Once Levied, Forever Levied

[Today I updated 50,000 words. This is not my limit, but the maximum word count the system allows per day.]

[To all the Tomato authors out there, I just want to out-grind everyone, or be out-grinded by you all.]

Looking at the pale-faced and weakly-breathing Ye Xuan, the disappointment in Zi Yao's eyes almost overflowed. She looked down at him from above and shook her head:

"To think that my once peerless and domineering husband who roamed the world unhindered has now become like this."

"For this petty profit, for this so-called revenge, you have made everyone turn against you. Ye Xuan, I have given my heart to the wrong person."

Xia Lengyue also sneered, her eyes bearing an indescribable mockery and sorrow:

"Junior Brother, without us, you won't be able to take a single step in this cruel cultivation world. You're on your own now..."

The two women were about to turn and leave.

"Hold on."

A weak yet exceptionally icy voice stopped them.

Ye Xuan forced himself up, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth slowly but firmly.

He raised his head. There was not a trace of regret or reluctance in those eyes, but rather a mockery that made the two women's hearts palpitate.

"Everyone turning against me? Petty profit?"

Ye Xuan looked at them and suddenly laughed.

"Aren't my actions today exactly what you two did to me in our previous lives?"

The two women stiffened.

Supporting himself with the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword, Ye Xuan glared at them step by step. Though his voice was light, every word pierced the heart:

"Back then, where did the cultivation resources that allowed you to become Saints and Ancestors come from? Where did the famous magical treasures in your hands that shocked the world come from?"

"Which one of them wasn't brought back by me, Ye Xuan, fighting like a dog with half my life on the line in secret realms filled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood?"

"At that time, you took them with a clear conscience, never once thinking they were petty profits."

"Now, when I'm just asking for a little interest and taking back what belongs to me, you think I'm heartless? You think I'm being petty?"

The mockery in Ye Xuan's eyes grew stronger as his gaze swept across their faces:

"How truly hilarious."

"You..."

Zi Yao's face turned pale. She wanted to retort, but found her throat seemingly blocked by something.

"But, whatever."

Ye Xuan took a deep breath, as if to exhale all the foul air of three lifetimes.

He didn't want to argue anymore.

Saying another word would be an insult to himself.

He reached out a pale hand and grabbed the hem of his long robe.

With his other hand, he raised the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword.

High up in the sky, in front of the two women who once loved him the most.

"Rip!"

A piercing sound of tearing silk shattered the dead silence of the sky.

A magnificent white robe, symbolizing royal favor and his status as the Empress's husband, had its hem severed without hesitation by his sword.

The torn brocade fluttered in the wind like a white butterfly with broken wings, falling into the sea of clouds.

Cutting the robe to sever ties.

Ye Xuan casually tossed the severed cloth from his hand, his eyes instantly turning as indifferent as water, as if looking at two strangers he had never met:

"From now on, we walk our separate paths."

"You don't owe me, and I don't owe you. The past is wiped clean."

"From now on, we shall never meet again."

After saying this, Ye Xuan did not hesitate at all.

He didn't even look at them again, not even a single glance.

No reluctance, no resentment, only a sense of relief and resolution as if a ten-thousand-pound burden had been lifted.

He turned around. Though his back was thin, it was perfectly straight. He walked step by step towards the exit of the cloud ship, towards the vast, unknown world.

Leaving only the two women on the deck, looking at the torn robe and his resolute back, a sense of indescribable emptiness and panic inexplicably rising in their hearts.

"Master! Wait for me!"

Just as Ye Xuan was about to step out of the cloud ship's barrier, an anxious call came from behind.

Seeing Ye Xuan's departing back, Ying'er didn't say a word. She directly took off the radiant storage bracelet on her wrist, a heavy treasure that Wu Lingxiao had previously rewarded her with to win her over.

"Clatter."

She threw the storage bracelet onto the deck like trash, making a crisp sound.

She only kept the faded green silk dress on her body.

She didn't bring a single magical artifact, abandoning all wealth and glory.

Her hands only tightly protected the seemingly plain and unadorned bracelet on her arm.

It was the Great Luo Immortal Artifact that Ye Xuan had traded his life for in his previous life—the Love-Binding Bracelet.

Faced with a ship full of rare treasures, she only took away this one item that belonged to Ye Xuan.

"I don't want to be some imperial palace female official! I only want to follow Master!"

The little girl lifted her skirt and ran with all her might in the direction Ye Xuan had left.

At this moment, her figure was small, but she went forward without hesitation.

Over the next few days.

Ye Xuan and Ying'er were like two wanderers, walking on a deserted ancient road.

Ye Xuan didn't have a single spirit stone on him.

They slept in the open, picking wild fruits when hungry and drinking mountain spring water when thirsty.

Though miserable and down and out.

