Chapter 47: Innocent Youth

Yin Pei sneered: "Instead of meditating quietly like all good priests should, those high and mighty Qimen fogies have in fact been secretly harbouring a Nirvana Parasite all this while. How can you still believe anything that they say!"

Zhou Fei unleashed three blows at him in quick succession, this move of 'Wind' having a touch of the Northern Blade in it. Each slash of her sabre was connected fluidly to the next in an uninterrupted flow of motion, aimed specifically at finding a weakness in Yin Pei's defenses, and coming at him from the most unpredictable angles. The savage wind created by her blade was whistling all around him. While Yin Pei's internal strength might have reached heights so great that he was practically invulnerable, the queen parasite on his chest was ultimately still a fragile little insect, and the cutting wind from Zhou Fei's blade came dangerously close to her several times.

As Yin Pei had come by his powers dishonestly, he'd never seriously trained in anything, making it impossible for him to best Zhou Fei through technique alone. So he simply thrust both of his hands out before him with a bone-crushing amount of force, intending to break Skies Shatter's slender blade with sheer brute strength. While the forger of Skies Shatter had been a once in a millennium talent, he had already been dead for a few hundred years now; although that splendid blade harboured the deepest of regrets and frustrated dreams, it was ultimately just a piece of metal. And because it was extremely sharp, it was also made incredibly thin, seemingly even more fragile than a regular sabre – it most certainly could not withstand such an overwhelming blast of pure power.

If all the sabres that Zhou Fei had ruined thus far were lined up in a circle, it would probably be large enough to surround the entire 48 Zhai. A situation like this was all too familiar to her. She immediately withdrew her sabre to avoid the brunt of this blow, but right then, the queen parasite on Yin Pei's chest seemed to have had it with him, and fluttered its wings as it flew into the air. It whizzed past Yin Pei's arms like a bolt of lightning, unaffected in the slightest by the violent surge of chi pouring from his palms.

Like an agile leaf, it flew precisely through the eye of the storm, leaving it completely unharmed.

In that instant, Zhou Fei was confronted face to face with this ghastliest of bugs – yet found that she felt neither fear nor disgust.

The trajectory of this ghastly bug seemed to become infinitely long in her eyes, the entire length of its journey slowing down and stretching out before her with incredible clarity. That inexplicable, hazy feeling that had been swirling around in the back of her mind all this while was suddenly traced out in vivid strokes by an invisible brush –

The first time she'd successfully tamed that rebellious Withered-Glory chi within her, letting two opposing currents of chi flow through her meridians in parallel.

The first time she'd encountered an extremely powerful opponent, pushing her to the brink – and the Withered-Glory chi had moved within her of its own accord, making her at one with her blade.

Each of the first times she'd grasped every single move of the Snow-Breaking Sabre.

The first time she'd truly come to comprehend the ingenuity of 'Inconstant' and its unpredictable twists and turns…

She'd scaled the sheerest of cliffs, bashed through the darkest of forests, and conquered miles and miles of icy tundra, having numerous brushes with death each time. Out there in the wild, she'd sometimes had trouble sleeping in the middle of the night. With the sky above her and the grass beneath her, she would stare all alone at the stunning galaxy of stars overhead, her head pillowed on Skies Shatter, feeling stumped once again about how she was ever going to advance in her technique, being quite sure that her skills were regressing instead of improving, and that the internal strength which she was painstakingly cultivating every day was just like sand slipping through her fingers. In this listless state, she would be assailed by the most unbearable sense of despair, as it seemed like her journey of martial arts was doomed to plateau here…all of this spiralling self-doubt and gloomy thoughts which she'd struggled with time and time again in the quiet hours of the night now flashed across Zhou Fei's mind like brilliant fireworks, before abruptly shrinking into the brightest little pinprick of light, which landed on the body of that insatiable queen parasite mere inches away from her.

Then Zhou Fei moved – her feet shifted a half-step forward at the oddest angle, and without sparing that queen parasite a single glance, she swung Skies Shatter up in a diagonal arc, aimed with brilliant precision right through that narrowest sliver of space between the blasts of chi emanating from Yin Pei's palms, allowing her sabre to slip away from him without encountering much resistance at all. The gleaming metal blade just narrowly missed Yin Pei while remaining unharmed, the wind from it slicing off an errant lock of hair that hung down the side of his face.

Swinging her sabre in a graceful semi-circle back to her side, her feet moving in step with the Mayfly Formation, Zhou Fei was a blur of motion as she managed to dart behind Yin Pei somehow. Thrusting at him from behind, her blade let the human host off, heading straight for the queen parasite instead.

