Chapter 47: Zhao Lixuan Was a Bit Startled by Him

With the Breath of Chaos’s passing, Wu Fu died as well.

Yet the world remained ignorant of these events.

The truths behind the deaths of the Demon King and the Immortal Emperor became secrets buried in the dust of history, shrouded in endless rumors.

Only Luo Ting had witnessed it all with his own eyes.

For a time, he alone knew where the remnant Chaos Power from the ancient demon god had landed due to the curse.

And he coveted that power just as fiercely.

But after Wu Fu’s sudden death, the Immortal Court descended into a storm of blood and betrayal.

The two Immortal Clan heirs, Shen Fengyan and Shen Fengyu, were immediately fought over by the great powers of the Immortal Realm.

Though Luo Ting was a powerful Demon Immortal, he couldn’t afford to offend the entire Immortal Court, so he dared not target those two brothers.

Fortunately, no one cared about Wu Fu’s former concubine or his posthumous son.

This gave Luo Ting his opening.

Luo Ting didn’t keep the young Jiang Chen by his side from the start.

“He wanted me to be more obedient…”

“He wanted to manipulate and control me, but he feared that I carried the demon god’s breath, making me defiant and uncontrollable, prone to turning on him. So he decided to wear me down first, then slowly break me in.”

Luo Ting understood the darkest depths of human nature all too well.

He believed that starting with kindness would never breed true loyalty in a hound.

Only by first plunging Jiang Chen into the abyss, making him taste the bitterest suffering the world could offer, grinding away all his sharp edges and rebellious spirit, would he one day truly obey and submit.

And so Luo Ting schemed meticulously, deliberately handing the young child over to those twisted, sadistic fiends for torment.

Beatings, nails driven through flesh, throats slit…

After all, Jiang Chen bore the Breath of Chaos’s power. No matter how brutally he was tortured, he always slowly recovered from the brink of death.

And so, for those years, Luo Ting trapped him in an inescapable, endless hell of Avici.

“I escaped many times…”

But every escape ended in betrayal and recapture, followed by even more violent and cruel abuse.

“Those wounds… they hurt so much, so much… the pain drove me nearly mad.”

“Countless times, countless times…”

Countless times he awoke in agony, only to faint again in despair—neither able to live nor die.

“Everyone lied to me… they said they’d help me escape, that they wouldn’t betray me, but every time… I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

It wasn’t until years later, after he had tasted the utmost bitterness of the mortal world, that his foster father Luo Ting appeared like a savior, pulling him from the flames and offering the one glimmer of warmth in endless darkness.

But it all passed like a shooting star.

After his foster father’s “death,” the immense grief, regret, and remorse left Jiang Chen spoiling his only remaining sister, Jiang Fu, granting her every wish.

Yet even those days when the siblings depended on each other were still subtly manipulated by Luo Ting from the shadows.

The brother and sister continued to face betrayal and harm.

Neighbors who fussed over them with false concern would collude with thugs to rob and smash their home the next day; friends who seemed righteous would set traps to frame them…

There were too many wicked people in this world. Apart from his sister, he grew ever more unwilling to trust anyone.

Years later, the Demon King Luo Ting arranged for Jiang Fu to “fall ill.”

“In truth, back then… the Xue Ying Princess had found a new secret method, drawing my Heart’s Blood to extract the Breath of Chaos from it.”

To obtain even purer power, they also inflicted upon him a bone-chilling poison.

For those years, he endured periodic extractions of his Heart’s Blood while the cold poison eroded him. His body withered like a candle flickering in the wind.

Everything had been going according to the father and daughter’s plan.

But in all their calculations, they never accounted for some spoiled immortal scion deciding to vacation in the Mortal Realm.

…

After encountering Zhao Lixuan, everything changed.

While the Demon King and his daughter relentlessly destroyed his body from the shadows, Zhao Lixuan exhausted every means to heal him.

The more the Demon King and his daughter wished for his misery, striving to shove him into the abyss of despair, the harder Zhao Lixuan worked to cheer him up, showering him with all the warmth and happiness the world could offer.

How could Luo Ting tolerate this variable slipping from his control?

“Back then, the Demon King… actually considered killing you.”

That was why Jiang Fu “succumbed to her illness,” tricking Jiang Chen into taking her to Moon Haze Hollow for treatment—why he wandered in a daze and unknowingly unleashed the Nine Luminaries Sword Array, grievously wounding Zhao Lixuan.

Silence filled the room.

Winters in the Unstained Immortal Realm rarely saw snow, yet fine flakes drifted silently at midnight.

