CH 133

Azalea flowers filled the broken stone steps. They burrowed out from cracked gaps, their thin and long red petals staining the grains of snow, like blood flowing in the snow. Climbing up along the mountain steps, the azalea flowers bloomed denser and denser, burning outward overwhelmingly the entire way like flames, vigorously blooming in the entire mountain and swaying amid the snowflakes.

Occasionally, sporadic assassins would emerge, as they had caught up from behind. Xiahou Lian cut them back one by one as he followed Baili Yuan’s footsteps into Nameless Nunnery on the top of the mountain. 

The nunnery was very quiet, as there wasn’t a single person there. Snow was piled on the white stone railing, and a row of sparse pine trees grew in front of the meditation room. Below them, clusters upon clusters of azalea flowers bloomed, like a burning ball of fire. Nameless Nunnery wasn’t in ruins, and it was even a little exquisite, like a garden created out of thin air in the barren mountain. The sun was showing signs of setting, and the orange sunlight shone in the nunnery, containing an indescribable stillness.

But it was too quiet, like it had been picked up out from years of chaos, a corner forgotten by the world.

Baili Yuan was nowhere to be seen, and there were only her residual footprints on the snow. Perhaps it was a trick, but he could only follow the footprints to search for her. The footprints disappeared in front of the veranda, but Xiahou Lian didn’t dare to enter hastily, so he bent his waist and snuck outside the meditation room, using his saber to cut open the window gauze. There was a small meditation room inside, and there was only this lattice window on the south side. There was no one inside, but the partition door facing the indoor corridor was open, so Baili Yuan must have gone out from there.

Xiahou Lian jumped in from the window. The furnishings in the room were very simple: a small kang bed-stove, a rattan table, and a few rattan chairs. A scroll painting hung on the wall; the paper was yellowing and the ink was also faded, so the person’s face in the painting was blurry, though he could vaguely see that it was a little girl. There was also a tiger kite with fierce eyes and a white forehead hanging on the south wall. A corner had clearly been broken before, but had later been sewed back. There was a book on the short table, with its cover already tattered, and Xiahou Lian flipped through it a few times. It was a medical book, and various flowers and plants were drawn in it. A garlic-head vase was placed on the rattan table, and a withered azalea flower was inserted inside. The petals were already pitch-black, as if they had been scorched by fire, dry and firm. 

This was probably Baili Yuan’s bedroom, but it seemed that she hadn’t slept here for a very long time. Although the quilt was neatly folded on the bed-stove, it was covered in dust. Would she rather sleep in the ruins than sleep in the nunnery? Xiahou Lian thought. This room gave him a strange feeling, as if the one living in it wasn’t a person but a ghost. Every day when the sun set, this ghost would sit by the window and look at the mountain filled with snow and flowers. 

The wind started, and the wind bells outside began jingling. Like an omen, thumping footsteps sounded in the originally silent corridor, like mischievous children jumping past. Xiahou Lian grabbed his saber and rushed into the corridor. A crowd of people was standing in the dark corridor, tall and short, their postures weird as they huddled together. Their figures were emaciated, and their robes empty.

Are they puppets? Xiahou Lian pressed his saber and didn’t move.

A candle lit up at the end of the corridor, and the puppets all turned, separating. A small girl stood in the only place that was bright; it was Baili Yuan holding a candlestick as she stood there. In the dim candlelight, Xiahou Lian saw fine and dense silk threads spread out with her in the center. They passed through the bucket-arched beams, columns, and paintings, connecting to these puppets.

At the same time, Xiahou Lian also clearly saw the faces of the puppets that were hidden in the darkness. They weren’t human faces, they were skeletons and charred bones, with empty eye holes. Leading Mechanism Silk connected their fragmented bones together, turning them into Baili Yuan’s skeleton puppets.

Could it be… Xiahou Lian had a horrifying premonition in his heart.

“These puppets aren’t your parents and siblings, are they?” Xiahou Lian asked.

“That’s right.” Baili Yuan’s voice came distantly, drifting in the spacious corridor. “I want to thank you for your Leading Silk techniques, otherwise how could they stand here? The tallest one in the center is my father, his name is Baili Kun, have you heard his name before? His saber “Wanjie 1” was once famous all over the world thirty years ago. However, no one knew that this young marquis born in Xue Mountain in the North was Garan’s Yama, everyone thought that he was a first-class good person.”

