>>> cw: body horror and gore <<<
The palace doors opened.
Wide expanses of golden light came into view. The interior of the Guoshi Hall was richly ornamented, interspersed with golden dust and light yellow drapes hanging down low. The ground was covered with a golden straw mat, and cushions were embroidered in gold—it was a scene of imposing wealth.
In this field of gold light, a man wearing loose-fitting robes had his back to him, facing the window. His head was down as he played the qin.
That qin was covered in human skin and strung with strands of human hair, with nine human eyes embedded into the body. The eyes spun and whirled with each of his movements.
Upon hearing the sound of the door being kicked open, the man leisurely finished the last few notes and pressed down on the strings to silence it. He calmly said,
"It’s a calm and quiet night, what brings my guest here?"
Li Qingqian's voice was deep with hate as he carried his bloody sword, biting out four words, "I'm here for vengeance!"
"Ah..." The Guoshi spoke as light as smoke, smiling. "In all the Nine Kingdoms, regardless if they’re man or ghost, there is no shortage of people who come to seek me out for revenge. But those with the ability to single-handedly charge into the palace and to my hall..."
He leisurely turned his head. "Really are few and far in between.”
The Liao Kingdom's Guoshi unexpectedly also wore a golden mask, with his black eyes moving behind it.
He chuckled. "What kind of vengeance is xianjun here for?"
"Blood vengeance," Li Qingqian said fiercely.
"Oh?" The Guoshi rose with interest. "Which honored person did I kill?"
Li Qingqian knew that telling him Hong Shao's name was useless, so he clenched his teeth and said, "The maidens sacrificed to the mountain.....You know what you did. You.... liar!"
The Guoshi was calm for a few moments before bursting into laughter. "So xianjun is in such fury, just for a woman...."
Li Qingqian was angered to the point of trembling, his eyes red. "You said those women were to be taken in as priestesses, to teach them to read the will of the heavens, but in reality it was to bury them alive on Phoenix Feather Mountain in sacrifice to the mountain god! Yes or no?!"
"No," the Guoshi replied.
".......!"
Li Qingqian was usually a reasonable man. As soon as he heard his flat denial, he restrained his overflowing hate. Eyes wide and chest heaving, he stared at him.
The Guoshi sighed. "For xianjun to have such an assumption, comes from knowing far too little. You’re accusing me in error.”
"I.....I....." From the looks of it, Li Qingqian wanted to ask, "how am I accusing you in error, but he was too overwhelmed. Additionally, what the Guoshi said was far too unexpected, giving him pause; he didn’t know how to question any further.
"It's right that I collected those girls,” the Guoshi said, “but saying I buried them alive in sacrifice to the mountain god is truly, ridiculously incorrect. Little xianjun, I'll ask you, what mountain god does Phoenix Feather Mountain have?"
"....."
"The five evil mountains probably couldn't receive hundreds of live virgin sacrifices. And what rank does Phoenix Feather Mountain have?"
"But— but..."
"It has no spiritual affinity. At most, it’s a deadlock for fengshui. You heard the rumours on the street, and immediately assumed I wanted human sacrifices, which is why I meaninglessly pushed those hundreds of women into earthen pits, letting them perish within."
The Guoshi paused before continuing. "I have better things to do with my time."
Li Qingqian was unwilling to believe his opponent, but every word he said was reasonable. He wasn’t twisting any logic or hiding the truth, which left him at an extraordinary loss.
This kind of blankness made him look extremely weary and incredibly pitiful. It was as if the heavens wanted to take the fire of revenge from him as well, digging it out of his chest and leaving behind a cold and empty skeleton.
The Guoshi's thoughtful eyes watched him, watched him lower his head, watched him stammer, and watched the willpower leave his eyes.
After a long time, the Guoshi raised slender fingers to the mask and suddenly burst into light giggles.
Li Qingqian immediately raised his head, his face bone-white, to watch this man’s strange behaviour.
In front of his blank eyes, the Guoshi looked like a man teasing and playing with little birds, laughing harder and harder. Each gale of laughter seemed like a rising tide of cold water, causing Li Qingqian's hair to stand on end. "Hahaha......hahaha...."
"Why are you laughing?!"
"Pft, I'm laughing because you're amusing, you're seriously too amusing—Water Parting Sword Li-zongshi, I've looked forward to meeting you for a long time. You and your great reputation for suppressing evil—turns out, the zongshi of this era are no more than a naive and innocent thing like you?"
Li Qingqian was stunned. "You knew who I was from the beginning...."
"With those sword noises coming from outside, wouldn’t I be deaf if I couldn’t pick it out?"
Li Qingqian spoke in a daze. "So what you just said was all a lie?"
The Guoshi sat back down on the qin seat, one hand on the instrument, one hand on his knee. His eyes were serene and bright, and he smiled sweetly. "Hm? Why would I lie to you? All of what I just said was true."
"I've never sacrificed hundreds of women to the mountain god, but I was the one who buried them. Not to offer them in exchange for the nation's prosperity, it was just..." he paused, chuckling again, "just for fun."
Li Qingqian was stupefied. "You—!"
"You know why I wanted to pick those women." The Guoshi carelessly swept his hand back and forth on the strings, creating intermittent streams of meaningless notes. He lowered his eyes and laughed. "To be honest, they can't blame much else, except to bemoan the fact that they resembled a certain bitch."
He breathed in. "That bitch really made me hate her." His black pupils gleamed. "I wasn't happy."
"You....you lunatic....."
"That's right, I am a lunatic," the Guoshi giggled, "but, if I told you that I’m actually an infatuated fool, would you believe it?
"You—"
"You're not even curious as to who those women resembled?"
Li Qingqian did not respond, but the Guoshi didn't care, pensively talking at him. "Ah, about them; they all looked like this priestess I kept...a lowly slave girl. I treated her with lenience, but she didn't show me proper filial respect, instead choosing to live off of me and help someone else. She did something severe that went against my wishes, then escaped without a trace."
"I've always been searching for her whereabouts, but never got anywhere. Until many years later, I heard that a peerlessly beautiful woman got married in Chonghua. That was her."
The Guoshi spoke of his overwhelming resentment in the most careless of tones. "Tch, very moving. They all said that this girl must have been crazy to marry such a harsh and emotionless man, given her youth and beauty. Clearly, she possessed calamitous looks and features that rivalled a lotus flower, but for some reason insisted on clinging stupidly to an ice-cube chunk of wood that didn't understand romance at all. Truly, it was a waste of a beauty."
