CHAPTER 57: CHAPTER 57 - LIN YUE...

Forty-three seconds since the portal sealed.

Lin Yue counted automatically, her archer’s training keeping precise time even as her world collapsed around her.

Her bronze hands were steady as she gripped Mei Ling’s trembling shoulders, her voice calm and authoritative as she barked orders about breathing and focus, but inside—inside she was screaming.

’He’s gone. He’s actually gone.’

Forty-seven seconds. Forty-eight. Forty-nine.

"Mei! Breathe!" she commanded, shaking the sobbing maid whose newly enhanced aura flickered like a dying candle.

Every warrior instinct she possessed demanded action—secure the area, assess threats, tend to wounded—but the wounded here was her own shattered heart, and there was no battlefield technique for that.

’Keep it together. They need you to be strong. Count the seconds. Focus on the count.’

Fifty-five seconds since she’d last seen his face through that golden portal, smiling that infuriatingly confident grin even as his body withered to nothing.

Fifty-six since he’d poured everything—his life, his power, his very essence—into saving three women who didn’t deserve it.

’I should have been the one to stay. I should have been the one to die.’

But even as the thought burned through her mind, her hands remained gentle on Mei’s face, her voice steady as she pulled the other woman back from hyperventilation. "Focus on my voice. He saved us. He saved all of us, and he made sure we were strong enough to survive without him."

The lie tasted like ash. Strong enough? She felt like spun glass, one wrong word away from shattering completely. The new qi coursing through her meridians—’his’ qi, gifted in those final moments—felt foreign and painful, a constant reminder of what it had cost him.

One minute, twelve seconds.

’I never even let him touch me properly. Never let him...’

The regret was a physical weight in her chest. All those nights she’d watched him with Mei Ling, telling herself it was perverted, disgusting, that she was above such base desires.

But the truth was simpler and more devastating: she’d been terrified. Terrified of becoming like her mother, reduced to nothing more than a vessel for someone else’s pleasure and power.

Instead, she’d held herself apart, convinced that love meant something pure and untouchable—that if she gave him her body, it would somehow diminish what they shared.

’What did we share? Philosophy? Pretty words about completion and silence?’

One minute, thirty-seven seconds.

Her mother’s screams echoed in her memory—not from the abuse, but from the day they’d finally drained her completely. The sound a person makes when their cultivation base is ripped away, when their very life force becomes fuel for someone else’s advancement.

Lin Yue had sworn she’d never be vulnerable like that, never let anyone have that kind of power over her.

But he’d never tried to drain her. He’d given instead, poured his own strength into her without asking for anything in return.

Even at the end, when she’d finally begun to understand what love really meant, he’d chosen to save her rather than claim her.

’I was a coward. A self-righteous coward who thought I was better than the maid who actually loved him enough to submit.’

"I should have stayed," Mei whispered, the words cutting through Lin’s self-recrimination. "I should have died with him."

"No." The word came out sharper than intended, Lin’s warrior instincts flaring to protect even as her heart bled. "You should have lived. Just as he intended."

One minute, fifty-nine seconds. Two minutes.

She could still feel the echo of their bond in those final moments—not the physical connection he’d shared with Mei, but something deeper.

The quiet understanding that had grown between them, the respect earned through challenge rather than submission. He’d seen her strength and matched it, never trying to break her down or make her smaller.

’And I repaid him by running away when he needed me most.’

Elder Feng was speaking now, her newly enhanced Soul Formation aura crackling with unstable energy as she outlined their cover story. Lin nodded at appropriate intervals, her tactical mind automatically cataloging the plan’s strengths and weaknesses, but most of her attention was focused on keeping her face composed while her internal countdown continued.

Two minutes, forty-three seconds since she’d failed the man who’d taught her what it meant to be truly seen.

’"Then I am happy."’

Her own words from that conversation in the pleasure palace, when he’d asked if she felt hurt watching him with other women. She’d thought it was wisdom then—the noble acceptance of a love that transcended possession. Now it felt like cowardice dressed up in pretty philosophy.

She should have been jealous. Should have fought for his attention, demanded her place in his bed, made him understand that she wanted him with the same desperate hunger she saw in Mei’s eyes. Instead, she’d held herself apart, convinced that her restraint made her somehow superior.

’I thought I was protecting myself. I was just protecting my pride.’

Three minutes, fifteen seconds.

The other women were looking to her for strength, for the warrior’s composure that had always been her armor. Mei needed someone to hold her together while she fell apart. Feng needed a comrade who could help craft their lies and face the sect’s inevitable questions. They saw Lin Yue the archer, Lin Yue the survivor, Lin Yue who always kept her head in a crisis.

They couldn’t see the woman inside who was drowning.

’He knew, didn’t he? Those last words... "Tch, I wanted to test Yue’s pussy too and ravage her day and night." Even dying, he was thinking about what we never had.’

The crude words should have offended her. Instead, they were a gift—proof that he’d wanted her, had thought about claiming her, had regretted the distance she’d insisted on maintaining. In his final moments, when most men might have whispered poetry or professions of eternal love, he’d been honest about desire.

’Perverted to the end. My perverted, wonderful, dead husband.’

Three minutes, fifty-eight seconds.

"The research station’s communication arrays are active," she heard herself say, her voice steady and professional. "I can reach the sect, report our status. But Mei... what do we tell them about the power surge? They’ll sense our advancement immediately."

The practical questions helped, gave her something to focus on besides the growing hollow in her chest. Her archer’s eye automatically assessed their situation: three women with suspiciously enhanced cultivation, no witnesses to their story, and a dimensional collapse that would have registered on every monitoring array within a thousand miles.

’We need to be smart about this. He saved us, but we still have to survive what comes next.’

Four minutes, twenty-one seconds since she’d lost the chance to tell him how she really felt.

Feng was outlining their cover story—enlightenment through trauma, breakthrough cascades triggered by dimensional exposure. It was plausible enough, especially with the Immortal Sect’s tendency to classify anything involving the Abyssal Demon Realm. But Lin could see the cracks in the narrative, the places where too much scrutiny would reveal the truth.

’Truth. What is the truth here?’

That three women had fallen in love with a man who’d treated them like they mattered? That he’d died saving them from their own poor choices and arrogance? That the great Lin Yue, who’d scorned physical love as beneath her, was now wishing desperately that she’d spread her legs and let him fuck her until she screamed his name?

’The truth is that I was wrong about everything.’

Four minutes, forty-seven seconds.

She could feel Mei starting to stabilize, the maid’s breathing evening out as shock began giving way to grief. Soon, they’d need to move, to face whatever consequences awaited them at the sect. Lin would need to be the strong one, the competent one, the survivor who held them all together.

’Just like always. Just like with mother, when I had to be strong enough for both of us.’

But this time was different. This time, the person she’d failed to protect had chosen to die for her, had poured his very soul into making sure she lived. The weight of that sacrifice pressed against her chest like a physical thing, demanding acknowledgment, demanding worth.

’I won’t waste this. I won’t waste what he gave us.’

Five minutes, twelve seconds since the portal closed.

Lin Yue stood slowly, her enhanced Late Nascent Soul cultivation settling into her meridians like liquid strength. The power felt wrong—stolen, unearned—but it was his gift to her, and she would use it. She would survive, and she would make sure the others survived too.

Because that’s what he would have wanted. That’s what he’d died to ensure.

’I need to fool other two.’