Tricking the Empress

In the Demon Suppression Hall, only Wu Lingxiao and Ye Xuan remained.

The two stood close enough to feel each other's breath.

She slowly loosened her grip on his collar and took a step back, standing still. For the first time, an expression Ye Xuan had never seen appeared on her noble face—not anger, not arrogance, but a bone-deep, bewildered exhaustion.

She lowered her head, looking at her own hands, her voice so hoarse it had almost lost its tone:

"Why do you insist on provoking me?"

Her voice had lost all its usual sharpness and calculation. It was simply a woman trapped in the vortex of her own emotions, issuing a question that was almost plaintive.

"I rule as the Female Emperor, you reign as the demon lord… wouldn't it be better if we each went our own way?"

Ye Xuan looked at her and was silent for a moment.

Then he tilted his head slightly, a faint, self-deprecating smile curling at the corner of his lips:

"Just like how you took a liking to me."

He paused, his gaze calmly settling on her face.

"I, too, have taken a liking to you."

Wu Lingxiao's head snapped up. For an instant, there was a crack in her eyes—a real, unguarded, utterly exposed fluster at being seen through.

But the next moment, she cooled her expression, ruthlessly pressing that fluster back down, her voice edged with thinly veiled mockery:

"Taken a liking to me? You just want to use me as a chess piece. You just want to hold me in your grasp so I can serve your purposes."

"Exactly right." Ye Xuan did not deny it, his expression so frank it was almost shameless. "That was my original plan, indeed."

He paused, something in his gaze shifting with the faintest movement.

"But later… things turned out somewhat beyond my expectations."

Wu Lingxiao stared at him. Her heart skipped a beat against her will, but she forced herself to maintain the cold mask on her face. "Beyond your expectations?"

Ye Xuan did not answer the question. Instead, he changed the subject, his voice unhurried:

"Lingxiao…"

He spoke those two words so casually, so naturally.

Wu Lingxiao's chest tightened abruptly, and she unconsciously held her breath.

"In these eight hundred years," Ye Xuan's voice was low and calm, like a river flowing out of a deep valley: "do you truly believe I have never endured torment equal to yours?"

"…What?"

"Yearning," he said softly, "and guilt."

"The most agonizing torture in this world has never been pain of the flesh."

Ye Xuan closed his eyes briefly, a trace of exhaustion creeping into his voice, so faint it could not be hidden: "It is the moment in the dead of night when you suddenly recall someone's face, yet can never grasp where she is now, whether she is well, whether she still remembers you."

"That kind of suffering is blunt. It does not kill in one strike. Instead, day after day, it grinds a person down, little by little, until nothing is left."

Wu Lingxiao's body trembled almost imperceptibly.

"Eight hundred years of waiting, eight hundred years of torment," Ye Xuan slowly raised his eyes. The crimson marks within his gray-white pupils flowed quietly under the dim red firelight: "eight hundred years of guilt…"

His voice suddenly grew extremely soft, soft as a leaf falling onto the surface of water.

"Lingxiao, tell me—is this not more painful than any torture?"

Wu Lingxiao froze.

Her lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but she found her throat dry and her mind a complete blank.

In these eight hundred years, certain memories she had sealed away tightly, never daring to touch, now surged forth like a tide.

Those long nights with solitary lamps, those deep autumn nights sitting alone in the imperial study until dawn, those countless years in which she called herself shameless and wanton, yet could not stop herself from turning over the same silhouette again and again in her heart…

"Demon…"

Her voice, for the first time, lost all its thunderous authority, becoming hoarse and powerless, like a candle flickering in the wind.

Her knees, unnoticed, bent slightly.

Her body, before some immense, insurmountable tide of emotion, finally gave way to a hairline crack.

She supported herself on trembling legs, but felt they might give out entirely at any moment.

"You are a demon…"

She repeated in a near choke, but there was no longer any resentment in her voice—only a helpless murmur after utter exhaustion.

And so, slowly and silently, her knees touched the ground. She knelt before Ye Xuan.

Her imperial robes spread across the cold black iron floor, the golden dragon patterns shimmering brilliantly under the blood-red demonic light, so resplendent, so unyielding.

But the person kneeling at the center of those magnificent robes was nothing more than a weary woman, trembling, burying her face deep into her hands.

Ye Xuan looked down at her in silence.

He did not speak, did not mock, did not press his advantage.

He only quietly watched the kneeling figure before him. In the depths of his gray-white pupils, the crimson marks flowed slower and longer than before.

His divine sense spread outward, imperceptibly glimpsing the color at Wu Lingxiao's heart.

That half of ashen black had already diminished by a third.

While that half of blazing crimson was spreading, slowly and irreversibly, encroaching upon the other half.

He smiled, silently.

Then he lowered his head, his voice softening by a degree, carrying something almost tender as he spoke slowly in the Demon Suppression Hall, where only the two of them remained:

"Lingxiao."

"Raise your head."

Wu Lingxiao slowly lifted her face from her palms. Tear tracks remained, the rims of her eyes faintly red. That once sharply imposing imperial countenance had now shed every mask, leaving only a naked, childlike grievance and bewilderment.

She stared at him, dazed, and said nothing.

Ye Xuan also looked at her in silence.

Their gazes met quietly in midair.

After a long while, Ye Xuan spoke again, his voice low, carrying a change only he himself could perceive:

"You said that torture alone could never make me yield."

"You were right."

He paused. A smile slowly crept to the corner of his lips—eighty percent self-mockery, but two percent was real, the kind that made one's heart tremble faintly at the sight:

"But have you ever considered…"

His voice fell softly:

"When have you ever truly tortured me?"

Wu Lingxiao was taken aback. She frowned. "I struck you for so many days…"

"That hardly counts."

Ye Xuan looked genuinely stunned, as if he had heard the greatest joke in the world. He shook his head, his tone carrying a kind of helpless sincerity: "All the wounds on my body—did you not precisely avoid every vital point with each strike? You hit hard, but you never once truly meant to take my life."

Wu Lingxiao's expression stiffened slightly. She wanted to deny it, but somehow opened her mouth and found not a single word coming out.

Ye Xuan continued, his voice growing calmer still:

"As for so-called torture… Lingxiao, do you know what in this world truly makes one wish they were dead?"

He raised his head slightly, his gray-white eyes looking toward the shadowed vault of the Demon Suppression Hall, his voice carrying a heavy weariness settled by years and years:

"It is longing. It is guilt. It is the night when you clearly know you were wrong, yet can no longer find that person to atone to."

"These eight hundred years," he said softly, "what you endured… that was the true torture."

"As for the whips you used on me…"

He lowered his head once more, looking at Wu Lingxiao, the corners of his mouth curving slightly, his tone growing a bit more meaningful:

"That was merely a form of playfulness."