Zhao Lixuan still remembered that night of parting, the kiss he shared with Jiang Chen.
It started as a gentle peck meant to soothe, but somehow it grew more entangled and inseparable.
Jiang Chen lowered his head to capture his lower lip, grinding against it tenderly, his tongue prying open Zhao Lixuan’s teeth with unyielding force. The hand clasped at his waist slipped inside his inner robes, tracing the sweat-dampened curve of his lower back and spine with slick palms.
Like parched earth drinking rain after a long drought, the long-pent-up longing found momentary release—but far from enough to truly quench it.
His other hand gripped the back of Zhao Lixuan’s neck, seizing total control as he continued his relentless conquest.
Jiang Chen’s kisses left Zhao Lixuan burning hot all over, his tongue helpless against the teasing intrusion. Saliva mingled, his tongue root went numb, and droplets he couldn’t swallow in time trickled from the corner of his mouth, bringing a faint itch.
Since we’ve kissed this far already…
With a flicker of intent, Zhao Lixuan flipped them over, pinning the other man beneath him.
His sudden boldness made Jiang Chen freeze stiff, storm-tossed waves surging in those usually serene eyes.
Shock, helplessness, and a trace of unfathomable darkness—all betrayed by his abruptly dilated pupils.
But Zhao Lixuan paid it no mind. Eager and proactive, his fingertips landed on the silken ties of his own inner robes, about to tug them loose.
Jiang Chen’s trembling fingers caught his collar, pulling it tightly closed.
Zhao Lixuan: “???”
Candlelight flickered as he stared in utter confusion, reaching again to undo it. Jiang Chen stubbornly refastened it.
As if Zhao Lixuan were some ferocious beast.
Full of bewilderment, Zhao Lixuan asked, “Ah, you… what do you mean? You don’t want to?”
He thought it a perfectly normal question.
But beneath him, Jiang Chen’s pupils shrank sharply, as if he’d heard something blasphemous, thunderstruck. His breath hitched.
Zhao Lixuan simply shifted forward, rubbing against him through their clinging clothes.
See? It’s raring to go.
Not gonna do it?
“Jiang Chen,” he tilted his head, his tone laced with genuine puzzlement, “don’t tell me you’re just like Ye Gong who loved dragons—all talk, no action?”
Jiang Chen jerked his face away, ears tinged pink, jaw clenched tight. His expression mixed shy embarrassment with frantic, struggling panic.
Zhao Lixuan: “???”
But his wrist was seized again by Jiang Chen’s firm grip, refusing to let him touch.
“What’s wrong? Weren’t you the one obsessed with getting married? Now that it’s our wedding night… isn’t this what you wanted?”
Jiang Chen’s chest heaved as he struggled to compose himself. After a long moment, he forced out a few low words through gritted teeth: “…No.”
Watching him like this, Zhao Lixuan felt both baffled and oddly amused.
Of course, he was baffled why Jiang Chen resisted when it was mutual affection, a natural progression… He couldn’t figure it out.
The amusement came from how this man had changed so much from the silent, aloof boy twenty years ago—yet deep down, that inscrutable awkwardness was exactly the same.
Still that same unpredictable Little Jiang.
But this was too unpredictable.
Twenty years ago, Jiang Chen hadn’t wanted to go all the way with him—he got that.
But twenty years later, with their broken mirror mended at last, why still reluctant?
Hadn’t it been Jiang Chen kissing so urgently and proactively just now? Hadn’t it been him scheming to reconcile, even announcing it to the world?
Jiang Chen wasn’t mute anymore.
Yet Zhao Lixuan discovered that when facing him, this man reverted to that old saw-mouthed gourd, bottling up all turbulent emotions.
He held his breath so long it grew labored before finally squeezing out: “It’s… not time yet.”
Zhao Lixuan: “????”
He nearly laughed in exasperation, trying to jog his memory: “Jiang Chen, you were the one who moved into my room, you who announced our marriage to the Three Realms.”
“Now everyone assumes we’ve already consummated.”
“Besides, it’s not like we haven’t before.”
“Back then, we did everything proper and improper—what haven’t we tried? Why cling to empty formalities, waiting for some damn wedding night? Tell me what you mean by ‘not time yet’?”
