As she watched the scene of such overwhelming affection unfold before her, Xiao Honglian completely lost her mind.
The venomous serpent of jealousy sank its fangs into her heart. The crimson light in her eyes seemed ready to drip blood, while her nails had already pierced her palms until they were a mangled mess of flesh and blood.
She wished she could erupt on the spot and burn that wretched woman leaning against Ye Xuan’s chest to ashes with the most vicious flames imaginable!
But—
She clenched her teeth, her entire body trembling like a sieve, and forcibly swallowed every trace of madness and jealousy back down.
She held herself back.
She did not even dare to release the slightest hint of hostility!
Because she had seen it clearly just moments ago.
The woman leaning against Ye Xuan’s chest—the woman Ye Xuan had called his wife and treated with a tenderness Xiao Honglian could never hope to receive again in this lifetime—
Was none other than the supreme ruler who now shook the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, acclaimed as the Number One Sword Under Heaven:
The Sword Sovereign, Ye Jiuhuang!
What drove her to even greater despair and terror was that the moment Ye Jiuhuang appeared, the aura she had inadvertently released directly suppressed the Flame Emperor origin Xiao Honglian was so proud of. Not even a spark of flame could emerge from it!
That was… the aura of a True Immortal!
A True Immortal expert who had surpassed the limits of mortality and stood above the Great Dao!
As for Xiao Honglian, though she was known as the supreme overlord, the Flame Emperor, her cultivation was merely at the Great Ascension stage!
Between the Great Ascension stage and the True Immortal realm lay an insurmountable chasm.
Before Ye Jiuhuang, this so-called Flame Emperor was not even worth considering a slightly larger ant.
A single sword aura from Ye Jiuhuang would be enough to reduce the lineage and cultivation she took pride in to ashes in an instant!
The absolute crushing difference in strength, combined with her utter defeat in matters of the heart, pressed down upon Xiao Honglian like two immovable mountains.
Like a pitiful, jealous stray dog driven mad yet utterly powerless, she could only kneel on the ground and watch helplessly as the man she had loved and regretted losing with her very life embraced the most noble and powerful True Immortal Goddess in the world and walked toward a happiness she could never reach.
She knelt upon the frigid clouds, her eyes wide with shock. The corners of her eyes had even split from the sheer intensity of her disbelief and jealousy, a thin streak of blood seeping out.
She stared fixedly at the man and woman before her, a pair who looked as though they had been made for each other. Once, Ye Xuan’s eyes had been reserved for gazing up at her. Now, they were filled with gentle affection for another woman.
“Husband, who is this?”
Ye Jiuhuang slightly raised her flawless, exquisite face from Ye Xuan’s embrace.
Her gaze passed over Ye Xuan’s shoulder and drifted lightly toward Xiao Honglian, who was kneeling on the ground, as though she were nothing more than an insignificant mote of dust.
Those limpid eyes held neither contempt nor hostility. There was only the lofty curiosity and indifference one might show toward a stranger.
That single glance caused Xiao Honglian more unbearable pain than any vicious curse in the world.
She was the Flame Emperor, worshiped by countless living beings as an unrivaled sovereign.
Yet in Ye Jiuhuang’s eyes, she was not even worthy of a second glance from the Sword Sovereign.
With one arm around Ye Jiuhuang’s slender waist, Ye Xuan wore a doting smile.
He did not even turn his head. In an utterly casual tone, as though introducing a weed by the roadside, he said flatly:
“Oh, her?”
“She’s just an old acquaintance from our time at the Scarlet Flame Sect. She used to be my fellow disciple.”
There was no mention of an unforgettable past, no love or hatred, no lingering emotions—only the dismissive words “old acquaintance” and “fellow disciple.”
Xiao Honglian’s body trembled violently. A muffled whimper, like that of a wounded beast, escaped her throat. Blood continued to spill from her bitten lips, dripping onto the cyan robes she had always been so proud of.
How she wanted to stand up and shout to Ye Jiuhuang:
I am the woman he once loved with his life! I am the eternal obsession in his heart!
But beneath the terrifying pressure of a True Immortal and faced with Ye Xuan’s utter indifference, she did not even have the courage to open her mouth.
“So she’s your fellow disciple, Husband.”
Upon hearing Ye Xuan’s answer, Ye Jiuhuang’s peerless face bloomed with a gentle smile capable of eclipsing the brilliance of heaven and earth.
Not only did she show no jealousy or wariness, she even gently slipped out of Ye Xuan’s embrace, assuming the bearing of the lady of the house—a legitimate wife with every right to do so.
With a warm smile, Ye Jiuhuang looked at Xiao Honglian and spoke in a clear, gentle voice:
“Since she is your fellow disciple, she is one of our own. A guest who has come from afar must naturally be welcomed properly.”
That word—“our”—struck Xiao Honglian like a heavy hammer, leaving her vision black.
Ye Jiuhuang and Ye Xuan were “we.”
And Xiao Honglian was merely a guest who needed to be entertained—a complete and utter… outsider!
Ye Jiuhuang did not notice Xiao Honglian’s face turning paler than a corpse’s. She naturally took Ye Xuan’s large hand and interlocked her fingers with his.
Their intimate pose, along with the betrothal immortal ring shining on her ring finger, was practically a torture device being dragged across Xiao Honglian’s eyes.
“You came at an opportune time today, Junior Sister.”
Ye Jiuhuang smiled. Her voice was as pleasant as heavenly music, yet every word struck at Xiao Honglian’s heart.
“Just now, I was discussing the details of our wedding with the Elder of Internal Affairs. My husband finds these things troublesome and has left everything for me to handle. He really is the most hands-off husband.”
Ye Jiuhuang cast Ye Xuan a coquettish glance, the myriad charms in her eyes making him smile with tremendous satisfaction.
Ye Xuan reached out and affectionately brushed the tip of his finger across Ye Jiuhuang’s delicate nose. His voice was filled with indulgence.
“I’ve always been a crude man who knows nothing of such tedious formalities. Since my wife is willing to take care of them, I’m more than happy to enjoy the leisure. Besides, our wedding will be announced throughout the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. Naturally, I can only rest easy if you oversee every detail yourself.”
As she watched the two of them flirt openly, completely oblivious to everyone around them, Xiao Honglian’s internal organs twisted and convulsed in agony!
Jealousy.
A jealousy powerful enough to incinerate the Eight Desolations surged wildly through every limb and bone in Xiao Honglian’s body.
Her eyes almost seemed ready to spew blood.
She stared fiercely at Ye Jiuhuang’s flawless face, a hysterical roar echoing in her heart:
Why? Why isn’t that woman standing beside him with a radiant smile me? All that tenderness, all that patience, every one of those soul-stirring calls of “wife”—they were supposed to belong to me!
It was me! I was the one who met him first! I was the one who won his heart first!
What are you, Ye Jiuhuang? You’re nothing but someone who picked up what I threw away!
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
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."
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.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
