CHAPTER 58: CHAPTER 58 - ALL THREE WOMEN AGAINST EACH OTHER!

Elder Feng Lianhua shot through the dimensional portal like a comet of pure ice and fury, her newly ascended Soul Formation cultivation propelling her at speeds that turned reality into a blur of fractured light.

Behind her, the Abyssal Demon Realm collapsed in on itself—dimensional barriers folding like origami made of screams and shadow, the very fabric of that hellish pocket universe unraveling as Zhao Tianlong held the exit open with the last fragments of his dissolving soul.

Her obsidian robes whipped around her transformed body as she soared through the void between dimensions, moving far faster than Mei Ling or Lin Yue could hope to match.

The power he’d poured into her burned through her meridians like liquid starlight, every heartbeat reminding her of the sacrifice she still couldn’t comprehend.

’Why?’ The question tore through her mind with claws of confusion and something far more dangerous. ’Why would he save me?’

She could have been the one left behind. Should have been, by any logical calculation. Mei Ling was his precious first wife, the loyal servant elevated to beloved companion.

Lin Yue was his fierce second, the warrior who’d earned his love through strength and stubbornness.

But her? She was nothing to him but a negotiated fuck, a political alliance wrapped in the pretense of desire.

’He could have escaped with both of them. Could have let the Primal Demon Emperor take me as payment. It would have been the smart choice, the strategic choice...’

Yet he hadn’t. When the dimensional tears opened and death came calling for all three of them, he’d poured his essence equally—no, ’more than equally’—into saving her ice-bound soul.

The corruption that had been rewriting her cultivation base, turning her into something demonic and twisted, had been burned away by his pure vitality.

Her Mid-Nascent Soul had shattered and reformed into something transcendent, power beyond anything she’d dreamed possible flooding through her like divine nectar.

All at the cost of his life.

The exit portal materialized ahead—a tear in reality leading back to the material plane, back to the research station and safety.

She could see the familiar mountains of the Immortal Sect’s territory through the gap, feel the clean qi of the mortal realm calling to her transformed essence.

’Just go. Leave. Pretend this never happened. Return to the sect and report the mission a failure. No one needs to know what transpired in that hellscape...’

Her hand was already reaching for the portal’s edge when his final message echoed through their rapidly dissolving bond:

’"And Feng, I really wanted to say you are the hottest MILF I could ever—"’

The connection snapped like a severed heartstring, leaving only silence and the taste of regret in her mouth.

Feng Lianhua, Elder of the Immortal Sect, master of ice cultivation and embodiment of controlled perfection, stopped dead in the void.

For the first time in over two centuries of existence, she felt her carefully constructed walls crumble completely. Not from external pressure, not from cultivation breakthrough or tribulation lightning—but from the simple, devastating realization that someone she’d barely begun to understand was dying alone in collapsing hell, and she ’cared’.

"No," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the dimensional winds. "No, this is wrong. This is..."

’This is what love feels like.’

The thought hit her like a qi backlash, stealing her breath and making her newly ascended power fluctuate wildly.

Love? Her?

She who had scorned such base emotions for centuries, who had remained pure and untouched while lesser cultivators rutted like animals?

But there it was, burning in her chest like a second dantian—raw, painful, utterly undeniable.

Not the cruel obsession she’d witnessed in others, not the desperate need that drove disciples to foolish acts.

This was something else entirely: the fierce, protective urge to shield someone precious from harm, even if it meant sacrificing everything she was.

"I’ve been such a fool," she gasped, spinning in the void to face the collapsing portal. Already it was shrinking, the golden light that held it open flickering as Tianlong’s essence finally gave out. "Such an arrogant, prideful fool..."

She’d spent three days spying on him, watching him work with single-minded determination to prepare for this mission.

She’d seen him pleasure his wives not out of base lust but as part of some greater strategy, using intimacy to strengthen their cultivation bonds. She’d witnessed him sacrifice comfort, safety, even dignity to ensure their survival.

And she’d dismissed it all as the antics of a perverted emperor, too blinded by her own prejudices to see the man beneath.

’But he saw me,’ she realized, tears freezing to diamonds on her cheeks as she remembered their first encounter. ’Even when I was nothing but ice and arrogance, he saw something worth saving...’

The portal shrank further, barely large enough for a person to pass through. In moments it would collapse entirely, sealing the Abyssal Demon Realm forever—with him inside.

Feng’s aura exploded outward, Soul Formation power blazing like a newborn star as she reversed course.

Her speed tripled, then quadrupled, the strain of acceleration making her newly reformed body scream in protest. But she pushed harder, burning her life force itself to fuel her desperate flight.

’I won’t let you die alone, you magnificent fool. Not when I finally understand...’

The portal was closing—mere feet across now, its edges crackling with unstable energy. She could see through it to the hellscape beyond: fractured reality, dimensional tears opening and closing like hungry mouths, and somewhere in that chaos, a withered figure holding the exit open through pure force of will.

Without hesitation, Feng Lianhua dove through.

She crashed into the collapsing realm with earth-shaking force, her Soul Formation aura blazing against the oppressive corruption.

The Primal Demon Emperor’s roar of fury shook the dying dimension, but she ignored it, her eyes scanning the chaos for any sign of Tianlong.

There—at the dimensional nexus, his form barely more substantial than shadow, pouring the last of his essence into keeping the realm’s collapse controlled.

His sacrifice hadn’t just been about escape; he was containing the destruction, ensuring that the entity would be trapped forever in this dying hell.

"Tianlong!" she screamed, fighting against the gravitational distortions that tried to pull her apart. "You stubborn, self-sacrificing bastard!"

She reached for him across the impossible distance, her qi stretching like desperate fingers toward his fading form.

But the dimensional barriers were too strong, the collapse too advanced. Her power, vast as it was, couldn’t breach the maze of folding space that separated them.

’Unless...’

Her hand went to the black jade key at her throat—the access token that had granted them entry to this realm.

It was more than just a key; it was a fragment of the sect’s authority, imbued with ancient seals that could manipulate dimensional barriers.

Feng crushed it in her fist, the jade crumbling to powder as she released every seal at once.

The backlash nearly tore her apart, but it also created a brief window of stability—a single path through the chaos leading to the nexus.

She poured everything into that moment: her Soul Formation cultivation, her life force, even fragments of her own soul.

Her perfect features aged decades in seconds as she burned through her remaining lifespan, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered except reaching him.

’Almost there... almost...’

Her fist connected with the barrier surrounding the nexus, and reality shattered like glass. She broke through in a explosion of ice and starlight, her momentum carrying her into the epicenter of the realm’s destruction.

But as she crashed through the final barrier, something impossible happened.

Two other figures smashed through from different angles at the exact same moment—Mei Ling wreathed in verdant nature qi, her Core Formation pushed far beyond its limits, and Lin Yue blazing with warrior’s fury, her bronze skin marked with bloody runes of sacrifice.

All three women stared at each other in shock for a split second, realizing they’d all made the same desperate choice.

’!’