63 Chapter 63

She doesn't like it anymore.

On the fifth day of his seclusion, Pei Xueyan saw colorful light and knew that he would soon end his cultivation.

She had no luggage, only a few simple clothes packed into a small bundle, and sat quietly on the stone steps outside the hall waiting.

Jiang Qiye saw her sitting quietly in a daze from afar, with a package next to her, and assumed she was throwing a childish tantrum again.

He stepped forward and calmly asked, "How long are you going to keep up this routine?"

Pei Xueyan looked up upon hearing the sound and slowly stood up.

Her face was still pale, her figure was delicate, and even her voice was very soft: "Thank you for saving me this time. I have no way to repay you. If you ever need my help in the future, please come to me."

This was the first time Jiang Qiye had heard such a polite yet distant tone from her, and he felt a little uncomfortable.

"Even if you can break the barrier, you won't be able to leave the Qingzong Sect's mountain gate."

Pei Xueyan smiled gently: "You won't keep me locked up forever, so why don't you let me go sooner?"

Seeing that he remained silent, she continued, "Why should Master Jiang worry about damaging his reputation? You only need to tell others that you were deceived by me in terms of cultivation, and they will naturally believe you and not me. Men are not afraid of such gossip. You are devoted to the Dao and have never thought about marriage. Keeping a woman by your side would only add to your troubles."

“You didn’t finish what you were saying last time.” Jiang Qiye looked directly at her. “These past few days I’ve been thinking about this carefully. The fact that the Heart Pill and the Melting Pill can be separated so completely is no accident. It must be the work of someone. And looking around the martial world, there aren’t many people with this ability.”

"Yes, because it's you."

Jiang Qiye stared at her in disbelief.

Pei Xueyan spoke casually this time: "It's you. It's a pity you don't remember anything."

This matter is too unbelievable, and he still finds it difficult to bear in the short term.

He stood there stunned for a moment, then denied it sternly: "Don't talk nonsense! Even if this were true, do you know that the separation of the Heart Elixir and the Core Elixir requires navigating an illusion and exhausting one's mental energy? A slight mistake could lead to a backlash. We were complete strangers before, why would I go to such lengths to do this?"

Pei Xueyan lowered her eyes and remained silent.

He continued, "Even the Qing Sect didn't go all out against Ye Xiuluo, and my master didn't kill her either. They never truly wanted her dead, so why would they cripple a mere disciple's cultivation? You're just lying to me."

Pei Xueyan could no longer hold back and raised her hand to hit him, the force of which was both urgent and heavy.

"Jiang Qiye! Your master didn't just sever your emotional roots, he clearly made you forget what you did and the mistakes you made! That's why you dare to accuse and humiliate me so self-righteously." Exhausted, she really didn't want to say another word to him.

After saying that, she turned around and was about to fly away.

Jiang Qiye was still in shock, how could he let her get away so easily?

He strode forward, grabbed her arm and pulled her back, saying in a deep voice, "You don't need to be so angry. Explain yourself clearly. If our fate is truly over, we can go to the Temple of the Matchmaker to get a divorce."

Pei Xueyan was in pain from his grip and struggled angrily, shouting, "You filthy man! You filthy Taoist priest! Let me go!"

She struggled even more fiercely, and Jiang Qiye had no choice but to bend down, carry her on his shoulder, and turn back into the palace.

With a light touch of his fingertips, he sealed her acupoints and made her sit on the futon.

“Miss Pei, since we are going to part ways sooner or later, why not explain the whole story clearly? Why beat around the bush? If I have truly done something wrong, I will naturally apologize.”

Pei Xueyan interrupted him: "Release my pressure points first."

Seeing that her expression had eased slightly, Jiang Qiye raised his hand and released her from the restraints.

He then took another futon, sat cross-legged opposite her, and said in a somewhat sarcastic tone, "Tell me. You've been so irritable these days, I must have done a lot of things to wrong you in the past."

Hearing his tone, Pei Xueyan made up her mind not to hate him, nor to like him anymore.

She turned her head away and remained silent for a long time before finally speaking: "Perhaps you didn't intend to kill me, but your master sent you to kill me."

"impossible!"

"Why is it impossible? Do you think your master is as great and righteous as a god, and would never make a mistake?"

Pei Xueyan looked up at him, her eyes full of mockery.

Jiang Qiye blurted out, "Master has feelings for Ye Xiuluo. Even a demon like her showed her mercy and didn't lay a hand on her. How could she allow me to kill you?"

Pei Xueyan stared at him blankly, momentarily lost in thought.

Master Wangyu likes Master, who routinely insults the Qing Sect.

Even now, despite their fierce fighting, Master Wangyu still takes her away to heal her wounds.

In this light, I have become the only lonely ghost in the world, covered in wounds and ignored by everyone.

She wanted to laugh out loud, but her gaze fell on the intricate carvings on the palace roof. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she felt a little dizzy.

Jiang Qiye rarely saw someone so heartbroken, so utterly devastated, and that was probably what Pei Xueyan looked like right now.

"What exactly are you trying to say?" he couldn't help but press.

