Breaking His Legs? Qian Yu: I Can't Kill Him Yet-I Need Bibi Dong to See Through Yu Xiaogang!

Qian Yu quietly watched Yu Xiaogang's crazed, hysterical outburst.

His eyes remained utterly calm, as if he were looking at a pile of hopeless trash.

"Demon?"

Qian Yu chuckled softly, his tone tinged with pitying mockery:

"To a weakling like you, who can't even protect his own woman, the one who controls your fate really is like a demon."

He slowly raised a long, pale finger and lightly tapped the air.

Buzz—!

A sacred, searing, and utterly terrifying pressure crashed down on Yu Xiaogang, as if a hundred thousand mountains had come crashing onto him.

"Crack!

Crack!"

Every bone in Yu Xiaogang's body instantly gave a series of crunching snaps that made one's teeth ache.

The terrifying pressure pinned him hard against the cold wall.

Even his breathing stopped completely.

His bloodied face twisted out of shape from the unbearable pain.

"What makes you think you're worth the effort of deceiving?"

Qian Yu's voice was like that of a god in the highest heavens—cold, majestic, and beyond question:

"To save your worthless life, she had no choice but to compromise.

She had to spend her entire life paying for the incompetence of a failure like you."

"Yu Xiaogang, you keep saying you love her, that you understand her."

Qian Yu leaned a little closer, gazing at Yu Xiaogang's eyes as they rolled back from asphyxiation. He drove each word home:

"But what have you brought her besides humiliation, danger, and despair?"

Those words were the sharpest blades in the world.

With precise cruelty, they pierced straight through the deepest defenses of Yu Xiaogang's heart.

His struggles stopped.

His hands, which had been pulling at the chains, fell limp.

The madness and resentment in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by endless darkness and deathly silence.

He understood now.

Qian Yu hadn't lied to him.

Given Spirit Hall's way of doing things, if Bibi Dong hadn't made enormous sacrifices and compromises,

then after provoking Qian Xunji like that, he would already be a cold corpse.

It was him... He was the one who had hurt Dong'er!

His vaunted talent and conceit had pushed Dong'er into the abyss!

As the last glimmer in Yu Xiaogang's eyes went out, his body slumped against the chains like a lump of mud drained of its soul.

Qian Yu finally withdrew his pressure, satisfied.

Killing a man was just a matter of bringing a blade down.

Destroying his heart was the most complete kind of ruin.

He wanted Yu Xiaogang to live with this endless guilt, humiliation, and fear.

To eke out the rest of his life like a rat in the sewers.

Qian Yu turned around and didn't spare another glance at the failure he had utterly destroyed.

He strode toward the exit of the water prison, his long legs carrying him with effortless grace.

"Guards."

His cool voice echoed through the empty water prison.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Two black-armored Spirit Hall Enforcement Knights appeared at the cell entrance like ghosts.

They dropped to one knee, their expressions fervent and reverent:

"My lord!"

"Take him down."

Qian Yu didn't break stride. His white-clad back gradually disappeared into the light beyond the water prison.

Only his final sentence remained, cold as ice and like a summons from the King of Hell:

"Break both his legs. Throw him out of Spirit City like a piece of trash."

"Tell him that from this day on, if he dares set foot even half a step into Spirit Hall territory,

or if I ever hear him mention 'Bibi Dong' anywhere on the continent again..."

"I'll show him what it means to wish he were dead and be unable to die."

"Bang!"

The heavy water-prison door slammed shut.

Emerging from the water prison, Qian Yu narrowed his eyes slightly.

He listened to the faint, shrill cries drifting up from beneath his feet—the cries of Yu Xiaogang, wailing like a beaten dog.

The corners of his mouth curled slightly.

Kill Yu Xiaogang?

Of course Qian Yu had considered it.

With his current standing and strength in Spirit Hall,

crushing this failure, who hadn't even reached level thirty, would be as easy as crushing an ant.

He wouldn't even get his hands dirty.

But he hadn't done it.

Because it wasn't time to kill this failure yet.

Qian Yu understood human nature all too well, and he understood Bibi Dong all too well.

His senior brother Qian Xunji's arranged marriage had used Spirit Hall's absolute power to bind Bibi Dong to Qian Yu's side.

It had made her his fiancée in name.

But that very oppressive situation

would lend the "ridiculous love" Bibi Dong felt for Yu Xiaogang an intensely tragic quality—and make her all the more defiant.

In Bibi Dong's eyes right now, Yu Xiaogang was a victim who had suffered for her sake.

He was the man she had to protect, her "beloved," even if it meant sacrificing herself for the greater good.

If Qian Yu killed Yu Xiaogang in the water prison right now,

then this failure would be frozen forever in the most beautiful moment of Bibi Dong's memories.

He would become the cinnabar mole in her heart that could never be erased, a forbidden wound no one could touch.

(A reference to Fox Spirit Matchmaker, Tu Shan Honghong and that young Taoist priest.)

The living could never compete with the dead.

If he did that, Qian Yu might get Bibi Dong's body.

But he would have almost no chance of ever truly winning her over or claiming her whole heart.

"If I let you die just like that, wouldn't that be far too easy on you..."

Qian Yu stood with his hands behind his back on the steps, looking down over the streets of Spirit City.

A dark glint flickered in his eyes.

Breaking both his legs and throwing him out of Spirit City like trash.

That bloody lesson for this failure was only the first step.

He would keep Yu Xiaogang alive.

He would let the world beat him down.

He would make Yu Xiaogang's hypocritical, cowardly, and selfish nature bare itself completely, in the desperate straits of life without Spirit Hall's protection.

When the time was right,

Qian Yu would personally take Bibi Dong along, so the two of them could watch the show.

They would slowly savor the sight of Yu Xiaogang.

How he wagged his tail and begged for his life.

How he discarded his dignity for profit.

And how he turned around and threw himself into another woman's arms.

Bit by bit, Qian Yu would tear away the disguise Yu Xiaogang wore as a "grandmaster whose talents went unrecognized."

He wanted Bibi Dong to see with her own eyes

what kind of revolting sludge the man she had once been willing to give up her status as a Saintess for—and even sacrifice everything to protect—really was!

Only after this complete "disillusionment"

had smashed the false idol in Bibi Dong's heart—the one named Yu Xiaogang—to pieces

would her proud heart truly break, despair, and then be remade in the palm of Qian Yu's hand.

When that time came,

after Bibi Dong had seen the cruelty and falseness of love, and Yu Xiaogang's true face,

she would submit to Qian Yu completely.

She would fall helplessly in love with him—the true god who had roused her from an illusory dream and given her absolute protection.

"Don't disappoint me at our wedding in half a month, my Saintess."

Qian Yu chuckled softly and turned toward the Pope Palace.