“Not time yet,” Jiang Chen turned away, biting down slightly, “means… it’s not time yet…”
Really?
Zhao Lixuan bucked his hips, grinding against the hardness again. Jiang Chen shuddered violently, even his eye corners flushing pink.
“I think… it’s pretty much time.”
Jiang Chen looked roasted alive, torn between restraint and fluster. He clenched his teeth, finally blurting something utterly absurd Zhao Lixuan had never heard in his life.
“Back then… did you really like me? Or did you just want to sleep with me?”
The candle flame leaped wildly, casting tangled, swaying shadows on the wall.
The words left Jiang Chen stunned first, then regretting it enough to bite off his tongue.
How absurd, he knew. Yet his voice trembled faintly as he stubbornly pressed on:
“If you truly love someone… shouldn’t you cherish and treasure them?”
“How could you be so hasty? Back then… you…” He trailed off, memories surging—
Back then, Zhao Lixuan had half-coaxed, half-tricked him back to the little courtyard. The first day was still proper; the second day—just the second—he’d climbed into bed hugging a pillow!
By the third morning, they’d already…
Fast?
Was it fast?
Mutual love, natural flow—what was fast about it? Zhao Lixuan didn’t get it.
He’d clearly held back a whole night; strictly speaking, two nights before truly claiming him! He’d been plenty restrained.
“Little Jiang,” Zhao Lixuan’s palm cupped his feverish cheek, “back when we were together… did doing this feel bad?”
Jiang Chen jolted like struck by lightning, breath turning ragged and chaotic, looking furious, frantic, about to explode on the spot: “You, you…”
“Or was I really that bad in bed back then?”
At those words, Jiang Chen flushed redder than Zhao Lixuan had ever seen, blood rushing to his face.
“Was I really that bad?”
He pursued relentlessly, tilting Jiang Chen’s chin to trap his gaze, grinding hotly between them. “Not that bad, right?”
Jiang Chen was cornered, tearless and trapped, finally shaking his head almost imperceptibly.
“See? I knew I wasn’t bad. So back then, when we did it, you weren’t unhappy, were you?”
If you were happy, why refuse today?
“…”
“Because…” Jiang Chen gritted out.
“It shouldn’t be like this. If it’s true love, you’d wait…”
“Ah???’
That final night, they not only failed to consummate but launched into a hilariously mismatched debate.
Or rather, Zhao Lixuan’s one-sided bewildered interrogation.
Because he truly didn’t understand.
“So, Immortal Lord Jiang, do you want to be with me or not?”
“…Want to.”
“You want to be with me, but not… get close?”
“I don’t like it.”
“?!?!”
“Little Jiang, if your body doesn’t like it, then you don’t like it. Everything else is just self-deception.”
“No,” Jiang Chen rebutted urgently, “I just don’t like… that kind of thing.”
Zhao Lixuan grew even more confused. But if he rejected intimacy with his beloved, what kind of “like” was that? Or did Jiang Chen have some physical issue?
No, memories say it worked fine—great, even.
While he puzzled endlessly, Jiang Chen seemed driven mad: “Why… is your mind always full of that stuff?”
Huh?
Heaven and earth as witness—he wasn’t obsessed.
Twenty years ago or now, hadn’t he shown him mortal fireworks, found novel gifts, practiced swordplay and tea-tasting together, shared seasonal vistas… and only when passion peaked did they slip in some intimacy?
Even in sword-practice bamboo groves or flower-viewing courtyards, occasionally… cough—that was just the mood, natural flow.
Where was it always on his mind?
…
Jiang Chen’s thoughts were truly hard to fathom.
As they argued, Zhao Lixuan vaguely grasped it—the crux seemed to be—
Jiang Chen craved something “pure,” dustless, gradual.
While Zhao Lixuan believed deep emotion fused spirit and flesh inseparably, total surrender the fullest joy.
But Jiang Chen disagreed.
To him, prioritizing skin-on-skin made it impure. Zhao Lixuan was shocked—what cloistered mindset was this?
They bickered till dawn before Zhao Lixuan finally touched on it.
What Jiang Chen sought wasn’t purity, but more—deeper, heavier, greedier possession.
