Chapter 67: Don’t Die

Wanqing’s blood-soaked accusations pierced through the fragile shell Shuyue had built to escape through death, laying bare the heart she’d desperately tried to conceal, exposed in the dim, hopeless depths of the rift.

“I’m sorry… It’s all my fault…”

Shuyue choked out the feeble apology, but those three words felt weightless, utterly powerless against Wanqing’s overwhelming pain.

“Wrong? What’s wrong?”

“Was it wrong to save her at the start?”

“Wrong to give her the cultivation technique?”

“Wrong to seize the crystal core for her?”

“Or… wrong that I even exist?”

This thought struck her heart like a venomous snake, biting deep.

The crushing collapse didn’t come from Wanqing’s slaps or that brutal kiss but from the suffocating weight of her emotions and the irreparable harm Shuyue had caused.

She’d always thought her “survival” tactics were mere self-preservation, perhaps clumsy, maybe a bit selfish.

But now, as Wanqing hurled her pain and grievances—emotions Shuyue had dismissed—so rawly before her, she realized the truth.

Her avoidance, her coldness, her “for her own good” mentality had been a dull blade, slowly carving away at Wanqing’s heart.

It was crueler, in its way, than the overt harm of the original story’s villainous female rival.

“I thought I was sparing her pain… but I hurt her in the worst way possible?”

“I made her hate me to her core… yet unable to forget me…”

“I trapped her in a torment of love and hate… and turned her into this cold, despairing figure…”

“And I… I thought dying would end it all… abandoning her again in the most cowardly way…”

With this realization, Shuyue could no longer hold back. She coughed violently, spraying a mouthful of blood! The crimson splattered on Wanqing’s white robes, stark and alarming.

It wasn’t the baleful aura that wounded her but the crushing guilt and self-loathing that shattered her heart meridians!

The emotional onslaught worsened her already frail body, weakened from abandoning resistance.

The physical pain was nothing compared to the agony in her heart.

Looking at Wanqing’s tear-streaked, bloodied face so close, her vision blurred, her consciousness slipping again.

“I’m truly… an utter bastard…”

“I don’t deserve redemption…”

“I don’t even deserve death…”

“Living was wrong… dying is even worse…”

Despair, like the deepest icy abyss, swallowed her whole.

It was darker than when she’d resolved to die, for then she’d at least had the illusion of “ending it all.” Now, even that fragile illusion was shattered by Wanqing, leaving only endless pain with no way out.

She’d harmed Wanqing.

She’d ruined everything.

Her very existence might be a mistake.

“Ugh…” She let out a pained whimper, her body collapsing. If not for Wanqing’s tight grip, she’d have slid to the ground.

Tears mixed with blood streamed from her eyes. She was like a lost child, utterly hopeless, stripped of direction and strength.

“You…” Wanqing, startled by Shuyue’s sudden collapse and blood, saw her fury replaced by panic.

She frantically tried to wipe the blood from Shuyue’s lips, but it only smeared more.

“Don’t… don’t you dare!” Wanqing’s voice broke into sobs, her earlier ferocity gone, leaving only fear. “I won’t let you die! You hear me? You haven’t paid me back! You still owe me!”

She hugged Shuyue tighter, trying to warm her cold, trembling body with her own, using her fierce words to anchor Shuyue’s fading consciousness.

But Shuyue seemed deaf to her, trapped in a prison of her own despair.

The external baleful aura she could resist, but the inner demons born of guilt and self-negation were destroying her from within.

“Let it… be like this…”

“Dying in her arms… maybe… it’s a form of repayment…”

“Though… it’s far from enough…”

Her consciousness sank deeper into darkness.

Wanqing felt Shuyue’s life force slipping away rapidly.

“Shuyue! Shuyue! Open your eyes! I won’t let you sleep! You can’t!” She shook her frantically, pouring her dwindling spiritual energy into Shuyue, desperate to preserve that faint thread of life.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” Shuyue only murmured those three words unconsciously, her eyes vacant, as if her soul had already departed.

Wanqing’s heart twisted like it was pierced by countless arrows.

