The Massacre of the Joyful Union Sect

A streak of flowing light sent Ye Xuan flying, shielding the dying Ye Qingcheng.

Ye Xuan was smashed heavily against the wall, all his ribs broken, but as he coughed up blood and looked at the mangled Ye Qingcheng on the ground, he revealed an expression of extreme regret.

"What a pity... The poison wasn't potent enough. If there was just one more breath of time, even the gods wouldn't be able to save you."

Ye Qingcheng lay in a pool of blood, her body riddled with wounds.

Her cultivation had instantly regressed by decades due to the severe injuries and lethal poison.

But as she looked at Ye Xuan's regretful eyes, her heart completely shattered into dust.

After this assassination attempt, Ye Qingcheng changed.

She no longer naively hoped for Ye Xuan's love, but her obsession became even more mad and twisted.

She did not kill Ye Xuan.

She found a magical treasure named the Nine-Turn Exquisite Coffin.

The interior of this coffin formed its own separate space, yet it was narrow and cramped, only able to accommodate one person lying down.

The walls of the coffin were carved with restrictive spells that not only imprisoned one's cultivation but also bound the soul.

"Since you want to kill me, then I will lock you up."

Standing before the coffin, Ye Qingcheng's face was as pale as paper. With her injuries unhealed, she looked exceptionally desolate and beautiful, yet the light in her eyes was chilling. "I will keep you by my side, never leaving you for a single step. You will watch me live, and watch me grow stronger."

Ye Xuan was locked inside.

To prevent him from committing suicide, Ye Qingcheng cast the Concentric Soul-Locking Curse on him, making it impossible for him to take his own life.

Years began to pass.

Every few days, Ye Qingcheng would open a crack in the coffin and speak to Ye Xuan.

"Husband, today I annihilated an orthodox sect. They cursed me as a demoness, are you happy?"

"Husband, I found a new Dao companion. He possesses an innate Pure Yang physique, but he is not as good as you."

Ye Xuan could not move; only his mouth worked. Every time the coffin opened, all that came out were his vicious curses:

"Slut."

"Why aren't you dead yet?"

"It seems your new paramour hasn't served you well enough, leaving you with free time to come and disgust me."

Listening to these insults, Ye Qingcheng felt as if a knife were twisting in her heart.

Later, to avoid hearing those curses, she directly cast a spell to seal Ye Xuan's mute acupoint.

From then on, Ye Xuan lost even the right to curse her.

In the blink of an eye, two hundred years passed.

Relying on her exceptional talent and ruthless plundering, Ye Qingcheng's cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds. Soul Formation, Void Refinement, Body Integration...

She became a notorious demoness in the Western Continent, and under her leadership, the Joyous Union Sect showed signs of becoming the leading faction of the demonic path.

Meanwhile, Ye Xuan remained a cripple at the Foundation Establishment realm.

He was growing old.

Although Ye Qingcheng had fed him countless life-extending pills, his lifespan was ultimately limited, and his resistance to the pills grew increasingly strong.

Ye Xuan's hair turned white, his skin sagged, and the fire of his life flickered like a candle in the wind.

Ye Xuan chose the most passive form of resistance, refusing to refine the medicinal efficacy. He wanted to let himself die of old age.

Ye Qingcheng panicked.

Looking at the dying old man in the coffin, a massive wave of terror swallowed her.

"What exactly do you want?"

She undid Ye Xuan's restrictions and dragged him out of the coffin. By now, she was a mighty expert at the Body Integration realm. A single furious roar from her could shatter mountains and rivers, yet it could not shake the heart of the dying old man before her.

"I am about to undergo my tribulation! As long as I break through to the Tribulation Transcendence realm, I can reshape your physical body, cleanse your marrow, and we can be together forever!" Ye Qingcheng cried out, like a helpless child.

Ye Xuan leaned against the corner of the wall, his cloudy eyes completely devoid of emotion. "Do you think it's possible for me to ever become your Dao companion?"

"As long as there is enough time! You will forget the hatred!" Ye Qingcheng roared.

"I don't have much time left." Ye Xuan sneered, his voice old and hoarse. "The life-extending pills you've been feeding me are useless now. Ye Qingcheng, you cannot keep me."

