You Say I Am a Prostitute

Ye Xuan let her hold him, but there was not a trace of warmth on his face.

He pinched her chin, looking at her tear-stained yet obsessively twisted face as if looking at an amusing toy.

"How interesting," he whispered softly, a hint of mockery in his tone. "To think that my constant threats of suicide, such childish tricks, could actually scare you like this?"

Ye Qingcheng's eyes were red. She looked up at him, her voice hoarse and earnest. "Because last time, you used this exact gentle tone to make me taste the greatest despair in this world."

Her trembling fingers caressed Ye Xuan's chest, feeling the powerful beating there. Her eyes were hollow and paranoid. "I can't forget... the way you smiled as you watched me break down... That kind of pain was worse than death."

"So, I beg you, Senior Brother... don't use 'Qingcheng's Love', don't kill yourself. As long as you are alive, even if you hate me, even if you torture me... I will gladly endure it."

Ye Xuan sneered in his heart. The threat of Qingcheng's Love worked even better than he had anticipated.

For a yandere, death was not the end; the other party's "self-destruction" was the greatest punishment for her.

That was an inner demon she could never heal.

He gently patted Ye Qingcheng's back, abyssal calculation flashing in his eyes, yet his tone softened:

"Rest assured, as long as you are obedient and don't force me to do things I don't want to do... I wouldn't bear to die either."

"I will be obedient! I promise I will be obedient!"

Ye Qingcheng eagerly promised, her tears once again wetting his clothes. She was like a child who had received candy, yet tasted poison within it, experiencing both pain and pleasure.

Outside the Listening Rain Pavilion, the fine, silk-like rain had unknowingly grown dense. The raindrops formed continuous lines, smashing against the emerald bamboo leaves with a rustling sound, as if countless wandering souls were weeping softly in the dark night.

A cold wind poured in through the half-open window lattice, causing the dim yellow candlelight inside the room to flicker erratically. It stretched the shadows of Ye Xuan and Ye Qingcheng extremely long, twisting and intertwining on the wall like a nightmare from which one could not awaken.

Ye Xuan suddenly let go of the hand that had been holding Ye Qingcheng.

The feigned warmth on his face receded like the tide, replaced by absolute rationality and chilling indifference.

He slowly stood up, walked to the window, and turned his back to Ye Qingcheng, looking at the scenery outside.

Ye Qingcheng's embrace was suddenly empty, the nostalgic warmth vanishing in an instant. She looked up in panic, like a puppy suddenly kicked away by its master, dazed and at a loss.

"Senior Brother...?" she called out cautiously, her voice trembling violently.

Ye Xuan did not turn around; he merely watched the curtain of rain quietly. After a long time, he finally spoke slowly. His voice echoed in the spacious room, carrying a heaviness and chill that had been suppressed for hundreds of years:

"Qingcheng, I have a question that has troubled my heart for a long time."

Ye Qingcheng trembled all over, an extremely ominous premonition instantly gripping her heart.

She swallowed hard and shuffled forward on her knees for two steps, trying to grasp the hem of Ye Xuan's clothes, but she shrank back in mid-air as if electrocuted.

"I once wanted to ask Xia Lengyue this question, and now, I want to ask you too."

Ye Xuan finally turned around and looked down at her from above. In his deep black eyes, undisguised disgust and ridicule surged. "Are you willing to answer?"

Ye Qingcheng's heart felt as if it were being fiercely crushed by an invisible giant hand, making it almost impossible to breathe.

She looked at Ye Xuan's icy gaze and instinctively felt fear, but her morbid obedience and her obsession with wanting to be forgiven forced her to nod.

"Senior Brother, please ask..." She forced a smile that was uglier than crying, her voice as thin as a gossamer thread. "As long as it is something Senior Brother wants to know, Qingcheng... will hide absolutely nothing."

Ye Xuan took a deep breath, the muscles on his face twitching slightly as if he was desperately suppressing the fury in his heart.

He abruptly took a step forward, grabbed Ye Qingcheng's chin, and forced her to look up and directly into his eyes.

"You and Xia Lengyue, you two cheap sluts!"

Ye Xuan said through gritted teeth, every word squeezed out from between his teeth like a poisoned blade. "You keep claiming that you love me. But when you cuckolded me, you didn't hesitate in the slightest!"

Hearing these words.

Ye Qingcheng's already pale face instantly drained of all color. Her pupils contracted violently, and she stiffened in place as if struck by lightning.

