“Come with me…”
“Right now… right here…”
“Let me know… that I’m still yours… completely, entirely…”
Buzz—!
Lin Jingzhe’s mind was struck like a heavy hammer.
An immense sense of taboo, along with some deep desire within her heart… was fiercely provoked by this blatant invitation.
The power of the Dream Realm subtly amplified every desire within a person.
She became increasingly unrestrained.
Shen Mo’s flushed face, that timid yet bold gaze, the scorching heartbeat pressed against her palm, and that incomparable allure of forbidden temptation… ignited the secret cravings she had long suppressed.
Her fingertips went soft, unwilling to move away even a fraction.
“You… you don’t want to?” Shen Mo saw her hesitation, and his eyes were shrouded in self-loathing.
The force gripping her wrist loosened, and his body began to shrink backward.
“Of course… you still despise me… think I’m dirty, unworthy…”
“No! That’s not it!” Lin Jingzhe blurted out without thinking.
She pulled him back into her arms with force, her other hand cupping his burning cheek, forcing him to look at her.
Their gazes met.
She saw in his eyes a pair that were slightly reddened from desire and inner struggle, burning with intensity.
His breath spilled from his nostrils, landing on her upper lip—rapid and erratic.
Lin Jingzhe’s other hand locked onto his waist.
She had wanted to do this for a long time.
When she caught his falling body by the Cold Pool, her arm had circled his waist, her palm tracing the curve of his side.
That arc—she had remembered it for three whole months.
Not deliberately, but her palm had remembered it for her.
Every time she closed her eyes, her palm would recall that curve.
From ribs to hip bone, from side to lower back, every inch of its rise and fall.
Now her hand finally returned to that curve.
Not catching—claiming.
Her fingers curled, locking his waist firmly within her palm.
“I want you.”
No longer pure imitation, but laced with Lin Jingzhe’s own dominance.
“Let me prove to you—you will always be mine. No one can take you away, and nothing can change that.”
She lowered her head and kissed those slightly parted, rosy, alluring lips.
“Mmn…”
Shen Mo let out a short gasp, which dissolved into a submissive whimper.
His body stiffened at first, then softened as if melting, responding to her kiss with awkward, trembling inexperience.
Tears slipped down again—but they were scalding, mingling between intertwined lips and teeth, impossible to tell if they were bitter or liberating.
Moonlight was hazy, the ancient osmanthus tree’s shadows swaying gracefully.
Lin Jingzhe felt as if she had split into two people.
One watched coldly from above, witnessing herself playing the role of Honored Teacher, committing the most shameful desecration upon this body that belonged to her Master’s Husband—yet felt utterly real within the dream.
The other was completely submerged in the extreme sensory impact and the thrill of total control that this vessel provided.
She explored with clumsy yet forceful strokes, feeling his trembling, his inexperienced responses, and those uncontrollable, broken soft moans beneath her (at some point he had fallen onto the soft grass).
The spun wildly, massive amounts of Dream Essence surged forth, the ice of her bottleneck melting at lightning speed, the sensation of rising Cultivation Level so clear it was terrifying.
And yet, even that pleasure seemed trivial compared to the joy of this moment.
She took greedily, filling the enormous void in her heart through this most primitive, most intimate means.
“Wan’er… Wan’er…”
Shen Mo whimpered brokenly beneath her, calling out a name that didn’t belong to her, yet his arms clung tightly around her neck, giving himself over more deeply, more completely, without reservation.
That posture of total reliance and sacrifice greatly satisfied Lin Jingzhe’s possessiveness.
Lost in passion.
Reason burned away completely.
Deep in the Southern Wilderness, several days earlier.
Chu Yi sat upright within a secluded and elegant glazed pavilion, idly toying with a Message Jade Talisman between her fingers.
Before her floated a Water Mirror, its surface shifting with light and shadow, reflecting the undercurrents stirring across the Southern Wilderness due to the few rumors she had released.
The first rumor: “The residual soul of the Demon King Nan Gong Jin, who fell a thousand years ago, has not fully perished. She possessed a low-level Female Cultivator, taking the name Chao’er, and has been recuperating in the Soul Severing Abyss. Now she is in the critical period of Soul Fusion with her host body—her power reduced to less than one percent. Moreover, the forced fusion has caused her Spirit Soul to become disordered, with bouts of madness.”
