Reincarnated Demon Seed

Weiyang Palace, the most prestigious bedchamber in the Great Xia Dynasty, was brightly lit at this moment, filled with warm and fragrant incense.

Every furnishing here was extremely luxurious. The floor was paved with ten-thousand-year warm jade, the bed curtains were woven from merman silk, and even the air floated with the calming scent of ambergris.

But for Wu Lingxiao, who had just slain her husband of five hundred years with her own hands, this place still felt as cold as an ice cellar.

That was until Ye Xuan carried her onto the wide phoenix bed.

"Husband..."

Wu Lingxiao's fingers tightly gripped Ye Xuan's lapels, her knuckles turning white from the force.

Even though she was a peerless Empress at the Mahayana realm, at this moment she was like a woman who had just awakened from a nightmare, her entire body trembling slightly and uncontrollably.

When she killed Bai Ran, she was crazed, she felt a sense of vindication.

But when that madness passed, what followed was not regret, but a massive, boundless emptiness and fear.

She was not afraid of Bai Ran's ghost coming for her life; she was afraid that after sacrificing everything, if Ye Xuan still didn't want her, she would truly be doomed eternally.

"Don't be afraid, I'm here."

Ye Xuan's voice was so gentle it could practically drip water. He sat by the bed, letting Wu Lingxiao curl up in his arms, one hand gently patting her back as if coaxing a frightened cat.

"Husband, am I... am I too cruel?"

Wu Lingxiao looked up. Her majestic phoenix eyes were now bloodshot and unbearably fragile. "Bai Ran, after all... after all, he was with me for five hundred years... But he wanted to kill you, I couldn't help it... I really couldn't help it..."

"Shh!"

Ye Xuan reached out a finger and gently pressed it against her cold lips.

He lowered his head, his gaze full of deep affection, as if looking at a rare treasure:

"Silly, how could you be cruel?"

"You were severing the shackles of the past for the sake of our future."

Ye Xuan's other hand gently stroked Wu Lingxiao's long hair, his tone carrying a strange, bewitching charm:

"Lingxiao, you must know that in this world, only I am true to you."

"Whether it's Bai Ran or those ministers, they only love your power and status. Once you are no longer the Empress, they will abandon you without hesitation."

"Only me."

Ye Xuan leaned close to her ear, his warm breath brushing against it, causing her to shudder:

"Only me. Even if you have nothing, even if your hands are covered in blood, I will still love you."

"Wu..."

The Empress, who ruled over billions of miles of territory, finally burst into loud sobs in his arms.

All her pride, all her imperial majesty, crumbled at this moment. She stripped herself down to a most primal, humble soul, opening herself up to this man without reservation.

"Husband... love me... please love me..."

Wu Lingxiao was infatuated and disoriented. In her extreme insecurity and intense longing, she instinctively wanted to demand more.

With trembling hands, she tried to untie Ye Xuan's belt, wanting to use the most primal physical union to fill the gaping hole in her heart.

However, Ye Xuan's hand gently stopped her.

"No, Lingxiao."

Ye Xuan shook his head, his eyes full of pity.

"Husband?" Wu Lingxiao froze, a trace of panic flashing in her eyes. "Do... do you still think I'm dirty? Because I just killed someone? I can go wash... I'll go wash right now..."

"How could I?"

Ye Xuan sighed, hugging her tighter, resting his chin on her forehead:

"I cherish you too much."

"Right now, your mind is agitated and your spiritual altar is unstable. If we were to perform the rites of Zhou Gong at this moment, it would only damage your foundation."

"Lingxiao, what I want is for us to stay together forever, lifetime after lifetime. I don't want you to deplete your body for a moment of fleeting pleasure."

As Ye Xuan spoke, an imperceptible trace of mockery flashed in his eyes.

Touch her?

He sneered inwardly.

Those hands were just covered in Bai Ran's blood, and now they were touching him; he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop himself from throwing up on the spot.

"Tonight, I won't touch you."

Ye Xuan's voice became ethereal and holy:

"I will use my origin soul power to cleanse your spirit and soothe all the grievances you've suffered over the past five hundred years."

