Against the Gods

“Tell me, Meiyin… the World Piercer is in your hands, so you are the only one who knows everything. You must tell me!”

Yun Che was mustering his full willpower to control his emotions. On the day he was crowned the great emperor of the four divine regions, he even believed that there was nothing in the world that could crack his mind anymore.

In reality, his control was already on the verge of being overwhelmed by the unending tidal wave of emotions.

“...” A bead of scarlet blood finally appeared on Shui Meiyin’s lip.

She looked down and answered in a difficult and pained voice, “If… she was the one who did everything… there’s no reason… why she wouldn’t tell you anything after you returned… So please, Big Brother Yun Che… please don’t force yourself to believe the fiction anymore…”

“You’re the one who’s forcing me and yourself to believe in it!”

Despite having lost any ability to defend herself, Shui Meiyin still stubbornly resisted admitting the truth for some reason. It made Yun Che even more frustrated as he growled out uncontrollably, “Everything was a lie! Even the flimsy theories I thought up to support your lies were lies, so why are you denying it still!? What are you hiding! Why won’t you tell me even after we’ve come this far!?!”

“...” Shui Meiyin didn’t give a reply. She simply shivered even harder, almost as if she was submerged in an icy, hellishly cold pond.

“...!” Suddenly, Yun Che realized something and pulled his hands away from Shui Meiyin’s shoulders in a hurry. His eyes trembled at what he saw.

He had lost control of his profound energy during the outburst. As a result, the fabric where he had grabbed her was shredded, and her snow white skin was covered in finger-shaped bruise marks.

For a time, Yun Che’s hands were frozen in the air. Then, light profound energy seeped out from his fingers, enveloped Shui Meiyin’s shoulders and slowly removed the bruise marks.

Drip...

Drip…

Drip…

Physically, the teardrops dripping on his knees were warm and soundless. But mentally, Yun Che felt like his heart was being gouged out with every drip.

For the past few years, Shui Meiyin had become a crybaby.

He recalled the time Shui Meiyin broke down suddenly and cried for a long time into his chest after he had informed her of Xia Qingyue’s demise.

She had told him that it was tears of joy and elation, but he should’ve realized sooner that such wouldn’t sound so broken-hearted.

During the three years they cultivated in the Eternal Heaven Divine Realm, he had occasionally woken from his meditation to find Shui Meiyin staring at nothing in particular with tear streaks on her cheeks.

She had smiled at him and explained again that she was crying out of sheer happiness. Days like those felt like a dream considering how dire the circumstances had been back then.

Even when they were enjoying moments that should be heartwarming and relaxing on the Blue Pole Star, her eyes would occasionally tear up for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

“My Meiyin is forever fifteen years old”... It was a half-joke he had cracked countless times to Shui Meiyin because she had become way too prone to crying for the past couple of years.

It was only now that he realized that it wasn’t without a reason after all.

Perhaps every drop of tears she shed was a drop of sorrow and pain she had failed to lock inside her heart.

“I’m sorry, Meiyin.” He placed his hands on her shoulders again, but this time his movements were gentle, and his voice much softer than before. “That was a most ugly outburst from me. I thought I had grown strong enough to face anything, but it looks like I was fooling myself again.”

“But the truth of this matter is just too important for me to let go of… can you please, please tell me?”

However, her head remained bowed, and her tears kept dripping like they were never-ending. Had her eyes been visible, Yun Che would’ve realized that they were fully dyed by grayish despair. For the owner of the Divine Stainless Soul, it was almost unthinkable.

“I can’t… I can’t…” She kept muttering seemingly more to herself than Yun Che. Her voice had lost its melodious quality and become wooden out of sheer pain. “I promised her… it was her… final wish…”

“So I cannot… I cannot…”

Promise...

Final wish...

Wish!?

“Meiyin, listen to me. Look me in the eye and listen to me.”

Yun Che very gently cupped her tear-stained cheeks and lifted her head. “I know you’ve made some sort of promise with her. You probably promised that you will keep all of her secrets until the end, and the fact is you’ve done very well until now. You haven’t leaked even a single word throughout these years.”

“Lying to someone close to you is a painful thing, and you had to make up lie after lie in order to keep your promise with her… You’ve already done the absolute best anyone could possibly hope to do.”

“It was a combination of pure luck and my existing suspicions that unearthed these truths. You’ve never tried to reveal them of your own accord, and you did everything in your power to keep them under wraps until the end. If you confess everything now, it is simply because it is the inevitable outcome after I found out. You are in no way breaking your promise to her or letting her down.”

Yun Che’s words unsettled the dark despair in Shui Meiyin’s eyes a little.

There was not a flicker of blame in his eyes despite all of the lies she said to him, only deep love and pain for everything she had gone through. His voice grew even softer and he said, “Not only are you shouldering all of the secrets and truths on your own, you knew everything she did but could only watch the world slight, shame, belittle and ridicule her. You were even forced to watch me hate and resent her so much that I refused to even hear her name from anyone’s mouth…”

“It must have been painful, wasn’t it?”

His words drove into the innermost depths of her soul with the strength of a hammer. The shivering in her pupils and across her body abruptly grew many times more intense than before.

“Have you forgotten?” Yun Che’s lips curled into a very soft, very gentle smile. “We are longer who we were back then. We are now husband and wife, and as husband and wife, we are supposed to shoulder the happy things, the sad things, the heavy things, and even the sinful things together, right?”

