In Zhou Ruoxi’s memory, Duanqing Peak in her Former Life had been as peaceful as a secluded paradise right until the outbreak of the Righteous-Demonic War that swept through the entire Kongxuan Realm.
Although the Fourth Junior Sister, Mo Qingyou, had a somewhat solitary personality and always loved to secretly tinker with her puppet parts, it didn’t seem abnormal to Zhou Ruoxi.
Zhou Ruoxi simply felt that she was relatively quieter and more focused on her puppet research than the other Senior Sisters and Junior Sisters.
When she looked at Master Lu Li, the absolute reliance and admiration in her eyes were no different from the rest of them.
However, that world-shaking Righteous-Demonic War, which turned the sky and earth dark as it engulfed the entire Kongxuan Realm, was like a massive boulder thrown into a calm lake, shattering all tranquility.
After the war ended, Master Lu Li and Second Senior Sister Gong Shangyu actually made their feelings for each other clear and intended to become Dao companions.
When the news arrived, it naturally caused thousands of waves on Duanqing Peak.
Senior Sister Feng Lingshuang spent an entire night silently polishing her Spirit Sword.
Junior Sister Gu Qingying’s eyes turned red on the spot, and she even half-jokingly, half-seriously declared that she would run to smash the bridal sedan chair and elope with Master on the wedding day.
Hearing this news in her Former Life, Zhou Ruoxi also felt a bit of indescribable bitterness and sorrow in her heart.
Such a wonderful man like Master was ultimately going to belong to someone else.
As expected, she still had no way to gather the courage to profess her love to Master like the Second Senior Sister had done…
However, despite their thousands of regrets and ten thousand reasons for being unwilling, these Disciples truly loved and respected their Master, and they didn’t entirely hate Second Senior Sister Gong Shangyu.
Seeing the rare human joy reflected in Master’s eyes, these female Disciples eventually chose to offer their blessings.
During that period, Duanqing Peak was busy preparing for the wedding, making it seem lively and harmonious.
When the day of the wedding arrived, Duanqing Peak was crowded with guests, and the sound of clinking glasses filled the air.
Everything was proceeding step-by-step according to the plan, until the final moment when Master and Gong Shangyu drank the Hexiang Wine together.
Zhou Ruoxi clearly remembered that the Fourth Junior Sister, Mo Qingyou, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, saw Second Senior Sister and Master Lu Li with their arms intertwined.
At the very moment they were about to share that cup of wine, which symbolized the eternal union of husband and wife, Mo Qingyou suddenly stood up!
The table in front of her was jarred, the wine cup toppled, and the dark red liquid splashed onto the bluestone floor like tears of blood.
Mo Qingyou said nothing. She simply used those eyes—which had suddenly become hollow yet burned with a certain flame—to stare fixedly at the ceremonial platform for a moment before turning and sweeping away!
That decisive back, suppressed with immense pain, was completely out of place with the surrounding celebratory atmosphere of the hall.
At that time, everyone simply thought Mo Qingyou was acting like a child and found it hard to accept for the moment, so they didn’t think too deeply about it.
Zhou Ruoxi couldn’t bear it in her heart.
Worried that something might happen to her, she quietly left the banquet and chased after her.
Zhou Ruoxi found her Junior Sister on the back mountain.
Under the Moon, the young girl who always kept her head down to tinker with puppets was now slightly twitching her shoulders as if she were crying silently.
“Fourth Junior Sister…”
In her Former Life, Zhou Ruoxi stepped forward and softly consoled her, “Today is the joyous day of Master and Senior Sister. Do not be willful and make everyone feel awkward.”
Mo Qingyou turned around abruptly.
There were actually no tear tracks on her face; there was only a near-distorted persistence and madness in her eyes.
“Hmph… awkward? Then what about me? Third Senior Sister, the one I love most is Master! From the moment I gained consciousness, the one I loved most was him! Why? Why did he eventually choose Second Senior Sister Gong Shangyu? Why can’t it be me?”
At this moment, Mo Qingyou seemed to have found an outlet, shouting her heart’s secrets at Zhou Ruoxi.
“Senior Sister, do you know? I have no parents, no relatives, and… I have absolutely no memories of the past!”
“I’m like someone thrown into this world out of thin air! The day I gained consciousness, the first person I saw was Master!”
“It was he who brought me out of that cold mountain cave that had nothing!”
“It was he who gave me my name and taught me how to read. Similarly, it was Master who passed the Dao Technique to me… He is my everything! My entire world was constructed by him!”
“Aside from him, I have nothing!”
Zhou Ruoxi was completely stunned upon hearing this.
She had always known that the Fourth Junior Sister’s background was a mystery and that Master was also very secretive about it.
However, she had no idea that the other girl’s true origin was actually so blank and pitiful.
Compared to herself, who at least had a sea of blood and deep resentment to serve as an obsession for living, Fourth Junior Sister Mo Qingyou’s life… really only had Master Lu Li as her single beam of light and her only pillar of support.
Mo Qingyou’s paranoia and madness seemed to have a tragic source at this moment.
Looking at the mixture of despair, unwillingness, and an intensely thick possessiveness in Mo Qingyou’s eyes, the reproach in Zhou Ruoxi’s heart turned into pity.
She didn’t say anything more that night.
She simply stayed quietly by Mo Qingyou’s side, listening to her incoherent talk about her morbid attachment to Master, while trying to use her own cool Spirit Energy as a talisman cultivator to calm the faintly restless heart demon inside her sister’s body that was about to lose control.
At that time, she thought she had successfully soothed her Junior Sister.
However, none of them expected that the wedding banquet in the Front Hall would brew an even greater blunder.
