Hidden Grievances

Ye Qingcheng extended her trembling hands—no longer crystalline and flawless—and tried to grab the hem of Ye Xuan’s robe. But just before her fingers could touch it, Ye Xuan mercilessly kicked her wrist away.

“Ah!”

Ye Qingcheng cried out in pain and fell backward, but she quickly forced herself to crawl back, her eyes filled with unbearable sorrow.

“Husband, I had no choice back then!”

Ye Qingcheng bit down hard on her lower lip as tears streamed down her face like pearls from a broken string.

In a voice hoarse with desperation, overflowing with grievance and self-sacrifice, she cried, “I did it all to protect you! I love you! Everything I did—even bearing eternal infamy—was all for your sake, husband!”

Yet faced with that tearful, deeply moving confession, Ye Xuan’s expression did not change in the slightest.

He looked down at Ye Qingcheng as though she were nothing more than a clown putting on a strenuous performance riddled with holes.

“Protect me? Love me?”

Ye Xuan tilted his head slightly, the corner of his mouth curling into a profoundly mocking, icy smile.

He slowly crouched down until he was eye to eye with Ye Qingcheng’s tear-filled gaze.

“Ye Qingcheng, do you really think that if you cry hard enough, if you keep throwing the words ‘I had no choice’ around, I’ll become that same fool from my previous life—the man you deceived so completely—and take you back into my arms, showering you with tenderness?”

Ye Xuan raised one finger and gently lifted Ye Qingcheng’s chin, but his eyes were filled with bone-deep coldness and disgust.

“Let me tell you the truth. Xia Lengyue, Zi Yao, and you.”

“Of the three of you, any one of them can be forgiven. But you, Ye Qingcheng…”

Ye Xuan suddenly tightened his grip on her chin and spoke each word distinctly.

“I will never forgive you!”

Ye Qingcheng’s pupils contracted sharply. She froze in place as though struck by lightning.

She had thought that as long as she repeated the excuses she had used back then, as long as she made herself humble and helpless enough, Ye Xuan would at least remember their past and soften toward her.

After all, in her mind, the harm she had caused Ye Xuan was far less direct and bloody than what Xia Lengyue and Zi Yao had done.

“Why?”

After a brief moment of stunned silence, Ye Qingcheng became completely agitated.

Ignoring the pain radiating from her chin, she suddenly tore herself free of Ye Xuan’s fingers and shouted at him like a shrew, “Why me? Why am I the only one?”

“Those two betrayed you and hurt you for the sake of cultivation resources and their own interests! Their betrayal was blatant and undeniable!”

Ye Qingcheng’s chest heaved violently, her eyes filled with unwillingness and madness.

“But I had no choice when I cheated on you! I never intended to take your life!”

“I did those things for your safety! Why can you forgive their open betrayal, yet refuse to forgive me—the one who endured humiliation and sacrificed herself to protect you?”

In Ye Qingcheng’s eyes, she was the true victim. She was the great woman who had sacrificed her reputation for love.

Yet in the face of her hysterical accusations, Ye Xuan merely rose to his feet.

He looked down at Ye Qingcheng. There was no anger in his eyes, only profound disdain born of seeing through every illusion, along with a trace of sorrow so faint it was almost imperceptible.

“I used to think the same way.”

Ye Xuan tilted his head back slightly and gazed at the pitch-black ceiling of the cell, letting out a long sigh.

“But later, things changed.”

He lowered his gaze and once more looked at Ye Qingcheng’s baffled face. His expression grew unfathomably deep.

“Ye Qingcheng, you probably don’t know this, but I have reincarnated through countless lifetimes. I don’t retain the memories of my previous lives in every incarnation. The laws of the Great Dao governing the myriad heavens and worlds are exceedingly strict. Most of the time, my memories are sealed by some irresistible force of reincarnation.”

As he spoke, Ye Xuan slowly paced back and forth.

“During those years when my memories were sealed, I was just an ordinary person—an ordinary cultivator starting from nothing. I would love, I would trust, and I would fight with everything I had for the people around me.”

“And as it happened…”

Ye Xuan abruptly stopped and turned his head. He stared at Ye Qingcheng, the coldness in his eyes seeming almost tangible.

“In the life I shared with you, my memories were completely sealed!”

Ye Qingcheng’s entire body trembled. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“I knew nothing in that life.”

A self-mocking, bitter smile appeared on Ye Xuan’s lips.

“I was merely a low-level cultivator with mediocre talent and a pitifully low cultivation. And you were the exalted Saintess of the Hehuan Sect. You lowered yourself to stay by my side, and I thought I was the luckiest man in the world.”

“When I saw you sleeping with another man behind my back, when you told me through tear-reddened eyes that you had done it to save me… tell me, can you guess how I felt at the time?”

Ye Xuan leaned forward slightly, his eyes filled with a calmness that sent chills down the spine.

“I hated myself for being useless! I hated myself for lacking the ability to protect my own woman! I could only watch helplessly as you writhed in pleasure beneath another man, while I stood by like a coward!”

“Even until the day I died, I felt guilty toward you in that life.”

Ye Xuan’s voice suddenly rose, booming like thunder from the Ninth Heaven.

“But in the next life, when my soul broke through the seal, when I recovered all my memories, when I uncovered certain clues throughout my endless reincarnations, that was when I finally learned…”

Ye Xuan pointed at Ye Qingcheng’s nose, his eyes blazing with unprecedented fury and disgust.

“That you were the one who had hidden yourself the deepest—the most vicious, the most revolting of them all!”

“Xia Lengyue and Zi Yao may have been vicious, but they were at least honest villains. They stabbed me openly, with their blades in plain sight! But you? You trampled my dignity into the mud with one foot, then demanded that I worship you like a living Bodhisattva and thank you for it!”

Faced with Ye Xuan’s accusations, each word dripping with blood and grief, Ye Qingcheng’s face instantly turned as pale as paper.

She could not admit it. The moment she did, she would lose even the last scrap of cloth covering her shame.

“No… That’s not how it was! Husband, you’ve misunderstood me!”

Ye Qingcheng shook her head frantically, defending herself with an expression of helpless misery.

“Husband, I truly had no choice! All our misfortune came from my ‘Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique’!”

As though she had seized a lifeline, Ye Qingcheng began to sob out her explanation at top speed.

“It was all because of this damned constitution that we ended up where we are today! The Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique is an incurable condition, husband! It causes the love poison inside my body to erupt violently at regular intervals. Every time it erupts, the amount of masculine essence I need doubles!”

Tears slid down Ye Qingcheng’s cheeks as she tried to brainwash Ye Xuan once again with this seemingly flawless excuse:

“Your cultivation was far too weak in that life. Your primordial yang was nowhere near enough to suppress the passion poison in my body. If I forcibly drained your primordial yang, you would have been sucked dry and died in an instant! So, to protect you, I had no choice but to seek out other men with profound cultivation… My infidelity was inevitable. I did it all so I could stay alive—and continue to remain by your side!”