"You were going to make me your cauldron," she said. Her voice was — flat. Empty. The voice of a woman who had passed through grief and emerged on the other side into something cold. "Your sex cauldron. Your — your resource."
"YUHAN —"
"That's all I was. All I ever was. To you."
Shen Wuji's mouth opened. Closed. His dark eyes — the madness receding, the reality of what he had confessed settling in — found hers. Found the cold. Found the emptiness.
"Yuhan, I —"
"You never loved me."
The words were — final. The closing of a door. The ending of a story.
Tianlong watched. His gold-crimson eyes — observing, cataloging, the expression of a being who had orchestrated this confrontation with the precision of a master tactician — found Jin Yuhan's kneeling form. Her slender body, trembling. Her dark eyes, empty. Her tears, falling.
