Ye Jiuzhou's Grand Wedding

Ye Jiuzhou opened his mouth.

He felt his cheeks burning so hot they might catch fire. This heat spread from his face to his ears, neck, and collarbones, trailing all the way down to his chest. His heart beat so fast it felt like it would leap out of his throat.

Shame welled up in his heart. Nervousness. Fear.

And...

A trace of humble, precarious expectation.

"Then do you..."

His voice was trembling.

This was the first time in Ye Jiuzhou's life that he trembled so obviously and undisguisedly in front of another person.

"Do you know that I..."

Before he could finish.

Ye Xuan interrupted him.

"I know what you want to say, Brother."

Ye Xuan's voice rippled through the twilight.

"I, Ye Xuan, have always acted unconventionally."

As he said this, he slightly raised his chin. The last ray of light in the twilight happened to fall on the side of his neck, outlining a gracefully sweeping curve.

This angle, this posture, carried a natural arrogance unique to Ye Xuan.

"The love I pursue lies in the resonance of souls; I am not bound by gender."

Ye Jiuzhou's breathing stopped for a moment, an unimaginable joy filling his heart.

Ye Xuan looked at him.

He saw the light that bloomed in Ye Jiuzhou's eyes for a split second, a light so dazzling it pierced the eyes, so bright it made one's heart ache.

Ye Xuan's heart twitched slightly.

Then, he continued.

"Even if you are a man, Brother..."

"If my heart is moved, I would dare to brave the world's condemnation and become Dao companions with you."

After saying this, Ye Xuan paused.

He looked into Ye Jiuzhou's eyes.

Those eyes were filled with far too many things. Expectation, fear, longing, humility, the wreckage of pride, and a scalding, reckless desperation that was about to overflow.

Ye Xuan suddenly felt his throat tighten.

"It's just..."

The moment these words left his mouth, Ye Jiuzhou felt an unprecedented fear. He had never panicked like this before.

"I have always only harbored brotherly affection for you."

Ye Xuan's voice was very light, but it struck Ye Jiuzhou's ears like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.

Crack.

Ye Jiuzhou clearly heard the sound of his own heart breaking.

His face held no expression.

The sentence that had rolled over the tip of his tongue millions of times, carrying the courage of no return—Actually, I was once a woman, my name is Ye Jiuhuang—was forcibly shattered and swallowed back down into his stomach along with the taste of blood.

There was no need anymore.

It turned out that even if she dropped her disguise, even if she changed back into women's clothing, the ending was destined.

It wasn't that he couldn't accept a romance forbidden by the world; he just... didn't love her as a person.

"...Okay."

Ye Jiuzhou suddenly lowered his head, biting his lower lip so hard that he tasted a strong metallic tang of blood, forcefully suppressing the despair that was about to burst from his eyes.

"It was your brother... who lost his mind."

Seven days later.

Sword God Palace.

The entire mountain gate was drowned in red.

Bright red lanterns hung all the way from the mountain gate to the peak of the main mountain, densely strung together to form a winding red river.

Red silk draped over the flying eaves of every palace hall, fluttering fiercely in the wind and making crisp rustling sounds. A red carpet was laid from the foot of the mountain to the doors of the main hall, covering all three thousand six hundred steps completely and securely.

This was the grandest wedding in the cultivation world in ten years.

The number one young sword cultivator in the world, the Young Master of the Sword God Palace, Ye Jiuzhou, was marrying his cousin Shen Qingshuang.

Invitations had been delivered to every corner of the Nine Regions of the Central Continent half a month ago.

The sect leaders of the six major orthodox sects arrived in person, and the masters of over a hundred small and medium-sized sects came together. The leader of the Rogue Cultivators Alliance also sent representatives. Even a few reclusive families who usually isolated themselves from the world unprecedentedly sent congratulatory gifts.

Ten thousand sects came to congratulate.

The grand occasion was unprecedented.

Above the main hall, drums and music played in unison.

Ye Jiuzhou stood in the center of the hall.

He wore a bright red wedding robe.

This wedding robe was sewn by the Sword God Palace's royal tailor using Nine Heavens Brocade Cloud Satin. Embroidered on the satin were seventy-two soaring phoenixes, and the eyes of each phoenix were inlaid with thumb-sized rubies. Cloud patterns woven with gold thread spread all the way from the collar to the hem of the robe, flowing with brilliant colors under the illumination of the lights, dazzlingly magnificent.

The bright red made his face appear even paler and his features sharper. His tall nose, fierce sword-like eyebrows, thin and tightly pursed lips, and those phoenix eyes that always carried a hint of arrogance—under the contrast of this red robe, he was so handsome he hardly seemed like a creature of the mortal realm.

But in those phoenix eyes, there was not a single trace of a groom's joy.

He walked mechanically across the red carpet. Every step landed exactly on the drumbeat, without the slightest deviation.

His steps were steady, upright, and impeccable. This was the etiquette he had been repeatedly trained in since he was ten years old. His body had already formed muscle memory; even if his soul was no longer there, this empty shell could perfectly execute every movement.

Bowing to heaven and earth.

He bent over. His back formed a perfect ninety-degree angle.

First bow.

He straightened up, turned around, and bent over again.

Second bow.

