“What is this!”
Yue Hantian began to struggle, but the silk thread was like a persistent ailment, tightly entwined around his soul. The more he moved, the tighter the thread wrapped around him.
Yue Hantian panicked.
He had never encountered such a strange situation.
The importance of the soul to a cultivator was self-evident. If his soul was destroyed, his path of cultivation would be over.
He could no longer concern himself with Xu Yi's situation, but instead, fled in a panic, desperate to return to his own body.
However, just as his soul was about to leave his body, the black silk thread suddenly contracted inwards, forcefully dragging it back.
Yue Hantian: !!!
He charged outwards like a madman, only to be pulled back again and again.
Unbeknownst to him, his soul power was being rapidly depleted.
When he realized he could no longer break free from the tugging of the black silk thread, an indescribable fear began to well up in his heart.
Had he really failed in the gutter?
But it shouldn't be like this. That Xu Yi was clearly no match for him, so how could she have nullified all his attacks?
Unless... unless she had planned it all along.
His still-writhing soul suddenly stopped moving and instead gazed towards Xu Yi's sea of consciousness.
Xu Yi's sea of consciousness was still shrouded in a hazy mist, and the golden arrowheads had lost contact.
“Xu Yi! Xu Yi! Is it you! You guessed it long ago, didn't you!”
Yue Hantian roared with anger, beginning to struggle again.
But with his movements, the black silk thread tightened, and intense pain assaulted his soul.
“Oh dear, Senior Brother Yue, you figured it out so quickly.”
A wisp of the gray mist outside Xu Yi's sea of consciousness separated, transforming into a small gray figure, which hopped merrily to the front of Yue Hantian's soul.
The small gray figure's appearance was unclear, but Yue Hantian could guess Xu Yi's current expression from it.
Xu Yi's lips were likely curved upwards slightly, smiling as gently and innocently as before, appearing truly gentle and friendly, but with a heart rotten to the core.
“I’m not convinced! I’m not convinced!”
Yue Hantian, thinking that he had actually fallen into the hands of Xu Yi, whom he had never taken seriously, wished he could turn back time and strangle Xu Yi to death.
“Senior Brother Yue, speaking of which, I must thank you. If you hadn't killed those two, how could I have obtained this Soul Restraining Talisman?”
The gray figure even gave Yue Hantian a playful half-bow, nearly causing Yue Hantian’s soul to shatter from rage.
The two people killed by Yue Hantian had created a Soul Restraining Talisman capable of trapping souls, in order to seize other bodies.
When the two died, this Soul Restraining Talisman fell into Xu Yi's hands. It could be said that fate had a hand in it.
“I’m not convinced! I’m not convinced!”
Yue Hantian knew that Xu Yi would not let him go, and even if Xu Yi was soft-hearted, Kunlun Academy would not let him go.
He was filled with hatred!
He had schemed for so long, only to fail at the final step.
If he had known Xu Yi was so troublesome, why had he even targeted her? He could have just found a simple and easy-to-control body.
But it was useless to regret it now.
The Soul Restraining Talisman was extremely overbearing, not only preventing him from escaping but also from self-detonating.
He could only watch as the small gray figure approached him, then reached out a hand, unhesitatingly plunged it into his soul, and began to stir it violently.
“Ahhh!!!”
Yue Hantian let out a painful wail.
The pain of the soul was more intense and direct than the pain of the body.
Xu Yi remained unmoved, continuing to stir, and finally found the deepest memory within Yue Hantian's soul.
After Xu Yi finished reading these memories, she almost vomited.
Yue Hantian wanted to have his childhood sweetheart reborn within Xu Yi’s body, which Xu Yi found disgusting.
However, Yue Hantian's feelings for his childhood sweetheart appeared sincere and precious.
As it turned out, Xu Yi discovered that it was nothing of the sort.
The girl named Zhu’er was not Yue Hantian’s lover at all, but rather an enemy.
Yue Hantian’s sect was called Shanhai Pavilion, which was quite well-known on the Jiuzhou Continent.
Due to his talent of having a single earth spirit root, Yue Hantian was taken as a disciple by the Pavilion Master of Shanhai Pavilion upon entering the sect. Zhu’er was the Pavilion Master's only daughter.
Yue Hantian was not entirely wrong about one thing: Zhu’er and he were indeed childhood sweethearts, inseparable in their youth. However, there was another person whom he had deliberately erased from the narrative.
That person was his junior brother, Qi Xiaoyu, who was also Zhu'er's fiancé.
Qi Xiaoyu was the son of a friend of the Pavilion Master of Shanhai Pavilion. The two families had arranged the marriage when Zhu'er and Qi Xiaoyu were born.
Although Qi Xiaoyu’s talent was inferior to Yue Hantian's, he was gentle in temper, handsome, and extremely considerate towards Zhu'er. When their affection first bloomed, they had pledged their hearts to each other, even agreeing to become Dao companions when they reached a certain age.
But neither of them knew that Yue Hantian, whom they considered an elder brother, looked at them with increasingly gloomy eyes.
Yue Hantian had long harbored covetous feelings for his beautiful and charming junior sister. However, he dared not reveal them due to the engagement. As these feelings accumulated over time, his mentality gradually changed.
Until the day he emerged from seclusion, he saw Qi Xiaoyu kissing Zhu’er, whom he considered his exclusive possession, in a bamboo forest. He could no longer suppress his ferocity and killed Qi Xiaoyu in the bamboo forest.
Zhu'er's fate of being reduced to a wisp of residual soul was also a result of her trying to protect Qi Xiaoyu, and she was accidentally injured by Yue Hantian.
Later, Yue Hantian went to great lengths to frame an non-existent evil cultivator for the accident involving Qi Xiaoyu and Zhu'er, and he actually managed to get away with it.
After living in fear for several years and discovering that no one suspected anything, he began to harbor other intentions.
He truly loved Zhu'er.
Therefore, he wanted to revive Zhu'er, making it so that she could only be by his side.
This plan had been in the works for seven hundred years.
In his heart, he had always believed that Zhu'er had feelings for him, and that after Qi Xiaoyu was gone, they would spend their lives together.
He had never considered whether Zhu'er was willing to be with her murderer.
Xu Yi felt so disgusted she wanted to vomit.
What a bizarre notion.
To think she had felt moved by Yue Hantian’s deep affection before.
It turned out to be all Yue Hantian’s wishful thinking.
If she were that unfortunate girl named Zhu'er, the first thing she would do upon revival would be to kill that scoundrel Yue Hantian.
“Yue Hantian, you are too disgusting. No wonder Zhu'er liked Qi Xiaoyu. If it were me, I would choose him too.”
Xu Yi, well-versed in the art of killing with words, after learning the entire story, used her words as a knife, striking a fatal blow at Yue Hantian.
The power of this blow, more so than Xu Yi’s earlier disturbance of Yue Hantian’s soul, drove Yue Hantian into a frenzy.
“Zhu’er is mine! Mine! Qi Xiaoyu is weak and timid, how could he be worthy of Zhu’er! He deserved to die! With him dead, Zhu'er will know who is the most suitable person for her!”
The small gray figure shook its head.
Yue Hantian was already terminally ill and beyond saving.
She no longer paid attention to Yue Hantian's cries, regained control of her body, then reached out her hand to the Soul Restraining Talisman and unhesitatingly ignited it.
“Ah–”
The Soul Restraining Talisman turned into ashes and drifted down gently, the screams coming to an abrupt halt.
Everything was over.