Mo Xi stood outside the door.
He looked as though he had just crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. His face was as pale as paper, his clothes covered in mottled bloodstains, and his eyes were frighteningly disordered.
Besides Mo Xi, Jiang Yexue had also come with him. But Jiang Yexue seemed extremely troubled. Sitting miserably in his wheelchair, he looked sadly and helplessly at the two people on either side of the stone door.
These two people…
Both were covered in blood and filth.
Both were covered in wounds.
And both were equally stubborn, with hearts that could not be broken.
The moment Mo Xi saw Gu Mang, he collapsed.
It was as though he could no longer feel the pain in his own body, or perhaps he was bearing pain upon pain. He moved his feet and walked toward Gu Mang, but only the first few steps could be called walking. After that, he began running, then stumbling, then staggering forward in a chaotic rush.
“Gu Mang…”
A weak murmur slipped from his pale lips.
He repeated it twice, his emotions breaking completely free like a horse whose reins had been released.
“Gu Mang, Gu Mang!!”
Even though his spiritual core was on the verge of collapse, he ignored everything and summoned Lvrán. With a single lash, he snapped the chains binding Gu Mang.
That body, already soaked through with blood, went limp and fell forward.
Mo Xi opened his arms and caught him.
“It’s all right. It’s all right… I’m taking you away. I’ll take you away right now… It’s all right. I’ll…”
The person in his arms was so cold.
His fingertips were frozen blue-purple, and dark-red blood trickled down from his temple.
Mo Xi tremblingly reached out to undo the gauze wrapped around Gu Mang’s lips and tongue. His vision was already blurred by tears. They streamed down his face and fell onto Gu Mang’s dirty, small face.
In truth, his senior brother had never been a particularly tall or imposing man.
He had always looked youthful and innocent, with an innate childlike quality in his brows and eyes.
The people who surrounded him had grown accustomed to his strength, his courage, his sharpness when charging into battle, and his meticulous gentleness.
And so, he had become their lighthouse.
They had come to see him as someone who could never be defeated.
But holding him in his arms now, Mo Xi finally realized how thin and frail the person in his arms actually was.
The passage of time had taken away the vitality of Senior Brother Gu and Marshal Gu.
What it had left Gu Mang with was nothing but a body covered in scars.
Those scars, whether new or old, intertwined before Mo Xi’s eyes.
An endless sorrow and pain surged into his heart, and he became painfully aware of one thing—
Gu Mang had been shattered countless times already.
The deaths of his comrades.
His elder brother being sentenced to execution.
His identity as a spy.
The remolding he endured in the Liao Kingdom.
The brothers and fellow soldiers he had been forced to kill while serving the enemy for five years.
Fate had pushed him down from great heights again and again, smashing him into pieces.
Yet every single time, he had desperately tried to piece himself back together into something resembling a human being.
He had truly tried.
He had tried so, so hard to put himself back together.
If it had been anyone else, perhaps they would have long since been crushed into powder, into dust, and would never have been able to stand again.
But Gu Mang had continued gritting his teeth and enduring.
Because behind him were the brothers who could never return.
And ahead of him was the dawn he had always yearned for.
“Gu Mang…”
The stimulation from the Hunting Falcon had been far too great for Gu Mang. Even though he had ultimately broken free of it, the memories he had painstakingly recovered had still suffered irreversible damage.
He turned those tear-filled, clear blue eyes and looked vaguely toward Mo Xi.
Mo Xi was certain that, for a brief moment, Gu Mang still wanted to pretend to be strong.
Gu Mang had even tried to push him away.
But Mo Xi caught the raised hand.
He caught that cold palm, its skin bruised purple from the iron chains.
Gu Mang’s eyelids were weakly half-open. His gaze was almost unfocused as he looked at him.
After a long while, he whispered,
“Mo Xi…”
“It’s me. I’m here. I’m here.”
Mo Xi choked back a sob. He took Gu Mang’s hand, his wet lashes trembling as he pressed a kiss against his fingertips.