Under his hand, the strings refined from human hair created a bloodcurdling noise.
The Guoshi grinned. "I thought so too." He pointed at his head. "She must have had a disease up here, to choose to wed that man.”
"You see, with how naughty she was, refusing to be a perfectly fine Guoshi priestess and insisting on being a hag old wife for someone else, aiya, it really made me so mad." The Guoshi maintained his smile throughout all of this, as if he were chatting about inconsequential matters. "But what could I do? I'm so remote, positioned so high, it's not like I could go bride-napping. Therefore...."
He bared his teeth animalistically, showing a ghastly double row of teeth. "I thought of an excellent idea. To dispel my own unhappiness."
He gazed into Li Qingqian’s paper-white face, laughing. "I would also get married," he said lightly.
"Wasn't she so peerlessly beautiful, a rare beauty, a beguiling temptress? Then I'll insist on marrying hundreds, thousands, of girls who look like her. That bitch wanted to raise her rank, so I insist on trampling her into the mud. What do you mean 'devastating beauty'....Hahahaha, can't I still get as many as I want? What's so special about marrying her?"
"......!"
This time it wasn't just Li Qingqian; even Mo Xi thought this person had to have a disease to be so insane.
"Look at me, I gathered hundreds of priestesses, and all of them looked like her. What is she to me?" The Guoshi spoke with enthusiasm, his eyes gleaming. "If I want to take a wife, then I can dress them in a gold crown and phoenix clothes. Make them kneel in front of me, one by one—"
Li Qingqian's face had gone waxy from horror, but his expression then suddenly changed. "Hong Shao would never kneel for you!" he snapped.
He didn’t expect the Guoshi, who didn’t deny it, to shoot him a glance and laugh. "Yes, there were those who wouldn't kneel."
"......."
He licked his luminously white, sharp canines, narrowing his eyes and speaking in a syrupy yet eerie tone, "But, all of those who dared resist, all those who refused, all those bitches....." He scoffed, "Learned to behave in death."
He never cursed, but now that he felt such deep hatred, he didn't know what words he could spit out, so his face flushed scarlet, his lips quivering as he said, "You....."
The Guoshi just laughed, his eyes flashing with cruelty and satisfaction. "Didn't they want to be arrogant and unbreaking? Simple, I'll just bury them all into Phoenix Feather Mountain and let the deadlocked fengshui refine them into vengeful ghosts!"
"Stop talking......"
"There's plenty of disagreeable things in this world, and it's impossible for everyone to do as I'd like. Although I can't grant my own wishes, I can let the world know they live at my command and die according to my whims!"
"You must be insane......you're insane!!"
Li Qingqian couldn't bear it. He drew his sword with a clang. Jade-blue light shone out, and he struck to sever the Guoshi's head!
Mo Xi had experienced countless fights, and at this moment, could tell that this move was indeed Li Qingqian's life's work, it was enormously powerful, capable of breaking stone and sweeping snow; there were no more than three swordsmen on earth who could match this move.
But the Guoshi didn't even move, still sitting up and simply using his fingertips to pluck qin strings—that human-skin qin clanged loudly, eclipsing the Water Parting Sword's glare. Moments after, it exploded everywhere, and actually disappeared!
"How—" Li Qingqian was stupefied. Not even Mo Xi could imagine this mighty slash could be so easily broken—that Guoshi dispelled the sword glare and rose, lifting two fingers, his figure seeming ghoulish.
By the time Li Qingqian could respond, the Guoshi had seized the sword in his hand, holding it with two fingers.
With the slightest exertion of force, it shattered into thousands of pieces!!
"You....." Li Qingqian leapt back, shaking his head in horror. "How can you....."
The Guoshi laughed. "How could I so easily break your sword move?"
"...."
The eyes behind that golden mask sparkled serenely as he carelessly tossed aside the sword hilt. Slowly approaching Li Qingqian, his hand shot out to press against the pillar behind him. He edged closer like a hungry panther, their gazes interlocked.
"Water Parting Sword." The Guoshi's voice was low and syrupy. "Why wouldn't I know it."
The last vestiges of blood in Li Qingqian's face had drained away. He had nowhere to go, his back hitting the thick redwood palace pillar with a thump. His pupils were rapidly contracting as he stared into those eyes behind that golden mask.
He suddenly startled.
— Were those.....were those the eyes from his memory?
Those eyes that saved him and his brother from the flame and smoke, those eyes that looked like they were immersed in Jiangnan's misty rain?
He was afraid to be sure, and he couldn't be sure. He felt cold, his every drop of blood and every inch of flesh freezing over… His Water Parting Sword technique was developed from that green-clothed cultivator's sword manual; other than him, what other person could so easily break through his moves?
But this insane madman in front of him, the grotesque and dark Guoshi, how could he be his saviour from back then?
How—how could it be?! Their only point of similarity was the golden mask.....
There were plenty of cultivators who wore masks and didn’t let others see their true face. How could this freak be his benefactor?!
How could he?!!!
He had already lost Hong Shao, lost his future.
Now the heavens were merciless, even destroying his past?!
"No......not possible.....you're not....." Li Qingqian was shaking as he spoke.
The Guoshi's gaze was like a knife, slicing down along his temple. Little by little, he flayed away skin and meat, peeling away flesh and bone, easily seeing through to his trembling inner heart.
"Heh, heh, although this Water Parting Sword wasn't perfect, I really did like it in my youth." The Guoshi chuckled lightly. "Listen, a sword of five years brings time's passage, a sword of ten years creates a world's change....... Just from these two lines of the sword formula, you can tell what kind of frivolous youth wrote it."
Li Qingqian slowly shook his head. "No!” he suddenly burst out. “You can't be him! You definitely aren't him!!"
The Guoshi didn't answer and only lowered his eyelashes, laughing coldly with his teeth showing. "Li Qingqian. Since you've cultivated from this sword manual, you would count as half my disciple. Good disciple, this teacher knows you hate me, but this teacher hasn’t had my fill of fun and can't die so easily. I can only send you off first."
Li Qingqian's face was deathly white.
The Guoshi laughed, voice low. "Ah, I originally wanted to use the vengeful ghosts from the Maiden's Lament Mountain to refine swords, but it was all ruined by a little brat like you. Thank goodness you threw yourself into the trap, and now I have something to play with. Don't worry, once you're dead, Shifu will definitely refine you into a godlike weapon. Be good, don't make a fuss."
