Those eyes, always hazy with moisture and brimming with complex emotions, were now filled with an almost ethereal calm.
It was precisely this calm that was more captivating than any display.
Because it wasn’t an act. It was his true self—a stillness forged through seven years of solitude, a gentleness that had never been broken despite countless humiliations.
This couldn’t be faked, nor hidden.
It flowed silently from his brows and eyes.
This charm, like the strongest wine, the most poisonous honey, instantly struck a soft corner in the hearts of many female cultivators below the stage—cultivators who had seen it all and whose hearts were like iron—a corner they themselves had never noticed.
Silence.
A silence deeper than any before enveloped the entire Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion.
Everyone’s gaze changed.
No longer were they looking at a beautiful object or an amusing plaything.
They were looking at a living, breathing man full of pain and struggle, yet tenaciously existing.
Deep in Chu Yi’s eyes, a flicker of surprise passed.
She actually saw her own father’s shadow in this youth.
Yu Furen and Lingshu Popo exchanged a glance, both seeing a hint of gravity in each other’s eyes.
What they saw was causality.
“They saw the densely packed causality threads wrapped around Shen Mo—countless threads that even her Heavenly Eye could not see through.”
Each thread shimmered with an ominous dark red, like strands soaked in blood, extending from his chest into the unknown distances of the void.
Who was tied to the other end of those threads? She couldn’t see.
But she could feel those threads trembling slightly, as if someone at the other end was pulling hard.
“Calamity Fate.”
Lingshu Popo spoke again, her voice this time even lower, so low that only the two could hear.
“This old one has lived a thousand years and has only seen this fate pattern twice.”
Yu Furen’s fingers halted on her prayer beads.
Lingshu Popo’s gaze grew distant.
“A thousand years ago, this old one was only at the Golden Core Stage, following my honored teacher to attend the Dao Discussion Assembly of the Heavenly Xuan Sect. It was there that I saw that person.”
She did not say that person’s name.
Because it wasn’t necessary. The great cataclysm a thousand years ago that swept through the entire cultivation world—no female cultivator would forget it, even if most of them had not personally experienced it.
That name had become a taboo, a nightmare that seniors would mention in the deepest voices late at night, ending with the words, ‘May the Dao Ancestor bless that he never has such dreams again.’
“What was his name…” Yu Furen murmured.
“Chu Yang.”
When Lingshu Popo uttered these two words, her voice carried a tremor that a thousand years had not been able to erase.
“Such a clean name, but this very name caused three sects that had been passed down for a thousand years to be destroyed in an instant, damaged Lady Yunhe’s Dao foundation, causing her to be forever stuck at the Deity Transformation stage.”
Yu Furen’s pupils contracted slightly.
“Lady Yunhe?”
“You don’t know this part.”
The corner of Lingshu Popo’s mouth twitched, her wrinkles forming a bitter arc.
“At that time, you were still young. Yunhe was the most promising prodigy a thousand years ago to break through Deity Transformation and step into the Lianxu Realm. The entire cultivation world thought she would become the first Lianxu True Lord in a thousand years. Then she met Chu Yang.”
A soft sound came from the prayer beads between Yu Furen’s fingers.
“Seizing by force.”
Lingshu Popo’s voice became very soft.
“She used the most extreme method—destroyed his sect, killed everyone he cared about, imprisoned him on the highest peak of Yunyin Mountain for thirty years. Everyone thought she was just coveting his beauty. But later, someone found a diary she had written in her secluded chamber. There was only one sentence on it.”
“‘I don’t know how to love someone. I thought if I killed everyone around him, then he would only have me.'”
A cold wind passed through the eaves of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion, and the wind chimes made a tinkling sound, as if someone was sighing.
“What happened next?” Yu Furen asked.
“Later, Chu Yang died, killed by her own hands.”
Lingshu Popo closed her eyes.
“It wasn’t hatred. It was too much love—love to the point that she couldn’t bear him looking at anyone else, love to the point that she would rather kill him with her own hands than let someone else take him away. After that sword fell, Lady Yunhe held his corpse for seven days and seven nights. When she was discovered, half of her hair had turned white.”
Yu Furen fell silent.
She suddenly remembered the gaze that had come from a certain direction under the stage just now.
She followed that gaze and saw Chu Yi.
“This is the Calamity Fate.”
Lingshu Popo’s voice was old and weary.
“It’s not that he harms others; it’s that everyone who gets close to him will involuntarily want to possess him, control him, make him their own. The Pure Yin Constitution is just the surface. The real reason is his fate pattern. That fate pattern amplifies the greed, anger, and ignorance in everyone’s hearts. Liking becomes obsession, appreciation becomes possession, pity becomes madness.”
“Is there no way to break it?” Yu Furen asked.
Lingshu Popo was silent for a long time.
“There is,” she finally said.
“Let him die.”
Yu Furen’s fingers stopped on her prayer beads.
“After Chu Yang’s death, fifteen of the seventeen Nascent Soul True Lords who were infatuated with him returned to normal. Of the remaining two, one went mad, and one passed away in meditation.”
“Although Lady Yunhe’s cultivation never recovered, she was no longer troubled by inner demons. All the causality caused by him dissipated the moment he breathed his last.”
Lingshu Popo’s voice was calm, as if she were telling a story that had nothing to do with her.
