CHAPTER 59: CHAPTER 59 - A BOND OF LOVE

The three women crashed through the dimensional barriers simultaneously, their combined impact sending shockwaves through the collapsing realm. For a heartbeat, time seemed frozen as they stared at each other in absolute shock.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?!" Lin Yue snarled, her newly enhanced Soul Formation aura blazing with golden fire as she whirled to face the other two. Her bronze skin was streaked with blood from the dimensional tears, her warrior’s garb shredded, but her green eyes burned with fierce accusation.

Elder Feng Lianhua straightened with icy dignity despite her disheveled state, obsidian robes torn and her perfect bun coming undone. "I could ask you the same, archer. This was supposed to be—"

"MY sacrifice!" Mei Ling screamed, her nature affinity erupting in chaotic vines that withered and regrew in the corrupted air. Tears streamed down her rose-glow cheeks as she faced them both. "He’s MY husband! I should be the one to die with him!"

The realm shuddered around them, dimensional barriers collapsing in cascade failure, but none of them cared. The fury and desperation that had driven each woman to abandon safety and dive back into hell now turned on each other like poisoned blades.

"Your husband?" Feng’s voice cracked like winter ice, her pale eyes flashing with something between rage and heartbreak. "He was mine to claim! Our bargain, our agreement—"

"Bargain?" Lin Yue laughed harshly, nocking an arrow wreathed in qi-fire. "You coldhearted bitch, he was never yours to bargain for! At least Mei actually loves him instead of just wanting to get fucked!"

"How dare you!" Feng’s aura exploded outward, ice crystals forming in the corrupted air. "I sacrificed everything to come back! My sect, my position, my—"

"Your pride!" Mei Ling sobbed, but her voice carried surprising steel. "That’s all you ever cared about! While I served him for fifteen years, while I stayed loyal even when forced to poison him, you were planning to use him!"

They stood there in a triangle of barely restrained violence, each woman blazing with power far beyond what they’d possessed hours ago, each convinced that only she had the right to share Tianlong’s fate. The dimensional chaos raged around them, reality folding and tearing, but their focus was entirely on each other.

That’s when they heard it.

A scream that cut through the realm’s death throes like a blade through silk—raw, agonized, utterly familiar.

All three heads snapped up in perfect unison.

There, suspended twenty feet above them in a web of crackling dark energy, was Zhao Tianlong’s body. But it wasn’t the withered husk they’d left behind. The demonic corruption had seized him, twisted him—his form flickered between solid flesh and writhing shadow, caught in some nightmarish transformation as the Primal Demon Emperor’s essence tried to claim him as a vessel.

"TIANLONG!"

The name erupted from all three throats simultaneously. Every trace of their conflict evaporated in an instant, replaced by shared terror and determination.

Lin Yue moved first, her archer’s instincts targeting the energy tendrils holding him. Her arrows flew like golden lightning, each one designed to sever the connections without harming him. But the demonic energy simply reformed, growing thicker.

Feng channeled her ice cultivation into precise strikes, flash-freezing sections of the web to make them brittle. Her newfound Soul Formation power carved through reality itself, but the corruption adapted faster than she could destroy it.

Mei Ling’s vines erupted upward, her nature affinity burning with purifying light as she tried to create a living net to catch him. But the demon energy lashed back, withering her constructs even as they formed.

"Together!" Feng barked, her tactical mind overriding emotion. "Simultaneous strike—now!"

They moved as one: Lin’s most powerful arrow, Feng’s absolute zero ice spear, and Mei’s concentrated life force beam. The three attacks converged on the web’s center, and for a moment the dark energy wavered.

Then it shattered.

Tianlong’s body plummeted, and all three women dove to catch him. They collided in midair, a tangle of desperate hands and flowing robes, but they managed to slow his descent enough that he hit the crumbling ground with jarring impact rather than bone-crushing force.

"Husband!" Mei Ling cradled his head, her hands glowing with healing qi as she poured her enhanced power into his failing body. "Please, stay with us!"

Lin Yue knelt beside them, her warrior’s composure cracking as she saw his condition up close. The corruption had left marks—veins of shadow beneath his skin, eyes that flickered between gold and crimson. "What did that thing do to you?" she whispered.

Feng stood guard over them, her ice barriers forming protective walls against the chaos, but her pale eyes never left his face.

Tianlong’s eyes fluttered open, and for a moment he seemed almost lucid. His gaze moved between the three women, and his lips curved in a pained smile.

"Wh-what... the he...ll—" His voice was barely a whisper, each word seeming to cost him enormous effort. "Why you—"

But before he could finish, another presence made itself known.

Behind them, shadow coalesced into form—not the Primal Demon Emperor, but something smaller, more focused. A fragment of its essence, given shape and malevolent purpose. Its voice echoed with the weight of eons:

**"So touching. The mortal’s pets have come to watch him die."**

Mei Ling’s head snapped around, her tear-streaked face transforming with absolute fury. She’d never shown such rage—fifteen years of perfect servitude and submission exploding into protective wrath.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!" she shrieked, rising from Tianlong’s side like an avenging goddess. Her nature affinity blazed around her, no longer the gentle green of growing things but the searing emerald of life itself pushed to its limits.

Without waiting for an answer, she sprinted toward the shadow construct, her power erupting in waves of purifying force that made the air itself sing with cleansing energy.

"Mei, don’t—!" Lin Yue started to call after her, but the maid was already engaging the entity in furious combat, her enhanced cultivation allowing her to actually harm it.

Feng cursed under her breath and abandoned her defensive position. "Stay with him!" she commanded Lin Yue, then rushed to support Mei Ling, ice and shadow clashing in spectacular displays of power.

Lin Yue looked torn, her protective instincts warring between staying with Tianlong and helping her fellow wives. But as another scream echoed from the battle, she made her choice. "Don’t you dare die on me," she growled at Tianlong’s still form, then charged into the fray with arrows blazing.

Left alone, Tianlong watched through dimming eyes as his three wives—his foolish, magnificent, utterly devoted wives—threw themselves into battle against a demonic fragment that could have killed any one of them with ease. But together, enhanced by his sacrifice and united by desperation, they were winning.

’So stupid,’ he thought, even as warmth spread through his failing heart. ’They should have escaped. Should have lived. Should have—’

His vision blurred, consciousness fading as the corruption finally began to claim him. But his last clear sight was of their backs as they fought for him—Mei Ling’s determined stance, Lin Yue’s fluid archery, Feng’s elegant ice techniques.

His wives. His stupid, brave, impossible wives.

"You stupid..." he whispered, his voice lost in the chaos of battle and dimensional collapse, "...wives."

His eyes closed, and darkness claimed him as the realm’s final death throes began.

But even unconscious, even dying, he smiled.

Because they had come back for him...

"Haah... it seems we all are about to die together here."