Chapter 1916: Severed Soul

"Where... would he go?" Shui Meiyin said tearfully.

"Don't worry too much. He will come through. After all, he's no longer the..."

Her voice faded into silence before she could finish her sentence. In the end, Mu Xuanyin lowered her gaze and whispered, "I will follow him from afar. While I do so, please inform the Devil Queen about this. She'll come up with something."

"Mn," Shui Meiyin responded as Yun Che's back gradually vanished from their sight. "I can spy on a person's soul, but I have never been able to see through Sister Qingyue's. I can nurture a person's soul, but again the one person I cannot help is Big Brother Yun Che."

"It's all my fault... if only I did better..."

"It's not your fault." Mu Xuanyin shook her head. "It is impossible to do any one thing to absolute perfection in this world. The coincidence with Wuxin's Eternal Imagery Stone... was more like a twist of fate than it was an accident."

She understood Shui Meiyin's feelings better than she might think. It was because she too hid a secret she could never speak to Yun Che about.

The daughter he had lost forever before he even met her.

As Yun Che's chaotic aura moved further and further away from them, Mu Xuanyin concealed her presence and started to follow him.

However, she paused in her tracks almost immediately before turning around to ask, "Meiyin, do you happen to know where the Moon Gods and divine envoys of Moon God Realm have vanished to?"

Surprise flickered across Shui Meiyin's features for a moment before she nodded slowly. "Sister Qingyue used the World Piercer to create a special space at a faraway lower realm... it was the last resort in case her death wasn't enough to save the Moon God Realm. At the very least, the core lifeline of the Moon God Realm would be saved."

"... I thought so." Mu Xuanyin sighed quietly.

For the past few years, Chi Wuyao had mobilized the forces of the divine regions to seek out the concealed Moon Gods and Moon God Divine Envoys to no avail. It was yet another thing that remained an unsolved knot in the Devil Queen's heart.

Now she knew the truth.

There was one other thing that Mu Xuanyin noticed. Xia Qingyue wasn't born in the Moon God Realm, and she wasn't even its Moon God Emperor for more than a decade. However, she seemed unusually attached and even obsessed with it for some reason.

............

The universe was a place that contained vast star regions and countless stars. However, their light failed to reflect even a bit of light in his eyes.

His body was dragged along by the chaotic streams of space to god-knows-where. He had no idea where he had even drifted to.

Once upon a time, he believed that Xia Qingyue was the one who destroyed the Blue Pole Star.

However, he was the one who really sowed the seeds of its destruction, while Xia Qingyue was its true silent protector.

She was the one who forced him to evolve and walk the path he should've walked from the beginning. She even saved him, his homeworld, his family, his soul, his everything...

Without her toiling away silently behind his back, he still would've lost everything even if he somehow survived the death trap. He would still be stuck in the cold and desolate Northern Divine Region right now; lost, lonely, and barely surviving.

But...

Why...

Why did you choose to leave without telling anyone...

I have become the man you wished for me to become. I am standing at the height you dreamed of me standing right now.

So why aren't you here to witness it?

You couldn't tell me the truth back then because the best way to spur on me to grow was to sever my attachments and hesitations completely.

But why did you choose what you did after that...?

What on earth were you bearing on your shoulders... Why wouldn't you let me carry it and face it with you, no matter how hopeless it might be...?

You paved the road for me and guided me to the best life I could ask for, but why did you give yourself such a bleak ending?

............

"The Yun Clan's Yun Che has a wife from the Xia Clan, Qingyue. She is unfilial to her parents-in-law, she is enemies with her clansmen, she murdered her own father and brother, she is heartless and devoid of righteousness, she is as venomous as a scorpion and a snake... Even if I were to use ten thousand words, it would still be hard to list down all of her crimes."

"I've decided to divorce you and we will sever every relation we have with each other from now on! From today onward, we owe each other nothing but hatred, a hatred that will carry on for all eternity!"

............

"Hah... haha..." Yun Che laughed, but it was more sorrowful than tears. Scarlet beads of blood slid down his twitching lips again and again.

She had saved his whole life.

But he had left her with only the most hateful of gazes, the vilest of curses, and... the destruction of everything she treasured...

Even more soul rending was the fact that she was gone forever, so there wasn't even a sliver of a chance for him to make it up to her or atone for his sins.

Before he knew it, he had arrived at an unusually silent space.

It was the emptiest star region in the vast Eastern Divine Region by far.

Just a couple of months ago, he had explained to Yun Wuxin in the calmest, most indifferent tone he could muster that it was the location of the former Moon God Realm. At the time, not a speck of the former star realm could be found already.

That's right. No matter where he looked, not a trace of the Moon God Realm could be found anymore.

Yun Che stretched out a trembling hand toward the void in front of him.

Once upon a time, here lay the star realm she had commanded; the space she had lingered in for a long time.

His fingers gradually lost strength, but he couldn't touch even a speck of her presence any longer.

His mind and body drifted once more. When he came back to himself after an indefinite amount of time later, he discovered that he was standing at yet another empty star region.

It was where he, Qianye Ying'er and Xia Qingyue had battled each other to the death. All the planets and stars in the surrounding star regions had been destroyed as a result.

"With my current power, I can only maintain this divine domain for a hundred breaths."

Back then, Xia Qingyue had ignited her vitality to create the incredibly powerful Purple Pylon Divine Domain immediately after the battle began. She had even managed to put him and Qianye Ying'er at a disadvantage for a time.

Later on, she had spent nearly all of her power trying to kill Qianye Ying'er.

She had sentenced herself to death right from the get go. Everything she did during the battle was just to kill Qianye Ying'er.

............

