They say that when a person faces someone who once hurt them, there is a grief and anger that is difficult to suppress.
Over the past months, every time the night deepened and she recalled what happened on Doucheng Ridge, Xiao Nanhui was the same.
Yet now that he was truly standing before her, she found she was not as overcome as she had been when she could not see him. Perhaps it was that many of her questions had already been answered. Or perhaps it was that her accusations had lost their meaning. Or perhaps it was simply that him standing there stirred so many memories in her.
He wore the most ordinary indigo cloth garment. He used to dress this way after returning to the manor. In his hand was a long spear — gilded at the tip and wooden in the shaft. The spear handle was a length of white wax wood. Only the spearhead bore the familiar bronze-base and dark-patterned white steel. Long, long ago, when he first taught her spearmanship, he had used this very kind of spear. Even the technique he had just used — the rear-drawing spear thrust — was the move he was proudest of, the one he had spent the most time teaching her.
But the richer the memories of the past, the more desolate the present scene before her.
She tried to flex her fingers, and only then realized the blood on Jiějia had already congealed, pressed tight against her skin, her fingers stuck to the hilt.
“Where is he?”
The general in plain clothes stood crosswise with his spear, and only spoke after a long silence.
“Your martial arts were personally taught by me. You cannot win against me.”
“My spearmanship was indeed taught by my adoptive father. My swordsmanship was not.”
When her words ended, Jiějia rang out a bright note and became a streak of white light, striking straight for the other party’s vital point.
Against Xiao Zhun, she absolutely could not be careless. Beyond bringing ten-parts of her strength, she also had to concentrate on every breath and every block, calculating the follow-up moves, before there was any possibility of gaining even the slightest advantage. But she had already become emotional to some extent. Reason had long since burned out, and every swing of the sword left not the slightest room for restraint.
She knew she wanted to prove something.
She wanted to prove his mistake, prove that he was now the past, prove that she had become a better version of herself.
But she simply could not swing the one blow that proved all of this.
“To use the short against the long, the shallow against the deep. You are still not prepared.”
She truly was not prepared. But if she waited until she was prepared, it would all be too late.
“Tell me where he is!”
He blocked her attack and immediately put her on the defensive with a counter.
“Today’s events are also already settled. A dragon lying low should make no moves — the strategy of the defeated army. The lessons taught to you long ago — do you still not understand them?”
“The art of war, military regulations, victory and defeat — can any of them outweigh a human life?” One strike failed; another rose immediately. She swung the sword in her hand until it left afterimages. “Even if you are no longer a Tiancheng officer, they are still Tiancheng soldiers — soldiers you personally trained. How can you bear to watch them go to their deaths like this?!”
The blade tip was deflected, and she steadied her aching wrist as she looked toward the other party.
In the black-and-white chaos, the general in plain cloth stood in the mist, like a ghost.
“There is no Qinghuai Marquis here, no Supreme Commander of the Northern Quietude — only the last survivor of the Xiao Family. When all is said and done, you are also a person of the Xiao Family. To face each other with weapons drawn now — by what identity, and from what position?”
“From the moment you abandoned me at Doucheng Ridge, I was no longer a person of the Xiao Family.” She tried to say all of this coldly and fiercely, yet her voice still could not suppress a few traces of choking. “Even if I have no family of my own anymore, Tiancheng still stands. The lessons about family and country and all under heaven were taught to me by you. Now that you have betrayed first, by what right do you question my position?!”
Her words fell, and the air stiffened for a moment. The person standing across from her only opened his mouth after a long silence.
“At that time I placed the security of the land and the people first. Xiao Dai placed the survival of all under heaven first. Yet what end did we come to?! Our home was shattered, our family broken apart, separated by life and death. And all of this was nothing more than a result of the Xie Clan’s slight suspicion — born of their desire to protect their own lasting dynasty! It was Tiancheng who betrayed the Xiao Family first. By what face do you condemn my betrayal?!”
She knew she could not rebut this, yet she was still moved and unable to contain herself.
She wanted to say: but you did not only betray Tiancheng — you betrayed me as well. Yet in the end, looking at that face covered in pain and grief, she could not bring herself to say it.
She tightened her grip on the sword in her hand. Blood and sweat were tangled together, twisting until her palm ached.
“None of what you speak of — he did not know of it at the time. None of this was his doing. He did nothing wrong.”
“And what wrong did the Xiao Family do?!” Having said this, Xiao Zhun’s voice suddenly dropped. “He carries Xie Family blood in his veins. The imperial family is above all else without feeling. If yesterday’s scene were to repeat itself, how do you know he would not make the same choice?”
