The night Su Wan’er woke, the last leaf on the ginkgo tree outside the Western Wing Room window fell.
It didn’t fall from the branch—it was swept up from the windowsill by a sudden gust of crosswind.
Chen Mo held her hand, his fingertip pressed against her wrist pulse.
Spiritual power flowed like a warm stream, from his Dantian, through his meridians, and from his fingertips into her body.
For seven days, twice each day, he had used his own spiritual power to warm and nurture Su Wan’er’s meridians.
Strictly speaking, a Foundation Establishment cultivator’s spiritual power, within the vast ocean of a Nascent Soul Cultivator’s meridians, was nothing more than a single drop of water falling into a parched riverbed—not even enough to fill the cracks.
But she was truly recovering quickly.
On the seventh night, Chen Mo finished channeling his spiritual power and was about to withdraw his hand when Su Wan’er’s eyelid twitched.
Then, her eyes opened fully.
At first, her pupils were a vast, empty gray.
It took a long time before her unfocused gaze finally gathered.
It swept across the unsettling phosphorescent flames flickering at the ceiling of the Underground Palace, across the window lattice, the desk, the medicine furnace, the medicine bowl at the bedside, and finally settled on Chen Mo’s complicated face.
Their eyes met.
Time froze.
There was no expected terror, no accusation, no pain—only a kind of detached, struggling attempt to understand the present situation.
“…Mo’er?”
Chen Mo pressed his forehead against their intertwined hands.
Like a child who had suffered every grievance and finally found someone to lean on, yet filled with an unspeakable guilt.
Su Wan’er looked at him quietly, her gaze still gentle.
Chen Mo had grown thinner. Dark circles hung beneath both eyes.
The outline of his cheekbones had surfaced from beneath his skin, pulling his face from softness toward gauntness.
“Where… is this? How long… was I unconscious? Are you… alright?”
Chen Mo told her everything that had happened since she fell unconscious.
He also shared the recent intelligence.
Of course, certain details were omitted.
Then came a long silence.
She lifted her head and met Chen Mo’s eyes.
It was heartbreaking.
He was afraid.
Afraid she would look at him the way one looks at an unclean person.
The thing every violated man in a Female-dominated World fears most—not the violation itself, but what comes after: everyone, including the victim, labels him in their hearts.
Unclean. Unchaste. Unworthy.
“You’ve been here alone, holding things together all these days. You’ve worked so hard.”
A Foundation Establishment cultivator, in a mansion full of Demonic Cultivators, guarding his severely injured and comatose wife, dealing with a Disciple who had fused with a thousand-year-old Demon Lord, maneuvering around the Shadow Hall’s surveillance, concealing the fact that he had to die to escape his fate.
And twice daily, he used his spiritual power to nurture his wife’s meridians, draining himself until his hair split at the ends, his lips cracked and bled, and the shadows under his eyes turned black as ink.
“All these seven years, I thought I was protecting you. I went into Seclusion, I traveled, I fought for my life in all kinds of dangerous places, thinking that once I grew stronger, I could give you better shelter.”
“I thought that was what a good wife should do.”
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket.
“Maybe the meeting itself was the mistake from the start.”
Those words were like a knife, thrust through the cracked stone crevice in Chen Mo’s chest, striking precisely the softest part.
“So,” Su Wan’er released the blanket, lifted her head, and met Chen Mo’s eyes, “that’s why what happened with Yun Tian happened.”
Chen Mo’s body went rigid.
The needle that had been suspended above his head since she woke had finally fallen.
“I don’t blame you,” she said.
Four words.
Chen Mo’s breath stopped.
“This is not your fault,” she said five more words.
Nine words in total.
Each word was like a finger, gently pressing on the wounds that had scabbed over and been repeatedly torn open on his heart.
Not bandaging them—just telling you, “I see a wound here.”
Chen Mo’s eyes suddenly turned red.
“I didn’t—” his voice squeezed through clenched teeth, shattering into pieces, “I didn’t mean to… when she lit the incense I didn’t know… I…”
“I know.” Su Wan’er cut him off.
She reached out her hand.
Not to hold his hand—but to cover his bitten lips.
Her thumb gently pressed against the bleeding wound, holding it closed.
“Stop biting,” she said.
Chen Mo’s teeth loosened.
The tone she used to say “stop biting” was exactly the same as seven years ago, when she lifted the bridal veil and asked him, “Were you crying?”
Clumsy. Stiff. Not knowing what force was just right.
“When Yun Tian lit the incense, I didn’t know it was Aphrodisiac Incense.”
“By the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late. She… she pinned me against…” He couldn’t continue.
“She left a mark on my forehead, but I couldn’t wash it off myself.”
It wasn’t just the mark that couldn’t be washed off.
That moment couldn’t be washed off either.
The temperature of incense ash falling into his collar when he was pressed against the desk couldn’t be washed off.
The eyes of Chao’er outside the door couldn’t be washed off.
The moment afterward, when he scrubbed his forehead until the skin broke and bled, only to discover the mark wasn’t painted on his skin but seared into his Spirit Soul—that couldn’t be washed off either.
Su Wan’er’s fingers moved from his lips.
To his brow.
“At that time,” Su Wan’er’s voice was a note hoarser, “were you very scared?”
Chen Mo opened his mouth. No sound came out.
She asked again: “Were you thinking that if I woke up and found out, I wouldn’t want you anymore?”
Chen Mo’s eyelashes trembled.
