Divorce by Agreement C17

Chapter 17

#If such beauty is not a mistake, then is its shattering one?

I couldn’t respond to what Xie Xuanqing said—my jaw hung open in shock, too weak to close.

“Why…?” I asked the question anyone would. But the moment I saw Xie Xuanqing lower his eyes, that sudden dimness in his gaze, I felt—I’d asked a pointless question.

It wasn’t that I belittled those lost lives, or that I pitied Xie Xuanqing so much that killing no longer mattered. It was just that… if Xie Zhuo had done what he did back then, there must’ve been a reason why he had to.

I’d lived with him for five hundred years. I didn’t know everything about him, but I trusted him. Truly trusted him.

I knew he wasn’t some bloodthirsty, cruel monster. And right now, I also knew that aside from being a Snow Wolf demon, Xie Zhuo must have had many other hidden, incredible secrets he never told me.

Thinking of that made my chest ache.

“Wait…” I let go of his wrist and covered my face to collect myself. “Forget I asked.”

I began to reflect.

Why? Why? Five whole centuries—and I knew so little about Xie Zhuo?

Was I a fool!?

Ever since our separation and my arrival here, I’d been turning that question over in my mind. First, I didn’t know his power was so immense. Second, I didn’t know what kind of demon he really was. Now I find out he has such a blood-soaked past behind him?

What did I even know?

His name? His face? His personality!?

Me…

What right did I have to call that a life? Other people marry and build a real life together—I got married and played pretend house…

Covering my face, I couldn’t help but let out a long sigh.

Xie Xuanqing had always been quiet, but now he was so silent it was like he didn’t even exist.

By the time I finally settled my heart and looked up to talk to him again, I saw him bracing against the wall with one hand and supporting himself with the other, as if trying to stand.

I froze. “What are you doing?”

He turned to look at me, his eyes an icy silence.

He showed no emotion. Just like always, he spoke coldly, “Kunlun has been good to me. Thank you… for these days.”

“Wait, wait…” I instinctively raised a hand to stop him. “I wasn’t trying to make you leave. Sit down first…”

Xie Xuanqing was stunned, then let himself sit back down under the pressure of my hand.

Watching him sit, I suddenly realized—

Wasn’t my goal to get him to leave? Why did I pull him back down? Shouldn’t I be acting scared, terrified, then take the chance to drive him out of Kunlun? Wouldn’t that be the natural course of things?

What was I doing!?

I stared blankly at the equally stunned Xie Xuanqing.

But as we looked at each other, his expression slowly began to change. In those frozen eyes, confusion and unease began to surface. He said softly, “I’ll leave quietly.”

“No one will know I was ever in Kunlun.”

Great… I’d grown soft again.

“I…” I didn’t know what to say. After a long pause, I sighed, helplessly looking at him. “Xie Xuanqing, just what have you been through?”

He stared at me, lost and unsure, like a child at a loss, waiting for me to pass judgment.

I couldn’t bear to look at that expression. I lowered my head and looked at his long, overly pale hands. I couldn’t stop myself from gently brushing them with my fingers. His hands were cold. I stopped and covered the back of his hand with my palm, hoping to warm him up. Without thinking, I spoke:

“Xie Xuanqing… you must’ve had a really hard time.”

His hand trembled slightly.

“I really hope that from now on…” But I trailed off midway and came to my senses.

Xie Xuanqing’s future was Xie Zhuo.

That thought threw my emotions into a chaotic storm. Because I suddenly remembered—I’d said this same line once, a long time ago, so long it was almost a blur. I’d once said it to Xie Zhuo.

Or maybe… it was to this Xie Xuanqing, on the day we got married. I told him personally, “Xie Xuanqing, I hope you won’t be so lonely anymore.”

I even said, “Let’s always be together from now on. I’ll talk with you, make you laugh—I’ll always, always like you just the way I do now.”

Back then, it was as if a candle had been lit in Xie Zhuo’s eyes—they slowly brightened.

