The blood-red demon lanterns in the Demon-Suppressing Hall still glowed a dim crimson.
Ye Xuan leaned against the icy black-iron wall, legs stretched out before him, looking less like a man imprisoned in a dungeon and more like an idle idler basking in the sun in his own courtyard. His body was covered in bruises and crisscrossing whip marks, old and new alike—a sight gruesome enough to make anyone wince. Yet his expression remained utterly calm. He sat with his eyes closed, a faint, careless smile playing at the corner of his lips.
When he heard footsteps, he didn't even lift his eyelids.
Wu Lingxiao stepped into the hall and stood in silence, watching him for a long moment. For some reason, today she carried no black-iron whip. She simply stood there in her ink-black imperial robes, and spoke in a low voice:
"You devil, don't you dare think you can win."
Ye Xuan finally opened his eyes, lazily. He turned his head to look at her. Those grey-white pupils gleamed in the dim red light, deep and still as an abyss, carrying a trace of idle scrutiny.
"Oh?"
"I can break your [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest]."
Wu Lingxiao spoke slowly, each word freighted with suppressed hatred: "You think that with this single law, you can hold me in the palm of your hand, force me to bow my head and submit to you? You overestimate yourself."
Ye Xuan was silent for a moment after she finished.
Then, he let out a self-deprecating laugh. It wasn't a wild or arrogant laugh, but one carrying an indescribable weariness. He slowly shook his head and said in a hoarse voice:
"If [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] truly were invincible, and could make every woman in the world fall head-over-heels for me..."
He paused. A flicker of complex darkness passed through those grey-white eyes before it settled into a sigh.
"Then why, when you were with me, did you cheat on me twice?"
Silence.
A bone-chilling silence, as if the entire world had plunged into ice.
Wu Lingxiao stood frozen in place.
That sentence was like a fine needle, silently piercing into the deepest, most forbidden corner of her heart. Her lips trembled slightly. She wanted to argue, but found her throat seized as though by an invisible hand—not a single word could escape.
Ye Xuan looked at her and shook his head. His voice grew even calmer, so calm it bordered on complete and utter release:
"[One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] locks the love in place, makes it never fade—but it does not make love peak overnight."
He paused, his voice dropping low.
"During that long process of taking hold, your heart was still your own heart. You could still make choices. You could still indulge yourself. Those two times... were your own choice. They had nothing to do with the law."
Wu Lingxiao's fingers curled involuntarily, her knuckles going white. She said nothing, only stared hard at Ye Xuan, her eyes full of something called embarrassment, which she crushed beneath a veneer of cold fury and sharp pride, refusing to let it surface.
But Ye Xuan acted as if he hadn't seen her expression at all. He continued:
"You should consider yourself fortunate."
"Fortunate?" Wu Lingxiao gave a cold laugh, though her voice was already unsteady. "Fortunate about what?"
"Precisely because of my [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest]," Ye Xuan lifted his gaze and looked at her steadily, "you remained chaste and pure for eight hundred years."
Wu Lingxiao froze.
The corner of Ye Xuan's mouth curled into a faint, elusive arc, and his voice carried a hint of the inscrutable:
"Otherwise, with your nature—how many men would you have taken over these eight hundred years?"
The moment the words landed, the entire Demon-Suppressing Hall fell so silent you could hear a pin drop.
Wu Lingxiao's expression changed dramatically. That noble, cold, peerlessly beautiful imperial face went blank first, then flooded with towering fury—and buried beneath that fury, Ye Xuan clearly saw, was a bone-deep panic and shame.
"You—!"
Enraged beyond words, she rushed forward, raised her hand, and delivered a sharp slap across Ye Xuan's cheek.
The crisp sound echoed off the stone walls. Ye Xuan's head turned to one side, a trail of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
But he didn't dodge.
He didn't even frown.
"It was you and your vile art that did this to me!"
Wu Lingxiao's voice trembled with barely contained emotion: "You made me a caged beast for eight hundred years, made my heart occupied by you alone, made it impossible for me to be a truly free empress!"
"Done this to you?"
Ye Xuan slowly turned his head back. The angry red mark of the slap was clear on his cheek, but he only looked at her with those calm grey-white eyes, his tone light, carrying something almost cruelly self-mocking:
"Wu Lingxiao, search your own heart. What kind of woman are you?"
Wu Lingxiao's brow twitched. A bad premonition stirred in her chest.
Ye Xuan didn't give her a chance to speak. His voice wasn't loud, but every word struck like a blade, slowly sinking into her heart:
"You filled your harem with handsome men, trapped their whole lives behind those narrow palace walls, used them at your whim, and when you tired of them, cast them into the cold palace like discarded shoes. You betrayed one true-hearted lover after another."
He paused.
"Your empress, Zhou Xubai... your beloved consort, Bai Ran..."
