The Madness of the Night That Topples the City

“H-Husband…”

Ye Qingcheng looked at Ye Xuan as though he were an unparalleled fiend who had climbed out of the deepest reaches of the Nine Netherworlds. And yet, at the same time, he was like the last wisp of hope—a lifeline capable of dragging her out of endless torment.

“Bang!”

With a casual motion, Ye Xuan withdrew the chains of law. Ye Qingcheng crashed heavily onto the icy floor, collapsing like a limp mass of flesh.

She did not even have the strength to stand. Like a maggot, she could only writhe with difficulty across the ground, slick with blood and muddy water, inching bit by bit toward Ye Xuan’s boots.

“Husband… I really know I was wrong…”

Ye Qingcheng looked up at him. Her face had long since become twisted by unbearable pain and terror, her features so gaunt that she was almost unrecognizable.

Her tears streamed wildly down her cheeks, mingling with blood and mucus.

She clung desperately to Ye Xuan’s boot, like a drowning person clutching a piece of driftwood, and screamed at the top of her lungs:

“Please… kill me! Or let my soul be obliterated—anything is fine! Just don’t send me back to that place! I can’t take it anymore! I really can’t take it anymore!”

Yet in the face of her heartrending pleas, Ye Xuan’s expression did not change in the slightest.

He simply looked down at her from above, his eyes fixed on her as though she were nothing more than a pile of non-recyclable trash.

When Ye Qingcheng saw that he remained unmoved, the obsession buried deep in her heart—one so extreme that it bordered on madness—began to grow wildly once more amid her terror and despair, like poisonous weeds.

She suddenly raised her head. The peach-blossom eyes that had been filled with pleading now erupted with a blazing, crazed fervor that sent chills down the spine.

“But, Husband!”

Ye Qingcheng gripped Ye Xuan’s trouser leg so tightly that her fingernails dug into his flesh. In a voice as shrill and mournful as a cuckoo crying blood, she roared:

“What exactly did I do that was so unforgivable?”

“Yes! I did find other men behind your back! I used illusions to drain their yang essence! But my body is still pure!”

Ye Qingcheng frantically defended herself.

“How many women in this world could remain faithful to you when faced with the temptation of immortality, while possessing a heaven-defying constitution like the Nine Yin Charming Body?”

“My heart belongs only to you! All I ever thought about was how to become stronger, how to keep you by my side so that we could remain together for ten thousand years!”

“Everything I did was beyond my control! The cultivation world is so cruel. I’m just a worthless cultivator with a Four-Spirit Root, and you’re a worthless cultivator with a Five-Spirit Root as well. If I hadn’t done those things, we would have turned to dust long ago! I did it for us, Husband!”

Ye Qingcheng wept and pleaded, looking so pitiful—like someone cruelly ravaged by fate who had nevertheless clung to her purity—that she had practically moved herself to tears.

Looking at that nauseating face, still stubbornly refusing to admit fault even with death staring her in the face, lost in her own self-righteous delusions, Ye Xuan did not fly into a rage as he had the last time.

He merely looked at Ye Qingcheng in silence, his gaze as indifferent as a dead sea that had remained undisturbed for ten thousand years.

He slowly crouched down and lifted Ye Qingcheng’s blood-smeared chin with a long, slender finger.

“Ye Qingcheng, do you know something?”

Ye Xuan’s voice was soft, yet in the empty prison cell, it carried an eerie chill that sent shivers down one’s spine.

“Once... there was a woman who said the exact same thing to me.”

The moment those words left his mouth—

Ye Qingcheng, who had been sobbing hysterically and wallowing in her own emotional display, suddenly stiffened.

The expression on her face froze completely. Then, an indescribable jealousy and fury erupted from her eyes like a volcanic explosion.

For a possessive madwoman—one who regarded Ye Xuan as her absolute property, who had even resorted to betrayal and humiliation to bind him to her—

what she could not bear most was not Ye Xuan torturing her, nor was it Ye Xuan killing her.

It was the thought that another woman had appeared in Ye Xuan’s life—one who shared the same bond with him, and had even spoken the same words of love.

“Who was that woman?!”

Ye Qingcheng instantly descended into madness.

She wrenched herself away from Ye Xuan’s finger and lunged at him like a rabid dog, clutching the front of his robes with both hands. Her once-dull eyes now blazed with a terrifying crimson light.

“Who is she? What right does she have to say something like that to you? Those are my lines! That is my proof of devotion to my husband!”

With her mouth wide open, exposing her stark white teeth, Ye Qingcheng shrieked like a vengeful ghost whose tail had been stepped on.

“My husband is mine! Your body, your soul, your pain, your despair—they all belong to me, and me alone! Whoever dares lay a finger on you, I’ll kill her! I’ll carve that bitch into ten thousand pieces! I’ll tear out her soul and use it to light a lantern!”

Watching Ye Qingcheng’s face twist grotesquely under the weight of her jealousy, Ye Xuan’s gaze remained indifferent.

With a casual flick of his hand—

*Slap!*

The crisp sound of a palm striking flesh echoed through the cell. Ye Qingcheng was sent flying, crashing heavily into the wall before coughing up mouthful after mouthful of blood.

Ye Xuan rose to his feet and looked down at Ye Qingcheng, sprawled on the ground like a dead dog. His tone was calm, without the slightest ripple of emotion.

“Her name was Bai Ningbing.”

“Like you, in pursuit of the so-called Great Dao and power, she committed every betrayal and inflicted every injury upon me—all under the banner of ‘wanting to be worthy of standing by my side.’”

A trace of distant remembrance flickered in Ye Xuan’s eyes, but it was swiftly replaced by absolute coldness.

“More coincidentally, she too once wept as she told me that she was still untouched—that from beginning to end, she had never allowed any man to lay even a finger on her.”

Upon hearing this—

Ye Qingcheng’s pupils contracted into pinpoints.

Ignoring the searing pain in her face and her broken ribs, she abruptly lifted her head and stared at Ye Xuan. Her eyes were filled with unprecedented terror, jealousy, and the extreme madness unique to someone obsessively possessive.

“No... That’s impossible! How could there possibly be a woman in this world who loves you more than I do?!”

Ye Qingcheng seemed desperate to deny something that was powerful enough to destroy her faith. Crawling on all fours to Ye Xuan’s feet, she lifted her head and stared fixedly into his eyes, insisting with near-mad intensity:

“Husband! Look at me! You’re the only man I’ve ever had! From the past to the present—even into the future—my heart and my body have room for no one but you!”

“That Bai Ningbing is a slut! A liar! She’s only imitating me! I’m the only one who truly stayed faithful to you!”

As she spoke, Ye Qingcheng shockingly began tearing at her already tattered prison uniform, disregarding all shame. She wanted to prove her twisted notion of purity to Ye Xuan in the most primitive way possible.