For Bai Li, recollections of his past only brought him anger. Perhaps from the moment he’d been born, he was destined to be estranged with the words “all’s well and good.”
Hardship, to the majority of people, was only one of many lifestyles. Normally, when one chose a path more difficult than most, it meant they would live to be greater than most.
But one could find any bird in a large enough forest. Bai Li simply wasn’t one of them. Sometimes he’d think that even if heaven were to rain pancakes on everyone’s heads, it’d definitely miss him alone.
Perhaps some people really were despised by heaven from their very birth?
No one could make heads or tails of all the tangled debts between him and Shi Wuduan. Perhaps not even the most skilled calculator, Shi Wuduan himself, would have a hard time figuring out just who owed the other more.
The only thing that wasn’t difficult to understand was that, at the point where they were now, they were both very unlucky… in that both sides suffered crushing defeat.
Sometimes Bai Li would think that perhaps “Shi Wuduan” didn’t actually exist, and that everything was just a hallucination born of obsession. Even when he was embracing him, feeling the warm of the other’s blood pulsing in their veins, the sensation was still unreal.
Did he hate him?
Bai Li was never a saint. If someone wronged him, he’d repay it in kind fivefold. Even now, when he remembered everything he did, every word that he used to stab his heart, he had that impulse to just bite him to death.
But because he’d regained the other half of his bloodline and soul, even though the impulse was still there, it no longer drove him to madness. He could finally calm down, close his eyes, and thoroughly experience the feeling of the other’s thin frame pressing against him as they hugged. He could recall how soft and grubby his little hands were when he was a child… thus, Bai Li said to himself, if you keep on hating him, you’ll never be able to obtain him.
His body seemed to have already made the decision for him.
His treacherous heart was like a thorn pinned in his back, making it stand straight, giving him an invincible strength that he could use to accomplish great things. Because when someone desired something as intensely as a drowning person needed air, they would become unimaginably strong.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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At that time, they’d realize that all this time, the thing that’d been forcing them to the brink was actually their own heart.
Shi Wuduan’s hand slowly ran through Bai Li’s long hair. It flowed through his fingers like silk. The stabbing pain in his heart ebbed away, as if he was a frozen person who had finally entered a warm room and had endured hours of stinging and itching as they forcefully rubbed themselves before their sluggish blood finally began to flow once more.
After an indeterminable amount of time, he finally sighed quietly and said, nearly inaudibly, by Bai Li’s ear, “… I was wrong.”
Bai Li softly responded, “En.”
Two stars on opposite sides of the heavenly expanse, after spending eons traversing the boundless Milky Way, finally reached their destination. At that moment, all the emptiness and guilt born of exhaustion, all the overwhelming emotions became still water. Only when one looked closely would they notice a slight flow, a small creek from which the water slowly and silently departed.
Shi Wuduan lightly let go of him and said, “Are you planning on going back to Pingyang City?”
A hint of bitterness flickered at the corner of Bai Li’s lips. He asked, “Return… to Pingyang City? Since when had that place become my home?”
Shi Wuduan turned and sat in the chair Li Si-niang had used, “Zou Yanlai is dead.”
“I know.” A moment later, Bai Li said, “Gurgle disappeared. It was the sign of my contract with Mi Sect. The person at the other end of it was Zou Yanlai. It disappearing must’ve meant that the other person was already dead.”
Shi Wuduan seemed to remember something. He sank into a thoughtful silence.
Spurred by a sudden impulse, Bai Li said, “Back then, the Mi Sect used forbidden methods to release me from the Hall of Demons, seal the three realms, and destroy Cangyun Valley. Because of that karma, my fate is bound to the country’s and the seven lanterns’.”
Shi Wuduan’s heart stuttered. He looked up at Bai Li.
After many years of suppressing his emotions beneath a mask, even when he wasn’t consciously trying to hide his feelings, his face reacted half a beat slower than his heart. To avoid making inappropriate expressions, he usually kept them off his face altogether, making his handsome features seem vacuous and unfathomable.
… Even then, in that instant, when he didn’t want to show such an empty face to Bai Li, he was like a savage that hadn’t spoken in years, he couldn’t keep up with normal people’s pace — he could never figure out whether he should react with a smile or a frown.
Bai Li closed his eyes, finally openly speaking about the chasm gaping between them, “When the time comes, are you going to kill me?”
Like the Qingcu of Jiulu Mountain, like Master Kuruo of the Xuan Sect… are you going to kill me too?
