Chapter 28#
“Wen Jin… I’m taking you home… We’re going home…”#
The jade pendant lay at the edge of the fire. Disregarding the scorching heat of the flames, Yu Lin quickly stepped forward, picked it up, and cradled it in his palms.
Burned by the flames for three days, the jade pendant already carried a searing high temperature. As Yu Lin held it in his palms, it didn’t take long for his hands to become red and swollen.
But he seemed unable to feel it. With reddened eyes and slightly trembling hands, he sought to feel that burning warmth.
He scanned his surroundings and picked up a half-buried iron rod from the fire, carefully sweeping the ashes in front of the jade pendant outward, piling them into a small mound.
The burnt ashes had just been swept from the fire, scalding and searing. Yet he was entirely oblivious, scooping up handful after handful, mixing them together with the jade pendant.
“Wen Jin…” Yu Lin lowered his eyes, and a single tear rolled down his cheek, dripping onto the boiling-hot ground and evaporating instantly.
“I’m taking you home… We’re going home…”
Before his voice could fade, unhurried footsteps sounded from behind Yu Lin, and a shadow cast by a figure loomed over him.
“What are you looking for?”
Yu Lin turned around stiffly, only to see that the person behind him was the cultivator who had just held a folding fan and answered his questions.
He breathed a sigh of relief and replied, “…Looking for my friend.”
The man stared at him for a long moment, then coldly spat out a sentence that sounded like a verdict.
“He is dead.”
Yu Lin’s body tensed upon hearing these words. Clutching the ashes, he still clung to a sliver of hope, stubbornly insisting, “He’s not dead!”
Tear tracks still stained his cheeks, smudged with ashes. With his bloodshot eyes, he looked incredibly wretched. Having run too fast during his search, his hair was a messy, disheveled ruin.
Emotionally overwrought, Yu Lin’s entire body trembled slightly.
The man raised an eyebrow, his gaze falling upon the object in Yu Lin’s hands, before letting out a soft, mocking laugh.
The man half-crouched to match his height, gently brushing Yu Lin’s hair behind his ear. Like a devil whispering, he shattered Yu Lin’s protective shell. “He has already turned into a handful of ashes. What kind of self-deception are you indulging in?”
Yu Lin warily took two steps back, shielding the things in his hands.
The man completely ignored his defensive posture, curving his lips as he looked up at him. “Do you know… why the demonic cultivators chose Lingyao Valley?”
Yu Lin stared back coldly, offering no reply.
The man didn’t care about his silence either. Looking at the raging flames around them, he spoke as if to himself, “Because… the Fusheng Sect wanted Lingyao Valley destroyed.”
He smirked maliciously at Yu Lin. “Never would have guessed, right?”
With reddened eyes, Yu Lin gritted his teeth and snapped, “Stop your nonsense.”
“The Luoshu Pavilion was already thoroughly despised when it was still under the Fusheng Sect. Establishing their own independent sect now is an even greater humiliation. Do you think the Fusheng Sect would tolerate such behavior?”
“What does that have to do with demonic cultivators?”
The man sneered, “I’ve made it quite plain… use your head. Naturally, the Fusheng Sect has colluded with the demonic cultivators.”
“Impossible!”
Yu Lin denied it instantly, staring daggers at him with red eyes. “…What on earth do you want?!”
The cultivator stood there unhurriedly, his eyes brimming with nonchalance. Contrasted with him, Yu Lin looked like a madman who had staked everything on a single throw.
Sparks from the fire reflected off the cultivator’s face. Courting a faint smirk, he resembled a jade-faced Shura, looking at Yu Lin with deep meaning.
“Is it really impossible?”
The seed of doubt had already been sown in his heart. Unless that single thread of hope was severed, it would eventually take root and sprout.
Yu Lin was already prone to overthinking, and he was frozen in place by the man’s words.
