What Exactly Is in the Coffin

“Rip!”

A sharp fragment of stone tore through her palm, and blood gushed out, mixing with the muddy water.

But she seemed unable to feel the pain. Like a rabid dog, she frantically clawed at the earth.

“Husband, you love me… You must be down there, right…”

As Xia Lengyue dug wildly, she muttered to herself in a crazed, nervous voice. Tears and rain mingled together, streaming down her cheeks.

“My nails are broken… Husband, does it hurt? I’ll come keep you company…”

“Crack!”

A hard rock snapped the nails off two of her fingers. The pain shot straight to her heart, making her entire body shudder violently. Yet after pausing for barely half a second, she resumed digging like a madwoman.

Blood stained the soil atop the grave, creating a shocking sight.

“Faster… Faster… I have to prove you wrong…” Xia Lengyue roared inwardly.

She wanted to deny Ye Xuan’s claim!

She firmly believed that once she opened the coffin, the one lying inside would be her husband—the man who, even after turning into a skeleton, would still retain the aura of his love for her.

The Ye Xuan who had tolerated her in the Supreme Forgetting Emotions Sect and protected her at Soulbreak Cliff had truly existed!

“Husband! Come out! Come out and tell him that you love me!”

“Husband! Don’t deny what we shared back then! Please!”

Xia Lengyue dug while letting out shrill cries. Her voice echoed across Soulbreak Cliff, sounding like the final struggle of a madwoman with nowhere left to run.

Ye Xuan stood to the side, watching everything with an expressionless face. His gaze was deep and icy, as if he were watching an absurd farce.

Finally—

“Thud.”

Xia Lengyue’s hands, already mangled beyond recognition, with stark white bone even visible beneath the flesh, touched a hard wooden surface.

It was the lid of a coffin made from ten-thousand-year-old yinwood.

She had reached it!

Xia Lengyue’s entire body began to tremble violently. Her breathing grew so rapid it was almost suffocating.

She stopped and stared blankly at the section of black wood that had been exposed. For a moment, she actually lacked the courage to continue.

“Open it.”

Ye Xuan’s cold voice drifted eerily from behind her.

“No… Don’t rush me…” Xia Lengyue said in a trembling voice, her teeth chattering violently.

She suddenly drew a deep breath, summoning every ounce of courage she had possessed in her life.

With her bloody, mangled hands, she gripped the edge of the coffin lid tightly.

“Husband… You’re wrong!”

Xia Lengyue abruptly turned around. Her eyes were bloodshot as she screamed at Ye Xuan, “The husband who died protecting me back then absolutely wasn’t a lotus root! He was real!”

After shouting those words, she spun back around. With a hysterical shriek, she summoned all her strength and violently heaved the heavy coffin lid open!

The lid was flung aside and crashed heavily into the muddy water.

The scene inside the coffin was instantly exposed before Xia Lengyue’s eyes.

At that moment, the howling wind came to a halt, and even the rain seemed to freeze in midair.

Xia Lengyue lay against the edge of the coffin, staring fixedly at its bottom.

Her pupils contracted to the size of needles, then abruptly widened to their limit, as if her eye sockets were about to split apart.

There were no bones inside.

No clothing.

Nor any sentimental keepsake.

Resting quietly atop the luxurious silk lining at the bottom of the yinwood coffin was a pile of long-rotted, blackened, foul-smelling…

Broken lotus roots.

The lotus roots had been snapped into several pieces. Faint, blurred blood-colored formations could still be seen upon them, proving that they had once existed as Ye Xuan’s “incarnation.”

Every fantasy.

Every delusion she had clung to.

Faced with this pile of rotten, stinking lotus roots, all of it shattered into pieces, leaving not even a shred behind.

“Ah… Ah…”

Xia Lengyue’s mouth hung open, and meaningless wheezing sounds escaped her throat.

She remained stunned for more than a dozen breaths. Then she suddenly lunged into the coffin, clutching the foul-smelling lotus roots tightly against her chest.

“No… This is impossible! This can’t be real!”

Xia Lengyue broke down.

She had completely broken down.

“This isn’t real! You put these in here! You switched my husband’s body!”

She hugged the pile of lotus roots and rolled frantically through the muddy water, her shrill cries utterly heartrending.

She pressed the filthy lotus roots against her face, kissing them and crying out as though she were truly insane.

Seeing Xia Lengyue’s spirit completely collapse into such a miserable state, Ye Xuan felt no pity whatsoever. Instead, the corners of his lips curled into a cold, cruel smile.

