Chapter 26: Dallying Hualian; Nightfall in Sinner's Pit (Part 3)

The story was getting more complex and convoluted, Xie Lian thought, and asked, "General, I want to ask..."

"Don't ask anymore!" Ke Mo said instead, "You killed my soldiers, what more would you want to know? I won't answer. Now fight me!"

"I killed them. He didn't do anything," San Lang said, "You can answer his questions and fight me."

Well, that was irrefutable logic. Ke Mo yelled angrily, "You're both taking orders from her; there is no difference!"

Xie Lian immediately said, "General Ke Mo, I think you've mistaken something. We've traveled across the Gobi desert to get rid of the Guoshi of BanYue. How can we be the helpers she sent for?"

Hearing that Xie Lian was actually there to destroy the Guoshi, Ke Mo fell silent. He then asked, "If you weren't helping her, then why did you kill my soldiers?"

Xie Lian explained, "Isn't it because you were throwing us into the pit and we had to defend ourselves?"

Ke Mo yelled angrily, "Nonsense! I didn't throw any one of you! I even caught you! You all jumped down yourselves!"

"Yes, yes, yes, we were jumping into the pit ourselves. General, we're all trapped at the bottom of this pit right now, let's just call it a truce for now, alright? Why did that BanYue Guoshi open the fortress gates to let the enemies in?"

As if Ke Mo would listen to him reason, and he said, unrelenting, "The two of you are sly and unjust, fighting me two on one."

Xie Lian felt a little exasperated, "I only smacked you once. I didn't do much."

He didn't mind being called sly or unjust. If the situation called for it, never mind two on one, he could bring a hundred to beat one down; who cared about one on one. But earlier, San Lang obviously had the upper hand even while carrying him, and told Xie Lian not to fight too. Ke Mo seemed to think he could've won if it had been just him and San Lang though, and Xie Lian felt bad for him.

Ke Mo was incredibly uncooperative, but Xie Lian wasn't worried. Ke Mo seemed to be the type that could easily be made to spill his beans, and they've got time, not a problem. San Lang, on the other hand, didn't have the same patience and lazily said, "You better answer his questions, for the sake of your soldiers."

"You already killed them," Ke Mo said, "It's pointless using them to threaten me."

"They are dead, but their corpses are still around," San Lang replied.

Ke Mo became alarmed, unable to remain sprawled on the ground anymore, "What are you going to do?"

San Lang smirked, "That depends on what you want to do."

Just by his voice, Xie Lian could imagine San Lang cocking his eye, "Do you want their next lives to be fortuitous or be reborn as a pool of blood?"

Ke Mo stopped but soon understood what San Lang meant, and exploded, "YOU?!"

The people of BanYue took death and funerals extremely seriously. They believed that however the deceased looked at their death will be how they shall be reborn. For instance, if the deceased was missing an arm, then they shall be reborn handicapped. If the corpses in this pit were to be destroyed, then what would their rebirths be like?

General Ke Mo was a purebred BanYuenese and couldn't help but be afraid. As expected, on the other side of the dark pit, Ke Mo gritted his teeth soundly in rage but finally relented helplessly, "Don't touch their bodies. They were good, brave soldiers. It was already a tragedy to be trapped in the pit for so many years. I don't know if being killed by you is a blessing or not, but I won't have their corpses be humiliated."

He paused and asked, "Are you really here to kill Ban Yue?"

Xie Lian replied warmly, "No lie. The more we know, the more chance we'll have at winning. Not much is known about the Guoshi of BanYue on the outside; we have no idea how to fight her. But you have worked under her before in the past; perhaps you can enlighten some things for us?

Maybe it was because they shared the same enemy—the Guoshi of BanYue—that a sort of bond was developed, or perhaps in an inescapable chasm, atop the dead bodies of his soldiers, Ke Mo became disheartened, but whatever it may be, the general ceased the will to attack them. "You don't know why she opened the gates? Because she's against us! She hates us! She hates the Kingdom of BanYue!"

"What do you mean she hates the Kingdom of BanYue? Isn't BanYue Guoshi a citizen of BanYue?" Xie Lian asked.

"Yes, but not entirely," Ke Mo replied, "She's a mix blood. The other half is from YongAn!"

"Ah..."

