Tome of Troubled Times-Chapter 846: Your Dowry

Ever since Zhao Changhe began to be straightforward with his pursuit, Ye Jiuyou had seemed a little dazed.

In any case, the questions that had once puzzled her now found their perfect answer—why he insisted on helping her, why he was willing to risk his life and body for her experiments, why he cared so much about whether she trusted him...

All these seemingly irrational actions that would normally be deemed madness in a mere ally, could be explained by a simple truth: he wanted her.

So he truly wanted me...

Only now did she realize, in a dazed, belated flash of clarity, that she had actually thought of the possibility before... only to instinctively reject it. Now, however, it became evident that this was the only answer. This scoundrel had never been like the other so-called gods and demons obsessed solely with their cultivation paths.

Because she had half-suspected it, when he spoke the words aloud, she felt a strange sense of inevitability, showing little outward reaction. Only now did she feel that she ought to have been furious. But alas, having missed the first chance to strike him with a stick, the atmosphere had shifted, and she no longer had the grounds to lash out.

Ye Jiuyou genuinely had no idea how to deal with a man who openly displayed his intentions. She certainly was not equipped to handle the kind of “battle-hardened” methods Zhao Changhe now employed. Apart from falling into silence, she had no better means of coping. And if she did not know how to respond, she simply chose not to.

What stroll through the market? Utterly absurd.

Fortunately, her cold and aloof nature masked her flustered state. Even Zhao Changhe failed to see that her demeanor was not coldness but confusion.

So, he simply continued to press forward with a grin, “Are you not going to answer? I’ll take that as silent consent, then... Good. I’m done resting. You can continue playing with my body for your experiments.”

“...” The corner of Ye Jiuyou’s mouth twitched.

When someone becomes another’s research subject, they might feel a touch of humiliation, and since she had deliberately tormented him earlier, he should have reasonably felt even more humiliated. Yet it seemed he had interpreted the entire process as being toyed with by a beautiful woman and was even delighted by it, perhaps even finding some perverse enjoyment in the torment...

Now, it was Zhao Changhe who was beaming, while Ye Jiuyou was on the verge of mental collapse.

Even the research itself now carried an ambiguous undercurrent. She seriously doubted whether she could still calmly focus on studying the changes of life and death and darkness within his body.

The air between them went still for a moment. Seeing that she still made no move, Zhao Changhe smiled lazily. “What, don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for me?”

“You’re insufferable!” Ye Jiuyou snapped, finally stirred into motion. She abruptly shifted from her meditative pose and viciously side-kicked toward his face, aiming to send him flying.

This time, Zhao Changhe actually fought back. He reached out to catch her foot... and it was only then that he noticed she was barefoot.

Her pale, snowy foot swept toward him, its whiteness surpassing even the drifting snowflakes.

Realizing his intent, Ye Jiuyou’s face grew colder. Though she maintained the same sweeping kick, she secretly unleashed a sudden surge of power. If this scoundrel insisted on trying to catch her foot, she would blast him straight off the mountaintop.

Zhao Changhe clearly read the intent and sensibly chose to lean back to evade instead of grabbing her.

Since they had been sitting face-to-face, his sudden backward recline caused her snowy foot to pass just above his waist. Ye Jiuyou’s eyes gleamed with mockery; her momentum shifted again, turning the sweeping kick into a downward axe kick aimed straight for a rather vital spot.

If her strike landed, his mountain peak would be turned into a valley.

Zhao Changhe broke into a cold sweat, hastily bringing both hands forward to block the descending blow. “Hey! You—”

Ye Jiuyou’s face lit up with a wicked grin. “What, you won’t let me cripple you?”

Of course, if she had truly meant it, given the disparity in their strength, Zhao Changhe would not have been able to block it. The thought flashed through his mind, but he said nothing aloud. Instead, he quietly circulated the qi of life and death through his palms.

Ye Jiuyou paused briefly, sensing the sudden surge of energy.

Is he really planning to have me study while in this posture? Something about this feels seriously wrong...

In her brief moment of hesitation, Zhao Changhe managed to lightly brush her foot.