The movements were so fluid it was as if they had been rehearsed a thousand times in advance. There was not a single unnecessary pause, not a single mistaken angle.

Third bow.

It was complete.

From today onwards, he was Shen Qingshuang's husband.

From today onwards, Ye Jiuzhou had a wife.

The drum and music swelled. The hall full of guests offered their congratulations in unison.

"Congratulations to the Young Master"

"A harmonious union for ten thousand years"

"May you soon have a precious son".

Blessings rose and fell one after another.

Ye Jiuzhou stepped down from the high platform and walked into the crowd.

He toasted table by table. At each table, he would raise his wine cup, nod slightly, and reveal a proper, perfectly measured smile.

This smile was gentle as jade, calm and elegant, carrying the unique nobility and grandeur of the world's number one young sword cultivator.

"Thank you all for gracing us with your presence. I, Ye, toast you all."

The guests raised their glasses one after another, feeling overwhelmed by the favor.

No one noticed that the smile did not reach his eyes.

No one noticed that the hand holding the wine cup was trembling slightly.

And no one noticed that his gaze, in the intervals of every toast, would cross the noisy crowd and cast toward a certain direction in the corner of the main hall.

That direction.

Ye Xuan was sitting there.

He wore a clean green robe. It wasn't new; it was that old robe that had been with him for many years. It had been washed countless times, and the collar and cuffs had turned somewhat white. But it was washed very clean and folded very neatly, without even a single wrinkle.

In front of him sat a jug of wine and a few plates of snacks to go with it. The wine was the most ordinary rice wine, and the dishes were the simplest peanuts and braised beef. Amidst a table full of exotic delicacies and ten-thousand-year spiritual brews, this jug of rice wine and these few small dishes looked extremely shabby.

But Ye Xuan ate very seriously.

He shelled the peanuts one by one. First, he would pinch a slit in the peanut shell with his fingernail, then break it open along the slit, take out the peanut kernel inside, and put it in his mouth to chew slowly.

When he chewed the peanuts, his cheeks would puff out, looking like two little hamsters hoarding food inside his cheeks.

He was smiling.

Not a perfunctory smile, not a forced smile, but a genuine, heartfelt smile that carried a hint of relief.

Ye Jiuzhou's gaze passed through the layers of silhouettes, passed through the clinking wine cups and the continuous toasts, and landed unerringly on the figure in the corner.

Right at this moment, Ye Xuan sensed something.

He raised his head.

Their gazes met across the crowded hall.

They were separated by more than half the length of the grand hall. Between them were hundreds of guests toasting and exchanging cups, a sky full of fluttering red silk and golden confetti, the deafening blast of drum music, and the clamor of voices.

But in Ye Jiuzhou's perception, all of this vanished.

The sounds vanished. The colors vanished. The crowds vanished. The entire grand hall, the entire Sword God Palace, the entire cultivation world—all of it disappeared.

Between heaven and earth, only two people remained: one wearing a grand red wedding robe standing amidst the crowd holding a wine cup, and the other wearing an old azure robe sitting in a corner pinching a peanut.

Ye Xuan raised his wine cup.

He offered a distant toast to Ye Jiuzhou.

The gesture was incredibly casual, like clinking glasses with an old friend at a roadside tavern. There was no solemn sense of ceremony; he merely raised the cup in Ye Jiuzhou's direction, and then his lips parted slightly.

Ye Jiuzhou read his lips.

In that deafening clamor where nothing could be heard clearly, he did not need to hear the sound. He only needed to watch the opening and closing of those lips to distinguish every single word.

Wishing Big Brother...

Ten thousand years of harmony.

Just four characters.

After Ye Xuan finished speaking, he tilted his head back and drained the wine in his cup in one gulp.

He drank it crisply. His Adam's apple bobbed once, and the cup was empty.

The hand Ye Jiuzhou used to hold his wine cup trembled violently. The wine spilled over the rim, splashed onto the back of his hand, dripped through his fingers onto the grand red wedding robe, and bloomed into several dark, circular stains.

He raised his cup and drained the wine in one gulp.

The liquid slid down his throat.

It was a top-grade ten-thousand-year spiritual brew, mellow and sweet, smooth on the palate. But to Ye Jiuzhou's taste buds, that mouthful of wine was more bitter than coptis root, more poisonous than arsenic.

It burned all the way from his throat to the bottom of his stomach, igniting an invisible fire within his internal organs.

It hurt.

It hurt so much.

It hurt so much that he wanted to draw the Heaven-Severing Divine Sword, cleave the hall above his head in two with a single strike, and reduce the entire Sword God Palace to ashes.

It hurt so much that he wanted to stride right up to Ye Xuan, flip that table, grab him by the collar, and ask him: Do you have any idea how cruel those words ten thousand years of harmony really are?

Do you have any idea how much my heart aches when you say those words with a smile?

It hurt so much that he wanted to destroy everything.

Destroy this wedding. Destroy the hall full of guests. Destroy this hypocritical, ruthless world that would not allow him to love a certain person.

But he did nothing.

He set down his wine cup, gave a slight nod, forced a textbook, gentle-as-jade smile onto his lips, and turned toward the next table.

Thank you all for gracing us with your presence. Let me toast you all once more.