On the sixth day, the palace door creaked open.

     The heavy rain outside was still pouring down. Someone closed an oil-paper umbrella and walked into the hall with rain-soaked clothes.

     “Shizun.”

     The visitor was dressed in a lotus-root-white robe and wearing a cloak. His peach blossom eyes were filled with emotion, but there were shadows under those eyes. This was the first time Shi Mei had gone to Wushan Palace to find him since the battle at Heaven-Piercing Tower.

     “I wanted to come visit Shizun before, but I couldn’t find the time. It wasn’t until today that I finally had some free time. Please don’t blame me for being late, Shizun.”

     Chu Wanning only glanced at him before turning his gaze away.

     Shi Mei didn’t mind this at all and sat down in front of Chu Wanning. Perhaps because the paving of the path had gone so smoothly, he looked to be in a good mood, with a bright glint in his eyes.

     “Are you still angry?”

     “...”

     “The gate to the demon realm is about to open. Shizun, is there nothing else you want to ask me?”

     Chu Wanning still didn’t answer and tilted his head to look at the rain outside the window. His fragility and emptiness were only shown in front of people he loved deeply. Shi Mingjing had exhausted all of his warmth, so he became a stubborn stone, which no amount of persistence could melt away.

     Shi Mei sighed. “I came here to talk with you, so please say something, okay?”

     Chu Wanning finally threw one word at him: “Scram.”

     Unlike his mania before the great battle, the closer he got to success, the calmer Shi Mei’s mind became. He wasn’t angered by Chu Wanning’s coldness but smiled and said, “You really did say something to me.”

     The rain pattered against the window pane, which had long since been soaked. The Gate of Time, Space, Life, and Death had disrupted the two worlds, and any strange phenomenon was a normal occurrence. Chu Wanning even felt that perhaps this rainstorm would never stop and would just keep falling like this until both worlds were submerged.

     Shi Mei wasn’t bothered. He got up and poured two cups of tea, one of which he handed to Chu Wanning, then said, “Since you’re ignoring me, I will say some things to you myself. I don’t like to explain myself, but I don’t want to have too many misunderstandings with Shizun either.”

     The tea was still warm, and he blew away the green leaves before slowly taking a sip with his eyelashes lowered.

     “How should I put it? I have done many evil things since I was a child, and I have rarely told the truth. But I truly don’t like to carelessly kill innocent people.”

     Chu Wanning’s hands clenched involuntarily, and veins bulged on the backs of his pale hands.

     “Shizun has seen the Path of Martyrdom, right? I originally only wanted to fill it with the people of this world who were worse than beasts. These kinds of people wouldn’t have a death worth lamenting anyway. But then I realized just how long it needed to be, long enough that it would take the corpses of two mortal worlds to complete it.” Shi Mei said, “I don’t feel good about it either.”

     “...”

     “I don’t like feeling blood on my hands, so I’ve hardly ever killed anyone myself. I didn’t lie to you.”

     “You didn’t lie to me.” Chu Wanning suddenly spoke. “I believe you’ve hardly ever killed anyone with your own hands.”

     Shi Mei’s eyebrows lifted slightly, and he seemed a little surprised.

     Chu Wanning turned his head, his eyes cold as ice. “You’re kind; you’re soft-hearted; you don’t want to kill innocent people; you don’t like blood on your hands. So you never do these things yourself. You created Taxian-Jun, and from then on, he became a madman who massacred Rufeng Sect, the tyrant unable to wash away the blood—he does all the things you must do but didn’t want to do. You’re clever.”

     “Shizun’s words are a bit unfair.” Shi Mei sighed and said, “I didn’t intend to massacre Rufeng Sect. That was his own personal grudge.”

     “Without the Eight Sufferings Everlasting Hatred curse, how could he have committed such a monstrous crime?”

     “Without the Eight Suffering Everlasting Hatred curse, would he definitely not have committed such a monstrous crime?”

     Chu Wanning looked into Shi Mei’s eyes. “He wouldn’t.”

     Shi Mei only chuckled and waved his hand, showing that he didn’t want to argue about it anymore. He said, “Forget it. There’s nothing to argue about. Anyway, I once told Xu Shuanglin that I hoped that in this world the capable would live, the mediocre would be slaves, and the good and evil would be repaid. This is all true. I didn’t lie.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “But for the Butterfly-Boned Clan, giving kindness to others is to forfeit their own lives. Our way back home must be paved with blood. I have no choice.”

     Chu Wanning closed his eyes.

     As Shi Mei said this, he refilled his empty teacup and sighed. “Shizun may not understand why I can sacrifice the lives of almost everyone in two mortal worlds for the Butterfly-Boned Clan to return to the demon realm, but it’s actually not that difficult to understand…”

     He watched the rising steam.

     The room was very quiet, and Shi Mei’s deep, calm voice was the only sound that could be heard.