Yet he still couldn’t comprehend: Aren’t you after more, possession?
So I give you everything—body, desire, unreservedly. Isn’t that what you want? Why aren’t you happy?
Zhao Lixuan prided himself on his patience for not pinning him down right then to “discuss” thoroughly.
“True love means restraint”—what twisted logic? Wasn’t it love that made one lose control?
He never lusted after others.
Sit pure and chaste, not even wanting it—that’s true love?
Absurd. What was he even with?
Only later, purifying demonic qi in the Sacrificial Tower with ascetic clarity, did he gradually understand.
And now, in the absolute darkness and silence of the Thousand Ridges Dark Grotto, holding the lamp gathering his brother’s remnant soul, he peered through the soulfire at Jiang Chen’s utter breakdown on the other end—forced to grit his teeth and press on through bloodied advance—
In the Extreme North Palace, the battle had reached a desperate life-or-death frenzy.
Tu Ji, leveraging her familiarity with the Demon Clan’s palace, had shaken off Luo Ting and his daughter. Alone, she fled madly along ancient passages riddled with traps and forks toward the deepest altar.
Behind her, countless demon generals, yao generals, and twisted fiends—catalyzed by evil sorcery—surged like tides, clogging narrow channels and vast underground halls, using their bodies as shields to frenziedly block the Immortal Clan coalition.
Every layer deeper demanded blood’s toll.
In the vast cavern, ice stalactites dripped demon-blood tainted slurry; bone-paved stairs led to soul-devouring toxic mires that swallowed immortal essence; narrow suspended stone bridges swarmed with demon bats…
Jiang Chen and Shen Fengyu had successively crushed Demon Emperor Jiyou in endless twisting darkness, repelled Xue Ying Princess’s elite yao guard, and in the second layer’s rune grand hall, bitterly slain Tu Ji’s infamous tacticians Fang Yishu and Jia Ling.
Their own losses were grievous.
Even the defense-specialist High Priest Yu Changxin was wounded.
Shen Fengyu slashed back an oncoming fiend, rushing to support him: “Foster father!”
Yu Changxin swallowed the sweet tang in his throat, gasping: “I’m fine, just need a moment to regulate my qi. But Immortal Lord Jiang, he…”
Jiang Chen’s wounds were graver: a chest gash deep to bone oozed dark blood, his waist corroded by demonic qi into flayed, horrifying flesh. Web-like backlash lines flickered on his face, immortal power boiling chaotically around him.
Yet he charged ahead oblivious to pain or fatigue, cleaving a bloodied path for those behind.
“He’s overdrawning his bloodline essence like this… it’s the sign of oil exhausted, lamp flickering out. He can’t fight anymore!” Yu Changxin tried to advance, but Shen Fengyu held him back firmly.
The night before storming the palace, Jiang Chen had sought out Shen Fengyu alone.
Laughable, really. Secrets he’d hidden from Zhao Lixuan, too shameful to voice—he spilled entirely to this Immortal Emperor he neither liked nor pitied.
Precisely because Shen Fengyu despised him, Jiang Chen trusted—
This man would mercilessly bury all traces, contrive every way to make Zhao Lixuan fully let go, forget him.
“If Lixuan asks you later, about any last words I left… Please…”
“Say you know nothing, heard nothing.”
“That way… he’ll forget me soon enough.”
“…”
“I didn’t mean to deceive him. Though I knew my days were numbered, I clung to hope with my special bloodline…”
“But the Breath of Chaos grew ever thinner by the day, becoming increasingly difficult to forcibly sustain.”
“If this dragged on, at most three to five years remained… and he would likely suffer endless torment from illness, only to burden him with worry. Since they were fated never to stay together forever, it was better to use this broken body to unseal the seal one last time, eradicate the demon scourge for the Unstained Immortal Realm, and then… retrieve Lan Ze Immortal Lord’s soul for him.”
“…”
“The reason he had spent twenty years scouring the Three Realms yet only found less than half of Lan Ze Immortal Lord’s soul was because… the other half of Lan Ze Immortal Lord’s soul wasn’t within the Three Realms at all—it was at the core of the Sealing Demon Great Seal.”