A look of sheer panic immediately came over Yin Pei's face, and he desperately used his body to shield the queen parasite without a thought to his own safety. A massive ripping sound was heard as Skies Shatter tore through the fabric of his robe, and sliced open what little flesh still remained on his emaciated shoulder. The wind from this stunning blow swept aside the iron mask on his face, revealing a face so gaunt that it was unrecognisable…which sported a pair of humongous dark circles and protruding cheekbones over which the skin had split apart.

Yin Pei was frozen in shock. He'd thought himself unbeatable – he'd never have imagined it possible for someone to wound him with a sabre that wasn't even a palm's breadth wide.

"I don't care at all where you got your Nirvana Parasite from, nor am I after you for revenge. I certainly don't know what happened between you and the Qimen Sect either. Today, I don't plan on arguing with you about right and wrong, or who's the real villain in all of this," said Zhou Fei as he gaze swept indifferently across Yin Pei's disfigured face: "As long as you tell those creatures and bugs at the Liu Manor to back off, I won't stop you and that parasite you worship from leaving."

Yin Pei clutched his shoulder with one skeletal hand, digging a withered finger right into the wound till streams of blackened blood came trickling out. That queen parasite which had very nearly been sliced in two just now seemed to calm down somewhat, as it quietly alighted on his raw wound to feed on his blood.

Yin Pei's eyes were bulging out slightly, the dense web of burst blood vessels in them obscuring any visible emotion they might contain – joy, or anger, or pain, or derision. Then he opened his blood-red mouth wide, and laughed maniacally.

"I'm not going to – I refuse to! To tell you the truth, even if I died right now, my creatures would still remain alive and kicking, and be more than capable of killing off every single one of those so-called heroes. There's nothing you can do about it! Zhou Fei, all of you claim to do things in service of a greater good, act like you are above us all, win for yourselves both glory and profits, and are the arbiter of good and evil – you are the only ones who get to decide who deserves to die, are you? How great and mighty you all are…I'd like to see how much longer you can remain so!"

Zhou Fei furrowed her brow: "This hurts you as much as it harms them – what's wrong with you!"

Yin Pei seemed to have a door installed on his laughter – when open, it would issue forth in manic guffaws; but could snap shut at once and die instantly on his lips. While all his teeth had been bared in laughter just a second ago, his face now drew into a tight, tense mask. Staring expressionlessly at Zhou Fei, he said: "Since ancient times, the martial arts community of the central plains has always looked askance at anyone of an exceptional nature. You were the ones that made me an outcast. So let me be the evil madman, the bogeyman that everyone flees at the sight of, and avoids like the plague – who cares about the Sword of Mountains and Rivers? He died a long time ago, yet all of you still put him up on your pedestals and revere him as a saint. If he were still alive today, who knows what kind of person he'd actually be? I'd thought at first that my father died at the hands of Zheng Luosheng, until I realised that perhaps Ji Yunchen was the real culprit instead. But while both of them are dead now, I don't feel better in the slightest. Who do you think is to blame, really? Only recently have I figured out that the Yin Clan in fact fell victim to the scourges of 'justice' and 'righteousness' – how absurdly wretched that is, don't you think?"

Chong Xiaozi bellowed: "Miss Zhou, don't listen to his lies! Kill the queen parasite!"

In her peripheral vision, Zhou Fei could see that Chong Xiaozi was far more skilled than she'd expected. While this old Taoist priest was in a fairly beleaguered state, he still managed to weave his way through these creatures with his phantom-like qinggong and seemingly infinite supply of needles.

Zhou Fei knew that Yin Pei was full of bullshit, yet she didn't completely trust this slightly odd version of 'Chong Xiaozi' either. So she ignored them both and focused on the task at hand, saying to Yin Pei: "If you still don't call off your creatures, I'll have no choice but to kill you and that puny little bug of yours."

Yin Pei looked dead into her eyes. Then he said abruptly: "You know something."

Zhou Fei did actually know quite a lot of things. Because of Xie Yun, all of her free time was spent puzzling over 'Sea Blends Into Sky', besides puzzling over her martial arts of course.

Based on what she'd learnt so far, nothing good seemed to happen to those who were linked to it.

There was General Wu, who had sacrificed his life for the Southern Dynasty; and then there was Yin Wenlan, whose death was clearly the product of an evil plot, although the identity of the true culprit was still up in the air. As Zhou Fei wasn't as sharp three years ago, she hadn't found anything amiss about the facts of his death at the time. But when she thought about it again much later on, she concluded that if Zheng Luosheng really had the brains to mastermind the entire affair, he wouldn't have been so easily trapped and killed by them in the secret passageways of the Heng Mountains. Moreover, while Zheng Luosheng and the others who were after 'Sea Blends Into Sky' coveted the treasures it was rumoured to contain, apart from a handful of pills from the Great Medicine Valley, what other priceless treasures did it harbour? Nobody really knew.

Furthermore, if even the lips of a mere witness like Madame Cirrus were so tightly sealed, then how on earth had word of 'Sea Blends Into Sky' travelled all the way to the Azure Dragon Lord of the Mountain of the Living Dead?

