Shentu Zhuojia stood where he was and took a slow breath before stepping inside. In the vast cave stood a bright bed, and on the stone table rested a dark blue Canghai pearl zither.
Li Minghan lay quietly on his back in the middle of the cave, on a crystal dragon bed. His pale skin still held a faint trace of color, and the slight tremble of his lashes silently proved that he was not truly dead. His hands were folded over his chest, holding a black mysterious pearl. His thin body looked especially fragile lying there. He wore the same clothes he had on the first time he met Shentu Zhuojia, only now there was a red coral ornament at his waist.
Looking at the sleeping Li Minghan before him, Li Luoning's feelings were complicated.
He did not know whether the choice he had made back then had been right, for in the end, it was by his own hand that he had cut off Li Minghan's only blood kin in this world.
Looking at Li Minghan's face, Li Luoning fell into a daze for a moment, and the Moonshadow Dan in his chest reacted as well.
"It is said outside that the Magic Venerable locked him forever in the back mountain of Wuming and that he will never be allowed to take another step out," Li Luoning said.
"The Chuan'an Yuanmo Seal may be one of the secret arts passed down through the generations of my demon clan's rulers, but it is not without a way to break it. The reason I used it before so many eyes was only so the world would slowly forget Minghan's existence. Minghan and I knew each other in our youth. He saw me as an elder brother, and I saw him as my closest friend. Even if he was at fault, I, as the elder brother who watched him grow up, could not be so absolute."
"I always knew Uncle Yingde treated Minghan harshly, but I never understood why, until one day I saw you in the Dragon Palace," Shentu Zhuojia continued.
"So Uncle Yingde always knew. He simply never allowed the two of us to meet," Li Luoning said quietly.
"Uncle always forbade Minghan from showing his true face, yet he never explained why. Then one day Minghan happened to see you by accident, and he took it as proof that his adoptive father had kept him only as a shadow of you. In a rage, he cut out his own bone to return it to his father and left the Dragon Palace."
"So that short sword on that day..." Li Luoning finally understood why, in the battle on Wuming Mountain, Li Minghan had been able to merge that short sword into his body so easily. He also understood why Yingde Dragon King had left it to him in the first place.
Shentu Zhuojia nodded, his eyes full of sorrow as he looked at Li Minghan.
"I had wanted to persuade him to let it go, so I told him to travel through the mortal world. I never thought he would end up meeting the one person he never should have met. Not long after he entered the mortal world, the secret that he was the vessel of the Moonshadow Dan was discovered, and it even reached my father's ears."
"Ou Shinan?"
Shentu Zhuojia nodded in agreement.
"Looking at it now, that Ou Shinan may have already known about you brothers long ago. That was why he deliberately approached Minghan and then spread the news that he carried the Moonshadow Dan to my father. That man truly is skilled at laying long plans and hiding deep schemes. One cannot help but be on guard against him."
"So all of this, which seemed so natural and inevitable, had already been part of Ou Shinan's design. For the sake of uniting the three realms, he plotted alone for so many years."
Shentu Zhuojia sighed. "I used to think that as long as my demon clan kept to its place and the people of Fanli Valley lived in peace, the rest of the world had nothing to do with me. Now it seems that in these three realms, not a single person can truly remain apart."
"Ou Shinan is all honeyed words and hidden poison. He is skilled at controlling hearts. In Pingyan, he was cruel and vicious, utterly ruthless. If the three realms truly fall into his hands, the people of the world will never know a single peaceful day," Li Luoning said.
"I imagine it was also his doing, tempting Minghan and spreading word of the Moonshadow Dan. On his way back to the Dragon Palace, Minghan was captured by my father and locked away in Kunlun Hill, where they tried to seize the power of the Moonshadow Dan inside him. But everyone under heaven knows that a Dan of that grade cannot be obtained by another person, no matter how hard they try, unless it is given willingly or taken by a blood relative. To get Minghan's Moonshadow Dan, my father had him bound with the Thousand-Clawed Refining Lock and tormented him in every possible way, and I knew nothing." At this, Shentu Zhuojia's face showed both guilt and pain, and his eyes stayed fixed on the faint scar on Li Minghan's upper lip.
"Minghan once told me that after being imprisoned in Kunlun Hill and tortured for days by my father, he escaped by sheer luck. It seems now that the one who rescued him from Kunlun Hill must also have been that Ou Shinan," Shentu Zhuojia said with certainty.
