The Perfect Husband Doesn't Exist at All

The images in her memory gradually came into focus.

Xia Lengyue discovered that she was floating in midair.

She saw the familiar mountain gate of the Supreme Emotionless Sect.

She saw the familiar point in time: six months after she and Ye Xuan had joined the sect.

Below, Ye Xuan stood stiffly in place, covered in mud and giving off a foul stench.

His hand was still extended, his fingertips stained with grime, frozen in midair.

Not far away stood Xia Lengyue herself.

That younger Xia Lengyue—vain, impatient, and desperate for quick success—was nestled in the arms of the elegant Zhao Wuji. As though avoiding a plague, she quickened her pace and hurried past Ye Xuan.

“Senior Brother, let’s walk faster. The smell here… is truly awful.”

Those cold, heartless words from her memory echoed through the space with perfect clarity.

The Xia Lengyue floating in midair was so ashamed that she wished her soul could scatter on the spot.

This was the stain she had wanted most desperately to erase from her life. She had always assumed that what followed would be Ye Xuan kneeling on the ground, weeping bitterly—or staring at her departing back in silent sorrow, his heart shattered.

But she was wrong.

Wrong beyond measure.

In the scene below, the instant Xia Lengyue and Zhao Wuji vanished around the bend in the mountain path, Ye Xuan, who had been standing rigidly in place, suddenly moved.

He did not cry. He did not collapse. He did not throw a fit.

He merely withdrew his grime-covered hand, slowly took a snow-white silk handkerchief from his robes, and wiped the dirt from his fingertips with intense distaste. Then he casually tossed the handkerchief onto the ground.

The embarrassment, affection, and pain on his face vanished in an instant. In their place was an icy, unnerving calm, along with a faint, mocking smile.

Looking in the direction Xia Lengyue had disappeared, he let out a soft sigh. There was not the slightest trace of sorrow in his voice. Instead, he sounded utterly unsurprised, as though he had known this would happen all along.

“Just as expected. She’s fallen for someone else after all.”

The Xia Lengyue in midair shuddered violently. Her eyes widened in disbelief.

What… was going on?

This scene was completely different from the one in her memories! Why wasn’t he sad? Why was he wearing that expression?

Before she could react, the space around Ye Xuan suddenly rippled like water.

A graceful yet frigid phantom appeared out of nowhere.

It was a girl with an exceptionally alluring figure. She wore a tight-fitting black outfit that accentuated her perfect curves to the fullest.

Yet her face was hidden behind a mask depicting both a smile and a tear. Only her eyes were visible—cold, devoid of human emotion, and filled with murderous intent.

The girl knelt on one knee. Her voice was as piercingly cold as ice that had endured for ten thousand years.

“Master.”

She raised her head. Beneath the mask, her eyes stared fixedly in the direction Xia Lengyue had left, radiating killing intent.

“How dare that woman insult you so! I’ll kill her right now, extract her soul, and use it to light a soul-lamp.”

Xia Lengyue, floating in midair, was scared out of her wits.

Who was this girl wearing the strange mask?

Why did she call Ye Xuan her master? The terrifying sword intent radiating from her body was even comparable to that of the Sword Sovereign!

Yet Ye Xuan merely waved his hand with indifference.

“There’s no need to kill her.”

Ye Xuan sneered. His tone was filled with lofty contempt.

“She possesses a heavenly spirit root that is rarely seen in a hundred years, not to mention her special constitution. Such a first-rate cauldron and source of nourishment would be a waste to kill now. Let her search the world for opportunities, trigger the traps for me, and serve as a suitable pawn. Wouldn’t that be better?”

At that moment, Xia Lengyue was utterly stunned.

She had always believed that she was Ye Xuan’s beloved—the moonlight in his heart, the woman he would protect even at the cost of his life.

But what had she just heard in this memory?

In Ye Xuan’s eyes, she was not a person at all. She was merely a tool to search for opportunities and take the blows meant for him.

An unprecedented sense of absurdity and terror instantly drowned Xia Lengyue’s soul.