Wu Lingxiao's body went rigid.
"Every one of them gave you their whole heart, their very soul. Every one of them, because they loved you, died at your hands."
Ye Xuan's voice was calm—so calm it chilled the bone. "You killed them, Wu Lingxiao. Not because they were lacking. But because, back then, you had never been bound by anything before. You didn't know what it meant to cherish. You didn't know what it meant to be unwilling to let go."
Wu Lingxiao trembled all over.
Those two names. They were like something ripped raw from the depths of her chest, dragged out bleeding and exposed before her eyes.
She had thought she'd sealed those memories away in the deeps of time. But now, they were so vivid—so vivid she could barely stand.
Zhou Xubai.
Bai Ran.
The looks in their eyes when they died—did she even remember?
She tried to tell herself it didn't matter. But that faint, lingering thread of guilt buried in her heart for eight hundred years now burst forth like a breached dam, drowning her.
"Shut up..." she said hoarsely, a low growl.
Ye Xuan looked at her, but he didn't stop.
His voice slowly dropped even lower, deeper, as if rising from the very bottom of the earth, carrying a calm that could not be turned away from:
"So you ask why I never dared to give you my true heart?"
He laughed softly.
There was no mockery in that laugh. No hatred. Only an utterly bone-chilling desolation, the kind that comes from having seen through everything.
"Wu Lingxiao... search your own heart."
"Do I dare to give you my true heart?"
"Zhou Xubai and Bai Ran gave you their true hearts. And what became of them?"
He spoke these words as if they were nothing. But they landed like a vast boulder dropped into still water, stirring waves that choked the breath out of the air.
Wu Lingxiao's eyes, without her noticing, had begun to redden.
She bit her lip hard. Tears were held back only by the last shred of an emperor's dignity, refusing to fall.
Ye Xuan leaned his head back against the cold stone wall, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper to himself:
"You have your false affection. I have my pretense."
The corner of his mouth curved upward slightly. That smile carried an emotion so complex, so layered, no one could name it: "The two of us—aren't we a perfect match?"
"You—!"
Wu Lingxiao exploded in utter fury.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her teeth clenched, and she kicked Ye Xuan hard in the ribs. He let out a muffled groan but didn’t even change his posture—only turned slightly, shifting the direction of the force by a fraction.
“You fiend! How dare you stand there and mock me! Do you think saying all that will absolve you of your crimes?”
She was panting, leaning down to seize Ye Xuan by the collar, dragging him up bodily to force him to meet her gaze. The moment their eyes locked, she saw it—beneath that calm in his gaze, something faint and hidden, yet real: a sliver of tenderness.
Her heart lurched.
Behind her, in the darkness, the nearly transparent phantom quietly materialized. Its voice drifted over, carrying a note of impatient anxiety:
“Kill him now.”
“If you let him grow, the consequences will be unthinkable. You should understand—this man is no ordinary being. His 【One Conquest, Eternal Conquest】 is still under suppression for now, but the power of time cannot hold forever. If he regains his full strength, he will overturn the entire Great Xia in the palm of his hand.”
“If you do not uproot the weed, it will only bring disaster later.”
Wu Lingxiao’s grip on Ye Xuan’s collar suddenly tightened, her knuckles turning white.
Yet she just stood there, frozen.
Motionless.
Ye Xuan waited quietly. He did not struggle, nor did he urge her on. He simply watched her with those pale gray eyes, the faint crimson veins deep within them flowing like an undercurrent—observing a game whose ending he had long foreseen.
The phantom spoke again, its tone heavier now:
“Hurry up and do it…”
“Enough.”
Wu Lingxiao closed her eyes and cut off that voice, speaking in a low tone.
“Killing him like this… I can’t.”
The phantom fell silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh. Its voice carried a tangle of emotions—helplessness, pity, and the weary understanding of one who had weathered countless ages:
“So… you have truly fallen in love with him.”
Wu Lingxiao snapped her eyes open. She wanted to refute it, but the words died in her throat.
The phantom’s voice grew faint, shadowed by bone-deep exhaustion:
“My power of time is nearly spent. I can no longer rewind. I need to enter slumber and gather strength.”
“While I sleep… you will have to rely on yourself.”
With that, the phantom quietly dissolved, as if it had never existed at all. What remained was nothing but a hollow, weighty silence.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
Cheng's father told him he was getting remarried—to a wealthy woman. Cao Cheng realized his time had finally come: he was about to become a second-generation rich kid. Sure, it might be a watered-down version, but hey, at least he'd have status now, right? The wealthy woman also had four daughters!! Which meant, starting today, Cao Cheng gained four stunning older sisters?? But that wasn't even the whole story... "My name is Cao Cheng—'Cheng' as in 'honest, smooth-talking gentleman'!"
