Chapter 90#
“Shangguan Ran” stared with eyes wide, his gaze filled with complete disbelief.
“You… someone like you…” he rasped, “who forced others… to commit suicide… to sacrifice themselves for the Four Seas Ten Thousand Swords Array… H-how could you…”
An Wuxue gripped the hilt of Chun Hua tightly, meeting his gaze. He appeared neither smiling nor angry.
But the veins on the hand holding the sword bulged, and he bit his lower lip hard. If anyone who knew him well were here, they would see that his state of mind was on the brink of collapse.
In the distance, a voice screamed out in agony: “Ran-er!?!?”
An Wuxue didn’t move an inch.
He didn’t dare move.
He didn’t even dare to blink, terrified that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his composure.
“Shangguan Ran” turned his head, opening his mouth as if to say something to the stumbling Shangguan Liaoliao.
But the moment he opened his mouth, a fountain of blood erupted.
Before Shangguan Liaoliao could reach them, An Wuxue’s gaze hardened, and he pushed the hilt forward slightly.
—Since he had chosen to do this, he would do it thoroughly.
The tip of Chun Hua’s blade burst through “Shangguan Ran’s” back. With a twist of the blade, spiritual energy flowed through the steel into his body, the sword light shredding his internal organs.
Even so, “Shangguan Ran” struggled to look in the direction of Shangguan Liaoliao.
He wasn’t afraid of death.
What he wanted was for Shangguan Liaoliao to know what had happened!
—He could not be allowed to utter a single word!!!
In an instant, An Wuxue’s gaze remained fixed, showing no hesitation as his divine sense surged into the other’s brow, shredding his divine soul as well.
Shangguan Liaoliao immediately struck out, her spiritual energy heading straight for An Wuxue!
The light faded from “Shangguan Ran’s” eyes. He stared fixedly at Shangguan Liaoliao with a death glare, but his life force eventually failed, and he fell like a plummeting bird.
At the same time, An Wuxue was struck by the sword energy Shangguan Liaoliao had unleashed in her desperation.
Having just pulled out Chun Hua, he had no time to defend and was knocked back several steps by the impact.
Setting up the array had already left him physically and mentally exhausted. The moment he watched “Shangguan Ran” lose his life, his heart finally relaxed. He blinked, and his face turned deathly pale in an instant.
He hadn’t been this disheveled even while establishing the array; his clothes were covered in the blood that had sprayed from the other man as the sword was withdrawn.
Trembling, Shangguan Liaoliao caught the body of “Shangguan Ran.”
The North Abyss Sword was complete, and the sounds of celebration already echoed through the forty-nine cities.
In the First City, it seemed even the mortals knew the battle was over, and fireworks were being set off in broad daylight.
The light of the sky spilled down, bright and brilliant.
Beneath the giant sword, within the array, there were only the two array masters, An Wuxue and Shangguan Liaoliao.
Shangguan Liaoliao was covered in the blood of demons, and her face was marked with gashes from the great demons.
Carried by the momentum of “Shangguan Ran’s” fall, she knelt on the ground, checking for any sign of life.
There was no life left; the soul was shattered.
She reached out, just as she had the first day she led him back to the First City, stroking the face of the young man.
She refused to believe what her divine sense had “seen,” still wondering if she had recognized the wrong person or if this was a demon cultivator who had infiltrated.
But as she meticulously felt the bone structure of the corpse in her arms, she struggled to maintain her composure, asking sorrowfully: “Brother, did Ran-er do something so unforgivable?”
An Wuxue stared blankly at the blood clinging to his natal sword.
Shangguan Liaoliao’s voice grew urgent: “A-Xue!?”
“He… he tampered with the sword array. I discovered it while I was setting the array—”
She suddenly raised her voice: “But I see the sword array is unharmed! Ran-er was naive; perhaps he just accidentally trespassed into a forbidden area, he—”
She paused, then asked with a glimmer of hope: “Did he do something else to make Brother strike with such lethal force?”
He did.
But…
An Wuxue’s hand holding the sword trembled slightly, his mind in a state of chaos.
He sheathed his sword and turned around, walking slowly toward Shangguan Liaoliao. He asked her: “That demon just now—did you kill him?”
“Naturally…” She seemed to find the question absurd. “Ran-er is dead; you killed him. An Wuxue, at a time like this, you are asking me about a mere demon?”
“Why? Why did you kill him!?”
An Wuxue heard Shangguan Liaoliao change the way she addressed him, her voice growing increasingly sharp with accusation.
He felt a roaring in his ears and a suffocating pressure in his chest.
It seemed that something hurt.
But where was the pain?
He couldn’t say.
Many people began to arrive.
The sword array was complete, and they had come to celebrate.