“Sorry, I was born too late, I haven’t heard of him before,” said Xiahou Lian.

“The one on the left of my father is my mother, her name is Wen Ruzhen, and was the daughter of a widower who sold sesame oil for a living in Huaishuo City. They were probably afraid of exposing their identity, the Baili family is always like this, they marry the daughter of an ordinary family without power, and then marry their daughters to an ordinary man. This way, if the women divulge the secret, cleaning them up is also convenient, since there’s no need to worry about some complicated interpersonal relationships behind them that need to be dealt with.”

“What a family without humanity…” Xiahou Lian said in a low voice.

“Yes,” Baili Yuan smiled, “so it’s better that they died. Look, they’ll move however I make them move, they’re extremely obedient. Xiahou Lian, when your brother dies, I’ll also install Leading Mechanism Silk into him, and he’ll survive together with my parents and siblings, accompanying me.”

“It’s fake, Baili Yuan.”

“As long as they accompany me, then it’s real.” Baili Yuan turned around, holding the candle flame as she slowly walked into the distance. “I originally thought that it would be Chi Yan to come and kill me, but I didn’t expect it would be you. Might as well, I don’t need to worry about injuring your bones this way, it’s okay if you’re maimed or crippled.” She blew out the candle, and the winding corridor instantly sank into dimness. In the last trace of the light, she turned her head around and smiled brilliantly. “Father, mother, help A-Yuan send this brother… on his way!”

The first saber, “Wanqie,” came head-on, the saber momentum as deep and majestic as a tiger pressing down from above. In his daze, Xiahou Lian seemed to see Baili Kun’s face with angry eyes and a white beard. Xiahou Lian swiftly drew his saber out of its scabbard, and Bushenglian’s black blade was submerged in the darkness, clashing with Wanqie. The two sabers collided brazenly, and in the collision of the blades, fine and dense sparks were rubbed out. In that instant when the darkness brightened, that burnt black skeletal face was only a short distance away from Xiahou Lian, as if it was exhaling gloomy and cold breaths. 

The other puppets came over to besiege him. Baili Yuan couldn’t swing a saber herself, yet she could control puppets to swing sabers, and she was controlling nine puppets at once! She was far stronger than Xiahou Lian had imagined; her strength came from her intelligence that surpassed others’. One needed to train their saber skills day after day, but one only had to learn Leading Silk techniques and memorize saber scrolls in order to control puppets.

Bushenglian flipped in his hand, and Xiahou Lian stepped forward as he turned in the corridor, his steps as fast as drums. He knew the weakness of skeletons; human bones were far more fragile than steel, so as long as he cut off their skulls, these skeletons would lose their ability to move. A gap appeared in the puppets’ attacks, so Xiahou Lian seized the opportunity and swung his saber directly up. The black saber hidden in the dark sliced out a sorrowful and cold howl, and the blade was only a step away from Baili Kun’s arm!

However, the skeleton’s wide sleeve abruptly fluttered, and fine and dense powder attacked him like bees. Xiahou Lian’s movement abruptly stagnated, and he coughed as he retreated.

What was this?!

The powder he inhaled through his nose had an extremely sharp taste, and he seemed to have tasted it somewhere before. A puppet shot a crossbow arrow upward, and above his head, there was the sound of something being cut. Xiahou Lian looked up; countless cloth bundles were hanging from the pitch-black ceiling, but because the light was too dim, he hadn’t noticed them before. At this moment, the cloth bundles had broken, and powder that filled the sky came head-on, swirling like fine and broken dust.

Breathing became difficult, his heartbeat was like the beating of a drum, and his head was dizzy. Xiahou Lian suddenly remembered. This taste… was Bliss Fruit!

“Xiahou Lian, you’re Chi Yan’s little brother, so I’ll grant you a favor.” Baili Yuan sat in the darkness and smiled ferociously. “I’ll let you die painlessly in supreme bliss!”

Xiahou Lian swiftly tore off a corner of his clothes and covered his mouth and nose. He had to be faster, as Bliss Fruit paralyzed the mind, so he couldn’t stay here for long. Xiahou Lian slowed down his breathing and kept his saber behind his elbow; this way, Baili Yuan couldn’t see his saber’s momentum. As long as he cut off the puppets’ arms, he could win!

