I suddenly recalled the day I cut the red string, how the light in Xie Zhuo’s eyes had extinguished without a sound.

That light, on that day, was merely a casual glance I’d given little thought to. Today, it had become a needle piercing the tip of my heart, stabbing pain through my entire chest.

I gently pushed Xie Zhuo away.

He was still staring at me blankly, seemingly unable to emerge from the lingering effect of my previous words.

“Xie Zhuo,” I called his name, then held his hand tightly in mine:

“Let’s not divorce,” I said. “We… won’t divorce anymore.”

His black eyes stared at me.

In his eyes, there was only me. A pale-faced me, a trembling-lipped me, and a tear-streaked me.

I untied the rope that had bound our waists, wrapped it three times around my wrist, then wrapped the other end three times around his wrist. I bit the end with my teeth and pulled, securing the rope tightly around both our wrists.

“The red string!” I haphazardly wiped away the tears that continued to fall my face, looking at him through blurry eyes. “I’ll reconnect it myself!”

Xie Zhuo didn’t speak.

He lowered his head, looking at the rope on his wrist, seeming somewhat disbelieving, somewhat cautious. He turned his wrist slightly.

The rope was tied securely and wouldn’t break with such a gentle movement, but he still covered the knot on his wrist with his other hand.

He remained silent, head lowered, eyes downcast, his eyelashes casting a shadow beneath his eyes.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, so I waited, following his breathing.

“Fu Jiuxia…”

He called my name. I wiped away my tears, heart tense, looking at him.

“The red string… has already been cut,” he said. “It can’t be rejoined.”

In front of Xie Zhuo, I was usually the talkative one, no matter when. But at this moment, I couldn’t say anything.

I watched as Xie Zhuo moved his fingers, gently untying the rope I had bound for him.

He held the rope in his hand.

His gaze toward me was calm and serene: “You don’t need to take the dream seriously. You don’t need to start sympathizing with me because of what you saw.”

He thought I was sympathizing with him.

He untied the rope, speaking words of rejection, but for some reason, watching him like this, I seemed to see the child from my dream again…

His outstretched hand, empty, grasping nothing.

“In the Undying City, malevolent energy runs rampant. Your emotions will fluctuate greatly. You must remain calm,” he said, almost coldly. “Forget what you saw in the dream. No matter what you saw, don’t think about it again.”

I looked at Xie Zhuo.

I didn’t know how long Xie Zhuo had confronted the will of the evil god in the depths of his soul to maintain such calmness now.

I also didn’t know if my current surging feelings for Xie Zhuo were due to love or what he called sympathy.

I didn’t even know if I was truly being influenced by malevolent energy, or if everything in the dream was false.

I was completely at a loss, utterly bewildered, yet I did one thing.

I held his hand.

So that his palm would no longer be empty.

Xie Zhuo was taken aback again. His gaze moved from our clasped hands to me.

“Still, let’s not divorce,” I murmured. “I now know why you didn’t want me to drink or eat spicy food. I also know why you kept things from me. If we can be honest with each other, if we can continue hand in hand. Then… there’s no need for divorce.”

“After we resolve matters here, we’ll return to five hundred years later, and properly…”

Xie Zhuo didn’t let me finish. He directly pulled his hand from my grasp.

I pressed my lips together, looking straight at him.

I noticed that after withdrawing his hand, his breathing had quickened slightly, as if he had exerted all his strength.

He avoided my gaze, turning to look into the distance. After a long time, it seemed like he finally found something to say.

“Dawn has broken. Let’s cover more ground while it’s daylight.”

Without further discussion, he pulled me up, expertly put me on his back, and tied us together at the waist with the rope, just like our journey into the Undying City.

I looked down at the rope around our waists and persisted with my question in his ear:

“So, can we not divorce?”

He had just finished binding us together, and hearing this question again, he seemed to feel there was no escape today, so he finally responded directly.

“Now is not the time to discuss this matter.”

