The Past of Bai Qian Gu

The Limitless Demon Sect, the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons.

This place was shrouded year-round in a heavy, black baleful aura. Sunlight could not penetrate it, and the air was filled with the stale stench of blood mixed with an extravagant, exotic fragrance.

This was a forbidden ground in the cultivation world, the nightmare of countless righteous cultivators, yet it was Bai Qiangu's only refuge.

At this moment, this female demon lord who could make heaven and earth change color was sitting all alone deep within the empty hall.

Barefoot, she walked step by step like a wandering ghost into a secret chamber that only she could enter.

The heavy doors of the chamber slowly closed, cutting off all sound from the outside world.

This was her home.

It was also the greenhouse she had specially built for Ye Xuan.

There were no torture instruments or bloody scenes in the secret room. Instead, it was decorated to be extremely warm, even possessing a bizarrely cozy, domestic feel.

However, a closer look would make one's scalp go numb.

A massive bed sat in the center of the room, and on the nightstand rested a lamp emitting a soft, warm yellow glow.

The lamp stand was crystal clear, like the finest mutton-fat white jade.

That was the calf bone Ye Xuan had broken when he tried to escape in his previous life. She had forcefully extracted it and refined it into this ever-burning lamp.

"As long as the lamp is lit, it feels like you are still keeping me company."

Bai Qiangu reached out her pale fingers and gently stroked the warm bone lamp. Her eyes were hazy, and a sickly flush rose on her cheeks.

She walked to the vanity table.

This comb was carved from Ye Xuan's rib.

The frame of this mirror was inlaid with the finger bones discarded when Ye Xuan underwent his bone-changing process.

The entire room was filled with Ye Xuan's aura; everywhere were parts belonging to his body.

Of course, these were all souvenirs she had kept to punish Ye Xuan for his past escape.

Bai Qiangu picked up a bone lamp and took down a long-dried skull from the shelf, one that had been polished to a brilliant shine from constant handling.

This skull, naturally, also belonged to the Ye Xuan of the previous life.

Holding the skull as if embracing her most intimate lover, she slowly curled up on the bed that was full of Ye Xuan's scent.

"My little husband..."

"You cannot escape."

She buried her face deeply into the soft blankets and took a deep breath. It was Ye Xuan's lingering scent, a mixture of fear, despair, and the masculine aura that utterly fascinated her.

"Since you like playing hide-and-seek, we will play to the very end."

"When I catch you... this time, I will shatter every single one of your bones, making you so soft that you can only lie paralyzed in my arms, unable to go anywhere."

In the darkness, Bai Qiangu's gaze gradually lost focus. Her thoughts, like a kite with a snapped string, drifted toward a distant and bloody past.

The starting point of her memories was the blood pool in the deepest part of the Limitless Demon Sect.

That year, Bai Qiangu was five years old.

She had no childhood. From the moment she could remember, her world had been red.

That was the color of blood.

Her father, the previous sect master of the Limitless Demon Sect, was a lunatic who would use any means necessary to pursue immortality.

He had someone give birth to his daughter, Bai Qiangu, not out of love, or even to produce an heir.

It was purely because he calculated that his bloodline had an extremely low probability of birthing a combination of the legendary Undying Demonic Body and a Heavenly Spiritual Root.

That would be the most perfect human cauldron.

"Qiangu, you must cultivate diligently."

Her father's voice was always so majestic, carrying an unquestionable ruthlessness.

"On the day you reach the Tribulation Transcendence stage, Father will merge with you, and together we will prove our Dao to achieve immortality."

The young Bai Qiangu did not understand what merging meant.

She only knew that if she did not work hard, she would be thrown into the Ten Thousand Demons Cave, and if she did not break through, she would be skinned and have her tendons pulled out.

She grew up amidst slaughter.

She killed her first person at six, massacred a city at eight, and by the time she was twelve, she was already the Demon Sect's sharpest blade.

She had no emotions and felt no pain. Like a delicate puppet, her only purpose in living was to wait for the Tribulation Transcendence stage to be devoured by her father.

Until eight hundred years later.

Bai Qiangu broke through to the Tribulation Transcendence stage and awakened the complete Undying Demonic Body.

It was a night of thunderstorms.

Her father walked into her room full of joy, ready to enjoy this perfect cauldron he had cultivated for eight hundred years.

However, what greeted him was not obedience.

But a hand piercing through his chest.

"Fa... ther..."

Bai Qiangu tilted her head. Her stunningly beautiful face was devoid of expression, even carrying a trace of childlike innocence.