With tears in her eyes, Ye Qingcheng suddenly tore open her robes, revealing her jade-white, delicate body.

"Since the pills are useless, then we will dual cultivate!

I am at the Body Integration realm; my body is enough to extend your life by fifty years!

I want you to live!"

She threw herself at Ye Xuan.

Ye Xuan, who had been like a corpse all this time, suddenly burst forth with astonishing strength at this moment. He scrambled desperately backward, screaming shrilly:

"Don't! Don't touch me! I'll cultivate! I'll cultivate voluntarily! Don't dual cultivate with me!"

Ye Qingcheng froze. With her clothes half-undone, she stood stiffly in place, trembling from a mix of shame and humiliation.

The man before her would rather give up the release of death than touch her even once.

"W-why?" she asked in a trembling voice.

Ye Xuan closed his eyes as two lines of clear tears flowed down his face, yet a manic smile appeared on it. "Because you are dirty, Ye Qingcheng. You are too dirty. Every time you change men, I feel an extra stench on your body. If you touch me with this body, I would rather my soul be scattered and completely destroyed!"

These words of his were more ruthless than the seven or eight stab wounds from back then.

Ye Qingcheng stood dumbfounded for a long time before suddenly throwing her head back and laughing maniacally. She laughed until tears streamed down her face, her laughter exuding a chilling demonic aura.

"Good... Good! You say I'm dirty? Husband, you wait here. I'll go wash myself clean right now."

The forbidden grounds of the Joyous Union Sect were deathly silent.

Only the Nine-Turn Exquisite Coffin, carved full of restrictions, stood solitarily on the cold jade bed.

Ever since Ye Xuan uttered the words "you are dirty," Ye Qingcheng had not left this secret chamber.

Like a soulless puppet, she knelt by the long-dried spirit spring, washing her body over and over again.

The water was cold, but the bone-piercing chill did not bring her clarity; instead, it made her skin turn a sickly pale blue.

She forcefully scrubbed every inch of her skin with special diamond sand. Her originally tender, jade-like skin was scrubbed raw red, then broken, and finally oozed beads of blood.

Bloody water dyed the spirit spring red, only to be diluted by fresh water.

"Is it dirty? Is it dirty here?"

Ye Qingcheng muttered to herself, her eyes terrifyingly hollow. Her nails dug deeply into the flesh of her arms, as if some invisible filth was hidden there.

"This spot was touched by Elder Wang... that old thing..."

"Riiip!"

She actually tore off a piece of her own flesh and skin! Blood spurted out, but she didn't even frown. Instead, she revealed a sense of liberating pleasure.

"It's gone. The skin is gone, so it's not dirty anymore."

If an outsider were to see this scene, their liver and gallbladder would surely shatter from fright.

How was this the peerlessly beautiful Holy Maiden of the Joyous Union Sect in the cultivation world?

This was clearly a malicious ghost wearing human skin.

Ye Qingcheng was torturing herself.

Because she could not torture the man lying in the coffin.

Ye Xuan was in the coffin just a few steps away. Although his five senses were sealed by the restrictions, his words, "I think you are dirty," were like countless venomous insects, gnawing at Ye Qingcheng's heart every single moment.

Even in her dreams, she could see Ye Xuan standing up high, looking at her with the gaze of someone looking at trash, before turning away and leaving.

"Husband!"

Ye Qingcheng suddenly stood up from the water, her body covered in scratch marks and blood. Her long hair clung wetly to her back, looking exactly like a water ghost crawling out of hell.

She stumbled toward the coffin and pressed her face against the cold coffin wall, her voice trembling and lowly:

"Husband, I'm washing... I'm really washing. Don't despise me. Please, don't despise me..."

Inside the coffin, there was dead silence.

This dead silence made Ye Qingcheng feel suffocated.

She suddenly realized that merely washing her skin and flesh was not enough.

Her cultivation base, her cultivation method, her Nascent Soul, and even her soul itself were all branded with the mark of the Hehuan Sect, reeking of the sickening aura of dual cultivation.

"Power... I need power."