Li Qingqian wasn't afraid of death—he was afraid of this person.....Could it be that this was his saviour, the one he had always been looking up to, the green clothed cultivator?
"Were you the one to pass Water Parting Sword.... to me……? That man back then..... was it........." His voice was broken.
The Guoshi didn't answer him directly, laughing instead. "To be honest, I didn't want to pass it to anyone else at all. But....whatever, there’s nothing left to say now that it's come to this."
He stopped talking and stood up, cold light flashing in his eyes. "Come, come, I'll let you experience a bit of what the real Water Parting Sword is like! Shi. Fu. Will. Teach. You!"
Mo Xi: "!!"
The sound hadn't even faded before a jade-blue light rushed in front of his eyes, swift as a flying goose's shadow and ruthless as thunder breaking the skies—in an instant, hot blood splashed out.
The vision was shaking violently. Mo Xi watched Li Qingqian collapse in a pool of blood. Watched as that Guoshi tore open his chest with his sword, using his bare hands to pull out the still-beating heart, liver, intestines, and lungs. The golden mask was splattered with blood, while the Guoshi was still laughing crazily, the sound spiraling out and refusing to dissipate.
In that field of scarlet, the Guoshi licked at the blood on his lips, quietly laughing. "Li Qingqian, the girl you loved really, really shouldn’t have looked like her. And you really, really, shouldn't have learned this sword formula. "
He stared at Li Qingqian's corpse. "It was your fault for not knowing better,” he said lightly. “Don't blame me in death."
The last scene was of the Guoshi rising and using his bloody hand to drag Li Qingqian by the neck, walking out of the golden Guoshi Hall and into the starry night.
A trail of fresh blood stained the golden bricks as Li Qingqian's corpse was slowly dragged into the distance. As it disappeared behind the corner of the palace hall, the Guoshi's unrestrained laughter suddenly sounded like drumbeats, both in delight and in madness, sighing out—
"A sword of five years brings time's passage, a sword of ten years creates a world's change, this sword is sharp enough to part the waters......"
He paused, and a shout of delight and anguish rang out, breaking the still night. "This lifetime…. too short to part my heart from yours!“
Crazed singing flowed in the vision like a whirlpool, and everything started fading out. All of a sudden, Mo Xi dropped into a deep and dark abyss.
.....
As he opened his eyes again, the first thing that came into view was a clear night sky, resplendent with stars. Branches reached out towards the skies, and withered leaves trembled at their tips.
The vision had ended. He had returned to Murong Chuyi's courtyard.
Mo Xi lay on the ground, his ears still ringing with echoes of, "This sword is sharp enough to part the waters, this lifetime too short to part my heart from yours,” and scenes from the vision still played out before his eyes. From practicing the sword in front of their shabby dwelling to the final scene of mottled bloodstains in the Guoshi Hall.
He gazed into the night sky, Adam's apple bobbing. He wasn’t sure how to feel. After a while, a thought appeared in his head—
He thought, What if in the beginning, Hong Shao never got sick?
What if her fate were good, and her body was healthy? Would they have always accompanied each other? One less sword demon on earth, one more pair of lovers, the little drum becoming an old lady, always rambunctiously making noise around Li Qingqian.
Would this kind of possibility exist?
Mo Xi wasn't sure. When he was younger, he was very ignorant of love, believing that, as long as they tried, lovers could become family.
But later, he discovered that wasn't the case.
As it turned out, in this world, there was something called "destiny”.
When love was deep but fate was shallow, destiny would become poverty, feuds, illnesses.... and so on, all becoming weights you couldn't imagine or expect, piling up to drag on those interlocked hands.
Some people couldn't bear the pain and retracted theirs.
And those who felt hurt but weren’t satisfied, feeling pain but refusing to give up, likely ended up similar to Li Qingqian, smashed into bloody paste, bones and tendons showing, a shattered skeleton torn from his veins and blood.
He had been tough to the end, but still broke.
Only receiving an ending beyond recognition.
He rose; the other's medicines hadn’t worn off yet, and they were still sleeping. His eyes flickered over their forms. In the end, his gaze landed on Gu Mang—Gu Mang, who was still unconscious.
Mo Xi's heart felt painfully obstructed. Unbidden, he thought of how he and Gu Mang were just the same—separated by the yawning chasm of class, under the oppressive hate of family and country. Gu Mang couldn't bear that pain, and so he left him.
In the end, Mo Xi was the one who had been left behind.
But perhaps their situation couldn't even match up to that of Hong Shao and Li Qingqian. Perhaps from the beginning, they had never been holding hands, and he was just imagining his love being reciprocated, wishfully grabbing onto Gu Mang's fingers, forcefully begging him and not letting him leave.
In the "love you"s that Gu Mang had said over the years, he really didn’t know how many were sincere.
Mo Xi closed his eyes and cupped his pulsing head, letting himself withdraw from the remnants of the vision and his own heartache.
Yue Chenqing had neither experienced suffering nor felt the helplessness of love, and so although he pitied Li Qingqian, he wasn’t moved very much. He was only disgusted at the end, and as soon as he pathetically crawled upright, he was retching. "Blergh— bleghhhh—”
"That Liao Kingdom Guoshi.....He must be a lunatic!!" Yue Chenqing retched many times and gasped in a huge breath. "So unreasonable,” he said weakly. “What's he scooping other people's organs for—was he raised by wild wolves?!"
The two Murongs seemed mostly unperturbed; Murong Chuyi didn't have much expression, closing his eyes to rest, while Murong Lian weakly leaned his head on the fake stone mountain and said, "Regarding sword spirits, you know that the more violently they died, the more powerful they are. There used to be a master artificer who liked to coat people in adhesive, peel off their skin, daub on sugar water, and throw them into a beehive..."
Yue Chenqing flapped his hands, gesturing for him to stop, and then held his stomach again to retch. "Hleghhh—"
Murong Lian likely felt that Yue Chenqing throwing up was gross, and so he stopped talking. Helping himself up with a hand on the fake stone mountain, he rotated his joints and sneered. "But at least now I know; turns out Li Qingqian's Water Parting Sword wasn't his own and was only grasped from the sword manual given by the Liao Kingdom Guoshi.”
But Murong Chuyi spoke up. "Not the same."
"How isn't it the same?"
