Chapter 62#

The small hours were nearly upon them. The night wind had grown cooler.

Dengyun Tower was named for the clouds, and its guest rooms for honored visitors sat correspondingly high — beyond the bright windows, the stars looked close enough to pluck.

When An Wuxue had first stepped inside, he’d found the view of the world below full of warmth and life. Now it struck him only as lonely.

He finished saying what he had to say. One hand curled into a fist, slowly tightening. The composure on his face could no longer hold.

He had to admit that he was not, in fact, particularly calm.

How could he be calm? How was calm even possible?

He had been awake again for all this time, and the one thing he had feared most, from the very beginning, was being recognized by Xie Zhefeng.

Thoughts crowded in from every direction — contradictory and tangled — nearly blocking up his chest and suffocating him where he stood.

He couldn’t make sense of any of it. The only thing he could do was treasure tonight’s fireworks while they lasted.

Even those words he had said just now — An Wuxue hadn’t been defending himself. He only wanted Xie Zhefeng not to mistake him for the one pulling strings behind Beiming and Zhaoshui, and in doing so let the real culprit stay hidden.

Beside the tea table, the brazier set out when the room was prepared had been burning for some time. Steam rose from it and was caught by the night wind, spreading into warm mist.

Without the crack and burst of fireworks, the night market was winding down. The noise of the crowd had faded lower and lower, until the sound of the water in the kettle boiling down to almost nothing was the loudest thing in the room.

Through the drifting steam, Xie Zhefeng’s eyes had gone faintly red at the rims. Even opening his mouth seemed to cost him something, his voice worn through with exhaustion: “Senior Brother…”

Senior Brother…

Those words, and An Wuxue heard it immediately in his ear — “Senior Brother got exactly what he deserved.”

A pain struck through his chest. He stood up sharply.

Xie Zhefeng startled, and immediately rose as well, stepping forward: “What’s wrong?”

An Wuxue retreated at once, backing up until he reached the brazier and had nowhere left to go.

“Immortal Sovereign!”

Xie Zhefeng stopped dead. He did not come closer.

Standing amid the gentle sound of boiling water, his back to the bright windows and the ten thousand lights of the world below, blocking out the cool wind, he said to An Wuxue: “I haven’t… I’m not…”

He seemed unable to find the right words. He paused twice before he managed: “I don’t suspect Senior Brother. I would never do the things you described. You… can you trust me once more?”

By the end, it was nothing but a plea.

An Wuxue looked at him blankly.

“…What?”

Xie Zhefeng reached out on instinct, wanting to touch him.

An Wuxue’s pupils contracted — but before he could react, the man pulled his hand back himself, and said to him: “I won’t move. Don’t be afraid of me, Senior Brother.”

On pure reflex, An Wuxue said warily: “What exactly are you trying to do?”

Xie Zhefeng’s face showed pain.

Those eyes of his, habitually cold as though frost had settled permanently behind them, now looked as though all that frost had melted — leaving only a thick, dense fog.

“Senior Brother can do whatever you like. Just don’t think what you were thinking just now…”

An Wuxue, still tense and guarded, was even more confused.

Think what he was thinking just now?

What had he been thinking?

He had stopped wanting anything. He had only stolen a few moments of fireworks and light.

But…

“…Whatever I like?” he repeated.

The words sounded like an opening. Something in Xie Zhefeng’s eyes brightened.

He looked down, opened his spirit pouch, and drew out Chunhua.

This sword had once been An Wuxue’s natal sword. It had been stirred by him on the Frostsea. It had been the sword Xie Zhefeng drove through an ice spike on his behalf in Cloud Sword Sect.

A few days ago, Xie Zhefeng had used Chunhua to test him.

Now, at last, Chunhua was being placed before him in a way that could no longer be questioned.

After all — this had always been An Wuxue’s natal sword.

His identity was already exposed. He didn’t hesitate. He reached out and took it.

His soul-sense touched Chunhua. The spirit sword gave a small shiver and rang out with a clear, bright note.

