"What is there for me to regret?!"
Qing Xu's temples bulged with veins, his eyes streaked with dense crimson threads.
His pupils trembled, his thin shoulders shaking.
He seemed to want to raise his hands and wrap them around himself, but in front of the three juniors, he restrained himself, refusing to show any vulnerability.
He repeated, word by word: "What is there for me to regret."
That love—he had discarded it like worthless trash.
Lingxue had been in his way. Yes, Lingxue had obstructed his grand ambitions. He was the one who cast her aside.
"Heh…" Qing Xu let out a low chuckle.
A man like him—how could he possibly care about something as foolish as chastity, like those weak, stupid women?
All that mattered was success, standing at the pinnacle of the world.
Once he achieved that, wouldn’t everything in this world be his for the taking? If he fancied someone, wouldn’t they grovel at his feet, licking the dust from his shoes?
Dirty? A real man would never think himself dirty.
What a joke!
He nodded firmly, a smug smile curling at his lips.
"Heh… Ha ha ha ha…"
While Luo Luo kept Qing Xu distracted, Li Zhaoye subtly surveyed their surroundings.
This was the Peach Blossom of That Year—Qing Xu and Chen Xuanyi’s long-standing stronghold.
No doubt it was riddled with traps.
His gaze shifted—and he recognized the place.
A small river flowed beside them, its waters murmuring "Luo Luo, Luo Luo" as they washed over smooth pebbles.
The light came from an illusory moon hanging cold and bright in the sky, casting sharp shadows of the stones in the clear water below.
Li Zhaoye chuckled. "This old man."
Capable of the cruelest deeds, yet so terrified of loneliness.
He had recreated the riverbank outside Luo Luo’s home—the very spot where, on a moonlit night, he and Li Zhaoye had found her.
That night, he had been impatient, but he hadn’t been alone.
Li Zhaoye sighed. "Old man, old man… So what if you were violated? So what if you stole the True Breath? No one cared—you could’ve kept bickering with Lingxue, could’ve kept roasting chickens with us."
Lingxue wouldn’t have cared about Qing Xu’s past, just as Luo Luo and Li Zhaoye didn’t care about that damned True Breath.
If he had just said outright, "The Hongmeng True Breath is right here in my hands," the two of them would’ve scrambled to help him cover it up from the Sealed Divine Hall.
The greatest regret in life was the "could’ve been."
Li Zhaoye smirked. "Well? Now you’re drowning in regret, aren’t you?"
No one liked having their hidden feelings exposed—Qing Xu was no exception.
His expression darkened as he calmly raised a hand.
Peach blossom mist swirled around him, the air thickening with countless petals—each bearing the eerie grin of a ghostly face.
"Whoosh—whoosh whoosh whoosh!"
The swirling petals became a deadly storm, hurtling toward the trio on the opposite bank.
Xu Junzhu swung her sword to block.
"Swish!"
A petal phased through the blade like an illusion.
With a soft "shick," it latched onto the back of her hand. In the next instant, the ghostly face woven from black smoke opened its maw and sank teeth into her flesh.
"Tch!"
She retreated swiftly, glancing down.
A hallucination flickered before her eyes—a pitch-black ghost child crawling out from her skin, grinning grotesquely.
Xu Junzhu shook her head. "These soul attacks are unpredictable. Be careful!"
Li Zhaoye grabbed Luo Luo with one hand and flicked out a sealing thread with the other, yanking them both into the air like a kite to evade the onslaught.
"Damn, old man!" He raised an eyebrow in mock admiration. "Hiding such good tricks from your disciples?"
Luo Luo chimed in: "Shame on you as a teacher!"
Amid the petal storm, Qing Xu chuckled softly.
"You two…" His voice was almost fond. "Still so naïve. Do you really think I should’ve kept you—that even if I strayed into darkness, you’d have followed me blindly?"
His laughter grew louder.
"How pitiful," he tutted. "Do you know what you look like right now? Stray dogs. Drowned rats."
