WJ Chapter 101

Tu Yuan (3)

After Ah Ku forced Yun Danjing to explain every cause and consequence clearly, he was so furious he wanted to beat this little young master half to death.

He thought in a panic: This is truly bad. Yun Changliu just suffered through a bout of the poison flaring up, and now of all times he’s received such a tremendous shock…

What was the most terrifying aspect of the Fengchun Sheng poison?

The excruciating pain when it flared? The despair that could never be uprooted?

What else besides those—

It was only now that Ah Ku suddenly remembered that quite some time ago, he seemed to have seen an ancient text at Guan Muyan’s place containing records about Fengchun Sheng.

He had happened to flip to that earliest story: a physician girl who turned love into hatred had planted the Fengchun Sheng poison in the man she had once loved. Yet the afflicted swordsman did not die from the poison itself — instead, after a flare-up of Fengchun Sheng threw his emotions into violent turmoil, a single careless word from his son drove him to draw his sword and slay his beloved wife and children. When he came back to his senses and was overcome with remorse, he took his own life.

The reason Yun Guyan had hardheartedly confined Yun Changliu within Changsheng Pavilion since childhood, cutting him off from the world, was precisely to force the Young Sect Leader to suppress emotional fluctuations and reduce the harm brought on by Fengchun Sheng to the absolute minimum.

And yet it was he himself who had come barging in, stirring up this little Young Sect Leader at every turn.

Yun Changliu had worried for him and wept for him, and in the end had refused to drink his blood medicine, choosing to endure the poison flare bare — and now, if under the influence of Fengchun Sheng he were to lose himself for even a moment and do something irreversible…!

Ah Ku drew a deep breath, forcing himself to steady his heart. He asked Yun Danjing in a low, measured voice. “Does the Sect Leader know?”

Young Master Danjing was, after all, still a child, and had grown up pampered and indulged by his mother from birth — he had never experienced anything like this. By now he was already in a complete panic and at a total loss. When Ah Ku questioned him, he instinctively stammered back, “The… the Zhuhuo Guards have all been sent down the mountain to search…”

Yun Danjing had long grown accustomed to trading thoughtless words with Yun Changliu and had never once imagined that one day he could push his elder brother to the point of disappearing entirely. It was only when he saw the Zhuhuo Guards throughout the city pouring out through the gates in the snow to search that he began to grasp the gravity of the situation, and by now he was terrified out of his wits.

Yun Danjing’s mind was all muddled. He answered Ah Ku’s question and then bit down on his back teeth, turning to bolt outside again.

“Stop right there!”

Ah Ku’s gaze sharpened. He stepped forward two paces, and in an instant his fingers struck out in rapid succession, sealing several major acupoints on Yun Danjing’s body—

His Duanmu family’s acupoint-sealing technique was already one of the most exquisite martial arts in the jianghu; even Yun Changliu was sometimes caught off guard by it, to say nothing of Yun Danjing.

The little young master had no power to resist whatsoever. The meridians at all four of his limbs were effortlessly sealed by Ah Ku, and he toppled over in stunned disbelief, crashing to the ground stiff as a plank of wood.

Furious and astonished, he immediately wanted to open his mouth and rage, only to discover that his mute acupoint had been struck as well — he could not produce a single syllable.

Ah Ku grabbed him by the collar and roughly dragged Yun Danjing into the wooden hut, tossing him onto the floor.

In such vile weather, with the night pitch-black, letting Yun Danjing run wild on the steep and slippery mountain paths would in all likelihood end in disaster.

Truth be told, Ah Ku had not the slightest fondness for this arrogant little young master — yet he could not stand by and watch such a small child lose his life… let alone the fact that he was Yun Changliu’s younger brother.

“Two hours. The sealed acupoints will release on their own.”

Ah Ku picked up the lantern Yun Danjing had dropped on the ground, inspected it briefly, and carried it in hand. He spared only this single cold remark for the little young master lying immobilised on the floor, then pushed open the door of the wooden hut and plunged without hesitation into the frozen, snow-swept world outside.

……

Outside, a heavy blizzard was already raging.

The wind was fierce, slicing across the face like a blade, to say nothing of the cold.

The moment Ah Ku stepped out of the hut, he was drenched by a wave of snow striking him full in the face.

