Ancestral Master

Ye Xuan smiled faintly. He slowly walked up to Wu Lingxiao, gently lifted her chin, and left a cold kiss upon her tear-streaked face—a kiss that carried the unmistakable air of a brand.

“My patriarch once said two things that I have always held to be true.”

He lowered his voice, each word seeming like a brand seared into the laws of causality:

“Good girls should not be let down.”

“Bad girls should not be wasted.”

“Wu Lingxiao, the moment you chose betrayal, you crossed your own name off the list of good girls. To me now, you are merely a powerful woman who is fairly pleasing to the eye—and one with a certain appeal for training.”

“You bad women do not merely betray me. You were born to betray everyone, because your hearts can never be filled.”

“So do not blame me for being cruel. Do not blame me for using you. And do not blame me for humiliating you.”

Ye Xuan released her and turned toward the sleeping quarters, his retreating figure resolute and aloof.

“Go take off that black-gold imperial robe and change into a concubine’s gauze dress. Come massage my legs later. Let others handle the affairs of the Great Xia Immortal Dynasty. From now on, you need remember only one thing…”

“You are no longer ‘We.’ You are only mine—Wu A-Xiao.”

The afterglow of the setting sun spilled into the Palace of Unending Peace, stretching Ye Xuan’s shadow long across the ground.

The Female Emperor, who had once held supreme power over the realm, now knelt dejectedly amid the ruins. As she looked upon the wreckage scattered across the floor, the living light gradually faded from her eyes, replaced by a resigned obedience tinged with deathly stillness.

Just as Ye Xuan had said, bad girls truly should not be wasted.

Over the next three years, the Wu Lingxiao who had once wielded the Great Xia Dragon Tally and whose every word had become law vanished from sight.

In her place was a woman who appeared punctually each day in Ye Xuan’s side hall, having shed her black-gold imperial robe for a simple, elegant palace gown of pale green.

She arranged her own hair, no longer wearing the heavy nine-stream imperial crown. She even learned to make several Jiangnan dishes that Ye Xuan had mentioned in passing.

The jade-like hands once used to deduce the laws of the stars were now often covered in small cuts and burns from knives and scalding heat.

“Husband, this is soup made with spirit ginseng freshly delivered by air from the far northern icefields. Please taste it and see whether the heat is right.”

Wu Lingxiao held a jade bowl, and not a trace of an emperor’s pride remained in her eyes. There was only an almost ingratiating humility.

Half-kneeling before Ye Xuan’s couch, she gently blew on the spoonful of soup until it had cooled, then brought it to his lips.

Ye Xuan did not refuse. He lounged lazily against the soft pillows, allowing this Female Emperor at the peak of the Mahayana Realm to wait upon him.

“A-Xiao, the bitterness in this soup is much lighter,” Ye Xuan said casually. He even raised a hand and lightly brushed a stray lock of hair from Wu Lingxiao’s temple.

That utterly ordinary gesture made Wu Lingxiao’s delicate body tremble. Her eyes immediately reddened.

Like a child who had been given a piece of candy, joy overflowed from her eyes, restoring a long-lost radiance to her lovely face.

“As long as Husband likes it, A-Xiao will make it for you every day.”

To make up for eight hundred years of guilt—and, even more, to hold on to that fleeting trace of tenderness from Ye Xuan—Wu Lingxiao did not hesitate to drain her own origin essence.

Around the sleeping quarters, she set up the [Corridor of Time].

“Husband, the fate of the Great Xia nation and my Time Dao Body are inherently one and the same.”

Wu Lingxiao sat cross-legged behind Ye Xuan, her entire body emitting a faint golden glow as countless runes of time danced in the void. “Cultivating here for one day is equivalent to one hundred days in the outside world. Go ahead and break through your bottleneck. Any lifespan you expend, A-Xiao will make up with her life.”

Under the terrifying acceleration of the laws of time, Ye Xuan’s cultivation rose at a frenzied pace, as though propelled by a rocket.

Yet this peace and beauty were, in the end, only an illusion.

That night, after exhausting too much of her origin essence to assist Ye Xuan through a complete major circulation, Wu Lingxiao left the side hall with a weary expression.

Before leaving, she thoughtfully lit a stick of calming incense for Ye Xuan, her movements as gentle as though she were handling some fragile treasure.

As the hall doors softly closed, all warmth vanished from Ye Xuan’s eyes in an instant.

He slowly sat upright. Within his ash-gray eyes lay an abyssal indifference.

He raised his right hand. A faint glimmer flashed in his palm, and a crystal-clear stone with an underlying blood-red hue appeared.

The [Heart-Querying Stone].

It was the only supreme treasure in all the heavens and myriad worlds capable of stripping away disguises and looking directly into the deepest emotions of the soul.

With a stroke of his fingertip, two drops of blood bearing utterly different auras fell onto opposite sides of the stone.

The drop on the left shone brilliantly gold, containing vast laws of time and an unyielding obsession. It belonged to Wu Lingxiao.

The drop on the right bore a faint ash-gray tint, calm as stagnant water. It belonged to Ye Xuan himself.

The Heart-Querying Stone shuddered violently. Two pillars of light shot skyward, transforming into two flickering numbers.

On the left, representing Wu Lingxiao’s feelings for Ye Xuan: [One Hundred Percent].

It was love overflowing its bounds—mad, all-consuming, and already beginning to burn itself away.

Under the repeated torment of [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] and eight hundred years of guilt, the Female Emperor’s soul had been completely engraved with Ye Xuan’s name. She was even willing to sacrifice everything for him, including her empire and her life.

Ye Xuan turned to the right.

There stood the measure of his feelings for the “A-Xiao” he spoke of: [Nine Percent].

It did not even reach one-tenth.

Perhaps that nine percent came from her useful Time Dao Body, as well as the convenience brought by her dog-like obedience over these past years.

Ye Xuan stared at the jarring contrast between the two numbers and remained silent for a long time.

The intimate closeness of the past three years, the tender affection of the past three years—for him, it had all been nothing more than a remarkably clumsy and tedious act.

He watched her struggle in the mire, watched her humbly offer up everything she had. In his heart, there was neither the pleasure of revenge nor any stirrings of forgiveness—only a profound boredom.

A piece of porcelain that had cracked and been mended again and again would remain broken in Ye Xuan’s eyes, no matter how much gold leaf was applied over its fractures.

“Hah…”

Ye Xuan let out a long breath and casually waved his hand. The numbers on the Heart-Querying Stone dissolved into the air.

He did not sigh. Nor did he feel even the slightest urge to increase that number.

“Does loving deeply always leave one feeling indebted?”

Ye Xuan recalled Ying’er’s words, a mocking curve forming at his lips.

“Wu Lingxiao, what you owe me cannot be repaid in this life. In your next life, and the life after that… you will continue burning for me in that abyss of guilt.”

He closed his eyes once more and sat cross-legged.

Within this side hall accelerated by the laws of time, spiritual energy surged into his body like an enraged tide.

He no longer spared a thought for the woman hiding in the neighboring sleeping quarters, secretly delighted merely because he had touched her hair.

All he wanted was greater power.

For only by standing at the pinnacle of all the heavens could he rule over every pathetic, laughable, worthless form of love in this world.