Bai Qian Gu Has Gone Mad

The Soul-Devouring Demon Fire burned for seven days and seven nights.

Ye Xuan’s soul was repeatedly seared, torn apart, and then forcibly mended by the life-sustaining elixirs Bai Qiangu fed him. The cycle continued endlessly, a pain that surpassed the limit of what any language could describe.

His screams, heart-wrenching on the first day, degraded into hoarse whimpers by the third. By the fifth day, only faint, ragged breaths escaped his throat. On the seventh day, there was only silence.

At last, Bai Qiangu extinguished the flames.

She approached Ye Xuan and lifted his chin. His once-handsome face was now pale as paper. His lips were cracked and bleeding, his eyes sunken, his cheekbones protruding. He looked like a withered tree that had been drained of all moisture.

Only his eyes remained—filled with hatred, despair, and something that made Bai Qiangu’s heart tremble.

“Look at me,” she said, her voice soft—so soft it seemed afraid of shattering something fragile.

Ye Xuan’s eyes moved slowly, his focus blurring for a moment before finally settling on her face.

He looked at her.

There was no anger, no curses, not even fear.

Only a chilling indifference that sent a cold shiver through Bai Qiangu.

That indifference was far more terrifying than hatred. Hatred at least meant he still cared, that his emotions were stirred, that she still existed to him as someone worth hating.

But indifference meant he no longer saw her as human. In his eyes, she was no different from the dried corpses hanging at the gates of the Demon Palace.

“Do you hate me?” Bai Qiangu asked.

Ye Xuan did not answer.

“It’s fine if you hate me,” she murmured to herself, her fingers tracing the hollow lines of his cheeks. “Hate is still an emotion. As long as you still have me in your heart—even if it’s hate—I’ll accept it.”

She unbound the chains piercing his collarbones, catching his limp body and cradling it like an infant.

Ye Xuan was light, light as a withered leaf. Seven days of soul fire had wasted him away to nearly nothing.

Bai Qiangu carried him step by step back to the secret chamber she had decorated to feel like a warm home.

She laid him on the bed, personally wiped his body clean, applied ointment to his wounds, and fed him life-preserving pills.

Her movements were incredibly gentle, as if the thing in her hands was not a person, but the most precious glass vessel in the world.

“Be good. Sleep,” she said.

She lay beside him, pulling him into her arms and resting her chin on the top of his head.

Ye Xuan’s eyes were closed. He did not move.

But he was not asleep.

In the darkness, his fingers curled slightly.

Ye Xuan’s injuries took a full month to heal.

Throughout that month, Bai Qiangu never left his side. She took care of his every need personally.

She even set aside all matters of the demon sect, temporarily handing control of the Demon Palace to a few trusted elders.

She boiled congee for him, cooling each spoonful with her breath before feeding it to him.

She combed his hair with an ivory comb, strand by strand, smoothing out the tangles from his long imprisonment.

She read to him—stories from the mortal world, tales of scholars and beauties, moonlit romances. She would laugh as she read, saying, “These mortals are so amusing. They need parental approval and a matchmaker just to fall in love. If I liked someone, I’d just take them directly.”

When she said this, there was a kind of innocent cruelty in her eyes.

Ye Xuan remained silent the entire time.

He ate the congee she fed him. He let her comb his hair. He listened to her boring stories.

But his eyes were always empty.

Like a walking corpse.

Bai Qiangu didn’t mind. She believed it was temporary. Once his wounds healed, once he came to terms with things, everything would be fine.

But then—

On the third day after Ye Xuan’s full recovery, Bai Qiangu was forced to leave the chamber for half a day due to a sudden assault by righteous cultivators.

Half a day.

Just half a day.

When she returned, covered in blood after slaughtering those arrogant ants who dared attack her sect, she found—

The door to the chamber was open.

Ye Xuan was not in bed.

Her heart plunged. Her divine sense instantly swept over the entire Boundless Demon Sect.

Then she found him, in a remote courtyard, hiding behind a rockery with a female cleaner.

The woman’s robes were disheveled, her face a mess of panic and seductive coquettishness. Ye Xuan’s clothes hung open, and there were fresh, red scratch marks on his neck.