The conversation below continued.

Ye Xuan turned toward the girl in the strange mask, a confident smile curving his lips.

“Have you prepared what I asked for?”

“Master, everything is ready.”

With a turn of her wrist, the girl produced a humanoid figure that radiated a lustrous, jade-like sheen.

It was a human form carved from a section of ten-thousand-year-old Creation Lotus Root!

“This Lotus-Root Incarnation contains a trace of your soul aura, Master. It is indistinguishable from the real thing. Even a cultivator at the Great Ascension Realm would never see through it,” the girl said respectfully.

Ye Xuan nodded. He stepped forward and formed a sword sign with two fingers, lightly touching the center of his brow.

A drop of crimson blood, mixed with an extremely faint strand of soul energy, was forced out from his fingertip and flicked into the Lotus-Root Incarnation’s brow.

As the blood merged with it, the Lotus-Root Incarnation, which had been no different from a lifeless object, began to writhe and transform violently. Texture gradually emerged across its skin, while its features began to take shape.

After only a few breaths, the Lotus-Root Incarnation had transformed into someone completely identical to Ye Xuan.

It wore the same filthy servant’s robes as Ye Xuan and emitted the same fluctuations of spiritual energy.

However, the incarnation’s eyes were hollow and vacant, devoid of the slightest spark of human awareness.

It was like a cold puppet—a machine that existed only to carry out orders.

Ye Xuan looked at the Lotus-Root Incarnation before him and smiled with satisfaction.

He leaned close to its ear and, in a low voice resembling the recitation of a spell, issued the sole command it would ever receive in its life.

“From this moment on, you are Ye Xuan. Your existence has only one purpose…”

“To love Xia Lengyue unconditionally, to tolerate all her betrayals without question, to protect her until every last bit of your value has been drained, and then… die in her place.”

The instant the command was given, a trace of fervor suddenly flashed through the Lotus-Root Incarnation’s previously hollow, vacant eyes.

It nodded stiffly. The corners of its mouth even pulled into an extraordinarily gentle smile—the same tolerant smile Xia Lengyue knew so well, the one that had broken her heart countless times.

Having finished, the real Ye Xuan brushed the dust from his hands and turned toward the masked girl.

“Since that’s settled, let him take my place here.”

Ye Xuan stretched lazily, his tone as casual as though he were discussing what to have for dinner that night.

“I can’t be bothered to keep playing this tiresome betrayal game with Xia Lengyue.”

“Let’s go, Ling’er. We have another target to deal with.”

“Yes, Master,” the girl replied respectfully.

The two figures flashed and transformed into a streak of light, disappearing completely into the rear mountains of the Supreme Emotionless Sect.

All that remained was the Lotus-Root Incarnation, its expression vacant and its body covered in mud.

It turned around and began walking step by step toward the servant quarters where Xia Lengyue lived, its movements mechanical.

…

At that moment, the scene in her memory shattered completely.

Xia Lengyue’s consciousness was violently ripped away and returned to the freezing underground prison cell.

“Ah!”

Xia Lengyue let out a heart-wrenching scream and collapsed to the ground like a lifeless heap of mud.

Clutching her head tightly with both hands, she dug her fingers deep into her scalp, tearing out handfuls of hair as blood trickled between her fingers.

“No! This is impossible! It isn’t true! You’re lying to me!”

Xia Lengyue had gone mad.

She truly had gone mad.

Her entire worldview, her Dao heart, and the one conviction that had sustained her through more than a hundred years of life—that suffocating burden of guilt and love—had been ground utterly to dust in that moment!

It turned out… the man who had burned his Three Souls and Seven Spirits on Soulbreak Cliff, using his flesh and blood to block the “Heaven-Sundering Sword Draw” for her, had never been Ye Xuan, the man who loved her with unwavering devotion.

He had merely been a lotus root with a set of instructions implanted in it!

All the tears she had shed over the centuries, all the soul-crushing remorse that had tormented her night after night, had actually been mourning a lotus root!

This was simply the greatest joke in the world!