"The Water Parting Sword was Li Qingqian's new style, sword path of 'benevolent blade parts water, righteous blade beheads worry, poor yet able to help the world, hundred hardships but still unresigned', but that Liao Kingdom person, his sword path core was 'this sword is sharp enough to part the waters, this lifetime too short to part my heart from yours.' One based on righteousness, one based on passion. They’re completely different paths."
Murong Lian stared for a moment. Dissatisfied, he jeered, "Ignorant Immortal, Ignorant Immortal, we call you "ignorant" but you really are insane."
Yue Chenqing was truly wholeheartedly protective of his uncle. His sense of vomit-inducing disgust hadn't passed yet, but as soon as he heard Wangshu-jun speak of Murong Chuyi like that, he couldn't help but angrily retort, "You're not allowed to curse at my Fourth Uncle!"
Murong Lian looked at him, askance. "Why can't I curse at him? In all of Chonghua, other than His Majesty, are there people who I, Murong Lian, can't curse at?"
"Murong-dage you, you, you, you're unreasonable! I'm going to tell His Majesty!"
"Little baobei,” Murong Lian replied without any sweetness in his tone, “why don't you go tell your mother?"
Yue Chenqing's face went pale, furious to the point of trembling all over. Right as he wanted to retort, he saw a flash of white clothes, heard a sudden crisp "pa"—Murong Chuyi had actually given Murong Lian a solid slap!
At this, everyone was startled, with Murong Lian utterly unresponsive from the force of that slap, covering his cheek. "You.....you dare....." he said, both angry and shocked.
Murong Chuyi's long sleeves fluttered, his silk ribbons wide, and the eyes beneath those sharp brows were as icy as a dagger’s blade. "What wouldn’t I dare."
Murong Lian was on the verge of exploding, his peach blossom eyes an angry red. "You bastard! This lord is—"
Murong Chuyi backhanded him again. "Who do you think you are.”
Murong Lian had never been so humiliated by someone of his own generation. He was so mad he could see stars, the hand holding his pipe trembling. "You....you have the audacity....I will report this to His Majesty— you— you offend your superiors...."
Murong Chuyi narrowed those phoenix eyes slightly, his pale lips opening and closing. He coldly repeated Murong Lian's previous sentence.
"What are you telling His Majesty for? Why don't you go tell your mother."
At this, Murong Lian's face instantly reddened! With the vein at his neck pulsing, he stormed up to fight Murong Chuyi!
Murong Chuyi leaned to the side to avoid him, and with a wave of his sleeves, he intoned, "Make him get lost."
Yue Chenqing hadn't thought his Fourth Uncle would command him to do things. Wide eyed and shocked, he nodded blankly. "O-oh, okay...."
Who knew that Murong Chuyi would then say, "I wasn't speaking to you."
"Ehh?"
Then he heard wooden armours clacking, and the bamboo warriors originally surrounding Gu Mang suddenly rotated their limbs, all coming for Murong Lian.
Muong Chuyi, with a wave of his hand, stood behind the pack of wooden armours, coldly watching Murong Lian.
"See our guest out."
Wangshu-jun had such a high rank. Where wouldn't he be constantly flattered, constantly respected? But this time, Murong Chuyi was appointing an army of wooden people to shoo him away, and by the looks of it, if Murong Lian didn't go, they would knock him over and carry him out. Murong Lian was furious, trembling all over, and angrily pointed at Murong Chuyi. "You— you dare!"
Murong Chuyi's whtie robes resembled snow. "Throw him out," he said angrily.
The bamboo warriors clattered, and as ordered, swarmed and pushed to throw Murong Lian out.
Having kicked out Murong Lian, Murong Chuyi returned, indifferent. He sat at the stone table in the courtyard as if nothing had happened. "Xihe-jun, sit," he said to Mo Xi.
Mo Xi: "......."
The Ignorant Immortal was truly insane.
Yue Chenqing was used to his uncle's disposition. "Fourth Uncle, can I sit too?" he asked earnestly from the side.
Murong Chuyi didn't even look at him. "You stand."
"....Oh..." Yue Chenqing responded dejectedly.
Murong Chuyi raised his fingers, and two bamboo warriors quickly came over from beneath the colonnade, holding a tea set that they placed on the table.
With two cups of tea poured and placed, Murong Chuyi lightly said, "Time to speak about business. Now that Li Qingqian's past is clear, how does Xihe-jun feel about that escaped sword demon?"
Mo Xi was once again gazing at Gu Mang, and only now looked away. "He probably wouldn't leave Chonghua,” he said. “He would go seek out the peerless beauty that the Guoshi had mentioned."
"But,” Yue Chenqing cut in, “that sword spirit was so strange. The Li Qingqian we just saw was a good-tempered person, how come he’s now...."
"Li Qingqian is a sword demon, not a sword spirit,” Mo Xi replied. “He died violently and was refined into the Hong Shao sword. At first, he could keep some of his thoughts. But Hong Shao was kept by the Guoshi's side for a long time, and was likely stained with great amounts of resentful energy and fresh blood. Under these conditions, his manner and temperament would become more like his owner's every day."
Yue Chenqing was startled. "So the Li Qingqian’s temperament had already become close to the Guoshi's by the time we met him?"
"En," Murong Chuyi responded.
Yue Chenqing gave this some thought. "So it's like this....then the Hong Shao sword was probably gifted to someone by the Guoshi? If it belonged to the Guoshi, it's not likely that it would land in Murong Lian’s hands."
Mo Xi shook his head. "Hong Shao sword's owner doesn't matter any more. The important thing is what he will do next."
"Correct,” Murong Chuyi said. “Once Li Qingqian was transfigured, every movement would closely mimic that Guoshi. It's likely that his obsession is too strong, he's already gone insane, and so we can't make our judgements through the lense of normal behaviour. However, his obsession isn't hard to guess, he just wants to find the 'peerless beauty' the Guoshi spoke of."
Mo Xi agreed with Murong Chuyi's assessment.
To think of it, Li Qingqian kidnapped those women not to immediately kill them, but to make them tell him where other similar girls were. And then, according to the information they would give him, he snatched them one by one to defile and kill. Li Qingqian probably believed that if not for this woman getting married and causing the Guoshi to feel resentment, Hong Shao wouldn't have died.
Li Qingqian had already gone insane, gone monstrous.
Mo Xi considered this and turned. “Yue Chenqing,” he asked, “roughly ten years ago, do you know who was the most beautiful maiden in Chonghua?"