And then there was Li Zheng: not too long after safely delivering the young emperor to the south, Li Zheng had been poisoned by the Big Dipper. As the brains of Duan Jiuniang were all muddled, and whatever her old servant had recounted to Zhou Fei was probably a second-hand account from that madwoman, she could only obtain a general idea of what had occurred, and upon closer analysis it all seemed highly suspicious – for example, how did the Big Dipper know Duan Jiuniang's whereabouts back then? And since Li Zheng had received word from the 48 Zhai's secret posts, and knew that the Big Dipper was roaming the vicinity of the 48 Zhai, why had he gone out to rescue her on his own despite the danger? Such reckless behaviour seemed like something Zhou Fei herself was capable of, but it really didn't fit her impression of the level-headed former Master of the 48 Zhai.

As for Old Master Huo, it was indisputable by now that he had gone mad from poison by Huo Liantao. But why his own brother had dared to do this, and where this poison had been obtained, was still a mystery left unsolved with Huo Liantao's death.

If all of these strange and suspicious happenings were simply coincidences, then there could only be one explanation for what 'Sea Blends Into Sky' was – it must be a terrible curse inflicted by a master of black magic.

Noticing this brief flash of hesitation in Zhou Fei's eyes, Yin Pei quickly took a step forward. But just then, a faint fragrance came wafting towards them, so sickly sweet that it almost made one gag. The queen parasite which had calmed down after drinking Yin Pei's blood was suddenly whipped into a frenzy again, and started to screech shrilly. Zhou Fei heard a series of groans from behind her, as those creatures grew increasingly agitated along with their mistress, their attacks doubling in ferocity. Unable to cope with this sudden and intensified onslaught, Chong Xiaozi suffered blows from two creatures on each side of his ribcage, which sent him flying into the air and slamming into a large tree. He slumped to the ground motionless.

Having dispatched the old Taoist priest, these creatures were now free to focus entirely on Zhou Fei. The queen parasite seemed to have clean forgotten how Zhou Fei had nearly split her in two just now, as she flew into the air once more and swooped towards Zhou Fei.

Their wings whirring eerily, the ghastly bugs on these creatures all flew into the air together with the queen parasite, and swarmed at Zhou Fei. Zhou Fei could see the look of pure astonishment on Yin Pei's face – but she had other things to worry about now.

Zhou Fei swung Skies Shatter down hard on that queen parasite. But this mother of all bugs seemed capable of predicting the movements of her blade, and deftly swerved to avoid it – before promptly ramming right into Zhou Fei's waiting scabbard with a soft thump. Zhou Fei had placed her scabbard right in the path of the queen parasite, preventing her from going anywhere.

The ghastly bugs that filled the air had already alighted all over Zhou Fei's hair, as if she were infested with them –

Without even batting an eyelid, Zhou Fei swung her blade straight down onto the queen parasite once more, slicing it cleanly in half. That ferocious swarm of ghastly bugs came to an abrupt halt in midair, then dropped to the ground at once like splattering raindrops, blanketing Zhou Fei's head and shoulders….

But she remained unharmed.

Zhou Fei dusted off her clothes, shaking these ghastly bugs off of her. Their glistening bodies that now carpeted the ground were spasming and shrivelling up before her very eyes, before they finally stopped moving.

Only now did she feel goosebumps start to rise on her skin.

But before she could heave a sigh of relief and turn to deal with Yin Pei, Zhou Fei heard a sharp whistling sound of something hurtling towards her from behind. She quickly leapt several metres away, looking over her shoulder in alarm. To her horror, not only had these creatures failed to collapse to the ground along with the ghastly bugs, they seemed to have been possessed by the vengeful ghosts of those fallen critters – charging savagely at her, they had her encircled in a flash.

Yin Pei immediately seized this opportunity to dart away into the surrounding forest, but Zhou Fei had her hands too full now to care about what might happen to him after losing the Nirvana Parasite. Fumbling to cope with this ferocious onslaught, she had no choice but to employ the Mayfly Formation. The Mayfly Formation used ingenuity to overcome brute force, and was hence most useful when you were outnumbered, or faced with opponents whose martial arts surpassed yours. As Zhou Fei had been focusing exclusively on the technique of her sabre over the last few years, she rarely used it these days – but was forced to do so now by these crazed creatures who were chasing her all over this little clearing.

She hacked off one of these creatures' hands at the wrist, yet he continued to ram himself at her relentlessly, seemingly immune to pain. At the same time, another creature reached a hand under his comrade's bloody arm with one of those long whips that Ding Kui used to wield, and lashed it round Zhou Fei's calf. A third creature leapt high up into the air, swooping down to deliver a tremendous palm strike on her head from above. With nowhere to run, Zhou Fei could only thrust her sabre out to meet that blow head-on.

