The Cruel World of Immortal Cultivation

Those words were like venomous arrows, each one striking deep into Ye Jiuhuang’s proud heart.

Ye Jiuhuang was completely stunned.

Slowly, she slid down the cracks in the wall. She paid no attention to the blood at the corner of her mouth or the red, swollen mark on her face. She looked as though every ounce of strength had been drained from her body.

Looking at Ye Xuan’s icy, disgusted gaze and hearing Ying’er’s heart-piercing questions, the pride buried deep in Ye Jiuhuang’s bones finally collapsed completely.

“Thud.”

Under the horrified gazes of tens of thousands of Sword God Palace disciples, the woman who was usually high above them—the First Sword Emperor, who could sever a galaxy with a single strike—actually dropped to her knees without hesitation. Crawling forward, she moved on her knees until she reached Ye Xuan’s feet.

“Husband… I know I was wrong. I really know I was wrong! I shouldn’t have tried to be clever. Please punish me, but please, don’t ignore me…” Tears streamed down Ye Jiuhuang’s face, and her voice was so humble that she no longer showed even the slightest trace of the dignity befitting an unrivaled Sword Emperor.

However, Ye Xuan looked down at her from above. The disgust buried deep in his eyes had not lessened in the slightest. Instead, it had grown even more intense.

“Ye Jiuhuang, answer me.”

Ye Xuan slowly bent down and raised one finger to lift her tear-streaked chin. His voice was cold.

“You were my companion in the previous life. You were indeed pure and unsullied, and you never betrayed me. But why… when I see you in this life, do I still feel such disgust and loathing?”

Ye Jiuhuang’s eyes widened abruptly, and her delicate body began to tremble violently.

She had always believed that Ye Xuan treated her so harshly because the women who had betrayed him had caused him to lose all trust in women.

She had always taken pride in her loyalty and purity in their previous life. Yet now, Ye Xuan had personally told her that he hated her for no other reason than who she herself was!

“I… I don’t know… Please, Husband, enlighten me…” Ye Jiuhuang sobbed, tears making her look as delicate as a pear blossom in the rain, while endless terror filled her heart.

Ye Xuan let out a cold laugh, released her chin, and straightened up.

“I admit that you were indeed pure and unsullied in our previous life. You truly never betrayed me the way Wu Lingxiao and the others did, nor did you push me into an abyss.”

“But aside from that? Ye Jiuhuang, your suffocating, almost pathological possessiveness and need for control were unbearable to me throughout the countless days and nights of our previous life. They even drove me to despair!”

“No… Husband, that was because I loved you too much!”

Ye Jiuhuang hurriedly shouted, trying to defend herself. “Everything I did was truly for your own good!”

“Smack!”

Her answer was another merciless, forceful slap from Ye Xuan.

The blow sent the corner of Ye Jiuhuang’s mouth splitting open once more, and fresh blood streamed down her face.

“For my own good? Hahaha… What a fine excuse—‘for your own good’!”

Ye Xuan laughed furiously. The suppressed rage he had carried from his previous life surged through his eyes. Pointing at Ye Jiuhuang’s nose, he began his bitter reckoning in a voice brimming with fury:

“In our previous life, you kept claiming that you loved me. And what did you do in the end?! Relying on the fact that you had become the Sword Sovereign and swept across the heavens, you forcibly stole away the eighteen wives I had formally married and genuinely loved! You wielded your sword and drove away more than a hundred confidantes from my side!”

Ye Xuan’s voice echoed throughout the great hall. Every number struck like a heavy hammer.

“You crippled 258 of my brothers—men who had stood shoulder to shoulder with me through life and death! You drove away more than two hundred of my mentors and masters, people who had sincerely protected me and taught me everything they knew! And the innocent people who suffered because of your pathological possessiveness, whose families were destroyed and whose lives were ruined, were beyond counting!”

Ye Xuan looked down at her, his eyes filled with endless mockery.

“Everyone in the world knows that the Sword Sovereign swept across the three thousand Dao Provinces, peerless in beauty and power, invincible wherever she went. But who among them knows that your so-called glorious battle record came from the fact that wherever I fled, you followed in a frenzy, slaughtering your way there? You pursued me relentlessly, cutting off every relationship I had!”

The barrage of bloodstained numbers drained all color from Ye Jiuhuang’s face.

Her swollen, beautiful face flushed red, then white. Though she was overwhelmed by guilt, she still could not stop herself from weakly—and stubbornly—trying to defend herself.

“Husband… I only did it so you would understand the cruelty of the cultivation world. Only by having no distractions could you grow stronger as quickly as possible…”

Hearing her completely unrepentant words, Ye Xuan took a deep breath. The last trace of warmth in his eyes extinguished completely.

“Then here’s the question, Ye Jiuhuang.”

Ye Xuan sneered, looking at her as though she were an idiot.

“In our previous life, I had so many gentle and virtuous companions. I had so many brothers who would risk their lives for me. I had so many protective masters who spared no effort to teach me. And I had so many good people who treated me with kindness.”

“With nothing but good people around me—with everyone caring for and protecting me—why did I still feel that the cultivation world was so cruel and suffocating?”

Ye Xuan leaned forward slightly, his voice filled with biting sarcasm.

“Could it be that all the cruelty and despair in the cultivation world did not come from anyone else at all? Could it be that it was all brought upon me by you, you madwoman who hid behind the banner of love?”

Those words were like thunder from the heavens, completely shattering the last line of defense in Ye Jiuhuang’s mind.

She opened her mouth, but found that she could not utter a single word.

In her previous life, Ye Jiuhuang had always believed that she was Ye Xuan’s savior. She had thought that she was helping him remove the impurities from his path of cultivation.

But she had never once considered that, in Ye Xuan’s eyes, she was the greatest demon of all—the one who had brought him the deepest despair.

The great hall once again fell silent.

The elders and disciples of the Sword God Palace stood nearby, each staring at their noses and mouths, desperately holding back their laughter. Not one of them dared even breathe too loudly.

Their usually awe-inspiring palace master had actually been such an obsessive, violent “husband-chasing maniac” in her previous life. This earth-shattering revelation had completely overturned their understanding of the world.

Behind a white jade pillar not far from the great hall stood a woman of unparalleled elegance.

She wore a green robe, and her features were refined and otherworldly. A lingering, seemingly unshakable sorrow rested between her brows.

She was none other than Shen Qingshuang, the Sword Sovereign Ye Jiuhuang’s nominal wife.

Although Shen Qingshuang knew Ye Jiuhuang’s true gender, she had silently remained by Ye Jiuhuang’s side all these years, playing the role of the “Palace Mistress.”

She had always believed that Ye Jiuhuang was the most proud and powerful person in the world, someone who would never bow her head to anyone.

Yet now, she had personally witnessed the person who was usually cold as ice toward her—the husband who had commanded awe throughout the countless heavens and worlds—not only reveal her true identity as a woman, but also kneel without dignity before a young man whose cultivation was merely at the Body Integration stage, begging him like a dog wagging its tail.

Watching Ye Jiuhuang’s humble, dust-covered posture, Shen Qingshuang bit down hard on her red lips. Her hands clenched the corners of her clothes as unprecedented pain and bitterness filled her heart.

What pained her was that the husband she had silently accompanied for thousands of years had never held even the slightest place for her in his heart.

What pained her even more was that Ye Jiuhuang’s abject, dignity-shunning state had completely shattered the image of the nearly invincible god she had once held in her heart.