A figure, slightly staggering, walked back as quietly as he had left, coming and going silently like a drifting shadow. Zhong Chunji gently stood up. Chi Yun’s eyes opened—he hadn’t heard Tang Lici’s footsteps, but he had heard the sound of Zhong Chunji standing.
“You… didn’t sleep all night?” She gently approached Tang Lici. “Did you find him?”
Tang Lici had wiped away the blood and ash from his face, his wounds had been bandaged, and his tattered clothes had been torn off and discarded. Obviously, during his night journey, he had not only searched every room and mechanism in Wind and Flow House but had also tended to his injuries. Seeing Zhong Chunji approaching, he seemed somewhat surprised. “No…” Before he finished speaking, Zhong Chunji suddenly rushed forward, throwing herself directly into his arms. Tang Lici was caught off guard. If this had been an enemy, he would have had dozens of ways to instantly break the attacker’s neck, but the one rushing at him was Xue Xianzi’s beloved disciple, a young girl who had never done anything bad in her life. He raised his right hand and forcibly restrained his killing move. Suddenly his back erupted in severe pain. He flung Zhong Chunji away with one hand, his lips parting in a smile. “You—”
With a loud crash, Zhong Chunji was thrown ten paces away, landing hard and painfully all over, though uninjured. Climbing to her feet, tears burst from her eyes. She looked at Tang Lici with desolation, then turned and fled wildly. Chi Yun leaped up, his face changing dramatically. “That wench! She’s mad! Young Master—”
A needle had pierced Tang Lici’s vital point on his back. His true energy boiled and began to scatter. With a roar, he pushed forward with both palms, gathering all his life’s true power into both hands, striking toward the earthen wall before him! Chi Yun dodged aside urgently. Shen Langhun suddenly opened his eyes, his face full of shock. They heard a thunderous earth-shaking roar, earth crumbling and stones splitting, dust surging wildly, rock fragments and earth clods striking people painfully—a ray of sunlight shot in as that earthen wall was pierced through.
Outside the opening was bright sunlight. Fresh air rushed in directly. Tang Lici, exhausted of energy and strength, fell forward. Chi Yun and Shen Langhun both caught him. The three looked up and saw the scenery outside the earthen wall was beautiful and strange—the ground covered with snow-white sand and stones, dark red vines like blood growing on the sand and stones, with snow-white flowers blooming on the vines. Flowers and sand and stones mixed together—at a glance, one couldn’t tell what were fresh flowers and what was sand and earth. Perhaps in this world, fresh flowers and sand and rubble had no difference. Beauty, ugliness, purity, defilement—these were merely shackles, merely obsessions.
“An exit?” Chi Yun was somewhat dumbfounded. In an instant he had forgotten about Zhong Chunji’s surprise attack on Tang Lici, completely forgetting to investigate why she had stabbed him with that needle. The strange scenery outside the opening dazzled their eyes instantly.
“Bodhi Valley…” Tang Lici’s body struggled. He saw a tombstone among the snow-white sand and stones and dark red vines. Chi Yun and Shen Langhun hadn’t expected him to still have such strength after dispersing his power. He actually broke free with one motion, staggering forward in two or three steps. What hadn’t been visible in the underground before was now clear—step by step, he left bloody footprints on the snow-white sand and stones, all the way to the tombstone.
That tombstone read: “Tomb of Ancestor Liao Wenqi.”
Tang Lici fell to his knees before the grave with a thud. His face, which always wore only smiles, was filled with disappointment. He rarely, extremely rarely, showed real emotions on his face, but the disappointment at this moment was so simple and pure—so simple and pure it was the expression of a child, the kind of… disappointment that only a child who didn’t know how to hide any emotion would have.
Beneath layers of disguise, beneath calculations and schemes, beneath wealth and fame, beneath treachery and cruelty, at this moment, Tang Lici was just a very willful, very disappointed child who very much wanted to cry.
Chi Yun gently walked to his side, placing his hand on his shoulder. “Young Master.”
“Mm, what is it?” Tang Lici looked up. The expression on his face instantly carried a smile, his tone gentle and calm, exactly the same as usual.
As if the person who had just fallen before the grave and nearly cried wasn’t him, but merely a momentary illusion of Chi Yun’s.
Chi Yun stared blankly at his smile, not knowing what to say for a moment.
Shen Langhun stood to one side, silent.
Tang Lici slowly stood up. Under the sharp morning sunlight, yesterday’s blood on his newly changed clothes had dried into mottled, winding patterns. This morning’s fresh blood slowly seeped around the edges of the patterns, like blood-thirsty flowers blooming. Looking around, in this snow-white sandy valley… there were still many graves. As he walked toward the nearest grave, he said quietly, “Chi Yun, have you ever had… the feeling of losing someone forever?”
Chi Yun was tongue-tied. After holding back for a long while, he forced out, “No.” Tang Lici swayed forward. The wound from that needle on his back kept bleeding, like a red flower gradually blooming behind him. He murmured, “Actually… the day he died, although I dug out his heart, in my heart… I didn’t feel anything… I didn’t know how to grieve… couldn’t feel at all… what it meant to die…”
Shen Langhun silently watched his back, vaguely hearing in his ears the sound of his wife falling into the Yellow River. While his pressure points were sealed, he could only watch helplessly as she sank into the waves. The pain of that moment… was enough to make him go back and forth between life and death ten times, and the most painful part was that in the end, he himself didn’t die.