He would not.
He acted with a certain ruthlessness in all things, and she had never been able to fully read his intentions. Yet she had an answer in an instant, without thinking.
But before she could reply, Xiao Zhun came at her again with the spear.
This time, the other party was clearly no longer holding back — intent on ending this duel with speed.
She knew the Xiao Family’s spear techniques inside and out, but there was one move she had never learned: the killing strike. She had once been defeated by that technique. Even Ping Xian had been broken by it. The psychological dread it held for her vastly outweighed any tactical disadvantage.
A spear — the most unyieldingly powerful of all weapons. Sweeping wide across four directions, it does not retreat from the enemy, and cannot be penetrated by water or smashed by stone.
But the sword in her hand was only two feet and seven inches, and she had barely trained with its techniques for more than a few days. The harder she pushed offensively, the more she was driven back. The more urgently she tried to break through the spear technique, the more she was constrained at every turn.
Three more feints and real strikes in succession — unable to respond in time, she had no choice but to block with a cross-parry. Jiějia’s slender blade met the assault head-on, holding firm purely by an act of will.
The grinding noise of copper against iron, along with its vibration, traveled from the hilt through her wrist, her upper arm, and into her torso, reminding her of the moment Ping Xian had been severed.
The webbing of her hand split open; blood poured freely. She gripped the hilt desperately and held on.
Blood ran slowly down the blade, leaving a thin red line across the smooth, unadorned surface — as if the blade itself had cracked open.
In a daze, she thought of Bolao again.
She did not know whether, in that bone-chilling night just before Bolao fell, he too had seen the same sight and felt the same way.
Fighting until one’s strength ran dry, yet every step a dead end.
She suddenly remembered the expression on Li Yuan Yuan’s face as she taught her the very last form of the sword technique. It was the kind of resolve that could cut through everything, leaving no retreat and no regret.
To advance by retreating — to give up one’s life and uphold righteousness.
To deliver a powerful blow, one often needs to first take half a step back.
Perhaps all resolution was not in holding on, but in learning to let go.
Both knees bent, her right leg stepped back. The balance she had maintained with such effort collapsed in this moment, and the spearhead came at her with the force of a thousand catties. This time, she did not try to block it.
The silver spearhead with its razor edge descended with fierce and formidable force, embedding itself deep into her right shoulder. Blood instantly soaked half her arm. The bone-piercing pain made her breath seize, then it mixed with the wounds torn open in her heart and became a single mass of bloody confusion.
From the moment fate wrote the bond between him and her — using her growth to compensate for the pain of his lost family — the day of severing that bond was always going to come.
The hand gripping the sword relaxed, and Jiějia fell. But another hand caught it immediately.
The left-hand sword rose against the current, soaring upward, threading out the final form of the soul-rending technique.
Three inches below the ribs, the inner side of the thigh, the ankle — then along the spine upward, up through the crown and out. The thin, cold blade grazed the general’s spine and came out, heading straight for his neck.
So this was the heart of soul-rending — the more resolute and unsparing one was, the more swiftly and fluidly the blade flowed.
So a sword could move this fast. Fast enough that before she could even react, life and death were already decided.
Her battle-maddened eyes cleared suddenly in this moment.
The blade halted just at the back of his neck, the whistling resonance of its channeled energy still lingering at the tip.
“You have lost.”
The figure beneath the blade stiffened and tried to pull free. She pressed in three more inches.
“If you move again, I will have no choice but to cripple your arm!”
Xiao Zhun’s corner of his mouth shifted slightly, his voice resolute.
“The Xiao Family has a mansion full of martyrs and heroes. Not one of us surrenders without a fight.”
“Surrender and defeat are words for enemies — not for one’s own people. How can this be called surrender?!”
He half-turned his head. She dared not look at that half of his expression.
“Then kill me.”
Her hand gave the slightest tremble — whether from exhaustion or uncertainty. Jiějia’s blade hung at his neck, and in an instant blood would be drawn.
“Kill me. Let me be the one—” He slowly closed his eyes, yet the resolution in his voice was no less than hers. “At this point, neither of us can advance or retreat. I am older than you by more than a decade — let me step half a pace forward for you and be the one to settle this.”
Before his words ended, he had already leaned into her blade.
She yanked her hand back and pulled Jiějia away. He was left grasping at nothing.