She realized her furious accusations might have been the final straw that broke Shuyue.

“I don’t want you to die… I don’t want your apologies… I just want you to live… just live…”

Regret overwhelmed her.

She stopped questioning, stopped shouting, and just held the fading figure tightly, pouring spiritual energy in vain as tears flooded out like a broken dam.

“Hold on… please… hold on… Someone will save us… They will…”

Her trembling voice carried endless pleas, faint as a sigh in the hopeless abyss.

In the depths of the Fallen Dragon Rift, time seemed meaningless.

Only the relentless howl of the baleful wind and the ever-fading life force remained.

Wanqing clung to the barely conscious, blood-spitting Shuyue, her initial anger replaced by boundless regret.

She could feel Shuyue’s life draining away—a decline not from physical wounds but from a shattered heart and a soul on the verge of extinction!

“It’s because of me… my words… I drove her to this…”

This realization stabbed her heart like a thousand arrows, stealing her breath.

She didn’t want this outcome!

She’d rather Shuyue remain cold, never explain, let them hate and entangle for a lifetime, than watch her die in her arms!

“Shuyue… wake up… look at me…” Wanqing’s voice was broken, pleading. “I was wrong… I shouldn’t have hit you… shouldn’t have pushed you… I don’t want you to die… I just want you to live… please…”

She futilely wiped the blood spilling from Shuyue’s lips, her tears mixing with it as they fell.

She pressed her warm cheek to Shuyue’s cold one, trying to rouse her with her warmth.

Perhaps it was the scalding tears, the desperate pleas, or the unrelenting embrace, but Shuyue’s vacant pupils flickered slightly.

So noisy…

So painful…

Why… won’t you let me go…

In the endless darkness, that persistent sobbing voice and warm touch were like a fragile thread, barely tethering her sinking consciousness.

Wanqing caught the subtle shift.

“Shuyue! You heard me, didn’t you? Hold on! You have to hold on!”

She called out more urgently, ignoring her own rapidly depleting spiritual energy and the baleful aura’s erosion, channeling every ounce of strength into Shuyue.

“…Go…” Shuyue’s lips moved, a faint, threadlike sound escaping.

Wanqing froze, then understood, her heart aching sharper: “I’m not leaving! I won’t leave! We live together, or we die here together! You can’t push me away again!”

Her tone turned stubborn again.

Shuyue seemed stirred by the resolve in her words, her lashes trembling as she struggled to lift her eyelids.

She saw Wanqing’s blood-and-tear-streaked, defiant face.

Those eyes… no longer pure hatred but a tangle of countless complex emotions.

“Die… together?”

“Why… would she…”

Someone would be willing to die with her?

“Fool…” She breathed out two faint syllables.

“Yes! I’m a fool!” Wanqing choked, admitting it. “I’m the biggest fool in the world! Tormented by you over and over, yet I can’t let go! So you can’t die! If you die, what’s a fool like me supposed to do?!”

Her words were incoherent but poured straight from her heart.

Shuyue could condemn herself, despise herself, believe she deserved death… but she couldn’t bear to watch this “fool” perish with her.

“I’ve already wronged her so much… how can I drag her down with me…”

This thought, faint but resolute, surfaced.

With immense effort, she tried to muster a sliver of remaining spiritual energy.

Not to fend off the baleful aura but to respond to Wanqing’s near-exhausted energy pouring into her.

Wanqing instantly felt the faint response!

Overjoyed, she nearly sobbed: “Yes! Like that! Shuyue! Don’t give up! Circulate your technique! We’ll resist together!”

Clutching at this lifeline, she guided that faint energy, attempting to form a more stable spiritual energy cycle around them.

Though still precarious, it was no longer a one-sided, futile effort.

Shuyue, eyes closed, relied on her last shred of instinct and the faint responsibility Wanqing had rekindled, cooperating.

Each bit of energy circulated felt like moving a thousand-pound weight, her soul torn with pain.

Supporting each other, they struggled to sustain that fragile, candle-in-the-wind life forc

e in this deadly place, awaiting a rescue that might never come—or perhaps, just an unknown end.