“I didn’t feel at all that he had died. Everything was the same as usual, just missing one person. When living in Zhou Sisters’ Tower, only when I couldn’t find things would I remember he was dead, so I could never ask where he had put those things. Sometimes seeing the flowers he raised, I’d think he would never see them bloom again. Sometimes… untying knots he had tied, I’d think that once untied, they could never be tied again… After a very long time, I began to regret—not regretting that I asked him to practice the Rebirth Manual’s Power Exchange Great Method, but that until the moment he died, I never… had a proper conversation with him. Things that should and shouldn’t be said—at that time, they all should have been said. I knew he wanted to hear them… wanted to know what I was planning in my heart, but I… said nothing.” Tang Lici murmured, “In my heart, I wanted to save him, but I didn’t tell him… Then day by day, year by year… every year I’d remember things I hadn’t said to him, remember that there were actually many things I could have done for him—why didn’t I do them then? But no matter what I think now, he will never know, and will never come back.”
Chi Yun listened silently. He had a thought in his heart, a vague stirring. Though he couldn’t say what it was, it felt… very similar to what Tang Lici was describing. So listening made his nose ache, and he actually felt like crying.
“Two years later, I finally understood—this feeling… is death…” Tang Lici said gently. “He died, vanished like smoke and clouds. All the traces he left behind—a piece of clothing, a line of writing, a rope knot… all became ‘death.’ But…” he said quietly, “but how could someone like Fang Zhou just die like that? His aspirations hadn’t been realized yet. He and I had planned many things, planned a very beautiful future. I promised him I would never betray friends. I promised him and A’Yan that I would reform and become a good person. Everything… was unrealized.”
Where he walked, he left bloody footprints, but Tang Lici’s steps didn’t stop. He walked straight toward the second grave, continuing quietly, “When he died, I said nothing, and he said nothing either. I don’t know if he blamed me in his heart, if because he indulged me like before, even though he was very disappointed in his heart, he still said nothing…” His voice stopped, and his footsteps stopped too. For the first time, Chi Yun saw light welling up in Tang Lici’s eyes. He heard him say softly, “I… I…” After pausing for a long while, he continued, “I don’t know if he was ever very disappointed. Actually in my heart… I really care about friends, really didn’t want him to die…”
Having said this, the second tombstone was before his eyes. The name on the stone was still not Fang Zhou. Tang Lici turned toward the third grave. With his fire-burned, snake-bitten body and the injury from dispersing his power, his steps still didn’t stop, like Kuafu chasing the sun, never… resting.
“Keep searching. Since that ice coffin underground was fake, perhaps Liu Yan buried the real ice coffin along with Fang Zhou. Once we find the grave and dig him out, you can return his heart to him, and he’ll be able to revive.” Shen Langhun finally said something flatly. Chi Yun let out a long breath. “Right, since the ice coffin hasn’t been found yet, there’s still hope.”
Tang Lici walked toward the third grave without looking back, smiling gently. “You’re really good to me.”
Chi Yun and Shen Langhun looked at each other. They already understood why Zhong Chunji had stabbed that needle into Tang Lici’s back—because if she hadn’t completely robbed him of his ability, this person would never give up anything, any hope, any possibility… The result would very likely be death… He would dig up and examine every grave in Bodhi Valley, would level Wandering Eyebrow Garden to the ground, until he died.
Crazy temperament, childish fantasies, stubborn self-will, unreasonable obsession…
“When Fang Zhou wakes up, I’ll have him play the qin for you. His qin playing… is truly the best in the world…” Tang Lici walked toward the third grave, his face gradually brightening with a smile. “If he wakes up, A’Yan won’t hate me anymore. I’ll tell Fang Zhou I was trying to save him—he’ll tell A’Yan I didn’t kill our brother. Then… brothers will still be brothers, and I… will apologize for past wrongs.”
The third grave still didn’t bear Fang Zhou’s name.
Tang Lici staggered toward the fourth grave. In this valley, there were thirty-six graves total.
He could hope thirty-three more times.
“Wild geese come from the east, where purple clouds scatter,
Who waits where, for whose return?
A red robe, one dream, yellow millet brings much sorrow,
Wine dissolves blue clouds in a smile.
When will you return, to that fine place by bamboo,
Waiting to hear your clear voice, asking how you’ve suffered?
Gray smoke curls, how many beauties have been failed,
Where at the ten-li pavilion can this be told…”
At some point, Tang Lici began singing an unknown song in a low voice. The deep singing voice echoed throughout Bodhi Valley. One low phrase had already penetrated deep into people’s hearts, like clouds arising in mountain valleys, mist rippling on water. What stirred was not only human hearts, but the entire valley seemed to change with wind and clouds, weather alternating because of this song. Chi Yun and Shen Langhun listened entranced. The bitterness and desolation that had been surging in their hearts was gradually dissolved by the deep singing. Sadness, joy, reminiscence, longing, pain, regret, loneliness… all these thoughts slowly transformed into a common feeling… that feeling in the song… of sadly waiting.
“Last night’s melancholy passed, meeting you brought such feeling,
Then I faltered, how much remains now?
Frost through white dew, phoenix nests in autumn’s old parasol tree,
A pearl covered in dust is still a pearl…”
This was the first time they’d heard Tang Lici sing. No one knew he could sing. In Bodhi Valley, grass and trees rustled, wind moved the trees, even the sunlight seemed to fade in color. Only that song stirred in the wind. In the mountain valley, only that song had life.
The seventeenth grave.
“Tomb of Brother Fang Zhou.”
(End of Volume One)