“Can dying put an end to everything? If so, then wouldn’t those who lived be ridiculous?” She breathed in deeply, doing her best to speak sincerely. “You once told me that before every battle, I should recall something good — so that I could live well through it. You are more than ten years older than me. Do you have fewer things to hold on to than I do?”
Xiao Zhun opened his eyes, yet they held no light.
“Through a hundred battles the general dies; after ten years the warrior returns home. To bear in mind one’s parents and elder siblings — let alone ten years at the frontier, even decades in torment are endurable, worth the wait. But now the manor stands empty. There is no one waiting for me to come back.”
She crouched down, her gaze level with his.
“How can the manor have no one? I am still here — I am still willing to be your family. As long as you are willing, we are always family.”
She said this urgently, waiting impatiently for him to waver, to turn back — yet she never heard that answer.
Thud. A dull impact. She slowly looked down.
A blood-tipped arrow, a slender shaft, had just pierced through the general’s chest. Blood flowed from the hollow shaft of the arrow, splattering into her eyes.
“My apologies for interrupting your reunion.” A slender, curved white horn bow lowered slowly. The hand holding it was pale, slender, and delicate, carrying a sense of innocence. “It is only that a sacrificial altar cannot hold two offerings. You understand, don’t you?”
The hand holding the sword fell listlessly. The trembling at her wrist spread through her entire body. She felt as if something had been shattered and dissolved, now slipping away between her fingers like flowing sand.
“Nan Hui…”
She blinked her dry eyes, and leaned stiffly toward him. She could only hear that familiar voice leave one last long, exhaled breath against her ear.
“I’m sorry…”
The general’s body grew heavy, as if something light had departed from him in this moment. But she still did not let go. She only looked down at the sword in her hand, covered in blood.
“It is my fault. If I had had a sword in my hand the last time, could I have kept you? And if I had, would everything be different now?”
“Even if we started over from the beginning, the result would be the same. His fate was sealed more than ten years ago, no matter how many tributaries it may have passed through, no matter how many twists and turns it may have taken — in the end it was always going to flow back together and move toward the same end.” The woman paused, then looked with some regret at the man lying on the ground with an arrow through his chest. “He was too cowardly. Not worthy of standing at my side.”
The body in her arms grew cold by degrees. She slowly rose, turned, and looked at Bai Yaoguan behind her.
It may have been her imagination, but the mist around them seemed to have thinned slightly. Just moments ago she could barely see her own hand in front of her face — now she could vaguely make out figures dozens of steps away.
“He gave up everything for you, yet in the end you call him only cowardly?”
“He did not do it for me. He did it for himself.” The figure drew a little closer — one could just make out that face, beautiful even in its desolation, with a hint of stubbornness. “Whether the hatred of his family’s destruction, or the resentment of a lost love — these were all the rise and fall of his own personal fate. Carrying that hatred, he was driven by me. And now you are the same.”
She worked to suppress the urge to tear the other party apart, telling herself that not everything was over yet, that she had to stay calm. Then she took Jiějia and cut away half her hem to bind the wound on her shoulder.
“You forget — your younger brother is still in Tiancheng’s hands. I hear he has been sent to the imperial dungeon. If you press on recklessly, his fate will not be pleasant, I am afraid.”
“Is that all the cards you hold?” The woman lowered her head. Half her long hair fell across her face. She appeared on the verge of tears — yet when she spoke again, her voice still carried a trace of something like laughter. “My father was foolish and obstinate. He always placed great hope in my younger brother and named him Zhi — believing that the misfortune of the Bai Clan could be ended with him. But people truly should not be too greedy. Having already gotten a clever and patient elder daughter and elder son who were willing to be sacrificed for his disposal, he should not have also hoped that the youngest son born in his old age would be even more outstanding than his siblings. That child is his retribution — his retribution for how cruelly he treated his own children.”
Xiao Nanhui stared fixedly at the blurred figure, and after a long silence slowly began to speak.
“You are not Bai Yaoguan. Even if she were heartless, she once had genuine feelings for my adoptive father, and held family honor above all else. Who are you?”
“If I am struck down, the Bai Family will never be able to turn their fate around. Even if he lives, he is only the descendant of a traitor — even the most wretched beggar in Quecheng could look down on him. The same goes for Xiao Zhun. For people like that — one with noble capital lineage, one descended from a family of loyal and illustrious generals — how could they live that way?” The figure stepped back a few paces, her voice drifting somewhat in the mist. “I am Bai Yaoguan. Bai Yaoguan is me. Do you think that by using her body I have driven her away? I would not lower myself to that.”