Ying'er was surprised to find that Ye Xuan had been smiling constantly these past few days.

It wasn't a sinister cold smile, nor a hypocritical fake smile.

But a genuine, relaxed, and even somewhat childish smile from the bottom of his heart.

As the sun set, the two sat by a campfire.

Ying'er was roasting a freshly caught wild rabbit. Looking at Ye Xuan, whose face was covered in dust but who was humming a little tune, she couldn't help but ask:

"Master, are you really this happy?"

"We are completely penniless right now, without even the money to stay at an inn."

"Of course I'm happy."

Ye Xuan lay on the grass, crossing his legs and looking at the starry sky. He reached out and stroked Ying'er's head:

"Ying'er, you don't understand."

"All these years, I've lived like a rat in the gutter, scheming every day, acting every day."

"But now..."

Ye Xuan took a deep breath of the earth-scented air:

"The nightmare is finally over."

"No Empress, no Demon Venerable, no more of that messy karma."

"From now on, in this vast world, we'll have to rely on ourselves to roam the martial world."

"But Master..."

Ying'er looked at him earnestly, her tone sincere:

"All these years, apart from living off women and relying on them to support you, I haven't seen you display any other skills."

"Will we... starve to death?"

"Pfft!"

Ye Xuan spat out the mouthful of water he had just drunk.

He sat up and stared wide-eyed at Ying'er. He never expected that this usually submissive little girl would dare to roast him like this.

"Alright! You little brat, you dare to look down on your master?"

"Tonight, I'm going to teach you a good lesson."

At night, by the campfire, the two were snuggled together.

"Master, did you do that on purpose?" Ying'er asked, hugging Ye Xuan's arm.

"Naturally, otherwise how would they give up on me." Ye Xuan casually tossed a piece of firewood into the fire.

"Your illusion art was probably seen through by them long ago, right?"

Ye Xuan's expression was calm: "I never thought they would fall for it. They have all entered the Mahayana Realm, and casting an illusion across several major realms is a joke to begin with. Only by showing my most despicable and greedy side, making them feel disgusted and feel that their devotion was misplaced, would they feel at ease erasing me."

"If I had fled on my own, they would have scoured the ends of the earth to drag me back."

Ying'er's eyes were slightly red: "Master, isn't it better to stay in the palace and be protected by them? Aren't you best at living off women?"

Ye Xuan did not answer this question. Instead, he touched the love token bracelet on her wrist, his gaze turning to the north: "In recent years, there is a place that has been calling out to me in the unseen world. I must go there."

"What is that place called?"

"The Red Dust Valley."

At the border of the Great Xia, the world was dim.

There were no sun, moon, or stars here, only a dark red haze that shrouded the sky all year round.

The air was filled with a strange, cloying scent of rouge mixed with a nauseating stench of blood. This was the ominous land that struck terror into the hearts of countless cultivators—the Red Dust Valley.

The Qi of Red Dust was the most filthy, yet most profoundly mysterious aura in the world.

It permeated everything, capable of silently stirring the deepest desires, greed, and obsessions at the bottom of one's heart. Let alone venturing deep into it, an ordinary cultivator could have their Dao heart collapse just by inhaling a single breath, reducing them to a beast that only knew slaughter and mating.

At this moment, on the outskirts of the Red Dust Valley, dozens of cultivators with powerful auras sat cross-legged. Sweating profusely with twisted expressions, they were using a trace of the outermost Qi of Red Dust to temper their Dao hearts.

"Ah! Mine, it's all mine! The connate spiritual treasure is mine!"

Suddenly, a Nascent Soul stage old monster snapped his eyes open, the whites of his eyes entirely filled with bloodshot crimson.

He let out a hysterical roar and actually clawed his own skull open, dying on the spot amidst his maddening illusions.

The surrounding cultivators were unsurprised; they simply distanced themselves with cold indifference, their eyes full of awe and fear.

Right at that moment, the figures of a man and a woman slowly walked over along the desolate ancient path.

The man wore tattered gray clothes, his handsome face exuding an unmelting iciness.

Following behind him was a petite young girl in a washed-out pale cyan dress, her hands fiercely guarding a plain and unadorned bracelet on her arm.

It was none other than Ye Xuan and Ying'er.

"Master, it's so scary here..."

Ying'er looked at the corpse with its brains splattered on the ground, her small face turning pale as she subconsciously gripped the hem of Ye Xuan's clothes.

Ye Xuan stopped in his tracks, tilted his head back, and took a deep breath of the nauseating Qi of Red Dust. His eyes showed not a hint of deluded madness; instead, they flickered with a strange light.

"Scary? This place is much cleaner than the imperial palace."

Ye Xuan sneered. Not only did he not retreat, but he took a step forward.

The next moment, a vast and domineering aura erupted from his thin body. The void trembled violently as the phantom of a massive black Kunpeng that blotted out the sky flashed behind him.

