The Eight Empresses Betrayed Me, Only to Deeply Regret It After Being Reborn

Lu Ye was actually laughing from how Shen Xitong was acting.

Just look at this pathetic little creature.

Fine, he’d let the brat bite him once.

Releasing his grappling hold on Shen Xitong, she immediately opened her cherry-like little mouth and chomped hard on Lu Ye’s arm.

She left behind two neat rows of teeth marks.

“Feel better now?”

“Ding. Meh, so-so... I kinda want to bite again.”

“You’d better not push your luck!”

“Ding. If I didn’t push my luck, would I even be Shen Xitong?”

“Watch my great grappling technique!”

“Ding—waaah! Damn host! I was wrong!”

After horsing around with Shen Xitong for a bit, Lu Ye found his mood had lightened significantly.

“By the way—how exactly am I supposed to deal with the Taiyin Marrow Worm you deduced?” Lu Ye asked.

“Ding. At your current realm, there’s only one method: use Bai Qiulan’s fresh blood as the lure. The Taiyin Marrow Worm will sense the Chaotic Supreme Yin force, and you won’t need to do anything. It’ll leave on its own.”

Lu Ye suddenly understood.

So that’s how it is!

“Help me find Bai Qiulan’s location. I need to return this gift she gave me,” Lu Ye said.

“Ding. This system does not possess a search function.”

“Bullshit. When you’re eating melon seeds, you always know exactly where everyone is and what they’re doing. And now you’re telling me you can’t locate someone?”

“Ding. Eating melons is eating melons. Searching is searching. The two cannot be conflated.” Shen Xitong replied righteously.

Lu Ye was shivering from the cold.

The Taiyin Marrow Worm hadn’t even hatched, but its grade was too high. Just the egg alone was enough to overwhelm a powerful cultivator at the Tribulation Crossing Realm like him.

“All right then, I’ll go find her myself.”

Lu Ye stood up.

But before he even made it out the door—he stopped.

If he went out now, and Bai Qiulan’s group was already on the brink of death, and they happened to run into the Eternal Teachings Sect...

Would the enemy go for Bai Qiulan, or him?

Definitely him!

And since they couldn’t beat him, he’d inevitably strike back and kill them all cleanly—

Wouldn’t that mean he’d basically be saving Bai Qiulan and the others by proxy?

Unacceptable!

“Oh right. I’ll contact Liu Changfeng. If Bai Qiulan and the others appear outside the sect, notify me immediately.”

Lu Ye took out a sound transmission stone and got in touch with Liu Changfeng.

“Sect Master, if my Master appears near Grand Dao Sect, inform me right away.”

“All right, no problem. Should we send people to rescue her?”

“Absolutely not. Everyone has their own fate. When dealing with others, we must maintain the mindset of letting go of the urge to save and respect the arc of another’s destiny. Because the moment you interfere, you risk changing their fate. If they end up resenting you for it, you’ll just have to take the blame.”

Everything Lu Ye said—was the fruit of bitter, firsthand experience.

“Got it. I’ll inform you the moment they’re back.”

“Thanks. Much appreciated.”

“Don’t mention it.”

After giving Liu Changfeng his instructions, Lu Ye resumed cultivating.

Though in truth, he was thinking about a deeper question.

The Second Heaven had a much higher ceiling than the First Heaven, and naturally, many more powerful cultivators.

If the First Heaven’s realms began with Qi-Gathering, then the sequence would be:

Qi-Gathering, Core Formation, Nascent Breakthrough, Spirit Refinement, Combined Dao, Tribulation Crossing, Great Ascension.

But the Second Heaven—had three more realms beyond that.

Heaven, Earth, and Man.

Man—was the True Human Realm.

Earth—was the Earth Immortal Realm.

Heaven—was the Heavenly God Realm.

Of course, the Second Heaven wasn’t only made up of those three realms. Realms like Great Ascension, Tribulation Crossing, and Combined Dao were still a huge part of the structure.

