Chapter 50

#The Blade Was Always in Your Hands

I didn’t find Xie Zhuo.

I searched in Undying City, in the forest surrounding it, and even through the wind and snow beyond its borders. I looked through many places in the Northern Wastes, but…

I didn’t find Xie Zhuo.

I don’t know whether a month passed, or two, or three.

Time seemed to freeze for me. I neither ate nor drank, only walked endlessly. Whenever I saw someone, I would study them closely. What began as a search for Xie Zhuo turned into a search for any trace of him in others—anyone who bore even the slightest resemblance.

But I never found a single person who looked like him.

Only now do I truly understand just how special Xie Zhuo was to me. So special that, across all the worlds, I could not find even a pair of eyes or brows that came close.

In the end, I returned to that forest—the place where the Snow Wolf Tribe lived.

Time seemed frozen here too, locked in an eternal late autumn. The orange and red fallen leaves were the only colors left in my eyes.

I stayed in the forest for a long time. Until… the Queen Mother of the West arrived.

I hadn’t seen anyone from my past life in a very long time.

But when I saw her, it felt like seeing someone from home—familiar, comforting. And once that brief warmth passed, I looked at her like the most helpless little immortal in Kunlun, stepped forward, tugged at her robe, and begged my main deity:

“Help me find Xie Zhuo.”

My voice was hoarse and soft as I pleaded, “I lost him. Please help me find him.”

The Queen Mother sighed heavily and gently patted my head. “Jiuxia, come back to Kunlun.”

She said, “Before Xie Zhuo died, he bore Kunlun’s mark. The scenes of him battling evil in the outside world were recorded and returned to us. I was researching the aura of evil…”

I stared at her in a daze.

Her expression was helpless, tinged with sorrow. “This time, before his death, Kunlun’s mark transmitted the scene back as well. Come see for yourself.”

And so I finally…

Returned.

I never knew there was a hidden temple behind Kunlun’s main hall.

It was concealed within a spiritual stone array beneath the Queen Mother’s throne.

She brought me inside. The secret temple held only one massive stone.

The stone had been cleaved flat, like a mirror. The Queen Mother and I stood before it. She gently traced a formation onto the stone mirror—Kunlun’s marking spell.

Then, slowly, mist began to rise on the mirror’s surface. It swirled around me, finally taking on the shapes of people and objects.

From these outlines formed in the mist, I saw Xie Zhuo again.

The stone mirror, through the mist, reconstructed the scene from that day.

“The mark cannot recall events from five hundred years ago—it can only retrieve scenes from after you both returned,” the Queen Mother explained.

In the reconstructed scene, traces of a space-time rift still lingered in the sky.

Xie Zhuo had laid me down. The forest then was still blanketed in white; the trees were like ice, their leaves like snow, and the ground was a frozen lake.

“I” was lying on that icy lake, while Xie Zhuo knelt beside me.

Beneath us was a formation etched into the ice.

From my current vantage point, I could recognize what it was—a formation to guide away the aura of evil.

Back then, Xie Zhuo had absorbed the aura of evil into himself, and I couldn’t bear to see him suffer, so I drew it into my own body instead. That was when he started taking me to Undying City.

He’d kept saying there was a place that could cure me, a way to heal me.

I believed him and didn’t question further.

But now I know—there was no cure. He had only planned to draw the aura back out of me again.

Only…

Why did it have to be here?

As if in answer to my question, Xie Zhuo activated the formation beneath us.

It spun, and the evil aura within “me” began to flow into him.

But this time, the aura did not leave so easily. It resisted, unwilling to part from my body.

Even though it had already burst through my meridians and skin, when drawn into Xie Zhuo, it struggled, fiercely unwilling.

Yet the power of the formation was too strong—it allowed no escape. Slowly, the aura was pulled from my body. But along with it… my blood was being drawn as well.

Xie Zhuo was… draining all my blood?

Just as I realized this, I saw something else—a white energy was entering through my other wrist.

It seemed to come from this pure, sacred “ice lake.”

As he pulled the aura and my blood from me, Xie Zhuo also infused my veins with the lake’s energy… It was as if he were…

Giving me a blood transfusion.

Seeing this, I looked down at my own wrist.

There were no wounds. In fact, the skin seemed even smoother than before.

“I’ve taken back the blood vow,” Xie Zhuo said, the overwhelming evil aura pouring into his body, yet he remained calm—as if he were just telling me not to drink or to stay off the cold floor. “If I’m gone, the blood vow will only burden you.”

I stood beside him.

He was now only a memory drawn in mist, but as I watched him, the dryness in my eyes finally gave way to a burning ache.

“Someone once told me to love life, to love the world. I never understood how, or why. I never knew passion, nor what it meant to like someone. So when you asked if I loved you—I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure.”

The black mist kept pouring into him, and his unnaturally calm face only made it more painful to watch.

“But not long ago, you absorbed this evil aura into your body. You fought me for half a month…” He lowered his head slightly. “You didn’t know—even if you were ten times stronger, you still wouldn’t have been able to beat me.”

