Changes Over the Past Decade

Heavenly Demon Sect.

The headquarters of the Heavenly Demon Sect was built within a bottomless abyss in the deepest reaches of the Southern Frontier.

The abyss was named the Nine Nether Rift, said to be a scar left behind when an almighty cultivator from the ancient era cleaved the earth with a single sword strike. The residual might of that sword strike still lingered on the rock walls on both sides of the rift. The spiritual energy there was twisted and chaotic; ordinary cultivators would feel dizzy and restless just walking to the edge of the rift.

The bottom of the rift was a darkness that never saw the light of day.

It was said to lead to the true Nine Nethers, a place the living should never go.

There was a place where even the elders of the Heavenly Demon Sect did not dare to easily set foot.

That was Zi Yao's private domain.

A secret chamber carved from a single, massive piece of Nine Nether Cold Iron.

The chamber was not large, barely three zhang in radius. Yet, this small space was the most hair-raising corner in the entire Heavenly Demon Sect.

On the floor was a massive array.

The array was not made of spirit stones or array flags, but human bones.

Hundreds of pristine white human bones were meticulously arranged into complex patterns. At every node rested a translucent, faintly beating heart. Although these hearts had been removed from their bodies, they still pulsated rhythmically, emitting muffled thump-thump sounds like a flock of birds trapped in a cage.

This array had only one function: tracking.

Zi Yao had spent ten years collecting one hundred and eight hearts of cultivators with special sensory abilities to form this Myriad Spirit Soul-Chasing Array, attempting to track the aura Ye Xuan left behind in the world to find his whereabouts.

But for ten years, the array's response had always been a chaotic void.

It was as if a person named Ye Xuan had never existed.

The four walls of the secret chamber were covered with portraits.

Portraits of the same person.

Ye Xuan.

Every portrait depicted Ye Xuan, but in various postures.

Some showed his cold-faced profile, some captured his ferocious appearance during battle, some showed his peaceful sleeping face, and others... were unbearable to look at, depicting him in highly erotic poses.

Some of these portraits were drawn with ink, some were phantoms condensed from spiritual energy, and some were even painted directly on the walls with fresh blood.

In the exact center of the chamber sat a low stone bed.

A layer of soft black mink fur was spread across the stone bed, and a few strands of black hair were sparsely scattered over the fur.

There was also a man's robe.

The robe was neatly folded and placed in the middle of the stone bed, as if waiting for its owner to return and put it on.

The robe was quite old, with frayed edges, but it had been washed perfectly clean, emitting a faint, refreshing fragrance that did not belong in this gloomy chamber.

It was a robe that Ye Xuan had once worn.

Zi Yao had obtained it from somewhere unknown and treasured it to this day.

At this moment, the master of the secret chamber was outside.

Behind the Holy Maiden's Palace was a naturally formed cave, and inside the cave was a pool of dark red blood.

Zi Yao was walking barefoot along the edge of the blood pool.

Her feet stepped on the scorching rocks, scalding her pale, tender soles until they turned red and blistered, yet she felt absolutely no pain.

Walking barefoot over the boiling hot gravel and coagulated scabs of blood, every step she took left a shallow, bloody footprint on the ground.

Her long hair trailed behind her. The floor-length black hair was more than a zhang long, and the tips had been dyed dark red by the steam from the blood pool.

The raven hair was not tied up, nor did it bear any ornaments. It simply draped loosely over her shoulders, hung down to her waist, and dragged on the floor, swaying gently in the blood-red light with her steps, like a bolt of black silk soaked in fresh blood.

Zi Yao walked a lap around the blood pool and suddenly stopped.

She tilted her head, as if she had heard a sound.

A moment later, two Heavenly Demon Sect disciples walked in, escorting a tightly bound man.

The man looked to be around thirty, with reasonably decent features, but right now his face was ashen, and his whole body was shaking like a leaf. His mouth was gagged with a black cloth, allowing him to only make muffled, indistinct whimpers.

Lady Holy Maiden, one of the disciples knelt respectfully, this is a rogue cultivator caught in Cloudwater City of the Southern Frontier. He looks... somewhat like the person you are searching for.

Zi Yao slowly turned around.

The instant the rogue cultivator saw Zi Yao, his pupils dilated, and his trembling became even more violent.

He struggled desperately, whining through his gag, like a mouse thrown into a snake pit.

Zi Yao walked over.

Her walking posture was incredibly slow. Her bare feet stepped on the bloodstained ground almost without making a sound.

The hem of her black gauze dress fluttered gently behind her, and her long hair dragging on the floor resembled a slithering black snake.

She walked up to the rogue cultivator and stopped.

Then, she carefully scrutinized his face.

The chamber was dead silent.

There was only the bubbling sound of the blood pool and the rogue cultivator's rapid, almost suffocating gasps.

It's not him.

Zi Yao finally spoke.

