Xiao Qingyue's legs suddenly felt weak beneath her, as if all the strength had drained out of them in an instant. She could not stop herself from wondering what new kind of torture device that demon had gone out to snatch and bring back this time, just to use it on her again.
No, she had to find some way to escape, and she had to do it soon.
Otherwise the nightmare would never come to an end.
She was afraid, truly afraid in a way that settled deep inside her chest and made it hard to breathe.
She felt that Wu Qin was a devil straight from the depths of hell itself. He showed no emotions at all and knew nothing about pity or mercy. He did things without any real reason, only following whatever sudden whim came into his head. Once he decided on something, he would never stop until he reached his goal. He was ungrateful, violent, and completely crazed in everything he did.
Yet here she stood, facing such a demon, and she did not have even the smallest sliver of power to resist him. Any attempt to fight back would only lead to even more cruel treatment than before.
But Xiao Qingyue told herself she could not simply hope for divine retribution to strike him down. She must never give up on resisting and trying to escape. She could never yield to him, and she refused to keep enduring this terrible situation as it was. If she did, his twisted goals would end up coming true in the end.
She did not want to experience that heart-wrenching pain ever again.
All she wanted was her freedom back.
Xiao Qingyue forced a small smile onto her face, trying to look calm as she took a careful step closer to Red Plum. She hoped she might be able to talk to her and maybe persuade her to help in some small way.
There was no other choice. She absolutely could not defeat this person in a fight, so words were her only option right now.
"Miss Hong Mei, have you known Wu Qin for a long time?" she asked, keeping her voice light and friendly.
"Four hundred and sixty-nine years and three months," Hong Mei answered without any hesitation.
"..." Xiao Qingyue felt a twist in her stomach. She remembered the exact time down to the month? What kind of feelings did this woman actually have for Wu Qin?
"How did you meet him?" she continued carefully. "Don't you think he is too cruel, too much, and far too evil?"
Hong Mei looked at her steadily for a long moment, then slowly spoke. "The Sovereign saved me. He has the grace of remaking my entire life. He is not as bad as you think. In fact, he is actually a good person."
She could never repay the Sovereign's kindness, no matter how many years passed.
Xiao Qingyue's vision almost went black for a second. She wanted to laugh out loud at the words, but she held it in.
A good person?
If he was considered a good person, then there were truly no bad people left in the whole world.
What kind of strange ideas had he fed to Hong Mei to make her believe something like that? Had he used some kind of soul technique to control her mind?
Hong Mei understood exactly what Xiao Qingyue was thinking. She knew how much the Sovereign loved the woman standing in front of her, so there was no need to hide many things.
As long as she did not think about escaping, she would always be the Mistress here.
The Mistress of Wuji Palace.
This was something many people in the cultivation world could only dream about.
"I was born in a remote village far from any big sects," Hong Mei began quietly, her voice steady as she looked into the distance.
Xiao Qingyue listened without saying a word, and her expression gradually grew cold and frozen as the story went on.
"My original name was Liu Xiaocui. After my mother gave birth to me, she became frail and sickly, and she lost her ability to have any more children.
My biological father was a hoodlum who did nothing useful all day long. He spent his time stealing, eating and drinking without care, visiting prostitutes, and gambling away whatever little money we had. No one in the village looked up to a man like that."
But her father blamed his own failures on his wife and daughter. At the slightest thing that went wrong, he would punch and kick them both.
He was a domestic tyrant, and it seemed like beating them was the only way he could feel any power after all the humiliation he faced outside the house.
She had desperately wished for a pair of wings to sprout from her back, or to fly away like the sword immortals in the old stories, so she could take her mother far away from that place filled only with pain, endless toil, and constant hunger.
In their small village, people married very early because every extra mouth to feed was seen as another heavy burden.
She was good-looking even as a young girl, and several families came to propose marriage.
Her father demanded an ridiculously high bride price, wishing he could sell her off for enough gold to last him forever, which scared every decent family away.
She did not want to marry at all, so at sixteen she followed two older brothers from the village to a small sect hundreds of miles away, hoping for a better life.
