She Is Just a Joke

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.