The tears in Ye Qingcheng's eyes evaporated instantly, replaced by two clusters of burning ghost fire.

"As long as I become strong enough to reverse the rules, I can reconstruct my physical body, and I can sever everything from the past! The Tribulation Stage... yes, as long as I reach the Tribulation Stage, I can completely shed my mortal body and be reborn!"

She spun around abruptly, walking toward the mountains of pills and rare treasures piled deep within the hidden chamber.

Those were the accumulated foundations of the Hehuan Sect over thousands of years, meant to be used slowly and steadily over time.

But at this moment, Ye Qingcheng was like a starving beast. She grabbed handfuls of ten-thousand-year-old spirit herbs containing berserk energy, fierce medicinal pills, and even highly toxic forbidden pills, stuffing them all into her mouth.

Crunch, crunch.

The sound of chewing echoed in the hidden chamber.

The violent medicinal efficacy exploded within her body. Her meridians shattered inch by inch, only to be forcefully restructured by her sheer obsession.

She was cultivating in a suicidal manner.

She was treating her own body as a vessel for refining Gu.

Three months later.

The sky above the Hehuan Sect suddenly darkened.

These were no ordinary dark clouds, but a mass of red clouds as thick and viscous as blood plasma.

The spiritual energy within a radius of ten thousand miles was forcefully drained empty. Cultivators across the entire Western Continent looked up in terror toward the direction of the Hehuan Sect.

"What kind of tribulation is this?"

"Blood clouds bearing down on the city, this is heavenly wrath! It is the omen of a great demon being born!"

Ye Qingcheng broke out of her seclusion.

She was still wearing that red dress, but at this moment, the red dress was so bright that it looked as if it would drip blood at any second.

Her aura was extremely unstable, sometimes as dead and silent as an abyss, sometimes as violent as a volcano.

Stepping barefoot through the void, she looked up at the Eye of the Heavenly Dao that was slowly opening in the firmament above.

That giant eye was filled with disgust and killing intent.

Ye Qingcheng's cultivation base, exchanged through devouring, plundering, and even falling into the demonic path, was intolerable to heaven and earth.

Boom!

The first bolt of lightning fell.

It was not silver, but a blackish-red blood lightning. Carrying an aura that could corrode all things, it viciously struck Ye Qingcheng's body.

Her flesh was torn open, and the smell of burning filled the air.

Ye Qingcheng was blasted down hundreds of feet, violently coughing up a mouthful of blood.

But she smiled.

She threw her head back, her face covered in blood, and laughed maniacally at the heavens: "Do you also think I am dirty? Even the lightning tribulation wants to destroy me?"

"Unfortunately, you cannot kill me. My life is kept by him to torture, do you think you are worthy to take it?"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The lightning tribulation was enraged. Tens of thousands of blood lightning bolts poured down like a waterfall, leveling half of the Hehuan Sect's main peak.

Ye Qingcheng danced in the sea of lightning.

She did not defend; she attacked.

Using her body as a sword, she forcefully clashed against the heavenly might.

Every lightning strike sent her flesh and blood flying, revealing ghastly white bones, but in the next second, demonic energy surged, and her flesh and blood regenerated.

This was no longer crossing a tribulation; this was a death by a thousand cuts.

But Ye Qingcheng could not feel the pain.

Because compared to Ye Xuan's cold gaze, the pain of heavenly lightning piercing her body was practically like a tickle.

She roared amidst the thunder, her voice shrill and mournful: "Ye Xuan! Look! I am risking my life for you! Besides me, who else in this world could go this far for you!"

The final bolt of lightning tribulation transformed into a blood-colored azure dragon, opening its massive maw to devour her.

This was a certain-death situation.

A trace of madness flashed through Ye Qingcheng's eyes. She did not summon any magical treasures, but instead looked back at the coffin she had protected under layers of formations.

"Husband, wait for me."

She opened her arms and took the initiative to welcome the azure dragon.

Inside her body, that demonic heart which had shattered and restructured countless times erupted with a boom.

She was actually devouring the lightning tribulation!

She opened her mouth and viciously bit into the azure dragon's neck, swallowing the essence of the thunder raw like a madwoman.

"Break... for me!"