The human race had a distinctive trait—they could reproduce.

Take, for example, a certain powerhouse from the Third Heaven. He, through sheer effort and relentless sowing, managed to father over three thousand biological children with his Dao companions.

Over three thousand...

Though they weren’t all born from the same woman, the higher one’s cultivation, the harder it was to conceive—and the longer the pregnancy lasted. From that alone, one could imagine just how diligently that powerhouse worked.

And so—his descendants multiplied endlessly. That was why even in the Second Heaven, a cultivator at the Great Ascension Realm could still be considered a true powerhouse, fully capable of founding a sect.

There was no such thing as "ascending and instantly becoming a grunt."

Lu Ye was thinking:

The Jiang Clan was terrifyingly powerful. They had more than one Heavenly God Realm cultivator, not to mention powerful treasures left behind by the Jiang Clan’s main branch after their ascension.

If he ascended, there was no way he could avoid a major escape scenario.

But as for dying?

Not likely.

If he had to flee from powerful enemies even after being reborn—then what was the point of being reborn at all?

Was there a way to ensure that, the moment he ascended, he’d be strong enough to slaughter his way across the Second Heaven?

Maybe it was worth experimenting.

And who knows—maybe he’d end up giving Jiang Die a world-shaking surprise.

At that moment, Liu Changfeng was sitting inside the Grand Hall, with Ji Changming seated beside him.

“Old Ji, what do you think Lu Ye meant by what he said?” Liu Changfeng asked, stroking his beard.

Ji Changming was deep in thought.

Back during the Genius Tournament, he’d already started suspecting that the Grand Dao Sect had become the Hehuan Sect... or worse, the Grand Dao Hehuan Sect.

“So far, judging by appearances, Lu Ye is keeping his distance from both Yue Hongling and Bai Qiulan—not interfering, not getting involved.”

“Still, I’m honestly kind of worried they’re gonna start acting out that whole ‘you chase, I run; I flap my wings but can’t escape; abusing your wife is fun for a while, chasing your wife ends in cremation’ scenario.”

“...Huh?”

Liu Changfeng blinked in confusion.

He was a devout cultivation addict—he didn’t really follow Ji Changming’s line of thinking.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a classic love-story plot. ‘When I loved you, you didn’t love me. Now that I don’t love you, you suddenly love me like crazy.’”

“One runs, the other chases—they go back and forth, and in the end they end up happily married.”

“Sect Master, you don’t know this, but some of those romance stories torment my liver and crack my ribs from laughter.”

“There’s one where the female lead formed her Golden Core inside her dantian, and then her Senior Brother told her to move it to her brain, saying a core in the dantian might affect future childbirth...”

“Hahahahaha! I nearly died laughing!”

Liu Changfeng: ...

Ji Changming was clearly older than him—so why was he enjoying life more?

“So you’re saying—even though Lu Ye seems cold-hearted right now, if something really happened to Junior ❀ ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Sister Bai and the others, we don’t know how crazy he’d go.”

“Besides, if Lu Ye really didn’t care at all, he wouldn’t have sent us that transmission. The subtext was basically: ‘don’t lock Bai Qiulan and the others out of the sect gates, and then tell me after they’re already dead.’ That would be too late.”

“We don’t have to protect them—but we should stick to the sect rules. If they return to the sect and there’s resentment or grudges, we resolve them by distinguishing right and wrong.”

“But we can’t just sit back and watch our sect members die at the gates. That would damage the reputation of the Grand Dao Sect.”

“Since Lu Ye said to respect others’ destinies, then it probably means we do things by the book. Don’t help unnecessarily, but don’t hurt either.”

“If there’s really a rift between them, and Lu Ye wants revenge or payback—then he’ll handle it himself. Isn’t that right?”

Ji Changming concluded his analysis.

Liu Changfeng found it all very convincing.

“Then it’s settled. If they return—everything will proceed according to sect regulations!”