28
This was the moment Lục Trầm Mặc and I truly faced each other.
He stood at a distance, looking down at me.
The young woman Đồng Đồng on his back saw me and immediately realized something was wrong. She grew wary at once.
But it was already too late.
Lục Trầm Mặc grabbed “Miss Đồng Đồng” by the arm and hurled her viciously into the center of the formation.
“Lục Trầm Mặc!” the girl in yellow cried.
This battle was not even as fierce as the one against Bách Lý Hứa back then.
The Heavenly Dao’s spiritual sense was no weaker than the sect leader’s. Otherwise, how could it have killed him so quietly?
But Lục Trầm Mặc had trapped it with a formation, while Lý Dục, Ông Bình, and Thẩm Khứ Chu supported him from outside.
The formation held the Heavenly Dao in place, leaving it unable to escape.
Even so, the battle dragged on for a long time.
At last, Lục Trầm Mặc shouted:
“Ông Bình, draw your sword!”
The Heaven-Slaying Sword, the Heavenly Sword Sect’s greatest treasure, was what the old sect leader had risked his life to protect.
Ông Bình raised the sword high and glanced at me once.
“Wait!”
Lục Trầm Mặc seemed to realize something and threw himself toward Ông Bình with all his might.
But he was too late.
Ông Bình’s sword came down.
I had never, ever seen Lục Trầm Mặc’s face so deathly pale.
29
The Heaven-Slaying Sword truly lived up to its name as the Heavenly Sword Sect’s greatest treasure.
The Heavenly Dao vanished cleanly, while I was wracked with unbearable pain.
It felt like my soul was being torn apart.
Had it hurt this much on Thương Sơn, too?
How had I managed to endure the pain and say goodbye to Lục Trầm Mặc then?
Lục Trầm Mặc rushed over and caught me before I fell.
“Miên Ý.” He said my name, his voice unfamiliar, and large tears fell one after another. After a few tries, he finally managed to say it smoothly, but by then he was sobbing so hard he could barely speak:
“Miên Ý, don’t—don’t leave me.”
He had said those words countless times.
The only thing that eased my mind was that this time, he wasn’t the one who killed the Heavenly Dao with his own hands.
Otherwise, how much pain would he have suffered?
Once everything had settled down, he finally learned my name.
Was this a final rally before death? I still had enough strength to reach for the bell at Lục Trầm Mặc’s waist.
That bell had been the Heavenly Dao’s way of deceiving him.
But it was also a token between us.
This time, I didn’t do it in secret. Right in front of him, I removed the bell’s clapper.
“Lục Trầm Mặc,” I said softly, “this time, don’t wait for me.”
“Live well on your own.”
“Just think of me as having gone home.”
“The mountains are high and the waters long. We… will never meet again.”
30
As I lost consciousness, the scene of the first time I met him flickered through my mind once more.
That fallen young master had just been dumped by his fiancée. Angry and heartbroken, he locked himself in his room and wept bitterly.
That was when I entered his jade pendant.
“Brave young man, would you like to make a contract with this system and awaken the ultimate power of this world?”
He looked up and asked, “Are you the fairy in the jade pendant?”
I truly wished I could go back to that moment.
When he asked if I could get the Matchmaker to tie the red thread between him and a girl named Bội Chi.
Then I would have answered him fiercely: “No!”
“I’m the only one who can tie your red thread.”
Across ten thousand rivers and a thousand mountains, across vast seas and distant skies.
I’m the only one who can stay by your side.
…
…
…
31
I thought I had been utterly destroyed once again.
I never expected to wake up again—and in this body, no less.
I didn’t wake in the nameless little village, but in a guest room atop Lục Xuất Peak.
Thẩm Khứ Chu was crouching nearby, setting spirit stones into the Như Xuân formation tray.
Hearing a sound, he didn’t turn around. “You’re awake?”
I glanced around. “…Where’s Lục Trầm Mặc?”
I remembered all those heartbreaking stories I’d read, and thought of what happened to the male and female leads in xianxia novels. My heart couldn’t help but sink a little.
“Lục Trầm Mặc… where, where did he go?”
Thẩm Khứ Chu’s expression turned strange. “…Why are you so worked up?”
He pondered for a moment, then suddenly got agitated. “Do you think I hurt him?”
Me: Huh?
But from the look on Thẩm Khứ Chu’s face, it was clear nothing had happened to Lục Trầm Mặc.
“Of course he’s fine. He thought your soul had been utterly destroyed and immediately wanted to kill himself. I knocked him out.” Thẩm Khứ Chu gave a cold laugh. “Ông Bình and Lý Dục carried him back to Lục Xuất Peak and took the fire poison out of him while they were at it… He’s still asleep in the next room.”