>>> cw: body horror and gore <<<
The palace doors opened.
Wide expanses of golden light came into view. The interior of the Guoshi Hall was richly ornamented, interspersed with golden dust and light yellow drapes hanging down low. The ground was covered with a golden straw mat, and cushions were embroidered in gold—it was a scene of imposing wealth.
In this field of gold light, a man wearing loose-fitting robes had his back to him, facing the window. His head was down as he played the qin.
That qin was covered in human skin and strung with strands of human hair, with nine human eyes embedded into the body. The eyes spun and whirled with each of his movements.
Upon hearing the sound of the door being kicked open, the man leisurely finished the last few notes and pressed down on the strings to silence it. He calmly said,
"It’s a calm and quiet night, what brings my guest here?"
Li Qingqian's voice was deep with hate as he carried his bloody sword, biting out four words, "I'm here for vengeance!"
"Ah..." The Guoshi spoke as light as smoke, smiling. "In all the Nine Kingdoms, regardless if they’re man or ghost, there is no shortage of people who come to seek me out for revenge. But those with the ability to single-handedly charge into the palace and to my hall..."
He leisurely turned his head. "Really are few and far in between.”
The Liao Kingdom's Guoshi unexpectedly also wore a golden mask, with his black eyes moving behind it.
He chuckled. "What kind of vengeance is xianjun here for?"
"Blood vengeance," Li Qingqian said fiercely.
"Oh?" The Guoshi rose with interest. "Which honored person did I kill?"
Li Qingqian knew that telling him Hong Shao's name was useless, so he clenched his teeth and said, "The maidens sacrificed to the mountain.....You know what you did. You.... liar!"
The Guoshi was calm for a few moments before bursting into laughter. "So xianjun is in such fury, just for a woman...."
Li Qingqian was angered to the point of trembling, his eyes red. "You said those women were to be taken in as priestesses, to teach them to read the will of the heavens, but in reality it was to bury them alive on Phoenix Feather Mountain in sacrifice to the mountain god! Yes or no?!"
"No," the Guoshi replied.
".......!"
Li Qingqian was usually a reasonable man. As soon as he heard his flat denial, he restrained his overflowing hate. Eyes wide and chest heaving, he stared at him.
The Guoshi sighed. "For xianjun to have such an assumption, comes from knowing far too little. You’re accusing me in error.”
"I.....I....." From the looks of it, Li Qingqian wanted to ask, "how am I accusing you in error, but he was too overwhelmed. Additionally, what the Guoshi said was far too unexpected, giving him pause; he didn’t know how to question any further.
"It's right that I collected those girls,” the Guoshi said, “but saying I buried them alive in sacrifice to the mountain god is truly, ridiculously incorrect. Little xianjun, I'll ask you, what mountain god does Phoenix Feather Mountain have?"
"....."
"The five evil mountains probably couldn't receive hundreds of live virgin sacrifices. And what rank does Phoenix Feather Mountain have?"
"But— but..."
"It has no spiritual affinity. At most, it’s a deadlock for fengshui. You heard the rumours on the street, and immediately assumed I wanted human sacrifices, which is why I meaninglessly pushed those hundreds of women into earthen pits, letting them perish within."
The Guoshi paused before continuing. "I have better things to do with my time."
Li Qingqian was unwilling to believe his opponent, but every word he said was reasonable. He wasn’t twisting any logic or hiding the truth, which left him at an extraordinary loss.
This kind of blankness made him look extremely weary and incredibly pitiful. It was as if the heavens wanted to take the fire of revenge from him as well, digging it out of his chest and leaving behind a cold and empty skeleton.
The Guoshi's thoughtful eyes watched him, watched him lower his head, watched him stammer, and watched the willpower leave his eyes.
After a long time, the Guoshi raised slender fingers to the mask and suddenly burst into light giggles.
Li Qingqian immediately raised his head, his face bone-white, to watch this man’s strange behaviour.
In front of his blank eyes, the Guoshi looked like a man teasing and playing with little birds, laughing harder and harder. Each gale of laughter seemed like a rising tide of cold water, causing Li Qingqian's hair to stand on end. "Hahaha......hahaha...."
"Why are you laughing?!"
"Pft, I'm laughing because you're amusing, you're seriously too amusing—Water Parting Sword Li-zongshi, I've looked forward to meeting you for a long time. You and your great reputation for suppressing evil—turns out, the zongshi of this era are no more than a naive and innocent thing like you?"
Li Qingqian was stunned. "You knew who I was from the beginning...."
"With those sword noises coming from outside, wouldn’t I be deaf if I couldn’t pick it out?"
Li Qingqian spoke in a daze. "So what you just said was all a lie?"
The Guoshi sat back down on the qin seat, one hand on the instrument, one hand on his knee. His eyes were serene and bright, and he smiled sweetly. "Hm? Why would I lie to you? All of what I just said was true."
"I've never sacrificed hundreds of women to the mountain god, but I was the one who buried them. Not to offer them in exchange for the nation's prosperity, it was just..." he paused, chuckling again, "just for fun."
Li Qingqian was stupefied. "You—!"
"You know why I wanted to pick those women." The Guoshi carelessly swept his hand back and forth on the strings, creating intermittent streams of meaningless notes. He lowered his eyes and laughed. "To be honest, they can't blame much else, except to bemoan the fact that they resembled a certain bitch."
He breathed in. "That bitch really made me hate her." His black pupils gleamed. "I wasn't happy."
"You....you lunatic....."
"That's right, I am a lunatic," the Guoshi giggled, "but, if I told you that I’m actually an infatuated fool, would you believe it?
"You—"
"You're not even curious as to who those women resembled?"
Li Qingqian did not respond, but the Guoshi didn't care, pensively talking at him. "Ah, about them; they all looked like this priestess I kept...a lowly slave girl. I treated her with lenience, but she didn't show me proper filial respect, instead choosing to live off of me and help someone else. She did something severe that went against my wishes, then escaped without a trace."
"I've always been searching for her whereabouts, but never got anywhere. Until many years later, I heard that a peerlessly beautiful woman got married in Chonghua. That was her."
The Guoshi spoke of his overwhelming resentment in the most careless of tones. "Tch, very moving. They all said that this girl must have been crazy to marry such a harsh and emotionless man, given her youth and beauty. Clearly, she possessed calamitous looks and features that rivalled a lotus flower, but for some reason insisted on clinging stupidly to an ice-cube chunk of wood that didn't understand romance at all. Truly, it was a waste of a beauty."