Pei Xueyan withdrew her gaze and looked at him slowly, saying, "Jiang Qiye, several months ago, you were ordered by your master to go down the mountain to kill me. This was because my master passed on all her cultivation to me, and she was known as a female demon by the world. Your master believed that I would inevitably repeat the same mistakes in the future and wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible to eliminate any future troubles in the martial arts world."

"However, in the end you disobeyed your master's orders and decided to cripple my cultivation, venturing into the illusion with me. But in that illusion, you carried all your memories, while I remained ignorant, merely a mortal growing step by step. Through three lifetimes of reincarnation, you gradually deceived me, induced me to condense my core, and finally stripped away my heart core, completing the dissolving core technique of severance. After waking up, I hated you to the bone. Feeling guilty towards me, yet still possessive, you forcibly forced me to drink the potion of forgetfulness."

"When I had completely forgotten the past, you found Qishi Mountain and deceived me once again. I admit that I did have selfish motives at that time, wanting to take the opportunity to reclaim everything that belonged to me. I only knew that my cultivation had been crippled by the disciples of the Qingzong Sect, but I didn't know that the person was you. Since you took the initiative to lure me, what's wrong with me pretending to fall for it? During those days without cultivation, I suffered all kinds of bullying and bitterness. How could you understand? Was I wrong to do this?"

Jiang Qiye felt as if his mind had exploded, a massive amount of information assaulting his senses, leaving him momentarily unable to react.

For some reason, my heart suddenly started racing, my chest felt tight and suffocating, and even my breathing became rapid.

He started to stutter when he spoke.

"Then...then why did you remember again? Didn't you drink the potion of forgetfulness?"

"Yes, why? I want to know too!" Pei Xueyan closed her eyes, her eyes reddening, a sharp, stabbing pain shooting through her heart. "I want to know why too? Why not hate you? Why wake up again and again? Why fall in love with you again and again? Why marry you even though I was just deceiving you about my cultivation? Jiang Qiye, I've married you twice already. Why is this? Why can you always be so heartless, so cold, always forget me? I've waited for you for so long, and you still remember nothing..."

Listening to her suppressed sobs and cries, Jiang Qiye felt even more helpless.

The tangled past, the intense love and hate, are so complex that he doesn't even know how to react now.

"You, you..." His throat tightened, a thousand words stuck in his throat, and he didn't know where to begin.

What should he ask, what does he want to ask?

Listening to her tearful and heart-wrenching narration, it was clear that in her eyes, he was a heartless and ungrateful scumbag.

Pei Xueyan tightly covered her lips with a handkerchief. She had just recovered from a serious illness, and this emotional turmoil caused her blood to surge in her chest, making her restless and her face even paler.

"Does anyone else know about this?"

Pei Xueyan slowly shook her head.

Those unforgettable memories are now only remembered by her alone.

Seeing the doubt still lingering in his eyes, Pei Xueyan said self-deprecatingly, "It's fine if you don't believe me. I have three scars on my waist. Apart from the minor injury I sustained during our duel, the other two were inflicted by your master. With your eyesight, you should be able to tell the difference."

"Yes," Jiang Qiye readily admitted.

He recognized the internal force patterns of those two palm prints as being the work of his master, but he still had doubts and didn't know the reason behind them.

"The first time was when your master found you at an inn near Yuanhua Mountain. He saw you with me and heard that you wanted to form a cultivation contract with me. He was so angry that he struck me with a palm, and I was seriously injured."

"The second time was a few days ago when you passed on your cultivation to me. Your master insisted that I had deceived you and wanted to avenge you. In order to avenge you, he imprisoned me in the secret room of the Qing Sect to blackmail you into severing your relationship with me. When my master found out about this, he was furious and came here to fight with your master. At that time, I was injured in your bedroom, and you severed your emotional ties."

Jiang Qiye felt a buzzing in his head, as if he had been struck by lightning.

He originally thought that his relationship with her was just a normal entanglement, but he never expected that it would involve such a complicated and bloody past.

His chaotic thoughts gradually settled, and he managed to piece together a few clues. He looked up at her and asked, "Princess Pei, you said we had two marriage contracts. The last one was... in the illusion?"

Those memories, a mix of sweetness and pain, surged back like a tide, causing her unbearable agony. She slowly closed her eyes, unwilling to recall even a single detail.

Those three entanglements in the illusion were too unforgettable for her.

"Yes, in the illusion, we became ordinary farmers, we worshipped heaven and earth and became husband and wife. You once said that when you woke up from the illusion, you would stay with me for the rest of your life."

Jiang Qiye fell into a long silence.

He forced himself to suppress the shock in his heart, and through her intermittent sobs, he gradually pieced together the cause and effect.

Those forgotten fragments, along with Master's vague words from the past, are now strung together into a clear narrative.

I roughly understand why my master opposed this marriage and severed his romantic feelings.

“Master Pei, I believe what you say, and I also believe that my master truly severed my emotional ties. I roughly know the ins and outs of this matter.” He paused, then slowly recounted the truth he had pieced together. “Initially, when my master finished his seclusion and learned that Ye Xiuluo had retired from the martial world and had passed on all his cultivation to you, he wanted to kill you, right?”

She nodded slightly.

Jiang Qiye then asked, "But when I saw you, I didn't kill you, did I?"