Chapter 303 |
Having decided to head out and consolidate his forces, Lin Hui began making arrangements to secure his departure.
With Gongsun Xinlian and Zhang Yao's full cooperation, vast resources poured in to construct over a dozen layers of temporary protection arrays around Clear Emerald Mountain. Combined with the defensive arrays he had already deployed, the entire vicinity was forged into an impenetrable fortress within a matter of days.
Yet at that very moment, grim news arrived from the Lin Manor's inner courtyard.
By the time Lin Hui arrived, everyone in the Lin Manor was already present.
Liu Xiao and Liu Wujun stood together, faces ashen, heads lowered in silence.
"She clearly took the longevity medicine—so why?!" Lin Shunhe seized the old physician's hand. His eyes were bloodshot from days without sleep. For a man of his constitution to look so hollowed out meant he had pushed himself well past his limits.
"I am powerless..." the old man sighed. "Second Madam has been afflicted by the Sea Cry's power... Coupled with her own weak constitution..."
Off to the side, Yao Shan muttered to herself, fingers working a string of dark brown beads as though in prayer. Since joining the White Child Sect, she had grown increasingly erratic, and something unsettling clung to her now—a quality that had no easy name.
The rest of the Lin Manor's household stood gathered at a distance, a heavy silence pressing down over everything.
The Sea Cry's power was merely a catalyst. Liu Shenglan's body had taken damage in the past, leaving her constitution severely depleted. Now, with Corruption and the deep-sea transformation both overtaking her at once, her condition was nearly identical to Mingde's.
He had tried to bring his entire family into the Clear Wind Dao, but without genuine conviction, the process bore no fruit—the law seal could not be bestowed, and the same went for the Eye of Life. His relatives each held their own stubborn loyalties, and he had managed to bring in only a handful.
A few people outside the courtyard spotted him. Lin Hui raised a hand, signaling them to say nothing.
He nodded toward Liu Wujun and Liu Xiao, then leaned against the wall alone and looked up at the Sea Cry rift hanging in the sky overhead.
The rift looked modest from a distance, but it was in truth nearly as long as Black Cloud City itself—a tear of incomprehensible scale carved across the heavens.
Leaning there, he felt Second Mother's aura growing increasingly chaotic, tilting steadily toward Corruption. Only then did he lower his head and close his eyes.
"If... Mother had listened back then and practiced martial arts like us..." Liu Xiao's voice came from beside him.
Lin Hui said nothing. He had used the Blood Seal before, attempting to evolve Relics or secret arts capable of halting Corruption. It had been entirely futile. The Blood Seal's evolution simply could not provide a solution for others. His own Corruption could be offset by the Wind Disaster, but that carried its own hidden danger.
Looked at plainly, Corruption and this world's vitality were simply two sides of the same coin. Where there was life, there was death—and Corruption was, in this world, the very prerequisite of dying.
"Everyone's time is set... Second Mother's road was cut short this time around. Perhaps the next life will be kinder to her," Lin Hui said softly.
Liu Xiao leaned gently against him, her face wet with tears.
At that moment, Lin Shunhe and Liu Wujun slowly walked out of the room. Not long after, suppressed sobbing rose from the courtyard and spread in all directions.
Clang.
The newly built bell of the Clear Wind Dao was struck, its chimes rolling out one after another.
With her son Liu Wujun at her side, Liu Shenglan had gone quietly. Her body was cremated before the Corruption and deep-sea transformation could claim it, her ashes placed inside a memorial tablet and enshrined in the Lin family's ancestral hall.
Lin Hui's travel arrangements were postponed accordingly. He remained home to observe the three-day mourning period.
Yet before those days had passed, another shock arrived—this time from Li Yuanyuan.
"What did you just say?!" Lin Hui fixed his gaze on her, expression hardening as he rose slowly from his meditative posture.
"Dao Master, because of the isolation array, none of us anticipated something like this... By the time we reached her, it was already too late..." Li Yuanyuan said, her voice barely above a murmur.
"...Grandmaster."
Just then, Tao Changsheng stumbled in from outside the courtyard. His face was streaked with tears, eyes red and swollen, entirely bloodshot.
"Why... why did she have to leave me? Why does everyone have to... leave me...?" He dropped to his knees before Lin Hui, forehead pressed to the ground, trembling without stop.
Lin Hui was silent for a long time. Looking at Tao Changsheng prostrated on the ground, something like suffocation closed around his chest without warning. He couldn't name the source of it. He tried to push it aside, but it hung there like a dark cloud, pressing the air from his lungs.
"Let's go," he said softly. "Let's go take a look."
Wind surged in an instant, and the group disappeared together, reappearing outside Weiwei and Mingde's courtyard a breath later.
A crowd of Clear Wind Dao disciples had already gathered nearby, though none had dared to enter.
Seeing Lin Hui arrive, they bowed in silence and stepped aside.
Lin Hui's mind-spirit spread out and took in the scene.
Inside the courtyard, Weiwei was slumped over a guqin. Her body was tilted to the side, and blood had long since pooled on the ground beneath her, beginning to blacken and congeal. She was gone.
Lin Hui moved closer and found a slip of paper tucked between the strings near the foot of the instrument. He pulled it free and unfolded it.
