The Death of Ye Xuan

Bai Qiangu's eyes flew wide open, her pupils violently trembling.

"Impossible... it can't be..." Her voice quavered uncontrollably, teetering on the edge of madness. "The Soul Severing Pill takes effect in just one incense stick's time! If you took it three days ago, how could you possibly still be alive!"

"I used a secret technique from the Heavenly Xuan Sect to suppress the poison for three full days."

Ye Xuan's face began to gray at a visible speed, the vitality within him hemorrhaging like a breached dam. "Just now... I released the technique."

The moment the words left his mouth, Ye Xuan's body went limp. The last shred of strength supporting him was completely drained, and he collapsed onto the cold ground like a marionette with severed strings.

Faint, eerie green specks began to drift from his fingertips, his hair, and his skin.

"Ye Xuan!"

Bai Qiangu let out a piercing, heart-wrenching scream. She threw herself onto the ground, clutching Ye Xuan tightly in her arms. An ocean of demonic energy poured recklessly into his body, desperately trying to reconstruct his life force.

The top-tier sacred medicines of the demonic sect, capable of reviving the dead and causing flesh to regrow over bone, were crazily shoved into Ye Xuan's mouth.

But it was useless.

The demonic energy passed through his body as if through a void; the sacred medicines slid down his throat but could no longer be absorbed by a vessel that was losing its soul.

With her Undying Demon Body, she could mend the most gruesome physical wounds in the world, yet she was utterly helpless against the dissipating soul.

An unprecedented agony consumed her completely.

"Don't die... please don't die... I was wrong, I was truly wrong. Let’s get out of here—I'll take you to a great cultivator who can heal you..."

Tears mixed with streaks of blood flowed from Bai Qiangu's eyes, dripping onto Ye Xuan's increasingly translucent cheeks.

Ye Xuan lay weakly in her arms, his vision already growing blurry. Yet he still stared fixedly at Bai Qiangu.

There was no fear of death in his eyes, nor nostalgia for the past—only a deep, stinging disdain that pierced the heart.

"Bai Qiangu..."

Ye Xuan spoke faintly, his voice as if drifting from a distant place. "All along... in your eyes... I was a traitor, wasn't I?"

Bai Qiangu's entire body trembled, and she shook her head violently.

"Back then, I promised I would wait for you to return and marry you..." Ye Xuan gasped, a bitterly ironic smile twisting at the corner of his mouth. "But I still let you down and married Xin'er."

"Stop talking! I don't care anymore!" Bai Qiangu gripped his hand tightly, her voice hoarse as if bleeding. "I truly don't care! As long as you live, even if your heart only holds that mortal woman... I will accept it! Please don't leave me!"

"And do you know why?" Ye Xuan completely ignored her pleas, his gaze empty as he stared into the void. "Because... I thought you would never come back."

Bai Qiangu was stunned.

She stared blankly at the man in her arms, whose life force was fading at an alarming speed, a whirlpool of immense panic and confusion engulfing her.

After a long while, her lips trembling, she asked hoarsely, "Why were you so sure I wouldn't return?"

Ye Xuan's eyes grew dazed, his thoughts drifting back twenty years.

"When you left, I was only eight years old," he said softly, as if recounting a distant dream. "I told my parents and my little sister the joyous news that you were going to be my wife."

"They were overjoyed when they heard it. They genuinely accepted you as the future daughter-in-law of the Ye family."

"My parents emptied our family's meager savings and began preparing the betrothal gifts early on. Our whole family looked forward to your return every single day."

"Back then, I kept that jade pendant close to my chest every day. It was the token of love you gave me—I guarded it like my own life."

Ye Xuan's breath suddenly quickened, a flash of pain crossing his dazed expression.

"Then... one day, a year later. The jade pendant suddenly shattered."

Bai Qiangu's heart clenched, her face filled with disbelief.

"It exploded without warning, cutting my hand."

Ye Xuan's voice gradually turned cold: "The flying fragments... instantly killed my three-year-old little brother."

"I was covered in blood, completely at a loss. Just then, my uncle—a wandering cultivator—returned home. He examined the scene and told me..."