Ye Jiuyou exploded in rage and stomped down with all her might. Zhao Changhe, prepared for this, executed a lazy donkey roll to the side.

With a thunderous crash, the mountain peak crumbled by several zhang.

Amid the rising dust, Zhao Changhe took off like a fleeing bandit, even shifting through space. Yet no matter how he tried to flee, Ye Jiuyou always managed to block his path.

Her snowy foot loomed large before him, and with a loud thud, she planted her heel squarely in his chest, sending him spinning through the air until he slammed into a distant cliffside and slowly slid down.

Ye Jiuyou appeared before him in a flash, grabbing him by the collar. “Well? Did it feel good?”

Zhao Changhe spat out a mouthful of snow and dirt. “Just wait till I’m strong enough to fight back.”

Ye Jiuyou’s hair stood on end.

Does that mean... if he’s strong enough, he’d really grab my foot and mess around as he pleased?

She had never before realized how critical strength was. Not even when contending against Ye Wuming did it feel quite so... urgent.

Yet oddly, she never considered simply killing him to eliminate the future threat.

Grumbling under her breath, Ye Jiuyou dragged Zhao Changhe back to the shattered mountain peak. She no longer bothered injecting death qi or darkness—the brutal stomp from earlier had already suffused the area with all the necessary force. Taking several deep breaths to calm herself, she placed her hand coldly against Zhao Changhe’s chest and resumed her study, no longer wasting words on him.

Meanwhile, Zhao Changhe lay in the crater, eyes sparkling mischievously as he watched her.

She really is stunning. And the blend of her status and power makes her even more alluring than Piaomiao. Absolutely irresistible.

She was the supreme villain designated by the Heavenly Dao itself—the god of chaos, death, oblivion, and darkness. Merely imagining a romantic entanglement with such a being was enough to make one’s heart race three times faster.

Yes, this time’s confession had been impulsive. He was mentally prepared to get beaten for it. In truth, there was a hint of arrogance in him, just as Ye Jiuyou had accused him. If even someone as detached and emotionless as Piaomiao could be stirred to tenderness, why should the same not be true for Ye Jiuyou? Especially given what he had learned from Piaomiao—that once she fell into her corrupted state, her capacity for love and hatred intensified... and Ye Jiuyou was a demon.

Yet what had truly driven him to act so directly this time was not bravado but necessity. The situation no longer allowed for a slow dance of tentative partnership and guarded testing. Ye Jiuyou was not some petty seductress. She was the topmost demon, with unfathomable machinations in the dark. This time, she merely played with corpses, but what about next time? With her nature, plotting the end of the world would not be surprising in the slightest. Add the White Tiger conflict into the mix, and the opposing lines between them were already being drawn. If he did not extinguish the flame of conflict now, should he wait until she actually made her move to counter it?

But how was he supposed to extinguish it? By force?

Was he supposed to rally the Four Idols, Piaomiao, and even the Sword Emperor, all to simply crush Jiuyou beneath sheer power?

Perhaps if he struck now, while she was transitioning and still weak, it could be done... But could he bring himself to do it?

Zhao Changhe already knew the answer.

That moment, when he stood beside the pool and watched her solitary figure cloaked in darkness and did not find it eerie or ominous but lonely, that was when he knew that he could not bring himself to do it.

Maybe he really was the type to be swayed by beauty his whole life. If even Ye Wuming had stirred such thoughts in him, then Ye Jiuyou, who was just a somewhat more wicked version of her, was hardly beyond the pale.

So, he had chosen the straightforward approach. Even if nothing came of it, at least their relationship would be stripped of ambiguity. All things considered, the most dangerous part about Ye Jiuyou was not her sheer power but her habitual secrecy. She never trusted anyone; she always plotted in the shadows like the villain she was born to be. But if she could be coaxed into laying things bare, Zhao Changhe truly believed there was nothing between them that could not be salvaged.

That was the best way to solve the problem.

“If you keep staring at me like that, I’ll gouge your eyes out,” Ye Jiuyou’s voice rang out, cold as the void of the underworld.

The evil energies within Zhao Changhe surged wildly once again, tearing through his body with even greater ferocity than before.