Under his hand, the strings refined from human hair created a bloodcurdling noise.
The Guoshi grinned. "I thought so too." He pointed at his head. "She must have had a disease up here, to choose to wed that man.”
"You see, with how naughty she was, refusing to be a perfectly fine Guoshi priestess and insisting on being a hag old wife for someone else, aiya, it really made me so mad." The Guoshi maintained his smile throughout all of this, as if he were chatting about inconsequential matters. "But what could I do? I'm so remote, positioned so high, it's not like I could go bride-napping. Therefore...."
He bared his teeth animalistically, showing a ghastly double row of teeth. "I thought of an excellent idea. To dispel my own unhappiness."
He gazed into Li Qingqian’s paper-white face, laughing. "I would also get married," he said lightly.
"Wasn't she so peerlessly beautiful, a rare beauty, a beguiling temptress? Then I'll insist on marrying hundreds, thousands, of girls who look like her. That bitch wanted to raise her rank, so I insist on trampling her into the mud. What do you mean 'devastating beauty'....Hahahaha, can't I still get as many as I want? What's so special about marrying her?"
"......!"
This time it wasn't just Li Qingqian; even Mo Xi thought this person had to have a disease to be so insane.
"Look at me, I gathered hundreds of priestesses, and all of them looked like her. What is she to me?" The Guoshi spoke with enthusiasm, his eyes gleaming. "If I want to take a wife, then I can dress them in a gold crown and phoenix clothes. Make them kneel in front of me, one by one—"
Li Qingqian's face had gone waxy from horror, but his expression then suddenly changed. "Hong Shao would never kneel for you!" he snapped.
He didn’t expect the Guoshi, who didn’t deny it, to shoot him a glance and laugh. "Yes, there were those who wouldn't kneel."
"......."
He licked his luminously white, sharp canines, narrowing his eyes and speaking in a syrupy yet eerie tone, "But, all of those who dared resist, all those who refused, all those bitches....." He scoffed, "Learned to behave in death."
He never cursed, but now that he felt such deep hatred, he didn't know what words he could spit out, so his face flushed scarlet, his lips quivering as he said, "You....."
The Guoshi just laughed, his eyes flashing with cruelty and satisfaction. "Didn't they want to be arrogant and unbreaking? Simple, I'll just bury them all into Phoenix Feather Mountain and let the deadlocked fengshui refine them into vengeful ghosts!"
"Stop talking......"
"There's plenty of disagreeable things in this world, and it's impossible for everyone to do as I'd like. Although I can't grant my own wishes, I can let the world know they live at my command and die according to my whims!"
"You must be insane......you're insane!!"
Li Qingqian couldn't bear it. He drew his sword with a clang. Jade-blue light shone out, and he struck to sever the Guoshi's head!
Mo Xi had experienced countless fights, and at this moment, could tell that this move was indeed Li Qingqian's life's work, it was enormously powerful, capable of breaking stone and sweeping snow; there were no more than three swordsmen on earth who could match this move.
But the Guoshi didn't even move, still sitting up and simply using his fingertips to pluck qin strings—that human-skin qin clanged loudly, eclipsing the Water Parting Sword's glare. Moments after, it exploded everywhere, and actually disappeared!
"How—" Li Qingqian was stupefied. Not even Mo Xi could imagine this mighty slash could be so easily broken—that Guoshi dispelled the sword glare and rose, lifting two fingers, his figure seeming ghoulish.
By the time Li Qingqian could respond, the Guoshi had seized the sword in his hand, holding it with two fingers.
With the slightest exertion of force, it shattered into thousands of pieces!!
"You....." Li Qingqian leapt back, shaking his head in horror. "How can you....."
The Guoshi laughed. "How could I so easily break your sword move?"
"...."
The eyes behind that golden mask sparkled serenely as he carelessly tossed aside the sword hilt. Slowly approaching Li Qingqian, his hand shot out to press against the pillar behind him. He edged closer like a hungry panther, their gazes interlocked.
"Water Parting Sword." The Guoshi's voice was low and syrupy. "Why wouldn't I know it."
The last vestiges of blood in Li Qingqian's face had drained away. He had nowhere to go, his back hitting the thick redwood palace pillar with a thump. His pupils were rapidly contracting as he stared into those eyes behind that golden mask.
He suddenly startled.
— Were those.....were those the eyes from his memory?
Those eyes that saved him and his brother from the flame and smoke, those eyes that looked like they were immersed in Jiangnan's misty rain?
He was afraid to be sure, and he couldn't be sure. He felt cold, his every drop of blood and every inch of flesh freezing over… His Water Parting Sword technique was developed from that green-clothed cultivator's sword manual; other than him, what other person could so easily break through his moves?
But this insane madman in front of him, the grotesque and dark Guoshi, how could he be his saviour from back then?
How—how could it be?! Their only point of similarity was the golden mask.....
There were plenty of cultivators who wore masks and didn’t let others see their true face. How could this freak be his benefactor?!
How could he?!!!
He had already lost Hong Shao, lost his future.
Now the heavens were merciless, even destroying his past?!
"No......not possible.....you're not....." Li Qingqian was shaking as he spoke.
The Guoshi's gaze was like a knife, slicing down along his temple. Little by little, he flayed away skin and meat, peeling away flesh and bone, easily seeing through to his trembling inner heart.
"Heh, heh, although this Water Parting Sword wasn't perfect, I really did like it in my youth." The Guoshi chuckled lightly. "Listen, a sword of five years brings time's passage, a sword of ten years creates a world's change....... Just from these two lines of the sword formula, you can tell what kind of frivolous youth wrote it."
Li Qingqian slowly shook his head. "No!” he suddenly burst out. “You can't be him! You definitely aren't him!!"
The Guoshi didn't answer and only lowered his eyelashes, laughing coldly with his teeth showing. "Li Qingqian. Since you've cultivated from this sword manual, you would count as half my disciple. Good disciple, this teacher knows you hate me, but this teacher hasn’t had my fill of fun and can't die so easily. I can only send you off first."
Li Qingqian's face was deathly white.
The Guoshi laughed, voice low. "Ah, I originally wanted to use the vengeful ghosts from the Maiden's Lament Mountain to refine swords, but it was all ruined by a little brat like you. Thank goodness you threw yourself into the trap, and now I have something to play with. Don't worry, once you're dead, Shifu will definitely refine you into a godlike weapon. Be good, don't make a fuss."