Xiao Nanhui moved quietly closer toward the figure.
“Nothing but selfish interest — why dress it up in such high-sounding language?”
The figure in the mist paused, then, sensing her intent, turned and ran.
She quickened her steps and pursued, but could only see a blurry shadow wavering ahead. The woman’s clear laughter drifted from within the mist, lingering and refusing to disperse.
“It was such a pity not to have killed you at the Jiaosong imperial resort. Looking at you now, you are indeed a nuisance — tenacious to the extreme.”
She said nothing and pressed on, feeling herself at the center of a vast labyrinth, vast and boundless in all directions, with no one she was searching for anywhere in sight.
The ground receding swiftly beneath her feet changed from level to sloping, and she realized she was heading down into a low depression. If what had just happened seemed like her pressing forward step by step, forcing the other to retreat, now it felt somewhat more like being lured into a trap.
Her heart beat faster and faster. The wound in her shoulder went from burning to numb. A feeling she could not quite name made her head spin faintly, until the slope beneath her feet leveled out, and the familiar figure appeared before her.
He still wore what appeared to be the dark garment from when he had left, sitting cross-legged, his expression serene — the same way he had looked sitting in meditation on the edge of the precipice after they crossed the Seven Fathoms Chasm in Bijiang.
She took a few urgent paces toward him, and Bai Yaoguan’s figure appeared behind him.
The white-clad woman clung with extreme intimacy to the man in dark clothes’ torso, like a white serpent coiled around a sacred bodhi tree.
The fury and hatred in her heart could be held back no longer. She snarled viciously.
“Release him!”
The other party seemed to hear the exact opposite of what was said — rather than stepping back, she drew even closer. A pair of slender, pale hands slid from the man’s face down to his neck, and from his neck moved to settle on his chest.
Yet the frame beneath those hands remained still, giving not the slightest response. This seemed to frustrate the instigator greatly.
“Master Wumi passed down everything he knew to him, then had him secluded in the tower for years of arduous cultivation — it is plain he knew all along that a battle with me was inevitable one day, and intended him to hold the final line. A pity that, for all the trouble Wumi went to raising such a disciple, in the end he still fell into the mortal world.” Bai Yaoguan spoke on while swiveling her eyes, looking at the sword-bearing woman standing there, covered in blood. “And now you cannot stir him, and he will not of his own accord step out of this samadhi. I, though I have used every method, cannot shake him or make him willingly leave this state of meditation. But you are different. Why not call out a few more times — perhaps he will answer you.”
Bai Yaoguan finished and laughed again.
Xiao Nanhui said nothing. The more flagrant the other party’s arrogance, the calmer she became.
“I have seen the power of divine blood. But precisely because of that, I have a question or two.” She looked around, confirming there was no Pu Huna ambush in the vicinity. “Earlier at the third stone stele, even Aunt Dai alone could drive back hundreds from a hundred paces. Yet you have not made a move since just now — even when killing my adoptive father, you used a bow and arrow. And you boast of many followers, yet from just now I have not seen any of your flying lackeys.”
Bai Yaoguan’s laughter gradually ceased. She finally slowly raised her head and looked at the disheveled woman with unwavering eyes, scrutinizing her.
“What are you trying to say?”
“This mist makes it impossible for you to use your divine powers right now, and you do not want anyone else to come near here. Am I not correct?”
Before her words fell, a young voice suddenly rose behind her.
“Miss Xiao, stop wasting words with her — quickly seize her!”
Before she could gather her thoughts, another figure came hurtling in from the left rear, a long blade cutting a trailing shadow through the mist.
“What are you standing there for?!”
Xiao Nanhui finally snapped out of it, and without time to think further, raised Jiějia and followed close behind Ding Weixiang.
A fifty-pace distance — even a top-tier martial artist needs seven or eight leaps to close in. And in that same time, an ordinary archer from Black Feather Camp could put an arrow through a moving target three times over.
And the other party was not an ordinary archer.
Bai Yaoguan notched an arrow and drew the bow, narrowing her eyes to lock onto two shadows moving fast in the mist.
Whoosh.
A black arrow grazed her scalp and flew past. She wasted not a shred of energy on dodging or evading, keeping her speed as she pressed forward, saving every moment of hesitation to pour into a surging advance.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two more arrows. One grazed her right arm. One nearly shot through Ding Weixiang’s shoulder blade.
But both of them were set in their minds, advancing rather than retreating — without prior discussion, they split into two separate paths and closed the distance. They gambled that the mist would be their best cover, and gambled that within these fifty steps they could seize the last sliver of a chance to live.
