Seeing Xiao Honglian in such unbearable agony, on the verge of a mental breakdown, Ye Xuan showed not the slightest trace of pity. Instead, his eyes gleamed with a sick, vengeful madness.
“Choose!”
His gaze was frenzied and bloodthirsty. The hand clamped around her throat tightened once more, nearly crushing her cervical bones.
“Hurry up and say it loudly: You’re nothing more than my former good junior sister—vile and selfish, but at least you never cuckolded me!”
“Otherwise…”
The corners of Ye Xuan’s lips curled into a bone-chilling smile.
“Otherwise, you’re a shameless adulteress who betrayed her husband! And when it comes to betrayers… I, Ye Xuan, have always shown no mercy!”
“Do you want to see what I can do?”
Killing intent!
A terrifying killing intent, almost tangible in its intensity, instantly enveloped Xiao Honglian.
Xiao Honglian’s strength far surpassed Ye Xuan’s. If she wished, she could burn his arm to ashes in an instant with nothing more than a wisp of the Flame Emperor’s origin fire.
But she couldn’t do it.
Not only because she felt a sickening guilt toward Ye Xuan, but also because her spiritual world had already been utterly destroyed by those few cruel, soul-piercing words.
Her entire body trembled violently. Her beautiful face had turned bluish-purple from lack of air, and her eyes were filled with a suffocating pain and despair.
She stared fixedly at the man before her.
At last, she understood.
The gentle young man who had once panicked for half a day whenever she merely frowned had died long ago, before the Eight Trigrams Alchemy Furnace, at the hands of Xiao Huo.
The Ye Xuan standing before her now was a devil who had crawled out of hell.
He did not want her life. He wanted to carve an indelible mark of humiliation into her soul.
She could not admit that she was an adulterous whore.
The pride of the Flame Emperor—and the last shred of dignity she still possessed before Ye Xuan—would never allow her to bear the eternal infamy of having cuckolded him.
She had no choice.
After dozens of breaths spent struggling in unbearable suffocation and agony, the light in Xiao Honglian’s eyes finally dimmed, little by little.
It was the hollow stillness that remained after hope had been strangled completely.
She gave up struggling and let her arms fall limply at her sides.
Scalding tears slid down her bluish-purple cheeks and dripped onto Ye Xuan’s cold hand.
She closed her eyes. Her lips trembled violently as she forced three words from the depths of her throat in a voice that sounded as though her entire soul had been drained away—hoarse to the point of becoming a wail.
“Senior… Brother…”
The instant those words left Xiao Honglian’s lips, she felt something inside her—a conviction she had clung to for several thousand years—let out a crisp cracking sound before collapsing completely into an irreparable ruin.
Hearing that title, the madness and murderous intent in Ye Xuan’s eyes receded in an instant like a retreating tide.
In their place appeared a smile of immense satisfaction and tenderness.
“Ah.”
Ye Xuan answered cheerfully, as if the demon who had nearly strangled her to death moments ago had never been him at all.
Then, as casually as discarding an unwanted object, he released his grip from around Xiao Honglian’s throat.
“Cough, cough… cough, cough, cough!”
Having regained access to the air, Xiao Honglian fell onto the clouds. Clutching her bruised neck, she coughed violently. Every cough was accompanied by a heart-rending sob.
Ye Xuan looked down from above at Xiao Honglian, who had collapsed at his feet. He watched as she sat there in utter disarray, stripped of every last bit of her pride.
He reached out and gently tidied the disheveled strands of black hair by her ear, like a kind and affectionate elder brother.
With that springlike smile still hanging from his lips, he spoke softly in a familiar, intimate tone.
“That’s more like it, my good junior sister.”
Those simple words were, at that moment, sharper than the most vicious curse in the world by ten thousand times.
Xiao Honglian sat blankly on the clouds. She did not look up, nor did she cry out again.
Because at that moment, she felt an extreme pain unlike anything she had ever experienced—a pain so intense it seemed to bring death itself. It surpassed the limits of the flesh and tore her soul completely to pieces.
She had lost.
She had lost utterly and completely.
She had not only lost him; she had also lost the right to love him and the right to atone.
Using the cruelest logic, Ye Xuan had forced her to acknowledge aloud the brutal truth she had been unwilling to face for thousands of years.
Now, she had admitted it completely.
She had acknowledged the cold, pitiful, and forever-impassable relationship between herself and Ye Xuan.
They were nothing more than senior and junior disciples.