They rustled onto the bare branches in the courtyard, piling into a thin layer of bleak white.

Zhao Lixuan listened quietly to it all.

“So back then, you truly… didn’t mean to.”

The fog that had shrouded twenty years dissipated at last, blown away by the truth, revealing a bright moon.

He hadn’t meant to hurt him.

Zhao Lixuan wasn’t overly surprised by this answer.

After all, he’d always believed as much.

Whether it was the self-deceptions he’d clung to back then or the inconsistencies he’d puzzled over later, he’d always sensed there must be an explanation.

Little Jiang might not have liked him, but he wouldn’t have done that.

Now, years later.

He finally heard the truth with his own ears.

It was something he’d long known, yet it felt like an endless drizzle finally lifting, the sky clearing.

He quietly examined his heart.

It was fresh and warm once more, free of any lingering gloom.

That long rain had truly ended.

Though the heart-piercing agony and countless grievances from back then remained vivid in detail.

It had been the only major setback in his otherwise smooth life—covered in blood, collapsing into the cold, Shen Fengyu’s cries and curses ringing in his ears.

So much grievance and confusion.

But…

The night deepened like ink.

Zhao Lixuan’s fingers traced the fabric beside him, inch by inch, until he wrapped an arm around the waist of the man at his side.

A scent both strange and familiar, a past, present, and future both strange and familiar.

His eyes grew slightly misty, but he ignored the emotion, simply reaching out to pull Jiang Chen tightly into his embrace.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The body in his arms trembled violently.

Then it hugged back with all its strength, hunched over in ragged gasps, as if trying to merge him entirely into its flesh and blood.

“It was me… it was my fault.”

In the darkness, a bloody taste rose from his throat: “It’s my fault, Lixuan. It’s my fault.”

Clumsily, he seized Zhao Lixuan’s hand and guided it, pounding it once after another against his own chest.

It was ridiculous, but only he knew how those blows, though light, carried the weight of mountains, tearing his chest and piercing to the bone.

There were so many words…

So many words stuck in his throat; Jiang Chen clenched his teeth and couldn’t utter them.

He’d suffered too much in his youth, so he trusted no one. No one had taught him how to love, so he’d botched everything.

He couldn’t tell truth from lies, convinced all warmth was illusion; drugs and dark arts had clouded his mind, leading him to hurt Zhao Lixuan…

And those bowls of tea from Jiang Fu that made his temperament ever more paranoid and gloomy.

Were these truths?

They were.

Yet only he knew how much pretense and pleading he’d layered on.

In the end, it all came down to him.

He was too accustomed to pain and cold; sudden true warmth only filled him with fear and panic, driving him mad.

He dared not believe, wanted only to flee—yet greedily craved more, like a madman, in twisted contradiction.

He was at a loss, selfish and cold, stubborn and gloomy by nature.

He had shattered the happiness within his grasp with his own hands.

Even now, he hadn’t fully confessed.

Luo Ting’s endless torments over those years weren’t just to make him obedient.

They were also because, from Su Zhen’s dying moments, he’d glimpsed the only way to unseal that Chaos seal—

Despair.

A heart turned to ash, convinced happiness was forever beyond reach.

…

The night flowed like water, pitch-black and sightless, swallowing all shameful shadows.

In near-drowning despair, Jiang Chen tested the waters—boldly, rashly—pressing a light kiss to Zhao Lixuan.

That kiss was faintly cool.

Slowly, dull ache mingled with tingling; regret, despair, love, self-loathing… countless emotions surged within.

He couldn’t control the torrent.

He could only let the violent tides drown and suffocate him again and again, receding at the brink of death to leave devastation behind.

His faint breaths and heartbeat were tormented, kneaded in this exquisite agony and illusory solace, cycling endlessly—madness without release.

What to do.

He still couldn’t let go, couldn’t walk away—doomed to sink forever in hopeless poison-quenching.

He wanted to live.

…If only back then.

If only he hadn’t erred again and again. Hadn’t insisted on going to the Demon Bright, hadn’t brushed off Lixuan’s red-eyed pleas with empty words. Hadn’t foolishly burned his lifespan to storm the Beiming Abyss for that secret medicine to return to the Mortal Realm…

Greed, despair, longing, entanglement—he crushed the man against him with all his strength, like gnawing at an incurable wound.

Damp and twisted, despicable and cowardly, stealthily begging.

He hadn’t expected reciprocation.

Zhao Lixuan hadn’t shoved him away; that he still listened to his feeble excuses was mercy enough.

After twenty years, he still offered an embrace, a shred of self-deluding hope.

…And yet he remained utterly despicable.

