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.”
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
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...
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
