Breaking Through to Refining Emptiness in Seclusion

Five days later.

They had walked far enough across the boundless wilderness to finally stop before a place of certain death called Netherworld Ravine.

Here, thick fog shrouded the land year-round, poisonous mists rising from the ravine's depths, slicing even the sunlight into scattered fragments that carried no trace of warmth.

Ordinary cultivators passing through this area would detour a hundred miles. But to Ye Xuan, this place was a natural barrier—the perfect retreat for seclusion.

"Right here."

Ye Xuan stood at the entrance of a moss-covered cave, casually setting up a few spirit-gathering arrays around it.

He turned, looking at Wu Lingfeng with a smile. His peach-blossom eyes were especially clear in the fog, and his tone was as carefree as if he were giving an order about a trivial matter.

"Brother Wu," he said, "for the next ten years, Ying'er and I will be in closed-door seclusion."

"During this time, whether the sky falls or the earth splits, whether gods or demons descend, let no one disturb us."

He paused, his gaze growing slightly heavier. The casual laughter in his voice suddenly carried a sliver of cold sharpness.

"Especially people from the Great Xia Dynasty."

Wu Lingfeng's heart tightened, but her face remained motionless.

She clasped her fists, lowered her gaze, and said in a low voice, "Rest assured, Benefactor. As long as I still draw breath, not even a fly will enter Netherworld Ravine."

"Good."

Ye Xuan nodded with satisfaction. Without any further pleasantries, without any extraneous words, he took Ying'er's hand and turned to walk into the pitch-black cave mouth.

Ying'er looked back and waved at Wu Lingfeng, her face bright with an untroubled smile. "Brother Wu, wait for us to come out!"

Wu Lingfeng stared at that smiling face. Something caught in her throat; she didn't know whether to respond or not. In the end, she only gave a slight nod, her face twisting into an unreadable expression.

Rumble.

The dragon-sealing stone slammed down—a heavy black gate of rock fully sealed the entrance, splitting the world inside the cave from the outside into two realms that would never meet again.

The sound of the closing echoed along the cliff face, long and lingering, before slowly fading into the mist.

Wu Lingfeng stood there, still holding her clasped-fist salute, not moving an inch.

The mountain wind swept past, stirring a few withered yellow leaves that spiraled around the hem of her robe before silently falling onto the moss.

She stared at the cold stone gate for a long, long time.

Then, the man who had been so timid and submissive—the down-and-out noble son who had been responsible for gathering firewood, building campfires, and always standing three steps away with his eyes downcast—slowly vanished.

In his place emerged a face no longer hidden.

A face of loneliness, of jealousy, and of a madness buried deep in her eyes—a madness she could no longer contain.

She found a clean, large bluestone near the cave mouth and sat down cross-legged.

This spot was very close to the cave. With her power at the Tribulation-Transcendence stage, she only had to focus slightly to hear through the dragon-sealing stone, to the sounds coming from deep inside the cave.

Ying'er's bell-like, carefree laughter. Occasionally, a low response from Ye Xuan. And the warmth that filled the air—a warmth that made her feel as if her heart and lungs were being clawed at.

It was a warmth that did not belong to her.

"Ten years of seclusion…"

Wu Lingfeng closed her eyes. Her fingertips silently dug into the bluestone, her knuckles slowly turning white.

"I once had twenty years with you, too."

Time, in the long days of guarding the gate, lost all meaning.

Day and night alternated. The mists rose and fell. The cries of venomous insects echoed from the ravine floor, rising and fading away.

Occasionally, some reckless cultivator strayed near Netherworld Ravine. With a single burst of her pressure, she sent their souls scattering and their bodies fleeing in terror—they didn't even dare to look back.

She sat on that bluestone, keeping watch, keeping watch.

And the memories, like venomous snakes, coiled around her throat every time she let her guard down in the deep of night, choking her, drowning her, offering her no escape.

She didn't know when it started, but scenes from the past began to appear before her eyes.

It was a story from eight hundred years ago.

Back then, Wu Lingfeng was not the lowly, dust-to-earth shadow she had become.

Back then, she was the most honored Ninth Lord of the Great Xia Dynasty—the person with the highest cultivation, the greatest power, and the one most feared by court and commoners alike, second only to the dynasty's Female Emperor, Wu Lingxiao.

But no one knew how much she hated Wu Lingxiao.

This hatred was not the ordinary hatred of a power struggle. It was something twisted, buried deep in her bones and blood—a deformed love mingled with extreme reverence and extreme jealousy.

For as long as she could remember, Wu Lingxiao had been the sun hanging high above her.