“Then when?”

He fell silent again.

After a long while, he slowly spoke: “After… you’re cured…”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. He leaped forward, carrying me, not using any spiritual techniques, yet effortlessly jumping from the rooftop to another broken wall.

And in that moment of rising and falling, I saw my arm inside my floating sleeve.

I was startled…

Inside my sleeve, my arm was covered with protruding black veins, a hundred times worse than before.

Now didn’t seem… the right time to “discuss marriage.”

“How many days did I lose in this dream?”

I remembered the last time, on the snow plain, when I woke up, Xie Zhuo told me I had been unconscious for half a month.

This time…

“Three days…”

Three days, carrying me in my confused state, evading both malevolent spirits and cultivators. It must have been… very difficult for Xie Zhuo.

But: “Thankfully… only three days…”

As soon as I spoke, a sharp pain shot through my chest, taking me back to the dream.

I gritted my teeth, not wanting to distract Xie Zhuo as he pressed forward, but we were so close, how could he not sense it?

“Adjust your breathing,” he instructed as we continued. “Don’t focus on any specific pain, let your energy flow naturally. We’re not far from the inner city wall. Don’t be afraid…”

I looked ahead; the inner wall of the Undying City still loomed tall and majestic.

Xie Zhuo carried me on his back, speeding through the city.

Through the jolting and pain, I spoke somewhat hazily: “The malevolent energy I transferred to you… You didn’t have it before.”

When we first met, Xie Xuanqing was severely injured, but his body had none of this malevolent energy.

I asked Xie Zhuo: “When did it start?”

He didn’t answer.

Until I said: “Distract me a bit…”

“After the Jingnan leader incident, it began.”

Jingnan leader… In our timeline, the man-eating incidents involving the Jingnan leader began gradually emerging shortly after our marriage.

At that time, people at Kunlun initially thought the disappearances were due to malevolent spirits. Then rumors spread that the demon who married me was eating people. Later, as more people disappeared, the rumors intensified, until finally, after someone who had come to smash the door of my residence was eaten, everyone began to believe that Xie Zhuo was the one eating people.

We were confined by Xi Wang Mu, and after that…

Xie Zhuo disappeared for a long time.

“After you were wrongfully accused, you went out without telling me, to capture the Jingnan leader?”

“Yes.”

“When you returned, you were covered in wounds. Was it because you fought with him?”

“Yes.”

“He was captured by you.”

“Mm…”

“You hid it so well.”

He told me nothing. That time, he returned on a rainy night, covered in blood, went to his room, closed the door, and set up a barrier. I knocked on the door all night.

At that time, I didn’t understand why Xie Zhuo would treat me like this. It was the first time I felt doubtful about our marriage.

As it turned out, he was in the room, healing his wounds…

“He wasn’t easy to deal with. Is the malevolent energy in your body because of him?”

“He certainly wasn’t easy to deal with, but the malevolent energy in my body isn’t entirely because of him. He was just a trigger, opening a path.”

Thinking of this, I recalled the wounds on Xie Zhuo’s body that I knew nothing about.

This was also why he never undressed in front of me.

After that, he battled countless malevolent spirits, was infected with countless instances of malevolent energy, day after day, year after year, until now.

Amid my physical agony, I still felt my heart contract because of him.

“Five hundred years…” I asked, “Did you endure such torment all this time?”

Xie Zhuo was silent for a long while.

“No torment,” he said. “These five hundred years, not torment.”

Liar…

How could such pain not be torment?

Struggling like this every night, how could it not be torment?

Facing my incomprehension and questions, yet unable to say anything, how could it not be torment?

I couldn’t understand how, even now, he could calmly say “not torment.”

But on the night I cut the red string, he took the Pangu Axe, split open time and space, said he wanted to go back to the past, said he wanted to make amends, said he wanted to kill me.

Emotional breakdown, spirit, and form in chaos.

Whether he admitted it or not, I thought, that night, he must have been in torment…

I tightened my arms around his neck.