Her hand was plunged into her father's heart, feeling the beating of that aged organ.

"Are you going to eat me?"

"But... I am hungry too."

That night, rivers of blood flowed through the Limitless Demon Sect.

Stepping on her father's corpse, Bai Qiangu sat upon the throne of white bones that symbolized supreme power.

And all of her father's former subordinates were slaughtered by her without exception.

She was free.

But she was also empty.

After killing everyone, she stared blankly at the empty hall, her heart nothing but a barren wasteland.

She did not know what she was living for.

She could only use slaughter to fill the emptiness within.

Until... that severe injury.

It was shortly after she had become the sect master.

The Top Ten Righteous Sects besieged the Limitless Demon Sect.

Although Bai Qiangu possessed peerless divine skills, her foundation was not yet stable. Coupled with the fact that she had just committed patricide, her inner demons were acting up.

In that earth-shattering battle, she fought until the sky turned dark. Ultimately exhausted and heavily injured, she fell from the highest heavens.

She fell into a nameless valley.

At this time, all the bones in her body were shattered, her demonic qi was depleted, and she did not even have the strength to move a single finger.

She thought she was going to die.

She even longed for death.

Because to her, living seemed to hold nothing else besides slaughter.

Just as she closed her eyes to wait for death, a drop of cool liquid fell onto her cracked lips.

She struggled to open her eyes.

What entered her vision was a little boy, perhaps only eight or nine years old.

He wore coarse linen clothes and carried a small medicine basket on his back. His face was dirty, but he had a pair of eyes brighter than the stars.

That was Ye Xuan.

An eight-year-old Ye Xuan.

"Big sister, you're bleeding so much."

Little Ye Xuan's voice was youthful and crisp, filled to the brim with worry.

He did not know she was a demon lord who killed without blinking; he only thought she was an injured passerby.

He clumsily took herbs from his medicine basket, chewed them up in his mouth, and applied them to her hideous wounds.

It hurt.

But Bai Qiangu did not cry out. She merely stared fixedly at this boy.

Why?

Why save me?

I am a demon.

The following month was the time Bai Qiangu felt the most human in her entire life.

She could not move and could only lie on a pile of straw.

Ye Xuan would come every day.

He fed her dew, picked wild fruits for her, and told her stories about the mountains.

"Big sister, this fruit is very sweet, I tasted it."

"Big sister, when you get better, I'll take you to see the sea of clouds at the peak of the mountain. It's so beautiful."

"Big sister, you don't like to smile. My mother says people who don't like to smile are bitter in their hearts."

With those small hands that could never be washed completely clean, he pieced together Bai Qiangu's broken body bit by bit, and also cracked open a seam in her frozen heart.

One day, as the sun was setting in the west.

Bai Qiangu's injuries had mostly recovered, and she knew she had to leave.

The Demon Sect still had countless traitors waiting for her to kill, and the righteous path still had countless hypocrites waiting for her to destroy.

But she could not bear to part with him.

She looked at little Ye Xuan, who was weaving a grass ring for her, and asked, driven by some inexplicable impulse:

"Little one, why are you so good to me?"

Ye Xuan looked up, revealing a smile so radiant it made the sunlight pale in comparison, and slipped that rough grass ring onto her finger:

"Because you are beautiful, big sister!"

"When I grow up, can I marry you?"

Bai Qiangu's mind went completely blank in that moment.

Marry me?

In this world, someone wanted to marry a demon?

Someone wanted to marry a monster whose hands were stained with blood?

Looking into Ye Xuan's clear, innocent eyes, Bai Qiangu's long-dead heart gave a violent throb.

It was a feeling she had never experienced before.

The feeling of being loved.

She reached out and gently stroked Ye Xuan's head, her eyes softer than they had ever been:

"Okay."

"You must remember your words."

"You have to marry me."

She left behind a jade pendant and turned to leave.

She had to go back, slaughter all her enemies, and forge the entire Limitless Demon Sect into an impenetrable fortress.

Then, she would return in absolute splendor to marry her... little husband.

In the blink of an eye, twenty years passed.

For these twenty years, Bai Qiangu cultivated like a madwoman and expanded her power with reckless abandon.

The Limitless Demon Sect became the number one demonic sect in the Tianwu Continent.

She became the Empress whose very name struck terror into the hearts of all.

And everything she did was for that one promise.

Finally, she felt the time was right.

Leading a hundred thousand demonic cultivators and riding in a wedding chariot pulled by nine demonic dragons, she descended in a grand and mighty procession upon Qingyang City, the town where that valley from all those years ago was located.