dam breach
That cold tear, like a red-hot branding iron, burned through all of Qi Yuan's defenses.
She watched helplessly as the ice in Jiu Che's eyes shattered, revealing the pain, confusion, and desperate question buried deep within for centuries. His grip on her neck and wrists remained firm, but beneath that powerful posture lay a fragile vulnerability.
"That kiss at the Spark Festival back then... was there even a trace of... sincerity in it?"
His voice was hoarse and on the verge of collapse; every word struck her heart like a hammer blow.
Qi Yuan opened her mouth, but her throat felt like it was blocked by something. The words of denial were on the tip of her tongue, words she had upheld for a hundred years as the pride and ruthlessness belonging to the Demon Lord. But looking into his broken eyes, which held the last glimmer of hope (perhaps even he himself didn't realize it), those lies became so heavy that she could no longer utter them.
A century of solitude, a century of struggle, a century of self-deception... all collapsed at this moment.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, all the feigned emotions in them had faded, leaving only a desolate calm and a deep-seated pain that she herself had never faced.
"……have."
A very soft syllable, yet it resounded like a thunderclap in the deathly silent room.
Jiu Che's hand holding her trembled violently, and his pupils suddenly contracted.
Meeting his shocked gaze, Qi Yuan continued, his voice hoarse yet clear, as if stating a fact unrelated to himself, yet carrying a pain akin to being skinned alive:
"It wasn't just that kiss at the Spark Festival..."
"The noise, the closeness, the seemingly playful teasing..."
"Perhaps it started even earlier... before I even realized it..."
She paused, as if using all her strength, before finally dissecting the deepest, most painful truth—the truth she had even deceived herself with:
"...it is no longer a pure calculation."
The moment the words left her lips, she clearly felt Jiu Che's body shudder violently! The icy mask in his eyes shattered completely, revealing a surging tide of emotions beneath that surface, almost engulfing him! Shock, disbelief, and... a deeper, more profound, century-suppressed, overwhelming pain and grievance!
"Why..." His voice trembled violently, the knuckles of his fingers gripping her wrist turning bluish-white from the excessive force, "Why...why didn't you say so sooner...why...left at that time..."
His questioning was tinged with blood and tears.
Seeing his pained expression, Qi Yuan felt as if her heart was being pierced by countless tiny needles, the pain so intense she could barely stand. She gave a bitter smile: "Why didn't you say so earlier? What should I say? That I'm the Demon Lord Qi Yuan, and that I approached you only to steal the Glass Heart? That everything between us started as a meticulously planned deception?"
“Jiu Che,” she called his name, her eyes filled with an overwhelming sorrow and self-mockery, “between us, from the very beginning… it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you, I shouldn’t have… become so entangled in it.”
It was she who personally turned this inappropriate attraction into an irreversible tragedy.
“Mistake…addicted…” Jiu Che repeated her words, as if he had heard the most absurd joke in the world, and laughed softly, a laugh that was more heartbreaking than crying. He suddenly pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest as if he wanted to crush her!
It was no longer that cold push away, but a desperate force, as if grasping at a lifeline.
“Wrong…” He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his hot breath burning her skin, his voice muffled and choked with sobs, “Then tell me… what does this pain mean now?”
Tell me... what does this century of solitude... this crack in my heart mean?!
His tears, warm, soaked the fabric of her clothes on her shoulders. The scalding heat seemed to pierce her soul.
Qi Yuan was stiffly held by him, feeling his body tremble and hearing his suppressed whimpers, like those of a wounded cub. The cold shell that the Demon Lord had been holding on to finally crumbled completely.
She slowly raised her free hand, hesitated, and finally, gently, with endless regret and pity, embraced his trembling back.
This embrace spanned a century, transcended deception and betrayal, and was soaked in blood and tears.
It came too late, and it was too heavy.
Inside the room, only their violently beating heartbeats and the silent flow of tears washing away a century of grievances remained.
turn out to be,
The game was already over.
Deeply involved
They've always been each other's.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