Before Shi Wuduan even had time to respond, Bai Li chuckled quietly, “If that’s the case, just say it straight. I don’t… want to fight with you anymore.”
He said wearily, “I’ve had enough already.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” Shi Wuduan blurted. He looked at his teacup, already cold. A long while later, a faint, tardy smile tugged at his lips, “Perhaps before, the thought had crossed my mind, however… I don’t want to kill anymore, especially not…”
He hurriedly blinked. Bai Li felt as though his lush lashes were tickling his heart. Shi Wuduan said softly, “I’ve constantly been trying to figure out a way, if…”
He looked up, and, infuriatingly, paused again. It was a good thing that Bai Li wasn’t Meng Zhongyong. Even if Shi Wuduan had to split up a sentence into a hundred and eight parts, he would wait patiently till he finished — despite the fact that he’d already waited for far too long.
“Once everything is over, do you want to leave with me?” Bai Li heard the words he’d been waiting for. Shi Wuduan uttered them in an odd tone, word by word, clearly enunciated, but as he reached the end, his voice trembled faintly. That familiar tremble suddenly gave Bai Li the feeling that the person sitting not far from him was actually the same as him.
Shi Wuduan continued, “Perhaps we can never return, or see anyone else ever again, spending the rest of our days in a very far away place. Are you willing?”
Bai Li looked at him peculiarly. This time, Shi Wuduan finally didn’t shy away. He met his gaze calmly. Bai Li chuckled, his stunningly beautiful eyes gleamed strikingly as he asked, “You’re asking me? Why would I want to see anyone else? Hasn’t all our suffering and hardship these past few years been caused by ‘other people?’ Why wouldn’t I be willing?”
“Even if you lose your extraordinary powers?” Shi Wuduan continued.
That was Bai Li’s sore spot, because power was what he’d once relied on to survive. He’d gone to such great lengths to obtain it, and had even gone separate ways from Shi Wuduan in order to keep it. He’d even been willing to gouge out his own flesh and blood. But, after a moment of consideration, he shook his head, “That’s nothing much really… actually, in the end, I felt like it really wasn’t much at all.”
This was how a person grew up. At first, they were ignorant and muddled, but one day, after being battered by the world’s winds and rains, they’d start to understand emotion and desire. At first, they’d set their sights on something that seemed impressive and arduously seek it out, letting go of many many things in the process. But one day, when they looked out from the perspective they’d once had, obtained what had seemed so out of reach, they’d realize that it wasn’t so impressive after all.
Whether they had it or not, it was all the same. Or perhaps… they’d even be better off without it.
That was the entire lifecycle of how a tiny, insignificant piece of flotsam crossed the boundless seas. Everyone would inevitably walk upon such a path. If one had never picked anything up, they would never be able to let anything go. For some things, only a person who’d obtained it could say, “It really wasn’t much at all.”
Shi Wuduan looked at him, his hollow gaze suddenly glimmered with tears, like a hint of algae finally appearing on a long dried riverbed. In an odd tone, as if he was trying to imitate the way he spoke as a youth, he said lightly “Okay, you can be my wife then!”
Twenty years ago, a little fox hiding from the lightning of a heavenly tribulation had ducked into a cave and sought the protection of a silly little youth. Back then, he hadn’t any shadows in his heart, he’d so easily grinned an ear-to-ear grin as he rummaged for a handkerchief and wiped the rain from his face. Then, the small fox clumsily but earnestly expressed his gratitude and said, “I’ll repay you for this.”
The youth had said thoughtlessly, “Okay, you can be my wife then!”
The Cuibing bird suddenly took flight and landed on Bai Li’s shoulder. Its wings stirred a gust of wind that brushed through Bai Li’s hair and swept past the astrolabe and the fifty-string jinse that hung next to it. When the heavy, melancholic music of the jinse rippled through one’s heart, it made one want to burst into subs.
It was a scene worth reminiscing about, but the moment was already lost.
Aaaaaaaaaaah. Translator-nim…. This is soooo bittersweet. I can’t. I can’t anymore. I’m dead!😭😭😭😭😭😭
Thanks for the chapters
🙂 thank you for the chapter!
Thank you 👏💐❤️🧨
💙💙💙💙
it will never come back…. but they can create a new one! a new chapter to heal the wounds… time separates them apart far too long, it hurts so much. but i wish they can be happy again…
thank u so much!!
My poor heart ♥