Taking an inch and demanding a mile, greedy beyond measure.

Long unqualified for any warmth or hope.

Finally…

He’d only meant to brush the corner of his lips, but once tasting that warmth, it was like a parched fish encountering sweet rain—he could no longer restrain himself.

Uncontrollably, almost reverently, he probed deeper with exquisite care. His tongue savored that familiar breath from memory, instantly drowning all reason. He craved more depth, more intimacy, eternal entanglement…

Then, he was pushed away.

Jiang Chen gasped, humiliated and heartbroken, yet laced with a vile thrill of at least I kissed him.

Wrapped in this chaotic, uncontrollable mess of emotions, he instinctively shrank back.

Fearing Zhao Lixuan truly despised him, that he’d say something unbearable.

Snow continued falling silently outside the window, the world hushed.

Tomorrow, dawn would reveal a world cloaked in silvery white purity.

“Jiang Chen.” Zhao Lixuan called him, voice somewhat stern.

“Mm?” Jiang Chen’s throat choked; after a long pause, he squeezed out a feeble syllable.

No rebuke came as expected.

Beneath the warm quilts, Zhao Lixuan’s arm tightened, his palm gently stroking the trembling back until the rigid body gradually relaxed.

“So much happened before. We were both too young, both made mistakes.” He said.

“If we’re deciding to be together…”

“Let’s forget the past, seal it away. No grudges from here on, alright?”

“You’re Jiang Linyuan of the Liao Yuan Court; I’m Immortal Lord Li Xuan of the Unstained Immortal Realm. Let’s pretend we’ve just met.”

“I see that Immortal Lord Jiang is brilliant and peerlessly handsome; Immortal Lord Jiang finds me steady, reliable, and exceptionally refined.”

“Let’s start over like this. How about it?”

…

The words caught him completely off guard.

Jiang Chen couldn’t react for a moment.

For twenty years, he’d teetered on collapse, ragged and perilous, eternally fallen into the abyss without a glimpse of light.

But suddenly, a candle flame… ignited in the endless dark.

He couldn’t believe it, straining to see if it was illusion—yet saw only a hazy glow.

His body shuddered uncontrollably, vast longing rising, chased by even greater fear.

“Lixuan…” Jiang Chen barely heard his own voice amid the deafening heartbeat and heavy breaths. His tone hoarse and off-key, he pressed, “What… did you just say?”

“You heard me.” Zhao Lixuan said.

He’d heard…

The hazy glow took solid form.

Someone holding a lantern, waiting for him. He saw clearly now.

It was Lixuan.

For a moment, countless versions of Zhao Lixuan overlapped, his vibrant clothes shifting to plain white immortal robes before reverting to his bright everyday attire. His clear, bright brows and eyes turned steady and reserved, only to blaze with the same youthful light as in their younger days, just as they always had.

He had always been himself.

Changed, yet never truly changed.

So, in his eyes, had he changed, or remained the same as ever?

He said he was willing to try again.

He actually… still willing to give him another chance. Still willing to have him.

His heart pounded wildly, slamming against his chest with excruciating pain. Jiang Chen felt like someone who had struggled too long in the cold Abyss, finally yanked ashore by a powerful force, granted the long-denied right to breathe freely once more.

Perhaps he had drowned for far too long, so long… that every gulp of free air seared his lungs like tearing agony.

This moment was pure happiness.

Utterly happy, yet it felt incomparably painful.

Jiang Chen let out a voiceless laugh for an instant, truly reliving that sensation from years ago—this extreme, lost-and-regained joy twisting into unbearable torture.

He simply couldn’t bear it. All he could feel was boundless panic and heart-piercing pain!

Only the overwhelming, crystal-clear agony that made him curl up, his entire body shaking uncontrollably.

So painful…

A sour, swelling ache surged from his sinuses, crashing over his head and spreading through every limb. He didn’t deserve it. He was a thorough deceiver. He didn’t deserve any of this.

Countless emotions clashed wildly. He clenched his teeth hard, hugging Zhao Lixuan so tightly it hurt, yet Jiang Chen refused to let go no matter what.

He buried his face deep in the crook of Zhao Lixuan’s neck, his body trembling beyond his control.

Zhao Lixuan was a bit startled by him.

Even the gravest wounds had never made him writhe in such agony, lose control like this.

His palm moved soothingly up Jiang Chen’s tense back, gently stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. His voice dropped extremely low and slow: “Little Jiang, what’s wrong?”

The man in his arms stopped breathing.

“Little Jiang.”

“Are you crying?”

“If you want to cry, then cry it out. Don’t hold back. It’s okay.”