I lay on the ground, looking at Xie Zhuo’s upside-down eyebrows and eyes. Given our current emotional state, I thought he would at least argue a bit.

But he didn’t…

His black pupils reflected the snow-white blood on the ground and my deathly pale face. The edges of his pupils trembled slightly like his fingertips, sealing those emotions I couldn’t understand within his crystal-like eyes.

Seemingly noticing that I was trying to peer into the secrets in his eyes, Xie Zhuo’s finger on my forehead slid down, directly covering my eyes.

Both the sky and he were blocked by his hand. I could only see a bit of light through the gaps between his fingers.

“Xie Zhuo…” I asked him, “What’s wrong with you?”

I had never seen Xie Zhuo like this before. In our five hundred years of marriage, we have faced many crises. Even when I was taken from Kunlun, when he came to find me, he never had such an expression—he was afraid, fearful, trembling.

And… in pain…

I didn’t understand…

Why would he reveal such emotions? If he were merely protecting me because of the blood oath, he shouldn’t have shown any emotion.

Such emotions, in the worldly sense I knew, were usually attributed to love…

But Xie Zhuo… had never spoken of such feelings to me.

He covered my eyes for a long time, until my numb limbs gradually began to feel the cold of the snow and ice. I heard Xie Zhuo suddenly take a breath.

He withdrew his hand and moved away from above my head. He walked to my side. Looking at his expression, he had already returned to normal, as if the emotional leakage just now had been my imagination.

Xie Zhuo didn’t respond to my question at all. He only asked: “Your limbs, have they regained feeling?”

I moved my fingertips slightly, then looked at him and nodded with effort.

Xie Zhuo crouched beside me, slid his hand beneath my neck through the snow, and helped me sit up.

As soon as I sat up, I was stunned.

As far as I could see, the snow plain around us was completely disrupted. In some places, even the soil and rocks beneath had been upturned.

“Has there been… intense fighting here?”

He remained silent.

My gaze fell on Xie Zhuo again, and I was startled once more: “Your wounds… have healed quite quickly.”

Before I lost consciousness, his chest was a bloody mess, but now only a scar remained. “As expected of you…”

“It’s been half a month,” Xie Zhuo interrupted me.

“Half…” It took me a while to process this. “I… was unconscious for half a month? Just half a month?” I couldn’t believe it. “You fought so intensely with someone near me, and I didn’t wake up?”

“With you.”

“What?”

“There was no one else.” Xie Zhuo looked at me calmly. “It was you fighting with me.”

I was immediately shocked and looked around once more. I took a couple of breaths: “Me? I was controlled by the evil spirit aura, wasn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I just had a dream…”

I recalled the eerie, shape-shifting person in my dream who wanted me to kill Xie Zhuo. He seemed to harbor deep resentment toward Xie Zhuo. They must know each other, with many stories I’m unaware of. I opened my mouth to ask, but then closed it.

According to Xie Zhuo’s usual pattern, he wouldn’t answer me anyway.

“I was controlled, yet somehow, I regained clarity…” I murmured, moving my stiff fingertips. Looking down at my palm, I saw that all my blood vessels had turned black!

I was suddenly alarmed and immediately gritted my teeth to raise my other hand. Sure enough, the veins on the back of my other hand were also black. I struggled to pull up my sleeve, but was stopped by a cold hand grabbing my wrist and holding my cuff.

“Don’t look,” Xie Zhuo stopped me, his voice somewhat hoarse.

I lowered my hand. Even the simple action of raising my arm had left me breathless. I turned my eyes to Xie Zhuo: “Are my pupils still clear?”

He stared at my eyes and nodded slightly.

I believed him. Looking back at my palm, my gaze traced the black meridians. After the initial shock, I quickly calmed down.

This wasn’t surprising.

There was so much evil spirit aura in Xie Zhuo’s body. When I performed the transference, I already knew it was a risky move. However…

“Why did you save me?”

Xie Zhuo’s voice sounded in my ears.

He rarely asked questions.

My gaze lingered on the lines in my palm, these black lines, ugly and horrifying.

After a long contemplation, I finally recalled a saying: “One day as husband and wife, a hundred days of grace.”

I said, “I wasn’t saving you, but our past.”

Having answered, I turned my head and fixed my gaze on his eyes.

