Chapter 68: This Venerable One Can't Bear it

>>more gore toward the end  

Chu Lan was dead, but the illusion continued.

Dawn was still hours away, the long nightmare not yet over. The survivors returned to the residence, preparing to leave for PuTuo Mountain as soon as the morning light breaks.

It was hard to believe that someone could still carry on after suffering that kind of pain. If truth be told, it really did seem like all that remained of Chu Xun was a walking husk, his soul long since gone.

Mo Ran walked around the city and heard many people fretting—after all,

Chu Xun had suffered so much that, leaving aside the possibility that he might be holding a grudge, even if he was still willing to lead everyone away from here,

their chances were significantly diminished with him in such a state.

But not everyone thought only of themselves; it wasn't many, but at least there were a few people who were genuinely sad for Chu Xun.

They stewed in anxiety as they waited for the sky to brighten.

But what arrived before the rising sun was that cold, now-familiar voice,

rupturing the heavy night sky and reverberating above the barrier.

This time the Ghost King addressed not Chu Xun, but everyone else in the city.

"The sun will rise soon. This Venerable One knows the lot of you plan to leave once it's daytime. But have you really thought it through? PuTuo is a long way from here, there's no way for you to make it there in only one day. Once night falls, all of you will have to depend on Chu Xun for protection. But do you think Chu Xun will protect you?" "Mommy——" A child started crying from fear at the terrifying voice, burrowing into his mother's arms. Everyone was looking up at the sky.

Only Chu Xun, standing in front of the residence and leaning against the haitang tree, had  his eyes closed as if hearing nothing.

"His wife and son are dead because of the lot of you. Do you really think Chu Xun would actually protect you? He probably has something else in mind to avenge his family, something to make you lot wish you were dead. It's only human nature, after all... this Venerable One was once human too, you know.

Sure there are kind people, but they're only doing it for their reputation. Humans are vile by nature, any so-called good person is just trying to get something out of it. But let's be honest, once forced into a corner, they're not gonna care about whether other people live or die." The Ghost King's eerie voice echoed from above them.

"This Venerable One has already said it before, but I wasn't going to take all of your lives. In fact, the living can serve us ghosts. If you don't believe me, just look at him——" As he spoke, a black cloud billowed toward the barrier with Xiao Man standing on top. And, next to him, a kindly man of about forty or fifty.

Someone called out in surprise: "That's Xiao Man's father!" "It's Xiao Man's father! Didn't he die?" "Even his body was dismembered, everyone saw. How could this be?!" The Ghost King continued: "As one of the nine kings of the underworld, even if this Venerable One does not exert control over life and death like Emperor YanLuo does, something like restoring the appearance of the dead is but a simple matter. If you serve me, I will grant you the lasting company of your deceased loved ones. But if you oppose me, you will end up like your Chugongzi, watching your wife kill your child with your own eyes, powerless to do anything about it." All were silent within the barrier.

"Will you really trust him? Trust that he won't take revenge for his wife and child?" "Do you really think he will take you from here all the way to PuTuo?" Someone glanced toward Chu Xun, eyes already flickering with malice.

Chu Xun finally looked up from where he stood under the flowering tree to level them with a quiet gaze. He really didn't know what to even say at this point; a long while passed before he finally said: "It is already what it is, what would be the point in maiming you now."   "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA——" The Ghost King's ghastly laugh echoed from above the barrier, "Very good, very good, he says he won't harm you. If you believe him, then go ahead and go with him. But if you believe me——" His voice thundered with increasing intensity, as if it might pierce through their eardrums straight into their hearts.

"If you believe me, you will be rewarded. I can bring back your families. All you have to do is hand over Chu Xun, you just have to——hand him over to me!

My grudge is against him, not any of you. Hand him over, and you won't have to abandon your homes. Hand him over, and you can reunite with your family. Just hand him over, and it will all be over." The Ghost King's voice grew faint.

"I will be waiting at ChengHuang Temple, until the sun rises." The voice faded away.

An odd sort of rackus emerged from the deathly silence as all eyes in the crowd looked over at Chu Xun. Chu Xun looked back at them with a calm, even expression.

Someone started muttering helplessly: "What should we do..." "What should we do, husband, I'm so afraid..." "Mommy I'm scared, I don't wanna get eaten!"   Someone else said in a low voice: "The Ghost King isn't wrong... these supposedly kind people all just have ulterior motives, we've seen plenty of their kind before. Chu... Chu-gongzi may not have done anything yet, but just look at him, half-dead the way he is, who's to say he won't do something crazy in the future!" Another person, hearing his words, whispered in agreement: "You're right.

For all we know, he's nursing that grudge and just waiting to get all of us killed!

