Ye Xuan Actually Comes from the Nine Heavens Holy Land

"Slap, slap, slap..."

A sudden, slow, and rhythmic clapping sound drifted faintly from the depths of the void.

The applause was not loud, yet it ignored the violent energy aftershocks raging in the area, striking each person's heart with the precision of a hammer.

The space ahead rippled violently, like a lake surface struck by a pebble.

A tall, slender figure clad in a moon-white flowing cloud-patterned robe, crowned with a purple-gold jade headpiece, stepped forth slowly atop the ripples of the void.

The newcomer had a face as fair as jade and an ethereal bearing like a banished immortal. But hidden within those arrogant, narrow eyes was a cruel smile that regarded all living things as mere straw dogs.

He was like a hunter savoring the sight of a trapped beast in a cage, his gaze locked unwaveringly on Ye Xuan ahead.

"Not bad. Truly not bad."

Bai Yujing halted his steps, the curve of his lips widening, his voice thundering across the plaza like rolling celestial thunder, rattling the eardrums of the already battered prodigies nearby, leaving them dizzy and reeling.

"Ye Xuan, oh Ye Xuan. I thought you would have long since turned into a pile of bones at the bottom of Burial Immortal Lake. Who would have guessed that after all these years apart, you—a mangy dog stripped of your fangs and tendons—have finally grown enough bite to be threatening."

Bai Yujing flicked a speck of non-existent dust from his sleeve, his tone dripping with unguarded contempt: "That sword strike of yours just now barely sufficed to make me look at you with a second glance."

The instant he heard that voice,

Ye Xuan's body, which had been as calm as ten-thousand-year-old ice, stiffened abruptly.

This was the voice etched into his very marrow.

This was the voice that, countless times in the dead of night, had dragged him down into a merciless hell.

Slowly, he turned his head. The eyes that had been as serene as ancient wells after shattering the jade tablet now erupted into world-destroying tempests in an instant.

The murderous intent he had forcibly suppressed, the bone-deep hatred that nine cycles of reincarnation had failed to erode even a fraction, now detonated like a supervolcano fully unleashed.

A more sinister, more savage aura than when he had shattered the jade tablet shot skyward. With Ye Xuan at the center, the jade dust within a thousand zhang radius instantly condensed into black ice crystals.

His originally ashen and deep-set pupils were rapidly flooded with bloodshot threads, eventually transforming into a blood-red glare that seemed eager to devour its prey.

"It... is... you..."

Ye Xuan gnashed his teeth, each word spoken slowly, as though dragged through the blade mountains and boiling oil of the netherworld, carrying a biting, deathly chill.

"Bai Yujing!"

Just as Bai Yujing's sneer was growing even more pronounced, and he was about to speak again...

"Stop!"

A shrill, desperate cry suddenly rent the sky apart!

"Whoosh!"

A streak of white light plummeted from the heavens like a burning life, crashing down with a suicidal resolve that seemed willing to shatter bone and body, slamming violently into the void between Ye Xuan and Bai Yujing.

As the dust settled, every prodigy present drew in a sharp breath.

It was the First Holy Maiden of the Nine Heavens Sacred Ground, the cold and untouchable fairy idolized by countless male cultivators—Bai Ningbing!

But now, not a trace remained of her usual immaculate, ethereal grace.

Her plain white dress was torn in multiple places by the raging gale. Her stunning face was streaked with tear stains. Her disheveled hair clung messily to her pale cheeks.

She was like a mother beast protecting her cub, spreading her arms wide and standing firmly in front of Ye Xuan, her gaze—laced with a hint of madness and profound hatred—fixed unyieldingly on Bai Yujing across from her.

"Bai Yujing! I won't let you touch him!"

Bai Ningbing's voice was hoarse and raw, carrying even a trembling note of humble pleading: "You already took his immortal bone. You already destroyed his foundation. You took everything from him! What more do you want? If you insist on killing him today, you'll have to step over my corpse first!"

