Chapter 176 - My Costar Helps Me Finish The Job

Yao Shen's hands shake with the effort he's making to try and keep the sword's blade away from his neck.

Si Wang looks in confusion at his actions. "What are you doing?" He narrows his eyes, and Yao Shen almost falls to his knees with the strong wave of compulsion that hits him. 

The voice in the back of his head tells him to drive the sword through Xin Hulei's heart and watch the light go out of his eyes. He fights it on his own, determined to prevent himself from hurting Xin Hulei.

But there's something else -- a conflicting force that won't let him harm a single hair on Xin Hulei's head, and instead makes him turn all the violence on himself.

Xin Hulei looks at Yao Shen's trembling hands in confusion, but then realisation strikes him.

"The contract," he says, his words carrying the weight of his regret. "The contract won't let you harm me."

That's right. How could Yao Shen have forgotten.

He falls to the ground on his knees, still trying to hold the sword away from his neck. "Good, that's good."

"Stop this," Xin Hulei shouts, his crimson eyes flaming with hatred. "He will kill himself if you continue this."

"But why?" Si Wang screams. 

Yao Shen can feel the moment he lets go of the compulsion because his arms lose all their strength. The sword drops from his limp fingers with a metal clank. 

"Because we've signed a contract with our blood," he says, panting harshly. "Neither of us can damage the other."

Yao Shen looks up at Si Wang and laughs. "You've lost, even before you really started you had already lost." He giggles, almost mad with relief. "We signed that contract before we had any feelings for each other. He thought I was acting weird, because of your 'instructions' as the system."

What delicious irony. 

If Si Wang had never tried to manipulate Yao Shen by pretending to be a 'system' perhaps his plan today would have succeeded.

For the first time, fate was smiling down on them.

His legs shaking, Yao Shen stands up from the ground. Xin Hulei goes to his side and helps him up, picking the fallen sword as they raise.

Si Wang stands still, looking at the two of them in utter shock. "It can't be...I..."

"You've lost," Xin Hulei says, pointing the sword straight at his chest.

"Why is it never me?" he groans, his hateful eyes fixed on Yao Shen. "Why do you never choose me?"

Yao Shen is tired of this conversation. He's tried of Si Wang's whining, and he's tired of centuries, millennia, of this game of cat and mouse. 

This ends today.

He summons the last of his strength and whispers a few words under his breath.

Despite his exhaustion he smirks the moment Si Wang's eyes start burning with hatred. "What are you doing? Where have you gone?"

Yao Shen is obviously not going to answer and give his location away. That would ruin the whole point of being invisible.

Xin Hulei remains where he is, pointing the tip of the sword at Si Wang's heart. Holding his position, as if this is something he has agreed to do with Yao Shen. 

Quietly, he makes his way towards Si Wang. He pulls the drawstring of his hoodie, unspooling it slowly.

He holds his breath when he's close to Si Wang, and then, holding the drawstring between his hands circles his neck with it.

"Now," he shouts.

Si Wang gasps for air, trying to free himself from Yao Shen's hands. Too confused by the sudden restriction to his air flow to think clearly.

He probably could free himself if he had his wits about him, but that fraction of a second is all they need.

Yao Shen holds Si Wang in place and Xin Hulei disappears.

Only to reaper immediately afterwards with the blade of the sword halfway through Si Wang's chest.

Yao Shen closes his eyes, as he holds the dying Si Wang upright. The sounds he makes as he chokes on his own blood will remain with him for a lifetime, but he doesn't move.

This ends now.

Finally, Si Wang lets out one last wheezing gasp and his body goes still. Yao Shen lets go of the drawstring at the same time Xin Hulei pulls out the sword.

His body crumples to the floor between the two of them, a pool of blood spreading out at their feet.

Yao Shen pulls back on his invisibility, too woozy to hold on.

Xin Hulei is already by his side.

"I have you," he says, whispering the words against the top of his head.

That's right. Xin Hulei doesn't need to see him to know where he is.

"It's over," Yao Shen whispers, his throat feels parched. He thinks he's going into shock, but he can't afford that now.

Tan Liansi is still lying unconscious on the floor. The three of them need to leave this ruin. There's nothing else for them here.

"I'll help you carry Liansi," Yao Shen says.

Working together, they manage to carry the unconscious Tan Liansi outside of the wall. Once there, Xin Hulei spares a single glance back at what remains of the place he once called home.

"Let's go, there's nothing here," he says, and whisks Yao Shen and Tan Liansi away.

---

They have no choice but to take Tan Liansi back to the Hengdian apartment, and set her up in the living room.

Yao Shen knows he'll probably have to slip into her dreams to rescue her from her own mind. She's probably stuck in a loop relieving a series of her own painful memories.

However, there's something he needs to do first.

Xin Hulei is a little dazed. It takes him a lot of effort to assimilate all his lost memories, and more so, to accept that it was something he did to himself.

"I'm sorry," he says, stopping what he's doing in the kitchen and turning to face Yao Shen. "I feel like part of this is my fault."

Yao Shen kisses him to silence his loud thoughts. "Don't say that. None of this is your fault. It's Si Wang's fault, and now he's gone forever." He takes a deep breathe. "He will never hurt us again."

They left his body there, inside the wall. One day, very soon, the sand will swallow him up too. It's not dignified, it's not a proper burial. Yao Shen isn't sure if his soul will be able to move on. But he doesn't much care if the spends all eternity haunting the black desert where Modu once stood.

It feels fitting somehow. That he'd die in the ruins of the city he helped destroy.

Yao Shen only cares about making Xin Hulei realise that none of this is his fault.

Which is why he waits for him to fall asleep, to travel back to Youdu.

He goes straight to the little house with the clay walls, and its room filled with the memories of all the deceased.

Meng Po is dicing spring onions in the kitchen. She doesn't look surprised to see him.

"Oh, it's you again. Did you get what you wanted from your memories?"

He frowns at her. "Did you know that Si Wang had switched out the real ones for fakes."

She smiles at herself, her old, knotted hands are still quick. "Yes." Her keen eyes drift over towards Yao Shen in the doorway and away from the vegetables. "But wasn't it better this way? You got your answers, and got to remain yourself."

She winks when Yao Shen glares at her. "Memory can be a blessing as much as a curse."

"It wasn't your choice to make."

Meng Po laughs heartily. "No matter how many centuries pass young people are always the same. You think you know everything, and have all the answers. Take it from an old lady. It's better to forget and move on."

Yao Shen isn't so sure. "Maybe if I knew about the Crown Prince, and about what Xin Hulei meant to me from the beginning...then, maybe..."

"You think this wouldn't have happened?" She smirks. "You think you would have made less mistakes, and been happy earlier on? What would you have done? Run away from your awful dad and gone to find Xin Hulei, at 13?"

She throws her head back and laughs. "No, things happen when they need to. For you, and for everyone else."

Yao Shen isn't convinced he believes her. She's just another person who knew more than him, and let him tangle himself up in knots regardless.

She shakes her head at him, cleaning her hands on the apron tied around her waist. "Child, let me put things this way. Do you think Xin Hulei would have survived a single month longer if he remembered everything that happened?"

Her words give Yao Shen pause. Something cold settles in the pit of his stomach.

"How would he have coped, after the deaths of his shizun, cousin, the destruction of Modu, and then the Crown Prince's bloody suicide?" She sighs. "How much do you think a heart can take before it breaks in pieces too small to put back together?"

Yao Shen doesn't have an answer for her.

"Let me show you what too much memory does to a person. Maybe then, you'll learn to value the gift of a clean slate."

She leaves him with those cryptic words, and disappears into the guts of her squat little house.