The clamour of combat outside the hall was unrelenting, and the Mingshes came in wave after wave, seemingly without end. He Bang had curled herself as tightly as possible inside her shell. The heat within the shell was rising steadily. She had forced herself to exchange a few words with the Mingshe, but by now she could not even produce sweat. Every drop of moisture within her body had been lost. The shell felt like a furnace, and she had long since run out of tears.

This place was not far from the main hall. She wanted to open her shell to assess her surroundings — but if she opened it… perhaps the heat alone would be enough to scorch her to ash.

In the hall, Jiang Haoran held He Bang and would not let go. Rong Chen Zi had no choice but to step forward and hold off the Mingshe. Though the hall was spacious, it could not contain so many snakes. Flames and venom crisscrossed in the confined space while flying swords and magical implements wove in and out, giving what should have been a grand and sweeping battle a chaotic and disorganized quality. Jiang Haoran had retreated to a corner — the He Bang in his arms was barely clinging to life. By the fitful light of sudden flames, Jiang Haoran brushed the long hair from her forehead.

The hall was far too loud for her to hear what he was saying. He spared himself the words. He reached into his robes and drew out a small jade-green medicinal pill, just about to feed it into He Bang’s mouth, when his expression suddenly tensed.

He Bang had plucked the cone-shaped blade from his waist and driven it straight into his chest.

Jiang Haoran stared blankly, his gaze lost. “Panpan — have you still not forgiven me?”

His hands could cut through gold and sever jade — but he only stood, still and unmoving, watching her. In the unsteady light of the hall’s flames, his expression was full of grief. “I know you hate me. But Panpan — over a thousand years. Can you truly say you made no mistakes at all? You knew they were my family, and yet you would not even make a show of it for my sake. Perhaps I also made many mistakes — but Panpan, I truly loved you…”

The blood at his side flowed more and more freely, but he could not bring himself to cry out — she had clearly suffered so much in there, and if he drew the others’ attention now, how could the Jiang household’s people let her go?

No one around them noticed anything amiss. He Bang held the cone-shaped blade and cut into the mass of snakes, moving gradually closer to Rong Chen Zi.

He Bang was still inside the pot. But how extraordinarily keen was her hearing? Jiang Haoran’s hands might not compare to an internal cultivator’s, yet they were not to be underestimated. After living together for a thousand years, she had long since been able to pick out the distinctive sound of his golden hands amidst the chaos of battle. But why had he not made a move? Rong Chen Zi was present, and yet why did he always seem unable to settle his mind? The Daoist school emphasizes correctness and composure — was it not a grave taboo to let one’s spirit become unsteady in the face of an enemy?

She had indeed once been to Changgang Mountain. Right there beside the pool of spring water at the mountain’s summit, someone had bound her in a Divine-Demon Covenant through the meeting of souls. Within that meeting of souls, she had seen only black wings. The water demon in the Li Family Settlement who shared her exact appearance — was it the Mingshe, having borrowed spirit energy to take her form? She struggled with all she had. Rong Chen Zi was such a fool — he would surely fall for it!

But she could not get out. She strained to listen more carefully, and through the sounds of battle she caught something — the faint voice of a woman: “Zhiguan…”

He Bang opened her shell. Waves of heat crashed down upon her.

She extended her foot-like appendage. The pot’s surface — nearly melted through — let out a sharp hiss the instant she made contact. Her tender foot adhered to the pot, and in almost the same instant, the scent of cooking flesh rose up. He Bang strained with everything she had to climb. The appendage was scorched to black almost at once, and even the smoke lasted only a moment before it dissipated. The pain was so terrible she wanted to writhe across the ground in agony — but she could not. One step at a time, she dragged herself toward the rim.

So this was what pain felt like. The scorching surface of the pot pressed against her body. Her once-tender feet were now unrecognizable. That kind of pain made this four-thousand-year-old demon wish she had never existed at all. The rim of the pot was finally within sight. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she would not let a single one fall — she could not spare even one.