Whoosh!

The previously deathly silence of the arena instantly erupted into frenzy, boiling over completely!

Everyone stared in utter disbelief, their minds going blank.

"That... is Fairy Bai Ningbing?"

"Wasn't she said to have long become dao partners with the First Holy Son, Bai Yujing? How could she..."

"Madness! To protect the White-Clad God of Slaughter, the First Holy Maiden of the Nine Heavens is willing to draw her sword against the First Holy Son? Heavens, what exactly happened back then?!"

Hearing the surrounding murmurs, Bai Yujing watched Bai Ningbing shielding Ye Xuan like a hen protecting her chick. The smile on his lips gradually froze and faded, replaced by an utter grimness and icy fury.

"Good. Very good." Bai Yujing's gaze turned as cold as a viper's. "Wretched woman, it seems your devotion to him is truly deep. Since you're so eager to die, this seat will..."

Yet, just as Bai Yujing was about to make his move, and Bai Ningbing braced herself for a desperate last stand...

Behind her, Ye Xuan suddenly let out a harrowing roar—a cry of agony like a cornered beast in its final throes!

"Clang!"

The "Sun-Slaying Divine Sword" that had accompanied him in severing heaven and shattering earth slipped from his grip and fell to the ground.

Ye Xuan clawed frantically at his own skull, his nails nearly digging into his scalp, and he slammed down onto one knee, his entire body convulsing violently like a sieve.

"Husband!" Ying'er, hiding in the distance, went pale with terror, desperately trying to rush forward—only to be forced back by the black sword energy that was rampaging uncontrollably around Ye Xuan, her tears streaming down as she panicked.

"Ye Xuan! What's wrong?!"

Hearing the disturbance behind him, Bai Ningbing's heart clenched sharply.

She turned around in a frantic panic. Seeing Ye Xuan writhing in agony, tears spilled from her eyes. She instinctively reached out her trembling hands, wanting to pull him into her embrace.

"Don't touch me... Get away!"

Ye Xuan jerked his head up!

His bloodshot, crimson eyes locked onto Bai Ningbing's slender, jade-white hands reaching toward him.

In his gaze, there was no emotion of old lovers reunited, no traces of childhood sweetheart affection, not even simple anger.

All that remained was an utter, pure revulsion—the look one would give to the filthiest, most disgusting, most nauseating thing in the world.

That look cut deeper than the sharpest blade, piercing Bai Ningbing's heart in an instant, leaving it riddled with holes. Her hands froze mid-air, as if plunged into an icy abyss.

Meanwhile, Ye Xuan's mind was enduring a cataclysmic upheaval.

Under the combined assault of that familiar yet repulsive presence, that face which had once been engraved in his heart but now held nothing but hypocrisy, and that voice that haunted him like a nightmare...

"Crack!"

Deep within Ye Xuan's mind, the memory seal that had been placed to protect the transmigrator's soul and shield him from the original owner's extreme torment, shattered in that very moment!

The two souls could no longer be separated; at this instant, they merged in the most thorough and cruelest of ways.

The original owner's humiliation, despair, and unwillingness—his everything violently stripped away, his three years of sinking in the pitch-black darkness and rotting corpses at the bottom of Burial Immortal Lake—came flooding in like an unleashed black ocean, drowning all of Ye Xuan's reason!

Pain.

Heart-rending pain.

Not just the physical torment of tendons torn and bones broken, but the excruciating agony of a soul being ripped apart by the very person you loved most!

The howling wind of Tongtian Cliff, the shocked cries of the prodigies, Bai Yujing's cold laugh—all of it faded rapidly into the distance.

The fragments of time spun violently before Ye Xuan's scarlet pupils, reassembling themselves into a colossal black vortex that wrenched his consciousness, dragged it down, and hurled it mercilessly toward the very place that had made his life a living hell.

The Ninth Heaven Sacred Land, Yuzhao Peak.