“So, please, tell me the truth. Would you rather keep your silence, watch me continue on with my life like a soulless zombie, and leave her name blackened by the world despite everything she has done for it behind the scenes. Or would you rather confess everything to me?”

The darkness in her eyes shook harder and harder until finally...

“Uu… Ss…”

At some point, the darkness in her eyes finally shattered into countless tears that looked like beautiful yet sorrowful crystals.

“Uu… uuu… uuuahhhhhh!”

Her heart, emotion and her tears reached their breaking point all at the same time. She clung to Yun Che and cried her heart out.

For the past few years, every smile she made was accompanied by a prick to the soul. Every time it happened, it would hurt her heart so bad that it took her forever just to recover her breath.

“It was her… it was sister Qingyue… it was her World Piercer… it was her… Uu… uuaaahhhh…”

She finally cried out that name.

She finally didn’t need to shoulder everything on her own any longer.

She cried as if the ten thousand mountains she had held inside her heart had toppled all at once. She screamed as if she was trying to vent all the pain, suffocation and torture she had endured for the past couple of years...

It would be a long time before she was able to form even one coherent word.

Yun Che hugged her, closed his own eyes and gritted his teeth tightly.

He already knew it was true before Shui Meiyin said it, but to hear it from Shui Meiyin herself still shattered his world like never before.

…………

Somewhere in the sky, Mu Xuanyin’s breathing was unusually out of control.

If Yun Che himself wasn’t a hundred times more disarrayed than she currently was, he would’ve noticed her existence already.

Although she had promised to leave him alone, her worry ultimately triumphed over the resolution. [1]

Not in a million years was she expecting to hear such a shocking truth.

If Yun Che was the most wounded and disbelieving when Xia Qingyue had dealt him the greatest betrayal of his life, she and Chi Wuyao would be the second.

Chi Wuyao in particular still couldn’t let go even though it had been many years since Xia Qingyue had passed away.

“Devil Queen,” she murmured to herself, “your assessment of her character wasn’t your biggest mistake in life after all…”

…………

“... do you remember that time where the world somehow learned that it was the Glazed Light Realm who had concealed you for a day? Not long after that, Sister Qingyue showed up to personally cripple my father’s profound veins and imprison me in the Moon God Realm.”

After Shui Meiyin finally calmed down, she began telling her story. Her eyes were completely red at this point, and there were still bits of tears clinging to her eyelashes.

“Father, sister and I had known that it was only a matter of time before people found out about it, and we had all resolved ourselves to our inevitable fate. However, the leak still happened sooner than we expected. It was because Sister Qingyue was the one who had leaked it on purpose.”

“... I thought so.” Now that he knew the most crucial truth, many things started to take on a whole new outlook in his mind.

“If the other king realms—especially the Brahma Monarch Realm—had discovered this first, the consequences might’ve been much more severe and unpredictable. So, she eliminated this possibility by exposing the truth herself and leaking it to the Eternal Heaven Realm first. After Zhou Xuzi had traveled to the Glazed Light Realm, she severely injured father, crippled his profound veins, and announced that she would imprison me in the Moon God Realm for a thousand years right to his face.”

Shui Qianheng was the realm king of one of the three strongest upper star realms in the Eastern Divine Region. It was one thing to injure him severely, and another to cripple his profound veins permanently. The latter was among the cruelest of punishments that could happen to a profound practitioner.

Moreover, Shui Qianheng was the central pillar of his star realm at the time. To cripple him was to deal a terrible blow not just to the Glazed Light Realm, but the Eastern Divine Region itself.

It was such a harsh punishment that even Zhou Xuzi had tried to beg for clemency on behalf of the Glazed Light Realm.

Everyone in the Eastern Divine Region knew that Zhou Xuzi adored Shui Meiyin and had tried really hard to recruit her to be his disciple a long time ago. However, he couldn’t request Shui Meiyin to be imprisoned in the Eternal Heaven God Realm instead because the world would only think that he was protecting her. So begging for clemency was all he could do.

Even so, Xia Qingyue stayed her course and dealt out the punishment that could only be described as cruel and bone-chilling. That was the point. If the punishment was light, the Brahma Monarch Realm would be able to call her out and attempt to wrestle the right to punish the Glazed Light Realm away from her. As it was, no one could even attempt to intervene in the matter.

At the same time, anyone who wished to exploit Shui Meiyin’s Divine Stainless Soul while the Glazed Light Realm was down would have to face the Moon God Emperor first.

“On the surface, it looked like a harsh punishment. In reality, it protected both me and the Glazed Light Realm.” Shui Meiyin sniffled. “She told me that Big Brother Yun Che… would surely be able to heal father’s profound veins after you came back.”

“And she was right.” Her tears started falling against her will again as she looked up. “Father is completely healed, and I only wish that I could’ve told her about the news in person.”

Yun Che asked quietly, “She told you… everything after she took you to the Moon God Realm, right?”

“Mn!” Shui Meiyin nodded. “She purposely spread the news of the harsh punishment not just to protect the Glazed Light Realm, but also to keep anyone from claiming ignorance and trying something while she was taking me to the Moon God Realm.”

“After that, at the bottommost Moon Prison of the Moon God Realm, she showed me the World Piercer and told me… everything.”

Yun Che’s breath caught in his throat.

1. (T/N: Just admit you’re a chronic voyeur already)