     “Has Shizun ever seen a herd of bison being encircled and hunted? They go on a rampage, their eyes red with killing intent, wishing to pierce all the people or beasts standing in their way with their two horns. This is the instinct for survival.”

     Chu Wanning knew what he meant. The Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast Clan was like a group of beasts that had been forced to desperation, surrounded by greedy faces that wanted to tear apart their skin and bones.

     “For the Beauty Feasts, there are only two options in the end; either the clan is completely eradicated or they return to the demon realm. This is a choice between life and death.” As Shi Mei said this, his eyes were somewhat dim. “If the cultivation world didn’t regard Beauty Feasts as lucrative goods and humiliate them so wantonly, if we were still able to survive in this world, no one would have done such a terrible thing.”

     He was silent for a while, his thoughts whirling as his gaze suddenly went from sorrowful to chaotic, then changed from chaos to ice, and finally to madness again.

     It was like the life he had experienced up to this day.

     “The herd of cattle had no intention to massacre. But once the executioner’s blade fell, and the lives of their companions were lost one by one… Shizun, how can you ask us to forgive this world?”

     Shi Mei’s voice trembled a little. “The cultivation world will not record the history of the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feasts, as these people only treat us as livestock or dual cultivation furnaces. But our clan has always remembered that in the eleventh year after the war between humans and demons ended, almost all of the pure-blooded Beauty Feasts were killed. For thousands of years following that, even though we were careful not to reveal our identities, we still couldn’t escape the cultivators’ greed. Four thousand years ago, two thousand five hundred years ago, nine hundred years ago, and seven hundred years ago, there were four cycles of raids. The Beauty Feast bloodline, which had mixed with mortals, was hunted. Their flesh was eaten, their blood was swallowed, and they were imprisoned and gang-raped… They wished to wipe out my entire clan.”

     Shi Mei’s fingers gripped the teacup, and the faint outline of blue veins began to appear on his wrist.

     “Actually, if they really were eliminated, then that would be the end. It would be over once and for all. But how could those cultivators give up such a good method of cultivation?”

     Chu Wanning: “...”

     “Shizun is well-read and should know what the previous Sect Leader of Guyueye did to avoid the complete annihilation of the Beauty Feasts.” Shi Mei looked up, and a tinge of scarlet could be seen in his peach blossom eyes.

     Chu Wanning indeed did know about this matter. Any book that introduced Guyueye would mention this and treat it as a glorious achievement.

     The medical sect, Guyueye, hunted twenty young Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast women and recruited strong and exemplary cultivators to have intercourse with them day and night to conceive. When they got pregnant, the Sect Leader used elixirs to induce labor, and the baby would be born within four months. Then the women who had just given birth were defiled again, forced to conceive, and had induced labor… This repeated process allowed the Beauty Feast Clan to continue.

     But this continuation was like pigs and sheep to the slaughter.

     No, it wasn’t like it; they had indeed become pigs and sheep to the slaughter.

     When children were born, the boys would immediately be cut apart and made into pills or sold directly to wealthy families like Rufeng Sect. The girls would be kept in captivity and mated as soon as they were of age, becoming a new breeding tool.

     “Mating.”

     Chu Wanning still remembered the shock and disgust he felt when he first saw these words appear in “Guyueye’s Immortal Pills.”

     Shi Mei smiled, and for the first time, his smile looked a little pale and miserable. “They used the method of refining gu to temper the Beauty Feasts. It actually won a lot of praise from the cultivation world.”

     “Living people… are all living people. They treated the living as livestock just because they once had mixed blood with ancient demons, which could bring benefits to their cultivation.” To hide his pain, Shi Mei raised his hand to drink another cup of tea, but his fingertips were trembling slightly.

     “The elixir that accelerates growth of the embryo is extremely detrimental to the mother. None of the Beauty Feasts they raised survived past the age of thirty. But a short life is a good thing for them. It put an end to the nightmare of ‘mating’ and ‘breeding.’ The sooner the better.”

     When he said the words “mating” and “breeding,” his face seemed to sting as if he’d been slapped. Shi Mei stopped talking, and for a moment, he appeared unable to resist the need to curse. But in the end, his mouth moved, and only two words full of ridicule came out.

     “Very good.”

     Chu Wanning opened his eyes, and his gaze fell on Shi Mei.

     This man, who had always been either indifferent or cunning, now looked like the most ordinary man of vengeance, his face engrained with stark hatred.

     Shi Mei was silent for a while, as if he’d thought of something and could no longer bear it. He put down the teacup, buried his face in his palms and rubbed it, then took a deep breath. When he looked up, his eyes were red.

     In all of Chu Wanning’s memories, Shi Mei’s emotions had never been so real and tangible.

     “Shizun, do you still remember how Guyueye discontinued the raising of the Beauty Feast Clan?”

