The Utterly Crumbled Night City

The setting sun was the color of blood.

Ye Qingcheng's pupils shrank violently in this moment, then dilated.

She stared fixedly at the man before her who had become a stranger, as if knowing him for the first time.

The outcome was sealed.

No matter how humble she became, no matter what heaven-defying cultivation she possessed, she could not salvage a heart that was already dead and hated her to the bone.

"Good... good..."

Ye Qingcheng suddenly stopped crying. The grief on her face faded in an instant, replaced by a terrifying, deathly stillness.

She slowly raised her hand and wiped the tear tracks from her cheeks. Her movements were as elegant as if she were touching up her makeup, but deep in her eyes, a cluster of hollow and mad ghost fire ignited.

"Since you want to die, since you hate me to the bone... then I will compensate you."

She suddenly smiled.

The smile was bleak yet peerlessly beautiful, more heartbreaking than weeping.

"Husband, you are right. No one loves me anymore. This world is lonely and cold; what meaning is there for me to live?"

She took a half step forward, her red robes fluttering like a soon-to-wither spider lily. "Whether it is the netherworld or the Yellow Springs, I will haunt you. You think I am dirty, so I will wash myself in the River of Forgetfulness. I will wash for ten thousand years, for a hundred thousand years, until you no longer despise me! We are destined to be a ghost couple!"

Before her voice faded, ruthlessness flashed in her eyes.

The terrifying pressure of the Tribulation Realm suddenly erupted. Without hesitation, she raised her right hand. In her palm, pitch-black destructive spiritual energy compressed madly, carrying the resolution to shatter the void as she viciously slapped it toward the crown of her own head!

This strike left no leeway; it was enough to destroy her body and soul, leaving her unable to ever reincarnate.

However, in the instant the palm wind was about to shatter her forehead.

"Buzz!"

An extremely bizarre blood-red light erupted without warning from the deepest depths of her soul. It was not a protective spiritual light, but rather a vicious shackle.

The red light instantly transformed into an indestructible barrier. Not only did it forcefully withstand her lethal strike, but it also erupted with a tyrannical rebounding force.

"Pfft!"

Ye Qingcheng was sent flying backward by the shock, spraying a mouthful of blood into the air, dyeing her robes red.

She fell to the ground, her face full of shock and bewilderment.

"What... happened? Why..."

She refused to believe it. Her fingertips gathered spiritual energy once more, attempting to reverse her meridians and sever her own heart meridian.

But the spiritual energy in her body seemed to possess an independent, evil consciousness. The moment the thought of "death" or "injury" surfaced in her sea of consciousness, the spiritual energy would riot like a mad dog, forcefully protecting her heart meridians, and even healed the shock injuries she had just suffered at a sickening speed.

She wanted to die, but she could not even injure herself.

"Heh... hehehe..."

Ye Xuan looked at her terrified state, unable to find death, and the final sinister laugh of his life rolled from his throat.

His laughter was hoarse and broken, like an old bellows, yet filled with the cruel satisfaction of a great vengeance achieved.

"Silly woman..."

Ye Xuan's figure began to blur. He looked at her, the light in his eyes colder than a blade edge. "Did you think 'Qingcheng's Love'... was really just a suicide pact spell for us to live and die together? If it were truly that beautiful, how could it be worthy of the name 'Qingcheng'?"

"I planted this spell into the origin of your soul."

"I used my eternal damnation, the complete dispersion of my soul as the price, to cast a... curse on you."

Ye Qingcheng trembled violently. A chill originating from the depths of her soul instantly froze her blood. "What... curse?"

Ye Xuan took a deep breath. His body began to turn transparent, and specks of starlight drifted from his shattered body like fireflies. That was the sign of his soul disintegrating.

In the moment before he dissipated, he used the gentlest tone to pronounce the most vicious punishment in the world:

"I curse you—to be immortal, to live forever."

"I curse you—to be unable to die when you wish it, and unable to truly live."

"All weapons in this world will avoid you like a scorpion, and the passage of time will not leave a single trace upon you. You will live on forever, forever maintaining this young skin you are so proud of, living in... a hell without me."

"No! Ye Xuan! You cannot do this to me!"

Ye Qingcheng went mad.

She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, trying to catch those drifting motes of light. Her fingertips swept through the void, but only caught a handful of desolate wind.

Half of Ye Xuan's body had already turned into a rain of light, dissipating in the wind.

His voice became ethereal and hollow, yet every word still pierced the heart.

"Who wants to meet you in the netherworld?"

