How could it be her?!

How had she become like this?

Zhou Kai’s heart churned with shock, his attack faltering.

He stared into those frenzied yet achingly familiar eyes. In a split second, he made a decision—he had to calm her down!

Without hesitation, he shed his disguise, revealing his true face, and retreated quickly to create distance.

“Roar…?”

Across from him, Li Youci’s frenzied assault halted the moment she saw Zhou Kai’s real appearance.

Her chaotic eyes flickered with intense pain and struggle. Suddenly, she turned and slammed her body against the light barrier of the Entrapment Array, desperate to escape.

“Even without your wits, you still don’t want me to see you like this?”

A sharp pang shot through Zhou Kai’s heart as he understood her intention.

Whether she had detected him through the Formless Scripture or her own formidable Divine Sense, it no longer mattered. Seeing her choose self-harm over facing him twisted his heart viciously.

He couldn’t let this continue.

“Young Miss!” Zhou Kai shouted, his voice cutting through her roars.

Hearing the familiar address, Li Youci’s body trembled violently. She turned to look at Zhou Kai, and on that terrifying, distorted face, a flicker of fear appeared.

She tried to mask her fragility with a fierce, blustering scream.

“ROAR—!”

She stopped crashing against the barrier and instead turned to snarl at him, as if trying to scare him away.

Has the Ghost Body turned on its master?

Zhou Kai’s eyes hardened. Without further hesitation, he flicked his wrist, and a chain appeared in his hand.

The Soul-Binding Chain.

Specifically effective against wraiths and malevolent ghosts. With her Ghost Body suppressed to the peak of Qi Condensation, this chain would hold her.

His figure shot forward like lightning, closing the distance instantly.

Li Youci instinctively swiped with her claws to block, but Zhou Kai nimbly evaded. The Soul-Binding Chain in his hand seemed to come alive, coiling like a spirit serpent around her slashing claws. Seizing an opening, it shot out with a whoosh, accurately wrapping around her waist and tightening instantly.

“Hah…”

Li Youci let out a pained groan, as if all her strength had been drained. The towering Yin-Death energy surrounding her receded like a tide, rapidly dissipating.

The charred, black skin on her body faded, restoring an ivory-like fairness and luster. The grin stretching to her ears retracted, the ghastly fangs vanished, and the black, sharp claws transformed back into delicate fingertips.

In just a few breaths, the terrifying monster was gone, replaced by a woman with a graceful figure.

The crimson madness completely faded from her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered a few times before she finally couldn’t hold on any longer. Her body went limp, and she fell backward.

Zhou Kai stepped forward and caught her in his arms.

The body in his embrace was warm and soft, a world apart from the cold, frenzied monster of moments before.

Her original clothing had been torn to shreds during her earlier rampage. Now, only a few tattered black strips remained, barely covering her vitals. Vast stretches of snowy, delicate skin were exposed to the air.

Zhou Kai’s gaze swept over her once before he swiftly averted his eyes, not a trace of lechery in his expression. He simply scooped her up and strode quickly toward the Spirit Boat moored nearby.

Gently placing her on the soft couch inside the cabin, Zhou Kai carefully examined her.

She had no external injuries, but her spirit was severely depleted. Additionally, she had inhaled some of the miasma within the Secret Realm, showing slight signs of poisoning.

He took out a Detoxification Pill and a Mana Replenishment Pill. Carefully parting her lips, he fed her the medicine.

After finishing this, Zhou Kai pulled a thin quilt over her. Only then did he turn and walk out of the cabin, standing at the bow of the boat.

The wind blowing through the valley carried a hint of Yin coldness, but it couldn’t disperse the doubts clouding his heart.

“This place merely suppresses cultivation realms. Why would she transform into that state?” Zhou Kai frowned deeply, lost in thought. “Could it be that her Ghost Cultivation method is inherently unstable at lower levels?”

A bold conjecture surfaced in his mind.

“Is there a problem with her Ghost Body itself, or is it that… for a living person, walking the path of Ghost Cultivation is fundamentally a dead end?”

If that were truly the case, then everything made sense.

The root of that loneliness was fear.

Fear that she might turn into a monster she herself despised at any moment.

How could someone who couldn’t even accept themselves open their heart to others? Who would dare approach a woman who might lose her mind and become a beast? Who could truly enter her heart?

Zhou Kai sighed softly, feeling a pang of pity for the woman who pretended to be so aloof.

A little over an hour later.

Inside the cabin, Li Youci’s long eyelashes fluttered, and she slowly opened her eyes.

The unfamiliar ceiling of the boat cabin greeted her. She was momentarily stunned before she felt the constricting sensation around her waist.

Looking down, she saw the dark Soul-Binding Chain. Instead of panicking, she seemed to heave a huge sigh of relief.

Good. I was restrained.

She propped herself up to sit, only then realizing she was covered by a quilt, and beneath it… she was barely clothed.

Everything before she lost consciousness—the out-of-control Ghost Body, the horrifying appearance, and… Zhou Kai’s clear face—flooded into her mind.

Boom!

A rush of hot blood surged to her head, instantly flushing her entire face crimson. The color then drained away just as quickly, leaving her deathly pale.

He saw…

He saw everything!

She looked around frantically. Through the crack in the door, she saw that figure standing at the bow.

Zhou Kai had seen her at her ugliest, the side she never wanted anyone to see!

And she was lying here, barely dressed… he must have carried her over… which meant he had seen almost her entire body?

Zhou Kai was a lecher. Had he touched her?

Lying here so defenselessly, had he… taken advantage of her?

This thought flashed through her mind but was immediately drowned by an even greater sense of shame and humiliation. She dared not think further.

Li Youci was both mortified and furious, wishing she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into. Flustered, she retrieved a new set of black robes from her Storage Bag and changed into them. She tied up her long hair and, after a moment’s thought, still took out a veil and put it on.

After doing all this, she remained seated on the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do next.

How should I face him?

From initially learning he had a high-grade Spirit Root and wanting to take him as a subordinate; to later discovering he had a Heaven-grade one and deciding to cultivate him wholeheartedly; to confirming his special constitution and conceiving the bold idea of Dual Cultivation with him to alter her own Spirit Root; to later learning of Shen Hanyi’s past with him and her view of him souring…

Her feelings toward Zhou Kai had changed again and again.

But some time ago, Zhou Kai’s overwhelmingly domineering declaration—”This old man just fancies you”—had stirred unprecedented ripples in the lake of her heart.

Since her birth, what man had ever dared speak to her like that?

Those who approached her all had ulterior motives, and in the end, her elder brother chased them all away.

After all, who would truly like a monster?

Ever since she embarked on the immortal path, moved to Taiji Peak, and began nurturing her own soul as a malevolent ghost, her appearance had grown increasingly strange, often hideous, with occasional lapses in consciousness.

It wasn’t until after Foundation Establishment that her father expended great effort to split her soul in two, allowing her to regain her original appearance.

But now, in this damned place that suppressed cultivation realms and Divine Sense, she couldn’t control the Ghost Body at all and had once again reverted to that most unbearable, unforgettable state.

And Zhou Kai had seen it all.

The ugliest, the most wretched, the most unsightly… he had seen everything.

Li Youci sat upright on the bed, her fingers tightly clutching the hem of her robe, her mind a battlefield.

After a long while, as if having made some kind of resolution, she took a deep breath to calm her turbulent emotions. Her voice regained its usual cool detachment.

“Zhou Kai, come in.”