Not Loving Is Winning

“Hahahahaha! Ye Xuan, just look at the miserable state you’re in! You gave up everything—even one of your kidneys—and worked yourself to the bone for so many years, groveling like a dog! And what did it get you in the end?”

Lu Yanchen looked down from above at Ye Xuan, whose shoulder blades had been pierced by chains. His eyes glittered with twisted delight. “Qing Xuanyin is about to put on her red wedding dress and become my bride! A century of your devotion has merely paved the way for me!”

Faced with Lu Yanchen’s vicious declaration, Ye Xuan was unexpectedly silent.

Slowly, Ye Xuan raised his head. His face was a mangled mess of flesh and blood, yet it held no expression whatsoever.

He simply regarded Lu Yanchen with the eyes one might reserve for a dead thing and said in a flat voice devoid of emotion, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

Lu Yanchen’s laughter came to an abrupt halt. He frowned sharply and stared at Ye Xuan as though he had just heard the most absurd joke in the world.

“You don’t care?”

Enraged, Lu Yanchen stepped forward, grabbed Ye Xuan by his hair, matted with filthy blood, and forced his head up. He laughed wildly as he asked, “Who are you trying to fool with that act of aloofness? Everyone in the Qing Family—and the entire Central Province—knows that you’re madly in love with Qing Xuanyin!”

“You were willing to throw your life away for her, and now you’re telling me you don’t care?”

Ye Xuan was forced to tilt his head back, but his eyes, black as ink, remained chillingly empty.

He looked at Lu Yanchen from such close range with an utterly indifferent expression. The corner of his mouth even curled into the faintest hint of mockery.

Ye Xuan’s voice was soft, yet it carried a bone-chilling coldness. “If the whole world knows that I’m madly in love with her, then why don’t I know it myself?”

Lu Yanchen froze.

He stared fixedly into Ye Xuan’s eyes.

At first, he had assumed Ye Xuan was merely forcing himself to hold on, pretending to be calm.

But in Ye Xuan’s eyes, he saw no pain, no jealousy, and not even the slightest trace of feigned strength.

“You…”

A flicker of inexplicable panic passed through Lu Yanchen’s heart, but he immediately suppressed it.

He snorted coldly and violently flung Ye Xuan’s head aside. “Stop pretending! You must be suffering horribly inside, right? Your heart is bleeding, isn’t it? You just don’t dare admit that you’ve lost!”

Ye Xuan slowly rested his head against the cold stone wall. As the chains rattled softly, he shook his head as though looking at a hopeless idiot.

“I have never loved her. What suffering could there be?”

His voice echoed through the dark prison, carrying a coldness stripped of all humanity. “I merely treated her as a stepping stone to help me climb the Great Dao. As for whether a tool is chaste or not, do you really think I would care?”

Lu Yanchen looked as though he had just heard the most ridiculous statement in the world. Pointing at Ye Xuan, he once again burst into raucous laughter, laughing so hard that tears nearly streamed from his eyes.

“Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!”

Lu Yanchen regarded Ye Xuan with contempt. “You loved Qing Xuanyin so pathetically that the entire world knows you were nothing more than her lapdog!”

“Now that I’ve stolen the woman you love, you’ve actually made up a lie that even a three-year-old wouldn’t believe just to preserve your pitiful dignity? Ye Xuan, you’re truly pathetic beyond words!”

Yet Ye Xuan did not argue any further.

He merely looked at Lu Yanchen.

“Lu Yanchen, you’re truly pitiful.”

Ye Xuan shook his head, his expression indifferent. “You schemed and plotted, pretending to be ill, playing the victim, framing others, and even going so far as to collude with demonic cultivators. You worked so hard for so long, believing you had manipulated everyone like puppets in the palm of your hand. But in the end, you were destined to be a complete and utter loser.”

“Whereas I, Ye Xuan, am destined to be the final victor.”

“Bullshit!”

Those words struck directly at the most sensitive and insecure place in Lu Yanchen’s heart.

Although he had gained control of Qing Xuanyin, deep down, he had always been plagued by a lingering unease.

Because he knew that everything he had was built on lies!

