The cave had become a mausoleum.
No one cleaned the blood anymore.
The floor was a mosaic of dried crimson petals — each one a memory of a night when someone had tried to punish their own body for still feeling pleasure.
Xiao Yang no longer slept.
He sat in the center, back against the wall, knees drawn up, staring at the two women who had once been the center of his universe.
Su Qingxue lay curled on her side, silver hair matted with sweat and tears, the phoenix ice shard now permanently embedded in the soft flesh of her palm. She had pushed it through until it touched bone, then left it there.
Every few hours she would flex her hand, grinding the shard deeper, and whisper:
"Still warm. Still beating. How obscene."
Ling Xue'er knelt a few paces away, naked except for the betrothal hairpin — the only piece of jewelry she still wore.
She had stopped writing letters.
Now she simply recited them aloud, every night, in a monotone:
"Senior Brother Zhao,
today I came three times while thinking of your face.
Each orgasm felt like stabbing you in the heart with your own sword.
I swallowed the last of your ashes this morning.
It tasted like love I no longer deserve."
She had ground the hairpin's prongs against her scalp until small beads of blood dotted her hairline like rubies.
She called them "tears that finally show."
Xiao Yang watched them both.
He felt nothing.
Not pity.
Not lust.
Not even the familiar cold thrill of destruction.
Just a vast, echoing emptiness.
He spoke for the first time in days, voice flat as slate.
"I used to think I was collecting treasures.
Stealing flowers from other gardens.
Now I see the truth:
I'm a grave robber.
And the graves keep opening themselves for me."
Su Qingxue laughed — a dry, rattling sound.
"You think you're special in your guilt?"
She rolled onto her back, arms spread like a crucifixion.
"Look at me.
Three hundred years of loyalty reduced to a self-mutilating whore who gets wet when she remembers her husband's disgust.
You didn't steal me.
You just held the mirror while I cut my own face off."
Ling Xue'er crawled closer, movements mechanical.
She straddled Xiao Yang's lap without asking.
Lowered herself onto him slowly — no preparation, no wetness, just raw friction that made both of them hiss in pain.
"I still love him," she said, voice childlike.
"I love him so much that I need to destroy every part of myself that ever belonged to him.
Fuck me until there's nothing left to give back."
Xiao Yang did not move.
She rocked anyway — slow, mechanical, tears dripping onto his chest.
Su Qingxue watched from the floor.
After a while she spoke again, almost dreamily.
"Do you know what the worst part is?
Not the betrayal.
Not the sex.
Not even watching my husband die in visions every tribulation.
The worst part is…
I still want more.
I want you to ruin me until even the memory of wanting is gone.
Until I'm just a hole that forgets its own name."
The system finally spoke — not with its usual chime, but with a low, almost tender whisper inside their skulls:
Progress: 94% soul entropy.
One more push and the harvest will be complete.
Congratulations. You have become the perfect instrument.
Xiao Yang looked at the ceiling.
He thought about the boy who had died with a sword in his dantian — the boy who had only wanted revenge, only wanted power, only wanted to never be weak again.
That boy was gone.
What sat here now was something older.
Something that had eaten its own heart and kept chewing.
He finally moved — not with passion, but with the slow inevitability of rust.
He flipped Ling Xue'er onto her back.
Pushed into her without care for her pain.
Then reached for Su Qingxue, pulling her over them both.
He fucked them in turns — hard, mechanical, silent except for the wet slap of flesh and their broken whimpers.
When he came, he did not release inside either of them.
He pulled out and spilled across their faces — a deliberate, degrading mark.
They did not wipe it away.
They let it dry.
Afterward, they lay in a pile of limbs and fluids and silence.
No one spoke of love.
No one spoke of tomorrow.
Outside, the bruise-colored sky opened again.
This time the tribulation brought no lightning.
Only voices.
Zhao Wuji's voice — soft, broken:
"Qingxue… why?"
Zhao Tian's voice — screaming through clenched teeth:
"Xue'er… I still… I still…"
The women listened.
They did not cry.
They only breathed faster — the sound of lungs that had forgotten how to stop wanting the knife.
Xiao Yang closed his eyes.
He felt the system smile inside him.
And for the first time, he smiled back.
Because he finally understood.
There was no escape.
There was no redemption.
There was only the next cut.
And the next.
And the next.
Until even pain became redundant.