As the writing vanished, Qiong Luo closed her eyes as well.
Jiuxiao stepped forward and picked her up, but her body gradually turned cold. He knew that this woman's life of hardships had finally come to an end.
A surge of demonic qi shot into the sky and flew toward the horizon. The beauty in his arms was left with only this mortal shell. Nothing was more pitiful in this world; once one died, another would attain the Dao.
The closed eyes slowly opened again. Before him, Qiong Luo was still one of the Nine-tailed Demon Fox's incarnations, and the look she gave him was exactly the same as before. Yet what had passed was ultimately gone, never to return.
Jiuxiao threw back his head and laughed, but sorrow choked his heart. Qiong Luo of his previous life had already offered her entire life to the Nine-tailed Demon Fox, yet the scattered Nine-tailed Demon Fox still used her former appearance for deception. It caused Jiuxiao unbearable pain.
He looked toward the other seven incarnations. Which of these young women had not had her life controlled by the Nine-tailed Demon Fox's path to immortality? Did they not have lives of their own?
No one could answer that question. Such was fate. Jiuxiao had originally been an orphan. After his master adopted him, he became a disciple of the Buddhist order. As time passed, the disciples under his master's care gradually increased, but his master also went out more and more often. Jiuxiao saw his master only occasionally, sometimes not for months, and eventually not even for years.
Once, he had asked his master what he did outside. His master had never possessed much of a temper; in Jiuxiao's memories, he wore a dark expression all day, as though something troubled him.