Her voice was unexpectedly pleasant, but the content held within that pleasant voice sent chills down one's spine:

The rogue cultivator felt a wave of relief and collapsed limply onto the ground. He thought he had been spared.

Bang.

A muffled sound.

It wasn't some exaggerated explosion, just an extremely faint, muffled noise like the squashing of a ripe grape.

The five fingers of Zi Yao's right hand slightly closed.

The rogue cultivator's head, caught in the grip of her palm, shattered like a clay toy.

Red and white liquids mixed together, slowly oozing through the gaps between her fingers and dripping onto the ground.

The two escorting disciples turned as pale as a sheet from fright, but didn't dare make a single sound.

Zi Yao lowered her hand, her face devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

Then, she turned around and walked barefoot back into the secret chamber.

She walked to the stone bed and sat down on the black mink fur.

She picked up the neatly folded man's robe from the stone bed, gently pressed it against her face, and took a deep breath.

Husband...

Her voice suddenly changed.

It was no longer the hollow and indifferent tone from before, but had become... soft.

Where on earth have you hidden yourself?

She hugged the robe tightly in her arms, burying her face in the fabric, like a little girl falling asleep holding her favorite doll.

Do you know... for the past ten years, I haven't been able to sleep a single night...

Her voice grew lower and lighter, carrying a trance-like quality as if sleepwalking:

I want to hear your voice so much. I want to hear you beg me for mercy so much... Do you know, you look incredibly beautiful when you beg for mercy, your eyes all red, your voice trembling... Even though you hate me to death, you still have to bow your head...

That expression makes me more addicted than any miraculous elixir.

The corners of her mouth curved up, revealing a smile so sweet it made one's heart palpitate:

And those eyes of yours... When you are stubborn, they are like two sharp swords, wanting to slice me into a thousand pieces. But when you can no longer hold on and finally compromise, the light in those eyes is like shattered stars, falling down piece by piece...

Ah... I really love that kind of light. I love watching the process of your pride being crushed bit by bit by me...

As she spoke, her body began to tremble slightly.

This trembling was not from fear, nor from the cold.

Rather, it was a sickening, extreme excitement and longing.

Come out quickly, my husband.

She hugged the garment even tighter, her voice turning into an enchanting whisper:

As long as you are willing to come out, I will give you anything.

The Heavenly Demon Sect? Take it. The entire Heavenly Demon Sect, all its disciples, elders, secret realms, and treasures, I will give them all to you.

You want to be the Sect Master? I will let you. You want to destroy the Heavenly Demon Sect? I will help you destroy it.

As long as you come out... as long as you let me look at you one more time...

Her voice suddenly rose in pitch:

I beg you!

These words echoed in the secret chamber, striking the portraits of Ye Xuan on all four walls, and were then swallowed by the steam of the blood pool, turning into a muffled, spine-chilling hum.

The two disciples standing outside the door exchanged a glance upon hearing this voice, both seeing the deep fear in each other's eyes.

They did not know exactly what kind of feelings the Saintess had for that man named Ye Xuan.

Love? Hate? Obsession? Madness?

Perhaps it was all of them. Perhaps it was none.

Perhaps it was something that transcended all known emotions, something twisted to the absolute extreme.

Like a vine nurtured by venom, madly, at any cost, and self-destructively entwining around a large tree that was long gone.

The tree was gone.

But the vine was still growing.

Growing denser and denser, deeper and deeper.

Until one day, it would even crush itself.

The Northern Region. The Extreme Cold Ice Palace.

In stark contrast to the furious rage of the Empress of Great Xia and the madness of the Heavenly Demon Saintess.

The master of the Extreme Cold Ice Palace in the Northern Region, Xia Lengyue, chose a completely different way to spend this long period of waiting over the past ten years.

She sealed herself away.

The Extreme Cold Ice Palace was situated atop a ten-thousand-year-old ice peak at the northernmost tip of the Kunwu Continent.

That ice peak was named the Absolute Yin Peak. It was covered by blizzards all year round, with temperatures constantly maintained at hundreds of degrees below zero. Ordinary cultivators flying near the ice peak would not be able to withstand the piercing cold even with their spiritual energy protecting their bodies, let alone approach the Ice Palace itself.

The interior of the Ice Palace was extremely spacious, so large that it did not look like a person's residence, but rather a frozen divine temple.

The domed ceiling was dozens of feet high, hung with countless inverted icicles, looking like an upside-down crystal forest in the dim light.

The floor was as smooth as a mirror, clearly reflecting a person's image.

In the deepest part of the Ice Palace was a circular ice chamber.

The ice chamber was not large, about ten zhang in diameter, but the domed ceiling was extremely high, extending upwards for dozens of zhang before converging into a sharp conical tip.

Right in the center of the ice chamber stood a massive ice crystal.

The ice crystal was about two zhang high and one and a half zhang wide, showing an extremely rare deep blue color.