Turns out, that BanYue Guoshi was born of a BanYue woman and a YongAn man. Living on the border with endless hatred and skirmishes, things were difficult, and the YongAn man finally had had enough and moved away from the border back to YongAn. Although it was an amicable divorce, the BanYue woman soon passed away from heartache.

They left behind a child of six to seven years in age; without any guardians, the child wandered the streets, hungry and desperate. The couple had received cold shoulders everywhere when they were around, and now their daughter too, received contempt wherever she went. The people of BanYue were tall and buff and saw beauty in strength and liveliness, but this girl was born of mixed blood and appeared small and scrawny amongst the BanYue children. She grew up being bullied and became more and more sullen. The BanYue children wouldn't play with her, but there were some YongAn children who did pay attention to her.

When this little mixed blood was about ten something, a riot broke out, and the two armies fought. That battle took many lives, and afterwards, that little mixed blood disappeared.

She had no friends nor families in BanYue, so no one noticed or cared when she vanished. The next time she appeared was a different story.

In those years, she walked thousands of miles and crossed the Gobi desert to YongAn. No one knew what kind of encounters she had had, but she returned having learned black magic and could control the venomous creature most feared by the BanYue—the scorpion snakes.

Upon her return, besides being impressed, many were also afraid. That was because the girl's personality never changed, still gloomy and unsociable. There were also many who bullied her in the past; if she were to enter the palace and become a high-ranking official, wouldn't she one day seek revenge against them?

"I'm sure there were many who spoke poorly of her," Xie Lian commented.

Ke Mo humphed, "Not just slanders, they went to the palace directly to advise the king, saying that she was an evil messenger from the scorpion snake clan here to bring ruin to the Kingdom of BanYue. But none of them succeeded."

Xie Lian guessed, "Did she rush to have those people hung first?"

Ke Mo was even more disgusted, "You, man of YongAn, why is your mind so full of depraved and vile developments? It was none of that! I protected her!"

Xie Lian was exasperated, "I already said I'm not from YongAn... Alright, whatever."

At the time, Ke Mo was already a distinguished, fierce warrior. There was once he took his troop out to annihilate the nest of a band of desert bandits and brought the girl who was the Palace Sorceress along.

That band of bandits were strong, building their nest below the sands. In that battle, both sides suffered casualties, and while Ke Mo stole the victory, the battle caused the nest below the sands to collapse, plus with the coming of windstorms, they couldn't stay. Ke Mo took a number of soldiers to retreat, but the other group that included the sorceress weren't able to escape.

Once they retreated to the safe point and waited out the sandstorm, Ke Mo returned anew, hoping to dig out the soldiers to bury them properly. Yet, who knew that when he got there, he found the sorceress had, by her powers alone, dug out a sizable hole and managed to drag all the surviving, wounded soldiers into hide away from the winds.

All the bodies of the dead were all dug out too and laid out in a neat order. She had done this all by herself, and when they got there, that sorceress' body was covered in blood but was still guarding the entrance to that hole silently, hugging her knees waiting for them like a small, little lone wolf.

"After that incident, I thought she was a good woman who does the right things," Ke Mo said, "I believed that she had never the intention to harm the Kingdom of BanYue, so I became a guarantor with all my might and fought back all those malicious voices."

Plus, Ke Mo himself grew up bullied and could understand her strife, so naturally, he paid more attention to her. The more attention he paid, the more he realized just how powerful this girl was and thus endorsed her all the way, helping her reach the position of Guoshi, becoming what was later recorded as the most loyal supporter of the Guoshi of BanYue.

This lasted until another war broke out, and the Kingdom of YongAn sent armies to annihilate the Kingdom of BanYue.

"With the two armies clashing and at a lengthy standstill, she conducted a grand ceremony to pray to the heavens, saying it was to bring blessings unto us BanYue soldiers," Ke Mo said.

Thus, the soldiers' will to kill exploded, their battle spirits significantly raised, and they defended the fortress gates to the death. There were arrows, giant boulders, boiling oil, swords and blades, the slaughtering was incessantly great.

Yet unexpectedly, just as the fighting was at its height, this guoshi suddenly opened the fortress gates.

With the gates opened wide, millions of enemy troops swarmed into the city all of a sudden like mad. After the trampling of iron steeds, the entire fortress city had instantly become a ritual of blood!