Treachery at the eleventh hour is hardly unheard of..." Suddenly a rough-looking man stood out from the crowd and yelled: "Grab him! We can live if we hand him over!'   Everyone went silent. A few moments passed before a young woman stepped out and blocked in front of the man, her voice soft but determined: "How could you be so ungrateful? Have you no dignity as a man?"   "Piss off!" The man kicked the woman to the ground and spit on her face,

"You're just a stupid whore that sleeps with men, no family to speak of, the hell you running your trap for? I have to take care of both young and old, I ain't gonna let my own family go through shit! Chu-gongzi, you're just gonna have to understand!"   And with that, he made to go capture Chu Xun.

But he hadn't even taken one step before his leg was firmly grabbed. He looked down and roared furiously: "Still getting in the way, you dumb whore? Go die by yourself if you want, how dare you try to drag everyone else down with you!"   The woman was no less enraged: "I may be a prostitute, but at least I can tell right from wrong. If even cats and dogs know to repay kindnesses, how could we humans not?!"  

"Shut the fuck up!"

The man aimed his boots at her head until her entire face was mottled with bruises. By then, the rest of the crowd had also come closer and formed a circle around Chu Xun. A few among them tried to stop them like the woman from the brothel had, but it was a futile effort, like a single leaf caught in a raging current,

swallowed in no time at all.

"Gongzi——Gongzi, hurry and get out of here!"   An old woman yelled shakily toward Chu Xun: "Chu-gongzi, go! Just go!

Don't stay for the sake of these animals! Go!"   There was also the tender voice of a young child: "Stop fighting, mommy,

daddy, don't hurt the gongzi, don't hurt him——"   A maelstrom of commotion, disorder and chaos.

Chu Xun stood alone in the rain. He felt as if he was looking at a horde of ghosts that had crawled out from the very depths of hell. For a moment, he did want to leave.

But then his gaze landed on those people, those living, breathing, crying people. He saw the young child, bawling as he tried to stop his parents. He saw the young woman who was the first to stand up for him, whose face was now bruised and swollen. He looked at the old woman shaking in the rain, and the other dozen or so people standing with their backs to him, trying their best to stop the others.

The foot that was about to leave paused.

They've done nothing wrong. If he takes down the barrier, these people will die too.

So it turns out that the most disgusting thing in this world weren't ghosts and demons, but those cowardly, worthless beasts wearing human skin hiding in the crowd, willing to say and to do anything just to ensure their own survival.

And, after it all, they would say: "I just wanted to live, I'm pitiful and powerless, I've done nothing wrong." He had thought that the people he protected were all helpless, good people.

But he was wrong.

Those beasts took off their human skins now, revealing their ugly, snarling,

blood-red faces...

They were so well hidden…...so well hidden.

He didn't want to cry and bleed for those beasts in human clothing anymore,

but they were so sly, hidden so well amongst the good, kind people, their faces laughing at him, delighting in his powerlessness.

——You have no choice but to save us; if you drop the barrier, we'll take the people you want to save, the people actually grateful to you, together with us to hell.

You have no choice, however much it sickens you.

You chose to be virtuous, you chose to be a good person.

Since that's the choice you made, then it's only your duty to sacrifice yourself to save everyone else. If you refuse, then you're a swindler, a pretender, a fake,

worse than animals.

It was as if he could hear those people howling, could hear their shrill laughter:

You have no choice. You have no choice!

In that frenzied pandemonium, in the tempest of rain and wind, Chu Xun slowly lifted his head toward the heavens.

Dawn was finally about to break.

The relentless downpour had washed the blood from the stone steps of the ChengHuang Temple. Chu Xun and those who had tried to protect him were all tied up, walking toward the temple.

The scene was both sorrowful and laughable; those people had tied Chu Xun up so tightly, smugly pleased that they had captured such a powerful person, completely unaware that Chu Xun could easily turn the ropes to ash with but a single spell.

But he didn't. Nor did he take down the Shangqing barrier.

Enough blood had been shed in Lin'an already. He didn't want any more innocent people to die just for his own revenge.

And so it was that the thin layer of light protected them all, both the thankless beasts that turned on him and the people who stood sincerely by his side. They arrived at the temple, but the Ghost King himself did not appear. Instead, there was a candle giving off a black smoke that twisted into a dark silhouette.

"Why——have you not dispelled the barrier!" The moment it saw Chu Xun,

that voice flew into a rage, "Dispel the barrier!!!!" Chu Xun said, calmly: "Over my dead body."   The black smoke let out a shrill shriek: "Chu Xun, you must be mad! You...

the lot of you——kill him, else I'll take all your lives as soon as night comes!"   Daybreak.

The first light of day lit up the endless night.

The Ghost King, unable to maintain his form in the daylight, fled into the darkness. The candle giving off the black smoke flickered and went out.