Before the words faded, his body dissolved into a swirling tempest of petals.
His mastery of soul arts had reached perfection—formless, shifting between illusion and reality.
Luo Luo frowned. "We can’t hit him now!"
Li Zhaoye yanked her aside as a tidal wave of petals surged past.
"Wait," he narrowed his eyes. "Why is he the only one who knows soul arts?"
Luo Luo blinked. "He learned it from Hongmeng Jun, so what’s the—huh?"
In this world, all techniques originated from a single founder, evolving through generations into distinct schools.
Hongmeng Jun was legendary—yet there were no records or lineages of his soul arts.
How?
It was as if this art had appeared from nowhere… and vanished just as mysteriously.
"Could it be related to what happened in the Sealed Divine Hall?" Luo Luo mused. "What exactly did the Sage do? When’s your brain gonna be edible again?"
Li Zhaoye: "…"
His handsome face fell. "Ask the Nether Maiden!"
Luo Luo muttered, "It can’t talk."
Li Zhaoye: "My brain can’t talk either."
Their bickering was cut short as Luo Luo peeked at the spiraling petals behind them and sighed. "Ugh, he’s not mad."
Qing Xu, no longer a hot-blooded youth, remained unfazed by their taunts.
The petals whirled endlessly, leaving no opening to strike.
Li Zhaoye: "Told you he wouldn’t bite."
Luo Luo: "When did you say that?"
Li Zhaoye: "With my eyes."
Luo Luo: "Oh, so your eyes can talk but your brain can’t?"
Li Zhaoye: "Tch."
The ghostly faces on the petals shrieked, their overlapping cries distorting vision.
"Shick!"
A petal grazed Luo Luo’s cheek.
Her mind buzzed—and suddenly, she was seven again, standing in that blood-red dusk.
Hallucination merged with memory: her parents’ broken bodies writhing in a pool of blood, hands outstretched.
"It hurts… save… save us…"
Their wounds bloomed like falling petals.
Luo Luo stared, frozen.
Reality shattered—she was back in her childhood courtyard, bare feet on cold soil, stepping toward her dying parents.
"Luo… Luo…"
She looked down slowly.
The person had shattered into such a state, yet still managed to writhe and produce sounds.
"If it weren't for you... we would have escaped long ago... It's you who got us killed... It's you..."
Father shook his remaining half of a thick sole with all his might.
Luo Luo bent down.
"If we don't die, then you die!" Mother's half-face let out a piercing shriek, "You die!"
Luo Luo reached out.
Her small hand was about to touch her father and mother.
Their faces and bodies were covered in blood, like scattered petals of peach blossoms.
Her fingertips drew closer to the bloodstains.
At the last moment, she stopped.
"Shifu," Luo Luo said softly, "you've exposed yourself again."
Flames flickered to life in her palm, and with a soft "whoosh," they collided with the peach-blossom-like blood.
"Sizzle... sizzle..."
Blood and fire locked in stalemate at her fingertips.
"You want to prove you weren’t wrong, to make me admit I’m a coward too." Luo Luo pressed her lips together tightly. "Shifu, this only shows how much it still weighs on you."
"Sizzle... sizzle..."
"No one thinks of themselves as the villain, Shifu. You’re no different." Luo Luo understood. "You killed your parents, but you couldn’t bear to admit your guilt, so you lied to yourself—told yourself they wanted to trade children to eat, that they wronged you first. But I accidentally exposed the truth, and now you’re desperate. You want to drag me down with you, to make me admit I’m just like you, so you can have some pitiful comfort."
"But Shifu, a person with a clear conscience doesn’t need to prove others are just as wretched."
"Boom!"
The flames at her fingertips surged, swallowing the peach-blossom blood, devouring the illusion before her.
Luo Luo blinked back to awareness.
The swirling peach petals in the air seemed to freeze for a moment.
"Tsk." Li Zhaoye sounded impressed. "That tongue of yours is something else!"
Luo Luo: "..."
She sighed. "If I could just fight, who’d bother arguing?"