Xiao Honglian sat dazed on the clouds. On that breathtakingly beautiful face, only an ashen numbness remained.
Seeing her completely drained of spirit, the smile on Ye Xuan’s lips grew even deeper.
He slowly straightened and spoke with a smile, like a broad-minded elder who genuinely cared for his junior.
“Now that Junior Sister has accepted reality, I can finally rest easy.”
Ye Xuan stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his white robes snapping in the astral winds above the sea of clouds. His voice was clear and composed.
“In half a month, I will be marrying Ye Jiuhuang, the Sword Sovereign.”
He lowered his head slightly and looked at Xiao Honglian, who was trembling at his feet like a leaf. His eyes were full of teasing.
“Junior Sister forced her way into my Sword God Palace today. Could it be that you came especially early to offer your senior brother a wedding gift and congratulate me on winning such a beautiful bride?”
Congratulate him?
Those two words were like a rusted knife, savagely scraping another circle across Xiao Honglian’s mangled heart.
Her entire body trembled violently. From deep within her throat came a series of suppressed, hoarse, rattling sounds.
She bit down hard on her lips, nearly shredding the red flesh. Blood mixed with tears and flowed into her mouth, filling it with bitterness and the taste of rust.
Congratulate him?
How could she personally congratulate the man she had wronged for lifetime after lifetime, the man she had loved to the very marrow of her bones and regretted losing until her soul trembled, as he married another woman?
It would be ten thousand times more agonizing than killing her.
At that moment, a trace of utterly unhinged and savage darkness suddenly flashed deep within Xiao Honglian’s bloodshot eyes.
The predatory instinct of a supreme overlord had completely broken free under the pressure of such extreme agony.
A dangerously twisted thought began to grow wildly in her mind.
Take him.
If he intended to marry someone else, then she would slaughter everyone in the Sword God Palace and take him back to the Endless Flame Domain.
She would use Nethersteel to forge the most luxurious prison imaginable and confine him within it forever, keeping him constantly within her sight.
He would be allowed to look only at her and depend only on her.
Even if he hated her for the rest of his life, that would still be better than letting him become another woman’s husband!
The fire laws surrounding Xiao Honglian grew wildly unstable under the influence of her extreme emotions. Even the void showed signs of melting.
What kind of person was Ye Xuan?
He toyed with people’s hearts as easily as if they were objects in the palm of his hand.
How could the possessiveness and almost yandere-like savagery that flashed briefly through Xiao Honglian’s eyes possibly escape him?
However, Ye Xuan showed no sign of panic. Instead, he turned around indifferently, clasped his hands behind his back, and continued gazing down at the vast mountains and rivers stretching for thousands of miles below.
“What? It seems Junior Sister didn’t come to the Sword God Palace to offer her congratulations?”
Ye Xuan’s lazy voice instantly shattered the unrealistic, frenzied notion that had just risen in Xiao Honglian’s mind.
Xiao Honglian stiffly raised her head. As she looked at Ye Xuan’s aloof and peerlessly graceful back, the violent rage that had welled up inside her instantly turned into boundless humility the moment she met his indifferent gaze.
She realized that she simply could not do it.
Even if she was now the Flame Emperor, even if she could shatter half of the Sword God Palace with a single palm, as long as this man merely frowned, her heart would ache as though pierced by needles.
“Ye Xuan… Do you really love Ye Jiuhuang?”
Xiao Honglian forced down the bitterness in her chest that felt as if it might tear her apart and spoke hoarsely. Every word she uttered felt like she was vomiting blood from the very depths of her heart.
Hearing this question, Ye Xuan slowly turned around. A rare trace of gentleness appeared in his eyes.
“Of course.”
Ye Xuan sneered, his tone filled with mockery toward Xiao Honglian and defense of Ye Jiuhuang. “Jiuhuang possesses unparalleled talent and is pure and untainted. She has also remained utterly devoted to me, never scheming against me or betraying me in the slightest. Faced with a perfect woman like that, why wouldn’t I love her? By comparison, who do you think I should love?”
Pure and untainted.
Utterly devoted.
Those two phrases were like two deafening slaps, striking Xiao Honglian’s already battered pride.
She lowered her head, her entire body going limp in the clouds as an emotion known as shame completely drowned her.
That was right. Ye Jiuhuang was the Number One Sword Under Heaven, born into nobility and renowned throughout the world.
And what about her?
