Involuntariness Is an Illusion

The scenes in Ye Qingcheng’s memories flashed by at incredible speed.

Over the course of just a few hundred years, Ye Qingcheng’s cultivation had skyrocketed as though she had boarded a rocket.

The Deity Transformation realm, the Void Refinement realm, the Body Integration realm, the Tribulation Transcendence realm…

One after another, the Dao companions she had once taken all died mysterious deaths.

Some had gone berserk and lost control of their cultivation. Others had died after exhausting their strength. Only Ye Qingcheng had bloomed the most enchanting Flower of Immortality atop their bones.

At last.

With the descent of the Nine Heavens Tribulation, Ye Qingcheng stood in the void and withstood all eighty-one bolts of heavenly lightning.

When the golden radiance faded, her “Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique” had finally reached the legendary perfected state.

The poison of passion that had tormented her for a thousand years was completely suppressed at that moment, transforming into boundless, abyss-like spiritual power within her body.

She no longer needed primordial yang energy.

She had finally become one of the supreme beings in this world.

In the scene, she returned to the sect that was already under her control.

Looking at her own reflection in the mirror—her beauty eternally preserved, her bearing as cold and divine as a goddess—she thought of Ye Xuan, who had long since vanished somewhere in the endless cycle of reincarnation.

A sick, satisfied smile curled across her lips.

“Husband, look. I did it.”

“My body is still pure, and I’ve become a supreme cultivator as well.”

“Although I made you suffer a little during the process, and although you ultimately killed yourself, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find your reincarnation. When I do, I’ll grant you the most esteemed status in this world. I’ll make you my personal possession, and we’ll stay together for ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years…”

At that moment, the scene of the memory shattered with a thunderous crash.

Inside the dungeon, Ye Xuan suddenly yanked his hand back and staggered several steps away.

Even his Dao heart, tempered to the firmness of rock through countless reincarnations, felt an unprecedented wave of disgust and horror after witnessing the memory Ye Qingcheng had hidden deep within her soul.

So that was why…

That was why, on that stormy night in the Hehuan Sect, when Zhao Tianba and the others had barged into the room, the sounds that emerged had been so lifelike despite them deliberately blocking everyone’s line of sight!

Because it had been the ultimate illusion created by the Heavenly Desire Art!

Zhao Tianba and the others had merely been aroused within a phantom, while Ye Qingcheng had hidden in the corner, coldly absorbing their primordial yang energy from a distance!

That was why she had later acted so self-righteous—because she believed her body was still clean!

But Ye Xuan had not known that at the time!

The lowly wandering cultivator Ye Xuan had knelt in the pouring rain for two hours, listening to his wife’s soft moans of pleasure beneath other men. His fingers had dug into the flesh of the earth, his heart had shattered until even his soul seemed to bleed.

His pain, his despair, his dignity being crushed to pieces…

All of it had been real!

What was even more terrifying was that Ye Qingcheng had known from the very beginning that once she accepted that inheritance, Ye Xuan would be subjected to such a living hell of humiliation!

The Nine-Tailed Fox had explicitly warned her that Ye Xuan would collapse and go mad. It had urged her to divorce him.

Yet for the sake of her twisted possessiveness—for the sake of those words, “I want the Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique, and I want my husband too”—she had forcibly dragged Ye Xuan into this hell!

She was not a helpless victim driven into a corner.

She was the creator of this nightmare!

She had calmly watched Ye Xuan be humiliated for her sake, watched his bones be broken, watched him howl in despair beneath the rain. At the same time, she had comforted herself inwardly, believing that she was a great woman who had endured humiliation for the sake of love!

“Ugh…”

Ye Xuan suddenly turned around, his stomach churning violently as he retched uncontrollably.

Disgusting.

It was utterly disgusting.

Xia Lengyue had killed him for the sake of the Great Dao, while Zi Yao had betrayed him for power. Those had been straightforward, barefaced betrayals.

But Ye Qingcheng…

She had worn the face of someone deeply devoted, using the excuse “I did it all for you” while inflicting the most horrifying and ruthless form of torture imaginable!

“Hus… husband…”

Ye Qingcheng, collapsed on the ground, had gone ashen.

The secret buried deep within her soul had been completely exposed. She was like an ugly monster stripped of every disguise, laid bare beneath Ye Xuan’s gaze.

She could no longer defend herself with excuses such as “I was forced into it” or “the Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique is an incurable affliction.”

“Husband… listen to me… I really wasn’t touched by them… My body is still pure…”

Ye Qingcheng was still making one final struggle. Crawling toward Ye Xuan on her hands and knees, she wept so hard that tears and snot covered her face.

“I only did it because I loved you too much! I was afraid of losing you… I didn’t want you to die…”

“Shut up!”

Ye Xuan spun around and brought his foot down heavily on Ye Qingcheng’s chest. Several of her ribs snapped with a series of sharp cracks.

“Your body is pure?”

Ye Xuan’s eyes were bloodshot. The fury coursing through him was so intense that the corners of his eyes split and began to bleed. He stared at Ye Qingcheng, his voice hoarse and ghastly, like that of a demon from the deepest reaches of the underworld.

“What about the dignity you trampled beneath your feet and ground into dust in that life? What about the heart that was tortured to death in the pouring rain?”

“For the sake of your immortality, for the sake of your sick possessiveness, you watched me struggle in hell with your own eyes. You watched me beg those men who had humiliated you, like a dog, for your sake!”

“And you even thought you were the great one? You thought I simply didn’t understand you?”

Ye Xuan laughed in fury, his laughter filled with grief and savagery.

“Ye Qingcheng, you don’t understand love at all! You only love yourself—the version of yourself lost in the delusion that you’re making some noble sacrifice for love!”

“Since you love playing with illusions so much, since you love absorbing primordial yang energy so much…”

A chillingly cruel light flashed through Ye Xuan’s eyes. Slowly, he raised his hand.

Chains of dark, sinister law materialized out of thin air, twisting around Ye Qingcheng’s limbs like venomous snakes. They pinned her in midair, spreading her body into the shape of a star.

“What… what are you going to do?” Looking into Ye Xuan’s eyes, which regarded her like a lifeless object, Ye Qingcheng was finally overcome by the deepest terror. “Husband! Kill me! Please, kill me!”

“Kill you? That would be far too easy on you.”

Ye Xuan’s icy voice echoed through the dungeon, like a sentence of death pronounced from the depths of the Netherworld.

He looked at Ye Qingcheng, held in midair by the chains of law and trembling with terror, and the corners of his lips curled into a cruel smile.

“Since you love the illusions of the Heavenly Desire Art so much, since you love watching others suffer in their hallucinations while remaining high above it all, preserving your so-called ‘purity’…”

Ye Xuan slowly raised his right hand. In his palm, a dark, bottomless vortex containing the endless power of reincarnation began to spin madly.

“Then today, out of my boundless mercy, I’ll let you experience the feeling of being trapped in endless illusions, never to find release!”

“No! Husband! Don’t! Please!”

Ye Qingcheng shrieked miserably, an extreme terror she had never felt before filling her eyes.

“Reincarnation Illusion Realm, open!”

Ye Xuan suddenly spread his five fingers.

The black vortex erupted instantly with a ghostly radiance that devoured everything, completely enveloping Ye Qingcheng’s entire body!