Once those ghastly bugs died, these creatures seemed to have been shocked with a temporary burst of adrenaline, as their powers had suddenly doubled or even tripled. The force of this creature's staggering strike seemed even greater than Yin Pei's blows, which now came shuddering down Skies Shatter to slam right into her, nearly knocking her to the ground. She instantly saw stars, and her throat felt like it was on fire. Skies Shatter gave a metallic whine in protest as it trembled violently.

Fortunately, Zhou Fei had far more experience handling such near-death situations than the average person. The more her life was in danger, the calmer she often was.

Biting on her tongue to stay conscious, she abruptly turned sideways, swinging Skies Shatter out in a gleaming arc away from that creature to release all the force of his blow from her blade. Then she deftly switched her sabre to her other hand and thrust it back towards that creature, right into his throat and out the back of his neck. She pushed it in a few inches more before giving her sabre another mighty swing, flinging him off towards the others behind him. Pivoting on her ensnared foot, she slashed her sabre in a semi-circle before her, which whistled viciously as it sliced through the air. Her whole lifetime's worth of training was being displayed right now.

Each parry, slash, chop, and use of her opponents' force against them…was executed in dazzlingly quick succession. The scintillating movements of Skies Shatter formed a tightly woven shield of metal around her, preventing this mob of crazed creatures from coming any closer. For a single moment, Zhou Fei felt as if her entire consciousness had been reduced to this sabre alone, all five of her senses coalescing into this slender blade, despite the growing taste of blood in her mouth. She could see through each and every one of these creatures' movements with incredible clarity, and even discern the minor differences between these seemingly identical creatures – the bothersome layer of translucent paper obscuring that window in her mind was ripped apart all of a sudden, and the Southern Blade who had been gone for more than two decades seemed to have returned from the dead, coming alive in three feet of glistening steel.

Unfortunately, Zhou Fei was rudely shaken out of this heightened state of consciousness soon after – she'd already chased after Yin Pei at full speed and fought with him prior to this, and was fast approaching total exhaustion; she'd also been seriously injured by that creature's blow, and was about to collapse at this point.

But these creatures had no fear of pain or death. Wave after wave of them kept coming at her, determined to kill her right there. Slipping out of her state of inspired swordsmanship, Zhou Fei felt her entire body start to ache, the organs that had been injured impairing the movement of her limbs, and then with a clang, Skies Shatter nearly slid right out of her grasp.

Zhou Fei stumbled backwards, and was pulled to the ground by the whip coiled round her calf –

Rolling haplessly around on the grass, she moved left and right to dodge the attacks of those creatures, using the sound of the wind whistling beneath their palms to discern the direction of their blows. The backs of her hands were scraped repeatedly on the ground, rubbing them raw. None of this seemed worth it to her at all – the last time she'd been in a situation this dire, it had been for rare herbs worth fighting for at least, but what was in it for her this time? Bragging rights?

While Zhou Fei was rueing the decisions that had landed her here, she didn't let this distract her from fighting for her life. She bent over and wedged her scabbard in between the whip and her calf, trying to free herself from this long whip that was tying her down. But the creatures had already lunged at her during this brief pause in her sabre's movements, and still busy tugging off that whip, Zhou Fei didn't have time to dodge – one of the creatures brought a small axe squarely down onto her shoulder.

Several long wisps of her hair were sliced in half instantly. Zhou Fei instinctively closed her eyes and clenched her teeth hard.

But the excruciating pain of having her arm severed never came. All Zhou Fei felt was something slamming heavily into her shoulder, and then that small axe slid harmlessly down her arm. The axe had made a gaping rip in her tunic, which revealed the body armour beneath, made from Old Chen's fishing net scraps. This dense and sturdy netting gleamed softly under the moonlight, brighter than a lustrous pearl. The shells dangling at its fringes jangled as they rattled against each other, like the waves lapping gently against the rocky shore of that little island in Penglai.

Finally free of the long whip, Zhou Fei immediately went on the attack. Ignoring her painfully throbbing muscles and meridians, she took a deep breath once more to muster up her strength, brandishing Skies Shatter before her. Her blade collided with the assorted weapons of these creatures, sending angry sparks flying. Beaten back by her sabre, the creatures were forced to regroup before going after her once more.

Despite the severity of her injuries, Zhou Fei felt more pity for her sabre than her own self. While blood was starting to trickle out the corners of her lips, all she could think of was: If Skies Shatter breaks, am I going to have to beg on the streets to afford another?

Just as this thought entered her head, Skies Shatter emitted a mournful whine amidst this blistering exchange of blows, as if signalling that its end was nigh.

But right then, these creatures suddenly and simultaneously came to a complete halt.

