Against the Gods

There was only Yun Che and Jasmine left in her bedchambers. Once Caizhi had left, the atmosphere had become rather weird.

“Whew,” Yun Che let out a long sigh of relief, “Jasmine, are you doing this to protect me?”

Jasmine was absolutely not the kind of person who would mess around, and she most definitely would not mess around when it came to Caizhi’s marriage. So even though Yun Che’s forehead was matted with sweat, he had not objected too much.

“Hmph!” Jasmine’s small face turned the other way, “You’re delusional. But you and Caizhi have exchanged keepsakes and bowed to the heavens and the earth, so now the both of you are already husband and wife. Since this has now been established as fact, you’re not allowed to ask about it anymore. You will understand… in the future.”

“Of course I know that you wouldn’t hurt me or Caizhi, but it’s just that… this entire affair is simply too weird. This concerns her marriage! Anyone else would also find it hard to simply just accept this in a short period of time.”

“Hard to accept?” Jasmine said as she cast a sidelong glance at Yun Che before snorting yet again, “Then why can’t I even feel a single iota of unwillingness emanating from your body? Hmph! You gained something good but you’re still pretending to be obedient.”

“Cough cough.” Even the thick-skinned Yun Che blushed at that as he struggled to explain himself, “Of course I’m okay with it. If this is truly your heart’s desire, I would be fine even if you asked me to marry an old female pig, much less your little sister. But for Caizhi… this is something that is definitely far more serious to her.”

“Oh really?” Jasmine said with a cold smile, “Then let me go wrangle up an old female pig and bring her back here right now.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Yun Che’s legs went limp as he anxiously reached out and grabbed Jasmine’s arm in panic, “Okay, okay, I won’t ask you why you’re doing this. But how are we supposed to explain this to your father… Uh, I mean, how are we going to explain this to the Star God Emperor?”

“Caizhi doesn’t have a father,” Jasmine said as her voice grew cold, “There’s no need to account for this to that old villain. He isn’t worthy!”

Every time she mentioned that “old villain”, Jasmine’s aura grew cold and a bone-piercing hatred would almost reflexively rise up from her entire body… there was even killing intent as well.

The hatred she bore for Xing Juekong had long since sunk into her bone marrow and perhaps it would never ever be able to dispelled for as long as she lived.

“Furthermore, even if he does know about it, he won’t say anything anyways.”

Yun Che was stunned by those words before he asked, “Why?”

“That’s something that you don’t need to be bothered about,” Jasmine did not give a direct reply. Instead she turned around and said, “Remember what I said before! You must treat Caizhi as well as you treat any of your other women! You’re not allowed to favor anyone else over her, if not… I’ll never forgive you!”

“Fine.” Yun Che said with a smile, “I’ll treat Caizhi just as good as I treat Jasmine.”

He had originally thought those words would definitely earn him that cold and arrogant stare of Jasmine’s, and maybe she might even send him flying with a kick. But contrary to his expectations, Jasmine did not lash out at him. Instead, she went silent for a bit before replying in an extremely sincere voice, “Good, remember those words that you’ve just said.”

“Mn?” Yun Che was stunned by that reaction and his gaze grew suspicious as he looked Jasmine once over, “How come you’re acting so weird today?”

“What’s weird!?” Jasmine said with a light snort, but after that she averted her gaze as if she did not quite dare to stare at Yun Che. At the same time, she coldly and forcefully changed the topic, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re willing or not, you and Caizhi have already said your vows before heaven and earth and exchanged keepsakes. All of this was done with her mother, her maternal aunt and I as witnesses. So the two of you are already husband and wife! You… what’s your impression of Caizhi?”

Yun Che thought about it for a while before saying, “Caizhi and I have not interacted with each other for very long. However, I have managed to gather two unique impressions about her.”

“Which two?”

“The first is that she regards you as more important than herself, far more important at that,” Yun Che said in an exceptionally serious tone of voice as he looked at Jasmine.

When they had met in the Darkya Realm, once she had figured out who he was, she helped him out in various ways from the dark… She even called him, a person with such a lowly cultivation and background, “Brother-in-law” with such gusto… Her excitement and high spirits upon seeing him in the Star God Realm… The way she had imparted the Heavenly Wolf Hell God’s Tome, that belonged exclusively to her, to him in such a completely unreserved fashion... And the way she had acquiesced to the marriage that Jasmine had forced on her even though she felt aggrieved by it...

All of these things told Yun Che that Jasmine occupied an extremely important place in Caizhi’s heart.

“...” Jasmine softly bit on her bottom lip before saying, “And?”

“The other thing is that…” Yun Che’s eyes flashed faintly as he said this, “She is far from the naive and innocent little girl who knows nothing of the world that she makes herself out to be. On the contrary… she is extremely clever and very good at hiding her true self.”

Jasmine’s eyes turned as an expression of faint shock crossed her face, “Why do you believe that is so?”