The Southern Wilderness was vast, dotted with numerous ruins and Secret Realms.
Since ancient times, it had been a place where righteous and demonic forces mingled and slaughtered each other endlessly.
A thousand years ago, the Demon King Nan Gong Jin had a fearsome reputation.
Her legacy, treasures, and even her Residual Soul itself were irresistible temptations to many cultivators.
More importantly, when Nan Gong Jin had dominated the Southern Wilderness, she had made countless enemies—killing for treasure, annihilating sects, destroying clans—deeds too numerous to count.
Many Sects and noble families harbored deep hatred for her, and her legacy disciples or descendants regarded “eradicating Nan Gong Jin’s remnants” as a sacred mission or a Fate Opportunity.
Now, hearing that this old Demon Lord had not only failed to fully dissipate but was in a weak, disordered critical period—how could those forces once harmed by Nan Gong Jin, or those coveting her legacy, possibly restrain themselves?
In an instant, countless visible and hidden gazes turned toward the Soul Severing Abyss—that region marked on maps as a deadly peril.
Avengers sharpened their blades, treasure hunters stirred restlessly, and those seeking to fish in troubled waters were beyond counting.
The second rumor was more specific—and more salacious.
“Within the Soul Severing Abyss, in Nan Gong Jin’s underground demon palace, resides this year’s Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion Flower Queen—that young master of peerless beauty and Calamity Fate, Shen Mo. It is said he has been imprisoned by Nan Gong Jin, defiled day and night, in a dire situation.”
The ripples of the Flower Queen Competition had yet to settle.
Shen Mo’s shocking appearance, his supreme looks and talent, and the convoluted, bizarre story behind him had long spread throughout the Southern Wilderness and beyond, becoming the subject of countless Female Cultivators’ romantic fantasies and gossip.
Now, hearing that this flower perched high above had fallen into a Demon Lord’s hands and was being violated stirred countless complex reactions.
Some simply lusted after his beauty and wanted to rescue him for themselves.
Some bore grudges from the competition or were simply jealous, wanting to take advantage of the chaos to humiliate him.
Others, self-proclaimed righteous, wished to get close to him under the banner of eliminating demons and rescuing the innocent.
Shen Mo himself had become a piece of fragrant meat, attracting countless moths to the flame.
The third rumor implicated the Righteous Path: “Su Wan’er, the Bright Moon Peak Lord of Jiaoyue Peak—severely wounded, unconscious, hovering between life and death—has also been taken by Nan Gong Jin to the Soul Severing Abyss demon palace, held hostage to coerce her husband, Shen Mo.”
The Jiaoyue Peak lineage had deep ties with Cloud Hidden’s Yunyin Mountain, and Su Wan’er was a figure of great importance. Her safety concerned matters of great magnitude.
This piece of news successfully drew the attention of even more Righteous Path forces toward the Soul Severing Abyss.
Chu Yi’s methods of spreading rumors were extremely sophisticated—not done with great fanfare, but through several seemingly unrelated secret intelligence channels with good reputations, leaked in the guise of accidental discovery.
Truth and falsehood intertwined, impossible to trace to the source, yet persuasive due to the detailed specifics.
Sure enough, just as Chu Yi had predicted, after the rumors spread, she didn’t need to lift a finger.
Mountain Rain Comes, Wind Fills the Tower.
Avengers, treasure seekers, lustful admirers, those wanting to rescue others and make a name for themselves, and even those simply wanting to profit from chaos… cultivators of every stripe converged from all the great continents to various parts of the Southern Wilderness.
Among them were no small number of capable Loose Cultivators, minor Sects and families, and even a few mid-sized powers sending out exploratory forces.
This was exactly the effect Chu Yi wanted.
The murkier the water, the better.
The more people, the more chaos.
Let these pawns scout the path for her first—exhausting the Soul Severing Abyss’s defensive power, already weakened by Chao’er’s departure and the assault from Qin Shuying and others—and further destabilizing a situation already stretched taut by foreign invasion.
Once the various factions had slaughtered each other into exhaustion at the Soul Severing Abyss, that would be the optimal moment for her—the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind—to slip in silently and take her objective directly.
