Early the next morning.
The sky was just beginning to lighten.
Ye Jiuzhou found Ye Xuan on a small path in the back mountain.
Ye Xuan was carrying the worn-out bamboo basket that had been with him for sixty years, walking down the mountain along a rarely traveled stone path.
He was not walking fast. His steps were leisurely, almost as if he were taking a casual stroll.
Passing by a cluster of blooming camellias, he even stopped to pick one, brought it to his nose to smell, and casually tucked it behind his ear.
He was leaving.
Ye Jiuzhou stood fifty feet behind him, his face pale.
Brother Xuan.
He called out.
Ye Xuan stopped in his tracks.
He didn't turn back immediately, but paused for a breath where he stood. Then, he slowly turned around.
He saw Ye Jiuzhou's appearance.
His gaze swept over Ye Jiuzhou's disheveled hair, over his bloodshot eyes, over his dry, chapped lips, and finally landed on the hand gripping the hilt of a sword.
Eldest Brother, what's wrong?
His voice was very calm.
Ye Jiuzhou grabbed Ye Xuan's wrist, his movements extremely urgent.
Let's go.
His voice carried a reckless madness that bordered on begging.
Let's continue our travels. To the Eastern Sea. To the Southern Frontier. To anywhere you want to go.
He looked at Ye Xuan, his eyes brimming with far too many emotions.
Pleading, obsession. Pain. And a cornered, near-collapsing despair.
Ye Xuan looked at him.
Looked at those eyes of his.
Then, he sighed softly.
Eldest Brother is a newlywed, and sister-in-law is still waiting for you...
I don't love her!
Ye Jiuzhou's voice suddenly rose.
This was not his usual calm and self-possessed voice, but a frantic growl.
You know that!
His fingers tightened around Ye Xuan's wrist. Too tight.
So tight that his nails pressed shallow white marks into the skin of Ye Xuan's wrist. But Ye Xuan did not pull away; not because he couldn't, but because he couldn't bear to.
Agony surged in Ye Jiuzhou's eyes.
You know my feelings!
His voice was trembling.
I only want you by my side!
Ye Xuan stood before him.
His wrist was still being grasped by Ye Jiuzhou. He didn't pull away. He just looked down at the hand holding him.
That hand was shaking, shaking violently.
Ye Xuan's eyelashes fluttered.
For a moment, a trace of complexity flashed deep in his eyes, but this emotion quickly vanished.
He raised his other hand and gently, carefully pried open the fingers Ye Jiuzhou had clamped around his wrist.
One.
Two.
Three.
With each finger pried away, Ye Jiuzhou's fingertips would twitch uncontrollably.
His cultivation base was far above Ye Xuan's, yet at this moment, he felt completely powerless and remained utterly silent.
The last finger was pried open.
Ye Xuan took a step back.
The distance of this step was no more than a foot. But in Ye Jiuzhou's perception, this step was further than the ends of the earth.
Eldest Brother.
These feelings of yours...
Ye Xuan paused, a hint of sorrow flashing in his eyes:
I cannot return them.
Four words.
Every word was enunciated clearly.
Unambiguous. Unhesitating. Leaving no room for leeway.
Ye Xuan looked into Ye Jiuzhou's eyes. The last glimmer of light in those phoenix eyes was extinguishing at a visible rate.
Eldest Brother. Ye Xuan's voice became even softer.
Spare yourself.
And spare me too.
After saying the last sentence, Ye Xuan turned around, just as casually as he had done countless times in front of Ye Jiuzhou over the past sixty years.
But this turn was different from all the previous ones.
Because this time, he did not look back.
Ye Jiuzhou stood rooted to the spot.
He watched Ye Xuan's back gradually recede into the morning mist, step by step.
He was gone.
Truly gone.
Ye Jiuzhou's knees gave way.
His body tilted forward, and he fell to one knee on the freezing stone path.
His mouth was open.
No sound came out.
It was as if something was blocking his throat.
He wanted to shout.
Wanted to call his name.
Wanted to ask him to come back.
But he couldn't make a single sound.
All these sounds shattered in his throat. Shattered into powder. Shattered into dust. Mingled with blood and tears, they were silently swallowed down.
The morning mist grew thicker and thicker.
So thick that he couldn't see anything.