She was tested and found to have a four-attribute low-grade spiritual root. She could have become an outer sect disciple, but the available spots were very limited that year.
The outer sect elder noticed her beauty and told her plainly that as long as she slept with him a few times, he would let her join the sect right away.
That elder was old enough to be her grandfather.
She refused, of course, and the result was that she could not even become a simple handyman in the sect.
She went through immense hardships on the long journey back home, comforting herself the whole way that if she could just marry a decent man and live an ordinary quiet life, it would be enough.
She had already accepted her fate by then.
But her father had other plans. He wanted to marry her off as a concubine to a famous wealthy merchant in town.
The merchant had given her father a large sum of money, more than enough for him to spend a whole year living comfortably in the brothels without any worries.
However, that very night she and more than ten other young girls were forced onto a carriage and sent away to a small sect that pretended to follow the righteous path.
The people there divided the girls into two groups based on their spiritual roots, their bodies, and their looks.
They called them Flowers and Medicine.
To put it plainly, they were nothing more than cauldrons for cultivation and short-term consumables. The final result for both groups was the same — death.
Each delicate flower would slowly wither away under constant abuse and pain.
Just as her heart was turning completely to ash inside the cold cell, a figure holding a saber suddenly fought his way in, cutting down several guards in a blur of motion.
The man with the saber wore black clothes that were already stained red with blood. He pulled a terrifying-looking smile across his face and said to all of them, "You are free now."
But she did not want to go home anymore. She no longer wanted to accept the fate others had chosen for her. She wanted to take control of her own destiny from that day forward.
She refused to be bought and sold like goods ever again.
She knelt down right there in front of the man and kowtowed repeatedly, her forehead hitting the ground hard. "Please take me away with you. I will do anything you want..."
Xiao Qingyue looked at Hong Mei in complete shock, not expecting her to have such a tragic past hidden behind her calm face.
Her father had been a complete beast.
How could there be such a father anywhere in the world?
Xiao Qingyue smiled bitterly to herself. Her own father had been very good to her, so she had always thought that all fathers in the world would be at least decent.
But her father was dead now.
"The Sovereign taught me how to cultivate, how to protect myself, and how to survive in this cruel world," Hong Mei continued softly. "He gave me a new name and brought me a completely new life."
Xiao Qingyue fell silent for a long time. Did he also have moments like that, where he acted with real chivalry?
He had saved a whole group of poor girls but had not taken any of them for himself.
Based on actions like those, he could truly be considered a good person in that moment.
But she clearly had never provoked him, and she had certainly never wronged him in any way. So why had he imprisoned her here? Why did he keep abusing her?
Was it really because of love?
But how could love ever look like this?
Xiao Qingyue really could not figure it out, no matter how hard she tried. Too many people had liked her over the years, and she had turned down far too many confessions.
Those people, without exception, had all wanted to be good to her. They gave her all sorts of gifts and said the sweetest words they could think of.
Just by talking to her, those men would become incredibly excited and happy.
They wished they could carve out their own hearts for her to see, offering everything they had to prove their sincerity.
Most disciples in her old sect saw her as a nine heavens fairy who could only be admired from far away — a proud and transcendent eldest senior sister. They did not even dare to approach her too closely. They grew extremely nervous in front of her, and some even started stuttering when they tried to speak.
How could there be someone like Wu Qin in the same world?
He would strike her at the smallest disagreement, whip her around like a spinning top, and train her like some kind of slave.
He was a complete lunatic with a sick mind.
Xiao Qingyue curled her lip slightly. Although, to be fair, he was occasionally somewhat decent to her.
The food, the drinks, and the living arrangements were always the very best available.
But his constant torment and abuse were more than any woman could possibly bear for long.
Who would ever like this kind of treatment?
Who would ever like a demon who hit them and whipped them hard with a lash at every little turn?
There was clearly something wrong with the way he expressed what he called love.
Or rather... he did not know what real love was at all.
All he wanted was possession and total control.
He fundamentally did not understand how to love someone in a normal way.
Xiao Qingyue felt deep in her heart that he was simply using her as a tool to vent all his negative emotions.
How hateful.
She would never truly fall in love with him, no matter what happened.