"He said the soul imprint on the necklace had been deliberately detonated from within. The shattering of the pendant proved that its owner had unilaterally broken off the engagement."

"He told me that cultivators were far above mortals, and in your eyes, mortals with my discarded spiritual root were nothing but ants. A happy ending for us... was impossible."

A single murky tear trickled from the corner of Ye Xuan's eye, his voice carrying a deep, aching sorrow.

"And so, from that moment on, I chose to give up."

"Carrying the guilt of losing my brother and the despair of being abandoned by you, I suffered for ten agonizing years. Then I met Xin'er. She stitched my shattered heart back together piece by piece, and I finally made up my mind to marry her."

Ye Xuan turned his head slightly, staring at Bai Qiangu with hatred:

"You were the one who first destroyed the token and abandoned this engagement! I simply accepted reality and chose to forgive myself!"

"So why, in the end, am I the traitor?"

"Why do you and everyone of the Infinite Demon Sect believe so self-righteously that it was I, Ye Xuan, who wronged you, Bai Qiangu?"

Those final accusations drained the last of Ye Xuan's strength.

Bai Qiangu was completely frozen.

Countless fragments of memory exploded in her mind.

She finally remembered.

That year, she was hunted by a great cultivator of the righteous path. To shake off the pursuer, she decisively detonated all the artifacts and objects that bore her soul imprint, using the explosion to make her escape like a cicada shedding its shell.

At that moment, she only wanted to survive—to escape alive and return to her mortal little husband.

She had never dreamed... that the jade pendant far away, imprinted with her mark as a token of love, would also explode at the same moment.

It was a fatal misunderstanding.

"No... that's not what happened..." Bai Qiangu shook her head, her eyes filled with terror and despair. She desperately tried to explain: "At the time, I was being hunted—I was about to die! I detonated my soul imprint to stay alive... I truly didn't know it would involve the pendant! I never intended to abandon you—it was an accident! A accident, Husband!"

Facing her hysterical explanation, Ye Xuan's expression was terrifyingly calm.

"It doesn't matter anymore."

He said flatly, as the dissipation of his soul had already spread to his chest.

He looked at Bai Qiangu, the last hint of warmth in his eyes gone completely cold.

"Bai Qiangu. I could barely understand you killing Xin'er out of jealousy."

"But..." Ye Xuan's voice suddenly turned hoarse and sharp: "Why did you massacre my entire family? Why did you kill my parents and my sister?"

"What did they ever do wrong?"

Bai Qiangu stood frozen in place, her mind a blank slate, unable to utter a single word.

How could she explain? Could she tell him that when she had returned joyfully back then, only to find he had married another, jealousy and raging fury had consumed her—and in that madness, she had slaughtered everyone in the courtyard who was smiling and blessing them?

Ye Xuan gazed at her face, pale as paper, his eyes filled with deep disgust.

“This is how you are,” he said.

“Always putting yourself above everyone else, never listening to anyone’s explanation. You only believe what your eyes see, only care about what your heart desires.”

“Your careless mistake blew up my younger brother. Your demonic rampage killed my innocent little sister and butchered my white-haired parents.”

“You destroyed everything I had, trampled every shred of my dignity and life…”

With the last shred of his strength, Ye Xuan stared straight into Bai Qiangu’s eyes—eyes widened with terror—and asked his final question, word by word:

“And yet you demand that I love you?”

“Are you worthy of it?”

Those three words became the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Bai Qiangu’s mind went blank.

She knelt there, dumbstruck, on the verge of going mad.

Ye Xuan watched her collapse, but the hatred in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by a strange, calm peace.

His body grew colder and colder.

The poison of the Soul Severing Pill had already eaten away most of his soul. He could feel his consciousness dissolving, little by little, like sand slipping through his fingers—no matter how tightly he clenched, it couldn’t be held back.

“Bai Qiangu.”

He called her name for the last time.

“In the next life… I don’t want to meet you again.”

His eyes slowly closed, a cold smile frozen forever on his face.

A moment later, his hand fell limp.

The rise and fall of his chest came to a stop.

That heart—the one that had started beating for a wounded older sister when he was eight years old—

Would never beat again.