Ke Mo, who was fighting hard against the enemies, went mad with rage when he heard the Guoshi had opened the gates. But no matter how tough he was, one could not win alone against so many.

Ke Mo gritted his teeth, "I only learned then that she had long since colluded with the enemy general and agreed to let them in at that moment. BUT EVEN IF I WAS DESTINED TO DIE IN BATTLE, BEFORE I DIE, I WAS GOING TO KILL THAT TRAITOR NO MATTER WHAT!!! So I sent a troop of soldiers to charge up the fortress tower and dragged her down, hanging her dead over the Sinner's Pit. Hung over that pole!"

After the enemy troops passed, the Kingdom of BanYue became a kingdom of death. Guoshi and the General who died in this battle also became trapped within the ruins, both watching the other in mutual grudge and hate.

Xie Lian followed, "So, General Ke Mo, you led the BanYue soldiers under you to search for the shadows of that guoshi everywhere, and every time you capture her, you'd 'hang her head' over the Sinner's Pit?"

"It wouldn't be anything even if we hung her dead a thousand times, a million times!" Ke Mo exclaimed, "Because she's been apprehending all my soldiers who have turned 'Savage' too and throwing them into the Sinner's Pit! She's set up a powerful array around the pit that only she herself could break, and once you fall, you can never climb back up. And us who have been betrayed by her, those soldiers who died wrongfully in battle, hold a deep resentment that only devouring the flesh and blood of those from YongAn could appease and slowly pass from this earth with our hatred released. Otherwise, they can only howl deep into the long nights without absolution!

"So is that why you kept capturing people to feed them?" Xie Lian asked.

"What else can we do?" Ke Mo replied, "Have me listen to them wail down below without doing anything?"

"The people you threw down, did you catch them yourselves or?"

"We can't stray too far from the Kingdom of BanYue, but thankfully her snakes like to haunt and often crawl out of the ruins to bite people. Those caravans who were bitten would then come into the city to look for the ShanYue fern."

"That mud face in the palace, was it you who buried it?"

"That's right. That man buried in the earth was originally planning on robbing the riches of the palace. But all the treasures our kingdom had were all cleaned out by those YongAn men two hundred years ago."

"Why did you only bury him instead of throwing him down directly?" Xie Lian asked.

"There's gotta be fertilizer to grow the ferns after all," Ke Mo replied, "Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to hold those scorpion snakes back. We don't want to run into those creatures either."

'That's not right,' Xie Lian thought.

If Ke Mo and his party consciously knew to grow and fertilize ShanYue ferns, even going as far as using live humans as fertilizer, then it was clear that while they were no longer alive, their fear of those scorpion snakes never lessened. If that was the case, then while they were alive, that fear must've been even greater. If that BanYue Guoshi could control a murder weapon as great as those scorpion snakes, then why would she so easily be dragged down the fortress tower by a bunch of soldiers and be hung to death?

According to Ke Mo, in the past two hundred some years, he had captured the Guoshi over and over and had hung her dead repeatedly. Either way Xie Lian felt, if it was him, and he had such a killing weapon in his hands, he would never allow the enemy the chance to come near him.

And the snakes that would leave the fortress to prey was also of interest. Was it an accident? Not likely. More like they were purposely trying to lure people into the Pass.

Then it was Guoshi's intentional doing? Wouldn't it be helping Ke Mo catch live humans to feed his soldiers? 'Mutual hatred' wouldn't make sense then.

Were they pretending to be enemies then? What was the point in that?

And in all of this mess, there was also the mysterious lady in white and her companion.

Xie Lian decided to ask more questions, "General Ke Mo, when we first entered the fortress, we saw two ladies, one in white, and the other in black. Do you know who they are?"

Before there was a response, San Lang whispered, "Shhh."

Xie Lian didn't know what was going on but closed his mouth immediately. A strange hunch made him look up.

It was the same framed, navy blue sky with a crescent moon. But, next to the moon, he saw a person; a small, black-clad silhouette peered over the edge and was looking down.

After watching them for a bit, the little form suddenly grew bigger – it had jumped down.

As the figure fell, Xie Lian could see clearly that it was the Guoshi who was hanging on the pole earlier.