So thick that the entire world turned into a vast, white emptiness.
Leaving only him alone.
Kneeling between heaven and earth in a blank, desolate void.
He didn't know how long he knelt there.
Long enough for the sunlight to pour down from the mountain peak, shining on his back, illuminating the golden phoenix patterns on his bright red wedding robe in a glaring and ironic way.
Then, he stood up.
The moment he stood up, he felt that something inside his body had died.
It wasn't his heart.
His heart had already broken last night.
What died was something else. Something deeper. Something more fundamental.
Ye Jiuzhou straightened his posture.
His expression returned to calmness under the sunlight.
This calmness was different from any of his past calmness. The past calmness was a disguise, but the current calmness was real.
It was the calmness of having absolutely nothing left.
His phoenix eyes no longer held any luster. Those eyes, which were once as sharp as swords, now resembled two pools of stagnant water.
He walked back to the Sword God Palace along the stone path, step by step.
Passing by the bridal chamber, the door was left ajar. He did not go in.
Passing by the main hall, the servants were cleaning up the aftermath of last night's banquet. Seeing him walk by, they bowed one after another. He did not respond.
He walked straight towards the deepest part of the Sword God Palace.
Passing through seven layers of restrictions.
Crossing nine seals.
Stepping into an eternal darkness that even sunlight could not reach.
The Sword Burial Abyss.
The deepest, darkest, and most untouchable forbidden ground in the twenty thousand years since the founding of the Sword God Palace.
Buried here were the broken, discarded swords of generations of Sword God Palace disciples. Over twenty thousand years, an unknown number of swords had turned into rust and dust in this place.
Their resentment, hostility, obsession, and unwillingness had all settled into this abyss, transforming into a thick, almost tangible black mist.
When Ye Jiuzhou walked in, that mist acted like a pack of wolves catching the scent of prey, immediately surging over from all directions.
Ye Jiuzhou did not drive them away.
He walked towards the very bottom of the abyss.
Beneath the graveyard of all discarded swords, at the very core of twenty thousand years of resentment, there was a stone platform.
On the stone platform lay a book.
Its pages had yellowed. The corners were curled, and the paper was covered with mildew spots of various sizes.
The handwriting on the cover had been blurred by the erosion of time, but a few ancient and ferocious large characters could still be discerned:
The Supreme Emotion-Severing Extinction Sword
This sword manual was left behind by the first-generation ancestral founder of the Sword God Palace before he transcended his tribulation and ascended. Legend had it that in the final moment before his ascension, he sealed his life's strongest and most dangerous sword art into this book, threw it into the Sword Burial Abyss, and left behind an ancestral injunction:
Future disciples must absolutely not cultivate this art.
This art is not of the sword, but a path of self-destruction.
To practice this sword, one must first sever the threads of emotion. Severing passion, severing love, severing righteousness, severing the heart. After these four severings, a person is no longer a person, a sword is no longer a sword, all things become void, and heaven and earth become ruthless.
Those who cultivate this art, even if they obtain unrivaled power in the world, shall forever lose their human heart.
For twenty thousand years, not a single disciple of the Sword God Palace had dared to touch this sword manual.
It was not because it lacked power.
Rather, it was because it was far too powerful, so powerful that the price of mastering it was the complete sacrifice of one's self.
Ye Jiuzhou stood before the stone pedestal.
He gazed down at the yellowed book.
He reached out his hand.
His hand was incredibly steady.
There was no trembling, no hesitation. There was not even the slightest hint of reluctance.
His fingertips brushed the surface of the pages.
Ye Jiuzhou spoke, his expression cold to the absolute extreme:
"Since all love and affection in this world bring nothing but suffering..."
"Since no matter what I do, I will never be able to have you..."
"Then what use do I have for this heart?"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
ts me of treason?" "Correct. The host must return to the capital and gradually build up influence." "Wait—I have half a million soldiers, and you want me to go back to the capital to 'build influence'?" "Host, you are currently the Northern Garrison General, loyal to the Great Xia Dynasty." "Of course I am loyal to Great Xia! Absolutely loyal!" "But you keep referring to yourself as 'We'..." "Never mind the details! Summon all the regional commanders and military officers! We suspect treacherous officials are manipulating the court! They shall march with Us to the capital and purge the corrupt!" "......"