“When I met her in the Darkya Realm, I always had the impression that she was just this little princess that some big family had spoiled rotten as she displayed various whimsical actions and often seemed to have an exaggerated opinion of her own abilities... But now that I think about the words and actions she had said and done during that time, I realize one thing. Every single word she said and every single action she had performed were very strong and focused probes.”

“From the very first moment she called me Brother-in-law, she had actually already completely verified my identity.”

“Furthermore, while I was in the Darkya Realm, you could say that she played me like a fiddle,” Yun Che said with a helpless expression on his face. “And to be honest, I’ve met very few people who could play me like that in my lifetime. However, she wasn’t playing tricks on me for fun, she was actually testing the feelings that I had for you.”

“It was probably when she was very satisfied with the results of her probing that she decided to help me find that ‘Divine Nine Star Buddha Jade’ in the end. She also even gifted me with a Void Illusion Stone as well.”

Compared to Yun Che, it was Wu Guike who had been played with by Caizhi until he wished to die...

But when she was in front of Jasmine, Yun Che did not detect any scheming or shrewdness from her. The only thing he saw was a completely open and unguarded heart, a young and tender maiden who did not hold anything back and did not defy her elder sister.

It was even to the point that there was a little bit of cautiousness and prudence mixed in, just because she was unwilling to see her older sister get the least bit angry.

“You’re right on the mark,” Jasmine said in a much softer voice as she gently closed her eyes. “Caizhi is indeed very intelligent, she is also very good at hiding her true nature. But, she was not born this way. Rather, it was something that she learned to give herself a form of protection.

“Self-protection?” Yun Che asked in a puzzled voice. “She was born as the little princess of the Star God Realm and now she’s even the Heavenly Wolf Star God, so I feel that… she’s probably the person who least needs any form of self-protection in this world.”

Jasmine shook her head, her eyes dark and gloomy, “The Star God Realm is far less pure than you think it to be... All the king realms are like that.”

Yun Che, “...”

Her gaze turned in the direction where Caizhi had left before Jasmine began to slowly speak, “Our Star God Realm places great belief in the power of the stars and we believe that every person in this universe has a star that corresponds to him or her.”

“When it was one month before the birth of Caizhi, that old villain allowed those old fogeys in the Institute of Elders to calculate the star which Caizhi was aligned with, but the result they received was…”

“That she was the Heavenly Cursed Lone Star that would bring boundless disaster and calamity!”

Yun Che shook his head, “These kinds of things aren’t to be believed, I’ve never believed all that nonsense about your destiny being set by heaven. And once you’ve reached the level that the Star God Realm is at, you should believe these sorts of things even less.”

“No, they do believe,” Jasmine said as she continued speaking, “Furthermore, the things that happened later were all unshakeable monuments to the truth of the four words ‘Heavenly Cursed Lone Star’.”

Yun Che, “...!?”

“The moment Caizhi was born, it robbed her mother of all vitality, causing my maternal aunt to die due to a lack of energy. The old villain and all of the people in Star God City were then even more convinced that she was the ‘Heavenly Cursed Lone Star’. Everyone rejected her and no one dared to even approach her. They threw her in some abandoned bedchamber, not caring if she lived or died. If it was not for Big Brother bringing her back and Mother taking her in, she would have long ago followed my maternal aunt into death.”

“How could such a thing have happened?” Yun Che’s brows sank heavily after he heard those words, “Even if the Star God Emperor really believed in these kinds of things, Caizhi is, in the end, his own daughter by blood. How could he do such a thing… as abandoning a newborn baby to its fate?”

A peal of cold mocking laughter escaped Jasmine’s lips before she continued, “Not long after we brought Caizhi back, my own mother was captured by the Moon God Realm and soon passed away by her own hand. After that, Big Brother was brought low by Qianye Ying’er and left us. Then after that, I was ambushed in the Southern Divine Region and everyone thought that I had also died...”

“Following her birth mother, there were only three people in the world that treated her well, yet each and every one of them met with calamity. Even though they were people with the strength of a Star God, they were still not able to avoid this. Thus, in everyone’s eyes, this was all because of Caizhi, because she was the Heavenly Cursed Lone Star that would bring disaster and calamity to all who were near her… and this was something that she believed herself as well.”

“...” Yun Che suddenly felt his heart being squeezed after hearing those words.

She had brought about the death of her own birth mother, had been spurned and rejected by everyone from the day she was born. Furthermore, every single person who had been good to her had met with calamity one after the other... Despite his own experiences, even Yun Che could not imagine the type of burden and torment this would place on his heart.

Let alone Caizhi, who was only a young and tender girl.

“After my mother and my big brother departed from us in close succession, Caizhi descended into a nightmarish hell of self-recrimination and self-hatred. She believed that all these disasters had happened because of her. During that period of time, if I was not by her side, her heart and spirit might have long ago fallen into ruin.”

“At that time, Caizhi was only six years old.”