He rarely smiled. But that day, I saw him smile. He curved his lips slightly, his eyes gentle, and replied, “Okay…”

Those words still echoed in my ears. Five hundred years passed in the blink of an eye. But for some reason, I suddenly remembered the day we separated, when I cut the red string. The pale look on Xie Zhuo’s face and that hollow gaze…

The candle burning in his eyes—seemed to have been snuffed out in that instant.

And now I realized… that was such a painful moment.

It was the shattering of so many vows. A complete denial of all the beauty we once shared.

Xie Zhuo—was he already heartbroken back then?

My hand was suddenly squeezed.

The force pulled me back to the present. I blinked and looked up at Xie Xuanqing.

He held my hand back. “I… am from the Snow Wolf tribe. And just like the rumors say, I wiped out my entire clan. I killed my own kin…”

He bit his lip lightly. Saying these things clearly tormented him. “My past is full of shame. But… if you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

That’s what he said. But in that moment, I couldn’t ask a single question.

Because I felt—I shouldn’t be hearing this from Xie Xuanqing.

I should be hearing it from Xie Zhuo.

The man I was married to for five hundred years. The one who shared a story and a thousand misunderstandings with me, and in the end, parted ways.

Because Xie Xuanqing could only tell me his past. But only Xie Zhuo could tell me what he hid from me in our past. What he concealed, and why step by step… we came to where we are now.

Maybe I shouldn’t let myself be led by Xie Zhuo’s pace anymore, walking toward the outcome he wanted.

I should find out the root of our problem myself—why did Xie Zhuo need to destroy our bond?

Only after I figured that out should I decide whether to help him, and how.

From the very beginning, I’d gone about this all wrong!

I’d narrowed my path too soon!

Suddenly, I stood up.

Xie Xuanqing looked at me, startled.

I said, “I just remembered something urgent—I need to go.”

“Huh?”

“It’s not to avoid you, uh… I… I think I was refining a pill before I left today. It just hit me—I’m worried the furnace might explode. I gotta go check. I’ll come find you again tomorrow!”

I turned and ran off. Worried he’d follow, I turned back and added, “Rest well! Don’t walk me out! Sleep early!”

I dashed out. As soon as I left the cave, I flew up with the wind, weaving through the snowy bamboo forest. I tapped my ear and shouted breathlessly:

“Xie Zhuo! Where are you!?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I suddenly saw a figure dressed in black standing in the snow-covered bamboo forest ahead. Who else could it be but Xie Zhuo?

I hurriedly landed and took a few quick steps to stand in front of him.

Xie Zhuo glanced at me, then looked behind me. “Someone chasing you?”

“No.”

“Then why the rush?”

“Because I wanted to see you!”

Xie Zhuo was momentarily stunned…

I steadied my breath and looked up at him. “Just now, Xie Xuanqing admitted to me that he’s a snow wolf demon. He also admitted to all those rumors—about massacring his entire clan and killing his own kin…”

Xie Zhuo’s pupils narrowed slightly. The bamboo leaves in the snowy forest rustled under the cold wind of Mount Kunlun.

“But that’s not the main point I want to make. What matters is—he also said that if I wanted to know about his past, he’d tell me everything.

To be honest, I think a big part of the reason our marriage fell apart was because you never told me anything. I believe we’ve always lacked a moment of true honesty between us.”

Xie Zhuo’s brows lifted slightly. “So?”

“So, are you willing to lay it all out—your past—and talk to me? Really talk, openly and clearly?”

Faced with my words, Xie Zhuo gave me his familiar silence.

I didn’t give up. I went on, “I could actually ask Xie Xuanqing and get some of the answers I want. But I think the past you shouldn’t be the one to tell me about your past. It should come from the present you. Because the one who once married me…”

“Heh…”

A cold chuckle interrupted me, forcing the unspoken words—”was you”—back down my throat.

All the passion I brought with me from the cave was instantly doused, three parts extinguished.

I looked up at Xie Zhuo.

The moonlight tonight was hidden by dark clouds, and there was no light in his eyes—only deep, abyss-like gloom. “Fu Jiuxia,” he said coolly, “you’re too late…”

His reaction didn’t exactly surprise me.