He shivered, and the frantically racing mind that had been burning with urgency abruptly went cold and still. The little medicine boy stood holding the lantern a few paces from the wooden hut, and for a moment he stood utterly motionless.

…Right — Shenlie Mountain was so vast, and if Yun Changliu had descended the mountain that would be truly dire. In this boundless flying snow, in these mountains swallowed by darkness, human beings were so terribly small. He wanted to find the Young Sect Leader — but where was he supposed to go?

What was more, over a hundred Zhuhuo Guards had already been mobilised. What difference would one more person make? On what basis would he be the one to find the Young Sect Leader?

But then, quietly, another strange voice rose up within Ah Ku:

…On what basis would he fail to find the Young Sect Leader?

In this entire vast Zhuyin Sect, he was the only person the Young Sect Leader liked to be close to. He was the person who stayed by the Young Sect Leader’s side every single day. He was the person who could make the Young Sect Leader say the most words. He was even the person the Young Sect Leader had gone to such lengths to protect—

Then how — how could he possibly fail to find the Young Sect Leader at a moment like this!?

Ah Ku closed his eyes. His teeth bit hard into his lower lip. He stood in his thin blue robes amid the howling wind and snow — urgent, yet not losing his clarity — and began to think carefully.

He would definitely be able to find where Yun Changliu was.

He would definitely be able to bring Yun Changliu back safe and sound.

Where would Yun Changliu go?

The majority of the Zhuhuo Guards had gone searching outside the city and down the mountain.

Indeed, when a person has been struck by an unbearable blow and finds they cannot escape the pain no matter what, it is only natural to want to flee the place that causes such suffering.

This was human nature — to say nothing of a child under the influence of Fengchun Sheng.

But what manner of person was this Young Sect Leader Changliu? He was not a common person, and he followed no common nature.

Ah Ku did not believe it. Yun Changliu, who would rather harm himself than harm those around him, would truly abandon the loved ones he cherished, abandon the Zhuyin Sect, abandon him — and flee heedlessly from Xifeng City, running alone down Shenlie Mountain.

— Besides, with the Young Sect Leader’s particular aversion to strangers, shunning them as he would snakes and scorpions, would he truly choose to plunge into the noisy, clamorous mortal world in a moment of pain?

Ah Ku still did not believe it.

Then why had he run away?

Where in the world did he want to go?

“……”

Ah Ku opened his eyes and tilted his face up toward the sky overhead.

Through the white sweep of blowing snow, he saw dark masses of cloud pressing down over Shenlie Mountain, the highest peak nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness.

……

Yun Changliu stood before the darkness.

The Young Sect Leader’s white robes snapped and billowed in the mountain wind. He stood here alone — and it was as though upon a vast canvas of black, a single point of white had been abruptly placed, striking the heart with a contrast so vivid it was almost painful.

He was standing on the very edge of a sheer cliff. The tips of his feet were suspended in air. Between him and the boundless, bottomless darkness lay only half a step.

If he leaned forward now, he would fall straight down ten thousand feet of cliff — and be shattered beyond doubt.

Yun Changliu’s expression was blank. Snowflakes clung to the strands of hair that had come loose around his face. The severe blood loss from his recent grave injury had left his body ice-cold, and it had not been long before snow had settled thickly over his shoulders as well.

He gazed quietly into the darkness. He was gazing into death.

…The truth was that Yun Changliu very much wanted to die.

Because he already knew: he himself was the source of all misfortune.

His mother, whom he had never met, had died on the night she brought him into the world.

The moment he was born, his father had been driven nearly to madness by the virulent poison in his body — how much internal energy had been spent in passing on his cultivation, and how much blood and carnage had been stirred up across the jianghu… The Zhuyin Sect now had enemies everywhere, and nine parts in ten of that could be traced back to this.

As for the lives killed in the course of all that, he could not even begin to know how many there had been. Those medicine children who had died — not even their names were known to anyone.

And that was to say nothing of the fact that now, every additional day he lived, he had to purchase with another person’s blood.

Viewed this way, it seemed he was not only the source of everyone’s misfortune — he was misfortune itself.

No matter how many times Yun Changliu turned it over in his mind, he could only arrive at one answer:

It was the mistake of him being alive.

