“No! That’s not true! You’re lying to me!”
Xiao Honglian raised her head and stared desperately at Ye Xuan. Her bloodshot eyes were filled with frantic despair and stubborn denial.
Her voice had turned hoarse and shrill from the intensity of her emotional collapse.
“We were meant to be a match made in heaven! We were supposed to be the most enviable dao companions in the entire world!”
Images from her time at the Crimson Flame Sect surged uncontrollably through her mind.
Back then, the sun always seemed to shine a little brighter.
She had worn a scarlet dress adorned with tassels and followed Ye Xuan around like a shadow.
He had taught her how to practice swordsmanship and how to draw qi into her body. Whenever she grew tired from training, he would magically produce a sweet spirit fruit and pop it into her mouth.
Back then, there had clearly been light in Ye Xuan’s eyes whenever he looked at her.
“Even though we never held a dual-cultivation ceremony, and even though we never entered into a contract… you liked me back then, and I loved you too!”
Xiao Honglian seized Ye Xuan by the wrist and pressed her cheek firmly against his palm, desperately trying to find even a trace of the warmth that had once been there.
She cried until her voice broke, baring the deepest obsession in her heart without holding anything back.
“Back then, in the rear mountain, you were injured by a demonic beast while picking Foundation Establishment Grass for me. When you looked at me as I bandaged your wounds, I saw the love in your eyes as clearly as day!”
“At that time, we were obviously everything to each other! If Xiao Huo hadn’t appeared later… if I hadn’t lost my way for a moment… we would have been married long ago!”
Faced with Xiao Honglian’s heart-wrenching defense, her attempt to bind him with the tenderness of the past, Ye Xuan showed not the slightest trace of emotion.
Instead, the curve of his lips grew even more mocking.
“Heh…”
A cold, piercing laugh slipped from Ye Xuan’s thin lips.
He pulled his hand away from Xiao Honglian’s cheek without mercy and looked down at her with undisguised disgust.
“Junior Sister, are you so distraught that you’ve started talking nonsense again?”
Ye Xuan looked down at her from above. There was not the slightest trace of lingering affection in his eyes—only absolute reason and merciless coldness.
“I admit that back when we were at the Crimson Flame Sect, I was young and ignorant. I did have a faint fondness for you. But who hasn’t experienced a few moments of infatuation in their youth?”
“Besides, that was all in the past. It happened before Xiao Huo appeared!”
Ye Xuan’s voice suddenly rose, cleaving through the fog of Xiao Honglian’s self-deception like a sword.
“From the moment you threw yourself into Xiao Huo’s arms without hesitation for the sake of your vanity and his sweet talk… that ridiculous trace of affection was something I personally strangled to death.”
“From that moment onward, for several hundred years, I, Ye Xuan, was nothing more than your senior brother. A fellow disciple who ran errands for the two of you and protected you on your journeys…”
As he spoke, Ye Xuan’s eyes suddenly narrowed. His formerly languid aura was instantly replaced by a terrifying, soul-shaking killing intent.
That killing intent was pure, domineering, and chillingly cold. Even Xiao Honglian, the Flame Emperor, felt a tremor rise from the depths of her soul.
“Junior Sister, you need to understand one fact.”
Ye Xuan’s gaze was cold as a blade. Each word struck like a knife.
“From beginning to end, you were Xiao Huo’s dao companion—not mine.”
“You shared a bed with him. You lived and flew together with him. You even went to the black market to buy aphrodisiac pills for him! Everything you did was the loyalty and devotion of a wife toward her husband!”
“Therefore…”
Ye Xuan suddenly bent down, his eyes boring into Xiao Honglian’s rapidly contracting pupils. His tone was decisive.
“You have never betrayed me, nor have you ever put even half a green hat on my head! Because I was never anything to you in the first place! Everything I did—running errands for you two, allowing you to order me around, even charging into the alchemy furnace to shield you from the flames in the end—was something I did of my own free will!”
“Therefore, the relationship between us has always been perfectly clean and innocent. It is nothing more than a pure relationship between senior brother and junior sister, without the slightest trace of romantic affection!”
Those words pierced Xiao Honglian’s heart like countless arrows.
She was completely stunned.
What she feared most was not Ye Xuan’s hatred.
What she feared most was Ye Xuan using that absolute reason and complete emotional detachment to sever every connection between them.
If this could not even be considered betrayal, then what had her agonizing guilt over the past several thousand years meant?
And what had the devotion she had guarded so faithfully for him meant?
“No! That’s not how it is! Stop talking!”
Xiao Honglian completely lost control. Covering her ears, she shook her head frantically like a madwoman, trying to drive Ye Xuan’s words from her mind.
She abruptly raised her head, her eyes red, and defended herself desperately.
“Even if that was our relationship in name… in my heart, I had already made you my true husband through all those years of endless regret! In all these thousands of years, I haven’t let another man touch even a single strand of my hair! You are my husband in my heart!”
She thought that as long as she expressed a devotion that had endured for thousands of years, Ye Xuan would finally understand her painstaking sincerity.
However—
The instant he heard the word “husband,” an uncontrollable fury suddenly surged into Ye Xuan’s previously icy eyes.
That rage was not born of jealousy.
It came from the utter humiliation of hearing something so absurd.
Smack!
A crisp, thunderous slap exploded across the silent sea of clouds in the void.
The slap came without warning. Ye Xuan had not used even the slightest bit of spiritual power; he had struck her purely with the strength of his physical body, landing squarely against Xiao Honglian’s beautiful cheek.
The tremendous force sent her reeling to the side. A streak of glaring blood slowly trickled from the corner of her mouth, leaving five distinct red finger marks across her fair skin.
Silence.
A deathly silence.
Xiao Honglian was the Flame Emperor!
She was the supreme overlord at the very pinnacle of combat power in the Great Thousand World, a Peerless Female Emperor with the most violent temper of them all!
Even the supreme patriarch of an ancient orthodox tradition would be burned into nothingness in an instant if they dared show her the slightest disrespect.
And yet, at this very moment—
This peerless female sovereign, whose power reached the heavens, sat dazed upon the clouds like an ordinary concubine who had just been struck.
She covered the side of her face, which had already swollen high, while her long black hair spilled messily over her shoulders.
Her eyes were wide with disbelief, tears of shock and grievance welling in them as she stared blankly at Ye Xuan.
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
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."
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
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.
