Xiao Honglian knelt motionlessly on the clouds, tears bursting forth like a broken dam. Her mind frantically replayed scenes from the past.
Back then, she would cling to Xiao Huo's embrace day and night, indulging in his honeyed words and intimate caresses.
As for Ye Xuan, he was always the one who stood ten paces away, quietly waiting on her hand and foot, fetching spiritual herbs for her, the one she only ever saw as "the Good Man".
She even grew disgusted when Ye Xuan got too close, fearing it would upset Xiao Huo, and often snapped at him in a tone of irritation to tell him to get lost.
From start to finish, she had given her most vibrant youth, her most precious self, and her most fervent affection entirely and unreservedly to Xiao Huo!
All she left for Ye Xuan was endless demands, cold glares, disdainful looks, and resounding slaps across the face.
Ye Xuan watched her crumble completely, slowly straightening up with his hands clasped behind his back. His voice was as merciless as the icy gales of the deepest winter:
"The moment you threw yourself into Xiao Huo's arms, we became nothing more than ordinary senior and junior fellow apprentices in name."
"Since you were another man's woman, as your senior fellow apprentice, of course I had to keep a respectful distance. The way I addressed you was always polite, perfectly proper for a junior fellow apprentice."
Ye Xuan let out a cold sneer, his eyes full of unmasked disdain:
"I sacrificed myself back then for the sake of our fellowship, to save my little junior fellow apprentice. That in itself is a great, touching tale of fellow apprentices looking out for each other."
"So... is there anything wrong with me calling you my junior fellow apprentice?"
Xiao Honglian gaped, her lips trembling violently. She tried to retort, but not a single word would come out.
What could she even say?
That Ye Xuan, after all he had done for her back then, must have loved her deep down?
But all those efforts, she had accepted with complete self-assurance, taking them for granted.
She had taken advantage of his feelings for her, ordering him around like he was nothing more than a dog at her beck and call.
Ye Xuan had never once pressed her for a formal status, never crossed the line of propriety. He had placed himself so low, so far beneath notice, that he had seemed to deserve nothing more than the right to call her "junior fellow apprentice".
And it was only after Ye Xuan's death, after she lost the man who had always been there to catch her whenever she fell, that she had spent endless days and nights in agony, forcing herself to tie the rest of her life to his memory.
She had styled herself his unwidowed widow, built the Flame Emperor Sect to commemorate him.
For thousands of years, she had kept herself chaste...
All of it, nothing but a one-woman show she had put on for no one but herself.
From Ye Xuan's perspective, he had merely been a spare tire who died saving a junior fellow apprentice.
He had never truly possessed her, never claimed her as his own.
If he never had her, where did betrayal come from? If they never swore a binding vow, where did the chance of them rekindling anything come from?
"No... this isn't how it's supposed to be..."
Xiao Honglian covered her face with her hands, letting out a shrill, mournful cry like a wounded beast.
Her nails dug deep into the flesh of her cheeks, blood seeping through her fingers and dripping onto her blue robe, a sight that was shocking to behold.
"I was wrong... Senior Brother, I truly know I was wrong..."
She crawled prostrate at Ye Xuan's feet, slamming her forehead again and again against the cloud under them, the thudding sound sharp in the air, humbling herself to the lowest possible point.
"Back then I was blind, I was fooled by vanity! I never should have treated you that way!"
"But... but you saved me! You used your own life to save me! If you didn't love me, why would you have run straight into the burning alchemy furnace at the last moment?"
Xiao Honglian clung to that last wisp of fantasy like a drowning man clutching at a stray branch.
She lifted her head sharply, face streaked with tears, and stared at Ye Xuan, begging desperately.
"As long as there's still a place for me in your heart, as long as you loved me even for a single instant... I beg you, don't marry Ye Jiuhuang! I'll do anything you ask! Even... even if I have to be your servant, even if you torment me, I'll accept it all without a single complaint!"
"Please... let me stay by your side to atone for my sins..."
She had thought that laying down every last scrap of her pride, even casting aside her glory as the Flame Emperor, would earn her even the smallest glance of recognition from Ye Xuan.
But she had no idea that the man standing before her was a demon whose heart was ice-cold to the core, who had long since seen every person around him as nothing more than a pawn to be played with.
Ye Xuan looked down from his height at Xiao Honglian, weeping and begging at his feet.
Watching this once-proud Flame Emperor now grovel like a beggar for a crumb of his favor.
There was no triumph in his eyes, no pity, only a deep, unyielding boredom and indifference.
Because he had seen through this woman entirely, long ago.
"Atonement?"
Ye Xuan let out another cold laugh, no warmth at all in the sound. "Xiao Honglian, you still don't get it, do you?"
"You keep saying you want to atone, but the truth is you just can't stand the crushing disappointment of losing a man who would have given you his whole heart. You're not making amends to me, you're just paying off the debt to your own guilty conscience."
Ye Xuan suddenly crouched down, reached out his long, slender fingers, and clamped them around Xiao Honglian's tear-streaked, bloodied chin, forcing her to look straight into his dark, bottomless eyes that seemed to hold nothing but endless abyss.
"You're asking me why I rushed into the alchemy furnace to save you that day?"
Ye Xuan leaned in, his fingers gripping Xiao Honglian's beautiful, tear and blood-stained chin like an unyielding iron vice. He looked into those eyes that had once held such arrogant disdain, now brimming with nothing but submission and supplication, and curled his lips into a cruel, suffocating smile.
"Because you're my junior fellow apprentice."
He tilted his head slightly, a look of unapologetic indifference in his deep dark eyes, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Isn't it only natural, for a senior fellow apprentice to save his junior fellow apprentice?"
That answer was like a rusty sledgehammer, smashing the last pitiful sliver of fantasy remaining in Xiao Honglian's heart to dust.
"No... this isn't right..."
In that instant, Xiao Honglian trembled from head to toe, as if she had fallen straight into an icy hell that had been frozen for ten thousand years.
She shook her head wildly, tears streaming down her face like a breached flood, blurring her vision completely.
She could not accept that answer.
She would rather Ye Xuan say he saved her out of hatred, out of a plan to get revenge on her, than accept those simple, dismissive words: a senior fellow apprentice saves his junior fellow apprentice.
What did that make all her suffering mean? The thousands of years of endless regret she had carried day and night, the obsession that had driven her to slay thousands of foes to build the Flame Emperor Sect in his memory? In the face of that light, casual line, all of it looked like nothing more than a ridiculous, absurd joke.
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
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.
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."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