Lu Yanchen roared furiously like a rabid dog whose tail had been stepped on. “Qing Xuanyin belongs to me! Her body is mine! Her heart is mine too! Who the hell do you think you are? Look at you now—you’re less a man than a monster! What could you possibly use to beat me?”

Faced with Lu Yanchen’s hysterical rage, Ye Xuan remained completely unmoved.

He even spoke in a calm, almost sermon-like tone, as if taking pity on him. “Lu Yanchen, do you know that in ancient times, there was a Demon Venerable who shook the heavens and all the realms? The world called him the ‘Emotion-Refining Demon Venerable.’”

Lu Yanchen furrowed his brows, unable to understand why Ye Xuan would bring up an ancient Demon Venerable at a time like this.

Ye Xuan paid no attention to his reaction and continued speaking to himself. “The Emotion-Refining Demon Venerable used the Dao of Emotion to suppress all other Daos. He could manipulate every desire in the world, making countless saintesses and immortal maidens willingly die for him, while countless mighty experts became ensnared by love and suffered cultivation deviation. What do you think he relied on?”

Ye Xuan’s gaze slowly focused on Lu Yanchen’s twisted face. Each word struck the soul like a heavy hammer.

“He did not rely on ‘emotion.’”

“On the contrary, he relied on the fact that he himself possessed no ‘emotion’ at all.”

The temperature inside the dungeon plunged to freezing point.

Ye Xuan calmly stated an exceedingly cruel truth. “Only by severing all emotions and desires within yourself, placing yourself outside the game, can you regard the ‘emotions’ of the world as a resource—as a weapon. The moment you develop genuine feelings, you become a prisoner trapped within the formation, a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.”

“I do not love Qing Xuanyin. I never have.”

Ye Xuan looked straight into Lu Yanchen’s eyes, his voice carrying a suffocating blend of rationality and coldness. “Because I don’t love her, every act of charity she showed me, every ounce of guilt she felt, even the smallest bit of affection she gave me out of pity—all of it was pure profit to me.”

“All I ever invested was cheap companionship and an act.”

Upon hearing such horrifying words, Lu Yanchen’s pupils contracted. Then, as if trying to conceal the fear rising within him, he once again broke into arrogant laughter.

“Hahaha! You’ve completely lost your mind!”

Lu Yanchen pointed at Ye Xuan’s nose and cursed, “That self-deceiving nonsense of yours might fool you, but no one else! Stop comforting yourself with this pathetic story!”

“I’m about to marry Qing Xuanyin! When we retire to the bridal chamber, I’ll personally strip off her wedding dress and take her virginity!”

“I’ll make her writhe beneath me in pleasure, and I’ll make her completely my woman—completely mine!”

Lu Yanchen stared fiercely into Ye Xuan’s eyes, trying to catch even the slightest trace of anger or jealousy. “Are you really going to sit there and watch the woman you guarded for a hundred years be defiled by me?”

Yet Lu Yanchen was destined to be disappointed.

Not only did Ye Xuan fail to become angry, he even slowly closed his eyes. His tone was as relaxed as if he were discussing an insignificant transaction.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s nothing but a shell. If you like it, then take it. You can soil this tool’s body, while I…”

Ye Xuan’s eyes snapped open, and a cold light exploded in their depths.

“All I want is her cultivation. And the Dao Fruit she’ll condense when she breaks through to become a True Immortal in the future!”

“You…”

Looking into Ye Xuan’s eyes—utterly devoid of humanity, filled with nothing but boundless greed and cruelty—Lu Yanchen finally felt a chill he could no longer suppress welling up from the depths of his heart.

He suddenly realized that the man before him was no longer the lovesick fool who had once allowed himself to be bullied by anyone.

Lu Yanchen had originally wanted to flaunt his victory before Ye Xuan and savor the pleasure of tormenting his rival in love.

But Ye Xuan’s complete indifference made him feel as though he were nothing more than a clown performing a one-man show.

An overwhelming sense of frustration and humiliation instantly drowned Lu Yanchen’s reason.

“I’ll make you keep pretending! I’ll make you act like you don’t care!”

Lu Yanchen lost all patience—and with it, the grace of a victor.

With a furious roar, he charged forward like a street thug and began raining a savage barrage of punches and kicks upon Ye Xuan, who was bound tightly by chains.