In the darkness, the overwhelming spiritual pressure that had stood against Ye Chen suddenly receded like a tide.
Xiao Xiao smiled.
That smile seemed to part all the clouds, turning her back, in an instant, into the pure and flawless girl with crescent eyes she once was.
Her features were now exquisitely beautiful.
In the dim room, she was like a quietly blooming night orchid—so breathtaking it made one’s heart ache.
“At first, I couldn’t get used to it.”
She spoke softly, a hint of sweet nostalgia in her voice.
“Tianjian Peak was so big, with so many rules. The senior sisters were kind, but I always felt there was something between us. Every day was either breathing practice or lectures, so dull I wanted to cry.”
“But later, when I succeeded in Qi Introduction for the first time, feeling spiritual power flow through my meridians—everything changed.”
Her eyes lit up, as if two sparks were ignited, filled with joy and delight.
“That feeling… was strange. My body grew light, my senses sharp. I felt I could hear the wind, see points of Lingqi drifting in the air.”
“I suddenly realized I was no longer the mortal who could only trail behind Young Master, unable to withstand even the wind from your stride.”
“That was the change in my heart, Young Master. It was when I felt… I finally had the confidence to walk beside you.”
She tilted her head slightly, long lashes casting shadows in the spirit light, her tone tinged with a unique maidenly shyness and bold yearning.
“I even… began secretly imagining those impossible futures I never dared to dream of before. Maybe… they weren’t so impossible after all?”
At this point, she paused.
The joyful atmosphere abruptly broke.
Her smile remained, but the starlight in her eyes gradually faded, replaced by a bottomless cold.
“But Young Master, do you know what happened after that?”
She asked herself, her voice sinking, as if she’d stepped from a warm afternoon into the chill winds of late autumn.
“That’s right. You know.”
“When I wrote the first letter, but received no reply for so long, I was just… a little disappointed.”
She spoke softly, as if confiding in herself.
“I told myself, Young Master must be busy cultivating, with no time for me. Mm, it must be like that. Young Master is so amazing, surely working harder than me.”
“So I trained even harder. I absorbed Lingqi desperately, strived to comprehend Daoist arts. I thought, the next time I saw Young Master, I would surprise you, make you praise me, maybe even… change the way you saw me.”
She lifted her head, gaze piercing the darkness, as if seeing into the distant past.
“Do you know, Young Master? In Qingyang City, I truly was just a humble maidservant. My only wish was for you to live well. If I could serve you all my life, I’d be content. I never… had any other thoughts.”
“But!”
Her voice suddenly rose, sharp and piercing!
With it, her spiritual power surged violently!
This force was no longer just pressure, but contained a destructive, raging will!
Ye Chen felt a huge force crash over him, forcing his body to sway.
He no longer held back.
The spiritual power within him surged out without reservation, rising to nearly half his strength, barely resisting the sudden impact.
Xiao Xiao’s eyes were already red.
They brimmed with tears that refused to fall, transforming into deeper resentment and hate.
“It was you! Ye Chen!”
She shouted, voice trembling.
“It was you! You gave me hope with your own hands! Do you remember? In that little courtyard, you asked me if I wanted to cultivate immortality!”
“Do you know how flustered I was then? How happy?! I thought… I thought the way you looked at me had changed! I thought you wanted us… to walk this path together! Hehe…”
She let out a bitter, self-mocking laugh, as if laughing at the foolish girl she used to be.
“I was really stupid… From that moment on, you planted a seed in my heart with your own hands.”
As her words fell, the raging aura around her miraculously subsided.
The agitation and anger vanished as if they’d never been, replaced by calmness, as if everything just now had been an illusion.
“Later, I entered the Daoist Sect. My cultivation grew by leaps and bounds.”
She recounted calmly, as if discussing a matter unrelated to herself.
“That seed sprouted, grew into a towering tree. Every moment, I thought of… our future.”
“But you ignored it.”
“Three months, four months, five months… Every night, I cried under my blanket. At first, I thought you didn’t want me. Later, I grew afraid, afraid something terrible had happened to you…”
“I even lost composure in front of Master… If not for Master’s mercy, using supreme power to show me your image in the sect, I’d have really thought you were gone from this world.”
At this, Xiao Xiao’s tone suddenly turned playful.
She extended a slender finger, gently pressing it to her pale cheek, eyes turning upward, head tilting as she feigned a look of innocent recollection.
“But… what did I see?”
“I saw Young Master… doing quite well.”
Her voice was soft as a feather, but it set off sirens in Ye Chen’s heart.
“You were chatting happily with that… red-haired senior sister. So happily you couldn’t even spare a moment to reply to me.”
Ye Chen’s brows knitted tightly.
Yan Hongxiu?
He and her had only met once by the lakeside a year ago—a brief encounter with no further contact.
Why, in Xiao Xiao’s words, had it become ‘chatting happily’?
Xiao Xiao, of course, didn’t know his doubts.
She kept smiling, sweet and pure.
“Sure enough, what Master and the senior sisters said was right.”
“They told me, you never really looked at me. Because… I was just your ‘little’ servant.”
“They said in the mortal world, a servant girl’s life, her thoughts, meant nothing. No one would care. I was thinking too much.”
The gentler her smile, the colder Ye Chen felt.
Suddenly!
Without warning, the spiritual force struck again, multiplying in strength! It was now almost at the threshold of the Golden Core realm!
Ye Chen, too, held nothing back.
The nameless art in his body ran at full force, spiritual power surging like a flood, fully resisting the deadly blow!
Even so, his Protective Spiritual Aura groaned under the pressure.
He calculated—if he didn’t use real Daoist arts, but only contested spiritual power, with her terrifying ‘Jade Root’ recovery, he wouldn’t last long.
And Xiao Xiao was already right before him.
There was only a step between them.
She gazed at him gently.
Their eyes met—so close, it was as if they could see reflections in each other’s pupils, even in the dark.
If not for the spiritual powers clashing wildly between them, anyone would think this was a pair of lovers reunited after a long separation, whispering words of longing.
“So…”
She spoke, her voice a lover’s whisper.
“It’s true that Young Master abandoned Xiao Xiao.”
“Did Young Master choose that red-haired senior sister?”
She tilted her head, pure childlike curiosity flickering in her unfathomable eyes.
“How far have you… gone? Are you already Dao companions?”
“Or… have you gone even further?”
Ye Chen was almost certain now.
Xiao Xiao’s Master, Elder Qingyu, and her so-called ‘supreme power’—it was likely all unreliable.
Or perhaps… deliberate.
She’d selected a scene of him and Yan Hongxiu by chance, then had her disciples ‘guide’ the distraught Xiao Xiao, making her believe he’d fallen for another, thus severing ties and focusing on the Dao.
In their eyes, a registered disciple with mixed spiritual roots was not worthy of a Heaven’s Chosen with the ‘Jade Root.’
And he himself had buried himself in the Lake of Questions, severing contact with the outside world for a year.
Ye Chen smiled bitterly inside.
He even suspected that even if he’d replied, those letters might never have reached Xiao Xiao.
In other words, no matter what he did, this outcome was inevitable.
At this point, regretting what had already happened was meaningless.
What mattered was…
Ye Chen looked at the girl before him, wrapped in obsession and despair, saw the purity and madness in her eyes, and knew this was something that had to be resolved.
Otherwise, the fruit sown because of him, the flower that bloomed because of him, would drag them both into an endless abyss.
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