Kunpeng's Free Roaming!

Under the ghost-seeing gazes of the surrounding rogue cultivators, Ye Xuan grabbed Ying'er's slender waist, transforming into a black streak of light that tore through space. Without the slightest pause or hesitation, he plunged headlong into the deepest part of the impossibly dense Red Dust miasma!

"Crazy! This kid is crazy!"

"He actually dares to charge directly into the depths of the Red Dust Valley?"

"Courting death, he is purely courting death!"

The cultivators on the periphery were dumbfounded, shaking their heads and sneering, as if they could already see the outcome of these two leaving no bones behind.

It was unknown how long they traveled through this pitch-black red mist where one couldn't even see their own fingers.

Ying'er kept her eyes tightly shut. Her ears were filled with waves of blush-inducing decadent sounds and miserable shrieks, but as long as she hid in Ye Xuan's embrace, the terrifying Qi of Red Dust seemed to encounter its natural enemy, automatically retreating far away.

"Open your eyes, we have arrived."

Ye Xuan's cold voice rang out above her head.

Ying'er timidly opened her eyes, and the scene before her suddenly opened up.

There was no slaughter here, no red mist, and no illusions.

There was only a spacious, deathly still, and extremely cold blood-colored grand hall. The floor of the hall was paved with unknown dark red crystals, as if just soaked in fresh blood.

At the end of the hall stood a massive throne built from countless sparkling white bones.

Upon the throne sat a woman.

To be precise, it was an old woman so ancient she seemed about to weather into dust.

Her face was full of ravines, like dead tree bark, and her sparse white hair clung to her scalp. Her entire body exuded an incredibly dense aura of twilight.

But what was hair-raising was that her eyes, deeply sunken in their sockets, revealed a profound and eerie dark light that seemed to pierce through the eons and see through all mortal dust.

Seeing Ye Xuan enter the hall, a look of extreme joy, even somewhat twisted, slowly squeezed onto the old woman's bark-like face:

"Hehehe... I didn't expect that after waiting in this sunless hellhole for tens of thousands of years, someone has finally managed to reach this point."

Ye Xuan stopped, his right hand casually resting on the hilt of the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword at his waist.

His gaze was as sharp as a blade, devoid of any reverence, as he glanced at her coldly:

"Who are you? Why is it that over the years, I have felt an unseen force from this valley constantly calling out to me?"

"I am the creator of this Red Dust Valley."

The old woman's voice was as hoarse as rubbing against coarse sandpaper, carrying an unquestionable arrogance and disdain: "You may call me Hongfu. The reason you were drawn here is because your talent is extremely high—high enough to trigger the restrictions I left behind, making you qualified to become my legacy disciple."

Ye Xuan sneered, his eyelids drooping slightly, his expression disdainful to the extreme:

"You do not have the qualifications."

A trace of surprise flashed across Hongfu's face. But soon, not only did she not get angry, she instead smiled with extreme admiration, gently clapping her withered hands:

"Not bad, astonishing spirit. You indeed have the right to be this arrogant. After all..."

"To have experienced ten thousand lifetimes of reincarnation and still retain all your memories, without your true spirit falling. You are the only one I have seen in all of eternity!"

As soon as these words came out.

Ye Xuan's pupils suddenly shrank to pinpricks!

His hand gripping the sword abruptly tightened, his knuckles turning white.

With a dragon-like cry of a clang, the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword was unsheathed.

An unprecedented, terrifying killing intent locked onto the old woman on the throne like something tangible. The surrounding space began to collapse inch by inch under this killing intent, and the Great Luo Limitless Sword Qi was already tearing rifts in the void.

This was his deepest secret! His greatest trump card!

And now, it had been laid bare in a single sentence by an old woman he had never met before!

"Who exactly are you?" Ye Xuan's voice was freezing cold. If the other party's answer was even slightly off, he would unleash a fatal strike even if it meant perishing together.

Facing this terrifying killing intent capable of slaying gods and destroying immortals, Hongfu merely sighed, and in a flat tone, uttered a sentence that left Ye Xuan dumbfounded:

"Me? Just an ordinary Great Luo Golden Immortal."

The great hall fell into a deathly silence.

Ye Xuan was taken aback at first, then laughed out of extreme anger, his laughter full of undisguised mockery:

"A Great Luo Golden Immortal? How could you be stranded in the lower human realm? Do you take me for a gullible three-year-old?"

"Because I was forcibly beaten down here!"

At the mention of this, Hongfu's eyes suddenly erupted with deep resentment and unwillingness. Her withered fingers almost crushed the white bone throne. "My immortal bones are completely shattered, and my origin source is depleted. I can no longer return! I can only linger on and pant for breath in this lower realm!"