He folded his hands behind his head. Though sweat trickled down his temples from the pain, he still grinned. “Honestly, torturing my body isn’t all that effective. You’ve seen how I handle battles—this kind of thing is child’s play to me. Want to try using a steel wool scrubber instead?”

Ye Jiuyou had no idea what a “steel wool scrubber” was, but she understood the implication well enough. Torturing his body truly was not of much use. She recalled how he had once flayed his own flesh to cleanse his wounds; no physical pain could possibly outdo that. In fact, she would wager that this very trait was what had first drawn Piaomiao to him, as Piaomiao had always admired heroes. By the time she met him in person, her opinion was already half-formed.

And Ye Jiuyou herself... had she not been shaped by the same instincts?

After years of being surrounded by rats and filth like Dark Oblivion and Underworld Guide, someone like Zhao Changhe naturally left a different kind of impression.

Of course, she was not about to say anything remotely like a compliment. Instead, she sneered coldly. “You think this is the limit of my methods? I can embed darkness into your bone marrow. Then you’ll understand what true torment mea—”

Zhao Changhe cut her off mid-threat. “Bone marrow’s nothing. If you really want vicious, go after the soul. My Soul-Shackling Chain has already been broken. Come on in.”

Ye Jiuyou froze, then stormed angrily into his soul sea.

Do you really think I don’t dare make you my puppet? At the very least, I’ll leave some kind of shadow. When the time comes, a single snap of my fingers will have you crawling like a dog. Don’t you even know how this works?

But the moment she entered, she paused again.

This was not a normal soul sea but a mental construct, deliberately created and shown to her. freёweɓnovel_com

What she saw before her was a vast void of darkness, with a slowly spinning sphere at its center. Upon closer inspection, the sphere was a miniature world, complete with continents and oceans, rivers and mountains, teeming with life—people, homes, cities.

Ye Jiuyou could not help but ask, “This is... your world?”

There was no response.

The sphere began to recede into the distance, shrinking as celestial bodies appeared around it, each orbiting along its own path. Ye Jiuyou’s eyes narrowed. This is... the seven luminaries?

The perspective continued to pull back, revealing an endless galactic expanse, magnificent nebulae shimmering in silence, and countless stars like grains of dust.

At this scale, the original world-sphere was nearly invisible, nothing more than a microscopic speck.

The view receded even farther until it was gone.

Zhao Changhe’s voice echoed in the dark: “See the backdrop of all this? Isn’t it your darkness?”

“...It is.”

“You once said, ‘without taking a step, how does one cross a thousand li?’ That’s true enough,” Zhao Changhe said. “But do you really understand the scale of that difference? When the gap in magnitude becomes this vast, it isn’t just a difference in size. It becomes a fundamental shift in nature. If you misjudge the essence, then no matter how many steps you take, it’s still down the wrong road.”

Ye Jiuyou was silent, her mind reeling in the face of this vast, cosmic expanse.

Suddenly, countless celestial bodies veered off course and began colliding, triggering an endless cascade of starbursts. The explosions rippled outward, silent, their fragments drifting into the void.

Whether life once dwelled in them or not, they had now fallen into utter oblivion and not a trace remained, not even sound.

“Isn’t this the chaos, death, and oblivion you seek?” Zhao Changhe’s voice echoed once more.

In the next instant, the cosmic vision vanished. They returned to his true spiritual sea—a small world of mountains and rivers, sun, moon, and stars. His soul’s projection stood serenely above the sea, gazing at her with a smile. “Can there be insight born outside the bounds of the Heavenly Dao?”

Ye Jiuyou took a deep breath. “There can.”

Zhao Changhe’s smile deepened. “Then... stop playing with my body. Nothing else compares to this kind of meaning, does it?”

“...No.”

Yet what struck Ye Jiuyou most was not any of this. It was the realization that Ye Wuming had known all along.

And even more startling was the faint sensation stirring within her. It was as if she had remembered something long buried. In other words, she was supposed to have known it, too.

She quietly withdrew from Zhao Changhe’s spiritual sea, silently studying his expression.

