Fierce Battle at the White Jade Capital

In the real world, atop Heaven's Reach Cliff.

The tidal wave of memories came to an abrupt halt within his mind.

Ye Xuan, who had been kneeling on the ground, stopped his death-like trembling. Slowly, he rose to his feet.

As he stood, the violent spiritual energy storm that had been raging wildly around him—caused by the shattering of the Heavenly Dao Jade Tablet—fell into an eerily absolute silence.

He paid no heed to Bai Yujing, who hovered in the distant air with a subtly shifting expression. Nor did he look at the holy land prodigies around him, who were holding their breath, hushed and terrified.

He merely lowered his head slightly, his gray-white eyes casting an indifferent gaze downward at Bai Ningbing, who stood before him, shielding him.

Bai Ningbing was a mess—her robes disheveled, her face streaked with tears.

She spread her arms wide, like a moth trying to shield its young, hoping that with her very body she could awaken even a sliver of his former feelings.

"Ye Xuan..."

Bai Ningbing looked at his face, now finally calmed, at the blood-red hue in the depths of his eyes gradually fading. A wild, desperate hope surged within her—the joy of surviving a catastrophe.

She thought he was still the husband who would tear out his own heart to soothe her the moment she cried.

"You... you recognize me, right? I knew it—you still have me in your heart..."

Bai Ningbing wept like a pear blossom drenched in rain. Her knees gave way, and she pitifully lunged forward, trying to embrace his legs: "I was wrong... I truly know I was wrong! All these years you suffered, and I lived every day in agony too! I shouldn't have listened to their slander..."

"If you'll only forgive me, we can be like before—on Jade Radiance Peak..."

Suddenly, Ye Xuan reached out. His five fingers, like a cage forged of steel and iron, clamped brutally around Bai Ningbing's slender, snow-white neck. Then, with a sudden surge of force in his arm, he hoisted her entire body high into the air—as if she were nothing more than a weightless, tattered rag doll.

"Gh—!"

Bai Ningbing's exquisitely beautiful eyes bulged violently, and deep within her pupils, an ultimate terror, as if she had seen a ghost, blossomed.

She opened her mouth wide, but only a wheezing hiss escaped.

The agony of suffocation engulfed her instantly. Her normally pale face flushed purple-red at a visible speed.

She flailed her hands instinctively, her ten fingers clawing desperately at his motionless grip. Her long nails even scratched bloody marks across the back of his hand, yet they could not budge him a single inch.

Ye Xuan simply held her suspended in the air.

In his gray-white eyes, restored to calm, there was no trace of the former tenderness, no hint of love—not even hatred or anger.

There was only the cold detachment of a man looking at a stray dog by the roadside.

"Forgive you?"

Ye Xuan spoke.

"My dear Ningbing..."

His gaze slowly descended, landing on her chest heaving violently. A cruel smile curled at the corner of his mouth: "I'll ask you only one thing. Back on Jade Radiance Peak, when you took that Bone-Dissolving Dagger and pierced through my spine, bit by bit, and tore out my immortal bone with your own hands..."

He suddenly leaned in close, his nose almost touching hers, but the depths of his eyes were like a bottomless abyss of ice: "Was your hand trembling as badly then... as it is now?"

The words struck Bai Ningbing's mind like a death knell.

She knew—it was over. Everything was over. The man before her had completely transformed from the god who once protected her into the vengeful demon demanding her life!

"Cou—cough... husband... listen to me... let me ex—explain..."

Suspended midair, Bai Ningbing forced out broken syllables, tears mixed with saliva secreted from sheer agony dripping down her chin in a pathetic mess.

At this moment, all the dignity of a holy land immortal maiden was ground to dust beneath the pure shadow of death.

"Explain?"

Ye Xuan tilted his head slightly, as if examining a defective product about to be smashed: "You're not worthy of speaking, and I can't be bothered to listen. Take your explanations down to the Nine Abysses and slowly tell them to the vengeful ghosts."

The instant the words fell, the spiritual energy at Ye Xuan's fingertips began its destructive, violent compression!

"Sssss—"

The overbearing [Great Luo Ultimate Sword Qi] pulsed and flickered in his palm. The blinding sword light, in the next moment, would obliterate this woman—who had once tormented him beyond endurance—body and soul, tearing her into a mist of blood scattering through the air.

Just at this critical, life-or-death moment, when Bai Ningbing was on the verge of utter annihilation, the void high above the nine heavens suddenly tore apart with a horrifying sound like ripping cloth.

A massive, sky-covering jade-white palm imprint, carrying a crushing momentum that overwhelmed all laws and leveled mountains, punched straight through layers of space like divine punishment, slamming violently toward Ye Xuan's back!

The angle of this strike was insidiously vicious, and the power it unleashed far exceeded the Nascent Soul limit that this Buried Heaven Abyss could ever contain.

Space shattered like fragile glass beneath that palm, exposing vast stretches of pitch-black spatial turbulence.

Ye Xuan's eyes turned icy in an instant, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. If he insisted on killing Bai Ningbing, he himself would be flattened into meat paste by this terrifying blow.

The instinct to weigh life against death forced him to release his grip against his will.

"Shua!"

Ye Xuan's figure twisted like a phantom, leaving behind a lifelike afterimage on the spot, as he retreated hundreds of zhang through the void in a flash.

"BOOM!"

The jade palm imprint, having lost its target, slammed heavily into Heaven's Reach Cliff, blasting an immense, bottomless crater into the bedrock of basalt.

The shockwave erupted in all directions, sending the watching prodigies tumbling and spitting blood. The shattered space around them refused to heal for a long time.

"THUD!"

Freed at last, Bai Ningbing crashed pathetically onto the dirt.

Like a dying fish, she clutched her throat, coughing violently and gagging, greedily gasping for air mixed with dust, her entire body shaking like a sieve.

In midair, the clouds parted.

Bai Yujing, clad in immaculate white as snow, hands clasped behind his back, stood upon the void.

He looked down from on high at Ye Xuan in the distance, the mockery and derision in his smile deepening: "Tsk tsk tsk, Ye Xuan, Ye Xuan. You truly are heartless. She was your betrothed Dao companion, sworn to each other by sea and mountain, and yet you strike so cruelly. Even I find it hard to watch. With such conduct, aren't you just confirming your reputation as a demon?"

"You're courting death."

Ye Xuan offered not a single word of extra courtesy—he didn't even raise his eyelids. His right hand grasped the void, and the crimson Sun-Severing Divine Sword, radiating the might to ignite the heavens and boil the seas, let out a resounding dragon's roar as it landed in his palm.

The moment he gripped the sword, the aura radiating from Ye Xuan changed completely.

A dark, profound sword intent—one that seemed capable of devouring all life and light in the world—shot straight into the sky!

His [Six Paths Reincarnation Heaven Scripture] churned like a boiling, raging sea. The thick, blood-red clouds around him were torn to shreds by this pure, ultimate sword intent of despair.

"Heaven and Earth's Heartless, Ruthless Severance Slash!"

Following a furious roar from an ancient deity, Ye Xuan swung his sword with a single strike!