I thought, under the love tree, Yue Lao’s young servant had told me that once the green scissors cut the red string, it could never be reconnected. But if I could return five hundred years later, I would find a way to reconnect it.

“Fu Jiuxia. Stay awake.” Xie Zhuo hadn’t heard me speak for a while and might have thought I had passed out from pain.

“I am awake,” I answered him.

More awake than I had ever been.

Somewhat reassured, he continued forward.

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my hand. Looking closely, I saw that the black veins protruding under my skin seemed unable to contain the malevolent energy in my body and had burst through my skin.

Malevolent energy flowed out from the back of my hand, seemingly thicker than all the malevolent energy in the Undying City.

It drifted in the air, and even in broad daylight, it caused unusual disturbances in the Undying City.

I covered my broken skin with my other hand.

“Xie Zhuo.” I looked at the increasingly close inner city gate, thinking that after spending my whole life as an immortal, capable of riding a sword through the wind, now I was confined to the ground. Such a short distance, yet it seemed we could never reach it.

“It seems I’m too late to say I don’t want a divorce.” I looked at the black energy scattering from me, while around us, the agitation and noise in the air grew increasingly obvious.

Perhaps malevolent spirits were following us, or perhaps the cultivators in the city were preparing to kill me.

“Maybe you should put me down.”

I didn’t want to burden him.

“You still have the Pangu Axe, right?”

In these five hundred years, perhaps I had tormented him enough.

“If you return five hundred years later, you might still make it.”

Without a word, he drew his cold sword.

Without stopping, at a street corner, when a malevolent spirit impatiently rushed toward us, he raised his sword and slashed, turning the spirit into a cloud of black energy.

He did not answer, yet his answer was clear.

I sighed inwardly, knowing he had a stubborn temperament.

Xie Zhuo carried me, leaping once more to the top of a broken wall.

From the top, I saw countless people darting through the alleys below, following us. A fierce battle seemed imminent.

Suddenly, at that moment, we heard a familiar sound of hoofbeats from the alley behind and below us.

It was a sound I had heard before!

I turned to look, and sure enough, a black-armored soldier with a spear was coming through the alley! It was the same person from that night!

My heart tightened as I recalled how he had slain malevolent spirits that day. Now, with so much malevolent energy flowing from my hand, I didn’t know what I looked like to the malevolent spirits, but in this soldier’s eyes, if he was a proper cultivator, he would certainly kill me with his spear!

From what I could see of his techniques, I wasn’t sure if he was as formidable as Xie Zhuo, but he could certainly defeat ten of me. If we were entangled by him, Xie Zhuo would be burdened by carrying me, while he was being carried by a horse!

“Put me down,” I thought. Xie Zhuo, carrying me, definitely couldn’t outrun four legs. If he put me down, Xie Zhuo might have a chance to fight this soldier, perhaps securing a chance for survival…

Before my thoughts could fully form, from the side, a ragged person with a gaping, bloody mouth lunged at Xie Zhuo and me!

Suddenly!

A flash of silver light, and the person lunging at us was pierced by a silver spear, pinned to the side.

I was startled. Turning to look behind, I saw the black-armored soldier leap onto the rooftop behind us, pull out his spear embedded in the roof, run forward several swift steps, then flip down to mount his war horse that had followed.

The entire sequence was flawless and crisp!

He ran parallel to Xie Zhuo, except Xie Zhuo was on the rooftop while he rode his horse through the alley. Anyone they encountered who seemed slightly off died under his spear.

If there had been any confusion before, now I truly understood.

“He’s helping us,” I asked Xie Zhuo. “Didn’t you say it’s hard to tell friend from foe in the Undying City? Who is this person helping us?”

Xie Zhuo finally spared a glance at the black-armored soldier below.

He frowned slightly: “Not certain, but possibly… the main deity of the Undying City.”

I was stunned. This Undying City… even had a main deity!?