"Don't!" Lu Ye shook his head, his eyes reddening. "You'll get better. I'll heal your wounds."
Xiao Die gave a desolate smile. "No need. Talk to me a little longer." Her voice gradually weakened, faint as a mosquito's buzz.
Her eyelids slowly fell shut, and the hand stroking Lu Ye's cheek dropped.
"Xiao Die?" Lu Ye called softly. By his ear, he seemed to hear that familiar reply: "I'm here, Brother Ye!"
But a cool breeze brushed past, and it was nothing more than an illusion.
"Ah..." He clutched the body in his arms tightly. Even when he had been slandered, besieged, and grievously wounded, he had never revealed the slightest emotion. Yet at this moment, his heart was being torn apart.
Blurred scenes inexplicably surfaced in his mind, impossible to make out clearly...
Overwhelming sorrow surged into his heart. Like an invisible hand, it suddenly swept aside layer upon layer of mist.
The blurry scenes abruptly became clear.
Xiao Die in the mountain village, cutting her own throat with a blade as her body gradually turned cold atop him; Senior Sister You Die in the barren mountains, tragically slain in the jaws of a Monster Beast, the scarlet blood upon her white robes impossible to erase even through countless reincarnations; Xiao Die in the Prime Minister's Residence, unwilling to suffer disgrace, biting through her tongue to preserve her innocence; Xiao Die, who recognized only him, helplessly throwing herself into the river under duress...
Scene after scene, image after image, surged endlessly.
The haziness of his past lives suddenly became incomparably clear at this moment. Memories from life after life swept over him like a tide, drowning Lu Ye entirely and leaving him breathless.
So this was already the tenth life!
So Xiao Die died because of him every time!