“After that, I just happened to hear that Evil God inheritance had appeared in the Southern Divine Region, so I set off by myself for the Southern Divine Region. Even though the me at that time had already inherited the Heavenly Slaughter divine power, I had an unquenchable thirst for even more power. All for the sake of avenging Mother and Big Brother and also so I’d have the ability to leave the Star God Realm forever with Caizhi.”

All of these were just part of her reasons. There was one other important reason that Jasmine would never tell Yun Che.

“But even though I had managed to retrieve the ‘Evil God’s Indestructible Blood’ while putting my life on the line, I was ambushed and inflicted with the Absolute God Slaying Poison. In order to not allow me any opportunity to purge the poison from my body, the ones who ambushed me chased me over a great distance... By the time I managed to shake their pursuit, the poison had already spread to my soul. After that, everyone thought that I was dead, even I myself did not believe that I could survive after that.”

She glanced at Yun Che before looking away yet again. She had never thought that this event would lead to a turning point in her destiny… because she had met Yun Che.

Similarly, that had been the turning point of Yun Che’s own fate. Because he had met Jasmine.

“I don’t dare to think about how Caizhi lived during that period, after the news of my death reached the Star God Realm. During the time I spent in the Profound Sky Continent, Caizhi was also the only thing that tied me to the Star God Realm. When I followed Moonflower back to the Star God Realm, Caizhi was also the most important reason.”

The other important reason was naturally Yun Che. Because if she did not leave, Yun Che and the entire Blue Pole Star would have met with the most calamitous of calamities.

“Four years ago, when I returned to the Star God Realm, Caizhi had already inherited the divine power of the Heavenly Wolf Star God. Those old fogeys from the Institute of Elders had also said that her star destiny had changed from the ‘Heavenly Cursed Lone Star’ to the ‘Heavenly Wolf Star’, so Caizhi’s status was naturally completely different from what it had been before. She had gone from being spurned by everyone to being revered by all.”

After he heard this, the pressure in Yun Che’s heart finally eased a bit. He had never thought, nor could he ever have imagined, that this pure and strange girl, whose eyes were as pure as elf’s, and who always seemed to have a sweet and winsome smile on her face, had actually lived such a nightmarish existence.

“The Heavenly Wolf Star God’s divine power is recognized by all as the strongest among the Twelve Star Gods, but at the same time, it is also the Star God divine power that has the most difficulty in finding a successor. All those years ago, my big brother had only been able to obtain the approval of the Heavenly Wolf divine power because his talent and comprehension of the profound way was incredibly high.”

“But for Caizhi... her talent in the profound way was exceptionally mediocre, yet the Heavenly Wolf divine power had taken the initiative to approve of her when she was twelve years old. Furthermore, she had a nearly perfect compatibility with it. Do you know why?”

Yun Che pondered this question with sunken brows before his heart suddenly thumped as he came to an awful realisation, “Could it be because of… hatred?”

It was only today that Caizhi had told him that the Heavenly Wolf Star God had once been christened as the God of Hatred. Furthermore, the Heavenly Wolf Hell God’s Tome had been born of obsession and hatred as well. The heavier the hatred and resentment, the greater the power displayed by the Heavenly Wof Hell God’s Tome would be.

“...” Jasmine gave a small nod of her head. The movement had been very light but it carried with it an extremely heavy oppressiveness, “After the news of my death had reached her ears, Caizhi was completely trapped inside her own hatred and resentment... The hatred she held towards the entire world, and… the hatred she held towards herself.”

The recitation of the Heavenly Wolf Seventh Sword Style’s sword formula suddenly flashed through Yun Che’s heart and soul:

Earth grieves heavens wounded, solely hatred without heart.

Solely hatred...

“This sword style has nothing to do with ‘talent’ or ‘comprehension ability’. It would be impossible for you to understand this sword style even if you spend ten thousand years pondering over it! It’s forever impossible for a foolish person like you to ever get that ‘opportunity’. Do you get it!?”

“I do not wish for you to ever have that kind of opportunity, and it is even more so for Big Sis... Anyways, don’t waste any more time thinking about it! You might as well spend more time practicing the first five sword forms!”

“...” Yun Che closed his eyes. When Caizhi had said those words, she had done so with a tone and smile of exultation as she pranced around in delight. But now that he thought back to that scene, he now knew that what lay behind each and every one of those words, was a heaviness that normal folk could not even begin to imagine.

Jasmine looked at Yun Che, as the sound that was emitted from her lips slowly sank into the depths of her soul, “There has always been a deep abyss in Caizhi’s heart. Now that you are Caizhi’s husband, you have one responsibility… and that is to never, ever let her slip into that deep abyss!”

If it is you we are talking about, then you will definitely be able to do it… Jasmine muttered these words in her heart.

“...Alright,” Yun Che said as he gave a light nod of his head.

Yet that one word was a vow that would last a lifetime.

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