“You are the final ray of sunlight in his life. I want you to personally deliver the knife to his heart and sever his last thread of hope!”
Chu Li, Chu Li, now I have killed this body’s father before you, killed the teacher who showed you kindness and mentored you, and helped Xi Linchen kill your subordinates, clearing a path for him to drive his blade into your chest. Have I already severed your last thread of hope?
Overwhelming grief and despair instantly surged through her chest. She slowly raised her head, gazing at those eyes filled with enormous despair and resentment. So many people stood between them, countless cold sharp arrows aimed at that lone, frail woman in the crowd. The chilling gleam of blade edges dazzled Qing Xia’s eyes. Countless people were clamoring, countless people were shouting wildly, countless people moved between them. Yet she could still so easily see through the layers of figures to his profound, anguished, despairing gaze.
Chu Li, this is a trap. We are all pieces in this game. I cannot break free, cannot escape, cannot charge out. I wanted to reach out and pull you up, only to find I was pushing you heavily downward instead.
Above is heaven, below is earth. Though I do not kill Boren, Boren dies because of me. I had no intention of harming you, yet I still personally shot the sharp arrow into your heart, slowly torturing away your hope, your kindness, your final expectations of human nature, piece by piece.
I wanted to walk cleanly through time, yet repeatedly fell into seas of blood. Ten thousand bloody waves surge before my eyes. From now on, there truly is no room for turning back. From now on, there truly is no reason to look back.
With a low shout, the surrounding crowd suddenly receded like a tide. Several court physicians knelt nervously on the ground, moving forward with Chu Li’s steps, anxiously covering his blood-soaked chest.
Chu Li walked closer step by step, his blood dripping to the ground drop by drop, like a blood-stained vengeful spirit crawling out from the abyss of despair, slowly approaching as if each step exhausted all his strength.
Finally, he stood facing Qing Xia from afar, his voice hoarse as if his throat had been burned by hot coals, carrying despair, exhaustion, and undisguisable desolation.
“You also want to kill me?”
Everyone in this world wants me dead—even you want to kill me now?
An enormous chasm rumbled open between them, so deep, so deep that even if all the yellow earth in the world were poured in, it could not be filled. Between heaven and earth, all was darkness, everything dim, stars and moon without light!
If high in the vast sky there truly are gods with wise eyes gazing down at the countless living beings below, then is my arrival also an important link in the chain of fate?
If every person’s existence shoulders a mission bestowed by heaven, then did I come here to push you completely into the abyss, to utterly destroy you?
If everything could start over, would I choose this turbulent and difficult life again, or would I rather die on Tokyo’s streets, letting cold snow cover my headless corpse?
“Chu Li,” Qing Xia’s voice was trembling slightly. She could not suppress the enormous, indescribable sense of powerlessness within her, her gaze filled with helplessness and sorrow. “I know that no matter what I say, you won’t believe me. But can you give me a chance to explain? This was not my intention. I didn’t kill Zhuang Qingxia. I’m not a spy plotting to overthrow Great Chu. I’m a soul from another world inhabiting this corpse. Zhuang Dianru was not a good person—he harbored ill intentions and would harm you… Chu Li, please, believe me. They will destroy you…”
Chu Li’s gaze was like a pitch-black sea, gradually losing all light. Even the anger, despair, and pain gradually disappeared. What remained was only such deep sorrow, such deep indifference, such deep alienation. Qing Xia stared straight at Chu Li, watching as that dark murderous aura gradually faded from him, replaced only by icy coldness, like icicles on a northern snow mountain peak, devoid of all warmth. Qing Xia’s lips trembled as she tried to speak, but her voice emerged like that of a desperate small beast. She slowly reached out her hand, wanting to grasp Chu Li’s robes like grasping the last thread of hope.
Suddenly, a bright white arrow shot through with a swoosh, slicing across the back of Qing Xia’s hand, drawing a streak of vivid blood and stopping her movement mid-air. The silver arrow embedded itself harshly in the ground, its tail quivering slightly like a leaf in wind and rain.
“What else do you want to say?”
An icy voice suddenly rang overhead. Qing Xia jerked her head up, staring at Chu Li’s face that had become completely cold without a trace of warmth. The final thread of hope in her heart finally sank deep, deep down!
