Chapter 1 Prologue (Xiyu Version)

His eyes were bloodshot and his stare, murderous.

After being married for so long, this is the first time I have seen him this way. My heart, once icy towards him, is now shredded to pieces upon seeing his massive transformation. Every step and movement he makes now feels so foreign to me.

He looks down at the corpses trailing at my feet and singles out a female corpse. This female corpse belonged to a woman, one formerly of exceptional beauty.

She is Yining, a woman he got to know during his travels. Although I can tell there is no love between the two of them, she owes him a debt of gratitude, having saved his life once. While he cannot marry her, he sought to provide her the best. Until one deep night, when the darkness in me raged wildly and caused me to lose complete control of myself.

Why did it have to come to this? I scream frantically, recalling bit after bit what had happened.

He encircles the corpses, noting every one of them and repeating their names after him.

"Sixteen lives. SIXTEEN! Xiyu, how could you do this?" He erupts at me, his fiery pupils focused intensely on me. I, Muxue Xiyu, have committed a heinous crime.

A sea of silence fills the cave. I have no words to say in my defence.

"Xiyu, what made you turn into this .... Monster?" he interrogates me, leaving me no space for remorse. His breath is austere and this just breaks me even more to know how he now perceives me as a killer.

I don't tell him, if not for the demonic power manifesting inside me, that I would not be capable of hurting even a fly.

I don't tell him how I feel for him. I know if I do, then maybe he would be incapable of giving me my anticipated punishment.

I cry silently, accumulating inside me, tears of eternal regret.

"Slay me then, if you wish, Zhan Dongyue." I reach to him and tear the woven bracelet off his wrist, an emblem of our undying bond as husband and wife. The bracelet is red and black, symbolic to my clan members. It was not awarded upon him during our marriage, but after the first year of our union.

"From now on, we shall part ways as husband and wife," I tell him while attempting to hold back tears in my eyes. He was the one who had melted my icy heart and shown me the love of his world and brought back the feelings of trust that I had lost.

We were bonded by a ritual due to an unforeseen circumstance, which he calls the work of destiny. Furthermore, he had said that the chance encounter between us is the long-awaited love which he has been dreaming of. The bond keeps us together as mates for life, but as long as one of us stays alive, the other will also live. For this reason, he spares my life.

"Muxue Xiyu, we are done."

Every thread of fate that remains is ripped to shreds as I witness my husband walk away from me in sheer silence, his figure becoming more and more obscure as he vanishes from view.

I slump to my knees, my mouth uttering only a prayer to Goddess Minami to grant me strength.

It is all over.