In Despair

The dawn of the fourth day.

Bai Qiangu was jolted awake by a violent tremor.

The entire Ten Thousand Demon Palace was shaking, dust raining down from the ceiling, the runes on the walls flashing wildly with a piercing hum.

She sat up abruptly, her spiritual sense expanding outward in an instant…

Then her pupils contracted sharply.

Her seventy-two layers of barriers were still there.

But outside those barriers, something else had been added.

A vast, impossibly complex sealing array that made her scalp crawl.

The scale of the formation far exceeded her imagination. Its runes covered the entire Ten Thousand Demon Palace and a hundred miles beyond, extending from deep underground all the way to the heavens above, forming a perfect spherical cage. And at every node of the formation stood a figure radiating immense spiritual pressure.

She counted them.

Thirty-six at the Tribulation Transcendence stage.

And countless cultivators at the Unity and Nascent Soul stages, densely packed at the outer edge of the formation like a tightening net.

The banner of the Heavenly Origin Sect snapped in the morning wind.

But it wasn’t just the Heavenly Origin Sect.

The flags of the seven righteous sects were also there—the Grand Void Sword Sect, the Mystic Way Dao Sect, the Azure Falls Immortal Mansion, the Purple Dawn Palace, the Azure Cloud Sect, the Ten Thousand Dharma Monastery, and the Spirit Vulture Peak.

The righteous path… had mobilized their full strength.

Bai Qiangu’s face instantly turned ashen.

She whipped her head around to look at Ye Xuan, who was standing beside her.

Ye Xuan had already dressed and was standing five steps away from the bed.

His face was utterly expressionless.

Not gentle, not smiling, not any of the expressions she had seen over the past three days.

Instead, it was a calmness she had never seen on his face before.

“Ye Xuan…” Bai Qiangu’s voice trembled slightly. “What’s… going on outside?”

Ye Xuan didn’t answer.

He simply stared at her, his eyes indifferent.

Bai Qiangu’s heart plummeted like a stone.

A sinister foreboding slithered up from the base of her spine like a venomous snake, coiling instantly around her heart.

“Ye Xuan, speak!” Her voice turned shrill, laced with hysterical trembling. “What are those people outside?! What is that sealing array?!”

Ye Xuan took a deep breath.

Then he smiled.

This smile was different from any he had worn over the past three days.

During those days, his smiles had been warm, gentle, like a spring breeze.

But this smile was the final, most resolute expression of a man walking toward his death.

“Qiangu,” he said, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the weather. “The seventy-two barriers you set up are indeed strong. So strong that the people outside couldn’t break through.”

“But you forgot one thing.”

“Your barriers were erected from the inside. They sealed off the outside world, but they also sealed off you.”

“For the past three days, your spiritual sense has been blocked by the barriers, unable to perceive the changes outside.”

“Meanwhile, the people outside spent three full days layering a larger sealing array around your barriers.”

“The Nine Heavens Demon-Sealing Array.”

“The seven righteous sects, forty-eight masters at the Tribulation Transcendence stage and beyond, combined their strength to create this peerless formation.”

“Once this array is activated, even your immortal demon body will be sealed away forever. Your demonic power will be lost, your soul imprisoned, with no hope of reincarnation for all eternity.”

Bai Qiangu’s face whitened inch by inch.

“You…” Her lips trembled violently. “Are you saying… these past three days…”

“That’s right.” Ye Xuan’s voice carried no emotion. “These past three days were all my arrangement.”

“I had you set up the barriers not to be alone with you.”

“But to blind your eyes.”

“To keep you from seeing everything happening outside.”

“To give the Heavenly Origin Sect enough time to complete the sealing array.”

Bai Qiangu stood frozen, her eyes wide, her pupils contracting frantically.

Those three days.

Those gentle words.

That bowl of personally prepared white congee.

That painting.

Those moments of combing her hair.

That promise about being “ordinary people.”

That line, “When these three days are over, we’ll leave this place.”

All of it was a lie.

“No…” Bai Qiangu shook her head, her voice rasping and fractured from deep in her throat. “It’s not true… You’re lying to me… Tell me you’re lying…”

She stumbled toward Ye Xuan, reaching out to grasp his sleeve.

Ye Xuan took a step back.

Just one step.

But that single step was like an insurmountable chasm, separating them completely.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Ye Xuan said. “Everything in these past three days was a lie. And now I’m telling you the truth.”

“This is the first time in my life I’ve spoken the truth to you.”

Bai Qiangu’s hand froze in midair.