With a furious roar that shattered the firmament, the blood dragon wailed and dissipated.

A terrifying coercion belonging to a powerhouse at the Tribulation Stage instantly swept across the entire Western Continent.

Heaven and earth wailed, and a torrential rain of blood fell.

Ye Qingcheng floated in mid-air, completely naked, with only a black robe formed from demonic energy barely covering her body. Her skin had become crystal clear, as if she had truly gained a new life.

But her eyes had completely turned into two pools of dead, silent black water, devoid of a single trace of humanity.

The moment she successfully crossed the tribulation, the Hehuan Sect boiled over with excitement.

All the elders, disciples, and even handymen knelt on the ground, shouting loudly, "Long live the Sect Master!"

They thought the Hehuan Sect was about to usher in its most glorious era.

The First Elder, a powerhouse at the Body Integration Realm who had once personally taught Ye Qingcheng charm arts hand-by-hand, was so excited that old tears streamed down his face. He flew forward to congratulate her: "Congratulations, Sect Master! Felicitations, Sect Master! Now that the Sect Master has achieved great mastery in divine arts, our Hehuan Sect will surely..."

"First Elder."

Ye Qingcheng's voice was very light and gentle, just like when she was still an ignorant young girl back in the day.

The First Elder froze. He looked up and met those pitch-black eyes.

He saw no joy within them, only an endless, chilling calmness.

"Sect Master?"

Ye Qingcheng slowly raised her hand, lightly tapping her fingertip against the center of the First Elder's brow: "Back then, it was you who arranged the first man for me to cultivate with, right?"

A chill ran down the First Elder's spine. He forced a smile and said, "That was for the grand enterprise of the sect, for your cultivation..."

"You were the one who made me dirty."

Ye Qingcheng said softly.

Splat!

A soft sound rang out.

The First Elder's head exploded like a watermelon.

Red and white matter splashed all over Ye Qingcheng, sticking to her cheek, making her look bewitching and bizarre.

The entire scene fell dead silent.

Hundreds of thousands of disciples knelt on the ground, trembling all over, unable to believe the scene unfolding before their eyes.

Ye Qingcheng stuck out her tongue, licking the fresh blood from the corner of her mouth, revealing a breathtakingly beautiful yet bloodcurdling smile.

"Today is a day of great joy for me. I need to clean up the house a bit to welcome my husband."

The slaughter began.

This was no battle; it was a one-sided massacre.

Having just crossed the tribulation, Ye Qingcheng already possessed the strength of the peak of the Tribulation Stage.

In the Hehuan Sect, she was practically unstoppable.

"Protector Zhang, you once served as my cultivation cauldron. I really dislike the way you look at me."

A flash of blood light passed, and Protector Zhang was sliced in half at the waist.

"Senior Brother Li, back then you pursued me and gave me a true-love knot. You deserve to die too."

Before Senior Brother Li even had time to beg for mercy, his essence blood was sucked dry by demonic energy.

Ye Qingcheng strolled through the crowd.

She had a reason for every single person she killed.

Even if it was just a handyman who had taken an extra glance at her, or a maid who had once been responsible for washing her clothes.

"You have seen me when I was unclean."

"You know my past."

"You all deserve to die."

Panic finally erupted.

Her former fellow sect members began to flee, but within the domain of a Tribulation Stage powerhouse, who could possibly escape?

With a wave of Ye Qingcheng's sleeve, countless blood threads shot out like venomous snakes, precisely piercing through the heart of every target.

Those dual cultivation partners she had once regarded as heaven's chosen, those young and handsome faces, were nothing more than piles of disgusting, rotting meat in her eyes right now.

"Do not... do not kill me! Qingcheng! I truly love you!"

The last surviving Dao companion, who was also the one with the highest talent, was currently kneeling on the ground, hugging Ye Qingcheng's leg with tears and snot streaming down his face.

Ye Qingcheng looked down at him.

This face had once been pleasing to her eyes.

But now, her mind was filled only with Ye Xuan's face, twisted in disgust.

"You love me?" Ye Qingcheng tilted her head, her eyes clouded with confusion. "But my husband said I am dirty. If you love me, that means you are dirty too."