Zhou Fei failed to withdraw her sabre in time, sending Skies Shatter straight through the throat of the creature before her. She stumbled forward, her long sabre buried deep in his neck. Her knees buckled under her, and she knelt to the ground together with the creature's corpse. All of these hideous creatures stood around her in a daze, looking like they had just snapped out of a trance. Some looked around them in confusion, while others blinked at Zhou Fei in bewilderment. A sudden silence fell over this clearing.

Zhou Fei painfully coughed out several mouthfuls of blood. Clinging for dear life onto her very last shred of consciousness, she brandished Skies Shatter before her, regarding these creatures warily. But immediately after, one of them stepped stiffly towards her on his long legs, and promptly toppled headfirst to the ground with a resounding thud, landing face flat in front of Zhou Fei.

Forgetting that her mouth was full of blood, Zhou Fei inhaled sharply in shock, which sent her into a massive, spluttering, coughing fit.

Amidst coughs so loud it sounded like Zhou Fei was about to wheeze her very lungs out, these creatures collapsed to the ground one after the other. They spasmed for a brief moment, before going utterly still.

Ignoring the agonizing pain in her chest, Zhou Fei thrust Skies Shatter into the ground and leaned on it for support, before cautiously reaching a hand out to touch the neck of one of these creatures. While his body was still warm, his neck showed no signs of life at all, as he was already dead – these creatures had simply been animated by a very powerful spurt of pre-death lucidity, like a centipede that was still moving after being severed in two.

Letting out a deep and shaky breath, Zhou Fei swayed unsteadily on her knees, and nearly fainted right there.

Just then, she heard a soft rustling from somewhere behind her, as Chong Xiaozi finally came to after being knocked aside unconscious. He clambered to his feet, pulling himself up with the help of the tree that he had crashed into, and walked towards Zhou Fei: "Miss…"

Still half-crouched on the ground, Zhou Fei said lowly: "Priest, you'd better stay right where you are. Take another step forward, and you'll have to forgive me for being impolite."

Chong Xiaozi looked taken aback, as he hadn't expected her to turn against him so suddenly.

Her head lowered, Zhou Fei watched Chong Xiaozi's movements in the reflection of a sword on the ground that had belonged to one of the creatures. Using every ounce of strength she still had left to circulate her chi through her body, to ease the unbearable pain in her limbs, she spoke slowly, careful not to let on how badly she was injured: "Priest, you said just now that although these creatures are under the control of the queen parasite, they are still capable of independent thought, and are nowhere near as easy to deceive as a wooden puppet – then pray tell, why were they so set on killing me just now, while all you had to do was faint to be spared their attacks?"

Chong Xiaozi came to a gradual stop before her, his eyes gleaming as they swept across Skies Shatter. In an amiable voice, he said: "The Nirvana Parasite is a poisonous creature of the rarest kind, and much of its workings are unknown to laymen like us…but perhaps you have some kind of misunderstanding about me?"

Zhou Fei suspected that her rib was broken. While she hadn't felt it when she was in the thick of fighting, every single breath she took now hurt so bad.

She knew that getting to her feet right now would already be a huge feat for her – she certainly didn't have any strength left to take on this mysterious priest. All she could do was try her best not to reveal any of the pain and exhaustion she was feeling, and put on a brave face: "Not quite. You imparted the Mayfly Formation to me a few years back, and also happened to save my life. I haven't even had the chance to thank you in person."

Chong Xiaozi smiled: "It was nothing much really, I only…"

"However, slow-witted as I am, I still don't understand many aspects of the Mayfly Formation." Zhou Fei looked up at Chong Xiaozi with a piercing stare: "Might you be able to help me with that?"

The smile on Chong Xiaozi's face faded somewhat: "There's no hurry to do that right now. While the queen parasite is dead, this thing is incredibly vile. Staying here could be dangerous – we'd better discuss that after we're far from here."

Zhou Fei smiled. Leaning on her sabre for support, she clenched her teeth and got to her feet despite the pain, cold sweat pouring off of her: "Ah, forget it. I don't have the temperament to feign ignorance and play mind games like Xie Yun and those snakes he deals with. Let me be blunt – a few years back in Yueyang City, when Mu Xiaoqiao's men were up to all kinds of mischief, he imprisoned many innocent folk of the martial arts world in an underground jail within a secluded valley. Entirely by accident, I barged inside and set them free, and it was there that I encountered the old Taoist priest Chong Xiaozi. We just so happened to be besieged by the henchmen of both the Vermillion Bird Lord and the Big Dipper, and were rather in a bind, when Chong Xiaozi yelled out several moves of the 'Mayfly Formation' to me. Do you know what the Mayfly Formation is?"

'Chong Xiaozi' stared back at her impassively.