Ye Xuan stared at her for a long time before slowly retracting his sword intent and sneering.

"So, you created this so-called Red Dust Valley and made such a huge scene just to take a peerless genius as a disciple, so he can ascend to the Immortal Realm and help you get revenge?"

"Exactly," Hongfu admitted frankly.

"And you searched for ten thousand years just to find me?"

"Yes." Hongfu nodded, her eyes filled with a fanatical light.

Ye Xuan frowned slightly, feeling a sense of absurdity. "Why are your requirements so high? In the Three Thousand Dao Provinces, stunningly talented individuals are as common as the hairs on a cow. With the inheritance of a Great Luo Golden Immortal as bait, is it really that hard to find a top-tier genius?"

Hongfu let out a long sigh, and a heart-palpitating gleam burst from her cloudy eyes. "Naturally, it is difficult! Because what I cultivate is the most difficult, most unorthodox, and most insane Great Dao throughout all of history—the Great Dao of Desire."

Hearing this name, a thick trace of disgust and disdain flashed through Ye Xuan's eyes. He sneered, "And here I thought it was some supreme Great Dao. It turns out to be nothing more than the lowly methods of dual cultivation, vitality extraction, and seducing men."

"Narrow-minded!"

Hongfu's withered fingers gently tapped on the bone throne as she stared at Ye Xuan with burning eyes. "The Great Dao of Desire is also one of the supreme Great Daos. As long as it is cultivated to the extreme, one can likewise shift the stars and cover the sky with a single finger."

"And you are destined to be the future supreme sovereign of the Great Dao of Desire. You are also my chosen successor."

Ye Xuan sneered repeatedly, as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world. "Are you that certain?"

"Of course I am certain!"

Hongfu's voice was like a clap of thunder, exploding within the grand hall. "Because you possess the most terrifying and inconceivable talent of desire in this world!"

Ye Xuan furrowed his brows, revealing a look of surprise. "How would you know?"

"Hehe... It seems that after experiencing so many emotional entanglements, you yourself have long sensed that something was off, haven't you?" Hongfu asked with a cold smile.

Ye Xuan fell silent.

Indeed.

His mind rapidly flashed with the mad and frenzied look in Xia Lengyue's eyes for his sake, the obsessive and desperate weeping of Ye Qingcheng, and the unreasonable fixation of Wu Lingxiao.

"Yes, I did feel something unusual." Ye Xuan nodded, completely lowering the sword in his hand. "I just couldn't be sure what exactly this bizarre power was."

"That is perfectly normal." A rare trace of fear and reverence actually flashed through Hongfu's eyes. "Because throughout all of eternity, including you, I have only seen two people who possess this talent. You are one of them."

Ye Xuan couldn't help but step forward, staring fixedly at her. "Who is the other person?"

Hearing this question, Lady Hongfu trembled violently, and extreme terror erupted in her eyes.

She shook her head desperately, as if recalling some indescribable and horrifying scene:

"I cannot say... That existence is far too taboo, far too powerful. Merely mentioning their name will attract an unpredictable murderous intent from the Heavenly Dao!"

Ye Xuan snorted coldly. Seeing her so terrified, he did not press the issue further. "Then the question remains, what exactly is this talent I possess called?"

Lady Hongfu took a deep breath and answered in a trembling tone:

"This talent once resounded throughout the myriad heavens and realms, feared by countless Immortal Kings and Devil Emperors. At the same time, it drove countless high and mighty fairies and female emperors to madness, and even depravity."

"It is known as Eternal Conquest!"

Ye Xuan's expression changed drastically, and an indescribable chill crept up his spine. "What does that mean?"

Lady Hongfu sighed, looking at Ye Xuan with complex eyes, as if she were looking at a monster wearing human skin:

"The terror of this talent has reached a level ordinary people cannot imagine. The meaning of Eternal Conquest is... a person who possesses this talent is born to become the most powerful incubus in the myriad heavens and realms!"

"The people around him, especially those of the opposite sex, once they develop even the slightest hint of true love for him, even if it is just for a fleeting instant... this love will be completely solidified by the laws of the Heavenly Dao! It will never fade!"

Hongfu became increasingly agitated as she spoke, her voice turning sharp and piercing:

"What is even more terrifying is that this love can only continue to increase as time passes; it can absolutely never decrease!"

"Even if you do countless wrong deeds, do countless things to break her heart, even if you kill her entire family and trample her under your feet... it will not have the slightest effect!"

"For example, if a woman, at a certain moment, because you risked your life to save her, or because of a random moment of being moved, suddenly has a fleeting thought of wanting to live and die with you."

Hongfu stared fixedly into Ye Xuan's eyes, enunciating every word clearly:

"Then, this affection will be instantly locked in! From then on, no matter what happens, she will forever hold an obsession to live and die with you, resting only when she is dead!"