He really did want to die. If only he could die.

…And besides, he truly was in a great deal of pain himself.

Yun Changliu looked at that cliff, and thought silently to himself:

If only I could die.

Die, and it would be silent forever… and it would stop hurting.

The body would stop hurting. The heart would stop hurting too.

If there could truly be such a day — that would be a happiness he could not even have imagined in his wildest dreams.

But he could not die.

If he died, there was no knowing how heartbroken his father would be. Many people would be implicated. Danjing, who had let slip the truth about the medicine children, might face retribution in his stead. And Ah Ku — Ah Ku would certainly be killed.

The gaze with which Yun Changliu stared into the dark abyss at his feet flickered with a faint, fragile thread of envy.

The way he looked at death was just like the way he had once sat inside Changsheng Pavilion gazing at the birdsong and blooming flowers outside — wanting it deeply, yet knowing it was within sight but beyond reach.

To live was wrong. To die was also wrong. Neither life nor death was permitted to him.

This was too hard. How could there be anything in the world this impossibly cruel?

The wind and snow brushed across Yun Changliu’s brow, bringing with it an icy chill.

The Young Sect Leader began to feel dazed. In truth he had long been exhausted, aching, and cold to the bone — but he wanted even less to go back to Medicine Gate and face anyone, and so he could only go on standing here.

A colour of weary, bone-deep exhaustion spread and seeped through the depths of his eyes. In the hollow of his heart, gnawed to numbness by suffering, it was as though the claws of ghosts and monsters were crawling and climbing.

…If only he could simply stop thinking about everything and just jump — end it all cleanly.

But he still had to live. Go on living. Go on surviving.

For Ah Ku. For his father. For the Zhuyin Sect. For Danjing and Chanjuan. For strangers he had never met—

Without hope, without expectation — go on living. Only living.

…No. No, that was not right.

That was what used to be true.

But now, it seemed not quite right anymore.

Yun Changliu tilted his head slightly, and a faint, dazed, guileless light passed through his eyes.

All at once, in this very moment, he discovered with surprise that there was still one small thing he was looking forward to.

When spring came next year — Ah Ku had said he would bring him peach blossoms.

He wanted that.

Ah Ku had also said he would pick flowers for him every year.

He wanted that!

In an instant, Yun Changliu’s mind cleared. He drew a sharp breath and stepped back — and both feet abruptly left that cliff edge behind.

In the next moment, the Young Sect Leader heard footsteps carried by the wind approaching from behind him.

On instinct he turned his head.

And he saw, impossibly, a light.

In the black night, in the wind and snow — a young boy in blue robes carried a lantern, coming up step by step from along the steep and winding mountain path, far off in the distance.

Yun Changliu froze.

The lantern in that blue-robed boy’s hand swayed violently in the bitter wind. That wavering light was like a leaping tongue of flame, parting the boundless and sorrowful sea of black — and in a single instant, it burned warm into Yun Changliu’s dim and darkened eyes.

Ah Ku finally crossed over from the mountain path to the peak where Yun Changliu stood, and halted there, a little distance away, looking at the Young Sect Leader.

The corners of his eyes still held a trace of a smile. He said gently, “Someone bothered you, didn’t they? Drove you to hiding in a place like this.”

“Mm,” said Yun Changliu, who had stood in dazed silence for a long while, and finally gave a small nod. He looked at Ah Ku, and the cool, composed features of his face gradually softened. “It’s the quietest here.”

And so Ah Ku carried his lantern and kept walking forward, walking to Yun Changliu’s side.

On this winter night, atop a vast and open mountain peak — wind wrapped around falling snow, unceasing — that young boy in blue robes, carrying his lantern, walked to the side of the white-robed Young Sect Leader.

— This was Shenlie Mountain. Xifeng City. Wolong Platform.

— It ought by rights to have been the forbidden ground where the Zhuyin Sect Leader entered closed-door cultivation; but because the current Sect Leader Yun Guyan feared for the Young Sect Leader’s ailing body and dared not enter seclusion, this place had long since fallen into disuse for many years.

— And so now, Wolong Platform was nothing more than the highest, coldest, and most silent place on all of Shenlie Mountain.