Yue Lianhua had long stopped counting the hours since the rats began their feast.
The pain had become a constant companion, gnawing at her consciousness like the vermin gnawing at her flesh.
Each tiny bite was a reminder that she had failed - failed her husband, failed her sisters, failed the world itself.
'How pathetic,' she thought as another rat scurried across her arm, its claws digging into an open wound. 'The woman once blessed by heaven, reduced to rat food in a forgotten cave.'
It hadn't always been like this.
Once, she had been Yue Lianhua of the Celestial Moon Sect, a cultivation prodigy whose beauty was matched only by her martial prowess.
She had been courted by countless young masters, but her heart had belonged to only one man - Lin Feng, the Heaven's chosen hero who stood against the rising darkness.
Their love story should have been one for the ages.
The noble hero and his devoted wife, fighting side by side against the Demonic Sect Master who threatened to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
She had been one of seven wives, each blessed with extraordinary cultivation, each devoted to their husband's righteous cause.
But righteousness hadn't been enough.
The final battle had been a massacre.
Lin Feng had fallen, his cultivation scattered to the winds by the Heavenly demon's forbidden techniques.
His seven wives had survived, but barely; their own cultivation was crippled, and their spiritual foundations were damaged differently for each one.
In their grief and rage, they had scattered to the four winds, each swearing the same oath: to hunt down and kill every member of the Demonic Sect, starting with that monster's only son.
Cang Wuhen. The young master of the Cang family. The heir to a legacy of blood and destruction.
Lianhua had tracked him for months, using what little remained of her cultivation to follow his carriage through the wilderness.
The ambush had been perfect - his guards overwhelmed, his carriage destroyed.
She had seen him fall, had watched the light fade from his eyes as her blade found its mark—in the end he was just a mere mortal.
Or so she had thought.
The guardian beast that appeared afterward had been unexpected.
One of the Demonic Sect Master's right hand commander, still bound to protect his bloodline even in death.
The fight had been brief and brutal, leaving her broken and bleeding in this cursed cave.
Now she lay dying, knowing she had failed even in her revenge.
"Urgh..." A groan escaped her lips as fresh pain lanced through her abdomen when a rat took a bite of her flesh.
The sword wound from her final battle was festering, and she could feel her life ebbing away with each labored breath.
At least her sisters might succeed where she had failed. At least her death wouldn't be entirely meaningless.
'Let me die with some dignity,' she prayed to the heavens that had abandoned her. 'Let me join my beloved in the afterlife.'
But the heavens, it seemed, had one final cruelty in store for her.
Footsteps echoed through the cave, accompanied by a voice she recognized with crystal clarity.
"What the fuck?"
Lianhua's eyes snapped open, silver irises wide with shock and horror.
There, standing not twenty feet away, was the face that had haunted her dreams for months.
Cang Wuhen. The young master she had killed. The son of her husband's murderer.
But he was alive. Impossible, but undeniably alive.
Her mind reeled with the implications. Had her assassination attempt been nothing more than an elaborate illusion? Had she been so weakened that she couldn't even properly kill a mere mortal?
'How can he be alive?' The thought burned through her mind like acid. 'How did he survive?'
She watched in growing despair as he moved through the cave, clearly searching for something.
That familiar face - handsome in the way that for a mortal was unseen, but tainted by the blood of his lineage - showed none of the wounds she remembered inflicting.
When his eyes finally found her, Lianhua felt her heart sink into her stomach.
The look on his face wasn't one of recognition or anger.
It was... amused?
Like he had found some interesting trinket rather than the woman who had tried to murder him.
'I couldn't even kill the son of my husband's murderer,' she thought bitterly as he approached. 'What kind of wife am I? What kind of warrior?'
She tried to move, to summon what little strength remained to her, but her body refused to obey.
The cultivation damage from her final battle had left her barely stronger than a mortal, and the blood loss had sapped what little energy she had left.
All she could do was watch as Cang Wuhen knelt beside her, his expression shifting to something she couldn't quite read.
He said something - words she couldn't understand through the fog of pain and despair - then suddenly stood and ran off into the darkness.
'Even killing me isn't worth his time,' Lianhua thought with bitter humor. 'Perhaps my other sisters will succeed where I failed so miserably.'
But he returned quickly, carrying something that glinted in the phosphorescent light of the cave. A knife.
Lianhua's blood ran cold. So this was how it would end - not in glorious battle, but butchered like an animal in a cave full of corpses.
She tried to speak, to curse him with her dying breath, but only managed a weak groan. Her throat was filled with blood, making coherent speech impossible.
Cang Wuhen positioned himself above her, the knife gleaming in his hand. Lianhua closed her eyes, accepting her fate but burning with internal rage and regret.
She had failed in everything - as a wife, as a warrior, as an instrument of justice.
'At least make it quick,' she prayed.
But instead of the killing blow she expected, she felt the cold touch of steel against her throat - not cutting, but resting there. Her eyes flew open in confusion.
What was he doing?
Then the blade moved, and pain exploded through her neck. But it wasn't the deep, fatal cut she had expected.
It was precise, surgical almost. Blood flowed, but not the gushing torrent of a severed throat.
She coughed, tasting copper, and suddenly found she could breathe more easily.
The awful gurgling sound that had been plaguing her was gone.
'What kind of torture is this?' she wondered, watching through tear-blurred eyes as Cang Wuhen stood and began removing his robe.
Understanding hit her like a physical blow.
He wasn't going to simply kill her.
He was going to defile her first.
'Y-you monster—!'