The Entanglement of Two Madmen

Over the next few days, the Weiyang Palace in the Great Xia Imperial Palace became a veritable slaughterhouse.

Ye Xuan completely abandoned any pretense of behaving like a prisoner. Day after day, he flirted and cuddled with Ying’er in the side hall. Sometimes they slept side by side, sometimes they played chess by the railing.

Those hands of Ying’er’s that had once made Wu Lingxiao tremble were now gently peeling deep-sea spirit pearl fruit for Ye Xuan. Their laughter drifted through layer upon layer of pearl curtains, like venom-coated needles, striking Wu Lingxiao precisely in the heart as she stood guard outside the door.

Wu Lingxiao stood in the shadow of the corridor pillars. Her black-and-gold imperial robes did not stir in the wind, but the hands hidden in her sleeves had long since clenched until her knuckles turned white.

She listened to Ye Xuan whisper sweet nothings to Ying’er. She heard him praise Ying’er as “pure as snow” and “the only one in this life.” Each word felt like a slap across her face, delivered in public.

And whenever she tried to push open the door, what greeted her was never fear from Ye Xuan, but mockery so vicious it cut to the bone.

“Has Your Majesty come to listen in again today?”

Ye Xuan did not even raise his head. His fingers threaded through Ying’er’s hair, and his tone was as casual as if he were shooing away a fly. “If you’re short of a man, there are three thousand beauties in the Great Xia harem for you to choose from. Why insist on standing outside my side hall like a neglected wife, making a fool of yourself?”

Wu Lingxiao gritted her teeth, her eyes so red they looked ready to bleed.

He no longer hurled those two most humiliating words at her, but the disgust in Ye Xuan’s eyes drove her deeper into despair than any vulgar insult could have.

On the morning of the fifth day, the sky above Weiyang Palace blazed with rosy light.

Ye Xuan sat cross-legged in the center of the spirit pool, his spiritual power surging throughout his body as he reached the crucial moment of perfecting the late Void Refinement stage.

Then the air rippled faintly.

Wu Lingxiao appeared soundlessly beside the spirit pool.

The cold, beautiful face that had once been filled with pleading now held only a near-maniacal ruthlessness.

“Ye Xuan, I gave you a chance.”

She slowly raised her right hand. Golden temporal runes spun wildly in her palm like a vortex.

“Reverse!”

An invisible, irresistible force instantly enveloped Ye Xuan.

He felt the spiritual power surging through his body like a river suddenly freeze. Then it began to flow backward at a terrifying speed!

The spiritual energy he had painstakingly refined, the meridians he had widened with such difficulty—all of it rapidly vanished beneath the wash of the Law of Time, like writing being erased by a rubber.

“No… What are you doing?” Ye Xuan’s eyes flew open, horror filling his pale-gray pupils.

“I’ve finally found your weakness.” Wu Lingxiao gave a sinister smile, her eyes filled with a sick delight. “Don’t you want to recover your strength? Don’t you want to return to your peak and run away with that little girl? Then I simply won’t let you have your way!”

She spread her fingers, and the golden light intensified. “I’ll use the power of time to scour your body again and again, until your cultivation falls day by day—until you become that helpless cripple once more, that weakling who could only cling to me for survival!”

“You devil! You’re insane!”

Ye Xuan’s face turned deathly pale as he watched his cultivation fall from the late Void Refinement stage to the middle stage, then to the early stage…

At last, accompanied by a deep rumble, his vast spiritual sea collapsed with a roar, forcibly regressing his cultivation all the way to the Deity Transformation stage.

“Pfft!”

Ye Xuan spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed into the spirit pool.

Half of the foundation he had painstakingly established was destroyed. The devastation of falling from the peak nearly drove him mad.

“This cultivation took countless humiliations, countless instances of relying on women, and countless brushes with death to obtain!”

Ye Xuan roared hysterically, his voice carrying a level of despair he had never shown before. “Wu Lingxiao, you destroyed me! I’m going to kill myself! Even if I have to blow up my primordial spirit in this lifetime, I will never endure this humiliation from you!”

