“You… you hit me?”
Xiao Honglian’s voice trembled like a withered leaf in the wind.
Ye Xuan looked down at her from above. There was not the slightest trace of pity in his eyes because of the slap. If anything, his gaze had grown even darker, filled with undisguised disgust.
“Junior Sister.”
He slowly withdrew his hand, took a snow-white silk handkerchief from his robes, and leisurely wiped his fingers. His voice was savage.
“Have you become addicted to acting like a shameless harlot? Do you really have to force a cuckold’s hat onto my head?”
The moment those words left his mouth, Xiao Honglian shuddered violently, forgetting even the pain in her cheek.
Like a startled fawn, she hurriedly scrambled to her feet. Without bothering to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth, she frantically waved her hands as she tried to explain.
“No! I didn’t! Senior Brother, I absolutely didn’t mean that! How could I ever dare put a cuckold’s hat on you…”
She had only wanted to express that she regarded him as her one and only beloved. How could she possibly have meant to humiliate him?
“You didn’t?”
Ye Xuan tossed the handkerchief he had used to wipe his hand onto Xiao Honglian’s face. His gaze was cold enough to pierce bone, and his words came at her relentlessly, leaving her no chance to catch her breath.
“I’ve emphasized this to you over and over again. From the moment Xiao Huo appeared, the two of us have been nothing more than senior brother and junior sister!”
“Everything I did to protect you back then—searching for spiritual medicines, fighting through secret realms for you, even going to the black market to buy medicine for you—everything was done solely because a senior brother was protecting his junior sister!”
Ye Xuan advanced step by step. The overwhelming pressure forced Xiao Honglian to retreat involuntarily.
“I admit that perhaps some of the pitiful affection left over from my youth was mixed in with it. But…”
Ye Xuan’s gaze suddenly sharpened.
“I never crossed the line even once! I never held your hand, never stepped over that boundary, and never once asked you for the status of a man and woman in love!”
“So as far as reputation and chastity are concerned, we are perfectly clean! Completely innocent!”
The instant his voice fell, Ye Xuan’s figure flashed forward like a ghost.
His right hand shot out.
“Urgh…”
Xiao Honglian let out a muffled groan of pain.
Ye Xuan’s hand, hard as an iron vise, had already clamped tightly around her slender, swanlike neck.
If Xiao Honglian had been willing, the strange flame inside her body—powerful enough to burn the heavens and boil the seas—could have reduced Ye Xuan’s physical body to ashes with a single thought.
But she did not.
Not only did she offer no resistance, she obediently tilted her head back, allowing Ye Xuan to lift her entire body from the clouds like a marionette on strings.
Her face flushed red, and tears streamed wildly from the corners of her eyes, dripping onto the back of Ye Xuan’s hand.
As Ye Xuan choked her, his gaze grew darker and darker. Deep within his eyes, a horrifying madness began to churn.
He leaned close to Xiao Honglian’s ear and spoke in a voice slow and cruel, like a devil whispering in her ear, each word carefully enunciated.
“Xiao Honglian! Since you refuse a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit, since you insist on shamelessly claiming that I’m your husband…”
“Fine. Then let’s settle this account properly!”
Ye Xuan’s grip around her neck tightened abruptly. Xiao Honglian grabbed at his arm in agony. Deprived of air, her mind began to swim in waves of dizziness.
“Listen carefully. If I, Ye Xuan, truly am your husband…”
“Then back then, knowing full well that I was your husband, you betrayed me without the slightest hesitation for the sake of resources and power. You willingly stripped yourself naked and climbed into Xiao Huo’s bed, becoming that man’s plaything!”
Ye Xuan’s gaze was like a blade, slicing Xiao Honglian’s heart open piece by piece and exposing the bloodiest truth within.
“While you were acting all lovey-dovey with Xiao Huo right in front of me, you brazenly ordered me—your husband—to run errands and handle things for you and your lover.”
“Tell me, Lady Flame Emperor… does that count as planting a vast expanse of green grass on my head?”
“Does it count as giving me the most humiliating cuckold’s hat in all the world?!”
Suspended in midair by the throat, Xiao Honglian was utterly stunned.
Her mind exploded in that instant, going completely blank.
Her eyes, originally filled with pleading and tears, contracted violently. They were filled with boundless panic and helpless confusion.
At last, she understood why Ye Xuan became so furious whenever she called him “husband”!
Ye Xuan’s grip around her neck tightened further and further, his knuckles paling from the force.
His gaze grew increasingly deranged as he pressed her relentlessly, leaving her no room to retreat.
“Look into my eyes and answer me!”
Ye Xuan’s roar exploded beside Xiao Honglian’s ear.
“Think carefully and tell me! What exactly is the relationship between us?”
“Are we lovers bound together as Dao companions—a relationship in which you consciously betrayed me and put a cuckold’s hat on my head?”
“Or are we… from beginning to end, perfectly clean, nothing more than ordinary… senior brother and junior sister?”
At that moment, Xiao Honglian was completely frozen.
The extreme suffocation, combined with the torture of this mental dilemma, drove her almost insane.
Ye Xuan was not reminiscing with her at all. He was wielding a blade that killed without drawing blood, forcing her to sever with her own hands the spiritual pillar she had relied upon for thousands of years.
He had given her two choices.
If Xiao Honglian wanted to preserve that false affection and insisted on acknowledging Ye Xuan as her “husband,” then according to Ye Xuan’s logic, her act of climbing into Xiao Huo’s bed back then would not be “seeking a better source of support.”
It would be outright marital infidelity.
It would mean placing an enormous cuckold’s hat on Ye Xuan’s head—one that would make the entire world laugh at him.
She would be transformed from a “selfish woman who chose Xiao Huo for the sake of benefits” into a “despicable, shameless slut who betrayed her husband.”
And that was a disgrace and moral accusation that the proud Flame Emperor absolutely, absolutely could not endure.
But if… if Xiao Honglian wanted to clear herself of the accusations of “cheating” and being a “slut,” she would have to follow Ye Xuan’s words and personally admit that the two of them had only ever been “senior brother and junior sister.”
If they were merely senior brother and junior sister, then her relationship with Xiao Huo was perfectly reasonable. She had been unmarried and free to choose her own partner.
At most, Ye Xuan would have been nothing more than a lovesick fool, a backup who willingly groveled at her feet.
Xiao Honglian had never betrayed Ye Xuan, in body or in name, in the slightest.
But!
The moment she admitted this aloud, it would mean that she had personally denied every bit of love between them.
She would have severed with her own hands the bond between Dao companions that she had gone mad for and suffered unbearable pain over for thousands of years, all in the hope of making amends.
She would forever lose the right to call herself his “bereaved wife” or the “woman he loved deeply.”
Before Ye Xuan, she would forever be nothing more than a cold and distant junior sister.
How vicious!
How cruel!
This was a deadlock with no solution at all. No matter which way she chose, Ye Xuan would crush the pride and obsession she had clung to for thousands of years until not even the dregs remained.
“No… I won’t admit it… I don’t want to choose…”
Xiao Honglian completely broke down!
With one hand clamped around her neck, she sobbed as tears poured down like pearls from a broken string.
She desperately shook her head, both hands clawing at Ye Xuan’s iron-hard arm. Her fingernails even carved several bloody scratches into it.
How could she choose? Either choice would lead to eternal ruin! Either choice would mean ripping her own heart out with a knife!
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
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.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
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."