But as they drew near and saw the lifeless Shangguan Ran in Shangguan Liaoliao’s arms, they all hesitated to step forward.
Only Qi Xun and Qin Wei, who had just been transported from other branch arrays, hurried to their side.
By then, An Wuxue and Qin Wei had been estranged for a long time due to Lou Shuiming’s death.
Qin Wei looked at the Shangguan siblings in disbelief, then turned to him and said coldly: “An Wuxue, what are you doing?”
Qi Xun walked to his side and asked in a low voice: “A-Xue, what happened? Is there some hidden reason?”
There was.
But there seemed to be nothing that could be said.
He took a deep breath, his gaze steadying.
Chun Hua returned to its sheath.
Maintaining a steady voice, he said: “This person tampered with the sword array with ill intent. It happened suddenly, and I had no time for a stalling tactic, so I had to kill him.”
Qin Wei said: “The sword array is unharmed. Even if Master Shangguan suddenly went mad and tried to do something to the array his own sister established, he hadn’t succeeded yet, had he? Why go so far as to destroy his soul!?”
“Qin Wei!” Qi Xun said crossly. “The matter isn’t clear yet. Why are you so quick to judge!?”
“Not clear? A person is dead before everyone’s eyes, and you call it not clear?”
An Wuxue only spoke to Shangguan Liaoliao: “Liaoliao.”
Shangguan Liaoliao seemed to be exercising extreme restraint.
“…Speak.”
He tried his best not to show anything: “He indeed attempted to tamper with the sword array but failed because I stopped him; thus, the array is not damaged. But his ill intent lies elsewhere—he is not your brother.”
Shangguan Liaoliao was stunned.
She abruptly put down the corpse of “Shangguan Ran,” took the spiritual pouch from her waist, and frantically pulled out Shangguan Ran’s life plate.
An Wuxue looked at it even more urgently than she did.
The life plate was lit, but its light was already fading, and the jade was covered in cracks.
Shangguan Liaoliao asked: “Is it lit?”
An Wuxue’s lips trembled, but he didn’t speak.
This was the first time he hadn’t answered that question.
Someone else spoke: “It’s lit, but it’s growing dim.”
Shangguan Liaoliao stroked the cracks on the life plate.
As if by some twist of fate, as she touched it, the jade plate crumbled into dust and slipped through her fingers.
She was stunned.
She suddenly pulled “Shangguan Ran’s” body back into her arms and felt the bone structure once more.
The result was the same.
“An Wuxue!! The life plate has shattered! He is dead!”
“Liaoliao, he truly… was not Shangguan Ran. He told me himself just now that he had been maintaining the facade until now solely to bring chaos to North Abyss.”
“Then where is my brother?”
—Then where is my brother?
An Wuxue suddenly froze.
Hadn’t he killed this malicious imposter early specifically to hide the truth?
“…The real Shangguan Ran was killed by him.”
“Then where are his remains? Where is he? Who is he?”
Around them, more and more cultivators from Falling Moon Peak and North Abyss City gathered.
“First Seat An, these words are too absurd. Can you provide a reasonable explanation?”
“We have also been with Master Shangguan for so long. If he were truly a fake, there would have been some flaw. How could he have known so much about the North Abyss Immortal Lord and the City Lord’s manor?”
“Is this not Master Shangguan? Could the City Lord really have mistaken him?”
“First Seat, if he is a fake and the life plate shattered at the same time, there must be a real one, right? If the First Seat cannot say, how will Falling Moon provide an account to North Abyss?”
“Such an excuse is too unbelievable.”
“…”
The voices came one after another.
He heard every word, yet it felt as if he didn’t understand any of them.
An Wuxue was truly tired.
“What I say is the truth.”
He repeated softly: “This person disguised himself as Shangguan Ran, conspired with demon cultivators, tampered with the sword array, and harbored ill intent. He was killed by me.”
Qin Wei questioned: “Is that truly all you have to say?”
Qi Xun said anxiously: “A-Xue, without evidence, killing a fellow cultivator without cause in the midst of a fierce battle… this act violates the third of the Thirteen Rules for Slaying Demons—harming a fellow cultivator. You…”
“He was indeed an immortal cultivator, and I indeed took it upon myself to kill him.”
“This crime,” he said word for word, “I accept.”
So be it.
He thought.
For Shangguan Liaoliao, in order for her Dao heart to remain intact, hating him was better than hating herself.
“I’m sorry.”
I cannot tell you.
“An Wuxue!!!”
The spiritual cloth covering Shangguan Liaoliao’s eyes was soaked with tears. She tilted her head back slightly, trying to see his expression.
But she could see nothing.
“He clearly did nothing. Why destroy his soul!? He said before that you didn’t like him. When you struck, was there truly no personal grievance involved!?”