     “...” Chu Wanning didn’t know what he was feeling at the moment as he said hoarsely, “There was a murder case.”

     After all, the Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feasts weren’t evil creatures; even poisonous bugs could still backlash, not to mention living people.

     In the generation of Jiang Xi’s master, there was a young girl among the Beauty Feasts who was unyielding and calculating. She was very different from her older sisters, neither suicidal nor numb and empty.

     She used her beauty and sweet words to seduce a high-ranking disciple of Tianyin Pavilion who had come to Guyueye to appraise the goods. The disciple was also a lustful man and couldn’t help but go to bed with the beautiful woman that night. The next day, she begged her lover to redeem her from Guyueye and vowed to spend the rest of her life in his hands and help him cultivate.

     The disciple was so obsessed with lust that he agreed to her request. But in a matter of days, the woman had escaped from him. It was unknown where she found the seeds of tribulation fire, but she returned to Rainbell Isle in the night and burned down Guyueye’s side courtyard.

     On that night, the imprisoned Beauty Feasts all fled with her help, and more than a hundred of Guyueye’s disciples were burned to death or injured by the fire…

     The other sects looked on with excitement, uncaring of the pain. They said words of comfort but secretly mocked Guyueye for not being able to keep watch over the women. The medical sect was greatly humiliated by this, and the sect leader was furious and simply ended the raising of the Beauty Feasts from that point on—

     “Since you want to laugh, don’t come begging for medicine in the future. In any case, so many people have escaped; if the many cultivators are capable, you might as well go hunt by yourselves.”

     Therefore, when Jiang Xi became the sect leader, the only Beauty Feast left within Guyueye’s possession was Song Qiutong. She was originally supposed to stay and serve the sect leader, but Jiang Xi was a man who didn’t want to get too close to women and was especially annoyed by them, regarding the Beauty Feasts as a curse. Despite the dissatisfaction of many elders of the sect, he still decided to auction the woman off.

     Seeing that Chu Wanning could recall these bygone accounts, Shi Mei finally smiled and said, “I want to admit something.”

     “...Say it.”

     “That day at Xuanyuan Pavilion, yes the day Miss Song was sold, I was there too.”

     Chu Wanning was slightly startled.

     Shi Mei said, “I went. I was in the first tier seat in the Xuan booth. I offered a price of thirty-five million.”

     When Shi Mei said this, Chu Wanning did have a vague impression from that day. At that time, Mo Ran was with him. He saw how pitiful Song Qiutong was and wanted to save her life, but in a private room upstairs, covered by a gauze curtain, the guest bid thirty-five million. Back then, he had thought of asking Mo Ran to help pay to beat this person’s bid…

     “It was you?”

     “Mm, it was me.” Shi Mei’s expression gradually relaxed again, and he smiled. “I swore a long time ago that I would protect every Butterfly-Boned Beauty Feast I could possibly help. Song Qiutong was a member of my clan, so when I got the news, I wanted to redeem her. …Of course, in this life, I also wanted to take Bu’gui back and try to provoke the malevolent internal energy in Mo Ran’s body. In the end, who knew that the half of your soul you left in his body protected him so well and even resonated with you… Forget it; these are insignificant matters of the past. What else is there to say? Anyway, Shizun knows it was Ye Wangxi who ended up buying her.”

     “Since she’s someone from your clan, when things suddenly changed at Rufeng Sect, why did you…”

     “Why did I stand by and let her die?” Shi Mei smiled. “There was nothing I could do. I needed to hide my lineage. Actually, I was the one who ordered Mount Huang at the time; she was just a cover. In other circumstances, I might have been able to save her life, but in front of Xu Shuanglin… Shizun also knows my spiritual power is weak, and Xu Shuanglin was my source of power at the time. He treated me as a close friend, but I befriended him as Shi Mingjing of Sisheng Peak.”

     “...”

     “If he knew I was a Butterfly-Boned Beauty, would he still be willing to conspire with me?” Shi Mei said calmly, “I’ve told you before; In the eyes of most cultivators, we are pigs and dogs, cattle and sheep. Xu Shuanglin is no exception, just look at his treatment of Miss Song.”

     Chu Wanning’s heart felt heavy, and he didn’t know what to say for a long time.

     Shi Mei wanted to talk to him more, so he continued, “Let’s get back to the Butterfly-Boned Beauty who escaped from Guyueye.”

    “...” Chu Wanning lowered his eyelashes and remained silent. After a while, he looked at Shi Mei’s beautiful face. He had actually picked up on clues from Shi Mei’s demeanor during his previous account and sighed lightly. “That’s your mother, isn’t it? That woman.”

     Shi Mei was stunned at first before his back slowly relaxed and his features softened slightly.

     He finally smiled wryly and said, “You always guess correctly. That’s right, she is my mother.”