It was not ordinary ice, but the most precious and terrifying type of Ten-Thousand-Year Black Ice: Absolute Yin Extreme Cold Ice.

It was said that this ice was formed at the beginning of the world, a crystallization of the power of Absolute Yin, with a temperature low to an unimaginable degree.

And at this moment, inside this block of Absolute Yin Extreme Cold Ice—

A person was sealed.

A woman.

She floated right in the center of the deep blue ice crystal, her eyes tightly closed, her arms hanging naturally at her sides, and her long hair floating freely within the ice crystal, like a black lotus blooming underwater.

She wore a moon-white long dress, its hem spreading out in the ice crystal like blooming petals. The fabric of the dress was extremely light and thin, presenting an almost translucent, soft texture under the refraction of the ice crystal.

Her face...

If Wu Lingxiao possessed a sharp, awe-inspiring beauty, and if Zi Yao possessed a demonic, terrifying beauty, then Xia Lengyue's beauty was a kind of...

Heartache-inducing beauty.

Her facial features were as light as an ink painting, not as rich and heavy as Wu Lingxiao's, nor as coquettish and stunning as Zi Yao's.

Her eyebrows were fine and long, like the silhouette of distant mountains; her eyelashes were thick and curled, currently covered with a layer of fine frost, looking like two small diamond-studded fans.

The bridge of her nose was graceful but not sharp, its lines as gentle as a slowly flowing stream; her lips had lost their color due to the freezing, turning into a pale pinkish-white, but still maintained a beautiful curve.

She looked very peaceful.

As if she had fallen asleep.

But if a mighty expert with profound cultivation were to investigate carefully, they would discover a shocking fact.

Her spiritual energy was circulating at an extremely insane speed.

Beneath this calm surface of seemingly deep sleep, the spiritual energy in her body was like a furious glacial river, violently washing over every acupoint and every bottleneck in her meridians with an intensity ten thousand times that of an ordinary person's cultivation speed.

This was a nearly self-mutilating method of cultivation.

Utilizing the characteristic of the Absolute Yin Extreme Cold Ice to freeze physical sensation, she allowed herself to push the circulation of her spiritual energy to the absolute limit without the interference of pain.

The advantage of this method was that the cultivation efficiency was extremely high.

The price was that every second, her meridians were enduring an impact far beyond their limits. If there was a mistake in any step, her meridians would collapse and disintegrate like a dam unable to withstand a flood, and what awaited her would be severed meridians, completely ruined cultivation, and even the destruction of both body and soul.

She had been cultivating like this for ten years.

Ten years without sleep or rest, without food or drink, completely isolated from the outside world.

Ten years on the brink of life and death, dancing on the edge of a blade.

Outside the ice chamber stood a woman.

That was Xia Lengyue's trusted maid, named Shuang'er.

Shuang'er looked to be in her early twenties this year, but she had actually lived for over two hundred years.

She was a personal maid raised by Xia Lengyue since childhood, and her loyalty to the master of the Ice Palace rivaled the sun and the moon.

But at this moment, her eyes were filled with worry.

And not just worry.

There was also fear.

She stood outside the door of the ice chamber, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, her knuckles turning white from excessive force. Her gaze pierced through the outer wall of the ice crystal, falling upon the sleeping figure inside.

Over the past ten years, this figure had undergone almost no visible changes.

But Shuang'er knew that there were changes.

And they were massive, terrifying changes.

She could feel that the aura emanating from that block of Absolute Yin Extreme Cold Ice was growing stronger day by day.

It was not the power of the ice that was growing stronger.

It was the power of the person inside the ice that was growing stronger.

So strong that even the ice crystal could almost no longer suppress it.

The Palace Master has been in seclusion for ten years...

Shuang'er murmured, her voice echoing in the empty Ice Palace, carrying a sense of lonely hollowness.

Behind her stood several other maids of the Ice Palace.

They were all trusted aides who had followed Xia Lengyue for many years, and at this moment, just like Shuang'er, they were gazing worriedly at their master inside the ice crystal.

Sister Shuang'er, one of the younger maids spoke up timidly, Will the Palace Master... ever wake up?

She will. Shuang'er's answer was firm, but her tightly clenched hands betrayed the true unease in her heart.

"But..." another maid hesitated for a moment before finally speaking up. "The Palace Master's aura is becoming increasingly terrifying. Last month, when the Third Elder passed by the outside of the Ice Chamber, merely sensing the fluctuations of the Palace Master's aura from afar caused him to cough up blood on the spot..."

Shuang'er remained silent.

She knew better than anyone what kind of transformation Xia Lengyue was undergoing.

It was not just her cultivation base that was skyrocketing.

Something else was changing as well.

She could not quite put it into words, but her intuition told her—

Her Palace Master was turning into something... not quite human.

"Her aura is growing more terrifying, and increasingly..."

Shuang'er hesitated for a long time before finally whispering the word:

"Inhuman."