As for everything else… in her eyes, they were merely insignificant supporting characters in this grand play, all ultimately forced to yield to her grand design of Stealing Heaven to resurrect her father.
Deep within the Soul Severing Abyss, in a lavish side hall Nan Gong Jin used to receive honored guests.
Within the hall burned priceless Ambergris Calming Incense, the furnishings extravagant to the extreme, yet imbued with an ancient Demonic Path Elegance in the details.
A woman wearing a long flowing robe of deep crimson with cloud patterns, her hair piled high and adorned with a slanted Jade Cicada Hairpin, lounged lazily upon a soft couch covered in snow mink fur.
She appeared to be around thirty years of age. Her looks were not stunningly beautiful, but she gave off an impression of spring breeze—warm, approachable, and easy to be near.
Her name was Xie Shilan. She was the true founder of the , a remarkable woman who had long retired from the world, her Cultivation Level unfathomably deep, having reached the pinnacle of the path of dreams and Spirit Soul.
She was also one of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion’s most mysterious distinguished guests, possessing numerous astonishing collections and peculiar tastes.
Not long ago, she had obtained through special channels that set of extremely private and explosive portrait photographs of Shen Mo taken by Liu Yanniang.
In the paintings, the young man’s unique charm—fractured purity interwoven with pure defiance—made her remember him at first sight. For days she had been somewhat haunted by him.
She had known the Demon King Nan Gong Jin a thousand years ago, when both were of humble origins.
They had fought through life-and-death dangers side by side, their temperaments matched perfectly. They were true bosom friends.
She was the only person who dared to take off her shoes in Nan Gong Jin’s palace, sit cross-legged, crack melon seeds, and leave the pile of shells stacked like a small mountain without cleaning up.
Every time Blood Orchid saw that pile of melon seed shells, the scar on her face would twitch slightly—but she never said anything.
Because Nan Gong Jin herself never cleaned up either—she would simply prop her feet up on the table and have Blood Orchid massage them.
Their friendship had begun with a fight.
At that time, Nan Gong Jin had just entered the Golden Core Stage and was locked in battle at the Dragon-Subduing Sea on the edge of the Southern Wilderness with a flood dragon about to undergo Dragon Transformation.
Three days and three nights—her Spiritual Power exhausted, the dragon’s fangs barely three inches from the artery in her neck.
Xie Shilan passed by, struck off the dragon’s head with a single sword stroke, then pocketed the dragon core, dumped Nan Gong Jin on the beach, said “You got yourself beaten like this by a single flood dragon—embarrassing,” and walked away.
Nan Gong Jin lay on the beach for half an hour, mustered enough strength, chased after her, and beat her up.
The dragon core was taken back, but Xie Shilan also latched onto her.
From that day forward, Nan Gong Jin’s rule of solitude was broken.
Xie Shilan was the only one who didn’t call her Old Ancestor. She called her “A-Jin”—for a thousand years.
On the eve of the Fallen Immortal Ridge battle, she had been lured away by three Righteous Path Sects using the Lure the Tiger Away tactic, trapped in a Spirit Severing Land ten thousand miles away.
By the time she broke free and raced back through the night to Fallen Immortal Ridge, all she saw were the scorched earth covering the mountains and Nan Gong Jin’s shattered Life Tablet.
She sat amidst the ruins of Fallen Immortal Ridge for seven days and seven nights.
On the morning of the eighth day, she stood up, picked up the fragments of Nan Gong Jin’s robes scattered across the scorched earth one by one, placed them in a Jade Casket, and handed it to the young attendant Blood Orchid.
“She doesn’t like others touching her things. These are all hers—keep them safe for her.”
Then she disappeared.
For a very long time, those on the Demonic Path thought she had died—some said she charged the Seven Righteous Sects alone to avenge Nan Gong Jin and was slain by their combined might; others said she became disillusioned and retired to the mortal world, never again concerning herself with cultivation.
All of it was false.
She simply couldn’t be bothered to talk to anyone anymore.
In a world without Nan Gong Jin, there wasn’t even a single person with whom she could take off her shoes and crack melon seeds. What was there to say?
She spent many years creating the . Its original purpose was deeply private—not to establish a Sect, not to pass down a legacy, but simply to see A-Jin one more time.