“I’m here…”
Gu Mang stared blankly at the person before him.
His consciousness was already extremely hazy.
All his memories were spinning in fragments inside his mind, seemingly ready to disappear at any moment.
Those nights when the wind and snow swept through the military camps.
Those summer afternoons at the academy.
The desperate entanglement on the night he came of age.
His Princess Majesty promising him their future again and again.
Everything seemed to have been covered by layer upon layer of snow.
Snow drifted and piled within his mind, trying to bury every trace of the past little by little.
Gu Mang knew that he probably could not hold on much longer.
That agony of losing something, regaining it, and then losing it again pressed into his organs.
Perhaps it was because the person he loved most in this life was right beside him at this moment, yet he was about to forget him.
Amidst that unbearable pain, Gu Mang suddenly felt a kind of unwillingness and weakness he had never experienced before.
He suddenly gripped Mo Xi’s hand tightly.
His eyes opened wide as he breathed rapidly, staring at Mo Xi’s face.
In an extremely hoarse and feeble voice, he said,
“I…”
But what could he say?
I’m not a traitor?
I’m not a bad person?
It’s not that I don’t love you.
It’s not that I don’t want to be with you.
It’s not that I deliberately distanced myself from you.
Can you believe me?
He could not say any of it.
He could say nothing.
Even at this moment, he still could not say anything.
He could not say a single word!
The wind and rain of Golden Terrace had crossed so many turbulent years before pouring down upon his burning heart, extinguishing that final spark of selfishness within him.
It was as though he could hear His Majesty’s voice again—both pleading and imposing, carrying the dream he had spent his entire life pursuing.
“I can promise you. I will definitely let you see a future where heroes are judged without regard to their origins, and where everyone receives fairness.”
Heroes, regardless of their origins.
Fairness for everyone.
Never again would someone have to be dragged into the struggle between old and new factions like Lu Zhanxing, only to die with his name cleared too late.
Never again would someone like him be unable to protect his brothers or accomplish what he wanted to do, spending his entire life being suppressed because of his lowly birth.
Never again would people who loved each other have to hide themselves because of their bloodlines, afraid to give their true hearts to one another…
“I need someone. He must be loyal enough, brave enough, and intelligent enough. I need such a person to infiltrate the Liao Kingdom, deliver intelligence to me, and become the poison injected into the belly of the Liao Kingdom and the old aristocratic clans.”
“Gu Qing. Are you willing to become a pillar of Chonghua, endure humiliation and bear this heavy burden?”
The thunder and lightning of Golden Terrace seemed to flash across his heart once again.
He opened his eyes and extinguished every trace of selfishness born from being human, swallowing every word back into his stomach.
Yes.
He was a spy.
From the day he accepted His Majesty’s request, there had been no road back for him.
But…
It was as though Heaven pitied him.
As though Heaven itself felt that after all the suffering of his life, he deserved at least one taste of sweetness.
Although he had said nothing, he heard Mo Xi tightly clutch his hand and whisper,
“I believe you.”
“…”
Those blue eyes turned around slowly, bewildered and sluggish, staring blankly at Mo Xi’s sorrowful face.
“I will always believe you… I will never leave you again.”
Gu Mang knew he should have been shocked.
He should have asked why Mo Xi was suddenly saying this.
He should have asked what exactly Mo Xi had learned and what he had gone through.
But perhaps his consciousness was already too confused.
The strongest feeling surging through him was an overwhelming sense of grievance.
I believe you.
Five years as a traitor to his country.
Three years after returning home.
He suddenly realized with startling clarity that he had been waiting all these years for those words.
In his dreams and in his sleep, he had longed for someone to say them to him.
But no one ever had.
No one had ever given him those three words.
Until today.
Those years spent living as a spy had ultimately been far too bitter.
Tears suddenly rolled down Gu Mang’s cheeks.
He choked back sobs, seemingly wanting to say something, but his throat was filled with blood. He could not make a sound.