"I want to make your soul belong entirely to me."

"Soul... belongs to you..."

Wu Lingxiao murmured to herself, her eyes gradually becoming glazed.

This complete spiritual possession actually made her tremble and sink deeper than physical pleasure ever could.

"Sleep, Lingxiao."

Ye Xuan's palm covered her eyes, and a gray light flared brightly.

"Forget those unpleasant things."

"Forget Bai Ran's blood."

"In the dream, there are only the two of us. I will hold you and pamper you until the end of time..."

With Ye Xuan's low murmurs, Wu Lingxiao's tense body finally went completely limp.

She felt an unprecedented warmth enveloping her entire body, as if returning to the womb. That absolute sense of security made her completely drop her guard for the first time in centuries.

In this man's embrace, she curled up into a tiny ball.

At this moment, she was no longer the Mahayana realm Empress, nor the decisive and ruthless tyrant.

She was like an unborn infant.

She greedily drank in the false tenderness Ye Xuan gave her, and within this tenderness, she completely lost her ability to think independently.

"Husband..."

She murmured one last time, a bizarrely blissful smile hanging on her lips as she fell into a deep sleep.

...

The night deepened.

The red candles in Weiyang Palace had burned halfway down, their wax tears like blood.

Ye Xuan still maintained his embracing posture, but the gentleness on his face vanished without a trace the moment Wu Lingxiao's breathing leveled out, like smoke blown away by the wind.

Replacing it was a sheer indifference.

That indifference was colder than ice and snow, darker than the abyss.

He lowered his head and looked at Wu Lingxiao, who was sleeping like a child in his arms.

Looking at her face, and how even in her sleep she still tightly gripped the corner of his clothes.

"Heh."

A very faint sneer slipped past his lips.

He slowly raised his hand, using spiritual energy to brush away a stray strand of hair clinging to his sleeve with a touch of disgust.

Then, he did not push her away, but just sat there coldly, like a lifeless sculpture.

He was using this night.

Using every second of their physical contact to plant the Reincarnation Demon Seed from the Reincarnation Heavenly Scripture into Wu Lingxiao's body, thread by thread.

"Sleep, sleep well."

Ye Xuan said coldly in his heart, "Anyway, you don't have much time left."

The next day, early morning.

When the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds and spilled onto the golden roofs of the Great Xia Imperial Palace, the cautious bowing voices of the palace maids came from outside Weiyang Palace.

"Your Majesty, it is time for the morning court."

On the phoenix bed, Wu Lingxiao slowly opened her eyes.

This sleep was the deepest and sweetest she had had in five hundred years.

No nightmares, no suspicions, only an overflowing sense of happiness.

She subconsciously reached out to the side.

It was empty.

"Husband?"

Wu Lingxiao sat up abruptly, her heart skipping a beat. The terror of impending abandonment washed over her in an instant.

"You're awake?"

A gentle, warm voice drifted from by the window.

Wu Lingxiao whipped her head around.

She saw Ye Xuan already fully dressed in a snow-white long robe. He stood before the window, holding a jade watering pot, tending to the orchids on the sill.

Sunlight spilled across his profile, gilding him with a golden halo. He looked as ethereal and flawless as an immortal stepping out of a painting.

"Husband!"

Forgetting even to put on her shoes, Wu Lingxiao leaped out of bed, dashed over in a few strides, and hugged Ye Xuan's waist tightly from behind.

"I thought... I thought you had left..."

Her voice carried the husky tone of someone just waking up, laced with a coquettish whimper.

Ye Xuan set down the jade pot, turned around, and affectionately tapped her nose.

"Silly girl, this is our home. Where else would I go?"

"You were sleeping so soundly, I couldn't bear to wake you."

"Hurry and wash up now. You are the Emperor of the Great Xia Dynasty, and millions of your subjects are waiting for you."

"I don't want to go..."

Wu Lingxiao nuzzled into his embrace like a little girl refusing to get out of bed.

"Those ministers are so annoying, babbling about the same trivial matters every day. I just want to stay with you."

"Be good."

Ye Xuan held her shoulders and gently pushed her back a little, his gaze turning serious and stern.