Lu Li usually drank very little.
That day, being happy, he was pressured by the guests into drinking a few extra cups, and he actually became unconscious from intoxication.
Finally, in his daze, he somehow failed to return to the bridal chamber he shared with Gong Shangyu and instead accidentally barged into Junior Sister Gu Qingying’s room!
Thus, when Zhou Ruoxi accompanied Mo Qingyou, whose emotions had stabilized, back to Duanqing Peak the next morning, this was the scene they witnessed:
Lu Li stood in the courtyard with his clothes in disarray and a face full of shame.
Gu Qingying’s eyes were red and swollen as she huddled in the room behind Lu Li, wrapped in a Quilt.
In contrast, Second Senior Sister Gong Shangyu, who was still wearing her bright red wedding dress after waiting a whole night in her bridal chamber, was shaking all over with rage as she cursed Gu Qingying. Her voice was so sharp it almost pierced the morning air.
“Gu Qingying! You did it on purpose! You must have intentionally seduced my husband!”
The scene in the courtyard was a complete mess.
Master tried to explain things to Gong Shangyu, but the more he described it, the worse it sounded.
Gu Qingying only cried, saying she knew nothing, while Gong Shangyu was completely blinded by rage.
In the end, it was the good-natured Zhou Ruoxi who stepped forward to mediate while suppressing her own internal shock.
She knew deeply that if this matter were to spread, it would be a fatal blow to the reputation of both Master and the sect.
Then she persuaded the furious Gong Shangyu and successfully calmed the terrified and uneasy Gu Qingying, while also imploring Master Lu Li to take responsibility for the matter.
Ultimately, this absurd and unexpected incident ended with Senior Sister Gong Shangyu being forced to hold her nose and acknowledge Gu Qingying as an equal wife to Master Lu Li.
However, for a long time afterward, Gong Shangyu insisted that Gu Qingying had deliberately seduced Master, and the rift between the two grew even deeper.
But the people of Duanqing Peak in the Former Life did not know that the storm on Lu Li’s wedding night was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, completely pushing Mo Qingyou’s already precarious sanity into a bottomless abyss.
Watching this absurd scene and looking at the Second Senior Sister and Junior Sister beside Lu Li, the demonic thoughts Mo Qingyou had forcibly suppressed flared up again like a wildfire, becoming even more intense and frenzied!
For many days after that, Mo Qingyou would constantly run to Zhou Ruoxi to complain.
“Aaaaah… Why! Why can they all be with Master?”
“Gong Shangyu can do it, and Gu Qingying can too… Why is it that only I cannot?”
“I am the one who loves Master the most! I am the one who should be the wife forever by his side…”
Just like that, the sliver of the ancient Demon Emperor’s will lurking deep in her soul awakened with a bang under this extreme stimulation and despair!
From then on, the Mo Qingyou of the Former Life no longer suppressed or hid herself.
She began to frantically study those forbidden Demonic Path Puppet Secret Methods that surfaced along with her awakening memories.
Mo Qingyou understood these Senior and Junior Sisters of the same sect far too well.
After all, they had lived and cultivated together for many years.
She knew everyone’s Cultivation Method weaknesses and personality flaws like the back of her hand.
Ultimately, all tragedies suddenly descended on a certain day when Master Lu Li went out to visit a friend.
Mo Qingyou completely erupted.
She used her understanding of all her Senior and Junior Sisters, as well as the terrifying power of the Demon Emperor’s legacy, to subdue every single one of them one by one.
Senior Sister Feng Lingshuang’s Sword Dao was supreme, but in the end, she fell to a Puppet Array Method specially crafted by Mo Qingyou to target the loopholes and flaws in her Cultivation Method.
Although Second Senior Sister Gong Shangyu was unparalleled in Pill Poison, she couldn’t guard against the herbal tea handed to her by her most trusted Junior Sister, which was laced with colorless, odorless, and invisible microscopic puppets.
Junior Sister Gu Qingying was quick-witted, but she perished in regret under the absolute power Mo Qingyou displayed and the siege of puppets who were familiar with all her combat habits.
Because Zhou Ruoxi was the only one besides Master who had ever cared for or shown concern for Fourth Junior Sister Mo Qingyou in the Former Life, providing warmth and a listening ear…
Mo Qingyou did not kill her.
Instead, she “repaid” Zhou Ruoxi in an extremely cruel way.
Mo Qingyou turned her into a Living Puppet—one who retained a conscious mind but was completely unable to control her own body.
Then, Mo Qingyou made her watch with wide eyes.
She watched how Mo Qingyou manipulated Senior Sister’s stiff body to dance with a sword for the returned Master Lu Li; watched how she mimicked Second Senior Sister’s tone and mannerisms to flirt with Master; and watched how she controlled Gu Qingying’s shell to flatter Master to the extreme…
Then, she controlled Zhou Ruoxi herself to knead Master’s shoulders and pound his legs.
Mo Qingyou wanted Zhou Ruoxi to see how she would completely “occupy” the space around Master, and how Master would eventually become a plaything belonging only to her.
Zhou Ruoxi was imprisoned in that cold shell, watching how her Master was poisoned and ambushed step by step by Junior Sister Mo Qingyou.
She watched how Master was pinned down in the room for forced cultivation by the puppets controlled by Mo Qingyou, gradually losing his strength under the siege of those familiar yet strange “Senior and Junior Sisters,” even including herself.
She watched as Mo Qingyou, wearing a smile that was both mad and satisfied, pierced the Puppet Thread into Master’s brow bit by bit, turning him into a Puppet.
Seeing this, Zhou Ruoxi let out a silent wail, and her soul trembled in despair because of it.