After all, I was the one who proposed our marriage back then—and the one who initiated the separation too. I said I liked him first, and I was the first to say I didn’t anymore.

So when it came to our relationship, no matter how you looked at it, I owed him something.

And Xie Zhuo’s resentment over our separation had always been stronger than mine. That, I understood.

I pushed down my emotions, thought about how I once felt about him, and calmly opened my mouth again:

“I know. We’re divorced. The red thread has been cut. But why are we here? Why did we come back five hundred years just to create this mess?”

“Because when you make a mistake, you fix it,” Xie Zhuo, for once, answered positively.

But his answer was totally off from what I was hoping for…

So I rejected it. “No! That’s not it! It’s because we’re still not willing to let go!”

Xie Zhuo sneered again.

I ignored it and kept talking: “Changing the past isn’t the only way to deal with these emotions! Xie Zhuo, we didn’t need to come back five hundred years. We didn’t need to sever our past bond. What we need is to reconcile—with each other, and with ourselves.”

I looked at him sincerely. “Xie Zhuo, let’s have one honest conversation. Just once. Let’s talk it all out, so we can truly understand each other. So we can have a little less—”

Before I could finish saying “resentment,” Xie Zhuo interrupted me again:

“Fu Jiuxia, what right do you have to say any of this—after cutting our red thread?”

I froze. Stunned for a long time, I finally said, “Yes, I was the one who cut the red thread. But our bond couldn’t last—that’s on both of us…”

“No. The essence is that you cut it.”

I gritted my teeth, twitched my mouth, closed my eyes, and swallowed my emotions. “Cutting the red thread was just an action. The essence is that we couldn’t go on.”

“You couldn’t go on.”

“I couldn’t go on!” My composure cracked. “And what, you could?”

“I could.”

“Oh, so you have to argue with me today, huh?”

“I’m not arguing, Fu Jiuxia.” He stared at me and emphasized with frustrating seriousness, “You were the one who messed up.”

Goddammit…

“Oh, so it’s all my fault now? Everything’s on me?”

When it came to provoking my emotions, Xie Zhuo, that bastard—he had it down to an art. Full marks!

Whatever calm and sympathy I had while talking to Xie Xuanqing in the cave earlier—gone. My whole mood exploded.

“What did I do wrong? Was it wrong to like you back then? Was it wrong to marry you? That was all spontaneous, natural—how the hell is that a mistake? And if the beautiful part of our story wasn’t wrong, then how is it wrong that it all fell apart!?”

Xie Zhuo pressed his lips together, clearly angry, but unlike me, he was always the quiet type—even now.

I kept at him. “Fine, I’ll take a hundred steps back. Let’s say I was wrong. But you—what, you weren’t? If you had trusted me even a little more these years, talked a bit more, been a bit less closed off, would we have ended up like this?”

Fuming, Xie Zhuo turned to leave.

I rushed up to block him. “There you go again! You always do this! Say nothing and leave! In these five hundred years, how much have you kept from me? Who could stand this? Does talking physically hurt you or something!?”

“Yes!”

Finally, Xie Zhuo shouted that word out loud.

This time, it was me who fell silent in the chilly wind of the bamboo forest.

I looked at Xie Zhuo like he was an idiot.

“Do you even hear yourself?”

He looked straight into my eyes and said seriously, “Talking hurts.”

My fists clenched in frustration. “You… You’re something else. Just to run away, you’re even saying this kind of crap now.”

I nodded. “Alright, fine. We’re done. Don’t talk. Tomorrow, go do whatever the hell you need to do.”

I gave Xie Zhuo one last glance, turned around, and walked away, thinking—maybe the one I loved was always the boy he used to be. Not this current version of Xie Zhuo, where all we do is argue and resent each other.

He says divorcing was a mistake. Cutting the red thread was a mistake. But after this fight, deep in my heart, I finally feel—

That damn marriage deserved to end!

I wasn’t wrong!