So all that struggle, all that maneuvering... he had done it just to draw her in and lead her to this “gift.” His mastery of illusions was not strong enough to project this vision outward, so he could only use his soul sea to present it.

Zhao Changhe still lay in the crater, his eyes blinking playfully as they observed her face.

Yet, Ye Jiuyou no longer had the urge to threaten his eyes. She simply murmured, “Do you have any idea what consequences you might bring upon yourself by awakening something like this in me?”

Zhao Changhe sprang to his feet and cheerfully grabbed her hand. “I don’t know about consequences. I just know that right now, you promised to come with me and visit the marketplace in Chang’an.”

Ye Jiuyou instinctively tried to pull her hand back, but Zhao Changhe’s voice chimed again, “Don’t move. Teleportation only works if we’re holding on together.”

She wanted to retort. I can teleport faster and farther than you ever could. Why would I need you to bring me along? But before the words formed, space twisted around them. When she opened her eyes again, they were already in Chang’an.

The two floated midair, gazing down.

Chang’an remained bustling as ever, but for those who could read the flow of qi, the end was already in sight. The qi veins of the land had all but vanished. Ying Five had severed the Western Regions, Situ Xiao’s army pressed down upon Hanzhong, Cui Yuanyong stood guard at Hangu Pass, and Batu loomed menacingly from the north. The prosperity of Chang’an had long depended on the commerce flowing from the Western Regions. Now, that artery had been cut. The land itself had begun to rot.

On a more ethereal level, even the goddess of qi veins, Piaomiao, had once worked with Ye Jiuyou and tacitly acknowledged this city as vital to the mountains and rivers. But a few days ago, she had left it behind without a second glance, choosing instead to walk away with a certain wild bear.

Heaven, earth, and man—all had abandoned this place. All that was missing now was a formal declaration of its fall.

Yet on the surface, none of this had manifested. The streets still bustled with carts and cries, the market filled with people, a noisy sea of sound and motion.

Ye Jiuyou’s face was stone-cold. “There are plenty of markets in the Western Regions. Why did you have to drag me to Chang’an?”

Zhao Changhe replied, “To see your dowry.”

Ye Jiuyou was still half-lost in the echo of stars and cosmos. Her voice was weary as she said, “Zhao Changhe... I’m not in the mood for your nonsense.”

Zhao Changhe laughed. “You didn’t go back on your word. That’s already more than enough to make me happy.”

It was only now that Ye Jiuyou realized there had been a chance to back out, but it was already too late. Zhao Changhe led her by the hand, touched down beneath a shaded alley corner, and began swaggering openly toward the heart of the market.

Ye Jiuyou tried once more to shake him off. “Let go. This wasn’t part of the deal.”

Zhao Changhe released her without protest, still smiling.

Only then did Ye Jiuyou realize why he had let go so easily. When the two walked side by side, passersby were already shooting them teasing glances, grinning as if they were a young couple on an outing. Whether he held her hand or not made no difference.

Fortunately, back when she had posed as the Li Clan’s young lady, she had always kept herself hidden and very few had seen her true face. Otherwise, she would not even be able to walk these streets now. What irritated her most was that Zhao Changhe was a known figure. Anyone recognizing him would surely associate the woman by his side with some rather unflattering things...

“What exactly are we buying? Hurry up so we can leave,” Ye Jiuyou muttered, eyes straight ahead, lips barely moving.

Zhao Changhe glanced around, then suddenly took her hand again and darted toward a nearby street stall.

It was a cotton candy stand. Fluffy white clouds mounted on sticks swayed in the breeze, drawing the eager gazes of children who gathered around, practically drooling.

Zhao Changhe squeezed in, tossed a few coins onto the counter, and grinned. “Two, please.”

Ye Jiuyou stared at him, expressionless. “You used such a high-concept bargain... just to come here and buy candy?”

Zhao Changhe handed her one and smiled. “Let me ask you something, o mighty Demon God Jiuyou who has lived since the birth of the world. Have you ever had cotton candy?”

Ye Jiuyou stood frozen in place.

So that’s it... You didn’t bring me out to stroll in Chang’an to buy something for yourself. You brought me out to buy something for me?

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