…
Inside the pitch-black, chaotic space, Yu Lin lay on his side with his eyes closed. His brow was furrowed deeply, and his eyelashes fluttered slightly like butterfly wings.
The cultivator holding the folding fan sat suspended in the void, leaning sideways to look at Yu Lin beside him.
He hovered his hand over Yu Lin’s eyelashes, while his other hand lightly tapped between Yu Lin’s brows, whispering what sounded like either a curse or a sincere sentiment.
“Your cultivation has developed an inner demon. You are destined not to go far.”
Yu Lin did not react to his words; he was trapped inside a nightmare of endless reincarnation, unable to free himself.
Countless reincarnations felt both illusory and real, with different timelines intertwining. Yu Lin’s sanity had been battered to pieces, leaving him to traverse the cycle of rebirth relying solely on instinct.
“Yu Lin.”
A soft call seemed to dissolve into a watery mist.
“Come here. Come to me.”
Within the reincarnation, Wen Jin’s voice was blurry, as if separated by a barrier.
Yu Lin turned around to look at the Wen Jin before him, unable to stop his eyes from welling up slightly.
This was his one hundred and thirty-second cycle in this reincarnation.
He stepped forward, staring at Wen Jin’s face, refusing to look away for a long time.
“Why are you spacing out like this? Come here.”
Outside, there were patrolling cultivators from Lingyao Valley, marching in orderly and methodical ranks. Fearing they might alert them, Wen Jin took Yu Lin’s hand and dragged him behind a rock to hide.
He poked his head out to watch for a long while. Only after confirming no one was paying attention did he turn his gaze back to Yu Lin.
“…What is it?”
Unaware of the reason behind it, Wen Jin asked with some confusion upon seeing that Yu Lin seemed a bit off.
He leaned in slightly, gently wiping away Yu Lin’s tears.
Yu Lin seized his wrist at that moment, his voice raspy. With a hint of a sob, he said, “Let’s leave… Come with me, okay?”
Across these hundred-plus cycles, he had initially accommodated Wen Jin’s wishes, but he could only watch helplessly time and time again as Wen Jin vanished in the roaring fire.
Later, he tried to take Wen Jin away by force, but he would always fail due to various unexpected events. Drawing lessons from each failure, he threw himself into the next cycle again and again.
He traced the features of the person before him with his eyes, his mind gradually fracturing.
Thinking Yu Lin was worried that the side branches of the family would harm him, Wen Jin comforted, “It’s fine… They can’t do anything to me…”
Yu Lin couldn’t hear what he was saying. He could only see Wen Jin shaking his head in the exact same manner as he had in the previous hundred-odd cycles.
The string in his mind snapped.
Yu Lin looked away and took a soft breath, suppressing his surging emotions as he rasped, “No matter what, I am taking you with me this time.”
I don’t want you to die…
Yu Lin composed himself, grabbed Wen Jin’s wrist in a reverse grip, yanked hard, and forcefully pulled his hand as he ran toward safety.
Yu Lin kept his eyes closed, his breath trembling. Out of sheer instinct and familiarity, he guided Wen Jin through their escape, dodging pursuers and breaking through the encirclement.
The layout of Lingyao Valley mapped out in his mind, and the safe destination seemed almost within sight. Yu Lin’s heart pounded wildly, carrying a trace of hope.
Only to suddenly feel his grip on Wen Jin’s hand go empty.
Yu Lin froze for a moment, stopping his steps to look back at him.
Wen Jin’s gaze was gentle, watching him with a faint smile. Without him needing to utter a single word, Yu Lin understood his meaning.
Go back.
“…Why?”
Why is it like this again… Why is Wen Jin always like this…
He was unhurried and carefree, neither rejecting nor yielding.
With his head half-lowered, Yu Lin buried his face in the shadows. “…Wen Jin, why do you have to put yourself in this kind of situation every single time?”
He raised his head emotionally, his eyes brimming with tears, his face filled with bewilderment and his brow deeply furrowed. “To you, is your life not a life, and is my worry nothing but a burden, is that it?”