"When I received the urgent report and rushed there, I found Minghan had already drained all the demonic cultivation from my father's body. After that, he imprisoned me in a hidden chamber and took the seat of the Magic Venerable in my place."
"That is why, after the Magic Venerable came out of seclusion, he always wore a mask. He was hiding the fact that he had taken another's place," Li Luoning said.
Shentu Zhuojia nodded. "At first, I thought he only meant to borrow the power of the demon clan to stir up one battle with you, to make up for what was missing inside him. I never imagined he would go farther and farther down the path of slaughter."
"If it were not for the Dan inside our bodies, perhaps we brothers would have been nothing more than children in an ordinary family, with a kind father and filial sons, living peacefully by our parents' side."
He no longer knew whom this should be blamed on, whether the cruel father who had abandoned Li Minghan back then, or Situ Fanzhi who had cast that heavenly fire, or the fact that he and his brother had been chosen as vessels without having any say in it.
"Minghan looks strong on the outside, but in truth he has always been terribly afraid of the dark. He has been that way since childhood."
"So I took the Mysterious Pearl that Uncle had once given me and went down into the deep sea to find him this glowing dragon bed. That way, when he was alone, he would not feel so afraid." Shentu Zhuojia gently stroked the patterns on the dragon bed as he spoke softly.
"He killed your father. Why do you not hate him?" Li Luoning found it hard to believe that Shentu Zhuojia, the ruler of the demon clan, could be so broad-hearted as not to seek vengeance for his father's death.
"In the state he is in now, is that not crueler than killing him?He planted the Qi Kuo parasite in me. If he fades away, I will vanish as well. It is not that I fear death, only that the demon clan cannot be left without a ruler for even one day. If someday there is someone fit to inherit the throne, then as his elder brother, I would willingly follow him below the Yellow Springs, where we could again play the zither and sit over a chessboard together."
If only he had noticed sooner, if only he had protected him more, perhaps none of this would have happened.
"Magic Venerable, you just mentioned Kunlun Hill. May I ask how much the demon clan knows about the terrain there?" Li Luoning suddenly changed the subject.
"My father built a prison there in those days, a place to confine the worst criminals and to tame fierce beasts. I do not know the layout in detail, but I believe something should be recorded in the scrolls my father left behind," Shentu Zhuojia replied.
"As things stand now, Ou Shinan is determined to rule the three realms, and he surely will not let Nian'er and me go. Rather than let him lead troops all the way from the Liaoyin Immortal Realm across Pingyan and Fanli Valley, we should spread word that we are in Kunlun Hill instead. That way, first, he will not be able to bring destruction to the people of the three realms along the way, and second, we can use the terrain there to our advantage."
On Wuming Demon Mountain, near Fanli Valley,
"The place you are looking for is in that direction,"
"Thank you for showing me the way,"
The courtyard that came into view made him think of the first time his Master had come to Wuming Demon Mountain to look for him. Back then, Miss Ruoying had fled with the two of them back to Peach Blossom Grove. Now Peach Blossom Grove could no longer be returned to, but Hua Ruoying's room still looked as it had before.
Mie Xingzhe drew a breath, gathered his courage, and pushed open Hua Ruoying's door. The dry wood gave a worn, creaking sound, and even in the moonlight he could see dust floating in the air inside.
Hua Ruoying's room was simply arranged. The screen in the central room was painted with white and pale purple flowers. To the left was a side room filled with shelves of herbs and poisons. To the right, a bed was hidden behind pale blue gauze curtains.
"These flowers on the screen... they are Hollow Valley Immortals."
Looking at the painted flowers, Mie Xingzhe recognized them at once, and could not help remembering how happy Hua Ruoying had looked the first time she saw the Hollow Valley Immortal in the Liaoyin Immortal Realm.
Only then did Mie Xingzhe understand why, to him, it had seemed like no more than an ordinary flower, while Hua Ruoying had been so happy at the sight of it.
At that moment, Mie Xingzhe seemed finally to understand that his feelings for Miss Ruoying had never been some one-sided fantasy of his own.
"Did I understand it all too late?"
Thinking back over everything that had happened between him and Hua Ruoying in Peach Blossom Grove, tears spilled from his eyes, yet a faint smile rose at the corners of his mouth.
