The Infatuated Sword

Bai Qiangu and the Azure Emperor exchanged a glance.

The two women who, only moments ago, had wanted nothing more than to tear each other apart now saw the same despair and sorrow reflected in each other’s eyes.

They had both once believed they were the most special one.

They had both believed that Ye Xuan still had a place for them in his heart. They had both believed that as long as they were humble enough and persistent enough, they could reclaim everything they had once possessed.

But now it seemed that neither of them had won.

There was no place for either of them in Ye Xuan’s eyes.

“Good… good…”

Bai Qiangu gave a tragic smile, wiped away her tears, and turned to walk toward the mountain gate.

Her back was ramrod straight. Her crimson dress snapped in the morning wind, yet her figure carried an indescribable desolation.

The Azure Emperor, meanwhile, took a long, lingering look at Ye Xuan. Her once cold and proud eyes were now filled with shattered despair.

She parted her lips, wanting to say something, but in the end, not a single word came out.

She turned around and took one step, then another, then a third…

Every step felt as though she were walking across a blade, the pain so intense that she could barely breathe.

How she wished Ye Xuan would call out to her—even if he only spoke her name, even if he merely spared her a glance.

But the instant she turned away, she saw Ye Xuan lower his head and say something gently to Ying’er beside him.

The tenderness in his gaze had once belonged to her alone. Now, he had given it to another woman.

It felt as though an invisible hand had crushed her heart. The pain made her entire body spasm.

She did not dare look any longer and fled from this place that had broken her heart.

Silence returned to the plaza.

Ye Xuan watched the two women disappear into the distance, his face utterly expressionless.

After a long while, he finally spoke, his voice frighteningly calm. “Ying’er, Jiuhuang, let’s go inside.”

“Mm.” Ying’er nodded obediently, then linked her arm with his and walked toward the inner hall.

Ye Jiuhuang followed behind them, but her footsteps faltered slightly.

She glanced back in the direction where the Azure Emperor had disappeared. A complicated emotion flashed through her cold eyes, but she said nothing.

She withdrew her gaze and hurried to catch up with Ye Xuan, naturally slipping her other arm through his.

The figures of the three vanished at the end of the white jade plaza.

Meanwhile, in the distance, the Azure Emperor stumbled out through the mountain gate of the Sword God Palace.

Once she had finally left everyone’s sight, she could no longer hold herself up. Her knees gave way, and she collapsed beneath an ancient tree beside the mountain path.

She curled into a ball, burying her face between her knees as she released a muffled sob, like that of a wounded beast.

“Husband… husband… I was wrong… I truly know that I was wrong…”

Her cries echoed along the empty mountain path, but they could never reach that man’s ears.

The exquisite die in her hand emitted a warm, gentle immortal radiance, answering her heart-wrenching cries. Yet that response only made her suffer more.

At last, she understood that some mistakes could never be made right.

Some people could never be won back.

No matter how many tears she shed, no matter how much torment she endured, no matter how many years she waited…

She would never again find the young man who had once smiled at her so gently beneath the peach blossom trees.

She had pushed him away with her own hands. She had personally sent him down a path of ruin.

The fate she had now fallen into was nothing more than what she deserved.

And yet, even so, she still could not accept it.

She still wanted to remain by Ye Xuan’s side. Even if she could only watch him from afar, even if she could only guard him humbly from beside him, she would have been willing.

But now, even that most pitiful of wishes had become an unattainable dream.

She slumped against the ancient tree as tears silently slid down her cheeks. Her once peerless beauty, a face that had captivated countless people, was now as pale as paper and filled with despair.

On the other side, Bai Qiangu stood at the edge of the sea of clouds outside the Sword God Palace, gazing at the rolling clouds below.

Her face was pale, and her eyes flickered with resentment and unwillingness to yield. Demonic energy surged violently around her, staining the clouds beneath her feet as black as ink.

“Azure Emperor… Ye Jiuhuang… Ying’er… You all deserve to die!”

She ground her teeth and hissed, her eyes filled with madness and jealousy. Yet before her words had even faded, tears spilled from her eyes.

“But… husband… why… why won’t you even look at me a little more…”

She raised her hand and slammed her fist into the bluestone beside her. The stone, hard as iron, shattered with a crack and turned into dust that filled the air. But the pain in her heart did not lessen in the slightest.

At last, she understood that the sins she had committed were far more grievous than she had imagined.

The status of a mere concubine was nowhere near enough to atone for what she had done to Ye Xuan.

But she would not give up.

Even if she had to use every means at her disposal, even if she had to scatter all the cultivation she had accumulated in her lifetime, even if she had to plunge the entire world into the flames of war…

She would make Ye Xuan fall in love with her again.