Bai Qiangu stood at the entrance of the courtyard, frozen as if struck by lightning.

Wind blew past, stirring fallen leaves that swirled at her feet.

She stared at those scratch marks.

They were not made by her.

They were left by another woman.

On her territory.

After she had spent an entire month making congee, combing his hair, and reading stories by his side.

“Ye… Xuan…”

The words squeezed through her clenched teeth.

Ye Xuan looked up and saw Bai Qiangu.

He was not flustered.

In fact, the corner of his mouth curled into a provocative smirk.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was hoarse and cold. “Didn’t you call me a pet? A pet gets horny. It’s normal to find a female to relieve himself. Can’t I?”

The female cultivator collapsed to the ground in terror, trembling like a leaf. She finally realized the enormous mistake she had made.

“Sect… Sect Master… spare me… It was Lord Ye who…”

Before she could finish her sentence, her head flew off. Blood sprayed out, splattering across Ye Xuan’s face.

Ye Xuan did not flinch.

He even stuck out his tongue and licked the blood from the corner of his lips, his eyes burning with manic satisfaction.

“Go ahead,” he said, spreading his arms as if embracing death. “Kill me too. Living is nothing but suffering anyway.”

Bai Qiangu did not kill him.

She simply walked toward him step by step, each footfall landing in the blood pool of the headless body, making wet, sucking sounds.

She stopped in front of Ye Xuan and looked down at him.

Her eyes were red—not from demonic energy, but from tears.

But the tears only welled up for a moment before she forced them back.

“You did this on purpose,” she said.

“Yes, I did it on purpose,” Ye Xuan admitted without hesitation. “You find ten male lovers, I’ll find a hundred women. Disgust me, and I’ll disgust you right back. Bai Qiangu, we’re both going to suffer.”

Bai Qiangu closed her eyes.

She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.

When she opened her eyes again, all warmth had drained from them.

“Fine,” she said.

One word.

Then she seized Ye Xuan’s right hand.

“This is the hand you used to touch her?”

Her tone was terrifyingly calm, as if she were asking about the weather.

Ye Xuan’s pupils shrank. A bad premonition shot up from the base of his spine, drenching his back in cold sweat.

“Bai Qiangu, what are you going to do…”

Crack.

It was not the sound of a bone breaking.

It was the sound of a joint dislocating.

Bai Qiangu pried apart his fingers one by one, her movements slow and precise, as if dismantling a complex machine.

“Did this finger touch her face?”

Snap.

The index finger was snapped clean, bone piercing through the skin, a pale white shard exposed.

“Ahhh!” Ye Xuan screamed.

“And this one? Did it touch her waist?”

Snap.

The middle finger.

“This one?” She continued.

Slap.

The ring finger.

There was no expression on Bai Qiangu’s face, except for the faint trembling of her lips, betraying the turbulent emotions within her heart. She snapped Ye Xuan’s fingers one by one, and with each break, she wrapped the severed end in a piece of fine spirit jade cloth to prevent him from losing too much blood.

“Don’t rush. It’s not over yet.”

From her sleeve, she withdrew a small dagger. The blade was entirely black, yet its edge shimmered with a ghostly blue light—a “Soul-Breaking Knife” she had forged from ten-thousand-year-old cold iron, designed specifically to cut through a cultivator’s flesh, sharp enough to slice through dragon scales.

“Wherever you’ve touched other women, I’ll cut it off.”

Bai Qiangu crouched down and pressed the dagger against the wrist of Ye Xuan’s right hand.

“Then, I’ll use a spirit pill to make it grow back.”

She lifted her head, meeting Ye Xuan’s eyes—wide with terror—and forced a smile that was uglier than tears.

“Once it grows back, it’ll be brand-new. There won’t be any trace of that slut’s scent on it.”

“You’re insane! Bai Qiangu, you’re completely insane!”

Ye Xuan struggled desperately, but his cultivation was to hers what a firefly is to the moon. He was pinned in place by demonic energy, unable to move even a single finger.

“Insane?”

Bai Qiangu tilted her head and thought it over seriously.

“Maybe.”

The blade fell.

Ye Xuan’s right hand was severed at the wrist.

Blood gushed out.