Li Zhaoye immediately protested, "Hey, which eye of yours saw me losing to him? I was holding back for your sake, didn’t want to go all out!"
Luo Luo: "Yeah, yeah, sure."
He pretended to strangle her. "Say that again with that tone!"
Xu Junzhu sighed in exasperation. "You two, honestly!"
Despite the complaint, his hands weren’t idle.
Seizing the moment the peach blossoms showed a flaw, Xu Junzhu swiftly unleashed a wave of frost, delicate ice crystals settling over the illusory petals.
The white frost passed effortlessly through most of the petals—but a few were marked with pale rime.
"Got you."
Li Zhaoye smirked, his sealing threads lashing out like a waterfall, piercing every last trace of the manifested spirit.
A soul-rending scream tore through the peach blossoms of that year.
Li Zhaoye yanked back hard.
The sky full of petals vanished instantly.
Qing Xu’s figure materialized from the void, staggering slightly as he raised bloodshot eyes.
His pupils trembled, his breath uneven.
Watching his expression, Xu Junzhu murmured, "The quieter the person, the deadlier their honesty."
Li Zhaoye chuckled. "Let’s go!"
He took the lead, sealing threads weaving a net around Qing Xu, cutting off all escape.
Xu Junzhu flicked his wrist—Qingnv Wushuang erupted in frostfire, its blade leaving trails of frozen space.
Qing Xu’s eyes widened.
"Xue’s sword...?"
Luo Luo clenched her jaw, watching him unblinkingly.
Her shifu had always been lazy, his skills mediocre at best.
Now, trapped by the threads and facing Xu Junzhu’s vengeful strike, he looked utterly lost. In that critical moment, he had no counter—just stood there as the sword tip touched his chest, then pierced through.
"Thud."
Luo Luo’s lips parted.
She wouldn’t stop this. Wouldn’t intervene. But she hadn’t expected him to fall so easily.
"Shifu..."
She watched scarlet bloom from his heart.
The blood crept toward Qingnv Wushuang as if to kiss the blade, only to be frozen by its merciless frost.
"Clink—"
The iced blood shattered, falling like powdered snow.
Dazed, he lifted fading eyes, blood with ice crystals bubbling at his lips.
Slowly, he turned to Luo Luo.
Frost gathered on his brows. He hunched slightly, forcing a grin.
"Listen... Shifu... sound like... a crispy pancake?"
Luo Luo froze.
That snowy night beneath the Cliff of Reflection.
She had said the same thing, shivering, just to make him laugh.
She pressed her lips together until they ached.
When no reply came, a hint of grievance flickered across his frozen face.
Luo Luo kept staring—until a large hand landed on her head.
Li Zhaoye scrubbed her hair like he was washing a stubborn stain, then gently pushed her forward.
Just like years ago, when he’d nudged her to bow to her new master, he said, "Go on. See him off."
Luo Luo: "...Right."
Qing Xu was no saint. He deserved this.
But Li Zhaoye was magnanimous—dead was dead. No need to hold grudges.
"Luo Luo... Luo Luo..."
A small river murmured nearby.
Qing Xu could no longer speak, but the water carried his call.
Luo Luo, Luo Luo.
In this life, he’d wronged many—but never truly harmed her.
Li Zhaoye had been a sacrifice. She was different.
After picking her up, he’d finally had a real "disciple."
Luo Luo stepped forward.
Xu Junzhu silently withdrew his sword. The wound was sealed by frost, no more bleeding.
She steadied Qing Xu’s arm. "...Shifu."
His body swayed, then slumped forward.
With his last strength, he tried to maintain some dignity.
Like that night, when he’d descended on the breeze, moonlight glinting as he stood before a little girl by the river.
A casual act of kindness—repaid over eleven years with genuine joy.
Luo Luo, Luo Luo.
She guided him down, easing him onto the ground.
"Luo Luo is too pure," Xu Junzhu said quietly, gaze complicated. "Like a clear mirror—he couldn’t hide from her."