The puppet swung its saber as it stepped toward him. Xiahou Lian gripped the hilt of his saber, the area between his thumb and index finger against the blade collar, icy and cold. When the puppet was three steps away from him, Xiahou Lian brazenly made a move, and his sleeve was constrained behind his elbow. Like a black butterfly, the black saber sliced past a heavy and restrained arc, chopping toward the puppet’s arm. This was a blow whose speed and strength had reached an extreme. No one could predict it and no one could withstand it, so the puppet would surely shatter under Bushenglian’s blade.

However, the puppet’s saber abruptly turned, and it lifted obliquely from below to up, the point of the saber moving later but arriving first!

His arm hurt abruptly and blood burst out. Xiahou Lian widened his eyes in disbelief; his saber momentum had actually been restrained.

Taking one wrong step would make every step wrong. In the darkness, the lights of sabers emerged, like thousands of venomous snakes hissing and flicking their tongues out. Amid the puppet’s offensive, he steadily retreated in defeat. Every one of his moves was seen through, and every one of his moves was restrained. His saber momentum was like a dried-up stream, difficult to sustain. His breathing lost its rhythm, and the cloth strip couldn’t block the powder of Bliss Fruit. His hand was going weak, his head was dizzy, and before his eyes, the puppets warped bit by bit, turning into dense ghost shadows.

Baili Yuan’s voice faintly sounded. “You forget, Xiahou Lian, that the Baili clan left twelve flaws in the saber techniques they passed to Garan. As long as you use Garan Saber, you’ll never be able to win!”

But why… His saber techniques clearly contained the techniques of hundreds of clans, so why had they still been seen through?

“There’s something else I forgot to tell you. Baili Saber is the source of all sabers, the ancestor of all sabers, so the sabers techniques of hundreds of clans all come from the Baili clan’s saber!”

Lightning-like saber light burst out in the somber light, warping like dragons and snakes that appeared and disappeared amid dark clouds. Baili Kun stepped forward and swung his saber in a downward chop. It was a simple blow, yet it was as if thousands of mountains and seas were coming from above! At that moment, Xiahou Lian seemed to see a warrior with loose hair and angry eyes. His saber had the might of Budda’s raging warriors, and all mortals would turn into dust under his saber! Xiahou Lian raised his saber to block, and Bushenglian emitted a shrill buzz, and the area between his thumb and index finger instantly split, blood flowing. Xiahou Lian lost his balance and fell to the ground.

His heart was beating so fast, thump thump, thump thump, and the entire world seemed to echo his heavy heartbeat. Many sounds surged into his mind in an instant: the clanging sound of the blades colliding, the sticky sound of blood and flesh separating, the shrill screams of women, the resounding crying of children… No, he had to stand up, he must stand up.

But his legs went weak inch by inch, and his vision was also shaky and blurry. He saw the puppet approach step by step, and he did his best to widen his eyes, yet his eyelids became heavier and heavier.

Am I going to die? Am I going to die? Exactly what should I do? What should I do… to break through the flaws!

Someone was calling him in his mind, as if thousands of people were shouting his name. Countless voices overlapped together, surging toward him like tidewater, closer and closer, clearer and clearer.

“Xiahou Lian!”

“Xiahou Lian!”

“Xiahou Lian!”

In the end, there was a sound like a great bell, and Xiahou Lian abruptly opened his eyes.

The world was a bright expanse. Above his head, there were whirling leaves and dazzling sunlight, and the chirping of summer cicadas sounded in his ears. Pagoda leaves that filled the sky rolled as they fell, and a black-clothed woman was swinging her saber amid the rain of leaves. The instant she spun around, Xiahou Lian saw her sharp eyebrows, and light emerged in her demon-like eyes. She swung her saber with both hands, sending out a gorgeous saber light swirling amid the rain of leaves.

“This is your mother’s saber, Xiao Lian.” Beside her, Shi Xin said, “Endlessly lasting, ceaselessly persisting. Her saber can annihilate thousands of techniques.”

Xiahou Pei and Shi Xin turned into flames, and all was instantly silent. A dilapidated and barren village appeared in his vision, and Shen Jue walked out from next to him. He was holding a Garan saber scroll in his hand, and a raging bonfire burned in front of them.