“You can do whatever you want,” Xie Zhefeng said, his voice very quiet. “If you hate me, if you resent me — you can use Chunhua to kill me.”

An Wuxue had been gazing at his natal sword with a distant expression. At those words, his eyes shifted — and a laugh escaped him.

“Kill you?” He paused, and laughed again, the kind of laugh that catches in the chest, dissolving into a string of helpless coughs.

Xie Zhefeng’s knuckles bent slightly — but he didn’t dare move.

When An Wuxue had laughed enough, he let all the laughter fall away at once, and said quietly: “How would I kill you? The Zhaoshui sword formation is in danger, and the one who used Yun Zhou is still nowhere to be found. The corrupt energy in Beiming — Zhao Duan has already let slip that there may well be a great demon holding the secret method for ascending through corruption. The Immortal Sovereign is the sword that holds up the world in everyone’s eyes. How could I dare be the one to break it?”

Even if Xie Zhefeng lost his mind in this moment and bared his neck willingly — could he kill Xie Zhefeng for the sake of his own grievances?

“I…”

Xie Zhefeng wanted to argue, and found he had nothing to say.

Everything An Wuxue said was true.

He couldn’t even give Senior Brother this — the satisfaction of revenge.

An Wuxue said: “I don’t know what the Immortal Sovereign is thinking, or what you make of me. I truly woke up this time knowing nothing, and with no choices to speak of. The past has nothing to do with ‘Suxue.’ You said I could do whatever I like — in that case, I do have one thing I want to ask of you. I want to leave.”

“…Leave?”

“I’ve said so more than once.”

Xie Zhefeng’s expression became stricken: “I truly won’t do anything. I would never harm Senior Brother. About what happened back then — there’s much I could say.”

“But I have nothing to say.”

An Wuxue’s thoughts were in chaos, but what he wanted was clear.

If Xie Zhefeng had no suspicions of him, that was all the better.

But he had no desire to remain at Falling Moon Peak and listen to this man say the things Qin Wei had already said. And even less desire to stay at this person’s side as a cauldron, in the murky undefined way he had been, now that Xie Zhefeng knew who he was.

He continued: “What I’m asking for is truly not much. Immortal Sovereign — I haven’t done anything, and I bear no resentment. I only want to go.”

“If you’re willing to show me a little more mercy, and let me take Kunkun when I leave — then this sinner will have nothing but gratitude for you.”

“You’re not a sin—”

“That doesn’t matter,” An Wuxue said quickly.

Xie Zhefeng’s lips moved. He seemed to want to say something — but seemed to know also that words would not move An Wuxue, and swallowed them back down.

The water in the brazier had nearly boiled dry, and with it came silence. The room had no sound left but the wind.

At last, before An Wuxue could open his mouth to break the impasse, Xie Zhefeng said: “What about the puppet brand on your body?”

An Wuxue went still.

“Only my spiritual energy can ease Senior Brother’s puppet brand. When it flares to its limit, the pain makes life unbearable.”

Everything Xie Zhefeng said was his own genuine worry.

The brand was profoundly dangerous, with who knew how many hidden complications behind it. Senior Brother wanted the brand broken — when had he not wanted that too?

He said, word by deliberate word: “Didn’t Senior Brother say before that you would leave only once the brand was broken? We still have no way forward on breaking it…”

Xie Zhefeng had never in his life spoken in so low and entreating a voice.

“I’m still of use to Senior Brother. For the sake of this puppet brand — would you stay, for now?”

An Wuxue let out a quiet laugh.

Clang —

Chunhua left its sheath.

Xie Zhefeng, thinking Senior Brother had finally decided to vent his anger on him, made no move to defend himself.

But in the next instant, the blade turned toward An Wuxue himself — and in a blink, Chunhua was laid across An Wuxue’s own throat.

He startled. “Senior Brother!”

An Wuxue said, without any trace of feeling: “It’s true that the puppet brand leaves me at your mercy. You could kill me — but if you’re thinking of using it to coerce me…” He paused. “We’ve been of the same sect and faced death together. You should know I’m not someone who clings to life.”

As he said it, he applied pressure with his hand. The sword moved into position.