“This is the end of a Calamity Fate: either be possessed by one person, or be destroyed by one person. There is no third outcome.”
The lights of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion suddenly dimmed for a moment.
Yu Furen looked at Shen Mo’s profile and suddenly recalled the moment she had lost her focus just now.
From a small loose cultivator in the mortal realm to now holding power over the Jade Pure Pavilion, to the point where even the sect leaders of the five great sects had to show her some respect, she had seen too many people and slept with too many.
For her, male beauty should have already been bland after tasting all flavors.
Yet when she looked at Shen Mo just now, her heartbeat quickened for half a beat.
It wasn’t the heat of a young hot-blooded cultivator seeing a beauty—she was so familiar with that kind of heat that she could discuss serious matters with an unchanged face while under the table hooking the ankle of the male cultivator opposite with her toe.
She had thought her reaction to men was only that kind of effortless control.
But Shen Mo didn’t remind her of those playthings she had brought to her bed. He reminded her of the white moonlight of the past.
From when she was still very young and very weak.
At that time, she had liked someone.
A loose cultivator, with cultivation even lower than hers, not particularly handsome, but when he smiled, his eyes curved, making her feel that the entire cruel cultivation world had softened.
Later, that person died in a chaotic battle over treasures. The cause of death was taking a sword for her.
She held his corpse and sat in the rain for an entire night. From then on, she never fell for anyone again.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to; she had forgotten how.
But the moment Shen Mo had walked down from the high platform just now—the crimson skirt hem, the lowered eyes and brows, the shoulders that tensed slightly when looked at—her heart suddenly tightened.
Like a thorn buried for over a thousand years, lightly touched by someone.
It didn’t hurt, but it itched.
Itched so much that she wanted to look at him one more time, and then one more.
When she came to her senses, she had already unknowingly twisted and broken three prayer beads.
A magical tool for calming the mind—it hadn’t even lasted an hour before her.
“Popo,” Yu Furen’s voice was a little astringent, “I just now…”
“This old one knows.”
Lingshu Popo interrupted her, without reproach in her tone, only the weariness of seeing through the world.
“You are neither the first nor the last. This old one considered herself as having a heart as still as water, but just now when I saw him playing ‘Moonlit Epiphyllum’ on the stage,” she paused, slowly opening her withered palm, revealing a crushed spirit stone lying in it, “I crushed my own Array Eye Stone without even realizing it.”
The two women exchanged a glance, both seeing the same thing in each other’s eyes.
Not fear, but pity.
That man named Shen Mo had done nothing wrong.
He was simply born with such a bone structure, carrying such an aura.
And then everyone—those who loved him, those who hated him, those who admired him, those who used him, those who protected him, those who destroyed him—everyone was tearing him apart, piece by piece, in their own way.
And the most cruel part was that each one of them believed she loved him.
“Should we tell him?” Yu Furen asked in a low voice.
Lingshu Popo put the crushed fragments of the Array Eye Stone into her sleeve and slowly shook her head.
“It’s useless. The most terrifying thing about the Calamity Fate is not that it brings calamity, but that the one who bears this fate will never believe he is a ‘calamity.'”
“He will think he isn’t good enough, that he failed to keep his place, that he dragged others down. He will blame himself for everyone’s madness, and then lose himself in guilt.”
She raised her head and looked at the beautiful silhouette on the high platform.
“Like the tanhua flower, it doesn’t know that blooming too beautifully drives people mad. It just blooms with all its might, and then when dawn comes, it dies.”
Yu Furen followed her gaze.
Below the stage, countless gazes fell upon him.
Some were burning, some were deep, and some had already begun scheming how to take him away.
Those gazes wove together into an invisible net, tightening inch by inch.
And Shen Mo was completely unaware.
The time it takes to burn one incense stick passed quietly.
He blinked, and the emptiness in his eyes gradually faded, returning to his usual look—tinged with some confusion and weariness.
He took half a step back, bowed to the audience with an extremely light, almost imperceptible inclination, and silently retreated into the row of candidates.
Throughout the entire presentation, he did not speak a single word, nor did he make any exaggerated movements.
Yet the shock it brought was longer-lasting and deeper than any of the splendid displays before him.
The silence under the stage lasted for several breaths before it was broken by gradually rising murmurs.
“This… what kind of presentation is this?”
“But I… I feel that it’s more… unsettling than watching any singing, dancing, or swordplay.”
“He did nothing, yet I feel like I saw so much…”
“That feeling… hard to describe, impossible to define, yet it makes one’s heart feel tight, and one can’t help but want to look…”
“This boy… he’s a monster!”
“This charm, it’s too sinister!”
The emcee finally snapped out of her shock. She took a deep breath, and her professional instincts let her quickly proceed to the next part of the process.
In the front row of the reserved seats, a beautiful female cultivator set down her wine cup.
She was wrapped in a floor-length crimson-purple dress that hugged her voluptuous and delicate figure.
The neckline was cut neither too high nor too low, just revealing a hint of collarbone and the full curve below.
She leaned forward slightly, resting her arm on the low table, and the neckline swayed with the movement, revealing a deeper snowy white cleft.
The young male attendant’s gaze involuntarily drifted over, only to be forced back by her half-smiling, half-serious look.
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