"Qianye Ying'er is now your slave. You can order her around, make use of her, vent your anger on her, humiliate her, and ravish her as you please... you can do whatever you want to her. But there is something that you must remember!"

"She is still someone that I must kill! Making her your slave with this scheme of mine does not mean that I don't wish to kill her. Rather, it only means that I can't kill her right now! Whatever happens between the two of you is none of my business. But... you definitely must not develop any feelings for her! Even more than that, you definitely must not have any children with her! Understand!?"

"..."

"A thousand years from now, Qianye Ying'er must die by my hands!"

.............

On that day, after having driven Qianye Ying'er into the Purple Moon Prison, Xia Qingyue had thrust the Purple Pylon Divine Sword toward the middle of her back. It was a blow that could've severely injured or even killed Qianye Ying'er outright.

However, he had blocked the attack with his own body and earned a bloody hole in the waist for his effort. Then, his counterattack had severely wounded Xia Qingyue and scattered her blood across the entire space...

She looked like she couldn't feel any pain even though her sword arm was marred by his attack, and the light of the crumbling Moon God Realm was illuminating her deathly pale complexion. She had asked in a voice so fleeting it was almost transient:

"Yun Che, do you still remember the vow you made to me back then?"

............

The Moon God Realm she wished to protect the most...

The Qianye Ying'er she wished to kill the most...

Every corner of his soul felt like they were being torn to shreds and consumed alive.

"Guh... ah.... guh..."

Blood sloshed between his teeth, his pupils dilated and contracted unnaturally, and a painful groan that could only be described as inhuman escaped his throat.

That day, every hit, every blast he had dealt to her... they all returned to torment his heart and soul like the worst torture in the entire world.

When he looked up in soundless pain, he felt like he could almost see the bloodied Xia Qingyue again. She had painted a picture of infinite loneliness, coldness and bleakness as she flew away from him in her blood-drenched red dress.

He flew mindlessly after the illusion, hoping to find even the slightest trace of her from all those years ago.

Eventually, he left the Eastern Divine Region and arrived at the God Realm of Absolute Beginning.

............

White mist surrounded the Abyss of Nothingness.

He stood at its edge and watched the bottomless abyss that turned everything into nothing.

This was the graveyard she had chosen for herself.

He and Xia Qingyue had grown up together in Floating Cloud City.

However, his clearest memory of her was her in her red wedding dress.

That was sixteen years ago. Everything else before that—his childhood and adolescent memories of her—was just a blur now.

In a twist of irony, his final memory of her was also of her in a red dress.

In one memory, she looked as beautiful as a goddess who descended from the heavens. In the other, she looked like a cracked sculpture that tethered on the brink of collapse.

"... Yun Che, remember this. In the end... I didn't die at your hands..."

Bang!

Yun Che sank powerlessly to his knees. At this point, even the gray despair in his eyes was fading away bit by bit into soulless, mindless nothingness.

The chance was miniscule at best, but you knew that there was a chance I might come to know everything one day... that was why you spent your last strength breaking free from my grip and killed yourself before I could.

You never stopped caring about me even in your last moments...

I...

"Yun... Che?"

He wasn't sure if he hallucinated it, but he thought he heard the shocked, disbelieving voice of a woman.

Jun Xilei couldn't believe her eyes or her senses when she arrived and saw the kneeling, trembling Yun Che. He didn't react to her arrival or her voice, and the hand clutching the place where his heart was bloodless and strained to breaking point. It almost looked like he was trying to claw out his heart with his bare hand.

"Are... are you okay?" Jun Xilei took two tentative steps forward, but she froze like a frightened rabbit when she finally made contact with his aura.

He wasn't hurt anywhere, but his aura had fallen into complete chaos. His complexion was so impossibly pale that it resembled a wax paper.

Jun Xilei didn't know what to do.

He's Emperor Yun, ruler of the four Divine Regions. What in the world could make him—

Suddenly, Yun Che's deathly pale face flushed red.

Pwack—

Then, he spat out a long, long jet of blood into the bottomless Abyss of Nothingness in front of him.

As the last vestiges of color in his pupils faded completely, he collapsed forward like a lifeless puppet.

"Yun Che!!"

Jun Xilei let out an exclamation of utter shock. Finally discarding her reservations, she rushed forward to catch him before he hit the ground.

Because she had reacted instinctively, she didn't realize that she had positioned herself in a way where Yun Che's face would fall right on top of her chest. For a second, Jun Xilei froze and couldn't process what just happened to her. When she came to and tried to push Yun Che away though, she abruptly realized that he wasn't moving at all.

After shifting Yun Che's head from her chest to her knees a bit panickedly, she discovered that he had fallen unconscious. However, even in this state, he was gritting his teeth, and his features were twisting uncontrollably in pain.

The bloody bite marks on his lips only made this whole situation even more shocking.

Behind her, an ancient presence slowly approached.

"Master," Jun Xilei asked in a daze, "what... what's happening to him?"

Jun Wuming let out a small sigh before answering, "'To hurt so bad it was as if the soul was severed, and the heart was burned.' He must be suffering from a terrible psychological trauma."

"Psychological... trauma?" Jun Xilei looked at the man beneath her and felt a rare pang of pain.

"At his height and life experience, the only person who can corner him to this extent is himself," Jun Wuming said in a murky tone. "If I had to guess, he probably discovered that he had a hand in something that he absolutely can't forgive himself for."

Something... he absolutely can't forgive himself for?

She subconsciously caressed his cheek in an attempt to alleviate some pain from his twisting features.

Despite her master's reply, she still couldn't imagine the thing that had driven him to this state.

He was untouchable both in terms of power and status today, so what else was left in this universe that could pain him so? What could he not forgive himself for?