She, Bai Qiangu, would never admit defeat.

The morning breeze swept past, lifting fallen leaves from the ground and sending them whirling outside the Sword God Palace. The green mountains remained unchanged, the clouds still drifted and curled, and the Sword God Palace was still brightly decorated, radiating a festive atmosphere everywhere.

But that joy had nothing to do with them.

The man they loved was about to become someone else’s groom.

And they had completely lost even the right to stand at his side.

Perhaps this was fate’s cruelest punishment for them.

Not death. Not destruction.

But having to watch helplessly as the person they loved most took another woman’s hand and entered the wedding hall, while they did not even have a place where they could weep and plead their case.

And that was precisely what Ye Xuan wanted.

He wanted them to remain lucid and alive, enduring day after day and night after night of torment a thousand times more painful than death.

Only then would it go a little way toward repaying the blood he had shed, the suffering he had endured, and the dignity he had lost in the dungeon during his previous life.

Early the next morning,

Ye Xuan stood on the white jade plaza, preparing to take Ying’er out for a stroll.

Just then,

a roar like a peal of thunder suddenly tore through the morning tranquility of the Sword God Palace.

“Ye Jiuhuang, why have you treated me this way? Why are you marrying Ye Xuan?”

Ye Xuan stopped and slowly raised his head, looking toward the source of the voice.

A streak of azure sword light shot across the horizon, moving with astonishing speed.

The sword light tore through the clouds, leaving a long white trail across the azure sky.

When it descended before the mountain gate of the Sword God Palace, it transformed into the figure of a man.

The man wore a tattered blue robe covered in sword marks and dried bloodstains.

His features should have been handsome and striking, but now they were twisted beyond recognition. His eyes were bloodshot, and a crazed obsession burned in his pupils, like a dying beast making one final struggle.

The sword qi around him was chaotic and frenzied, surging violently one moment and weakening the next.

His cultivation was clearly at the peak of the Tribulation Transcendence Realm, yet he radiated an indescribable air of misery and madness.

Standing atop the bluestone before the mountain gate, he stared fixedly at Ye Jiuhuang, his eyes filled with possessiveness and unwillingness to accept defeat.

“Ye Jiuhuang… Ye Jiuhuang… Why would you marry this good-for-nothing?” His voice was hoarse, and every word carried the heart-wrenching pain of a love gone mad. “I’ve waited for you for thousands of years! For your sake, I abandoned my sect’s inheritance, cast aside my family’s bloodline, and gave up the chance to become an immortal! How could you marry someone else?”

Ye Xuan narrowed his eyes slightly, preparing to speak.

But Ying’er suddenly tugged lightly at his sleeve. A look of realization appeared on her delicate, lovely face.

“So it’s him,” Ying’er whispered.

Ye Xuan glanced at her in surprise, a trace of confusion in his eyes. “Who is he?”

Ying’er pressed her lips together and lowered her voice further. “While I was helping out in the Sword God Palace’s kitchens recently, I overheard several old servants talking about him.”

“His name is Gu Jingchen, and he’s known as the ‘Lovestruck Sword.’ Supposedly, thousands of years ago, he caught a distant glimpse of Sister Jiuhuang at an Immortal Dao Assembly. That single glance left him bewitched—he fell in love with her at first sight.”

She paused before continuing, “Afterward, he went to the Sword God Palace and confessed his feelings to Sister Jiuhuang in front of countless disciples. He was utterly deranged in his declarations, even claiming that he would sever all worldly ties for her and scatter every bit of his cultivation.”

“Sister Jiuhuang flew into a rage and struck him with a single sword, blasting him straight from the gates of the Sword God Palace to a point a hundred li away.”

“That strike nearly cost him his life. He spent three thousand years recovering in his cave abode, and everyone assumed he had already died. No one expected him to show up again.”

At this point, a look of disgust flashed through Ying’er’s eyes. “He’s incredibly stubborn, like a piece of dog-skin plaster that just won’t come off. Sister Jiuhuang never once looked at him properly, from beginning to end, yet he foolishly convinced himself that he and Sister Jiuhuang shared some kind of special bond.”

Ye Xuan frowned slightly upon hearing this.

His gaze settled on the crazed man as he carefully examined him.

A cultivator at the peak of the Tribulation Transcendence Realm would normally be quite formidable. Yet the aura surrounding this man was chaotic, his sword intent disordered, and his Nascent Soul unstable. It was obvious that his old injuries had never healed, and that he had suffered new ones on top of them. His cultivation was nowhere near its former peak.

A cultivator of considerable talent had ruined himself, turning into something barely recognizable as human, all for the sake of a woman who had never even looked at him properly.

What kind of infatuation was this?

It was nothing more than utterly foolish obsession.