She stared into Ye Xuan’s eyes—the eyes she had thought had grown warm again. Now they were clear as a mirror, reflecting her own disheveled, broken, ugly image with perfect clarity.

There was no love inside them.

There never had been.

“Ha… haha…”

Bai Qiangu suddenly laughed.

The laughter rose from low to shrill, from suppressed to unrestrained, eventually becoming a bone-chilling cackle. She doubled over, laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face, laughing until the entire Ten Thousand Demon Palace trembled violently under her demonic aura.

She straightened up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and looked at Ye Xuan.

Her expression had changed.

Not anger, not devastation, not hysteria.

Instead, it was an eerie calm that sent a chill down the spine.

“If you’re going to seal me, then seal me,” she said with a smile.

Ye Xuan’s brow furrowed slightly.

Bai Qiangu walked toward him step by step. Her red bridal gown trailed behind her on the ground like a river of flowing blood. She came to a stop before him, raised her hand, and gently caressed his cheek.

Her fingers were icy, but her touch was unbearably tender.

“As long as my husband stays with me.”

Her lips curled into a smile, one that held madness, obsession, and a suffocating depth of devotion.

“Let them seal me.”

“We’ll stay here.”

“Together, forever.”

“After all, I have an immortal demon body. Even if I lose all my demonic power, I won’t die.”

“And you…” Her fingers slid down to his chin, gently gripping it, forcing him to meet her gaze. “You can’t escape either.”

“This sealing array traps me, but it traps you too.”

“From now on, this is our home. No demon sect, no righteous path, no one will ever disturb us.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to be ordinary people?”

“Fine. We’ll be ordinary people here.”

“For eternity.”

Her eyes blazed with an unsettling brilliance as she spoke. That light wasn’t the light of reason—it was the last, most fervent blaze of madness before total burnout.

Ye Xuan met her gaze in silence for a long time.

Then he, too, smiled.

“Qiangu.”

“Yes?”

“You’re right. This sealing array traps you, and it traps me.”

“But you forgot one thing.”

Bai Qiangu’s smile began to falter.

Ye Xuan pulled a small porcelain bottle from his bosom.

The porcelain bottle was pitch-black, no larger than a thumb, its mouth sealed with wax. Through the thin ceramic walls, one could faintly make out a pill glowing with an eerie green light inside.

Bai Qiangu’s gaze landed on the bottle, and her pupils abruptly contracted.

She recognized that pill.

The Soul Annihilation Pill.

The ultimate poison of the Heavenly Tenet Sect.

Once ingested, the soul would completely dissipate within the time it takes a stick of incense to burn. No lingering remnants, no reincarnation—utter erasure from the heavens and earth, leaving not a trace of existence.

Even the Undying Demon Body could not resurrect someone whose soul had already dissolved. For the Undying Demon Body could mend the flesh, but it could never mend the soul.

“You!” Bai Qiangu’s voice snapped into a different pitch, sharp as a cat whose tail had been stepped on. “Where did you get that thing?!”

“The Heavenly Tenet Sect gave it to me,” Ye Xuan said flatly. “As payment for my cooperation with them.”

“Payment?” Bai Qiangu’s voice trembled. “You call this payment?”

“To me, it’s the best payment there is.”

Ye Xuan pulled off the wax seal from the bottle’s mouth.

A stream of ghostly green light spilled from the opening, accompanied by a strange, cloying sweetness like rotting flowers.

“Ye Xuan! Put that down!”

Bai Qiangu screamed and lunged at him. Her figure moved like a specter, carrying a piercing, bloody wind as she hurled herself toward Ye Xuan.

Slap!

She clamped her hand tightly around Ye Xuan’s wrist, and with an irresistible force, her other hand snatched the black porcelain bottle away.

Without a moment’s hesitation, her demonic energy erupted. Boom! In a single burst, she ground the bottle and the glowing pill inside into fine dust, leaving not even a speck behind.

Bai Qiangu heaved for breath, her shoulders—strained to the breaking point—finally slumping in relief. She let out a long sigh, a flicker of post-calamity relief flashing in her eyes. Then she glared at Ye Xuan, her teeth clenched. “You want to die? It’s not that easy! I told you, we will be together forever. Even if you…”

Her words stopped mid-sentence.

Because Ye Xuan showed no panic, no anger, no despair at having the poison taken from him.

He looked at her, and once again the corner of his mouth slowly curled upward. It was a smile full of mockery.

“Qiangu, that was just an ordinary Qi-Condensing Pill,” Ye Xuan said, his voice as soft as a sigh. “The real Soul Annihilation Pill—I took it three days ago.”