To continue guarding Taiping in Xie Zhuo’s place…

Xi Wang Mu had given me expectations that were too high. I felt that I might be unable to accomplish this goal.

After returning from Xi Wang Mu’s secret palace, I fell ill.

During my illness, my mind remained foggy and confused, as if I were in a dream.

All the scenes of Xie Zhuo and me together in this courtyard appeared and disappeared before my eyes like images in a revolving lantern, over and over again.

I barely took proper care of myself while sick. Sometimes I would fall asleep beneath a tree, sometimes I would wake up on the rooftop.

But more often, I would sit at the courtyard entrance, as I had done many times before, resting my chin in my hands, watching the road outside, waiting for a familiar figure to return home.

In my illness, hallucinations sometimes let me see Xie Zhuo coming back, but these visions quickly vanished.

I think it was these occasional hallucinations that made me, almost subconsciously, reluctant to recover from my illness.

But eventually I did recover. After the icy lake water had been infused into my bloodstream, my spiritual power increased by several levels. Even with my careless self-treatment, I got better.

The power of the icy lake remaining in my bloodstream seemed like Xie Zhuo’s last trace in this world, still supporting me, just as he had when he was here, telling me—

“The ground is cold, don’t catch a chill.”

“Take proper care of yourself.”

“Don’t give up.”

So, in the tug-of-war between my conscious mind and my physical awareness, I slowly and reluctantly recovered.

But even though my body had healed, I felt complete aversion to the outside world. I couldn’t be bothered to go out.

Meng Meng and my other friends came to see me many times, but I avoided them all. They wanted to comfort me, so they came up with a method.

They wrote down news from outside or drew pictures, folded them into paper cranes, and then used magic to make the cranes fly into my room, where they would land on the floor.

When I got out of bed, my feet would accidentally touch a paper crane, and it would unfold.

I saw them saying that now the world was free of malevolent energy. So, although the Pangu Fu had disappeared along with Xie Zhuo, Kunlun no longer needed a barrier.

Kunlun was now completely open, and people from inside and outside could freely come and go.

Now Kunlun was full of vitality, and the East and West markets were more bustling than ever before.

They also said that people returning from the Northern Wilderness had told them about a place in this world called the City of Immortals, and what secret the people there had been guarding.

All the confused people in the world finally knew how they had been deceived, and also how they had been protected.

Then people began to argue. Some said they should have known the truth about the world;

Some said the main deities had been wrong; others said the mountain deities had been extremely cruel to imprison in the City of Immortals those who accidentally learned the truth…

So, outside, the debate about whether the main deities should atone for the past City of Immortals was becoming increasingly heated.

Xi Wang Mu and the mountain deities all maintained silence.

Many people participated in these discussions.

But the one thing nobody disputed was that Xie Zhuo, who had eliminated the malevolent energy, was a hero.

They wanted to erect monuments for Xie Zhuo, write his biography, and some even suggested to Xi Wang Mu that I should receive some honor…

Because I was Xie Zhuo’s… widow…

My friends urged me to go out and see, saying that although people wouldn’t stop talking now, the world was still beautiful.

I still didn’t go out.

I burned all the paper cranes.

My friends wanted to comfort me. I knew they were good people, sincere and kind.

Kunlun was now more peaceful than before.

Even my body was healthier than before.

I knew these were all good things.

But whenever I thought about how all this goodness had been bought with Xie Zhuo’s life, I found it difficult to open my eyes to see the beauty of this world.

Until… one clear morning, a man stood beside my bed.

“All of Kunlun is saying that Xie Zhuo is dead, and Fu Jiuxia is so heartbroken she might follow him soon. I didn’t believe it at first, but it seems it’s true.”

Qin Shuyan, the old fox, had come.

I lay in bed, glanced at him, then turned over, pretending not to see him, and continued to rest with my eyes closed.

“Tsk, tsk.” Lao Qin sighed. “Look at yourself. If Xie Zhuo saw you like this, wouldn’t he pull you up and scold you thoroughly, inside and out?”

“He can’t see me anymore.”

I replied in a muffled voice from under the covers.

Lao Qin fell silent.

In this world I had returned to, the past that Xie Zhuo and I shared evolved from the past of Xiaxia and Xie Xuanqing, and although the result was the same, the process was quite different.

Here, Xiaxia and Xie Xuanqing were connected through Lao Qin’s introduction. They…

Or rather, we-we—we-the “we” in this timeline, had once hidden in a secret room Lao Qin found for us, where we developed feelings for each other, then worked together to defeat Jing Nanshou, and finally got married.

We had always maintained a close friendship with Lao Qin, so now he was much more familiar with me than in the timeline I previously knew.