Whether it was Heaven’s blessing, or the timing of that desperate moment of perfect precision, by the time the woman had her last arrow notched and was about to draw, blade and sword arrived together.
The sharp edges passed through her side, curved around her shoulder blade, and crossed at her throat.
The longbow fell to the ground. The woman’s hair scattered loose. She looked like a vicious ghost as she tried to lift herself up — but was pressed back down without mercy, in the very next instant, by both the blade-user and the sword-user.
Both of them bore down with full force, as if the figure under their hands was not a young woman’s body but an enemy northern barbarian captured alive.
The chest was compressed, and the sound of labored breathing squeezed from between the woman’s teeth. Even so, there was still a kind of contempt.
“That worthless bag of bones Wumi — dying and still spending his last effort on these petty tricks.”
“Tan high rising is yang, pit sunken is yin. Mound up soil for the altar to worship Heaven, sweep the ground for the consecrated field to worship Earth. You have set up the stage yourself — how could this humble monk not come to perform upon it?”
The young monk dragged his half-injured leg forward and wasted not a moment pulling out a scripture scroll from his robes, gently brushing the dust from its surface. He walked to the man sitting cross-legged on the ground, seated himself back-to-back with him on the ground.
“My foolish disciple always said the Great Compassionate Heart Dharani Sutra sounded finest when chanted, but I came out in such a hurry today, the only scroll I happened to grab was this Mahapratisara Dharani Sutra — it reads awkwardly out loud, but it is at least remarkably potent for subduing demons and exorcising gods. Would you say this is apt timing?”
Bai Yaoguan’s gaze fell on that scripture scroll. The corner of her mouth curved coldly.
“Even Wumi could not overcome me. What can you do? This demon-binding formation lasts no more than half an hour. What will you do when half an hour is past?”
“Half an hour is enough.”
Yikong said this, then reached a hand toward the white-clad physician who was crawling on the ground not far away.
Hao Bai cursed under his breath, but still, shaking, reached into his medicine bag — which had been crushed nearly flat in the chaos just now — and drew out a wrapped bundle. The coarse cloth unfolded, and inside it was a square of translucent green.
“This humble monk has always been opposed to taking life. Nor is it necessarily that I want your soul dispersed to nothing — only to seal you back inside this box, and today’s lesson will be considered complete.”
The四-sided square jade passed through several hands before coming to rest once again on the earth.
Yikong slowly spread open his scripture scroll and began to chant in a quiet voice.
A rotting smell began to emanate from the body of the young woman under their hands. Black blood seeped from every opening in her face, sketching her expression into something even more vicious.
“A broken stone wants to contain me forever? I have seen far more of the three thousand great thousand worlds than any mortal could. White marsh divination, Yunyang speech of men, the azure dragon’s dormancy in the deep, the chariot riding the clouds. Even so, I have never seen anything unbreakable. Mountains can be leveled, rivers and seas overturned. Wumi calculated that I would ultimately come here, staked everything and laid out this formation — so what? Human calculation cannot in the end surpass the calculation of Heaven. And I am Heaven!”
Xiao Nanhui looked at the near-manic expression on the woman beneath her blade, trying to convince herself this was only the other party’s last desperate bluff.
All of this should have been settled, should it not? But why — why did she feel something was not quite right?
Perhaps it was this enemy who was seemingly all-powerful and yet fell so easily into submission. Perhaps it was the mist, which was still gradually thinning all around. Or perhaps it was her narrow escapes from those arrows just now…
Wait.
She snapped her head around — but it was already too late.
In the even thinner mist, the outline of the ancient tower could now be made out. Three black-feathered arrows were embedded in the tower’s body — each one, with perfect precision, lodged into the joint between each story.
She could not see the crack spreading outward from where the arrows had struck, but she heard a faint sound of fracturing. In barely a breath’s time, the entire upper half of the stone tower collapsed with a thunderous crash. The demon-subduing pestle at the top of the tower fell.
At the same moment, the last piece of mist disappeared in an instant.
The night sky above was laid bare. Rolling, heavy clouds shot through with thunder and lightning converged above the whole of Buxu Valley into a vast whirlpool.
On instinct, she twisted her wrist to drive the sword in her hand into the other party’s throat — but an immense, invisible force came at her, and the edge of her weapon could not get even half an inch closer.
The blood-streaked woman slowly raised her eyes. Both pupils were wide, shining with excited light.
“Now it is my turn.”