She had once been a woman who shamelessly clung to another person for resources. She had once been blind and foolish. She had once personally struck the man who loved her so deeply.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
Xiao Honglian murmured as tears once again soaked her green robes.
As though trying to seize the last trace of warmth in an illusion, she raised her head. Her eyes, filled with longing and carrying the final struggle before complete despair, locked desperately onto Ye Xuan.
“Then… back then… back at the Chiyan Sect, did you… did you ever love me?”
Even a lie would have been enough. She desperately needed that answer now.
For the past several thousand years, she had been trapped in a vicious cycle between “He loves me, so I have to atone” and “Perhaps he never loved me at all.”
Who would have thought that Ye Xuan would be utterly frank this time—one might even say unusually generous.
Looking into Xiao Honglian’s eyes, which were filled with yearning, he gave a slight nod. His voice held a trace of reminiscence, but not the slightest hint of warmth.
“Yes. Back then, at the Chiyan Sect, I truly did have feelings for you. In fact, you were the only woman I ever felt my heart stir for during those naïve years.”
At those words, the lifeless light in Xiao Honglian’s eyes instantly burst into dazzling radiance.
Surprise!
Overwhelming joy!
It was as though a prisoner who had spent thousands of years climbing through a dark abyss had finally seen a ray of sunlight shining down.
“See? I knew it! I knew you loved me!”
Xiao Honglian trembled with excitement. She suddenly crawled forward on her knees a couple of steps, reaching for the hem of Ye Xuan’s robe.
Her normally cold and dignified face, that of an emperor, was now filled with a young girl’s delight and excitement. She cried out frantically, “So you really did love me! When you saved me back then, it wasn’t because we were senior and junior disciples—it was because you had feelings for me! You still remember, don’t you?”
Seeing her joy bordering on madness, Ye Xuan did not push her away. Instead, he went along with her words, his tone so gentle it was intoxicating.
“That’s right. It was precisely because I had feelings for you that I silently protected you for several hundred years. And it was also because I loved you that I restrained my desires and never did anything improper to you.”
“I didn’t want to make things difficult for you. I didn’t want you to bear the stigma of betraying Xiao Huo. I would rather suffer myself than ruin your reputation.”
“Waaah… My good Senior Brother…”
Xiao Honglian wept like a child. The overwhelming ecstasy of finally receiving his acknowledgment nearly made her burst apart.
She felt that all the suffering she had endured over the past several thousand years had been worth it.
So he really had loved her. So all his coldness had been for the sake of fulfilling her wishes.
However…
Just as Xiao Honglian was sinking helplessly into this illusory, long-delayed happiness, Ye Xuan’s gentle expression suddenly changed. In the blink of an eye, it became an utterly cruel and mocking smile, as if he had performed the most dramatic face change in Sichuan opera.
Looking at Xiao Honglian, who was shedding tears of joy, he let out a faint sigh.
“But… that was all in the past.”
Xiao Honglian’s laughter came to an abrupt halt.
Her eyes, which had been filled with delight, widened to their absolute limit. Her pupils contracted violently into tiny points from sheer terror.
She froze where she was. She could even hear the anguished cry of her own heart as it plummeted at terrifying speed.
“You… What do you mean, ‘in the past’?”
Xiao Honglian’s voice trembled, filled with the despair of someone on the verge of death.
Ye Xuan smiled faintly. It was the calmest—and most ruthless—smile he had shown all day.
He looked down at her as though gazing upon a sacrificial offering that was already dead.
“In the past, I loved you. For your sake, I could have gone to my death. But now, I no longer love you.”
“Do you understand?”
“Junior Sister, I don’t love you. Not even a little.”
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."
+ Slow Paced + Main Character Thrives Together with His Disciples】 Transmigrated into a cultivation world, Chu Xingchen awakens a discipleship system that reveals the tags of his disciples! Starting from scratch, he builds the strongest sect. Disciple One: Li Yingling 【Gold Tag: Genius Cultivator】【Purple Tag: Extremely Lucky】【Blue Tag: Bewitchingly Beautiful】 Disciple Two: Li Hangtian 【Gold Tag: Reincarnated】【Purple Tag: Ruthless and Decisive】【Blue Tag: Loyal and Noble】 Disciple Three: ??? 【Orange Tag: Alluring Demoness】【???】【???】 Thus, in the cultivation world, an unremarkable little sect appears out of nowhere, but little do others know that each member of this sect is a powerhouse in their own right. The book is also known as: Cultivation? It's Exactly Like This!
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...
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.