She had the highest cultivation. Her beauty was the most radiant. Her talent was the most unrivaled. Wherever she stood, her light naturally covered all directions.

Wu Lingfeng had known since childhood that she could never compare to her Imperial Sister.

She imitated her sister's clothing, practiced her sister's sword techniques, and even deliberately aligned her preferences with her sister's.

She longed, one day, for her sister to look at her properly, to say, "Well done," even if just once, even if only with a glance. She would have cherished it.

But Wu Lingxiao's eyes held only the world, only her grand ambitions, and only the cold, solitary path to the throne—a path she walked alone, having stepped over everyone else's bones.

And so, over the long years, this worship and longing slowly rotted, slowly soured, until in the final clash for the throne, it festered into a raging, all-consuming hatred.

In that decisive battle, Wu Lingfeng lost.

She lost completely, without even a shadow of a chance to fight back.

Wu Lingxiao stood on the victor's high platform, looking down at the one kneeling among the ruins. There was no anger in those eyes, no hatred, not even pity.

Only indifference.

She said, "Get out of here and go to Youzhou. Don't ever come back to the capital."

Just one sentence.

No fury, no tears, not even humiliation—because she wasn't even worth the expense of Wu Lingxiao's emotions.

At that moment, Wu Lingfeng knelt among the ruins, with the defeated imperial banners overhead and the clamor of defecting courtiers in her ears, and something inside her broke quietly.

Not because she had lost.

But because, at last, she clearly understood a terrible truth:

Her sister had never really seen her.

The first hundred years of exile in Youzhou.

It was a snowy night, the wind of the northlands cutting like knives against her face. Wu Lingfeng was patrolling the border with her personal guards when they found a man in a desolate mountain gully.

A man soaked in blood, his spiritual meridians entirely severed, clinging to life by nothing but a thread.

When the torchlight lit up that face, Wu Lingfeng froze.

She recognized that face.

That was Ye Xuan.

He was the Consort Xuan of the Great Xia Dynasty, the one in Wu Lingxiao's heart—the one vulnerable point for whom Wu Lingxiao had even dismissed the imperial harem, keeping only him.

Wu Lingfeng crouched down and looked at him for a very, very long time.

In that moment, she did not feel any stirring of the heart.

What she felt was something foreign, surging up from within, making her entire body tremble with exhilaration…

It was a drive for destruction.

It was a madness that screamed, "Heaven is helping me."

"Hahahahaha…"

Inside the commander's tent, with the candle flame flickering, Wu Lingfeng stared at the unconscious Ye Xuan on the cot, laughing until tears rolled down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking.

"Wu Lingxiao, you think you're above everything? This man is your most precious treasure?"

"Your treasure… is now in my hands."

That night, the snowstorm outside the tent was so fierce it seemed to tear heaven and earth apart, while the candlelight inside twisted and swayed.

At that time, Ye Xuan was severely wounded internally, his memories still not fully awakened, retaining only a instinctive, terrified alertness.

He opened his eyes, his peach-blossom eyes filled with fear and humiliation, his voice weak but carrying a bone-deep, unyielding pride: "...Get away."

"Get away?"

Wu Lingfeng grabbed his chin, her eyes burning with a chilling, twisted light, "Do you know who I am?"

"I am your wife's younger sister."

"Since she abandoned you, it's only right that I, as the younger sister, take over and take good care of you."

That night, Wu Lingfeng showed no mercy.

She poured all her hatred for Wu Lingxiao, all her jealousy, all the unspoken "you never saw me," and everything that had fermented and rotted over a hundred long years in Youzhou—completely and utterly—onto this man.

She knew what she was doing.

It was not love, it was revenge, revenge against Wu Lingxiao. She used this man's humiliation and pain to pierce the one soft spot in that lofty Female Emperor's armor.

Ye Xuan's resistance only brought her pleasure.

Ye Xuan's tears only gave her a twisted, disgusting satisfaction.

"Scream," she said, looking down at him, her voice cold and cruel. "Scream louder. Let her hear."

"Let her hear! Let that lofty Female Emperor hear her precious darling begging for mercy beneath someone else!"

Outside the tent, the snow fell all night long.

Wu Lingfeng felt an unspeakable pleasure. As she violated Ye Xuan, she fantasized that, through this act, she was forging some twisted connection with her sister, a thousand miles away.

As Ye Xuan himself had said: she did not love Ye Xuan, she was just snatching her sister's toy.

However.

No one is made of stone or wood; who can remain unmoved?