Li Qingqian wasn't afraid of death—he was afraid of this person.....Could it be that this was his saviour, the one he had always been looking up to, the green clothed cultivator?
"Were you the one to pass Water Parting Sword.... to me……? That man back then..... was it........." His voice was broken.
The Guoshi didn't answer him directly, laughing instead. "To be honest, I didn't want to pass it to anyone else at all. But....whatever, there’s nothing left to say now that it's come to this."
He stopped talking and stood up, cold light flashing in his eyes. "Come, come, I'll let you experience a bit of what the real Water Parting Sword is like! Shi. Fu. Will. Teach. You!"
Mo Xi: "!!"
The sound hadn't even faded before a jade-blue light rushed in front of his eyes, swift as a flying goose's shadow and ruthless as thunder breaking the skies—in an instant, hot blood splashed out.
The vision was shaking violently. Mo Xi watched Li Qingqian collapse in a pool of blood. Watched as that Guoshi tore open his chest with his sword, using his bare hands to pull out the still-beating heart, liver, intestines, and lungs. The golden mask was splattered with blood, while the Guoshi was still laughing crazily, the sound spiraling out and refusing to dissipate.
In that field of scarlet, the Guoshi licked at the blood on his lips, quietly laughing. "Li Qingqian, the girl you loved really, really shouldn’t have looked like her. And you really, really, shouldn't have learned this sword formula. "
He stared at Li Qingqian's corpse. "It was your fault for not knowing better,” he said lightly. “Don't blame me in death."
The last scene was of the Guoshi rising and using his bloody hand to drag Li Qingqian by the neck, walking out of the golden Guoshi Hall and into the starry night.
A trail of fresh blood stained the golden bricks as Li Qingqian's corpse was slowly dragged into the distance. As it disappeared behind the corner of the palace hall, the Guoshi's unrestrained laughter suddenly sounded like drumbeats, both in delight and in madness, sighing out—
"A sword of five years brings time's passage, a sword of ten years creates a world's change, this sword is sharp enough to part the waters......"
He paused, and a shout of delight and anguish rang out, breaking the still night. "This lifetime…. too short to part my heart from yours!“
Crazed singing flowed in the vision like a whirlpool, and everything started fading out. All of a sudden, Mo Xi dropped into a deep and dark abyss.
.....
As he opened his eyes again, the first thing that came into view was a clear night sky, resplendent with stars. Branches reached out towards the skies, and withered leaves trembled at their tips.
The vision had ended. He had returned to Murong Chuyi's courtyard.
Mo Xi lay on the ground, his ears still ringing with echoes of, "This sword is sharp enough to part the waters, this lifetime too short to part my heart from yours,” and scenes from the vision still played out before his eyes. From practicing the sword in front of their shabby dwelling to the final scene of mottled bloodstains in the Guoshi Hall.
He gazed into the night sky, Adam's apple bobbing. He wasn’t sure how to feel. After a while, a thought appeared in his head—
He thought, What if in the beginning, Hong Shao never got sick?
What if her fate were good, and her body was healthy? Would they have always accompanied each other? One less sword demon on earth, one more pair of lovers, the little drum becoming an old lady, always rambunctiously making noise around Li Qingqian.
Would this kind of possibility exist?
Mo Xi wasn't sure. When he was younger, he was very ignorant of love, believing that, as long as they tried, lovers could become family.
But later, he discovered that wasn't the case.
As it turned out, in this world, there was something called "destiny”.
When love was deep but fate was shallow, destiny would become poverty, feuds, illnesses.... and so on, all becoming weights you couldn't imagine or expect, piling up to drag on those interlocked hands.
Some people couldn't bear the pain and retracted theirs.
And those who felt hurt but weren’t satisfied, feeling pain but refusing to give up, likely ended up similar to Li Qingqian, smashed into bloody paste, bones and tendons showing, a shattered skeleton torn from his veins and blood.
He had been tough to the end, but still broke.
Only receiving an ending beyond recognition.
He rose; the other's medicines hadn’t worn off yet, and they were still sleeping. His eyes flickered over their forms. In the end, his gaze landed on Gu Mang—Gu Mang, who was still unconscious.
Mo Xi's heart felt painfully obstructed. Unbidden, he thought of how he and Gu Mang were just the same—separated by the yawning chasm of class, under the oppressive hate of family and country. Gu Mang couldn't bear that pain, and so he left him.
In the end, Mo Xi was the one who had been left behind.
But perhaps their situation couldn't even match up to that of Hong Shao and Li Qingqian. Perhaps from the beginning, they had never been holding hands, and he was just imagining his love being reciprocated, wishfully grabbing onto Gu Mang's fingers, forcefully begging him and not letting him leave.
In the "love you"s that Gu Mang had said over the years, he really didn’t know how many were sincere.
Mo Xi closed his eyes and cupped his pulsing head, letting himself withdraw from the remnants of the vision and his own heartache.
Yue Chenqing had neither experienced suffering nor felt the helplessness of love, and so although he pitied Li Qingqian, he wasn’t moved very much. He was only disgusted at the end, and as soon as he pathetically crawled upright, he was retching. "Blergh— bleghhhh—”
"That Liao Kingdom Guoshi.....He must be a lunatic!!" Yue Chenqing retched many times and gasped in a huge breath. "So unreasonable,” he said weakly. “What's he scooping other people's organs for—was he raised by wild wolves?!"
The two Murongs seemed mostly unperturbed; Murong Chuyi didn't have much expression, closing his eyes to rest, while Murong Lian weakly leaned his head on the fake stone mountain and said, "Regarding sword spirits, you know that the more violently they died, the more powerful they are. There used to be a master artificer who liked to coat people in adhesive, peel off their skin, daub on sugar water, and throw them into a beehive..."
Yue Chenqing flapped his hands, gesturing for him to stop, and then held his stomach again to retch. "Hleghhh—"
Murong Lian likely felt that Yue Chenqing throwing up was gross, and so he stopped talking. Helping himself up with a hand on the fake stone mountain, he rotated his joints and sneered. "But at least now I know; turns out Li Qingqian's Water Parting Sword wasn't his own and was only grasped from the sword manual given by the Liao Kingdom Guoshi.”
But Murong Chuyi spoke up. "Not the same."
"How isn't it the same?"