By my bedside, there was the constant sound of Lao Qin’s fan waving. After a long while, he sighed and spoke:

“I’ll take you to meet someone. Will you go or not?”

“I won’t go.”

“An old acquaintance of Xie Zhuo’s.”

I opened my eyes, sat up, turned my head, and looked at Lao Qin.

The smile on Lao Qin’s face was somewhat helpless: “Xie Zhuo probably wouldn’t want you to meet this person. But, you need to find a reason to continue living, don’t you?”

For the first time since my return, I left home.

The place Lao Qin brought me to was an underground lava cave. The cave walls and floor were all flowing with bright red lava.

I had never been to this place before, but it looked somehow familiar.

Thinking about it, a memory surfaced in my mind from one of the times Xie Zhuo and I had returned to five hundred years ago.

At that time, a person named Zhu Lian had just attacked me, and Xie Xuanqing went to settle accounts with Zhu Lian, a scene that happened to be witnessed by Xie Zhuo, who was hiding in a corner.

I had just made contact with Xie Zhuo through the Yin-Yang fish, and so I saw this place through Xie Zhuo’s eyes.

Thinking carefully, before Zhu Lian attacked me, I had been led into danger by a Kunlun soldier.

That soldier…

Now that I think about it, that soldier looked exactly like the malevolent spirits in the City of Immortals. In appearance, it was impossible to tell he had been infected by malevolent energy…

The conversation between Xie Xuanqing and Zhu Lian at that time was also strange in every sentence.

Zhu Lian asked Xie Xuanqing to kill him, but Xie Xuanqing flatly refused, saying he wouldn’t kill Zhu Lian. But he also said…

He would protect me.

Recalling the past, I lowered my head.

At that time, I hadn’t really thought seriously about how he would protect me, or to what extent he would go to protect me…

Now I knew, but it was too late.

Lao Qin had been silently leading the way, and just as we were about to reach the area with the most lava ahead, he finally paused.

Lao Qin turned to look at me, his expression solemn: “That person knows more about Xie Zhuo than any of us, but he and Xie Zhuo were enemies.”

“I know,” I said. “He once said that if he had the chance, he would tear me to pieces in front of Xie Zhuo in the most cruel way.”

Lao Qin raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised that I had calmly said such a thing.

“You’ve met him before?”

“Zhu Lian, right? Yes, I have.”

Lao Qin then tapped his chin with his fan with great interest, adopting a spectator’s expression, and led me forward.

The ground lava was bright red, as if it had torn open the cave to reveal the blood of the earth. Beside the flowing lava was a black cage, where a man with loose, long hair sat quietly.

Seemingly hearing the footsteps of Lao Qin and me, his ears twitched, and he opened his eyes.

This wasn’t my first time seeing him, but perhaps because I had been missing Xie Zhuo so much these days, I found some familiar shadows in his features.

He and Xie Zhuo… resembled each other somewhat.

Seeing me, Zhu Lian slightly curled the corners of his mouth. Without saying a word, just with that smile, he made my heart grow cold, and a strange tremor rose from the depths of my soul.

I was afraid…

But I knew clearly that I wasn’t afraid of him. What I feared…

Was some strange… aura within his body.

This aura reminded me of the despair in the City of Immortals and the terror in that chaotic dream when I was infected by the malevolent energy.

“You’ve come…”

Suppressing the fear in my heart, I frowned: “You knew I would come?”

“Xie Zhuo is dead. Sooner or later, you would come to find me.” He laughed softly and called to me in a low voice, “Sister-in-law…”

Hearing this term of address, my heart suddenly trembled.

I suddenly remembered a past I had seen in a dream—

The chief of the Snow Wolf tribe recalled the evil god’s soul, and to give the evil god a physical vessel, the Snow Wolf chief chose Xie Zhuo’s mother. At that time, Xie Zhuo’s mother already had her husband and…

Child…

I stared at Zhu Lian in shock, watching as he slowly sat up straight in the cage, then suddenly lunged forward, grabbing the black iron bars.

The cage bars made a tremendous noise when he crashed against them, echoing throughout the stone cave.

“What a pity.” Zhu Lian showed an extremely regretful expression, his gaze fixed directly on me. “Xie Zhuo died too early. How I wish I could have torn you to pieces in front of him.”

As he spoke, he seemed to envision that scene, and he began to laugh happily, almost maniacally.

The laughter continued to echo in my ears, making my heart tremble. I frowned as I stared at him. Then suddenly Zhu Lian’s mood took a sharp downward turn and abruptly stopped.

“Such a pity,” he looked at me and sighed softly, as if truly regretful. “Even at the end, he wasn’t driven insane.”