“What about you?” I asked him. “I was controlled by an evil spirit’s aura and fought with you.” I nodded at the scene before us. “It must have lasted quite a while, right? Several days, or the entire half month? For such a long time, why didn’t you kill me?”

The corner of his lips tightened slightly, a small curve that I still noticed.

With so many wounds from fighting evil spirits, he must have killed many of them. I, controlled by evil spirits, had completely lost my consciousness and had almost become an evil spirit myself.

Someone completely controlled by an evil spirit aura could never regain clarity. By normal logic, I shouldn’t have been able to wake up…

He should have killed me.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

My persistent questioning seemed to shatter the transparent glass in his eyes. The emotions Xie Zhuo had been concealing leaked out again.

So much anxiety and entanglement.

He lowered his eyes, using the shadow of his eyelashes to hide the emotions within.

After his long silence, I answered for him: “I know, the blood oath has not yet been released.”

Xie Zhuo raised his eyes, looking at me strangely.

I didn’t avoid his gaze, staring straight back at him, then told him: “But Xie Zhuo, if I am controlled by evil spirit aura again, don’t hesitate—kill me. If you can’t do it, let someone else do it. If no one else can, drain all the blood from my body if necessary.”

His pupils trembled, and I continued: “I don’t want to become a creature without consciousness. I don’t want these hands to be stained with the blood of innocents. I am a guard of Kunlun; my blade should only slay evil spirits.”

He looked at me quietly, but it was as if he was looking through me, gazing into the distant past.

I didn’t know what memories came to him, as even now, I still know nothing about his past.

Only when I felt his hand on my back tighten did I realize he had emerged from his emotions again. But this time, he directly lifted me in his arms!

My eyes widened slightly. This action wasn’t right!

“What… are you doing? I can walk myself…”

He ignored me, only saying: “To survive, you’ve struggled until now. Yet now, you dare to ask me to kill you.”

I frowned: “I can’t accept being killed because of our separation. But if I become an evil spirit… You killing me would only let me die for my beliefs.”

Carrying me, he stepped forward. As he moved, I saw more and more of the scene—overturned boulders, contaminated snow, and in the distance, a broken frozen river…

The battle between Xie Zhuo and me had been quite violent…

I, controlled by evil spirits, was apparently… somewhat formidable.

“Fu Jiuxia,” Xie Zhuo suddenly spoke, “If… we return five hundred years later, and I don’t kill you, would you still leave me?”

I froze in Xie Zhuo’s arms.

The cold wind of the snow plain stirred our hair and clothes, the chill cutting painfully into our skin.

I looked up at his profile.

His jaw was firm, his expression cold. Xie Zhuo was just as he had been at every moment during these five hundred years. But today, he had lowered his head. He looked at me, though his expression remained calm and indifferent.

I thought carefully for a moment, then told him calmly and seriously.

“What’s ended is ended,” I said, “whether you kill me or not.”

Our separation might have seemed sudden, like a joke. But in fact, it was the final answer I had come up with after tossing and turning through tens of thousands of nights.

“Heh…”

Xie Zhuo made a small sound from his nose—a laugh.

It seemed like helpless self-mockery, like relief and letting go.

As I was surprised that Xie Zhuo would laugh, he parted his thin lips. Facing the warm hue slowly rising at the horizon, he exhaled a breath of white mist, accompanied by a slightly hoarse voice—

“Fine…”

He seemed to have made many decisions, but I didn’t know what they were.

“The evil spirit aura you drew into yourself, I have a solution for it,” he said as he carried me across the vast snow plain. “Don’t rush, and don’t be afraid. I will save you.”

He said: “This time, it’s not because of the blood oath.”

I didn’t understand. Xie Zhuo always made me not understand. I had just rejected him, so why would he say such things?

Was it because he felt that since I had saved him, he owed me a debt that needed to be repaid before taking me back five hundred years later to deal with me?

I examined him, but he only strode forward with determined eyes, as if there was no more wavering or hesitation, struggle or confusion.

“Xie Zhuo…” An inexplicable unease rose within me, though I didn’t know its source.

As soon as I called him, he looked at me, waiting for my words.

“You…” I pressed my lips together. “Carry me on your back…”

I didn’t even know what to say to him… and could only awkwardly insert such a request.

Xie Zhuo didn’t say much either. He stopped, put me on his back, and I hooked my arms around his neck, resting my head on his shoulder.

It’s quite ironic.

In our married life, such intimate moments could be counted on one hand…