"The Water Parting Sword was Li Qingqian's new style, sword path of 'benevolent blade parts water, righteous blade beheads worry, poor yet able to help the world, hundred hardships but still unresigned', but that Liao Kingdom person, his sword path core was 'this sword is sharp enough to part the waters, this lifetime too short to part my heart from yours.' One based on righteousness, one based on passion. They’re completely different paths."
Murong Lian stared for a moment. Dissatisfied, he jeered, "Ignorant Immortal, Ignorant Immortal, we call you "ignorant" but you really are insane."
Yue Chenqing was truly wholeheartedly protective of his uncle. His sense of vomit-inducing disgust hadn't passed yet, but as soon as he heard Wangshu-jun speak of Murong Chuyi like that, he couldn't help but angrily retort, "You're not allowed to curse at my Fourth Uncle!"
Murong Lian looked at him, askance. "Why can't I curse at him? In all of Chonghua, other than His Majesty, are there people who I, Murong Lian, can't curse at?"
"Murong-dage you, you, you, you're unreasonable! I'm going to tell His Majesty!"
"Little baobei,” Murong Lian replied without any sweetness in his tone, “why don't you go tell your mother?"
Yue Chenqing's face went pale, furious to the point of trembling all over. Right as he wanted to retort, he saw a flash of white clothes, heard a sudden crisp "pa"—Murong Chuyi had actually given Murong Lian a solid slap!
At this, everyone was startled, with Murong Lian utterly unresponsive from the force of that slap, covering his cheek. "You.....you dare....." he said, both angry and shocked.
Murong Chuyi's long sleeves fluttered, his silk ribbons wide, and the eyes beneath those sharp brows were as icy as a dagger’s blade. "What wouldn’t I dare."
Murong Lian was on the verge of exploding, his peach blossom eyes an angry red. "You bastard! This lord is—"
Murong Chuyi backhanded him again. "Who do you think you are.”
Murong Lian had never been so humiliated by someone of his own generation. He was so mad he could see stars, the hand holding his pipe trembling. "You....you have the audacity....I will report this to His Majesty— you— you offend your superiors...."
Murong Chuyi narrowed those phoenix eyes slightly, his pale lips opening and closing. He coldly repeated Murong Lian's previous sentence.
"What are you telling His Majesty for? Why don't you go tell your mother."
At this, Murong Lian's face instantly reddened! With the vein at his neck pulsing, he stormed up to fight Murong Chuyi!
Murong Chuyi leaned to the side to avoid him, and with a wave of his sleeves, he intoned, "Make him get lost."
Yue Chenqing hadn't thought his Fourth Uncle would command him to do things. Wide eyed and shocked, he nodded blankly. "O-oh, okay...."
Who knew that Murong Chuyi would then say, "I wasn't speaking to you."
"Ehh?"
Then he heard wooden armours clacking, and the bamboo warriors originally surrounding Gu Mang suddenly rotated their limbs, all coming for Murong Lian.
Muong Chuyi, with a wave of his hand, stood behind the pack of wooden armours, coldly watching Murong Lian.
"See our guest out."
Wangshu-jun had such a high rank. Where wouldn't he be constantly flattered, constantly respected? But this time, Murong Chuyi was appointing an army of wooden people to shoo him away, and by the looks of it, if Murong Lian didn't go, they would knock him over and carry him out. Murong Lian was furious, trembling all over, and angrily pointed at Murong Chuyi. "You— you dare!"
Murong Chuyi's whtie robes resembled snow. "Throw him out," he said angrily.
The bamboo warriors clattered, and as ordered, swarmed and pushed to throw Murong Lian out.
Having kicked out Murong Lian, Murong Chuyi returned, indifferent. He sat at the stone table in the courtyard as if nothing had happened. "Xihe-jun, sit," he said to Mo Xi.
Mo Xi: "......."
The Ignorant Immortal was truly insane.
Yue Chenqing was used to his uncle's disposition. "Fourth Uncle, can I sit too?" he asked earnestly from the side.
Murong Chuyi didn't even look at him. "You stand."
"....Oh..." Yue Chenqing responded dejectedly.
Murong Chuyi raised his fingers, and two bamboo warriors quickly came over from beneath the colonnade, holding a tea set that they placed on the table.
With two cups of tea poured and placed, Murong Chuyi lightly said, "Time to speak about business. Now that Li Qingqian's past is clear, how does Xihe-jun feel about that escaped sword demon?"
Mo Xi was once again gazing at Gu Mang, and only now looked away. "He probably wouldn't leave Chonghua,” he said. “He would go seek out the peerless beauty that the Guoshi had mentioned."
"But,” Yue Chenqing cut in, “that sword spirit was so strange. The Li Qingqian we just saw was a good-tempered person, how come he’s now...."
"Li Qingqian is a sword demon, not a sword spirit,” Mo Xi replied. “He died violently and was refined into the Hong Shao sword. At first, he could keep some of his thoughts. But Hong Shao was kept by the Guoshi's side for a long time, and was likely stained with great amounts of resentful energy and fresh blood. Under these conditions, his manner and temperament would become more like his owner's every day."
Yue Chenqing was startled. "So the Li Qingqian’s temperament had already become close to the Guoshi's by the time we met him?"
"En," Murong Chuyi responded.
Yue Chenqing gave this some thought. "So it's like this....then the Hong Shao sword was probably gifted to someone by the Guoshi? If it belonged to the Guoshi, it's not likely that it would land in Murong Lian’s hands."
Mo Xi shook his head. "Hong Shao sword's owner doesn't matter any more. The important thing is what he will do next."
"Correct,” Murong Chuyi said. “Once Li Qingqian was transfigured, every movement would closely mimic that Guoshi. It's likely that his obsession is too strong, he's already gone insane, and so we can't make our judgements through the lense of normal behaviour. However, his obsession isn't hard to guess, he just wants to find the 'peerless beauty' the Guoshi spoke of."
Mo Xi agreed with Murong Chuyi's assessment.
To think of it, Li Qingqian kidnapped those women not to immediately kill them, but to make them tell him where other similar girls were. And then, according to the information they would give him, he snatched them one by one to defile and kill. Li Qingqian probably believed that if not for this woman getting married and causing the Guoshi to feel resentment, Hong Shao wouldn't have died.
Li Qingqian had already gone insane, gone monstrous.
Mo Xi considered this and turned. “Yue Chenqing,” he asked, “roughly ten years ago, do you know who was the most beautiful maiden in Chonghua?"