“When you use cruel methods against villains and demon cultivators, that is something you must do as the First Seat. For years, so many people have said your methods are cruel, and I always thought they were just talking nonsense.”
“Regarding the Zhaoshui sword array, the world says you forced a dear friend and fellow cultivator to commit suicide to sacrifice for the array for the sake of the achievement, causing the tragic deaths of Lou Shuiming’s entire family. I felt that you must have had no choice for the sake of the two realms and never brought it up with you.”
“For all these years, amidst all the talk in the world, I felt you weren’t like that…”
“But now?”
She screamed with all her might.
“An Wuxue, do you have no heart at all!?”
The heart-wrenching accusation from a thousand years ago echoed within the sword array of the illusion. Across the unreachable torrent of time, it reached An Wuxue’s ears.
An Wuxue’s heart shook violently.
Even across a millennium, standing behind his past self, he felt as if it were his current self standing amidst those words.
He looked away.
The critical moment of the Death Gate illusion had arrived. They only needed to ensure the sword array remained unaffected. Xie Zhefeng no longer dealt with the elusive array creator.
The man had already returned, using his peak Tribulation-Transcending incarnation to hide the auras of the three of them.
In the illusion, their past selves did not discover the people who should not have been there.
Shangguan Liaoliao stood at the very front. Neither Xie Zhefeng nor An Wuxue could see her expression.
She slowly raised her hand, as if trying to reach out through the concealment barrier to grab hold of something.
But she was destined to grab nothing.
That was a past she could no longer change.
Standing behind Shangguan Liaoliao, An Wuxue heard the words of accusation and remembered the time after leaving the sword array.
At that time, he had accepted the crime of harming a fellow cultivator. All the North Abyss experts and the Falling Moon disciples who had come to aid witnessed this.
Qin Wei had taken him back to the Discipline Peak and repeatedly questioned him about that day.
He repeated his explanation, but eventually, it always came back to the question Shangguan Liaoliao had asked then—if the person he killed wasn’t Shangguan Ran, where was the real Shangguan Ran? The shattering of the life plate proved Shangguan Ran was indeed dead. So who was the dead Shangguan Ran? Where were his remains?
He knew the answer, but the answer was the very thing he most wanted to bury.
In the end, Qin Wei followed the Falling Moon precepts and sentenced him to one hundred days of punishment at the top of the Ancient Tower.
On the day he entered the tower, before the Ancient Tower, Qin Wei had said with an unreadable tone: “No demon cultivator who enters the Ancient Tower ever leaves alive, and for an immortal cultivator to enter the top floor is a narrow escape from death. You are the First Seat of Falling Moon Peak. If you were to avoid it through favoritism, as long as Xie Chuhan as the Immortal Venerable says nothing, no one would dare to manage you.”
An Wuxue only said: “It is precisely because I am the First Seat of Falling Moon. The two realms are currently in need of restoration. The Thirteen Rules for Slaying Demons are the rules that govern the two realms. If I, the First Seat, do not follow them, how can other immortal cultivators be expected to?”
Qin Wei’s eyes flickered.
The tower doors opened.
Shangguan Liaoliao, dressed in black, walked slowly up the steps.
An Wuxue had already entered the tower and turned back to look at her.
She asked him: “I’ve thought about it for a long time beneath the sword array. Why? You knew how important he was to me, yet you still shredded his soul right before my eyes!?”
“My mother cursed me to never see the world again, to have my kin turn against me and perish, and for my enemies to rejoice. Tell me, has her curse come true?”
“—Do you have anything to say to me?”
An Wuxue felt as if this question had already been asked many times.
“I have already said all that I can. City Lord Shangguan,” he spoke for the last time as an elder brother, using his usual gentle tone, “on the day Master brought you to Falling Moon Peak, he told us that you lost your father at a young age, lost your mother, lost your brother, and lost your younger brother. You carry the weight of all North Abyss on your shoulders. You are no ordinary girl, and you possess extraordinary talent just like your mother. In time, as long as no accident occurs, you will surely become a venerable protector of your domain. He hoped everyone at Falling Moon Peak would take extra care of you and look after you.”
“I accepted that request.”
He may not have done the best job, but he had done his utmost.
That apology was for being unable to tell Shangguan Liaoliao the whole truth, but as for himself—his conscience was clear.
“Since we met, I believe I have done my best and have never broken my promise.”
“But our bond ends today. From now on, you will walk alone. This is my last wish for you. May you part the clouds and see the moon in the mist, may you behold the spring breeze and winter snow of all living beings, may your path be brilliant, and your immortal journey be smooth.”
That was the only wish he could give to a stranger he had happened to meet.