Chapter 454: Broken Guilt

The hissing of the steam vanished.

Returning so many times just for him...

Who is Him?

The words did not make logical sense.

Ji’an was 17 years old.

She was a mortal chef who had recently ascended.

But when those words left Yan Zhaoge’s lips and entered Xie Wangchen’s ears, they did not register as a drunken ramble.

They registered as a reality-shattering systemic failure within his own immortal soul.

It felt as though a rusted iron spike had been violently driven directly through the center of his chest.

His breath left him in a sudden, agonizing gasp.

His vision swam, the aura surrounding him fluctuated wildly, completely collapsing in on itself.

Returning...

He didn’t understand the word. He didn’t possess the memories.

But his soul did.

Deep, deep within the buried, sealed archives of his spiritual core, a phantom resonance flared. It was an emotion so devastatingly agonizing, so overwhelmingly saturated in guilt and failure that it physically buckled his knees.

Wangchen staggered backward, clutching Ji’an to his chest, his eyes wide and unseeing.

He saw flashes of a world covered in blood.

He saw a sky ripped apart by cosmic rifts, saw silver hair stained with crimson.

He felt the phantom sensation of a small, cold hand slipping from his grasp, falling into an endless, crushing abyss.

He didn’t know the context.

He didn’t know the story.

But he knew, with the absolute, undeniable certainty of a soul that had been shattered across a thousand lifetimes, that he was the reason she was suffering.

He was the "him."

He was the reason she had to return.

He was the mistake. He was the failure.

He was the fatal flaw in the architecture of her survival.

The guilt hit him with the force of an ocean, drowning him in an instant, suffocating wave of self-loathing so intense he actually tasted blood in the back of his throat.

"What..." Wangchen choked out, his voice a broken, raspy wheeze, his entire body trembling violently. "What does that mean? Returning? What did I do? What did I fail to do?"

Yan Zhaoge looked at the trembling, broken immortal. The Overtime Boss’s eyes were cold, filled with a grim, uncompromising pity.

"It means you are carrying a debt you cannot comprehend, Ice Demon," Yan Zhaoge stated softly. "It means you have already failed her in ways that cannot be undone, even if you died and returned seventeen times. So do not stand there and boast of your devotion. Your devotion is the bare minimum required to justify the air you breathe in her presence."

Yan Zhaoge turned away, his purple robes billowing in the thermal updrafts.

"Take her to the guest barracks," Yan Zhaoge ordered, his voice echoing with finality. "Let her sleep. And pray to whatever dark god you worship that when the veil finally lifts... she still looks at you with trust, and not with the memory of the blade you put in her back."

The Sovereign of the Iron-Stone Monastery vanished into a pillar of silver smoke, leaving Wangchen alone in the sweltering, roaring kitchen.

Wangchen did not move.

He stood frozen, cradling the sleeping girl against his chest.

His mind was a swirling, apocalyptic maelstrom of agony. The words echoed relentlessly, carving jagged, bleeding trenches into his sanity.

Returning so many times just for him... A mistake that cannot be undone even if he died seventeen times...

He looked down at Ji’an’s peaceful face.

She murmured softly in her sleep, burying her face deeper into the crisp white silk of his robes, seeking the cool comfort of his skin against the oppressive heat of the volcano.

A single, freezing tear escaped his ruby eyes, carving a path down his pale cheek before freezing into a tiny diamond that fell and shattered on her leather apron.

"My Ji’an," Wangchen whispered, his voice cracking, completely broken by the sheer, crushing weight of a sin he couldn’t even remember committing.

He adjusted his grip, lifting her entirely into his arms.

He didn’t use a spatial portal, because he didn’t trust his magic right now. His core was too unstable, too fractured by the agony of a past timeline.

He walked.

He carried her out of the Grand Kitchens, his boots moving silently across the obsidian floors. The corridors of the Iron-Stone Monastery were empty, the disciples long asleep or meditating in the lower forges.

The only light came from the glowing rivers of magma outside the windows, casting long, flickering, demonic shadows against the walls.

He found the guest barracks.

He navigated to the most secure, heavily warded master suite, his aura passively freezing the locks and disabling the door’s hinges so he could push it open without making a sound.

The room was spartan, furnished with heavy petrified wood and thick woven rugs.

Wangchen walked to the massive bed.

He gently, incredibly carefully, lowered Ji’an onto the mattress. She shifted slightly, letting out a soft sigh, but did not wake.

He reached down and meticulously unbuckled the heavy leather blacksmith’s apron, sliding it off her body to reveal the loose, white inner-tunic beneath. He pulled the thick, woven quilt over her, tucking it securely around her shoulders.

He did not leave the room.

He did not sit in the chair.

Xie Wangchen dropped to his knees beside the bed.

He collapsed onto the floor, his pristine white robes pooling around him like a shroud of snow. He rested his forearms against the edge of the mattress, burying his face in his hands.

The dam broke.

It wasn’t a dignified cry.

It was the desperate, suffocating sobbing of a man whose soul was being ripped apart by a karmic debt he could not pay.

His broad shoulders shook. The black frost exploded from his knees, creeping across the floorboards, frosting over the walls, turning the room into a freezing, localized replica of the deepest circle of hell.

What did I do?

The question hammered against the inside of his skull like a physical weapon.

’What did I do to you, my Ji’an? Why don’t I remember anything? How many times did I watch you bleed? How many times did you die trying to save me? Why would you return for me? I am a monster. I am a feral, rabid dog. I do not deserve the air you breathe, let alone the warmth of your smile.’

He lifted his head, his ruby eyes bloodshot, glowing with a manic, desperate level of devotion.

He looked at her sleeping face.

He looked at the soft curve of her lips, the delicate slope of her nose.

He knew she was a woman. He knew she had hidden herself from the world to survive.

He knew she carried the weight of the Vanguard, the weight of her sect, and the weight of a cosmic conspiracy she was desperately trying to unravel.

And now he knew that she carried the weight of him.

He reached out with a trembling, freezing hand.

He did not touch her skin.

He did not dare defile her with hands that possessed the phantom memory of failing her. He simply hovered his fingers an inch above her cheek, tracing the outline of her jaw in the cold air.

"I do not know the sins of my past," Wangchen whispered into the frozen, dead air of the room, his voice a raspy, broken vow of absolute, fanatic surrender. "I do not know the timelines we have walked. I do not know how many times my weakness cost you your life."

He slowly lowered his hand, gripping the edge of the quilt, twisting the fabric until his knuckles turned bone-white.

"But I swear to you, Lin Ji’an. By the blood in my veins, by the frost in my core, by the very fabric of the void that separates the heavens from the earth... it ends here."

He leaned his forehead against the edge of the mattress, right beside her hand.

"I will not fail you in this life. I will become the monster you need me to be. I will slaughter the gods. I will freeze the World Will. If the Heavens demand your life, I will pull the stars from the sky and drown them in the abyss. You will not return for me again. You will never, ever have to suffer for me again."

The devotion in his chest was no longer just a yandere obsession.

It had mutated and evolved into something darker, heavier, and more tragic.