"The Mayfly Formation is an unorthodox and ingenious technique which capitalizes on the user's surroundings to develop a tactical formation. It is intended specifically for when a single person is fighting against many, and incorporates all kinds of influences including qinggong, Taoist cosmology, the five elements, and tactics for group fights, to break down the coordination between your opponents, and use their force against them when they are stronger than you – hence its name is taken from the proverb 'a mere mayfly tries to shake a tree'. If you ask me, it almost seems like it were tailored for dealing with this bunch of creatures." Continuing to stare hard at 'Chong Xiaozi', Zhou Fei said: "But just now, you were fending them off with brute force alone, and didn't use a single step of the Mayfly Formation. Could you have clean forgotten it in your old age, or perhaps you thought that these powerful creatures were just small fry?"

'Chong Xiaozi' furrowed his brow. But then he shook his head and smiled, sighing: "You have a bright future ahead of you, Miss. You might seem reserved, but you're actually very sharp."

He brought a hand to his face as he said this, peeling off the whiskers that hung down both sides of his mouth.

This person looked quite similar to the Chong Xiaozi she'd met before, and with those whiskers on his face, he could almost pass off as the old priest. As Zhou Fei had only encountered Chong Xiaozi once, and three years ago at that, it was already quite a feat that she still had a vague recollection of what the old priest looked like. She certainly had no way of distinguishing the two from these subtlest of differences.

Zhou Fei asked: "So you're the 'Black Judge' Feng Wuyan then, and not Chong Xiaozi?"

"That's right," said Feng Wuyan readily. "Chong Xiaozi is my younger brother, who grew up in the Qimen Sect. I only ran into him by chance much later on in life. Because of him, I've been quite friendly with the Qimen Sect in recent years. The martial arts world of today hasn't been what it was for a long time now, with even the great Mingfeng Tower retiring in seclusion, so naturally I too withdrew many years back. As the 'Black Judge' had made far too many enemies, I decided to retire to the Qimen Sect, and on my occasional trips out, I'd frequently borrow Chong Xiaozi's name. Chong Xiaozi and I remain quite close, and he has mentioned you to me several times before. You really don't need to be so wary of me, Miss Zhou."

Zhou Fei asked again: "Mr Feng, you speak so convincingly that you almost had me fooled – but perhaps you don't know what happened: after the Qimen Sect suddenly scattered a few years ago, and Chong Xiaozi was released from captivity, when he learnt that Shen Tianshu was headed for the Huo Manor in Yueyang, he parted ways with us and rushed to Yueyang overnight, even though the drug in him had yet to wear off completely. When he knew that I was a descendant of the Li Clan, he gave me a book before he left, which apart from recording the manoeuvres of this Mayfly Formation, also contained a profound technique to cultivate internal energy. Given your experience, sir, you certainly know what it means when somebody imparts his internal energy technique to you, don't you?"

Although some senior pugilists who fancied themselves great teachers might give a word or two of instruction to young and promising talents that they encountered, it was one thing to offer such guidance, but another thing entirely to impart their technique in full. While sharing basic fighting stances and moves might still be acceptable, the techniques for cultivating internal strength were a tightly-kept secret to all but one's fellow sect members. Apart from her seniors in the 48 Zhai, only two other people had ever imparted their internal strength techniques to Zhou Fei. One was her self-professed 'grandmother', that madwoman Duan Jiuniang, and the other was Chong Xiaozi.

Duan Jiuniang didn't count, given her mental state, but as for Chong Xiaozi, from the way he'd handed his copy of the 'Tao Te Ching' to Zhou Fei, it was clear that he was entrusting his knowledge to a worthy successor, as he was sure that he was heading to his death.

"Since Chong Xiaozi turned out fine after that, and even mentioned me to you several times, why aren't you concerned in the slightest about whether I'd learnt the Qimen Sect's secret techniques, and instead the first thing you did when we met was urge me to help you kill Yin Pei and the Nirvana Parasite?"

With a rueful look on his face, Feng Wuyan said: "Since this is a technique from the Qimen Sect, it's an internal affair of theirs. Why would he tell me all the details? Hey, young lady, I'm not trying to be rude here, but you weren't even born yet when I retired from the martial arts world – what on earth do I get from harming you?"

Zhou Fei thought to herself: Only you know the answer to that.

Just as she was trying to figure out how she could get this person to scram as quickly as possible, she heard a strange rustling behind her.

Zhou Fei immediately turned around to look – and every hair on her body promptly stood on end. One of those masked creatures appeared to have risen from the dead, as he had crawled his way out from under that pile of corpses and was now staggering to his feet!

And beside her, Feng Wuyan said in a voice that sounded very much like he was smirking: "Hey, watch out!"

As he said this, the flute in his hand had already fired off another fistful of his long needles, which were raining down on Zhou Fei!

She was beset on one side by a Black Judge who wanted to kill her all of a sudden, and on the other by a creature that had regained consciousness – and worst of all, Zhou Fei's legs still felt like jelly!