Especially when facing a man like Ye Xuan—even if his wings were broken, even if he was trapped in a cage, even if his very bones were crushed, his eyes still hid an indomitable spirit.

In the twenty years that followed, Ye Xuan was imprisoned by her in the Forgetting Sorrow Valley of Youzhou. His body grew frail, his spiritual veins were all severed. He was like a golden canary, locked in a meticulously arranged cage.

At first, she saw him only as a trophy, a tool, a bargaining chip in her revenge against Wu Lingxiao.

But slowly.

She found herself caring whether he had eaten that day.

She found herself panicking and restless if he even furrowed his brow.

She found herself growing afraid to meet his eyes.

This transformation—even she didn't know when it had begun.

She only remembered one winter, when Ye Xun was gravely ill with a high fever, unconscious for three days and three nights.

Wu Lingfeng stayed by his bedside for seven whole days and nights, never changing her clothes, never even closing her eyes for a moment.

She summoned every healer in Youzhou who could be found. She personally went to the medicine vault and selected the finest life-saving herbs. She used her own spiritual power, bit by bit, to drive the cold from his invaded meridians.

She, a mighty practitioner at the Nirvana Tribulation stage, who had once killed countless enemies with her own hands, repeatedly wrung out cold cloths and laid them on his forehead.

That night, Ye Xuan, half-conscious, moved his lips and muttered faintly, like a mosquito's hum:

"...Water."

Wu Lingfeng shot up, turned to fetch a teacup, her hand trembling and knocking it over. It smashed onto the ground with a crash.

She paused for a second, looked around. The maids had all been dismissed. In the vast bedchamber, there was only her and him.

She bent down, cupped a palmful of warm water, and then froze.

Then, this Ninth Lord of Youzhou, who had made countless cultivators tremble in fear, lowered her head, took a mouthful of warm water, and leaned down. Mouth to mouth, drop by drop, she fed it to him.

How absurd this scene was.

When she came to her senses and realized what she was doing, she found that the breath had already been smoothly delivered, and could never be taken back.

Ye Xuan's fever broke.

He opened his eyes. For the first time, those peach-blossom eyes were no longer filled with the hollow emptiness of utter despair. Instead, there was something she couldn't identify—something that made her heart stop.

He just looked at her.

For a long time.

Said nothing.

Just that one look made Wu Lingfeng's heart race, for the first time, completely out of control.

She later thought: Perhaps it was that very moment.

Her hatred for Wu Lingxiao dimmed for the first time.

The man she had used as a tool for revenge—for the first time, he had his own shape, his own outline in her heart.

She began a frantic attempt to make amends.

She spent half her cultivation base journeying to the North Pole in search of the legendary thousand-year snow lotus that could reconnect severed spiritual veins. In that lethal region where even Nirvana Tribulation stage cultivators easily perished, she endured alone for three full months.

She began to learn how to be gentle, how to be a person who would no longer harm him.

She risked exposing her identity by personally slashing down several groups of Xia dynasty spies from the capital, all just to give him one more sliver of safety in that small courtyard.

"As long as you can stay by my side..."

"Even if just staying, even as a caged bird—I'll accept it."

But what was missed was ultimately missed.

That story, which began with revenge, was destined not to end in love.

And the amends she offered were, in Ye Xuan's eyes, always a form of imprisonment, always a cage.

The memory abruptly stopped.

"Plop."

A teardrop fell onto the blue stone, quickly evaporating in the cold wind, leaving no trace behind.

Wu Lingfeng suddenly opened her eyes, struggling to tear herself away from the swamp of that deep memory.

She reached up and touched her face.

It was soaking wet.

She didn't know how long she had been crying.

She stared at the cold, unyielding Dragon-blocking Stone before her. She stared for a very, very long time, until that stone began to blur in her vision. Then she heard her own voice, hoarse beyond belief:

"Ye Xuan..."

She called his name, but no one answered her.

The cave was filled with a profound, deep silence that even her Nirvana Tribulation stage hearing could not penetrate.

The corners of her mouth twisted into a bitterly rueful curve—this smile was uglier than tears:

"If I hadn't treated you that way back then..."

"If back then, I had walked up to you, openly and honorably, and told you I liked you..."

"Would I now be worthy, just like that girl Ying'er, to sit by your side?"

"You once threw yourself so resolutely into Imperial Sister's arms to die, because you believed I never loved you, that I only saw you as a tool for revenge."

"But I'm telling you, you were wrong. I truly fell in love with you."

The wind blew up from the valley below, carrying poisonous mist and chill, sweeping away the last few words of that sentence.

Wu Lingfeng slowly closed her eyes.