"Lingxiao, you must remember."

"Your empire is our empire."

"If you don't attend the morning court, those with ulterior motives will seize the opportunity. You are guarding this empire for us, do you understand?"

You are guarding the empire for us.

Those words instantly injected Wu Lingxiao with boundless motivation.

That's right!

She was no longer fighting alone!

She was Ye Xuan's wife! She had to guard this family estate for her husband! Whoever dared to covet the Great Xia Dynasty was touching her and her husband's shared property, and they would have to die!

"I understand, Husband!"

Fighting spirit reignited in Wu Lingxiao's eyes, blazing with a fervor far more fanatical than ever before.

"Guards! Help me dress!"

At Wu Lingxiao's command, the palace maids filed into the room.

Today, Wu Lingxiao was so energetic it was almost frightening.

Her face glowed with radiant health, her skin flush with vitality, as if she had grown centuries younger overnight.

The confidence and domineering aura radiating from within her, mixed with an indescribable excitement, made her look like an unsheathed sword, its sharp edge fully exposed.

She donned the black and gold dragon robe symbolizing supreme power, and upon her head rested the imperial crown with twelve beaded tassels.

As she stood before the bronze mirror, looking at her majestic and inviolable reflection, her mind was filled with only one thought—

Only this version of me is worthy of Ye Xuan.

"Husband, I'm leaving."

Before departing, Wu Lingxiao turned back to cast a lingering, reluctant glance at Ye Xuan.

Ye Xuan stood where he was, smiling and waving at her.

"Go on. I'll wait for you to come home for dinner."

The phrase wait for you to come home for dinner completely melted Wu Lingxiao's heart.

Wearing a smile of utter satisfaction, she held her head high and strode out of the Weiyang Palace with confident steps.

As that black silhouette disappeared beyond the palace gates.

The heavy doors of the Weiyang Palace slowly swung shut.

Click.

The last ray of light was shut out.

The smile on Ye Xuan's face, who had been standing by the window waving, froze in that instant. Then, like a melting wax figure, it rapidly collapsed.

He turned around and walked over to the vanity table where Wu Lingxiao had just been sitting.

Resting there was the dragon-patterned jade comb she had just used.

Ye Xuan extended two fingers, pinched the comb, and a trace of unconcealed disgust flashed in his eyes.

Then, he applied a slight pressure with his fingertips.

Crack.

The priceless, ten-thousand-year-old warm jade comb crumbled into fine powder in his hand.

"What an... absolute idiot."

Ye Xuan brushed the jade dust from his hands, walked over to a nearby armchair, sat down, and poured himself a cup of cold tea.

Time flowed like sand through fingers, slipping silently over the glazed tiles of the Weiyang Palace.

For a mortal, twenty years was a long stretch of a lifetime, turning youthful beauty to white hair, and young boys to frail old men.

But for the few titans of the cultivation world hidden deep within the Great Xia Imperial Palace, twenty years was nothing but a snap of the fingers—a slightly extended closed-door cultivation, or the time taken to refine a single furnace of pills.

However, for Ye Xuan, these twenty years had been a rebirth, a complete shedding of his mortal shell.

Deep inside the Weiyang Palace, within a secret chamber reinforced by layers upon layers of formations.

Ye Xuan sat cross-legged, levitating in mid-air.

His snow-white robes fluttered and snapped without any wind. Behind him, six massive, abyssal gray vortexes slowly rotated.

Those were no ordinary spiritual energy vortexes.

They were the Six Paths of Reincarnation.

Rumble...

Thunderous sounds echoed from within Ye Xuan's body.

Deep within his sea of consciousness, a pitch-black tome exuding an ancient aura—the Samsara Heavenly Scripture—was flipping its pages frantically.

Every turn of a page was accompanied by a sigh from the distant past.

Memory fragments of countless reincarnations flooded into his soul like rivers merging into the sea.

Countless lifetimes, countless epiphanies, and countless power systems were violently crushed and then reforged under the dominion of the Samsara Heavenly Scripture.

Phew...

Ye Xuan slowly opened his eyes.