While the best thing she'd learned in all her years was how to remain cool as ice in handling the worst of circumstances, all she could do right now was kneel helplessly on the ground.

This re-animated creature let out an inhuman howl, and pounced on her like a frenzied beast.

Zhou Fei instinctively raised her arm to block him, but her sapped limbs refused to listen to her. She could only stay motionless as that creature flung himself onto her. He was still breathing, although it was urgent and shallow. She could feel his breaths on her neck, which had a lingering stench of rotting flesh. This creature was extremely strong, his rail-thin arms clamping themselves onto Zhou Fei's body like two steel rods.

The creature lifted Zhou Fei clear off the ground and flung her aside, sending her sailing through the air in a massive arc. Then his body suddenly went rigid.

Zhou Fei's eyes widened.

To her great astonishment, he'd used his back as a shield, thrusting his lanky figure in front of Zhou Fei – every single one of Feng Wuyan's deadly needles had pierced into him!

The night breeze rustled through the trees, beneath a moon whose brilliance was obscured by passing clouds. The stars too had slowly disappeared, leaving just a single morning star which hung all by its lonesome in a corner of the vast darkness above.

In that moment, something seemed to occur to Zhou Fei. She crawled her way across the ground towards the creature, and slowly raised a hand to his face to remove his mask.

But the creature shoved her aside with a roar. Zhou Fei collapsed to the ground once more, the force of her fall nearly knocking her out.

Feng Wuyan hadn't expected this creature to charge out like that all of a sudden. He stood there in confusion, still puzzling over why the creature had gotten in his way, yet also hurled Zhou Fei into the air. Then all of a sudden, the creature spun right around, and with those long needles still buried in his back, made his hand into a claw and lunged at Feng Wuyan.

Feng Wuyan was forced to react. With a soft grunt, he stabbed his flute at the creature's eyes.

While this creature was incredibly strong, all of the joints in his body seemed to have been rusted together, as his movements were stiff. As he lumbered forward, Feng Wuyan's flute went straight through the eyehole of his iron mask, heading right for his eyeball – once it pierced through to his brain, there was no way he could survive, not even a monster such as he.

Just as Feng Wuyan was about to send his flute forward for this fatal blow, the creature bit down hard on Feng Wuyan's wrist, not even bothering to dodge that iron flute.

This creature must have held the deepest of grudges towards the Black Judge, as he seemed intent on tearing off a chunk of Feng Wuyan's flesh, even as he was on the verge of death. Greatly shocked, Feng Wuyan applied pressure on his flute, burying a whole third of it into the creature's eyeball. The creature's shallow wheezing came to an abrupt halt. His breathing had stopped, but his teeth were still firmly embedded in Feng Wuyan's wrist.

With a shout of dismay, Feng Wuyan forced open the jaws of this corpse. He couldn't feel his hand anymore, and blackened blood was bubbling out from his mutilated wrist. This creature had been immersed in the parasite's venom for so long that even his teeth were poisonous. As buckets of cold sweat poured off him, Feng Wuyan frantically used his chi to stop the poison from circulating further, while desperately trying to squeeze the tainted blood out, yet that terrifying numbness continued to spread from the wound all the way up to his chest.

And just then, there was a flash of steel, and Feng Wuyan's frantic movements suddenly stilled –

The pointed tip of Skies Shatter slowly emerged from his chest.

Zhou Fei had used her last ounce of strength to impale the Black Judge – she didn't even have the energy to pull her sabre back out. She left Skies Shatter buried in his corpse like that as he toppled to the ground. It stuck out of him ramrod straight, like a victorious flag on a bloody battlefield.

She stumbled backwards weakly till her back hit a large tree, and slid slowly to the ground.

The raw skin on the back of her hands had started to scab over already. With her hands covered in dried-up blood and tender scabs, the actual colour of their skin was almost indiscernible.

Zhou Fei looked down at her hands. Her palms had been covered with a thick layer of callouses from years of wielding a sabre, yet she'd swung Skies Shatter around so forcefully just now that they'd split open. If she wasn't feeling so utterly depleted, she wouldn't have chosen to kill Feng Wuyan like that. There were still so many things she wanted to ask him about: the whereabouts of the real Chong Xiaozi, why the Qimen Sect had been keeping a Nirvana Parasite in its secret base, how exactly this retired assassin was connected to Sea Blends Into Sky, why he wanted to kill Yin Pei, and why he wished to kill her as well…but she knew that while she could always investigate these things later on, if she hesitated now and got herself killed, she'd never be able to find the answers.