“I often wonder whether there is a kind of saber technique in the world that attains perfection, without any flaws,” said Shen Jue, gazing at the fire.

“My mother’s saber.” Xiahou Lian heard his own voice say, “Shi Xin said that my mother’s saber can annihilate thousands of techniques. Before, you said that my mother cultivates a devious path among sabers, perhaps a devious path can work.”

“That’s your mother’s saber, everyone’s sabers are different.” Shen Jue looked at him directly, and Xiahou Lian saw the flames leaping in his eyes. “Xiahou Lian, what is your saber?”

In an instant, thousands of worlds turned into a torrent that surged past below his feet. A ray of brightness appeared in the darkness, and Xiahou Lian heard the sounds of fighting outside.

“Huh,” Baili Yuan tilted her head slightly, “they attacked here so quickly? Then I’ll hurry up.”

She abruptly pulled the Leading Mechanism Silk, and countless silk threads trembled and buzzed violently in the corridor. All of the puppets suddenly moved, raising their sabers and walking toward Xiahou Lian with weird postures. Xiahou Lian strenuously got up from the ground. His vision was distorted, so he closed his eyes; the noises were like a tide in his ears, so he wouldn’t listen.

He took a deep breath and rushed toward the darkness ahead. A saber light flashed before his eyes, and Xiahou Lian spun like a ghost, dodging the piercingly cold blade. Still, another saber cut the side of his elbow, and sharp pain spread around his entire body, yet it added clarity to his mind. He didn’t stop and continued to charge. He cut down the blade in front of him, and at the same time, his back was completely exposed. Baili Yuan was forcing him to turn back to resist, but he wouldn’t!

He roared as he advanced step by step, and a saber cut into the center of his back. The chainmail in his clothes blocked the fatal injury for him, but the impact of the great force still caused blood to surge up his throat. He continued to swing his saber in a downward chop, and he used the force of the puppet’s parry to flip and sweep over the puppet, sprinting forward.

Whether there was an invincible saber in the world, he did not know. He only knew that, in order to break through his flaws, the only way was to expose all of his flaws. His target wasn’t the puppets’ arms, and it wasn’t the Leading Mechanism Silk. Instead, it was at the end of the corridor… Baili Yuan!

His mother’s saber annihilated thousands of techniques.

And his saber lived toward death!

Xiahou Lian dragged his saber as he ran, a glow congealed at the gloomy and cold point of his saber, slicing out a sorrowful and cold howl. Baili Yuan watched with wide eyes as this man covered in blood ran toward her, and she pulled the Leading Mechanism Silk as if she had gone insane, but the puppets’ speeds were far inferior to Xiahou Lian’s. The Bliss Fruit powder tore at his mind, but the pain brought him back.

His head throbbed in pain, and the world seemed to spin in his hazy vision. His lungs were like broken bellows, and the sounds of his breathing reverberated in his ears. This corridor was too long, and Baili Yuan was a small black dot in the distance, seemingly never able to be reached.

But he couldn’t stop!

During that endless run, the sounds of fighting outside became clearer and clearer, and in the haze, a snowflake seemed to drift down before his eyes. The fighting sounds penetrated the walls, and amid the snowfield and flower shrubs of Nameless Nunnery, assassins slaughtered one another like vicious wolves. Corpses were strewn across the mountainside and mountaintop, lifeless eyes gazing at the sky. Blood flowed down along the mountain steps, converging into a river.

Shen Jue stabbed Jingtie into the center of an assassin’s forehead, and blood and sweat mixed together on his forehead, his usually beautiful face already unrecognizable at this moment. At the same time, Chi Yan cut off the heads of two people, and the two round heads were thrown out into the distance, rolling into an azalea flower shrub. Shen Jue and Chi Yan were together back-to-back, and they heard each other’s rapid breathing. New assassins approached them, and their blades dripped with pattering blood.

In the corridor, Xiahou Lian caught the snowflake and held it in his palm.

He couldn’t lose; he was carrying the wishes of everyone, so he definitely couldn’t lose.

Before he fell and while he still had strength, he had to run a little faster!

The closer he got to Baili Yuan, the denser the Leading Mechanism Silks became. Xiahou Lian swung his long saber, and the Leading Silks were cut apart, the fine and dense silk landing on his head and shoulders like snowflakes. Xiahou Lian continuously swung his saber, and he was only a step away from Baili Yuan!