If Xie Zhefeng used the puppet brand to control him, he would not hesitate. Becoming a wandering soul was the worst of it — and if his soul was scattered entirely, well, he had seen tonight’s fireworks. He couldn’t call that dying with regrets.

“That is not my intention!”

An Wuxue shifted the hand holding the sword. Chunhua — pressed lightly against its own master’s throat — drew a thin line of blood. The spirit sword was razor sharp.

The three-day term of the forbiddance curse had not yet expired. An Wuxue felt nothing. Xie Zhefeng felt a sharp sting at his own throat.

And Xie Zhefeng didn’t dare say another word.

He stepped back in a panic — several steps — until he reached the window.

The pain in his chest was a hundredfold worse than the pain at his throat, but he had no attention to spare for it. He gathered his spiritual energy into his fingertips and quickly pressed several points on his own body.

An Wuxue watched, his grip on the sword loosening slightly, his gaze pausing.

— Xie Zhefeng had sealed his own spiritual energy.

The Chuhan Immortal Sovereign was, at this moment, no different from an ordinary mortal. Any cultivator at all could take his life.

“There is nothing I can do now,” the man said carefully. “Are you at ease, Senior Brother?”

An Wuxue was genuinely taken aback.

But he did relax, somewhat.

He lowered Chunhua in a daze — and only then noticed that the blade carried a faint smear of blood.

Blood…?

Had he been cut?

He raised a hand to check, and sure enough found a trace of dampness — but not even a hint of pain.

At the same moment, Xie Zhefeng’s brow furrowed instinctively.

— As though he were the one who had been hurt.

An Wuxue watched it happen, and something seized in his mind — one thread pulled loose from among a thousand tangled thoughts.

He thought back to when he had first begun to suspect.

These past few days, his meridians had broken through to Tribulation Crossing in his sleep — something that should have felt like needles stabbing through him at every moment — yet there had been nothing. Meanwhile Xie Zhefeng had been looking distinctly unwell. Earlier, when a wooden splinter had pierced his hand, he had felt nothing either, and it had been Xie Zhefeng who reacted first.

That was what had confirmed to him, just now, that something was wrong with Xie Zhefeng…

“…What curse or technique did you put on me?” he asked, with certainty.

“I haven’t used any technique or curse.” Xie Zhefeng answered immediately.

An Wuxue said coldly: “Does the Immortal Sovereign take me for a fool?”

Chunhua was still unsheathed. He reversed the blade without hesitation and drew it across his own arm.

“Senior Brother!”

The freshly changed robe was soaked with blood in an instant, and at almost the same moment, Xie Zhefeng felt the pain on his arm.

But the forbiddance curse only transferred the suffering — it could not take the wound in someone else’s place.

The injury was real, and it had landed on An Wuxue.

He had barely hesitated for a moment — and An Wuxue, without blinking, cut again.

The color drained from Xie Zhefeng’s face.

Two cuts. An Wuxue felt neither of them.

How could there be nothing wrong here?

“What did you do to me?” There was something close to fear in his voice now.

He genuinely feared that Xie Zhefeng had done something to bind or restrain him.

Xie Zhefeng felt as though a blade were twisting inside him. He finally could no longer hide it: “It’s only a forbiddance curse to transfer pain. The time limit is almost up.”

He moved to take a healing elixir from his spirit pouch — then remembered, head dropping, that he had sealed his own spiritual energy just now, and the seal couldn’t be undone so quickly. He couldn’t open the pouch.

He could only untie the pouch entirely and set it beside An Wuxue, his voice gone rough: “Chunhua is sharp. Please treat the wound first, Senior Brother.”

The blood had soaked through An Wuxue’s sleeve. He didn’t spare the spirit pouch a glance.

Xie Zhefeng heard Senior Brother address him by his most distant title: “Immortal Sovereign…”

An Wuxue let out a bleak laugh.

“When it comes to sharp edges — Chuhan still cuts deeper.”

Xie Zhefeng’s gaze stilled. But his voice, when it came, carried something like hope: “About what happened back then — I can explain.”