The answer was all in that single tremor.
Su Wan’er moved the hand that had been on the back of his head to the front, using her thumb to wipe away the tear clinging to his lashes.
The motion was clumsy, the angle wrong.
One wipe didn’t get it clean, so she wiped again, mussing his lashes sideways. She frowned slightly, as if annoyed at her own hand.
“I want you,” she said. She paused, then added, “I wanted you the moment I lifted the bridal veil seven years ago. Now your hair is split, your lips are bleeding, and you’ve been bullied—I want you even more.”
She didn’t know how to say sweet nothings.
She spoke sweet nothings like she was inventorying the Treasury—this one I want, this one I want too, this one is damaged, but I still want it.
“Wan’er,” Chen Mo called her.
“Hm.”
“I have something to tell you.”
Su Wan’er looked at him.
“The Dragon Marrow Liquid is in the Storage Bag, and the Mother-Son Talisman is there too. Qin Shuying is on her way—at most two days before she can pinpoint our location.”
Su Wan’er’s eyes widened slightly.
“Blood Orchid told me Chao’er went out tonight.”
Blood Orchid walked at the front carrying the lantern—a distance that had been the Shadow Hall master’s habit for years: close enough to block an attack from any direction at a moment’s notice.
The moss on the well wall was already dead, its dried gray-green remains like a layer of peeling skin, rustling down with every footstep.
Chao’er walked second.
Behind her were the thirteen Dark Tan Wei, their Dark Swords swinging silently at their waists.
From the bottom of the well, heading east, was a man-made tunnel.
The tunnel was tall enough for one person to stand upright, and wide enough for two to walk shoulder to shoulder.
Every ten steps, a recess was carved into the wall, with long-dried lamp oil and charred wicks remaining inside.
Blood Orchid’s scarred face looked even more ferocious under the eerie green phosphorescence lining both sides of the corridor.
In her hands she gripped a pair of black-glinting, poison-coated Emei Piercers, her aura coiled tight like a Poison Snake before striking.
The green light stretched and shrank everyone’s shadows, casting them against the walls like a silent funeral procession.
“Ahead is the First Layer of the Underground Canal.”
Blood Orchid’s voice was very low.
“Yun Fuling’s Corpse Puppets are distributed along both sides of the drainage channel. Nineteen total, six of which were newly refined last night and haven’t fully solidified yet. Our undercover source reports that Yun Fuling herself isn’t on this layer—she’s at the Second Layer Altar Ruins, guarding the Stealing Heaven cauldron.”
Chao’er nodded.
She stopped and turned around.
The sickly green light shone up from below, carving her features into sharp contrast—jaw bright, eye sockets dark.
She made a gesture to the Dark Tan Wei behind her.
The thirteen split silently into two groups: six to the left, seven to the right, pressing forward along both walls of the tunnel.
Their footsteps were impossibly light, like thirteen snakes gliding simultaneously across dry leaves.
“How long to clear the first layer?”
“Half an hour.”
Blood Orchid hung the lantern on a recess hook in the tunnel wall and drew the Dark Sword from her waist.
Chao’er inclined her head, turned, and vanished into the darkness of the tunnel Depths.
The howling shrieks of the Corpse Puppets gradually thinned.
Blood Orchid’s blade was fast.
A Spirit Transmission came through.
“First layer cleared. All nineteen Corpse Puppets slain. The entrance to the Second Layer of the Underground Canal is found—at the end of the drainage channel, sealed by a Prohibition Seal from the Soul Refining Sect.”
Chao’er straightened from the wall and walked down.
What met her eyes was a mountain of densely packed, towering bone-white remains.
Human forms, beast forms, and many more bizarre, unrecognizable skeletons—all pressing and interlocking against each other, forming a Bone Mountain that made one’s skin crawl.
Resentment Energy thick enough to condense into substance, Death Energy, and Demonic Qi that had lingered for years flowed slowly over the surface of the Bone Mountain, making a gurgling sound.
Merely standing at the edge, the towering dead stillness and malice was enough to freeze one’s Spirit Soul and shatter one’s mind.
Nan Gong Jin, however, seemed not to notice at all.
Her hands formed seals at her chest. After a few breaths, the thick, unbreakable black Death Energy at the center of the Bone Mountain slowly parted to both sides.
A narrow bridge, formed of piled white bones and just wide enough for one person, led straight toward a pitch-black cave opening at the bottom of the pit—the entrance to the second layer.
The Prohibition Seal had been broken.
“Go.” Nan Gong Jin stepped onto the bone bridge, her pace steady, as if walking on flat ground.
Blood Orchid took a deep breath and followed closely behind.
It was very narrow, only enough for one person.
Oil lamps were embedded in the walls every ten steps.
Chao’er stepped barefoot onto the stone stairs.
The rough stone met the soles of her feet, and a chill climbed up from her soles, running down through her meridians like a cold little snake burrowing into her Dantian.
Inside was a perfectly circular alchemy chamber.
The entire space was lit by a single source: the massive alchemy furnace at the center.
The furnace was twice the height of a person, its body a dark red from being scorched by flames countless times.
Its surface was densely carved with alchemical Line Patterns, each one flowing slowly.
Like countless tiny rivers of magma embedded in the furnace’s body.
Furnace fire seeped through the hollowed patterns in its belly—golden-red, warm, utterly out of place in this sinister underground world.
The furnace fire cast a shadow on the opposite wall, magnified several times over.