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?"
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
