Not until the offering elder had departed did Wei Xing'er's gaze shift from icy cold to something soft and lingering. She looked at Jiang Chen with a trace of reproach, a trace of resentment, but above all, surprise.
Evidently, Jiang Chen's unexpected visit had caught her off guard to some degree.
Seeing that Jiang Chen still wore a guarded expression, Wei Xing'er offered a faint smile. "Enough, stop being so suspicious. There's no surveillance here. This is a restricted area of the Cuihua Pavilion — no one dares to monitor it. I just never expected that you'd actually come back to the Royal Capital. After the way we parted last time, I assumed it would be forever."
Her smile carried a hint of bitterness and woe. Clearly, years of this kind of existence had ground her spirits down.
Jiang Chen sighed softly. "Last time we met, I was indebted to Miss Wei's kindness. I've come to help you break free."
"Help me break free?" Wei Xing'er laughed at herself. "Someone like me — rootless, with nowhere to go — even if I broke free, where would I end up? Here, I may be no more than a walking corpse, but at least I'm safe. It's been so many years now. I hear the Myriad Domain has already fallen completely into the hands of the Immortal Execution Dynasty. Little one, I know you haven't given up yet, but I'd advise you to abandon any thought of revenge as soon as possible. Us so-called geniuses from the Myriad Domain don't amount to anything in front of a true first-tier sect. Your talent may be ten times mine. But the geniuses of first-tier sects, the geniuses of the Upper Eight Regions — they're absolutely not something a Myriad Domain genius can compare to. What's more, first-tier sects don't merely have geniuses; they have even more terrifying figures in power. Those figures... sigh!"
Wei Xing'er's tone carried a palpable note of despondency. It was somewhat different from the last time Jiang Chen had seen her.
The Wei Xing'er of that day, though pessimistic in her own way, had still held on to a sliver of hope. She had still been optimistic. Back then, she had even asked Jiang Chen about the Carefree Sect, clinging to a faint hope that the Myriad Domain might rise again.
Now, after the passage of several years, it seemed Wei Xing'er had simply resigned herself to her fate.
Jiang Chen paused, a flicker of disappointment crossing his eyes as he regarded her.
"Miss Wei, I didn't expect you'd already accepted your fate as a walking corpse. It seems my journey of a thousand miles to rescue you may not have been such a wise choice after all." His voice turned cold.
Wei Xing'er smiled bitterly. "You came to save me only because you felt indebted for the small kindness I once showed you. Once you repay it, you'll have a clear conscience and can move on. Did you ever truly care whether I lived or died? If you cared, why didn't you take me away back then instead of thinking of rescuing me years later when you happened to have free time? What freedom is there to gain for me? To someone like me — a stray dog with no home — this world is a cage everywhere. Escape one prison and you'll only stumble into another. People like us who've lost the protection of a sect are nothing but ants in the end..."
Jiang Chen's brow furrowed. "So you've been kept in the dark this whole time? You think that if you want to be a walking corpse, you can just keep being one? You think the Cuihua Pavilion Master can't find another vessel to prop up his business? Is that confidence, or are you just deceiving yourself?"
Wei Xing'er's face drained of color. "You... what do you know?"
"Did you really not know?" Jiang Chen countered with a cold smile.
Pain flooded Wei Xing'er's eyes, and her voice grew sorrowful. "What does it matter if I know or not? From the moment I entered the Cuihua Pavilion, my fate has been out of my own hands. Did I not know that the Cuihua Pavilion Master has designs on me? I never knew why he kept me around all this time, but one thing was certain — he was never interested in my looks. Because he never once laid a hand on me!"
This was no surprise to Jiang Chen.
Since the Cuihua Pavilion Master intended to cultivate Wei Xing'er into a furnace for his cultivation, he naturally wouldn't take her virginity prematurely.
"Then you've already resigned yourself?" Jiang Chen asked gravely.
"Do you think I still have the strength to struggle?" Wei Xing'er smiled wryly.
"Do you know why the Cuihua Pavilion has been so bustling these past few days?" Jiang Chen pressed.
"Hmph. The Cuihua Pavilion Master is attempting to break through to the seventh level of the Imperial realm — a critical step from mid-tier to upper-tier. He's always had enemies everywhere, so hiring a few more guardians is perfectly normal."
Jiang Chen nodded. "And the matter of him using you as a cultivation furnace — you're probably still in the dark about that?"
The moment these words left his mouth, Wei Xing'er's delicate frame swayed. Her face went deathly pale, her cherry lips parting slightly in shock.
That shock quickly gave way to bone-deep dread.
"How do you know that?" she whispered, still shaken.
"How I know isn't important. What matters is that you now face two choices. Leave, or become his cultivation furnace."
To become a cultivation furnace was, plainly put, a death sentence.
Those who served as furnaces almost never survived.
Wei Xing'er's beauty had vanished from her face entirely, unable to extricate herself from the terror for a long while. She might have accepted her current situation, but that didn't mean she had truly resigned herself to death.
It wasn't that she was afraid of dying per se — it was that dying as the Cuihua Pavilion Master's cultivation furnace felt too sudden, too violent. Psychologically, she simply could not accept it.
In that moment, Wei Xing'er was genuinely afraid.
She had thought she had made peace with her fate, but with the reality bearing down on her at last, she realized she could not face it with equanimity.
After all, she was still young — barely past thirty, which in the world of martial arts meant she was barely a child who had learned to walk.
At her age, she should have been only just beginning to shine — should have been bursting with vitality and promise.