Hearing his words, Wen Jin fell dazed for a moment, then smiled softly. He raised his hand to wipe away Yu Lin’s tears, his voice gentle. “It has been over a hundred times… Xiao Lin. This is my destiny. You cannot change it.”
“Let it go.”
Yu Lin stared at him blankly. “You knew all along…”
The hand cupping Yu Lin’s cheek grew semi-transparent, and Wen Jin’s entire being began to dissolve into flecks of starlight.
So you remembered every single one of my hundred-odd moth-to-a-flame attempts.
Then… did you also endure being burned by the raging flames over a hundred times?
A stream of tears rolled down, passing straight through Wen Jin’s semi-transparent hand. In that instant, Yu Lin felt that he could not grasp Wen Jin—not even once.
Wen Jin gazed at him for a very long time, his voice as tender as if he were reminiscing about something. “Go home.”
“Be good.”
Then, Wen Jin turned around resolutely, walking toward Lingyao Valley, the hem of his robe fluttering in the wind.
Yu Lin pressed his lips together tightly, watching Wen Jin’s thin, fading figure in silence.
The wind in Lingyao Valley was incredibly clamorous, howling past Yu Lin’s ears. His hearing was filled entirely with the sound of the wind, missing a whisper that had been crushed into the gale.
Wen Jin’s whisper, so faint it seemed ready to break, dissolved into the wind: “My only hope is that you don’t hate me…”
…
The pitch-black space was completely silent.
Yu Lin’s breathing was heavy, his eyelashes fluttering and struggling wildly, his heart feeling as if it were being crushed to pieces. “Wen Jin… don’t go, Wen Jin…”
He had been alone all his life; many people came in a hurry, yet none of them ever stayed.
Yu Lin suddenly snapped his eyes open, looking at the scene before him in slight confusion.
“You’re awake.”
Startled, Yu Lin recoiled two steps back, curling himself into a tight ball.
Wet tear tracks still lingered at the corners of his eyes. Fluttering his eyelashes, he closed his eyes and said to the person before him, “…What on earth do you want?”
The cultivator rested his head on his hand, looking down at him with a faint smile on his lips. Without answering, his hand, adorned with a jade archer’s ring, reached out to touch Yu Lin’s cheek, gently caressing the skin near his eye.
Through those eyes that were as calm as still water, Yu Lin clearly saw his current appearance.
There was a jarring flash of red in his pupils, and a persistent ruthlessness lingered in his gaze. Even the space between his brows was tinged with a deep melancholy.
Having never seen himself looking so unfamiliar, Yu Lin’s pupils shrank.
The cultivator chuckled softly, giving an irrelevant answer. “This is your destiny, and it is his destiny as well.”
Destiny again.
Recalling Wen Jin’s final words in the illusion, Yu Lin found it completely laughable and gritted his teeth, “It’s just an illusion… How dare you talk about destiny?!”
The cultivator murmured with amusement, “An illusion, is it…”
Did this brat not know that he had already been tightly bound by the threads of fate?
The cultivator knitted his brows slightly, then smiled with pure, innocent harmlessness. “Not at all. I am merely tearing reality open to show you.”
With curved eyes, the cultivator lightly placed his hand over Yu Lin’s eyelashes. His voice, filled with allure, echoed softly through the chaotic space. “It’s not over yet.”
What you need to see is far more than this.
If you were cast into chaotic memories time and again, through countless reincarnations, could you still maintain such a resolute state of mind?
Jun Ti sent you to reverse all of this… but what can you possibly save?
Yu Lin wanted to argue back, but the echoes of the cultivator’s words kept ringing in his ears, like a sobering bell repeatedly tolling inside his head.
He felt his eyelids growing heavier and heavier, and he closed his eyes, unable to stop himself.
[Author’s Note]
Wen Jin and Xiao Lin are two good babies!
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