Ye Xuan’s scream tore through the entire courtyard, startling hundreds of crows perched on the ridge of the Ten Thousand Demon Hall. They flapped their wings and soared into the sky, circling beneath the blood-colored sunset, letting out mournful cries as if playing a dirge for this human tragedy.

Bai Qiangu picked up the severed hand, examined it closely for a moment, then tossed it into the nearby demon fire.

The hand twisted and curled in the blue flames, eventually turning to ashes.

“All burned clean,” she said, nodding with satisfaction.

Then, from her bosom, she took out a golden-glowing pill—a Regeneration Pill, one of the rarest and most miraculous elixirs in the entire cultivation world, capable of regrowing severed limbs.

She forced the pill into Ye Xuan’s mouth while channeling her own primal demonic energy to accelerate the medicine’s effects.

The flesh at Ye Xuan’s severed wrist began to writhe and grow at a visible speed. Bones re-formed, meridians reconnected, muscles re-wrapped, and skin re-covered.

The entire process lasted about the time it takes to burn an incense stick.

A brand-new, pale, and scarless right hand had grown back.

Ye Xuan stared down at this “new” right hand, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.

Not from pain.

But from fear.

A fear that went deeper than bone, deeper than anything he had ever known.

Finally, he understood that Bai Qiangu’s torment of him wasn’t simple beatings, scoldings, or imprisonment.

She could cut off any part of his body and then make it grow back.

Endlessly.

That meant his suffering would also be endless.

“There,” Bai Qiangu said, taking his new hand and interlocking their fingers, that eerie, tender smile returning to her face. “Now this hand is clean. It has only touched me.”

“Remember: from now on, this hand can only touch me.”

Ye Xuan said nothing.

He just hung his head, shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

Whether he was crying or laughing, no one could tell.

From that day on, Bai Qiangu’s torment of Ye Xuan entered a new phase.

She no longer simply punished him.

She began to systematically, methodically “cleanse” every trace of other women from his body.

Because his lips had kissed someone else, she branded them off with a red-hot iron and used a spirit pill to make them grow back.

Because his eyes had looked at someone else, she pierced them blind with silver needles and used rare herbs to restore his sight.

Because his legs had walked toward someone else, she shattered his kneecaps and used dragon’s blood to make them heal.

And as for that part of him, she castrated him more than once.

Each cleansing was accompanied by Ye Xuan’s agonized screams and Bai Qiangu’s expressionless gaze.

She sat to one side, always holding a cup of tea, occasionally taking a sip as if enjoying a spectacular performance.

But only she knew that every time Ye Xuan’s screams rang out, the hand holding her tea would tremble slightly, spilling a few drops onto her blood-red robes—like crystal-clear tears.

She wasn’t heartless.

Her heart ached so badly it was killing her.

Every cut she made felt not like cutting Ye Xuan’s flesh, but her own. Every scream that reached her ears burned not Ye Xuan’s soul, but hers.

But she couldn’t stop.

Because if she stopped, she would have to face an unbearable truth:

Ye Xuan had touched other women.

Her little husband—the man she had traded the entire world to claim—his body was stained with the scent of other women.

This thought coiled around her heart like a venomous snake, tightening with every breath she took. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t let it go, couldn’t pretend nothing had happened.

And what hurt her most was…

She herself had started all of this.

It was she who had first used ten male concubines to provoke Ye Xuan.

If she hadn’t done that, he would never have gone to those women.

If she had just explained back then—told him she had killed every one of those men, that not a single finger of hers had been touched—none of this would have happened.

But she couldn’t say it.

She was Bai Qiangu.

She was the sect master of the Boundless Demon Sect, the female demon who made heaven and earth tremble, the supreme ruler of the demon path.

How could she bow her head? How could she explain? How could she admit she was just jealous, playing a petty, childish game?

Pride—like an invisible wall—sealed the truth within her throat.

So she could only use greater madness to hide her own pain.

Torturing Ye Xuan was torturing herself.

But at least while torturing him, she could feel a warped sense of control.

He was hers. His pain was hers. His flesh and blood were hers. Every inch of his regrown skin was a gift from her.

This control was the only thing she could hold onto in this relationship—broken and bleeding as it was.