Shen Fengyu suddenly understood upon hearing this.
Of course—he should have realized it sooner! When Zhao Lanze had sacrificed himself to suppress the demons back then, his soul scattering to the winds, his divine soul’s origin naturally went to suppress the Sealing Demon Great Seal!
“No wonder… he could never find the complete set.”
Then Shen Fengyu fully grasped Jiang Chen’s entire plan: “With Lan Ze Immortal Lord’s soul atop the Sealing Demon Great Seal, doesn’t that mean it can’t be freed unless the Great Seal completely dissipates—whether after a thousand or ten thousand years?”
“Unless… someone substitutes their body in his place.”
And it had to be an Immortal Lord of comparable cultivation who was willing from the heart, to guard the Abyss for him. Just like the Breath of Chaos had back then, enduring that near-eternal boundless solitude.
Jiang Chen raised his eyes, a dead, resolute silence in their depths: “Yes.”
In that moment, even Shen Fengyu couldn’t help but be moved.
Though his face remained cold, he still asked, “Are you truly willing? Back then… weren’t you the proudest and fussiest? Refusing this, rejecting that—afraid of the cold, scared of the dark, terrified of thunder, and even more afraid of…”
Even more afraid of loneliness.
On top of that, there was that streak of madness and obsession deep in his bones. For such a temperament to guard eternal emptiness alone forever.
“I’m willing,” Jiang Chen said. “Of my own volition.”
“Of my own volition, all I ask is that from now on, his immortal path is smooth and carefree, that one day he attains the Great Dao.”
“And that he gradually… forgets me, never knowing any of what happened today.”
…
But Zhao Lixuan knew.
The lamp flame flickered dimly, drawing him toward an underground lake.
The surroundings remained pitch-black as ink, yet atop the lake surface stretched an eerie twilight sky. The dying sun, like congealed blood, sank inch by inch into the inky silhouette of distant mountains, spilling its final streak of mournfully gorgeous afterglow across the still waters.
In the wavering halo of soulfire, he saw not only Jiang Chen locked in battlefield slaughter.
But also many versions of Jiang Chen from those twenty years—frantic, desolate, waiting, agonized, forbearing, shattered in collapse, crushed into despair that could never be pieced back together.
He finally understood why, after visiting Clear Heart Island, Jiang Chen’s cultivation had skyrocketed unmatched in such a short time.
Why he grew thinner day by day, becoming more and more emaciated to skin and bones.
Why this parting, which should have been brief, filled him with the unease and fragility of an eternal farewell.
Why even when they embraced in sleep, his body always tensed unconsciously, as if the next moment he would collapse, scattering to the ground?
Memory pierced through the fog like a blade—the final half-day at the Sacrificial Tower, when half a bottle of Heart-Eater Pills slipped from Yu Rumu’s sleeve by accident.
The High Priest Yu picked it up, his expression changing drastically: “This pill may temporarily suppress all pain, but it most damages the origin and corrodes the divine soul! As a healer, how could you recklessly use such a ferocious drug?”
Yu Rumu hurriedly explained, “It’s not for my own use. This bottle was… confiscated from Jiang Immortal Lord.”
Since when had Jiang Chen needed to rely on something like this—drinking poison to quench thirst—just to hold on?
Zhao Lixuan raised his hand and harshly wiped his eye sockets, his fingertips icy and wet.
His teeth ground together uncontrollably, his five viscera and six bowels churning and colliding in his hollow chest, every place they touched filled with a dull, stabbing ache.
Had it been from the moment they reunited—or even earlier—that he had been living in a silent hell?
That cold, stubborn facade at their reunion wasn’t aloof pride. It was a spent force clinging to the last shred of dignity, refusing to reveal even a hint of vulnerability.
…What should he do?
What was he supposed to do with a person like this?
Right now, Zhao Lixuan truly wished Jiang Chen was as he had first thought upon reuniting: cold-hearted and callous, having cast aside all past affections.
That would be better than knowing these twenty-odd years of his life had been spent in ceaseless pain and torment, never truly at peace for even a moment.
Hadn’t they made up?
Didn’t everyone say love was like sweet dew, the most nourishing thing for a person?
Then why… did love torment someone like this?
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