"Today, every last one of you can forget about leaving this underground palace."
Lin Shisan's fury burned through the nine heavens.
Seeing Bai Youyou nestled in Zi Yuner's arms like that, his honest, simple face no longer looked honest or simple.
Bai Youyou could not speak. Blood still streaked the corner of her mouth, and both hands rested in the crook of Zi Yuner's arm, drained of even the strength to lift a finger. Her robes were torn beyond recognition, and the exposed skin was covered in overlapping scars, old and new.
Those scars looked as though someone had stabbed her over and over with fine needles.
Lin Shisan had seen Bai Youyou injured in the Heavenly Revelation Secret Realm, in Little Fishing Village, and outside the Dragon Palace's Teleportation Array, but he had never seen her like this.
Her eyes still smiled as she looked at him, her lips curving faintly, as though saying, I'm fine. Don't be afraid.
That faint curve cut into his heart more cruelly than a knife, turning all his innards upside down.
He remembered the Heavenly Revelation Secret Realm, where she had stood before him and unleashed A Thought, Flowers Bloom.
White petals had filled the sky, torn apart by the Spacetime Vortex. Blood had flowed from the corner of her mouth then, too, yet she had not even furrowed her brow.
He remembered that downpour in the Dragon Palace's rear garden, how she had passed through the abandoned Teleportation Array alone and knelt in the rain in Zi Tianya's rear garden, waiting for him. He remembered their wedding night in Little Fishing Village, when she had leaned against his shoulder and said that this one night was enough.
Only now did he truly understand how much he had never seen lay beneath those