"Since you are all dirty, let's wash you clean together."

She gently pressed her palm down.

In an instant, the person was reduced to a puddle of bloody water.

This massacre lasted for a full month.

The ninety-nine peaks of the Hehuan Sect were dyed a dark crimson with blood. Corpses piled up like mountains, and the stench of blood soared into the sky, lingering endlessly.

Sixty percent of the Hehuan Sect's population perished.

Any male who had even the slightest connection with Ye Qingcheng was killed without exception.

Even the female elders who knew of her past were silenced by her one by one.

The once prosperous and decadent Hehuan Sect had now become a living hell.

As the sun set in the west, the fading light was as red as blood.

In the entire plaza of the Hehuan Sect, Ye Qingcheng was the only one left standing.

The wind blew past, sweeping up a pungent stench of blood.

Ye Qingcheng did not care about the corpses littering the ground.

She carefully took out the Nine-Revolution Exquisite Coffin from her spatial storage.

Her movements were incredibly gentle, as if it were the most precious glazed artifact in the world, terrified of chipping it even slightly.

She placed the coffin on a high platform formed from a pile of corpses.

Then, she knelt beside the coffin, using the very hands that had just slaughtered tens of thousands to gently caress the coffin lid.

Her hands were still stained with warm blood, leaving glaring fingerprints on the black wood of the coffin.

"Husband, are you awake?"

Ye Qingcheng's voice was so tender it seemed to drip with water. She pressed her cheek against the coffin, a maidenly, bashful blush adorning her face.

"I have good news to tell you. Our home is clean now."

"Those who have touched me, looked at me, or even gossiped about us—I've killed them all."

"Look, am I a bit cleaner now?"

There was no response from within the coffin.

Ye Xuan still lay there quietly. Sealed by restrictive arrays, he could not hear the outside world, but in Ye Qingcheng's heart, he was smiling at her, praising her for a job well done.

"I know, this still isn't enough."

Ye Qingcheng stood up, her red dress snapping sharply in the blood-scented wind.

She turned around, her gaze passing over the devastated Hehuan Sect and casting toward the distant west.

Over there was the territory of the Western Continent Alliance.

There were countless righteous cultivators there, countless people who had once despised and spat upon her.

And there were countless insiders who had seen her former promiscuous self.

"Husband, you once said I was a woman anyone could have."

The tenderness in Ye Qingcheng's eyes instantly transformed into monstrous killing intent and overwhelming dominance.

"Then I will kill everyone in this world, kill until only you and I are left."

"When that time comes, who will remember that I am dirty? Who will dare to say I am dirty?"

She fiercely waved her sleeve, and a ten-thousand-foot-long blood-red sword aura tore through the clouds, pointing straight toward the west.

"Pass down my decree!"

She ordered the empty plaza. The remaining, shivering disciples of the Hehuan Sect crawled out of the ruins and prostrated themselves on the ground.

"Assemble all disciples and set off for the Western Continent!"

"I will use the skulls of all the experts in the Western Continent to build a towering monument of death!"

"I will use the millions of miles of the Western Continent's lands as my dowry!"

"This time, I will grandly and gloriously marry my husband, Ye Xuan!"

The disciples trembled as they received their orders.

Looking at the maddened red silhouette on the high platform, their hearts held nothing but endless terror.

The Ye Qingcheng who used to be so socially adept and resourceful was dead.

The one living now was a lunatic who, for the sake of a single man, wanted to drag the entire world down to the grave with her.

Ye Qingcheng lifted the massive coffin onto her back once again.

The heavy immortal artifact pressed down on her back, yet it brought her an incomparable sense of peace.

This was her entire world.

She walked down the mountain of corpses and the sea of blood step by step, leaving a bloody footprint with every pace.

She turned her head slightly and whispered softly to the coffin on her back:

"Husband, we are going to kill people. After we finish killing, we will get married. We will have so, so many children..."

"This time, you won't be able to escape."

"For all lifetimes, through the highest heavens and the deepest underworld, you are mine."

The setting sun stretched her shadow very, very long.

The shadow twisted, resembling a massive cage that trapped both herself and the man whose heart had long since died.