Chu Xun pulled himself together. ChengHuang Temple stood on tall ground;

from here, he could see the morning mist shrouding gently about the mountains and the rivers, hiding the scars from view, and for a moment, everything looked like the days of old—it was a beautiful spring.

"Chu-gongzi, sorry." "It's not that we're cruel and heartless or anything, it's just that the Ghost King holds a grudge against you for ruining his eye... we have no other choice..."   "What're you all still yammering for! Don't drag it out, we don't want any surprises. I've got a family back there that wants to live! Who's more important,

this one guy or all of us? The righteous put the people before the self, his words,

not mine!"   Chu Wanning stood in the distance, looking at that person of unknown relation to himself, his feelings complicated.

Suddenly, a pair of hands covered his eyes.

Chu Wanning whispered: "What are you doing?" "Not letting you see." "...Why?" "You'll be sad." Chu Wanning was quiet for a while, his eyelashes trembling against the underside of Mo Ran's hands: "I won't. I've already said that it's all in the past,

already, two hundred years ago." Mo Ran sighed softly from behind him: "...You little dummy, then why are my palms wet?"

He didn't know how long had passed: one incense stick [30 min], one shichen [2 hr], or only a split second.

Time blurred in this madness, this chaos.

When Chu Wanning opened his eyes again, the Shangqing barrier had dissipated. Chu Xun laid in a pool of blood, surrounded by people and by ghosts,

by demons wearing human skin, inhaling the scent of fresh blood.

Ecstasy and guilt; calamity past, the rest of their lives now laid open. Agony and sin; the hearts of people, indistinguishable from those of beasts.

The air smelled like death.

The human realm—or perhaps hell.

It was difficult to tell.

Slowly, the crowd dispersed. There was no fear of ghosts during the day, so they went to find food, to rest, to wait for the Ghost King to come back at night and inspect the body in the temple and reward them the promised reunion with their deceased loved ones.

Slowly, only a dozen or so people remained in the temple, weeping in grief.

The young woman from the brothel was there, and the white-haired old woman. The young child, and his parents who had listened. A beggar, a scholar,

a storyteller, a son of a once-wealthy family, a widow holding her infant son, a teacher, and a farmer.

No one else.

But just as they wept over his body, the man lying dead in a pool of his own blood slowly opened his eyes.

"Gongzi!" "Chu-gongzi!"     Mo Ran's heart tremored. Unable to bear it, he said: "No... this is..." This spell was a lost art in the modern age, he hadn't expected to see it being used in this illusion.

"The Lingering Voice Spell. He's already dead, but he used this spell on himself before he died." Chu Wanning paused before continuing, "He still had unattended matters, things he was worried about."   Sure enough, Chu Xun's eyes were blank, pupils dilated, and his voice was flat when he spoke: "Demons and ghosts are treacherous, you must not believe their words. Without the Shangqing barrier, they will overrun the city once night falls and slaughter at will. Please leave this place and head to PuTuo." "Gongzi..." "I have already died, and will not be able to accompany you. But I have concentrated my entire lifetime of spiritual power into my spiritual core, bring it with you, and ghosts will not be able to approach." They wept even more sorrowfully.

Mo Ran and Chu Wanning's blood ran cold.

The spiritual core...

It was a crystalline formation within the heart…...

Chu Xun's body slowly lifted its hand that had not yet gone stiff, and, under the control of the spell, grasped the knife buried in his chest and pulled it out.

And then——

"GONGZI!!!!!!" The people around him cried out with grief, their voices twisted and hoarse, soaked with tears, "Gongzi, what are you doing——!!!!" With his own hands, he ripped open the gash in his chest, dug into his flesh,

grabbed his heart that was no longer beating and slowly, inch by inch, tore it out.

Blood dripped from the heart, enveloped in a golden-red flame.

It was Chu Xun's spiritual core, the last burst of light from a candle that had burned out.

"Take... it..."   He lifted the burning heart, holding it out in front of him, repeating: "Take it... take... it..."   Droplets of blood fell, only to become so many red haitang blossoms,

burning brilliantly as they drifted downwards.

"The road ahead is long and unpredictable. My life ends here, and I can do no more. Please... please take care... of... yourselves..."   Watching this scene unfold before his eyes, Mo Ran suddenly broke out in a cold sweat, feeling like there were thorns digging into his back.

Scar... this scar!!

He suddenly remembered that, on Chu Wanning's chest, where the heart was—— There was a scar there!

Chu Wanning was extremely sensitive there, how could he forget? Whenever he licked at that light-colored scar as they entwined in bed, Chu Wanning's usually impassive face would reveal a hint of the desire that he kept suppressed.

That expression made Mo Ran's blood boil, so he always humiliated the person underneath himself in this way.

But back then, he had never cared about Chu Wanning's past, and so had never asked how he got that scar, all the way until death.

And now, in this life, he no longer had any right to ask.