At that moment, all the light in the secret chamber seemed to be devoured by those eyes.

They were no longer human eyes.

The distinct black and white irises had vanished, replaced by two slowly swirling gray nebulas. The left eye held life, the right eye held death; the left eye held the past, the right eye held the future.

A terrifying aura erupted from his body, instantly shattering the bottleneck of the Nascent Soul stage, skyrocketing with unstoppable momentum!

Early Soul Formation stage!

Mid Soul Formation stage!

Late Soul Formation stage!

The aura only slowly ground to a halt when it reached the Great Perfection of the Soul Formation stage.

In a mere twenty years.

He had re-cultivated from a mere mortal all the way to the Great Perfection of the Soul Formation stage.

If word of this were to spread, it would be enough to make every genius in the cultivation world commit suicide out of pure shame.

Ye Xuan lowered his head, looking at his crystalline, jade-like palms. The lines on his palms had changed; every crease looked like a surging river of time.

"Is this... the power of reincarnation?"

Ye Xuan's voice was deep and hoarse, carrying the vicissitudes and indifference of one who had seen through the ways of the world.

He hadn't merely restored his cultivation base.

He had superimposed it.

Through the Samsara Heavenly Scripture, he had forcibly borrowed power from the peak moments of his past lives.

At this moment, although his realm was only at the Soul Formation stage, if one were to measure his foundation and the strength of his divine soul, even an ordinary Body Integration stage expert would not gain the upper hand against him.

Ye Xuan clenched his fists, a mocking smile flashing through his gray eyes.

"I am finally no longer an ant waiting to be slaughtered."

Right at that moment.

The restrictive wards outside the secret chamber were triggered.

A familiar aura was approaching. It was the Empress of Great Xia, Wu Lingxiao—and also his nominal wife of twenty years.

The gray vortexes in Ye Xuan's eyes rapidly faded away, reverting to those warm, jade-like black eyes that appeared deeply affectionate but were actually bottomless abysses.

He concealed his entire aura, making himself look like an ordinary Soul Formation cultivator who had just broken through and had an unstable foundation.

"Husband!"

The doors of the Weiyang Palace were pushed open.

Wu Lingxiao ran in wearing a fiery red nightgown, her long hair draped loosely over her shoulders and her feet bare.

Twenty years had not left the slightest mark on her face; if anything, it had made her even more alluring. However, mixed within this breathtaking beauty was a suffocating sense of madness and possessiveness.

She had lived very happily these past twenty years.

Ye Xuan had not left her, nor had he given her the cold shoulder. He stayed by her side in the palace every single day.

She felt that this was the life she had always dreamed of.

"Husband, you have come out of seclusion?"

Wu Lingxiao threw herself into Ye Xuan's arms, greedily breathing in his scent.

"I sensed it... You broke through? The Soul Formation realm? Heavens, Husband, you truly are a peerless genius!"

Ye Xuan allowed her to embrace him. With that signature smile hanging on his lips, he reached out and gently stroked her hair.

"It was just a stroke of luck. I also have to thank you for all the resources you have provided over the past twenty years."

"What is mine is yours, there is no need to thank me."

Wu Lingxiao raised her head. Her phoenix eyes rippled like autumn water, carrying an undisguised lust.

"Husband... tonight is the night of the full moon."

"You said that once you broke through to the Soul Formation realm and stabilized your foundation, we would..."

Her hand slid down Ye Xuan's chest, her actions full of suggestive intent.

It had been twenty years.

For a full twenty years, Ye Xuan had always rejected her advances using various excuses, such as being in a "critical period of cultivation," having an "unstable foundation," or "needing to purify his body."

She was an Empress of the Mahayana realm, yet she had lived like a widow for twenty years. This pent-up longing had accumulated to the very verge of erupting.

Ye Xuan looked at her face, which was thoroughly written with desire.

His heart remained completely undisturbed; he even felt a wave of physical nausea.

But the smile on his face grew increasingly gentle, so gentle that it resembled a meticulously woven net.

"Yes."

Ye Xuan said softly.

"I have kept Your Majesty waiting for far too long."

"Tonight... we shall consummate our marriage."