This "person" was actually an old acquaintance of Gu Junshi.
— The Human Emperor.
She didn't recognize the face behind the mass of darkness, but she recognized the same origin of aura from the Netherworld of the Yellow Springs.
Besides her, no one else in this world possessed such a pure dark attribute aura.
Once the Ten Sea Emperors, betrayed by the one they loved and the ones closest to them, ultimately died tragically on their throne.
She met him in her first life.
At that time, she hadn't completely shed her mortal way of thinking, believing that upon arriving in a new world, one should join a sect. It was better to train with others than to "reinvent the wheel" alone.
She joined a sect, concealing her wolfish nature. She was silent in daily life but absorbed all useful information like a sponge.
In her first attempt at cultivation, she was cautious of the outside world but underestimated the means of detection in the cultivation realm. During a trial, she exposed the uniqueness of her cultivation technique while saving her fellow disciples. Upon returning, her limbs were broken, one eye gouged out by her hypocritical master, and she was chained like a dead dog in a cold, damp cave.
There was no food, no water, only people coveting her cultivation method who came daily, subjecting her to relentless torture and interrogation.
She experienced the full extent of human wickedness within that so-called sect.
Yet, she harbored no despair. Her heart was as unyielding as steel; all her outward behavior was merely a compliance with rites and doctrines.
She could be ruthless to others, but she showed no mercy to herself when she erred.
If this was the punishment she deserved for underestimating this world, she accepted it.
She would engrave the sensation of all pain into this body.
But one day, she would return it all to them, tenfold.
And it was at this time that the Human Emperor came to her side.
He appeared as a skeletal frame, seemingly from nowhere. He squatted before her, resting his chin on his hand, and asked, "Crippled one, are you dead yet?"
From those words alone, it was clear he was a particularly malevolent skeleton.
And a supremely bored person.
Her leg bones were broken, preventing her from sitting up. She could only lie on the ground. Her gouged-out eye socket was scabbed over, leaving a bloody hole, while her remaining eye was as dark and deep as an abyss. Yet, her expression displayed no pain or resentment. She replied calmly, "Not yet. Perhaps if you return in a while, the answer will be different."
Then she heard him laugh maniacally, "Hahaha." He seemed fearless of his bone structure scattering in his frenzied state.
Perhaps his life after revenge was too mundane, or perhaps he found her current miserable state, yet still capable of telling dark jokes, quite amusing. Thus, every night she was tortured, he would return to chat with her.
Each encounter began with the customary greeting: "Crippled one, are you dead yet?"
And each time, she replied that she was not, prompting him to check again later.
She could sense that this skeleton was powerful. Even if he were a demonic being reviled by all cultivators, she never showed any fear or disgust.
He was waiting.
She was also waiting.
Finally, one day, he yielded to her will and stopped waiting for her to initiate.
Staring at her pale face with his two dark, empty eye sockets, he asked, "Crippled one, why don't you beg me to save you?"
She could already feel that her body might not last until his next inquiry. However, no one could discern any fear of death or dimness from her eyes. She was like a powerful soul capable of existing beyond the physical body, refusing to yield even unto death.
"If I beg you, will you save me?"
The skeleton chuckled, his jawbone nearly falling off its loose hinges: "Of course, after all, we're so familiar with each other."
The next moment.
"I beg you."
Two clear, calm words emerged without hesitation.
The skeleton's jawbone, already not perfectly secured, almost dropped: "...I thought you were too proud to bend."
"Didn't you say we were familiar with each other? If so, I don't need to be polite anymore." She used his own words to retort, her face expressionless.
The skeleton was silent for a moment, then erupted into another bout of crazed laughter, "Hahaha." This time, his bone structure finally couldn't withstand the strain, and several pieces scattered onto the ground.
Later, amidst his joyous laughter, he personally snapped her neck.
Yet, he resurrected her and transformed her body into a peculiar constitution capable of cultivating with death qi.
He accompanied her in annihilating that depraved sect, and she accompanied him in finding his reincarnated lover.
Perhaps due to their compatible temperaments, they tacitly avoided all of each other's sensitive topics, thus spending over a hundred years together.
Later... something happened to him. As he willingly accepted death at Mohe Zen Temple, he passed on his greatest secret, the "Gate of the Yellow Springs," to her.
In a way, they could be considered mentor and friend.
However, in all the subsequent lives, she never thought to seek him out. This was because each life was distinct; that "Human Emperor" was the one she knew in her first life, not the "Human Emperors" of other lives. She knew the difference.
But in this life, he had proactively appeared before her, so she couldn't pretend not to see him.
It turned out that before she met him, he had been sealed within the Crossing Life Daoist Temple.
When she met him, he was a skeleton. At that time, he had already begun to use dragon qi and the death qi of the "Gate of the Yellow Springs" to reshape a new body. Yet, now, he was still in the initial state of a decaying corpse.
Even so, she might not be able to defeat him.
Even though she could sense that four-fifths of his power had been divided, leaving only this residual body to be suppressed here by the formations of the Crossing Life Daoist Temple.
To achieve revenge, he had once massacred an entire royal city, even devouring the souls of his enemies.
Born from an extremely wicked soul, after the "Human Emperor" awoke from chaos, his body was dominated by malevolence. His eyes were black and opaque, yet they radiated a chilling, deadly aura.
Liu Jiang Fusheng tucked one of Gu Junshi's clones, the little white mouse, into his robes. He felt the undeniable danger emanating from above the ice pool and was about to retreat when, in the next instant, a powerful force struck his chest, slamming him hard against the bridge.
"Senior Brother Fusheng!"
Ice shards condensed on the ground and lunged towards him. Cold mist billowed, and frost crystals adorned Liu Jiang Fusheng's eyelashes. His skin, as pure and white as snow, made him seem otherworldly.
He channeled spiritual energy and performed a sword incantation. A fierce wind carried sword qi, shattering the approaching ice shards. In the next moment, he flashed into mid-air, his clothes and hair billowing. He saw the dark energy from the "decaying corpse" that had emerged from the coffin coil around him.
This was a profoundly yin and corrupt aura, capable of consuming the surrounding spiritual energy inch by inch—utterly dominant and formidable.
Gu Junshi knew that the "Human Emperor" had just awakened and lacked any semblance of sentience. He would instinctively capture the surrounding soul power to replenish his depleted body, accepting all comers, be they malevolent or benevolent souls.
She certainly wouldn't stand by and let him devour her little husband's soul.
A behemoth like the Human Emperor was clearly beyond the capabilities of her little husband, who was just stepping out of his sect for the first time.
In the original plot, the little husband was only supposed to deal with the Ice-Fire Twin-Headed Dragon, while the Human Emperor remained peacefully sealed within the ice coffin. So, what reason had caused him to be awakened prematurely at this moment?