Me: …
What’s the word for this feeling? Coming back from the dead.
Having survived a calamity, my whole body went limp.
Thẩm Khứ Chu went on, “Someone else has it even worse than you. Once you’ve recovered, go see Ông Bình.”
He killed his longtime friend with his own hands…
How devastating must that have been?
I was still very curious about how I’d come back to life.
The smile that had just appeared on Thẩm Khứ Chu’s face faded. “The first time your soul was utterly destroyed, after Lục Trầm Mặc attained the rank of Heavenly Venerable, my master went into seclusion for years. Guess why he went into seclusion?”
I knew that old man felt guilty toward me.
Lục Trầm Mặc was his direct disciple, but the old man and I had spent plenty of time together, too.
That old man was softhearted.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken pity on Lục Trầm Mặc.
“He went into seclusion to make a body without a spiritual root.”
That body was the one he’d promised to give me on the day Lục Trầm Mặc and I married, so I could inhabit it and we could have children.
When Lục Trầm Mặc found out my soul had been utterly destroyed and insisted on searching for it, the old man let him.
He even realized before Lục Trầm Mặc that the infant wasn’t me.
Then he sighed and went back into seclusion.
That retreat lasted exactly sixteen years.
After he emerged from seclusion, the sect leader summoned Thẩm Khứ Chu and handed him two things.
One was a divine stone from beyond the realm; the other was a body without a spiritual root, fourteen years old and without a soul.
“Just take it anywhere. When the time comes, she’ll return.”
Not long afterward, Thẩm Khứ Chu quietly brought that soulless body without a spiritual root to a small village.
One night, the body without a spiritual root stopped breathing.
And I…
Opened my eyes.
Thẩm Khứ Chu asked me:
“Do you know why you were able to enter this body without a spiritual root so precisely?”
“When my master went to find Lục Trầm Mặc, he secretly took a strand of soul. He couldn’t tell whether it belonged to you or the Heavenly Dao.”
“That day, Lục Trầm Mặc searched everywhere, nearly going mad.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
The image of Lục Trầm Mặc as a young man, so furious he’d lost control, came vividly to mind.
“If a body has no spiritual root, it’s not hard to set up a soul-locking formation inside it.”
So when the Spirit of the Heavenly Dao vanished, there was still a soul-locking formation in this body, holding my soul fast.
My soul, which had been bound to the Heavenly Dao, had been forcibly torn away.
In the end, the scattered fragments of my soul were imprisoned in this body.
No wonder it hurt so much.
Had my soul been dragged back and forth between falling apart and coming together, and was that why it hurt so badly?
“It’s just a shame that a body without a spiritual root can’t be given one. You won’t be able to cultivate from now on. But fortunately, a body without a spiritual root won’t age. With your soul held fast by the formation, you should be able to grow old together with Lục Trầm Mặc.”
“Before my master died, he left a message.”
“He told me to ask you: Are you satisfied with the belated gift he gave you and your husband?”
…
At last, the snow stopped falling on Lục Xuất Peak.
Thẩm Khứ Chu and I went down the mountain for a while.
The sect leader, my master, was buried behind the sect.
Unlike the sect leaders before him, whose bodies were kept in a secret realm,
he had only asked Thẩm Khứ Chu to dig a small grave for him behind the mountain.
A small, lonely grave, covered in wildflowers.
Just like him.
Even his grave was that of an interesting old man.
I sat before his grave and shared a drink with him for a while.
Then I asked about his next life.
“His soul should be whole,” Thẩm Khứ Chu said. “If nothing unexpected happened, he’s probably been reincarnated by now.”
“He doesn’t want to cultivate immortality anymore, so we don’t need to look for him.”
That was for the best.
I didn’t get up until the sky began to darken.
Thẩm Khứ Chu had something to take care of. I declined his offer to send disciples to escort me and returned to Lục Xuất Peak alone.
Halfway up the mountain, snow began falling on Lục Xuất Peak again.
I climbed step by step. Sure enough, when I reached the summit, I saw Lục Trầm Mặc.
Night had fallen.
Dressed all in white, he stood amid the snow and wind, watching me approach.
Watching me climb to the summit.
He said nothing and did nothing.
I took one step toward him. Just one.
“Ding, ding.”
The bell at Lục Trầm Mặc’s side rang.
“Does it hurt?” I asked him—and the man who, for a hundred years, had crossed mountains and rivers, searched everywhere, drawn ice into his own body, and endured countless rounds of refinement.
He walked toward me.
And held me in his arms.
“You’ve come back. From now on, you won’t hurt anymore.”
—The End—