“Are you still going to tell me you don’t know this person?” The voice hard as wrought iron bit by bit shattered the thick night. Blood continuously poured from his body. His face was extremely pale, yet his eyes grew colder inch by inch. A faint cold smile, whether self-mocking or mocking others, appeared. “Are you still going to tell me that appearing here dressed like this in the dead of night was just casual wandering on a whim? Just how stupid am I to repeatedly cherish feelings for you?”
Chu Li suddenly stepped forward step by step, carrying an aura of darkness that would destroy everything, his face almost viciously contorting. The flowing fires throughout the sky illuminated his pale cheeks and black armor with blade-sharp keenness. He said through gritted teeth in agonized tones: “Do you know? I really want to strangle that weak former self to death!”
Her eye sockets instantly turned red, but the frail woman just stood there, biting her trembling lips tightly, refusing to let a single tear fall. She breathed deeply, her chest heaving violently. Slowly, slowly, she straightened her spine and slightly raised her head. A pale face, like a white lotus in blood and filth—on that bloodless, plain visage were patches of hideous fresh blood. She stood with head held high, gradually calming herself, then turned to look at the cold man, smiling bitterly and shaking her head slightly: “Only you can save yourself. If you refuse to escape, then you can only sink into degradation. Chu Li, Zhuang Qingxia is already dead. Now, kill me too.”
She slowly closed her eyes and slightly raised her head. A sudden wind swept up, blowing off the black headwrap, and thousands of black strands suddenly scattered in the wild wind, dancing chaotically like broken butterfly wings. Qing Xia closed her eyes, her face sharp, thin, and pale, her slender neck snow-white. The pitch-black night adorned her backdrop as a single tear suddenly flowed from her tightly closed eyes, sliding down her gaunt cheeks and pointed chin, dropping into the pitch-black night, drifting in the wind and snow filling the sky.
Chu Li’s eyes narrowed slightly as he coldly observed this woman who had appeared countless times in his dreams over the past two years—her black long hair, gaunt cheeks, upright spine, pressed lips. She was a nightmare he could never escape, destined to torment him for life. Where exactly had things gone wrong, leading them step by step to today?
He gradually turned away, step by step distancing himself from what he considered the most perfect destination in his heart.
Taking steps, the first step crushed that afternoon of their first meeting. She stood in Lanting Hall, her gaze no longer weak as before but filled with confident radiance. She held her head high, coldly confronting him, saying in ringing tones: “What conditions? What purpose? Which faction do you represent? Lay your cards on the table clearly, then I can consider whether we have any need to continue talking.”
That day, her face was filled with confident brilliance—something he had never seen in anyone else. It was vivid, passionate, full of hope and enthusiasm.
Everything began from that day. All that followed was like the entanglement of destiny—thousands of threads binding them tightly together, impossible to break free from or cut apart, only to be trapped within, with nowhere to escape.
He staggered forward step by step, his footsteps unsteady, surrounded by panicked Nanchu ministers, his chest blood dripping with each step. Memory was like a giant axe, blow by blow severing all connections between him and her. Those years of joined hands, nights of embrace, scenes of fighting side by side collapsed thunderously in his heart like burning grasslands, roaring as they devoured all hope of rebirth.
Only at this moment did he desperately realize that he had already fallen so deeply in love with her. That despairing, unattainable love consumed his flesh and blood day and night like bloodthirsty insects clamoring in his bloodstream, driving sharp teeth deep into his bone marrow, boring into his heart bit by bit. Long, long ago—even at that first meeting in Lanting Hall—he had already realized this woman was not that shy, timid child, not that woman he felt guilty toward and ashamed to face directly. She was confident, calm, full of vitality. So when he was with her, he could be certain he was also alive, flesh and blood, rather than crawling alone in darkness, surviving like a groveling dog.
He loved so deeply, so profoundly that even he had been deceived by himself. He stubbornly refused to carefully investigate the problems about her, as if by not looking, everything would continue intact. He had been deceiving himself all along, finally waiting for this day when the wound was torn open by others—flesh, blood, and all—pain piercing to the bone marrow.