Wu Lingxiao looked at him coldly, her expression as emotionless as a stone statue. “You want to die? Then we’ll die together. The Great Xia can be abandoned. This peak Mahayana cultivation can be abandoned too. As long as I can keep you locked at my side, I don’t mind turning to dust with you.”

Ye Xuan trembled with rage. He glared at her through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you want?!”

Wu Lingxiao fell silent for a moment. Her gaze dropped to Ye Xuan’s lips, made even more breathtaking by his fury. Her voice was low and hoarse.

“Kiss me.”

“What?”

Ye Xuan looked as though he had heard something utterly disgusting. His despair instantly turned into overwhelming revulsion.

Pointing at Wu Lingxiao, he unleashed the most vicious mockery he could muster. “Kiss you? Wu Lingxiao, have you never looked in a mirror? How many people have those lips kissed?”

“Those vermilion lips have been tasted by ten thousand men, those jade arms embraced by a thousand! In my eyes, you’re beneath even the lowest prostitute in a brothel!”

Her face paled with every word he uttered.

“At least a prostitute sells her body. You’re nothing but shameless.”

Ye Xuan continued, his contempt reaching its peak. “You’re nothing but a used-up empress. The stench of corruption clings to you so strongly that I can smell it from three palaces away. What makes you think I’d have any appetite to kiss you?”

“Shut up!”

Wu Lingxiao flung her arms about in a frenzy, shattering the temporal barrier around them.

Her heart, repeatedly kneaded between the powers of “One Conquest, Eternal Conquest” and love and hatred, shattered at that moment until not even dust remained.

“If you think I’m filthy, then we’ll die together!”

She raised her hand once more. The Law of Time condensed into a terrifying beam of death that shot straight toward Ye Xuan’s crown.

Ye Xuan thrust out his chin and sneered. “Go ahead and kill me! Yun Meng is protecting my true spirit. Even if I die in this life, I’ll carry my memories into the next reincarnation! And you? After you die and enter the cycle of reincarnation, you won’t retain a single memory of your past life.”

“Kill me, you used-up slut!”

Wu Lingxiao’s hand froze in midair.

She could not kill him. Even if she destroyed his physical body, Ye Xuan would still have another life ahead of him.

More importantly, she could not bear to.

That sick, bone-deep love turned her, in that moment, into a defeated captive. Her hand fell limply to her side.

“What… do you want?” Wu Lingxiao asked, her voice breaking with tears.

“I don’t want anything. Hurry up and die, you used-up slut.” Ye Xuan’s mind had completely snapped. The agony of having his cultivation destroyed drove him to pour every ounce of his malice onto the woman before him.

Wu Lingxiao drew a deep breath. A faint, humble hope flickered in her eyes. Trembling, she reached out a hand and said softly, “As long as you kiss me… just one sincere kiss, and I’ll use the power of time to reverse the heavens and earth for you. I’ll not only restore your cultivation—I’ll also grant you a chance to reach the Mahayana stage.”

Ye Xuan froze.

He looked at Wu Lingxiao’s tear-filled, pleading eyes, then felt the withered Deity Transformation-stage spiritual power inside his body.

For the sake of his cultivation, for the sake of escaping this madwoman’s control as soon as possible…

He gritted his teeth, a profound humiliation flashing through his eyes.

“Really?”

“Really.” Wu Lingxiao nodded as tears slid down her cheeks.

Ye Xuan lowered his head stiffly, as if he were paying respects at a grave, and slammed his lips against hers.

It was a kiss devoid of warmth.

Ye Xuan’s lips were cold as iron, trembling with unmistakable disgust. He merely pressed them against hers mechanically, then immediately tried to pull away.

But Wu Lingxiao, like a drowning person clinging to the last piece of driftwood, suddenly wrapped her arms around Ye Xuan’s neck, wanting to reach out with her tongue and capture that touch of tenderness she had yearned for over eight hundred years.