She understood him so well... because he’d mattered to her.
"Shifu." Luo Luo didn’t cry. She spoke carefully, "Remember—don’t go looking for Aunt Lingxue. She won’t want to see you. Whatever you’d say, we’ll burn it for her."
Qing Xu: "..."
If he had any strength left, he’d knock this brat’s head.
"Understood?" She ducked to peer into his eyes.
The light had already faded from his eyes.
Like a dead fish.
Finally, in one fleeting moment, those lifeless fish eyes froze completely.
Luo Luo, Luo Luo.
The creek flowed gently beside him, carrying away reflections of happier times.
"Dead?"
"Yeah."
"Alright." Li Zhaoye crouched beside her and rubbed her head. "I'll handle the body."
Luo Luo stayed silent for a moment before standing and stepping back.
Li Zhaoye drew out You Nü, ready to strike Qing Xu’s forehead, when suddenly an ear-piercing shriek erupted from the corpse.
"Screeeech—"
In the next instant, a cloud of black mist surged out, dispersing in all directions.
A sinister laugh echoed in the wind.
"Kekeke… hisss… hahahaha!"
"A hypocrite who played the saint—should’ve died long ago."
"Worrying about this, hesitating over that, shackled by morals—utterly pathetic!"
"Congratulations! You’ve killed Li Ermiao, who wasn’t evil enough. Now I’m finally free!"
"From this day forth, I have no weaknesses. My little ones, we’ll meet again!"
The laughter faded into the distance.
Luo Luo and Li Zhaoye exchanged glances.
She asked, "That was… him?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
This was the "him" that Li Ermiao had summoned due to his own weakness.
"His" actions were bound by Li Ermiao’s will, yet "he" had subtly influenced and manipulated him all along.
"He" had led him to pursue soul arts to strengthen himself, and today, "he" had successfully orchestrated a murder to escape his host.
After a pause, Luo Luo said, "You’ve all taken your turns killing. Next time, it’s my turn."
Li Zhaoye shrugged. "Fine by me!"
Xu Junzhu frowned slightly. "But where would we even find a soul like that…"
Her voice trailed off as her eyes twitched, and she gave Li Zhaoye a strange look.
He was pulling his own corpse out of his Qiankun bag.
"You’re planning to…?"
Li Zhaoye grinned, summoning Changtian Sword, and proceeded to gut his own corpse right then and there.
Luo Luo: "…"
Xu Junzhu: "…"
Without pause, Li Zhaoye retrieved the rare medicinal herbs Xu Junzhu had brought and began sealing them inside his corpse.
"Wait," Luo Luo said weakly, "why are you bullying your own corpse?"
Without looking up, Li Zhaoye replied, "Making a corpse puppet to track him."
Luo Luo: "Huh?"
As he worked, he explained casually, "Think about it. Back then, he killed me while having Chen Xuanyi possess my body, right?"
Luo Luo nodded. "Yeah."
"And after the possession, wasn’t I just a wreck?" He rapped his knuckles against his stiff corpse.
Luo Luo was momentarily speechless at his choice of words.
She nodded. "I… guess?"
He continued, "If Chen Xuanyi’s soul was already in this wreck, then who was the one who reforged my sword core and rebuilt my meridians?"
Luo Luo understood. "Qing Xu."
Li Zhaoye grinned, ruffling her hair. "Smart girl."
Luo Luo recoiled. "…Don’t touch me with your corpse-hand!"
"Ahem!" Li Zhaoye coughed, avoiding the topic. "Anyway, this body has an inextricable connection to Qing Xu—one he can’t sever. A corpse puppet will make it easier to find him."
Luo Luo nodded obediently.
She got it, but watching him go to town on his own corpse, blood and all, was downright horrifying.
Xu Junzhu couldn’t take it anymore and left the peach-blossom grove to help outside.
"Huh?" Li Zhaoye suddenly paused.
"What’s wrong?"
His tone was complicated. "My primordial yang is still intact."
