“I’m sorry…”
Shen Xiuyun’s eyes drifted shut, and he murmured in a daze. His body, which had been tense from pain all along, suddenly went slack after he spoke those words.
The sensations in his body were fading, just like the feeling of a soul leaving its vessel… weightless and floating.
Was this liberation?
This way… wasn’t too bad…
The moment Shen Xiuyun closed his eyes, Zhu Xingyao’s chest seized violently. An inexplicable, agonizing pain made him spit out a mouthful of dark blood.
He suddenly realized something. Terrified, he looked at the person in his arms and stammered, “Master…”
No response. Only deathly silence.
The sensation of his body suffering the backlash from the Heart-Linking Curse was overwhelming.
Back then, he had made a small modification to the spell… if he harmed the other person, he would suffer ten times the damage in return.
“Master!”
Zhu Xingyao lowered his head and saw the almost gruesome scars on Shen Xiuyun’s body… He was struck as if by lightning.
What had he done?
Why was he at the Cliff of No Regrets on One-Finger Peak?
In the distance, the other peaks of the Xuantian Sect blazed with fire that lit up half the sky.
Zhu Xingyao’s mind went blank. He vaguely remembered discovering that his master had faked his death, sensing that his master was at the Xuantian Sect, and then…
He had been furious, disappointed. In a moment of inattention, he was seized by demonic energy. In a fit of rage, he had ordered an attack on the Xuantian Sect, injured Yun Siqing, brought his master to the Cliff of No Regrets, and let the demonic energy tear his master’s body to shreds.
Zhu Xingyao turned the person over and gathered him into his arms. His trembling fingertips did not know where to land on Shen Xiuyun’s body.
His voice shook uncontrollably as he forced out a smile uglier than tears.
“Master, wake up. You’re scaring me, aren’t you? You’re angry at me for what I did to you, so you’re refusing to open your eyes and look at me, right?”
Shen Xiuyun’s eyes remained tightly shut. No reaction at all.
“Master, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I don’t even know how I could have…”
“I didn’t mean it… I didn’t want this either…”
“Master!!!”
The Cliff of No Regrets echoed with Zhu Xingyao’s heartrending, soul-rending scream.
He could no longer sense his master.
Not even a trace.
He had lost his master.
There would never be another Shen Xiuyun in this world.
He no longer had a master.
『《The End》
The backlash from the Heart-Linking Curse came with exceptional ferocity. Zhu Xingyao spat up blood several times in succession, then collapsed beside Shen Xiuyun with an unfocused gaze, falling into an eternal slumber alongside him. … 《The End》』
“Author, do you want to look at what you’ve written? Hmm?
Angst for the sake of angst, nothing but misunderstandings on top of misunderstandings. What are the two protagonists’ mouths for? Answer me!
The master’s spiritual roots were damaged, not his mouth sewn shut!
Was it really that hard to let him explain why he hadn’t gone looking for his disciple during the six years the disciple was unexpectedly missing… that it was because he had sustained near-fatal injuries while suppressing an ancient fierce beast to protect the sect, not because he had taken on a new closed-door disciple, found a new favorite, and forgotten the old one!
The master used to treat his disciple so well. Back then, he was willing to use the one and only Blood Bodhi in the entire cultivation world to save his disciple.
Ever since you forced a closed-door disciple on him for the sake of setting up a love triangle later, the master acted like he’d been body-snatched! Ignoring his disciple who had returned from the brink of death was bad enough, but when the closed-door disciple exposed that the disciple had fallen into demonic cultivation, he didn’t even let the disciple get a single word in edgewise before expelling him from the sect!
Author, is something on your mind? Writing this kind of inhuman plot!
You just had to make the returning disciple misunderstand and get jealous, then force him to turn villain, right! And then the two protagonists tortured each other body and soul, tormenting each other half to death. Now the master has been tortured to death, the disciple died from backlash, and the whole world gets a bad ending!
Are you satisfied? Are you happy now! I will never forgive you, never. You stupid, trash author!”
Shen Xiuyun sat in front of his computer, furiously typing out a long novel review, and angrily clicked send.
The glaring white light from the monitor made his eyes ache with dryness. He had stayed up half the night binge-reading a novel whose shou protagonist shared his name, and seeing this kind of ending was something no one could accept.
Ding…
The computer chimed softly with a new message notification.
Shen Xiuyun narrowed his eyes and saw that a new reply had appeared under his review on the webpage:
Author: “Hehe…”
Hehe???
Shen Xiuyun’s eyebrows shot up. He was incensed by those two provocative words.
Just as he was about to grab his keyboard and fire back…
Author: “The pen is yours. You write it.”
Shen Xiuyun shot to his feet. The pushed-back chair scraped against the floor with a harsh screech.
But whether from sitting too long or from standing up too abruptly, Shen Xiuyun felt a wave of dizziness. His vision went dark, and his chest seized with waves of tightening pain. He couldn’t catch his breath. Before his hand could reach his phone, everything went black and he lost consciousness entirely.
『PS: A reminder for readers who wandered in by mistake… this is a dual-male-lead story, meaning it’s about boys falling in love with boys. If that’s not your thing, please exit promptly to avoid a critical hit to your sensibilities.
The male lead is genuinely out of his mind. The way he loves someone is different from a normal person’s… there will be forced love, confinement, and love triangles. For anyone just starting to read dual-male-lead stories, another friendly reminder: proceed with caution. Please, proceed with caution, okay?
Also, the one Zhu Xingyao has always loved is the master who transmigrated into this world now. There’s no substitute lover or stealing someone else’s love… that kind of melodramatic nonsense. The author can’t write that sort of thing. As for how things ended up the way they did, read on and you’ll find the answer.』