"Master... why... why..."
Curled up in the corner, Yun Yun's consciousness had already grown hazy. Her cracked lips moved soundlessly as she repeatedly murmured those three heart-piercing words.
Whenever she closed her eyes, the merciless yellow sands swept toward her, along with her master Yun Shan's resolute back and the icy killing intent of the Snake-People Tribe's experts, weaving into a nightmare from which she could not escape.
The temple of trust had collapsed in an instant, crushing every support and belief in her heart to pieces. The world seemed to have lost all color, leaving behind only endless grayness.
The wounds on her body could still heal, but the crack in her soul, torn open by the person she respected most, continuously seeped with a poison called "betrayal."
Days without food or water, coupled with utter physical and mental exhaustion, had pushed her body to its limits.
Her once lovely face was now pale as paper, her eye sockets deeply sunken. Only the faint battle aura within her, like a guttering candle in the wind, sustained her last thread of life.
She had nearly become a living corpse that still breathed.
Outside the cell, Su Baichen stood silently for a long time. His deep gaze passed through the bars, taking in Yun Yun's miserable state. A complicated feeling rose in his heart, and he sighed softly.
"Alas, the course of fate had actually been brought forward by so many years... At this moment, she was far from the Misty Cloud Sect leader she would become over a decade later, someone tempered by hardship and possessed of an unyielding mind. Betrayed so suddenly by the master closest to her—such a blow was enough to destroy her completely."
Yet pity accounted for only three parts of that sigh. The remaining seven