The Cruelest Torture

Ye Qingcheng hurriedly cried out, “Husband, my body is pure! No one has ever touched me!”

Her voice was choked with sobs as she desperately tried to prove her innocence. Both hands clung tightly to the hem of Ye Xuan’s robe. “I swear! Throughout those long years, no matter what temptations I faced or what illusions I used, I never allowed a single man to come near me! I saved the purest version of myself for you!”

Seeing Ye Qingcheng’s hysterical desperation to wash away the stain against her name, the curve of Ye Xuan’s lips grew even more cruel.

“As long as I think you’re filthy, that’s enough.”

“Perhaps no one else has touched your body, but your soul—your heart, filled with schemes and selfishness, immersed in hypocritical self-righteousness—has long since rotted through. It reeks.”

Ye Xuan leaned forward slightly, his deep eyes, dark as an abyss, fixed upon her. “In my eyes, you’re ten thousand times filthier than the lowest whore in this world.”

Those words extinguished the last trace of hope in Ye Qingcheng’s eyes.

She lowered her head. Tears filled her eyes, yet she said nothing.

Great drops of water struck the cold jade tiles one after another. Her heart felt as though it had been crushed by an invisible hand.

All her dignity, all her pride, and every sacrifice she had once proclaimed to be noble had been reduced to nothing more than a complete and utter joke by Ye Xuan’s words.

Just then—

Ye Xuan seized her by the hair and yanked her head upward, forcing her tear-streaked face, still bearing the marks of his slaps, to tilt toward him.

Looking down at her from above, Ye Xuan spoke in a voice as soft and sinister as a demon’s whisper from the depths of the Netherworld. “What? You look a little dissatisfied.”

The tearing pain in her scalp made Ye Qingcheng tremble all over. Yet, strangely, beneath this crude abuse, the despair in her eyes rapidly receded, replaced by a grotesquely twisted sense of satisfaction.

He was looking at her! Even if it was through such a violent act, his attention had finally become completely focused on her!

Ye Qingcheng shook her head, her gaze humble yet blissful. Like a dog begging for scraps of affection, she actually rubbed her cheek against the back of Ye Xuan’s hand.

“No.”

“Whatever my master bestows upon me, whether pain or humiliation… Qingcheng will gladly accept it all.”

Looking at Ye Qingcheng’s utterly incurable, twisted state, Ye Xuan released her in disgust, as though touching her for even one more second would soil his hand.

“Go kneel in the corner,” Ye Xuan ordered coldly.

As though granted a reprieve, Ye Qingcheng hurriedly crawled to the corner of the throne room on her hands and knees. She knelt there like a lowly statue, prostrating herself against the floor and even breathing with utmost caution.

Ye Xuan reclined lazily against the Nine-Dragon Frost Throne. A faint, dark-golden gleam passed through his deep eyes.

He sensed the emptiness in his meridians caused by his successive breakthroughs over the past few days. His gaze once again fell upon the trembling, battered figure in the corner.

Although he despised the filth within Ye Qingcheng’s soul, he could not deny that, as a cultivator in the Great Ascension Realm blessed with a naturally seductive physique and the Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique, the source energy within her was undoubtedly the finest nourishment in the world for the Heaven-Devouring Demon Art.

“Since you’re so eager to prove your worth, then I might as well put you to good use.”

A cruel smile tugged at the corners of Ye Xuan’s lips.

He slowly raised his right hand, spreading his five fingers slightly.

Boom!

With a muffled roar like the bellow of an ancient demon god, the black devouring vortex that had been concealed above Ye Xuan’s head suddenly reappeared.

This time, the vortex was several times larger than before. Countless scarlet law runes flickered within its profound darkness.

A terrifying suction force capable of stripping the world bare and devouring the vitality of all things surged forth like a black flood bursting through a breached dam, instantly enveloping Ye Qingcheng in the corner.

“Ugh…”

Ye Qingcheng let out a muffled groan of pain from the back of her throat. Her entire body was instantly dragged into the air by that dreadful suction.

The Heaven-Devouring Demon Art erupted!

Ye Xuan’s gaze remained cold and merciless as he extracted the source of Ye Qingcheng’s Nine Yin Profound Charm Physique, along with the vast power she had cultivated in the Great Ascension Realm.

Visible to the naked eye, streams of pink source energy, almost solid in form, mixed with the pure essence she had refined through thousands of years of cultivation. They transformed into chains of brilliant spiritual energy that poured wildly from her seven orifices and pores, continuously flowing into the black vortex above Ye Xuan’s head.

As her source energy and cultivation were rapidly drained away, Ye Qingcheng’s body began to undergo a horrifying transformation.

Her skin, which Shen Qingshuang had slightly restored with spiritual medicine, lost its radiance within the span of a few breaths. The moisture and flesh were completely sucked dry. Her skin shriveled until it became rough and black, like the bark of a dead tree, covered in countless age spots and nauseating wrinkles.

Her long hair, still dark and thick despite being somewhat disheveled, instantly lost all vitality. It turned pale and dry as withered grass before crumbling into ash that drifted down through the air.

Her eye sockets sank deeply. The peach-blossom eyes that had once captivated countless hearts became cloudy and dull, their eyeballs bulging outward as though they might fall from their sockets at any moment.

Her bones cracked with a series of sharp snaps. Her spine bent, her limbs withered, and in an instant, she became a terrifying, skeletal old crone on the verge of death, with only a layer of skin stretched over her bones.

The agony of having one’s life force, cultivation, and youth completely drained away in an instant was no different from placing one’s soul upon a millstone and crushing it inch by inch.

If an ordinary cultivator had been subjected to the Heaven-Devouring Demon Art’s merciless extraction, they would have turned into a pile of ash and perished completely in a matter of moments.

Yet Ye Qingcheng did not die.

At the instant her vitality was about to be extinguished and the flame of her soul was on the verge of going out, a strange and tyrannical dark-red radiance suddenly erupted from the depths of her heart.

It was the curse of “Qingcheng’s Love”!

Hum!

Dark-red chains of law raced wildly through Ye Qingcheng’s exhausted meridians. The laws of Heaven forcibly intervened, beginning to repair her dying body in a process that could not be reversed.

With a harsh, grating hiss, her shriveled flesh began to grow back like withered wood returning to spring. Her pale, desiccated hair fell away, while new strands of glossy black hair rapidly grew to her waist before the naked eye. Her withered organs regained their vitality, and her shrunken skin once again became fair, delicate, and smooth as jade.

In no more than a dozen breaths, the old woman on the verge of death had once again become the stunning, peerless Grand Elder of the Hehuan Sect.

But to Ye Qingcheng, this was not rebirth.

It was the beginning of an even deeper abyss.

Because the devouring vortex above Ye Xuan’s head had never stopped turning.

Almost in the very next instant after her youth was restored, the terrifying suction of the Heaven-Devouring Demon Art pounced upon her again like a starving wolf, ruthlessly tearing apart and draining the source energy and flesh she had only just regained.

Drained dry, aged, brought to the brink of death;

The curse was triggered, reshaping her flesh and restoring her youth;

then she was drained dry once more, aging again…

Life and death, withering and flourishing, formed an unimaginably cruel, endless cycle within this woman’s body—one that could never be stopped.

The excruciating agony of her muscles being torn apart and reassembled, the maddening itch of her bone marrow being drained and then growing anew, the tearing sensation of her soul repeatedly ricocheting between life and death…

This process could be called the cruelest and most heinous punishment in the history of the cultivation world. It surpassed the limits of the flesh, becoming the most complete form of torment for both the soul and the will.