Ye Xuan's fingers suddenly exerted force, pinching her jawbone until it made a teeth-aching cracking sound, but he was completely oblivious to it. He just stared at her fixedly, his eyes full of brutality and bewilderment:

"I truly don't understand, what exactly is this so-called love of yours? Don't you think it's too contradictory?!"

"On one hand, you say you would even give up your life for me, but on the other hand, you moan in pleasure beneath other men! On one hand, you say I am the only one in your life, but on the other hand, you locked me in the abyss like a dog, making me watch you act like a slut tasted by ten thousand men up there! Is this your love?"

Ye Qingcheng's eyes widened, and pain completely submerged her like a tidal wave.

That past she was most unwilling to look back on, the past she most wanted to cover up with lies and self-delusion, was mercilessly torn open by Ye Xuan and exposed bloody in the air.

"No... it's not like that..."

She struggled violently, her hands tightly gripping Ye Xuan's wrist as tears rolled down madly like pearls from a broken string.

Her facial features twisted together due to extreme pain and the anxiety of rushing to defend herself.

"I did it to protect you!" she roared, her voice as mournful as a cuckoo weeping blood. "Under those circumstances, I had no choice! I really had no choice!"

"In a demonic sect like the Hehuan Sect, people eat people, and the Great Elder pressed down on my head like a mountain! If I didn't become stronger, if I didn't rely on those powerful men and dual-cultivate with them, I couldn't possibly survive! I couldn't possibly protect you!"

She cried heart-wrenchingly, trying to pour out all her grievances and all her helplessness, trying to exchange them for even the slightest shred of pity from Ye Xuan.

However, after listening to her tearful plea, Ye Xuan was not moved in the slightest.

He forcefully shook off his hand, throwing Ye Qingcheng viciously to the ground.

Ye Qingcheng fell onto the cold floor tiles. Before she could even scramble up, Ye Xuan's blade-like, cold voice sounded again, carrying a suffocating mockery:

"Protect me?"

Ye Xuan sneered and slowly squatted down, looking at Ye Qingcheng, who was slumped on the ground like a puddle of mud. "Don't you think using such methods to protect me is a bit too cruel to me?"

"You turned me into a joke! You made it so that every day and night, the moment I close my eyes, I can picture my wife rolling in the sheets with other men! You traded my dignity and my soul for cultivation base! And you call this protection?!"

Ye Qingcheng shook her head madly, her hair disheveled, looking like an absolute lunatic.

She crawled to Ye Xuan's feet on her knees, desperately hugging his calves, her nails digging deeply into his fabric.

"I had no choice... I couldn't help myself!"

She tilted her head up, her originally beautiful eyes now covered in terrifying bloodshot veins. "I didn't want to! I really didn't want to! Every time I was with them, all I thought about was you! I treated them as dead men, as tools for cultivation! Senior Brother, you have to believe me!"

"Heh... Hahahaha!"

Ye Xuan suddenly threw his head back and let out a wild, mournful laugh.

In the stormy night, this laughter sounded exceptionally chilling, making Ye Qingcheng's eardrums ache.

He abruptly stopped laughing and lowered his head. His eyes, burning with eerie green ghost fire, locked dead onto Ye Qingcheng.

"Good, what a great 'couldn't help yourself'!"

Ye Xuan enunciated every word through gritted teeth. "You dual cultivated with them because you couldn't help it, to gain cultivation power. Then..."

His voice suddenly softened, yet it carried a sharpness that could tear a person's soul apart. "How do you explain your flirting with them?"

Ye Qingcheng stiffened all over, her crying coming to an abrupt halt.

She stared blankly at Ye Xuan, her mind completely empty, as if struck by an immobilization spell.

Ye Xuan pressed on step by step, giving her no chance to breathe. "I remember it perfectly clearly. That day on the Peak of Ultimate Bliss, you stood side by side with that sword cultivator. You smiled like a flower, and as he brushed a fallen leaf off your shoulder, the shyness in your eyes—did I go blind and see that wrong too?!"

"And that body cultivator. When he held you in his arms, not only did you not resist, but you pressed your face against his chest, smiling so wantonly, so charmingly! Could it be..."

Ye Xuan leaned into her ear, his voice like the whisper of a devil. "That was also because you couldn't help it?"

Ye Qingcheng was completely stunned.

