The Divine Elements - Chapter 9: A Painful Past

[ Late check-ins accepted. Abyss residues surcharges apply. ]The Last Neutral Inn, a small establishment run by a retired man named Aldous. He serves good soup, honest tea, and the only guaranteed neutral ground between the mortal world and the Abyss.He used to change the world. He doesn't do that anymore, but he has opinions about bread. He will share them.In a place where exiled gods need somewhere to sleep, demon courts require neutral venues for negotiations they can't afford to lose, and abyssal entities older than civilization occasionally need a simple word with someone who won't panic, Aldous runs the only establishment that qualifies. His guests aren't only human. His inn shouldn't exist. The Abyss stops exactly at his property line, which nobody has satisfactorily explained.Aldous makes soup. He fixes the stairs. He files the paperwork.He is no hero. No king. He runs an inn.The question nobody had the courage to ask yet is why.

Falling for his warm touch despite his usual coldness, she loved him only to be disappointed and betrayed in the end.When love turns to darkness, it festers to be poisonous and consumes the soul.The naïve Arabella evolved.***“Thank you for becoming my wife,” was her cold husband’s last words before he died, coupled with a smile that had never before graced his lips. Not on their wedding day. And not even at the birth of their only child.Emperor Ferdinand, someone Arabella loved so much, killed their son.She became a villainess and vowed revenge for her beloved child.For a decade, she used everything she could to make Ferdinand pay.Until finally… he fell to ruin!With her revenge complete, Arabella's life soon ended with her dead husband in her arms.But fate wasn’t done playing with her.All of a sudden, she was back two decades ago right after their wedding.Was it a curse or a blessing?It didn’t matter. Because there is only one thing she needed to do.“I will ruin you in this lifetime too!”This was her hateful promise to herself upon realizing she was reborn.But in her second life, Arabella was unexpectedly bestowed a gift to uncover the truth.Who was wrong and who was right?Only time will tell.

The day the city fell, Feng Yun was treated by her father as a spoil of war and presented to the enemy general.Everyone pitied her, soon to be a captive, plunging into a fiery pit.Yet she veiled the little donkey cart that took her out of the city tightly, daring not to let anyone see the secret delight in her heart…As a child, she behaved oddly and spoke startling words, once predicting a war in which the whole army was wiped out, nearly being burned to death by her clan as a demon.When she grew up, her beauty was out of the world, but she was rejected by her husband's family.In the period of chaos and disorder everywhewe, where could a female captive go?“I do not seek a devoted partner to grow old with; I merely wish to rule unrivaled in this life.”In her previous life, Feng Yun was always the one being scorned by others; in this life, she decided to strike first, turning the tables on each and every one of them, those so-called unreachable flowers and beasts in gentleman's clothing, those degenerates… all to be scorned in return.

The 27-year-old Wei Han is a slightly fat, slightly chicken-livered, and slightly foolish, pure-hearted and besotted top, and his sweetheart who had been together with him for seven years, in the end, was stolen away by Qi ZhiFan one morning.
Deeply broken-hearted and in despair, he went overboard with binge eating, and ended up pathetically choking to death…