“Do you still think I was wrong?”

Ye Xuan walked slowly to the side of the coffin and looked down at Xia Lengyue, wailing in the muddy water. His voice was as cold as the depths of winter.

“I let you cheat on me time and time again. I watched you act like a slut in other men’s arms, and I still tolerated you. In the end, I even died for you?”

Ye Xuan crouched down and seized Xia Lengyue by the collar, yanking her up from the muddy water. He interrogated her word by word:

“Xia Lengyue, just how narcissistic are you? Do you really think that I, Ye Xuan, am that pathetic?”

“I told you before. From the very beginning, that flawless husband in your eyes—the one who could tolerate every despicable thing you did… never existed!”

Ye Xuan abruptly released her. Xia Lengyue fell heavily back into the muddy water, which was littered with fragments of lotus root.

“You carried this ridiculous guilt with you, searching the entire world for my reincarnation, hoping to rekindle our relationship, relive the past, and make up for the guilt in your heart…”

Ye Xuan rose to his feet and stood with his hands behind his back, his eyes filled with deep mockery.

“But what did it amount to in the end? All of this was nothing more than a one-woman monkey show. Every bit of it was fake!”

“Ahhhhhhh…”

Xia Lengyue screamed madly, no longer capable of forming a single complete sentence.

She could only shed tears and shake her head desperately, unwilling and unable to believe it.

She clutched the section of lotus root that Zhao Wuji had pierced through and sobbed desperately. Blood flowed from her ruined fingers, staining the lotus root red—and staining the final fragment of her sanity as well.

Seeing Xia Lengyue in such a miserable state, the malicious amusement in Ye Xuan’s eyes grew even more intense.

Since he was going to destroy her, he would destroy her completely.

He would leave behind not the slightest trace of hope.

“Stop crying.”

Ye Xuan sneered and slowly continued, “Seeing how heartbroken you are, I’ll show you mercy and tell you another truth.”

At the words “another truth,” Xia Lengyue’s body, which had still been shaking with sobs, suddenly went rigid.

She raised her face, smeared with mud, blood, and tears. Her hollow eyes were filled with a bone-deep terror.

She was afraid.

She was truly afraid of hearing another word from Ye Xuan.

But Ye Xuan clearly had no intention of letting her off.

“Have you always believed that the reason you were able to find me so precisely after my reincarnation in the Three Thousand Dao Prefectures, join the Azure Cloud Sect, become a lofty direct disciple, and silently protect me was because your strength was unrivaled? Or because of the unbreakable bond of fate between us from our past lives?”

The curve of Ye Xuan’s lips widened, and a cruel gleam flickered in his eyes.

“Xia Lengyue, you think far too highly of yourself. The reason you were able to find me in the Azure Cloud Sect had nothing to do with how capable you are. It was because…”

“You were the Dao Protector I personally chose.”

“What?”

Xia Lengyue was struck as if by a bolt of lightning, her entire body freezing in place.

A Dao Protector?

What was that supposed to mean?

“Surprised?”

Ye Xuan smiled faintly, but his smile was laced with the sinister cunning of someone who had calculated everything.

“In this life, I’m nothing more than a tiny ant at the Qi Refining stage. In this world where the strong prey upon the weak, any outer disciple could crush a Qi Refining cultivator with no background like me.”

“I needed a bodyguard—one who was powerful enough, absolutely loyal, and even willing to die for me. A Dao Protector.”

Looking down at Xia Lengyue from above, Ye Xuan’s voice brimmed with the smug delight of someone who had toyed with another’s heart.

“So, I used a little trick and released a trace of Ye Xuan’s aura. And you, driven nearly insane by guilt, came running to my door just as I expected.”

“All those years in the Azure Cloud Sect, because of your guilt over our past lives, you carefully concealed your identity while protecting me from the shadows. You secretly slipped me the finest cultivation resources, and you slaughtered every enemy who dared to plot against me.”

“With that ridiculous love of yours and your attempts to make amends, you escorted me all the way forward. You allowed me to successfully establish my foundation and safely survive the most vulnerable and dangerous period of my cultivation.”

At this point, Ye Xuan even gave Xia Lengyue a perfunctory cupped-fist salute—the first time he had ever bothered to thank her.

“Come to think of it, I really should properly thank you for your selfless devotion over all these decades. My dear ex-wife… my dear Dao Protector.”