The fire at the rim was too fierce. She closed her eyes and rolled herself over the edge, and when she hit the ground, she heard the sound of her legs shattering. She called upon the essence of vitality she had stored within her body and transformed again into human form. But she could not stand. Those two legs — they had been utterly destroyed. She had barely crawled two steps before she wanted to burst into tears, but there was not a drop of water left in her shell. Even her voice was gone.

All she could do was force herself to crawl toward the room’s exit. Inside, a Three-Eyed Snake stood guard. It watched He Bang clawing her way upward, watched the flesh from her body stick to the pot’s surface piece by piece and quickly char to black ash — and yet she truly had pulled herself out.

But at that moment, she was so desperately weak. Even this ordinary Three-Eyed Snake no longer feared her. It crept slowly closer. Its tail coiled out and dragged her before it, then wrapped itself tightly around her, intending to hurl her back into the pot. The snake’s tail bound her legs in a crushing grip, and He Bang was nearly at the end of her despair.

But she could not go back. They would all die… Rong Chen Zi would die too.

She drew out her staff. With no water, she could not activate any technique. But she still had blood. She brought the staff down hard against her own wrist. After so many days without food, there was not much blood to speak of. She cut a second time with greater force, and at last a thin trickle seeped through. The staff was wet with blood and began radiating a crimson glow. The Three-Eyed Snake felt as though its entire field of vision had gone red. That vivid, brilliant colour cut into its body like a blade.

It held He Bang in its tight coil — but it no longer had the strength to throw her back into the pot. The white-and-yellow-patterned snake writhed on the ground in unwilling protest for a while, then finally went still.

But He Bang was still bound fast in its death grip. She could not crawl any further. Even the sounds outside had grown faint. She let her head drop — how she wanted to sleep. But she could not. If she slept, she would never wake. She knew she had to crawl out.

She strained and strained, but her legs would not move a fraction. She rasped a cry and wept for a while, then slowly raised the staff in her hand. The head of the staff concealed an axe-shaped shard of cold essence, sharp beyond measure. She pressed the trigger, and brought it down again and again against her legs. Blood welled up — still that same red. She kept striking. Toward the end, she wanted to wail aloud — but there was no one around. Who would she be crying for?

With the final blow, she was finally able to crawl forward — because her legs were no longer part of her body.

A voice seemed to sound somewhere in her mind, now near, now far. She forced her spirit to its limits and dragged herself out of the earthen chamber. In the shadows outside lay a person — crimson robes, dark hair, a face of luminous clarity.

He Bang crawled past him and studied him with great care. More than three hundred and sixty years of days and nights spent side by side — he was as familiar to her as every rise and fall of the tide in the waters off Lingxia.

The Mingshe must have returned to its own body. He Bang lingered beside him. And finally she crawled up and lay across him — no tears left, her voice no longer clear and bright. She could not even find any words. She could only choke out, with great difficulty: “Chunyu Lin… it hurts so much…”

The Chunyu Lin before her slept deeply and without stirring. In the old days, no matter how soundly he slept, the lightest call of his name would wake him. Whenever she was unhappy, he would tell her jokes, make her food. He used to say her shell was the most beautiful of all the Sea Clan in the Eastern Sea.

He Bang lay against his chest for a long, long time, and at last came to understand — he would not wake again.

Four thousand years. Master, junior sister, senior brother — and now him. One by one, they had all left her and gone on alone.

She crawled down from him and rolled onto the ground. She truly did not want to die. If even she died, who would remember all those beautiful or sorrowful meetings and partings — all the people who had once loved her so deeply?

Yet what life could last forever?

She had to be brave, and face this cycle of arising and ending.

She crawled to the doorway and looked back. In the shadows, Chunyu Lin lay sleeping serenely — as if she only needed to close her eyes to see his smile, still gentle as it had always been.

The sounds of battle grew closer and closer. He Bang’s hands were long since drenched in blood. The Mingshes inside the hall had been mostly eliminated, and the snake corpses were piled like mountains. The ancient Mingshe, with four wings spread wide upon its back, faced the assembled fighters in cold, silent confrontation. The Jiang household’s people had already noticed something was wrong with Jiang Haoran. Rong Chen Zi caught sight of He Bang the moment she crawled out from behind the Mingshe.