"I am going to see my first wife, and the unborn child who died by your hands... They are waiting for me. It is very clean there, very warm."

"And you?"

Ye Xuan's final gaze fell upon her peerlessly beautiful face. In his eyes, there was no love, no hate, only the ultimate disgust and disdain, as if looking at a pile of rotting garbage.

"A filthy thing like you... even if you went down to the eighteenth level of hell, you wouldn't be worthy of being with me!"

"Husband!"

Ye Qingcheng let out a heart-rending roar, her voice as mournful as a weeping cuckoo.

She desperately stretched out her arms, wanting to keep even the slightest trace of his aura.

"Bang."

The last speck of starlight shattered an inch from her fingertips.

Ye Xuan completely disappeared.

Not even a corpse was left behind, not even a remnant soul remained.

So clean, as if he had never existed in this filthy world.

Only an empty, bright red wedding robe remained, losing its support and collapsing limply into the black coffin.

Glaringly red, ironically red.

A deathly stillness fell between heaven and earth.

Only the wind whimpered, as if countless wronged souls were mocking her.

Ye Qingcheng maintained her grasping posture, kneeling before the empty coffin, her knuckles pale from exertion.

She stared blankly at that wedding robe. A few seconds ago, there was still a person there, still warmth, still a heartbeat.

Now, there was nothing.

"Gone?"

She looked around in bewilderment, her eyes like a lost child's. "Where did my husband go? Who saw my husband? He was just here..."

No one answered.

In the distance, the five Tribulation Realm experts who had been besieging them watched this scene, their hands that originally gripped their weapons slowly lowering.

The fear of the female demon was gone from their eyes, replaced by a bone-deep chill and pity.

Even as enemies, seeing this punishment that was a thousand times crueler than death, they couldn't help but feel terrified.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

After a brief silence, Ye Qingcheng suddenly clutched her head and let out an inhuman scream.

Her voice was mixed with despair, remorse, and madness, shaking the mountains and causing rocks to tumble.

"Crack."

That was the sound of her Dao Heart completely shattering, so crisp it set one's teeth on edge.

The terrifying Tribulation Realm aura on her body began to leak madly like a burst dam.

Her cultivation was rapidly dissipating, because the only reason that supported her demonic cultivation, supported her growing stronger, and supported her slaughtering the world—for Ye Xuan—was completely broken.

But bizarrely, no matter how much her cultivation fell, even if she fell to a mortal, her body remained as flawless as new, her skin like snow, and her appearance still peerlessly alluring.

The curse of "Qingcheng's Love" was taking effect.

It not only locked away her life, but also locked away her youth.

That was the most vicious adornment Ye Xuan had left for her.

"Let me die... I beg you, let me die..."

She frantically picked up the longsword on the ground. The blade glinted with a cold light. Without a shred of hesitation, she fiercely slashed it toward her tender neck.

Clang!

The moment the longsword touched her skin, it was as if it had struck unyielding metal and stone, automatically shattering into several pieces. The fragments grazed her cheek, failing to leave behind even a faint white mark.

Unreconciled, she gathered the last trace of residual spiritual energy within her body, intending to detonate her Nascent Soul and destroy herself.

Yet, the moment the spiritual energy condensed, it instantly dissipated. Instead, it transformed into a warm current that forcibly nourished her limbs and bones, leaving her brimming with vitality. She could not even manage to faint.

She stumbled toward the edge of the cliff and leaped into the abyss.

A gentle breeze from an unknown origin tenderly caught her. Like a lover's hand, it slowly lowered her back to the ground, not even allowing the hem of her dress to be soiled.

To Ye Qingcheng, this gentle wind was sharper than the blades of a thousand cuts and more scorching than the fires of purgatory.

This was the cage Ye Xuan had left behind.

A cage named "living."

There was nowhere to escape, and no path to death.

"Husband, you are so cruel... you are truly too cruel..."

Ye Qingcheng slumped weakly onto the ground, her hands desperately clutching that red wedding robe. It was as if she were grasping her final lifeline, or embracing the skeletal remains of her beloved.

She opened her mouth wide, her chest heaving violently, but she could no longer shed a single tear.

Her tears had run dry, replaced by tears of blood.

When the tears of blood also ran dry, all that remained was a hollow, beast-like whimper.

The setting sun finally vanished, and darkness devoured the earth.

All that remained was a breathtakingly beautiful woman in crimson, guarding an empty robe through the endless river of time, immortal and undying, living alone for ten thousand years.