She Is Not My Woman

Wu Lingfeng shielded herself in front of Ye Xuan. Blood had already begun to seep quietly through her fingers. She kept her movements subtle, clenching that hand into a fist and hiding it within her sleeve, her spear tip aimed at Yeh You, her eyes cold and steady.

She was calculating rapidly.

In her current state, if she fought to the death, could she hold off a Mahayana-stage cultivator long enough for Ye Xuan to find a chance to escape?

Ye Xuan’s hand fell lightly on her shoulder.

Wu Lingfeng paused, turning her head to meet his gaze.

Ye Xuan looked at her and shook his head gently.

Wu Lingfeng lowered her spear tip by an inch, stepped back half a pace without withdrawing the weapon, retreating from the direct line facing Yeh You, yet still every taut nerve remained on edge.

Ye Xuan stood up.

He rose unhurriedly, brushed the nonexistent dust from his knees, and holding that wine cup, took one step forward, positioning himself directly before Yeh You, mere inches away from the Mahayana-stage cultivator's chilling aura.

He lifted his head, meeting Yeh You's eyes, which seethed with demonic energy, and shook his head with a serene expression. “This matter has long ceased to concern me.”

“Doesn’t concern you?”

Yeh You laughed in fury. He leaned down abruptly, his eerily handsome face nearly touching the tip of Ye Xuan’s nose, the dark depths of his eyes churning with eight hundred years of accumulated malice. He spoke softly, each word deliberate:

“Ye Xuan, you’re still putting on this act of purity even now? Don’t you hate me?”

His voice was barely a whisper, yet every word felt like a barbed hook, gouging deep into the heart:

“Don’t forget—I slept with the Empress of Great Xia. She was your woman!”

“In the Realm of Extreme Bliss, I held her in my arms, listening to her call my name in my ear, listening to her belittle you as a waste... Have you forgotten all this?”

“These scenes must be etched into your very bones!”

Yeh You’s gaze locked onto Ye Xuan’s face, like a bloodthirsty hunter waiting for the final crack in his prey’s resolve.

Any sign of anger or humiliation from Ye Xuan—even the faintest, most imperceptible tremor—would have been fuel for his vengeful satisfaction.

Yet he was disappointed.

Ye Xuan’s eyes were as clear as stagnant water.

No waves, no ripples, not even the last trace of warmth remaining.

A moment of silence.

Ye Xuan picked up the wine flask, unhurriedly took another cup from his storage pouch, filled it, and then pushed it evenly toward Yeh You.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said while pouring, his voice as calm as if discussing the day’s weather.

“She stopped being my woman a long time ago.”

Yeh You froze.

His gaze flickered between the cup of wine and Ye Xuan’s face, a bizarre, absurd sensation rising within him.

“You... do you not feel the slightest resentment toward me?” Yeh You asked incredulously. “I’m the one who destroyed your family!”

“Resent you?”

Ye Xuan lifted his eyes and countered, “Back then, did you force the Female Emperor?”

Yeh You answered instinctively, “She was at the Tribulation-Transcending stage back then. I had just entered that stage myself. The Great Xia imperial palace was layered with countless formations—how could I have forced her?”

“If it wasn’t force, then it was by her own will.”

Ye Xuan raised his wine cup, gazing at the sky through the crystalline liquid, his voice distant: “Since it was her choice, then it’s her own karma. Why should I hate you?”

“This...”

Yeh You opened his mouth, his throat moving, but found that all his fierce words of eight hundred years seemed to have lost their vitality, trapped within him.

Ye Xuan smiled faintly. That smile held neither triumph nor mockery, only a kind of desolate compassion born from weathering countless storms.

As if he had seen through something. Or as if he had let something go.

“Yeh You, the truth is, I’ve always understood,” Ye Xuan said.

“Even without you, there would have been a Li You, or a Zhang You.”

“The Female Emperor... she was too stifled.”

He raised his hand, pointing at his own chest, his tone as calm as recounting an old story unrelated to himself:

“That suffocation lasted ten years. She was a generation’s empress, cultivating the Way of Domination, walking the path of absolute sovereignty. For the sake of a mere Golden Core-stage cultivator like me, she forcibly suppressed her true nature—playing the devoted wife, playing the lovesick fool devoted to one partner for life.”