She slowly lowered her head and grabbed it in agony with both hands. Her fingers dug deeply into her hair, pulling hard, as if trying to tear those filthy memories out along with her scalp.

"It was all just putting on an act..."

She muttered to herself, her voice so weak it seemed it would break at any moment. It was as if she was answering Ye Xuan, but even more so, desperately trying to hypnotize herself. "I did it all to get resources... If I didn't coax them into being happy, how would they willingly give me top-tier resources... I did it all for us..."

"Oh, really?"

Ye Xuan looked down, stretched out two fingers, and pinched Ye Qingcheng's trembling chin, forcing her to lift her pale, bloodless face.

His gaze was freezing cold—no anger, no sorrow, only an ultimate disgust of having seen through everything.

"But I remember that you enjoyed it all very much."

These words were light as a feather, yet deadlier than ten thousand sharp knives stabbing into her heart at the same time.

"No!"

Ye Qingcheng let out a shriek so miserable it sounded inhuman.

"I didn't! I didn't!"

She shook her head desperately, like a patient whose most fatal wound had been poked.

Her hands scratched madly at the ground. Her nails cracked and dripped with blood, but she felt nothing.

That was the deepest, most terrifying darkness in her heart that she dared not face.

In the long years, in the countless times of putting on an act, in the thrill of her cultivation base skyrocketing, had there truly been a moment where she succumbed to it?

Was there truly a moment when she forgot the husband she had locked away in the abyss?

This thought was an absolute taboo she could never admit!

Once admitted, she would completely become a hopeless slut. All her self-righteousness, all her doing it for you, would turn into the most ridiculous joke in the world!

"Senior Brother, I didn't enjoy it! I was disgusted by them! I only love you! I only love you!"

Ye Qingcheng threw herself like a madwoman to hug Ye Xuan's legs. Tears and snot mixed together, leaving not a trace of the former dignity of an Empress.

But at this moment, as if disgusted by some extremely filthy object, Ye Xuan suddenly kicked her away.

"Enough!" Ye Xuan's eyes were filled with sickening disgust. He looked down from above at Ye Qingcheng rolling on the ground. "That doesn't matter at all!"

Ye Qingcheng froze. She curled up on the ground in agony, looking up at the man she loved to the bone, and feared to the bone.

Ye Xuan took a deep breath, his eyes becoming hollow and profound. He spoke slowly, his voice carrying a despair-inducing calmness:

"Let me ask you, is there any man in this world who could endure such humiliation?"

"To watch helplessly as his own wife, for the sake of so-called protection, pleases other men beneath them, and even uses the filthy resources gained from it to provide for him. I ask you, who in this world could forgive such a thing?"

Ye Qingcheng was dumbfounded.

Was there any man in this world who could endure it?

No.

Any man with dignity would feel that life was worse than death.

In his past life, Ye Xuan chose to end his life in the most resolute way precisely because he couldn't endure it.

She knew it. In fact, she had always known.

It was just that she didn't want to wake up. Like a terminally ill gambler, she vainly attempted to use her current bottomless humility to fill a black hole from the past that could never be filled.

"Senior Brother..."

Ye Qingcheng mumbled to herself, her eyes completely unfocused. Two streams of bloody tears slowly slid down from the corners of her eyes, mixing with her pale complexion, making her look like a desperate vengeful ghost. "Are you... never going to forgive me no matter what?"

Looking at her miserable state, Ye Xuan's mouth suddenly curled into a cruel sneer.

He stood perfectly straight with his hands clasped behind his back.

"I, Ye Xuan," his voice was loud and clear, piercing through the sound of the wind and rain outside, "although my cultivation is currently low, and although I have to depend on others to survive."

He paused, his gaze striking straight at Ye Qingcheng like a sword:

"But I will never take a prostitute as my wife!"

Time seemed to stop at this moment.

Even the sound of the wind and rain outside faded away in an instant.

Ye Qingcheng's mind buzzed and completely exploded.

A prostitute?

Senior Brother... called me a prostitute?

For him, she had struggled through hell; for him, she had killed everyone who ever insulted her; for him, she had humbled herself into the dust, willing to give everything she had...

And in the end, in his eyes, she was just a... prostitute?

Ye Qingcheng's eyes widened, staring at Ye Xuan in disbelief. Her lips trembled violently, and it took a long while before she squeezed out a few broken syllables: "You... you're calling me a... prostitute?"