What If There Are Two Lifetimes

“Enough.”

Ye Xuan’s brows drew together, and deep disgust flashed in his eyes.

He spat out the two words coldly. In an instant, an invisible force clamped Ye Qingcheng’s hands firmly against her sides.

Ye Xuan shook his head. Looking at her face, twisted by madness and stripped of reason, he sighed.

“Ye Qingcheng, even now, you’re still hung up on something so meaningless.”

“Do you really think that as long as your body is still pure, as long as you never slept with another man, then all the cruelty, betrayal, and humiliation you inflicted on me can simply be wiped away?”

Ye Xuan leaned forward slightly, his gaze piercing Ye Qingcheng’s soul like ice that had endured for ten thousand years.

“That doesn’t change the fact that you hurt me.”

“I can make it up to you!”

Ye Qingcheng’s chest heaved violently. Like a gambler who had lost everything and gone mad, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Husband, as long as you’re willing to forgive me, as long as you let me stay by your side! I’ll serve you like an ox or a horse! I’ll be your dog! Whoever you want dead, I’ll kill! I can become your cultivation furnace and let you drain my essence every night!”

“I’ll make it up to you with a lifetime after lifetime of obedience!”

A feverish light gleamed in Ye Qingcheng’s eyes. She actually believed that such extreme devotion—such a form of atonement that debased her to the lowest possible level—could move Ye Xuan, could prove the greatness of her love.

And yet…

Faced with this obsessive confession, one that would have moved or even softened any ordinary man, Ye Xuan’s expression remained as calm as still water. If anything, there was a trace of lofty pity in that calm.

“You say you love me.”

Ye Xuan raised his chin slightly and gazed at the pitch-black dome above the prison cell, his voice low and deliberate.

“But in this world, anyone who truly loved me would never use the excuse of ‘doing it for my own good’ to trample on my dignity or cruelly tear my soul apart.”

“Someone who truly loved me couldn’t bear to see me suffer even the slightest grievance. Let alone be the one who personally pushed me into a hell worse than death.”

At those words, Ye Qingcheng froze.

The madness on her face vanished for a brief moment, leaving behind a blankness. But soon, her obsessive fixation surged back to the forefront.

She shook her head frantically, trying to refute Ye Xuan with her own twisted logic.

“No! You don’t understand! You don’t understand at all!”

Ye Qingcheng erupted completely. Like a shrew, she shouted, “The cultivation world is too cruel! This is a place where people devour one another, Husband! Do you think I wanted to make you kneel in the rain? Do you think my heart didn’t ache when I heard your cries of pain?”

“But what could I do?! I had no choice! I had to claw my way upward by any means necessary! I had to rise to the top by stepping over the corpses—and draining the vital essence—of those men! Only then could I protect you, you good-for-nothing with a Five-Element Spiritual Root!”

Ye Qingcheng screamed hysterically. Tears and blood smeared her entire face, yet she stubbornly clung to the last bastion of her convictions.

“Never mind how despicable my methods were, and never mind what the outcome was! All you need to know is that, in this cannibalistic cultivation world, I managed to preserve my body! I resisted the temptations of so many mighty cultivators and kept the purest part of myself for you! I love you! My love is greater than anyone else’s in this world!”

“Greater?”

Ye Xuan suddenly let out a cold laugh, as though he had just heard the most ridiculous joke in existence.

“Ye Qingcheng, you never loved me.”

“You only loved yourself—the version of you lost in the delusion that you were sacrificing yourself for love.”

Ye Xuan enunciated every word, each one striking Ye Qingcheng’s heart like a heavy hammer.

“You enjoyed the thrill of manipulating every man in the world from the palm of your hand. You enjoyed the superiority of standing above it all and watching me struggle in the mud for your sake. What you enjoyed even more was facing yourself in the mirror in the dead of night and indulging in your own self-pity: ‘Look at me. For my husband’s sake, I’ve borne a reputation reviled for a thousand ages. I’m such a great, such a pure woman.’”

“No… That’s not true… You’re lying!” Ye Qingcheng shook her head frantically, her face turning as pale as paper.

Ye Xuan’s words were like a sharp scalpel, cutting precisely into the darkest corner of her heart—the part she had hidden so deeply that even she herself refused to face it.

Ye Xuan paid no attention to her denial. His eyes were filled with deep disappointment and disgust.

“You think you’re so great. You think everything you did was for my sake, don’t you?”

“Yes! It was all for you!”

As if she had seized a lifeline, Ye Qingcheng nodded frantically, like a deranged fanatic. “Everything I did was for us! So that we could be together for all eternity!”

“There was never any ‘us.’”

Ye Xuan cut her off without mercy, his voice cold as a blade.

“There was only you.”

“All you cared about was the immortality you wanted. All you cared about was your desire to possess me. All you cared about was your sick need to indulge in your own self-righteous fantasy!”

Ye Qingcheng broke down. She could not accept that Ye Xuan had reduced the love for which she had supposedly given everything to something utterly worthless.

She desperately crawled forward, frantically arguing back.

“No! Husband! You can torture me, you can kill me! But you absolutely cannot deny my feelings for you! You can’t erase everything I sacrificed for you!”

She would rather die than admit that her love was false.

Yet faced with Ye Qingcheng’s hysteria, Ye Xuan’s expression remained utterly indifferent.

He no longer bothered arguing with her over those vague, insubstantial feelings. Instead, using logic that was perfectly calm yet unimaginably cruel, he asked her the question that would deliver the fatal blow.

“If you’re really so great, if you truly did all those things you claimed were for our own good…”

Ye Xuan bent down slightly, meeting Ye Qingcheng’s bloodshot eyes at close range. Slowly and distinctly, he asked:

“Then tell me, Ye Qingcheng.”

“In that life, did we… stay together until the end?”

The question struck Ye Qingcheng’s crown like a bolt from a clear blue sky!

She went completely still.

The face twisted by madness froze in place. Her lips parted slightly, and an unconscious, rasping “guh… guh…” escaped her throat, but she could not utter a single word.

Did they stay together until the end?

No.

Although Ye Qingcheng had reached the pinnacle of the Great Dao, although she had preserved her chastity, she could only embrace a handful of yellow earth and spend the long, lonely years in the empty main hall of the Hehuan Sect.

Seeing her vacant expression, a cruel smile curved Ye Xuan’s lips. He continued questioning her.

“And what about this life?”

Ye Xuan straightened and spread his arms, displaying his terrifying cultivation at the Body Integration Realm, as well as the black-gold robe symbolizing supreme authority.

“In this life, I possessed unparalleled talent and climbed to the pinnacle of the Great Dao, while you ended up groveling at my feet like a stray dog.”

“Tell me, did you and I… rekindle our relationship?”

Ye Qingcheng collapsed completely.

“No… Neither life… We never did…”

Like a puppet whose soul had been torn away, she slumped into the muddy water.

All her logic, all her self-deception, and the twisted faith that had sustained her—all of it melted away in an instant before Ye Xuan’s two merciless questions, like snow beneath the sun.

She had gone to such lengths, willingly shouldering infamy that would last a thousand ages, even pushing the person she loved most into hell. Yet in the end, all she gained was complete and utter emptiness.

Whether in her previous life or this one, she had never obtained the ending she wanted.

Not only had she lost Ye Xuan—she had personally destroyed the last shred of pity he held for her.