Zhou Fei was starting to feel a little chilly. From the very moment that she'd first left the 48 Zhai, it seemed like that idyllic picture of the martial arts world which she'd so hankered after in her childhood, where one could simply sit down with a stranger and share a flask of wine, had been shattered into a million pieces. She'd been forced to become suspicious of this and wary of that, always on her guard against anything that came her way, and ever prepared to be backstabbed by a smiling stranger, or betrayed by someone that she'd thought she knew and trusted…yet she wasn't born like that, to be always overanalysing and overthinking everything, and sometimes she felt like her brain was about to explode from all of this constant calculating, yet she still couldn't come to accept this stone-cold reality as she should.

Oh…and there was still that matter of the creature who had sacrificed himself for her.

Feng Wuyan had yanked his iron flute out of the creature's eye while trying to prise his jaws open. As he'd used an excessive amount of force, the creature's iron mask as well as several of his front teeth had been ripped out as well, revealing the bloody mess of a face below. No matter how good-looking a person might be, after his eye had been squished in like that there was no way he could still look decent – moreover his face was already disfigured from years of exposure to the parasite's venom.

He lay dead on the ground, his one good eye open to the sky and his mouth agape, traces of Feng Wuyan's blood still visible on his teeth and lips. He looked dreadfully gruesome.

Zhou Fei had to stare at this face for a long time, particularly that lone intact eye, before she found that she could vaguely make out the features of someone she knew – this seemed to be the young master of the Xing Nan Escort Agency Zhu Chen, who they had run into outside Yongzhou City three years back.

After seizing the Mountain of the Living Dead, Yin Pei's vile deeds had far surpassed all of those committed by its erstwhile Four Lords combined. Numerous innocents had lost their lives at his hands. A small escort agency which had fallen on hard times, and previously had to pledge allegiance to Huo Liantao just to scrape by, must have been like a rootless weed struggling to survive. In turbulent times like these, nobody would remember to avenge them even if they were wiped out overnight.

That trip to Yongzhou had been so eventful that everything which had transpired was more than enough to fill the pages of an entire novel. In comparison, their assistance to a little escort agency along the way was an insignificant footnote, with nothing about it that was really worth remembering. Looking back on it now, Zhou Fei could only vaguely recollect that there'd been a knowledgeable old man, a young maiden whose face was now quite hazy in her memory, and a handsome and delicate young man who had been fairly useless during their journey, and who stammered awkwardly every time he tried to talk to her.

As Zhou Fei was older and wiser now, she no longer needed such things to be spelled out so clearly to her. She had some idea of why Zhu Chen had helped her today. Leaning her head back against the cold bark of the tree, she felt the damp night air start to unload its moisture, forming fat droplets of dew on her hair and brows, as if the air couldn't bear its watery weight any longer. She felt a mix of emotions roil up within her, not quite in crushing waves, but in gently swirling eddies.

Yet no matter how she was feeling now, or what memories were being conjured up…for Zhu Chen at least, none of it mattered anymore.

Because it was too late for him.

Zhou Fei didn't know how long she sat there in that corpse-strewn clearing. She thought of Xie Yun's maudlin composition of 'A Jackdaw's Cry' – while it had been highly popular all across the land a few years back, it had vanished from music halls for a long time now, and even the most third-rate artists wouldn't perform it anymore. Nobody wanted to listen to such operas in times like these. As war continued to rage on, and everyone was constantly running for their lives, impassioned operas full of revenge and patriotic fervour were all anyone sang now.

Sentimental nonsense had gone out of fashion – it hailed from a time and a world that was too far away.

Perhaps news of Cao Zhongkun's death had already reached Zhou Yitang's ears, which would probably mean that war was about to break out in earnest again.

And in the martial arts world, dark currents were stirring beneath the surface as well. Everyone had their own selfish interests at heart, with endless power struggles amongst each new generation of pugilists. Every single person had their own tragic story of blood and betrayal, which meant a never-ending cycle of revenge and reprisals. All of these debts and connections and causes and people were snarled together in a ball of yarn so knotty that Zhou Fei couldn't find a single loose thread from where she could start unravelling it. She simply felt like everyone seemed to think that they were right and their actions were completely justified, and that they were all doomed to be forever tangled up in this intractable web – just as how this long night didn't seem like it would ever end. She couldn't even see the slightest hint of dawn breaking in the dark sky above.

Zhou Fei attempted to sort out everything that she knew in chronological sequence, but found that the more she pondered this the more muddled she got, until she gave up and shut her eyes wearily, leaning back against this tree and falling into a dead sleep.

This lasted till the close of this seemingly endless night, when she was startled awake by the piercing rays of dawn.

The uncomfortably bright morning light was accompanied by soft strains of music. Zhou Fei was on her guard the very second her eyes flew open. Somebody was sitting cross-legged atop a branch of a nearby tree, his back to the sunlight, less than three metres away from her.

This person was poised elegantly on that slender branch, almost as if he were floating in midair. His long hair was graying at the temples, and hung unfettered down his back. He was draped in a striking peach-pink robe, and holding a lute in his arms.

It was the long-lost Mu Xiaoqiao!