He could barely believe his own eyes. Standing beside him was another He Bang — her figure, her sweet and playful manner of speaking. Compared to her, the He Bang crawling out right now looked like a filthy corpse.

And yet Rong Chen Zi recognized in an instant that this was truly her. Despite the blood and grime across her face, her gaze was so clean and clear. Within that quietly endured pain was even the faintest trace of pride — as though she were standing with hands on her hips and bellowing aloud: What the hell! You stinking Mingshe — didn’t I crawl out after all?!

She smiled and raised her staff. Rong Chen Zi met her gaze. His lips curved in a smile — but his eyes were streaming with tears. He closed his eyes, turned, and embraced the false He Bang beside him. At the moment the cone-shaped blade shot out, he struck with a sudden punch, shattering with focused force both her disguise and the snake body within her chest. The flesh and muscle beneath the skin burst into a fine mist of blood, yet the skin itself was entirely undamaged.

The male Mingshe had noticed nothing amiss. It beat its four wings and was about to spew fire. He Bang raised her staff. The bloody-crimson light flooded the hall. Only then did the Mingshe notice her presence. Even it was taken aback, and hastily swept its tail out to coil around her. It coiled with such force that its entire body had wound itself into a mass. “Xiaohe!” Rong Chen Zi’s cry was a sound of pure anguish. He Bang could no longer respond. Every single bone in her body was being crushed by the force of the snake’s coil — but there was no blood. Not a single drop.

She closed her eyes, not wanting her death to look too terrible. The Mingshe still desired the wind and water spirit essences — after all, they were wonders one might wait a lifetime and never encounter again. It hauled He Bang before itself, and then, as some realization struck it, its pupils flooded with horror.

He Bang soundlessly tugged at the corner of her mouth — and then came a deafening boom that made the entire hall shudder.

A spray of blood mist.

Flesh and bone flew in all directions throughout the hall, along with what appeared to be fragments of the staff. A river clam of a thousand years’ cultivation — who knew how many pearls she had stored within her shell? They all detonated at once. Even an ancient divine beast such as the male Mingshe was, after all, a creature of flesh and blood — how could it withstand such a blast?

Its body was riddled with wounds on all sides, its internal organs spilling outward, the sight growing more and more grotesque. It raged desperately, trying to find He Bang’s remains to tear her to shreds — and instead it encountered an equally desperate Rong Chen Zi.

This was no longer a contest between righteousness and evil. Rong Chen Zi’s eyes were wide with savage fury, and he spent every last golden talisman on his body — what Daoist principles, what cosmic order, what boundaries of conduct?

His eyes held nothing but this sky full of blood rain. In memory, she smiled as brilliantly as a flower in bloom, her voice soft and sweet: “I would not deceive you… I like you.”

Why should a single word of liking have to be proven with so much blood and tears? Why was it that the most tender and sweetest confession could only be believed when it was too late — in the very last moment, when nothing could be undone?

Jiang Haoran found He Bang’s body in a corner. That soft, delicate skin — there was not a single unbroken place on it left. Her pupils had completely lost their focus. Her voice was rough and hoarse, like iron scraping against iron. She was the vainest of demons, a creature of vanity through four thousand years of existence — and this was the most wretched and filthy moment of all those years. And yet she was smiling. She could not see anyone, could not hear any sound — yet she was still smiling.

“When I still had a true heart, I could never meet anyone who was true to me. And then, when I finally did, I was told I had no true heart left.”

Jiang Haoran wanted to press down on her wounds — but there were simply too many. He could only watch as the blood kept flowing. He Bang was still breathing, but her body… was gradually ceasing to feel pain.

She smiled faintly. “Rong Chen Zi… will be able to defeat the Mingshe, won’t he?”

Jiang Haoran held her hand, his face pressed close to her ear. “He will.”

Her voice was like the murmur of a dream. “Jiang Haoran — what I owed you both, I have repaid. What you owe me… I no longer want it.”

Jiang Haoran was silent for a long time. Slowly, he released her hand. That pale wrist fell without a sound.