Liu Ying'er sneered, "You wouldn't suddenly realize that the person you love is me after you burned me to death with your own hands, would you? Unfortunately, I only feel hatred for you now. As long as I can kill you with my own hands, I'm willing to give everything, even if it means my soul is scattered to the winds!"

Liu Shengyuan froze, as if all his strength had been drained, and collapsed to the ground. "Ying'er, do you hate me that much?"

Receiving no answer for a long time, he slowly closed his eyes. "So be it. I should have died with you long ago."

Hearing this, Liu Ying'er felt incredibly hypocritical and disgusted. Even now, Liu Shengyuan was still lying to her.

“You burned me alive that day, and you also detained my soul so that I could not enter the cycle of reincarnation and became a wandering ghost.”

She exuded a strong aura of malevolence as she walked step by step toward Liu Shengyuan, saying, "Then today, I will devour your flesh and blood alive, so that you will never be able to reincarnate."

After saying that, Liu Ying'er opened her mouth wide and leaped towards Liu Shengyuan, tearing at his flesh bit by bit. Blood gushed out and flowed all over the ground, and the illusion began to shake.

Although Liu Shengyuan's face was full of pain, there was a hint of relief in his eyes. He reached out and hugged Liu Ying'er tightly. In this way, even if he died, he would never be separated from her again.

...

In no time, only a bloody white skeleton remained on the ground, its hands still in a clasped-in position.

Liu Ying'er slowly stood up from the ground, chewing incessantly, while tears of blood slid down her cheeks. The expression on her face suddenly became like that of the Buddha statue in the temple, a mixture of joy and sorrow.

After a long while, she finally swallowed what was in her mouth, but her stomach churned violently.

She forced down her nausea, then looked at Lu Fuyue and suddenly laughed sadly, "Don't worry, I will do what I promised you."

After consuming Liu Shengyuan's body, she gained his memories and also recovered her own lost memories.

She remembered everything; she and Liu Shengyuan had lived in the mortal realm since childhood.

Liu Shengyuan's ancestors included cultivators, so he also possessed spiritual roots. Unbeknownst to him, he was targeted by an evil cultivator who wanted to obtain his spiritual roots to cultivate evil arts.

However, to extract a spiritual root, it must be done while the person is still alive, after experiencing great joy or sorrow, for it to be effective.

So the demonic cultivator cursed Liu Shengyuan, making him treat the maidservant beside him as his beloved, and then took advantage of this to make Liu Shengyuan burn her to death with his own hands.

After Liu Shengyuan killed her with his own hands, the evil cultivator lifted the curse on him. Therefore, when Liu Shengyuan woke up, he was still immersed in the joy of winning the heart of his beloved, but the next second, he found that he had not only killed his lover with his own hands, but also made her die such a miserable death.

In his grief, Liu Shengyuan's spiritual root was stolen by an evil cultivator, and he nearly died.

But Liu Shengyuan didn't want to die. He wanted to atone for his sins, so he sold his life to a ghost cultivator and served the ghost cultivator for five hundred years.

The ghost cultivator told Liu Shengyuan that vengeful ghosts who were burned alive in the fire could not be reincarnated. The only way to seek a chance of survival was to go to the Netherworld City.

And so, Liu Shengyuan took her ashes to the City of the Underworld. No one knows how he obtained this method, but he personally built a temple for her and even sculpted a Buddha statue for her.

This attracted many cultivators who used illusions to force those whose primordial yang energy had not yet been broken to worship her, resulting in her cultivation level and soul being much better than that of ordinary vengeful ghosts.

But somehow, she gradually forgot all of this, and also forgot what Liu Shengyuan looked like.

It wasn't until she had slowly swallowed his flesh and blood that she gradually recalled these memories.

Liu Ying'er suddenly burst into laughter, but the sadness in her eyes betrayed her emotions.

She roared and with a bang, her soul exploded instantly, creating a gust of wind and a terrifying shockwave that overturned everything around her.

Lu Fu's expression changed, and he could no longer care about anything else. He immediately circulated his spiritual power to the limit and barely managed to avoid the impact of the self-destruction.

However, Song Zhou was not so lucky. Although he reacted in time, he was still a step too slow. Just as he was about to escape, he was knocked unconscious by the aftershock of the self-destruction and fell to the ground.

...

With Liu Ying'er and Liu Shengyuan both dead, the illusion and the formation naturally disappeared as well.

Lu Fuyue carried the unconscious Song Zhou out of the illusion, and then fed him a pill. It was already dawn when they left.

Song Zhou woke up quickly, but as soon as he opened his eyes, he found himself casually abandoned on the grass. He looked around but did not see Lu Fuyue anywhere.

Song Zhou frowned slightly, looked down and touched his chest. He vaguely remembered that before he lost consciousness, someone had fed him a pill and brought him out of the illusion.

Song Zhou shook his head and sighed helplessly. He thought that with Senior Brother Lu by his side, someone would take care of him along the way. He didn't expect that he was too weak. Not only did he hold Senior Brother Lu back, but he also caused him to waste a valuable pill.

In this light, it's understandable that Senior Brother Lu abandoned him and left.

But just then, a shadow fell from behind him and covered him. Song Zhou was stunned and subconsciously turned around and looked up. "Senior Brother Lu... you didn't leave?"

Lu Fuyue lowered her eyes to look at him and said calmly, "Are you from the Sword Sect?"

Song Zhou paused for a moment, then nodded after a brief silence.

He had already revealed his identity when he used those sword moves.

Lu Fuyue recalled the Sword Sect Master she had encountered in the Trial Tower, and paused, "Do you know Meng Qingyan?"

Song Zhou looked at Lu Fuyue in surprise, "Senior Brother Lu, how do you know our ancestor's name?"

Lu Fuyue's eyes narrowed slightly. Meng Qingyan was actually a real person. It seemed that her trip back tens of thousands of years ago had changed the course of many things.

Although the great war between the demon realm and the human realm was over, a great war between the human race and the demon race broke out later, causing the spiritual energy of the Qingyuan Continent to decline.

Regardless of the changes, the issue of the decline in spiritual energy on the Qingyuan Continent has remained unchanged from beginning to end.

Lu Fuyue pursed her lips. So, what about that letter Meng Qingyan wanted her to send to the Sword Sect...?