“She grew tired. She couldn’t bear it anymore.”

“Even if it hadn’t been you, the outcome wouldn’t have changed.”

“Because this relationship was never equal from the start. She was the lofty Empress of Great Xia, commanding the lives of billions. And I was just a Golden Core-stage waste, needing her protection and resources just to survive.”

Ye Xuan turned to look at Yeh You, his eyes sincere:

“So why should I hate you?”

“When it rains, it pours. When a woman is determined to leave, she can’t be held back.”

“You’re at the Mahayana stage—you should understand the True Heart’s Way. A perfection forced is nothing but a flower’s reflection in a mirror, the moon’s image in water. Since it’s shattered, just sweep the pieces away. Why let the shards leave your hands bloody?”

Silence.

A deathly stillness.

On the flying vessel, only the rustle of wind against the flags remained.

Yeh You stood there, rooted like a stone statue from which time had drained all spirit.

Countless times, he had rehearsed this reunion in his mind: Ye Xuan drawing his sword, trembling, cursing, kneeling for mercy, or screaming madly to die together with him.

Each scenario would have given him enough gratification to endure another eight hundred years.

But not once had he imagined this.

These words not only dissected the flesh and bone of that ancient tragedy but also stripped away the pitiful sense of conquest buried in his heart, leaving nothing behind.

So in Ye Xuan’s eyes, he, Yeh You, had never been a sworn enemy at all.

Not even a worthy opponent. He had merely been a tool—grasped at random by the Female Emperor in her suppressed state to vent her frustrations.

A long moment passed.

The demonic energy that had roiled in Yeh You’s eyes receded like a retreating tide, inch by inch. What took its place was a profound confusion and a crushing sense of defeat he had never anticipated.

“I... I originally planned to capture you, cripple your cultivation, and drag you to the Great Xia imperial capital, torturing you before the Female Emperor’s eyes to get my revenge on her,” he said.

His voice had grown hollow, as if compressed by some unseen weight, laced with a bitterness hard to name:

“You don’t know—the Female Emperor has gone mad searching for you. She’s put a bounty across the world, even using the national fortune to divine your whereabouts. She’s reached the point of obsession.”

At these words, Wu Lingfeng and Ying’er both tightened their grips on their weapons, knuckles turning white.

Yet Ye Xuan remained utterly indifferent.

He even leisurely refilled his cup, raised it to his lips, and drank it all.

“I advise you not to do that,” he said.

He set down the cup, his gaze suddenly sharp.

“I carry a great karmic burden.”

Ye Xuan lifted his hand, pointing toward the seemingly serene sky above them, his voice casual yet each word striking like a nail:

“If you move against me, the karmic consequence will be something you cannot bear.”

It was no empty threat.

Yeh You shuddered violently.

As a Mahayana-stage cultivator, his perception of celestial mechanisms and karmic ties had long fused into every thread of his spiritual awareness.

The moment Ye Xuan spoke those words, a bone-chilling cold that made even his soul tremble surged from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head.

It was as though an omnipresent pair of eyes, gazing down from the celestial heavens above with an indifferent and careless stare, was silently watching this flying vessel.

“Hoo…”

Yeh You exhaled a long, turbid breath, and the weight that had been pressing down on his chest for eight hundred years dissolved with that sigh.

He gazed deeply at Ye Xuan for a long time. The murderous intent in his eyes had completely extinguished, like dying embers of a spent fire. Beneath those ashes lay a complex and genuine respect—one whose origin even he could not clearly articulate.

He took a slow step back, clasped his hands in salute, and bowed with solemn reverence before this man, whose cultivation was merely at the Refining Void stage.

“Back then, I was wrong.”

“Ye Xuan, you have lived with far greater clarity than I—greater even than the Female Emperor.”

“We part today, never to meet again.”

With his words said, there was no reason to linger.

Yeh You turned around. His black robes fluttered as he transformed into a shrill, black streak of light, hurtling upward into the sky. In an instant, he dissolved into the boundless sea of clouds without leaving a trace.

Wu Lingfeng stared at the direction where the streak of light had vanished. The knot that had been lodged in her chest for so long finally, imperceptibly, began to loosen. She lowered her gaze and realized only then that her back was soaked through with cold sweat, clinging to her skin in a chill that reached down to the bone.