Upon a sheet of paper on the writing desk in Hua Ruoying's side room lay two quiet lines:
When you dwell in shadow, your form can no longer be seen.
May you rest in the light, as I have always wished.
Mie Xingzhe did not see them. He merely turned and walked toward the other side of the room.
Pushing aside the gauze curtain, he remembered waking here for the first time. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the half mask lying on Hua Ruoying's dressing table.
As he lightly touched the things Hua Ruoying had once used, every inch his fingers brushed across felt like a knife that was not sharp enough to pierce cleanly, but only enough to grind slowly at his heart.
He could not feel the sharp pain of being stabbed through, but he could feel the torment of a blunt blade sawing through flesh. The mask he had once worn was more like a branding iron, heating all the memories he had shared with Hua Ruoying until they burned alive again.
"Miss Ruoying, I am sorry."
"Nian Nian."
Li Luoning's voice came from the central room. At once, Mie Xingzhe pulled his hand back from the mask, quickly forced his feelings down, wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, turned, and walked out.
"Master, how did you know I was here?"
"How could I not know what was in your heart?"
"Did Master come looking for me because something happened?"
The gust of wind from the closing door blew the sheet of paper in the side room onto the floor. But once again, it escaped Mie Xingzhe's notice, landing quietly near the doorway.
"I have two things to give you," Li Luoning said as he walked beside Mie Xingzhe, his tone calm and gentle. He opened the three fingers pinching together in front of Mie Xingzhe, and a pale green spell slowly spread apart. A beautiful butterfly fluttered into the air. Li Luoning opened his other hand, and the butterfly landed smoothly in his palm.
"A Liuguang Butterfly?"
"This one belonged to your brother alone," Li Luoning explained.
"Brother Qingyi's ..."
"Qingyi always loved poetry, painting, and beauty. The Liuguang Butterflies he cultivated were always different from those of other people. This one records everything from the day he entered the sect onward. I thought you might wish to know more of his past." Li Luoning gave a light push with his palm. The butterfly fluttered through the air, scattering shining motes of light as it settled onto Mie Xingzhe's shoulder.
Mie Xingzhe immediately held out both hands for the butterfly to land in them and cupped it carefully.
"Everything aboutBrother Qingyi? You are really giving it to me?"
"You and Qingyi are blood brothers. Naturally, his things should be left in your care."
The Liuguang Butterfly circled Mie Xingzhe lightly once, then disappeared from his shoulder.
"Brother Qingyi sword. But Master, did you not bury this sword..." Mie Xingzhe clearly remembered that his Master had buried it. How could it now appear again in his hand?
"I did indeed leave this sword in the Peach Blossom Grove as an offering to Qingyi, buried beneath the trees. But perhaps because you brothers are bound in heart, the sword gained spirit and came to my room on its own yesterday. It must be that Qingyi, knowing in the world below, wished to leave it to you as something to remember him by." Li Luoning spoke gently, trying to comfort him.
"Qingyi... brother..." Looking at the sword in his hand, Mie Xingzhe gently traced the patterns along the blade, and his eyes reddened.
But he had never once had the chance to call him brother aloud. He had been his senior brother, teaching him like a master, loving him like an elder brother.
"Moon?" Mie Xingzhe drew the sword and noticed the character for moon engraved on the blade, which left him puzzled.
"Men today no longer see the moon of ancient days, yet the moon today once shone on those who came before."
In the dungeon of the Liaoyin Immortal Realm, cries and shrieks rang out without end, mixed with the sharp crack of whipping.
Ou Shinan gently set down the teacup in his hand, picked up the fan beside him, pressed one hand to his temple, and began to fan himself lightly. The seductive charm in his eyes made him look almost like a woman spirit wearing a man's skin.
"It has been locked away so long. Of course it has a temper. But it should be about done by now."
Before the words had even fully left his mouth, he flicked the fan and a mass of purple-black magic slammed heavily into the tulu beast's forehead. Dazed by the hit, the beast shook its head. Seizing the moment, Ou Shinan summoned a black shadow from his sleeve and poured it into the tulu's mind.
As the sound of the tulu's struggling grew weaker and weaker, the shadow he had poured into it gradually took control of all its consciousness.
The once snow-white feathers on the beast's back rustled and changed bit by bit into deep purple wings with a dark gradient. Its eyes glowed with a black-green light, and a cloud of black shadow wrapped around its entire body.
"Come on, Let's go have some fun."