Only his lips moved faintly.
His entire body trembled and shrank in on itself as he silently cried, staining his already disheveled face with tears.
This was the first time in all the years Mo Xi had known him that he had seen Gu Mang cry with such heartbreak and helplessness.
Mo Xi raised his own bloodstained hand and caressed that face.
He wanted to wipe Gu Mang’s tears away, but clumsily, the more he touched him, the dirtier his face became.
Mo Xi’s tears kept streaming down.
His fingers trembled violently as he stroked Gu Mang’s soft yet icy cheek.
He stopped trying to wipe the tears away.
He simply looked at Gu Mang.
There were so many people around them, but he no longer cared about anything.
He wanted to concern himself with nothing else.
He lowered his wet lashes and simply gazed at this one person.
After a while, he said hoarsely,
“Senior Brother, I’m sorry. I made you wait too long.”
“I’ve come to take you home…”
He lifted Gu Mang into his arms, hooking one arm around his shoulder.
Only then did Zhou He finally come back to his senses and call out to him.
“Lord Xihe!”
“…”
“Do you know that Gu Mang is the trial vessel personally designated by His Majesty? He…”
Mo Xi did not let him finish.
His phoenix eyes suddenly lifted, the rims red from crying.
“His Majesty personally designated many things for him. Some of them are things no one knows about.”
“Right now, I only want to know whether, when His Majesty gave you this mission, he had a clear conscience.”
“Are you insane? Do you know what you’re saying?!”
Zhou He turned around and shouted an order.
“Stop him!”
Mo Xi really was insane.
He said nothing more.
He raised his free hand, and faint blue light began to shine within his palm.
Jiang Yexue’s face went deathly pale when he saw this.
“Mo Xi! Stop!!”
How could he stop?
Between him and his senior brother lay eight years of time.
If he stopped so easily, how could he ever catch up to the Gu Mang who, eight years ago, had carried his little bundle and set off alone, singing as he journeyed into the distance?
Mo Xi closed his eyes and shouted furiously,
“Tun Tian! Come forth!!”
A fierce gust of wind swept up from the ground.
The dark-blue divine staff suddenly materialized in his palm.
Mo Xi felt an intense, splitting pain in his chest, as though a knife were tearing his heart apart.
Blood seeped from the corner of his lips.
His spiritual core had begun to crack, fine fissures spreading across it.
Every strand and thread of magical power was causing irreversible damage to his body.
The sharp radiance of the staff illuminated Mo Xi’s eyes.
He urged his spiritual power, and Tun Tian unfolded, transforming into a staff more than ten feet long, taller than a person.
It had a white shaft and a golden head adorned with sun patterns, while the sapphire embedded within it radiated dazzling light.
Clang!
Tun Tian, in its complete form, released an overwhelmingly powerful spiritual current that violently shook the surroundings.
With merely a tap against the ground, waves of spiritual power surged outward.
Several weaker disciples were directly forced down onto one knee.
“Lord Xihe…”
Zhou He’s expression had already become extremely grim.
“Do you know… that fighting privately within the Bureau of Magical Arts and releasing a divine weapon is a violation of military regulations!”
“Report me.”
The blue-gold radiance of the staff illuminated Mo Xi’s handsome and pale face, yet his expression was filled with extraordinary determination.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Zhou He: “…”
Jiang Yexue: “…Mo Xi…”
Tun Tian was a terrifying divine weapon capable of leaving millions of corpses in its wake with a single strike.
Although no one believed that Mo Xi would truly use it against the people of Chonghua, the fully manifested Sun-Edge Staff in his hand was already terrifying enough.
Let alone the Bureau of Magical Arts—even the Military Affairs Office, where experts gathered, would not dare to stop him.
Mo Xi swept his gaze over the crowd, none of whom dared to step forward.
Supporting the unconscious Gu Mang tightly, he carried him with him.
The two men, both covered from head to toe in wounds, leaned against and supported each other.
Slowly, they walked out of this bloodstained hell.