Baili Yuan made a prompt decision and gave up on the Leading Silk, turning around and sprinting.

A saber cut into the center of Baili Yuan’s back, slicing out a long mark of blood. She staggered and continued to run. Xiahou Lian lifted his saber and chased her, following her as she ran out of the meditation room, passed through the empty flower garden, dove into the dog hole in the back wall, trudged across the white snow that submerged her to the knees, and arrived at the apex outside the nunnery that had no way out.

Xiahou Lian’s blood and Baili Yuan’s blood dripped the entire way, twisting and turning. In the end, both of them lost their strength and crawled in the snow.

Baili Yuan gritted her teeth as she clung to the snow and crawled forward, the icy snow freezing her fingers so they were red. The blood brought away her consciousness, and her vision became blurrier and blurrier. In her daze, she seemed to see A-Chu’s cheeks, her clear face without powder or paint, and her domestic clothing; she was like a gentle big sister at home, standing in the sunlight and turning her head back to smile at her.

“A-Yuan!”

“Jiejie…” Baili Yuan was shedding tears and crawling desperately, “I don’t want… I don’t want to die here alone…”

It was too cold, too cold; there was no one at this apex. 

Xiahou Lian caught up from behind and took out a dagger from behind his waist, stabbing toward her chest. She grabbed Xiahou Lian’s dagger tightly, bood soaking past the gaps of her fingers and flowing inside her sleeves. Xiahou Lian had inhaled too much Bliss Fruit powder, so his seven facial apertures began bleeding, striking her fast drop by drop. He used all of his strength, and the dagger sank into Baili Yuan’s chest bit by bit, gradually causing her to faint from blood loss.

Her consciousness gradually faded. Baili Yuan lifted her head to gaze at the azure blue sky and was pulled back to years of the past.

She remembered the moonlight in Yunxian Building, big and round. She, Gege, and Jiejie were sitting under the moon and releasing a sky lantern, the fat and bulging lantern rising into the dome of the sky, and on it was written: “A-Yuan wants to be together with Chi Yan-gege and A-Chu-jiejie forever.”

It was such a simple wish, so why couldn’t it be achieved?

Sunset in the empty Nameless Nunnery, a big fire burning all night long in the Baili house, building countless snowmen by herself… Past events flashed before her eyes scene by scene. It turned out that her days in Yunxian Building had been the best times of her life.

But, time flew, and in the end, she couldn’t stay.

If… if time could stop there, how nice would it be?

In her daze, she seemed to hear A-Chu’s voice come from afar, passing through thousands upon thousands of mountains and waters, sent to her ears by the distant sky wind.

“A-Yuan——”

“Jiejie… Gege…”

She murmured and suddenly gave up on resisting, allowing the dagger to sink completely into her chest. The world lost its color in her eyes, and her wide eyes shed tears, her jet-black pupils slowly becoming lifeless.

Xiahou Lian got down from her body and fell into the snow.

There was blood in his mouth, so he raised his sleeve to wipe it, yet he discovered that the more he wiped the more there was. He looked down at his sleeve; it turned out that his wrist had also been injured, and his sleeve was already red. It was too cold, so he had already lost his sense of pain. Lowering his head and touching, his entire body was sticky with blood. Xiahou Lian tore off the cloth from his outer clothes and took out the medicine for metal-inflicted wounds that he carried with him. He bandaged himself bit by bit and then laid down in the snow, unmoving. This way, his blood would flow a little less and a little slower.

He maintained his breathing, as he had to wait for Shen Jue to come and pick him up. Shen Jue had said that he would find him.

He didn’t know whether it was because he was too tired, or he had bled too much, or if it was because of the Bliss Fruit, but his hands and feet were gradually becoming numb, as if he had turned into a block of ice. When his consciousness was slowly drifting away, he heard the sounds of footsteps. He turned his head and looked over; Chi Yan was holding his saber and walking up to him step by step.

He opened his mouth but couldn’t make a sound.

Chi Yan’s entire body was also covered in cuts and bruises, but he looked better than him. Chi Yan squatted down and touched the top of his head. “The little young master and I split up to find you, he should be here soon, wait a little longer.”

