"This is not even the most brilliant part," the smirk on Ye Xuan's lips widened further, the kind of delight a hunter feels watching his prey sink deeper and deeper into madness.
"To win back Xiao Huo's favor, Xiao Honglian actually came begging to me, asking me to go to the underground black market and spend a fortune to buy an extremely overbearing, top-tier Harmonious Joy Elixir specifically made to stir carnal passion in the bedchamber."
"Her face was flushed bright red, her eyes full of anticipation as she told me that as long as she got Xiao Huo to take this pill, he would definitely stay in her chambers that very night."
Ying'er's lips trembled, her face full of utter disbelief. "How dare she make such a request of you... and then you... did you agree?"
"Of course I did."
Ye Xuan let out a scornful laugh. "Not only did I agree, I even spent every last spirit stone I had to buy the version with the fiercest medicinal potency, the one that could stir up human desires more intensely than any other, and personally placed it in her hands."
"I watched her run off overjoyed like a little child who had just gotten their favorite candy, and watched her that very same night, unable to wait a second longer, slip the medicine right into Xiao Huo's wine cup."
"For the hundreds of years that followed, I acted like the most undignified lackey in the world, watching her go mad over another man, watching her weep for another man, even personally helping her curry favor with that other man."
"But..."
Ye Xuan's gaze suddenly sharpened, and a terrifying dark black flame churned wildly in the depths of his pupils.
"During those hundreds of years that looked as lowly and humble as could be, I did not idle around."
"At a time when Xiao Huo had completely snubbed her, leaving her in utter emptiness and agony, I pretended to stumble upon an ancient cultivation manual called The Ten Thousand Fire Devouring Heaven Art, and casually passed it into her hands. I lied to her, saying that I had risked life and limb to find it in an ancient secret realm, and that it would most likely be of great benefit to her fire-aligned spiritual constitution."
"In reality, this is a top-tier demonic cultivation art that was enough to spark bloody storms even back in the Immortal Realm! Not only can it devour all the myriad different strange fires of heaven and earth, what is even more terrifying... is that it can drain the origin true qi of other fire-attributed cultivators without the slightest rejection at all."
Ye Xuan's laughter turned icy cold. "That foolish woman Xiao Honglian truly thought it was some ordinary, fortuitous cultivation art. To catch up to Xiao Huo's level once again, to earn Xiao Huo's attention and gaze once more, she went completely mad practicing this demonic art."
"Taking advantage of Xiao Huo's constant expeditions to collect all the strange fires across the realm, she used this cultivation art to secretly and greedily absorb the overflowing origin power from all those different fires. Before she even realized it, her cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, and she even faintly showed signs of being a match for Xiao Huo, standing on equal footing with him."
Hearing this, Ying'er finally understood the full picture, and a layer of goosebumps rose all over her body.
"Husband! You were raising contending poison worms in a vat!" Ying'er exclaimed in shock. "You deliberately gave her that cultivation art to make her stronger!"
"Exactly."
Ye Xuan threw an appreciative glance at Ying'er. "A tiny, frail songbird that only knows how to weep is worth nothing to me. I wanted her ambition and her strength to swell to their very limit alongside this demonic art."
"It was only later that I finally found out the truth. The reason Xiao Huo was willing to accept Xiao Honglian in the first place, even taking her into his harem, was never because of any so-called bullshit love at all!"
"It's all because of the 'Ten Thousand Fire Spirit Body' hidden inside Xiao Honglian! According to an ancient alchemy scroll that Xiao Huo obtained, once the wielder of the Ten Thousand Fire Spirit Body cultivates to the Body Integration stage, they become a living, human-shaped immortal medicinal herb. If you refine her alive into a 'Heaven-Burning Immortal Pill', you can use it to completely ignore the Heavenly Dao's thunder tribulation and ascend to immortality in broad daylight directly!"
"Xiao Huo has never treated Xiao Honglian as anything more than a human-shaped immortal herb, raising her in captivity this entire time!"
Ying'er was so horrified that her hair stood on end. "Good heavens... did you ever tell her this secret?"
"I did."
Ye Xuan let out a cold snort. "I put on a whole act, looking like I was frantic with anxiety and my heart was tearing apart, as I laid out this earth-shattering deadly scheme for her. And guess what happened next?"
He pointed at his own left chest. "Not only did she not believe a single word I said, she decided that I was just acting out of jealousy, trying to ruin her relationship with Xiao Huo. In a fit of rage, she drew her sword and stabbed me right here, hard."
"She screamed at me hysterically, calling me a despicable, shameless villain, and said that if I ever slandered her husband again, she would kill me with her own hands."
"What a pathetic woman," Ying'er shook her head and sighed. "All things considered, Xiao Honglian really is deeply in love with that Xiao Huo, utterly devoted to him."
"Maybe so."
Ye Xuan brushed off his sleeves nonchalantly, his gaze holding a bone-chilling, utter rationality. "In any case, the final act of a grand drama is always the most exciting one."
"The day Xiao Honglian's cultivation finally stepped into the Body Integration stage, Xiao Huo, the husband she had worshipped like a god and loved as her entire life, finally bared his fangs at her."
It seemed as if Ye Xuan's mind was conjuring up the scene of endless fire, of utter despair and heart-wrenching screams from that day.
"Xiao Huo had mixed a spirit-sealing powder into their wedding wine, then used Nine Nether Black Iron Chains to lock her tight inside the Eight Trigrams Alchemy Furnace. When Xiao Honglian looked at the man who had always showered her with sweet words and sworn eternal vows, now standing there expressionless as he channeled the Eight Wastelands Heaven-Refining Flame to burn her alive into an elixir..."
"Her Dao heart was completely shattered to dust in that instant."
Ye Xuan leaned back slightly against the pavilion pillar, a nearly mad gleam of pleasure dancing in his eyes.
"At the critical moment, right before the Eight Wastelands Heaven-Refining Flame was about to reduce her to ashes."
"I, the senior brother she had scorned for hundreds of years, hit and scolded for hundreds of years, treated like a servant and a spare option for hundreds of years... descended like a divine soldier from the sky, charging alone straight into the alchemy furnace."
"I burned through every last bit of my soul and blood essence, using my own flesh and blood to block the fatal karmic fire for her. I used my last breath of strength to shove her out of the furnace, and then..."
Ye Xuan's voice dropped low.
"I looked into her eyes, which were wide with shock, regret, and total disbelief, and said to her in the most tender, most despairing tone in the world: 'Junior sister, live on well.'"
"After that, Xiao Huo smashed my skull with a single palm strike, my blood stained the alchemy furnace, and I died right before her eyes. I died a most solemn, tragic, and stirring death."
Silence.
The entire pavilion was deathly quiet.
The only sound was the faint, trembling gasp Ye Qingcheng let out from overwhelming shock.
Ying'er stared up at Ye Xuan, dazed. She suddenly felt that the man before her was no human at all, but a peerless devil who had been toying with the fates of every single person around him like they were just pieces on a chessboard.
"Th-then what?" Ying'er swallowed hard, her voice trembling as she asked.
"Then what?"
Ye Xuan tilted his head back, gazing at the flowing clouds drifting high above the nine heavens, a wild, unbridled smile that looked down upon all eternity tugged at the corner of his mouth:
"What else could there possibly be after that?"
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
