“Bai Yulu,” Feng Zihuan gasped, his voice raw with emotion. “All this… all this chaos, all this… did you do it… for me?” Kuang Mian tilted her head, a sliver of genuine confusion crossing her features. His question made no sense. For him? The thought was so utterly alien, so wildly unprofitable, it nearly short-circuited her well-oiled avarice circuits. She considered the stacks of jade-lacquered crates, the gleaming ingots of pure aurum, the embroidered sacks bulging with spirit stones, and the vast hoard riding this very skiff. She then looked at Feng Zihuan, hanging by his fingertips, swaying precariously over the rapidly shrinking Celestial Crane Peak. “For you?” she repeated, her tone flat, devoid of any warmth. Her fingers tightened on the heavy, leather-bound register clutched to her chest—a detailed account of every single crystal, relic, and rare earth element now gracing her personal transport. “Absolutely not. Are you insane?” Feng Zihuan blinked, his soot-streaked face twisting into knots of bafflement. “Then… then why? Why all this… deception? The stolen funds, the shattered artifacts, the sect grounds in disarray? Why leave?” Kuang Mian sighed, a sound of deep, profound exasperation. This man was truly dense. She had assumed her motivations were glaringly obvious. “Why? Because I wanted the money, of course. All of it. Every last glittering, valuable piece.” She gestured grandly with her free hand, encompassing the groaning skiff. “This isn’t about you, Zihuan. It’s about securing my retirement. A very lavish, very permanent retirement far from any further plot complications, thank you very much.” He squinted through the soot on his lashes. “Retirement? After all the promises? After… after I swore to protect you, my love?” He pushed himself up higher, his knuckles white. “Was it because of the demonic remnants? Did they threaten you into this? Tell me, my fragile flower, and I will tear them all limb from limb!” “Fragile flower?” Kuang Mian scoffed, a genuine, mirthless laugh escaping her lips. “I am the Blood-Ash Sovereign. I ended the last war single-handedly because I got tired of everyone trampling my prize fields. These ‘demonic remnants’ are my former subordinates, the fools who betrayed me because I cut their pill budgets. And frankly, they were terrible at robbing their own sect, so I took over.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, though it held no kindness. “I am a villain. A cold, calculating, ruthlessly greedy villain. I care about coin. I care about comfort. I care about a beach made of crushed spirit stones and a steady supply of exotic fruit wine. I care about precisely nothing else. And I care about you least of all.” The confession hung in the frigid night air, stark and unambiguous. Kuang Mian watched, waiting for the inevitable horror, the righteous fury, the heartbroken condemnation. She was ready for it. She had even mentally accounted for the potential market value of his Azure-Phoenix Sword should she need to pry it from his rapidly cooling grasp. But Feng Zihuan’s face didn’t show horror. Or fury. Instead, moisture coated his lashes, catching the lantern light cast by the skiff’s engines. “Ah,” he whispered, a tremor in his voice, “so that’s it. My brave, selfless Yulu.” He gazed at her with an adoration so profound, so utterly unhinged, it made Kuang Mian’s stomach churn. “You confess to these terrible deeds… you push me away with such cruel words… because you wish to spare me. You believe your path to be too dangerous, too stained by darkness, for a righteous disciple such as I.” He shut his eyes as salt water carved a pale streak through the grime on his cheek. “You wish to protect me from the consequences of your choices. You bear this burden alone, my love, sacrificing your own happiness for my safety! Oh, Yulu, how could I have been so blind? This is the purest act of devotion I have ever witnessed!” Kuang Mian stared, speechless. The sheer, unadulterated idiocy of the man was breathtaking. She had laid out the unvarnished, brutal truth, and he had twisted it into a grand, romantic tragedy of self-sacrifice. It was beyond parody. Her lips thinned. “No,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet. “I am doing this because I do not like you, and I am leaving with all the money. There is no deeper meaning. I hate you, you insufferable, deluded fool, and I want you to let go.” He opened his eyes, now rigid with stubborn purpose. “Never! I will never let go of you, my love! Your noble sacrifice will not be in vain! I will follow you to the ends of the Jade-Spire Continent, or I will wait here, forever, for you to forgive yourself and return to my side!” “Fine,” Kuang Mian snapped, her patience snapped like dry kindling. She released her grip on the register with one hand, maintaining it with the other, and without a moment’s hesitation, stomped her silk-clad foot down with precision and force. Her heel landed squarely on Feng Zihuan’s white-knuckled fingers, grinding them against the auric railing. A surprised yelp escaped him as his grip instantly failed. His hands flailed in the air, then he plummeted, a dramatic, flailing silhouette against the distant, shrinking lights of Celestial Crane Peak. “Yulu!” his voice echoed up, already faint, filled with what sounded suspiciously like triumphant, heartbroken resolve. “I will wait for you! Even if it takes a thousand years!” Kuang Mian peered over the side. He landed with a spectacular splash in the glassy surface of the sect’s ornamental Sky-Mirror Lake, a perfectly safe, albeit humiliating, landing. She watched for a moment, then straightened, dusting her hands. “Good riddance,” she muttered, returning her full attention to her register. Patriarch Tuo Buyan, perched at the skiff’s helm, watched the dramatic descent, his ancient face crinkled in a wide, toothless grin. “Excellent! A clean break! The boy’s safe, Elder Lin’s ruined, and my coffers are overflowing with his ‘unaccounted for’ assets! A truly elegant solution, my dear Bai Yulu. Or should I say, Sovereign?” He winked, then let out a wheezing, triumphant cackle that vibrated through the very deck of the Supreme Golden Skiff. *** The Southern Tropic Isles, five years later. The air was thick with the scent of salt and exotic blossoms. Kuang Mian lay stretched on a chaise lounge, half-submerged in a shallow pool of water, its bottom paved not with tiles, but with millions of perfectly smooth, crushed lunar-jade spirit stones. Sunlight dappled through the leaves of a towering, golden-leafed palm, painting shifting patterns on her face. A servant, a local islander whose settlement now thrived on her heavy spending, discreetly refilled her goblet with chilled nectar from a gleaming, bioluminescent fruit. This was it. This was the life. No sect politics, no assassinations, no arrogant male leads demanding her attention. Just peace, quiet, and an unimaginable fortune. She stretched, a picture of indolent bliss, then reached for her brass-clasped tally book, flipping through pages filled with meticulous entries of interest earned and new investments. Truly, the righteous sect’s market holdings had been a goldmine. Suddenly, a shadow fell across the crushed-gem pool. Kuang Mian frowned, annoyed. The skiff’s perpetual warding had a blind spot, apparently. She looked up, not at a person, but at the sky. Streaks of cerulean energy, so bright they momentarily outshone the sun, were being drawn across the vast expanse above. They swirled, coalesced, and began to form familiar characters, each one the size of a small airship. The familiar, infuriatingly dramatic script of Feng Zihuan. *“My Dearest Yulu,”* the sky-written poem began, the azure ink crackling with a ludicrous amount of spiritual energy. *“Five years have passed, and still my heart burns bright…”* Kuang Mian scowled. She closed her eyes, sighed, and pushed herself out of the water, retrieving her tally book. She didn’t even need to read the rest. It was undoubtedly more of the same maudlin nonsense about eternal love and waiting. What truly bothered her was the color. Cerulean. That was a rare, Grade-7 elemental ink, harvested from the Sky-Whale’s Tear Gland. Each brushstroke probably cost a hundred top-grade spirit stones. And he was wasting it on poetry. The sheer inefficiency of the man was infuriating.

A Very Profitable Goodbye