Luo Luo: "Oh…"
He turned his head, giving her a resentful look like a wronged ghost. "Two lifetimes, and still a virgin."
Luo Luo silently averted her gaze, ignoring him.
She focused on studying his corpse instead.
Seeing him so still was unsettling.
Her eyes lingered on the diagonal scar on his cheek. She could barely remember what he looked like when he was alive in this body—his presence was so overwhelming that, in just a few days, he had completely overwritten her mental image of him.
Suddenly, the corpse’s eyes snapped open, and it sat up abruptly, lunging toward her.
Luo Luo yelped, falling backward onto the ground.
Li Zhaoye burst into laughter. "HAHAHAHA!"
Luo Luo: "…"
Her gaze dropped to where he was gripping his own ribs, puppeteering his corpse like a marionette.
She was too exhausted to even complain.
He laid the corpse back down and began reconstructing its meridians, mimicking Wu Xie’s corpse-puppet techniques.
Casually, he said, "If I’m ever gone, it can keep you company. So you don’t cry at night."
Luo Luo’s heart skipped. She angrily covered his mouth.
"Do you have any idea how jinxed that sounds?!"
He dodged her hand. "Tch. Don’t be superstitious."
Luo Luo took a deep breath. "You’re cultivating immortality, and you’re calling me superstitious?!"
Li Zhaoye: "…Fair point."
She grabbed his arm. "Stop this! It’s bad luck!"
"Hey, hey—" Li Zhaoye gave up and tossed the puppet aside to placate her. "Fine, fine. Later, I’ll make one for the old man too. They can keep each other company—that’ll balance the feng shui."
Luo Luo: "…"
He added cheerfully, "Dead is dead. Negative times negative equals positive."
Luo Luo: "…"
Grudgingly, she hugged her knees and sat by the creek.
Occasionally, peach-blossom mist drifted over in layers.
It reminded her—hadn’t she dreamed this once? A dream where she cried by the creek, and Li Zhaoye barged in, knocked her flat with his sword, then vanished into the peach mist before she could catch up.
Thud.
A pebble hit the back of her head.
She turned angrily to see him lazily waving at her. "Quit daydreaming. Come help."
Luo Luo: "…"
With him around, there was no room for melancholy.
Her resistance lasted until the puppet was complete.
When the pale, solemn, and dignified corpse puppet of Li Zhaoye stood up, she suddenly found it hard to breathe.
Now she understood Qing Xu a little—seeing the tearful Lingxue must have shaken him deeply.
Because this version of Li Zhaoye—stern, restrained, icy—was…
Li Zhaoye snapped his fingers smugly, commanding the puppet to stop in front of Luo Luo.
"Well?"
Luo Luo’s cheeks warmed slightly as she averted her eyes. "Mm. Not bad."
Dissatisfied with her lackluster praise, he huffed and led her and the puppet out of the peach-blossom grove.
If she wouldn’t compliment him, he’d find someone who would.
When they reached the back mountain, Xu Junzhu had already used the Sect Leader’s Token to summon the second sacred artifact of the sect—the Demon-Slaying Seal. Working in tandem with the sect’s protective formation, it temporarily sealed the entrance to the Netherworld.
Li Zhaoye tilted his head and swaggered up to the crowd.
Before he could even boast, "Take a look at this!" everyone had already noticed the corpse puppet.
"Wow! Senior Brother! That’s insane!"
"Did Senior Brother refine his own corpse into a puppet?"
"Damn, that’s impressive!"
Li Zhaoye was practically bursting with pride. Suppressing a smirk, he shot Luo Luo a smug look—See how amazing I am? Serves you right for not recognizing my skills.
The crowd gathered around, examining the corpse puppet from head to toe.
Zhao Yu glanced between the puppet and Li Zhaoye.
After a long pause, he muttered in dazed disbelief, "So… our little junior sister is living the dream with two men?!"
Luo Luo: "?!"
Li Zhaoye: "……???!!!"
I’ll kill myself!