Hearing him say this so seriously, even now, made me want to laugh.

Of course I couldn’t beat him. In our five hundred years of marriage, every time I got mad and fought him, he always let me win.

“You turned into an evil spirit. I should’ve killed you. Even if it meant breaking the blood vow and shedding your blood, I should’ve done it. But in that moment, I finally understood—I didn’t spare you because of the blood vow. I spared you because I didn’t want to kill you. I couldn’t…”

As he spoke, he reached out and held my unconscious hand.

“Just the thought of it… hurts.”

“It hurts more than breaking a blood vow.”

He pressed my hand against his chest.

“But you… you’re a villain. You don’t feel it at all.”

He looked at me, his eyes full of grievance, a hint of bitterness. “You said, so confidently, that you were the one who loved. You were the one who wanted to separate. You cut the red thread—your fingers didn’t even hesitate…”

“I’m sorry…”

“It really hurts…”

I covered my mouth, staring at him through the mist, my voice hoarse as I apologized. Other than those words, my mind was completely blank.

“Maybe if you disappeared, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. That’s what I thought back then. So I wanted to kill you, to destroy the blood oath. I struggled for so long…”

Xie Zhuo removed my hand from his chest and gently stroked the lines in my palm.

“Only now do I realize—I was wrong.”

“How could I ever win against you?” He let out a bitter laugh, as if resigning to fate. “The butcher’s knife has always been in your hands.”

“Perhaps this is what they call love and devotion.”

I stood before Xie Zhuo, tears falling like rain, unable to utter a single word.

Amid the overwhelming aura of evil spirits, I saw something lingering in his gaze—reluctance, longing.

Everything unfolding before me felt absurd. Xie Zhuo had done nothing but protect me in the past, yet he had never once spoken of “love.”

And now, as he carried out what he called “severing fate,” the only words on his lips were all about that very “fate.”

All the evil aura and blood within me had been drawn into Xie Zhuo’s body.

What remained in my bloodline now was the purest spiritual energy of this frozen lake.

Our bond was severed cleanly by his hand—but within my soul, the ties between us could never be cut.

Not even by life or death, not even by reincarnation.

The dark aura of evil spirits sank completely into Xie Zhuo’s body.

He fell silent, never speaking of “us” again. He didn’t stop, only raised his hand and pressed his five fingers to the array beneath me.

The array lit up instantly, its brilliance seeming to outshine heaven and earth.

Xie Zhuo was expanding the formation that absorbed the evil aura!

Such a massive array—was he trying to…!?

I was still in shock when I saw, from afar, countless streams of evil energy rushing toward us.

All of it was absorbed into Xie Zhuo’s body.

His expression twisted in pain.

He fell to one knee, and soon, as if he couldn’t support himself anymore, sank to the ground on both knees, his ten fingers pressing against the glowing array. Endless waves of evil energy surged toward him like a flood.

“Xie Zhuo…”

I reached out, wanting to pull him back—but the moment I moved, the mist beneath me began to swirl and churn.

I couldn’t help him. This was the past. All of this had already happened…

“That was the day all the evil aura in the world vanished,” Queen Mother of the West said softly behind me. “Xie Zhuo absorbed it all into himself.”

I stared in disbelief. “How? How is that even possible?”

She looked at me. “You went back five hundred years. What did you experience? All this time, we’ve searched for a way to deal with the evil aura, but found no clue. This time, when Xie Zhuo returned, he seemed to have found a way. It must have been in that time you traveled to—he must have gained some understanding there.”

I looked at her blankly, then back at the mist before me.

I shook my head. “He never told me anything.”

“Even so, looking at it now…”

As Queen Mother of the West spoke, I saw the mist-shaped Xie Zhuo become pitch black. The whites of his eyes disappeared. He raised his hand and drew from the array a blade of pure white.

It was exactly the scene I had seen in my mind before.

He stabbed the blade into his own heart, turned it, and chanted:

“With my body, I contain you. With my body, I bury you.”

“No…”

I knew what would come next. I could no longer hold back. I lunged forward to embrace Xie Zhuo.

But in my arms, he dissolved into mist and scattered.

The mist around us roared and transformed. All the evil aura vanished in an instant.

And with it, the snow and ice in the forest disappeared as well. The trees regained their color, their leaves turning back into the rich hues of autumn—just as I saw when I first woke. Even the frozen lake became ordinary land.

My arms were empty.

Xie Zhuo was nowhere to be found.

At that moment, I finally realized—and finally admitted—Xie Zhuo…

Was truly gone.

I would never see him again. Never hold him again.

I knelt on the ground, unable to endure any longer, and sobbed uncontrollably.

“Jiuxia,” Queen Mother of the West said with pity in her voice, “Xie Zhuo used his life to draw all the world’s evil aura into the land beneath his feet. He gave peace to the world at the cost of his life. You must pull yourself together—and guard what he left behind…”