QT: Against My Will-Chapter 661 - 13.26 - A Hateful Hubby
The man’s eyes were full of contempt despite the tears streaming down his face, his long raven locks cascading down his shoulders, flowing freely around him. When he spoke, his voice was filled with disdain, "How dare you show yourself before me?"
"My, what a welcome." Did all the sorrow turn him stupid? Bing Shi thought they were too old for this. She sighed, "To sign divorce papers, it seems?"
He laughed bitterly, shaking his head, "That would be too easy." His expression changed to suppressed, "You have no idea how hard I am trying not to strangle you right now."
He took a few steps towards her, his aura darkening and becoming menacing.
Bing Shi pulled a broom from her space ring and swung at him, charging at him, "DIVORCEEEEEEEEEE!!! There’s no place for hateful hubby in my life, you can go and be a sad, little, angry man to someone else, I don’t care," she yelled out as she chased him around, swinging the broom.
The hateful man jumped back, barely avoiding her swings, "Stop that."
"Then divorce me," she retorted, "And don’t show me your face ever again."
"And make it easy for you?" he chuckled bitterly, "I’ll make you suffer first, just like I suffered because of you," he spat.
"DIVORCE!" she swung the broom at him again, "I’ll make you regret not divorcing me when you still could. I swear your miserable life will get even more miserable."
"Then you’d better be ready to suffer just as much," he said coldly, tilting his head away from the incoming blow.
He blocked the attack, then grabbed the handle of the broom and yanked it out of her grasp, raising it to strike her back.
Bing Shi didn’t have time to react. He was too fast, and the broom stopped barely a few inches from her head.
Nothing happened. No pain or any other sensation. No sound. No movement. He was frozen in place, his face contorted in anger. His grip loosened, and the weapon clattered to the ground.
Chains materialized out of thin air and locked themselves around her neck, wrists, and legs, preventing her from escaping. They had an eerie, otherworldly feel to them, and they seemed to grow tighter the more she struggled against them.
A throne manifested in the void behind him, and the hateful Xuan Mu sank into it with grace, looking like an absolute ruler in his regalia. His legs crossed at the knees, and his chin rested on his knuckles as he scrutinized her from above his nose, "You will stay here and take your punishment for the rest of eternity."
He suddenly changed his mind. "No, that’s too generous. You should stay here until I am satisfied," he corrected himself and smirked, "And we both know that won’t happen in eternity."
Her soul had been trapped in the space within his, and he had complete control of it. The chains were made from his spiritual energy and were unbreakable, the same way no one could escape the dark void.
"I’m hungry," Bing Shi declared.
"Not my problem," he scoffed. The hateful Xuan Mu with long hair frowned and turned his face to the side to ignore her.
"I’m bored," Bing Shi announced.
"Finally, you know how I felt the whole time you were gone," the hateful Xuan Mu said, "Suffer with me now."
He got that one. Bing Shi could give him that, but he still sucked big time for being so hateful. A grudge-holding, resentful...let’s call him ex-hubby. She already divorced him in her head a few hundred times. It was a wrap; she was no longer married to this one.
She had some standards, alright? She came to love her husband’s flaws, which made him who he was, and even though this spiteful Xuan Mu was kind of cute in his own, weird, twisted, messed-up, deranged way...she didn’t care enough to try to win him over.
There were plenty of better versions of him out there. She could have her pick.
She just had to wait for the hateful Xuan Mu to get his head out of his butt, and let her go, which could happen in a minute or in a hundred years.
She got lost in her thoughts, and the hateful Xuan Mu must have sensed a change in her mood, because the next thing she knew, he tightened the chains around her body.
"You are not really bored, are you?" he asked.
Bing Shi ignored him and took a look at her surroundings, noting the lack of sound, lack of color, and the overall emptiness of this place. If only she could summon Biyu, who couldn’t withstand a man’s presence (Bing Shi from her third lifetime).
If he wanted her to suffer, she could give him what he wanted. At the end of the day, he was still a part of her husband. She would give him anything he wanted if she could, no matter how painful it was for her.
"I know all your tricks," he said, his voice sounding almost nostalgic, "Nothing will make me fall for you. They all tried to do the same thing, persuading me, showing me how great it was to have a wife and how much fun it would be to have you around..."
"...I couldn’t care less about those things. I don’t need love to survive, but they just won’t stop forcing you down my throat, expecting me to accept you and move on," he explained.
He had already given her a long speech about how he wasn’t going to fall for her, and she wasn’t going to change him. She was just a burden that was forced upon him by his other versions. He only fed on their misery and pain when they lost her, his sole existence, his sole purpose in life.
He was the only one immune to her charms and would never succumb to the temptation to love her. He had been burned too many times to trust the happiness she offered him. He had seen how the others fell for her, and then suffered immensely when she was taken away from them. He was not going to make the same mistake.
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The hateful ex-hubby didn’t try to communicate with Bing Shi after that. Has it been a week? Or a month? It was hard to tell the time because the darkness of the void was unchanging, and their souls were stuck in the state of in between.
He was content to just sit there and watch her, as if he was used to it. He was used to being alone, being a shadow that was never meant to be noticed. He was used to the silence, the loneliness, the emptiness that came with being the only one who remembered all the pain and suffering.
Bing Shi didn’t mind it either and just tried to unlock her past life’s memories to pass the time. That lifetime was one she was always afraid to remember, and she only had a vague idea of the things that happened. She didn’t plan to unlock it at all at first.
It was the only lifetime where she didn’t meet her hubby. It was also the only life that ended in tragedy, with her running away from her family, and then being kidnapped and locked up in a dirty basement for who knew how long. She became a nun after escaping the first hell. Then war broke out, the temple was bombed, and she got captured by the soldiers... and... and...second hell...
"Ugh," she tried to recall, but there were still too many blank spaces, and her mind was refusing to open up the box of horrors that was her past life. The only thing she could remember was the smell of gunpowder and the sight of a soldier’s rifle as he pointed it at her. The rest was still fuzzy. Maybe it was for the best, but at the same time, she wanted to grant her ex-hubby’s wish of wanting to see her suffer.
She should be able to replace herself with her past self. She was a god after all, all present, past, and future. She was a being that was not limited by time or space, a being that existed beyond such concepts.
Dai An was helping her with gaining more power as well.
Bing Shi didn’t want to torture her past self by bringing it back; it was not like she hated herself, or would take pleasure from doing it, but it was more like she wanted to help herself.
If it were any other part of hubby, she would have never let him suffer by introducing Biyu to him (afraid her past would haunt him too much and he would become even more overprotective), but this one?
The hateful Xuan Mu lifted his head to look at her, and she could see the coldness in his eyes. It seemed like the rest were unable to get easy access to him, which was a good thing, considering what she planned to do.
"I trust you will take good care of Biyu," she said to him, "Don’t disappoint me, okay? She is precious to me. I don’t think you can break her more than she already is, but you can always try," she said, her voice carrying a hint of challenge in it. "I will come to pick her up once I finish my task."
The hateful Xuan Mu didn’t reply and remained silent and still, not understanding anything that was happening, but feeling an intense loathing in his heart.
He felt a burning sensation in his chest and a desire to punch something when she smiled at him like she was happy to have met him, as if she was ready to suffer through everything that he was going to throw her way.