Chi Yan stood up, picked up Baili Yuan’s corpse, retreated a few steps, and said to Xiahou Lian, “I am leaving, Xiao Lian.”

Xiahou Lian spat out a few mouthfuls of blood and sat up with difficulty. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“Probably a very faraway place.” Chi Yan squatted down and took off the fox fur on his neck to wrap Baili Yuan up. “I cannot leave Baili’s body to you all, I promised Baili that I would bring her ashes with me.”

“You… You…” Blood choked his throat, so Xiahou Lian couldn’t speak.

“Xiao Lian, did you not say that I have to have my own wishes?”

Chi Yan gazed down the cliff. The sun sank in the west and Xue Mountain stretched out, the distant mountains misty. His pupils were fresh and clear, reflecting the clouds dispersed by the wind in the boundless world.

“With the little young master to take care of you, I feel very relieved.” Chi Yan stood up, his pale face stained with blood still tranquil and peaceful. “I want to take Baili to go on a long journey, while I am still alive, and go to very, very far places, walking around and taking a look. This way, my wish and Baili’s wish can both be realized.”

Xiahou Lian forcibly swallowed a few mouthfuls of blood and said hoarsely, “Can we see each other again?”

Chi Yan stood up in the wind and said softly, “We can. Whether it is on the opposite shore of the netherworld or in this life, we will eventually meet.”

He turned around and stepped into the blizzard that filled the sky. This assassin who had come riding on the wind and snow finally still disappeared amid the wind and snow.

Xiahou Lian laid back down and strenuously maintained his breathing. He had to hold on for a while, hold on until Shen Jue came.

The efficacy of Bliss Fruit had come, and he really wanted to sleep, so he slowly closed his eyelids. Voices finally sounded in the distance, and he came back to his senses, opening his eyes with difficulty. He suddenly remembered that the current appearance of his face covered in blood must be very frightening, and Shen Jue might be sad if he saw it. He struggled to sit up and took a handful of snow to wipe his face clean before laying back down.

He didn’t know how long he waited, but his body finally landed in a warm embrace. Shen Jue took off his coat and wrapped him in it, calling him softly, “A-Lian, A-Lian.”

He opened his eyes and lifted his head to kiss Shen Jue’s cheek.

He really wanted to say, Young Master, why did you come so late, I’ve been waiting for so long. But he was too tired and couldn’t open his mouth, nor could he open it, as he couldn’t spit out blood in front of Shen Jue.

“A-Lian, hold on, we’ll go to find a doctor.” Shen Jue carried him on his back. “A-Lian, don’t sleep, listen, don’t sleep.”

He laid on Shen Jue’s back, and blood flowed out along the corners of his mouth. His eyelids became heavier and heavier, but he did his best to open his eyes. In the distance, there was a brilliant sunset and red clouds, and the horizon seemed to be a large expanse of burning fire, dying Xue Mountain with the color of rouge.

How beautiful, he thought.

His consciousness began drifting, and he felt that he seemed to have turned into a tiny snowflake, slowly rising and floating in the wind. He saw that the vast snow had covered the killing field, washing away all of the filthy sins. Assassins were in deep sleep underneath the snow, and the years here returned to tranquility and serenity.

Is it all over?

He forgot who had said, If you create a karma of killing, you will be killed in retribution. 

Had his sins been paid off? Had he finished repaying his blood debt? Had his retribution ended? Had his years of cruelty finally come to an end, and from now on, could he rest in peace? 

But… there was still deep sentimentality in his heart.

“A-Lian, A-Lian,” Shen Jue called him again and again, “if you hear me, touch my face, okay?”

He trembled as he lifted his fingertips and touched Shen Jue’s cheek, tears flowing down from his half-closed eyes.

Buddha, forgive me. I really, really want to… live on.

Even if it is for just a moment longer.

His hand drooped weakly, and his star-moon Bodhi beads slid out of his sleeve, hanging on his wrist. Shen Jue’s entire body was shocked, and he turned his head back as he called his name. 

“Xiahou Lian!”

Like the stillness of being submerged in water, the world suddenly moved far away from him, and the sky and earth were reflections in water, the light of the waves glittering, becoming blurrier and blurrier.

Sounds dissipated bit by bit, disappearing into the wind.

In the end, all was silent.