A brief, elegant line of handwriting: Life is like a dream. Having walked to the end of this road, it is time to wake up.
"Mother!!!" Tao Changsheng dropped heavily to his knees behind him and began to wail.
Listening to the cries, Lin Hui set down the letter. He saw the scatter of blue-black scales on Weiwei's exposed pale forearm, and said nothing. With the faintest flicker of intent, he called the wind to draw her sleeve down over them.
In that moment, he recalled how Mingde, at the very end, had entrusted her to his care—and how Weiwei had said nothing in reply.
It seemed she was still as proud and stubborn as she had always been. When it was time to go, she left without hesitation.
Gazing at the still figure before him, Lin Hui felt as though a strange chord had abruptly been plucked somewhere deep in his chest.
In that instant, his mind-spirit seemed to lift sharply, soaring to the highest peak of Clear Emerald Mountain and looking down upon the vast multitude of living things below.
The qi of countless living beings surged and intertwined, weaving into intricate patterns above the mountain.
Amid the current, Lin Hui extended his hand—as if reaching for something unseen.
He could no longer tell whether he was truly reaching out or merely imagining it.
But when he came back to himself and looked down, a long, slender ribbon woven from seven distinct colors had appeared in his hand without explanation.
One end was already fragmenting, dissolving into gray particles that scattered into the air. Within mere seconds, the ribbon had been reduced to a single inch of color pinched between his fingers.
He opened his hand. That final inch fluttered upward, shattered utterly in midair, and vanished without a sound.
"So this... is the Sacred Form of Heaven?"
Lin Hui lowered his gaze, took one last look at Weiwei, and turned to walk out of the courtyard.
The instant he crossed the threshold, a white phantom streaked out behind him, dissolved into the air, and was never seen again.
In that moment, the third layer of the Star Breath Sword Canon—the Sacred Form of Heaven—was perfected.
…
Taisu Royal City, Biqiu. The peripheral deep-core region.
Black sand churned through the violent winds, spiraling above a pitch-black abyssal canyon like a vast, formless monster forever baring its fangs at the void.
On one side of the canyon, atop a cliff cleaved as cleanly as if by a blade, a group of figures in plain black robes gathered quietly at the precipice's edge, gazing down into the bottomless dark.
"You have no fathers or mothers, no sons or daughters, no ties or attachments, nor any desires or lingering thoughts." Facing the wind, the leading old woman spoke in a measured voice, reciting words that carried the cadence of a eulogy.
"For the sake of the Royal City, you were destined to die. Now, it is time to return everything to heaven and earth."
"Yuan Jing." The old woman turned to the figure standing closest to the edge. "Do you have anything to say?"
The person pulled back her hood, revealing a beautiful face.
"We never had anything to begin with, so there's no need to speak of ownership." She paused. "Sisters—the world is beautiful. I will take my leave first."
She offered a soft smile, turned to face the crowd one last time, and leaned backward. Like a dry autumn leaf, her dress rippling in the wind, she plummeted into the abyss.
"Next," the old woman said quietly.
The second person stepped forward and paused.
The third stepped up from behind.
The two reached for each other's hands and exchanged a smile. Without a word, they leaped together—as if stepping toward something new—and were swallowed swiftly by the dark below.
"Next..." The old woman sighed and looked to the fourth.
The fourth person threw back her hood, revealing a face that was half-withered and half-delicate. It was Han Xiaoyue.
She walked to the edge and stopped.
"I had wanted to leave something behind." Her voice was quiet. "Unfortunately, it's too late for that."
"Captain!"
"Captain, we'll go together!"
Qin Shishi and Xue Yan stepped out from behind her.
"The quota is filled after her. You two are needed elsewhere," the old woman said firmly.
The two pressed forward anyway, taking their places at Han Xiaoyue's side.
"It's all right." Han Xiaoyue smiled gently and reached out—pinching Qin Shishi's cheek, ruffling Xue Yan's hair.
"Remember what I told you: you must be like Lin Sha..."
"Captain... why don't I go in your place? Your promise with him still isn't finished..." Qin Shishi said, her voice steady despite everything.
"It doesn't matter." Han Xiaoyue shook her head. "Perhaps this is how it was always meant to end. After I'm gone, send him the letter. And apologize on my behalf—just tell him I'm sorry I broke our promise."
As she spoke, her voice grew quieter.
Standing at the edge, even with the Destruction Key embedded in her body, the image returned unbidden—a pale, delicate hand reaching out to her in her darkest hour, all those years ago.
Big Sister Lin Sha... can I also... become a hero like you?
She took a step forward and tilted her face up, as if glimpsing a face she had longed for across too many years.
She reached out. Han Xiaoyue felt as though she saw that woman extend a hand back toward her.
Just like back then, that hand was dazzlingly white.
Exactly like the flawless snow from that year.
The two hands crossed gently in midair, passing through each other like light through glass.
Carried by her own momentum, her body fell silently toward the abyss.
Looking back from the air, she saw tears streaming down Qin Shishi's face, and Xue Yan biting down hard, her pretty face tight with grief.
And behind the two of them—a blurred figure she almost recognized.
He wore white robes with a longsword at his waist. His long hair cascaded down like dark seaweed, loose in the wind.
He, too, seemed to be watching her.