, and lock you in a sunless underground palace. You won't be able to go anywhere. You will only be able to look at me every day. You can only be mine..."

Before her voice faded, Chu Jinghong formed her hand into a claw. Carrying the terrifying Mahayana realm laws that sealed heaven and earth, she viciously clawed toward Ye Xuan's dantian!

She wanted to cripple him! As long as she crippled him, he would never be able to run away again!

However, right at the moment her palm was about to touch Ye Xuan's body...

Ye Xuan's figure suddenly became illusory, and an extremely profound ripple of spatial laws spread out.

Chu Jinghong's strike actually only crushed an afterimage!

"It's no use."

Ye Xuan's icy voice echoed from above the hall.

Chu Jinghong abruptly looked up, only to see Ye Xuan standing in the void with his hands behind his back, looking down at her with pity in his eyes.

Having fought side by side for a thousand years, Ye Xuan's spatial divine abilities had long reached perfection. Even Chu Jinghong, at the Mahayana realm, could not keep him here.

"As long as I want to leave, you cannot catch me."

Ye Xuan looked indifferently at the crazed woman below and issued his final ultimatum:

"I will give you one last day to consider. Sign it, or don't."

"Swish!"

The spatial rift closed, and Ye Xuan's figure completely vanished into the night.

"No! Ye Xuan, come back! Come back to me!" Chu Jinghong knelt in the ruins, letting out a despairing and shrill scream to the sky. Blood seeped from her fingernails as they dug deeply into the jade floor.

Just one day later.

The entire Great Jin Imperial City was completely enveloped by a suffocating and terrifying murderous intent.

In front of the ruins of the Changle Palace, Chu Jinghong stood with disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes. Like a prehistoric ferocious beast ready to devour someone, she glared fixedly at the trembling commander of the hidden guards kneeling below.

"What... what did you say? Say it to We one more time?" Chu Jinghong's voice was so hoarse it barely sounded human.

The hidden guard commander kowtowed so hard his head banged loudly against the ground. Trembling with a crying tone, he reported, "R-replying to Your Majesty! The Regent... after leaving the palace last night, he went straight to the imperial city's largest den of extravagance, the Yihong Brothel! Then... then he consecutively visited ten more brothels..."

"Not only did he hire all the girls in those ten brothels... but... but according to the footage from the shadow-recording stone sent back by our spies..."

The hidden guard commander didn't dare to say any more, because he could feel that the life aura of the Empress above him was rioting madly, liable to blow the entire imperial city sky-high at any moment.

"Speak!" Chu Jinghong shattered the coiled dragon pillar beside her with a single palm strike, her voice booming like thunder.

"According to the reports from our scouts... His Highness the Regent... he really did it! And the women he sought numbered no less than a hundred! Deflowering a hundred women in a single night... Now the entire imperial city is buzzing with rumors, saying that His Highness..."

"Pfft!"

Chu Jinghong suddenly spewed out a large mouthful of fresh blood, staggering backward for three steps.

Her world was completely shattered at this very moment!

That man who belonged only to her, that Ye Xuan who used to feel guilty even just glancing at another woman, had actually slept with a hundred brothel prostitutes in a single day?

Her man had been defiled by a hundred lowly women!

"Ahhhhh! Kill them! Take every living creature in those ten brothels, whether human or dog, and chop them all into meat paste!"

Chu Jinghong had gone completely mad. The terrifying oppressive aura of the Mahayana realm was released without reservation, and more than half of the buildings in the imperial city collapsed with a resounding crash under this pressure.

"Please quell your anger, Your Majesty!"

Right at this moment, Lin Jiutian and a group of other chosen geniuses hurriedly arrived.

Seeing Chu Jinghong in such a miserable state, Lin Jiutian felt wild joy in his heart, but on the surface, he pretended to be heartbroken and took the opportunity to step forward and instigate:

"Your Majesty! This Ye Xuan is simply deranged and worse than a beast! Not only has he betrayed Your Majesty's deep affection, but he has also publicly dragged the royal family's dignity through the mud! With such a tremendous humiliation, if Your Majesty continues to tolerate this evil, where will the majesty of the Great Jin Dynasty be?!"

"Scram!"

How could Chu Jinghong listen to any of this right now? She snapped her head around, her scarlet eyes locking dead onto Lin Jiutian as if looking at a corpse. "All of you, scram! Whoever dares to say another half a word, I will kill them first!"

Locked on by the terrifying killing intent of a Mahayana realm expert, Lin Jiutian's entire body stiffened, and cold sweat instantly soaked his back. He gritted his teeth, knowing that the current Chu Jinghong had already lost her reason and could not be confronted head-on.

"Yes... This humble subject will take his leave. It is just that..."

As Lin Jiutian turned around to leave, he deliberately lowered his voice and spoke in a tone full of bewitchment:

"This humble subject knows that Your Majesty is troubled by the Regent's spatial divine abilities and cannot capture him. But my Nine Heavens Holy Land has a Heaven and Earth Sealing Grand Array passed down from ancient times. Once this array is deployed, it can completely seal even the spatial laws of an immortal, let alone the spatial divine abilities of a mere Tribulation Crossing realm cultivator."

"As long as Your Majesty needs it... this humble subject can send a message to the sect at any time and mobilize this array."

Having said that, Lin Jiutian did not stay any longer and quickly walked away.

Meanwhile, Chu Jinghong, who was standing amidst the ruins, heard the words seal space. Within those crazed and despairing eyes of hers, a ball of light suddenly erupted, a light so morbid that it would make one's soul tremble.

"Heaven and Earth Sealing... seal space..."

She muttered to herself neurotically, then suddenly began to giggle. Her laughter was incomparably shrill and eerie.

"Ah Xuan... you cannot run away anymore... It does not matter if you have dirtied yourself, I will catch you and wash you clean with the water of the Heavenly River... And then, I will shatter those legs of yours that love to run around, inch by inch..."

"You will forever... only be mine..."