Yue Chenqing’s face was streaked with blood and grime, his tears already exhausted, leaving him unable to cry anymore.
He stared at Jiang Yexue, a voice of utter grief and rage rising from his throat.
“You… lied to me… You lied to me!!!”
“That was because you were stupid.”
Jiang Yexue spoke indifferently.
When he faced Mo Xi, he could still wear a smiling expression. But when he faced Yue Chenqing, every trace of a smile disappeared from his face, and his gaze was as cold as shards of ice.
He seemed to feel that Mo Xi’s injuries were too severe, and the demonic-grass poison could not be cured by any ordinary means, so Yue Chenqing was the one who concerned him more—the one who made him feel more threatened and disgusted.
He walked step by step toward Yue Chenqing, looking down condescendingly at this half-brother who shared the same father.
Jiang Yexue was actually very tall. Standing upright before Yue Chenqing, the coldness and oppressive presence he radiated were enough to make one’s flesh and bones feel chilled.
“You were stupid yourself. You had no brains. You didn’t trust your Fourth Uncle. Who else can you blame?”
“I didn’t! I just… I just…”
“Oh? You didn’t?”
Jiang Yexue sneered.
“You ‘just’ accidentally summoned the Yin Soldiers from the Blood Pool, and then you ‘just’ accidentally gravely wounded your uncle. Is that it?”
Yue Chenqing’s face turned ashen.
“Yue Chenqing, you really were protected far too well by him. Oh no. That’s not right—not just him.”
Jiang Yexue said,
“You were also spoiled and protected like an idiot by your father, your uncle… by everyone in the Yue family. In the end, you really did become a useless fool who has only two words in his vocabulary when it comes to cursing at people.”
As he spoke, he grabbed Yue Chenqing by the hair and hauled him up from the ground.
Then he turned his face slightly.
Without him even needing to speak, Little Lan’er—whose spiritual core had long since been hollowed out and turned into a puppet by him—obediently pushed the wheelchair toward them.
Jiang Yexue’s grip was extremely forceful.
He tightly seized Yue Chenqing by the throat and forced him down into the wheelchair.
It was like being dragged back to a den littered with the bones of corpses by a hyena.
Yue Chenqing’s hair stood on end. He absolutely refused to sit in that wheelchair.
His face pale, he struggled frantically, but all that earned him was an even harsher grip from Jiang Yexue.
Without allowing any refusal, Jiang Yexue forced him into the chair.
He bent down, narrowed his eyes, and raised Yue Chenqing’s chin with two long, slender fingers.
“If you had grown up in my position, little brother, you wouldn’t have turned into such an innocent and naïve fool.”
“You’re so foolish that I actually envy you. Do you know that?”
Yue Chenqing’s entire body trembled.
If someone’s flesh and skin were torn apart, their bones and blood separated, and their entire body turned inside out, they still would not be as bloodied and mangled as Yue Chenqing was now.
It seemed that there were countless things he wanted to say—things born of collapse, rage, grief, and vicious hatred.
But just as Jiang Yexue had said, Yue Chenqing had been protected far too well since childhood.
He had been protected so thoroughly that even when it came to cursing someone, he only had those same two words.
Those pitiful few words were utterly incapable of carrying the overwhelming emotions that were destroying him at this moment.
It was as though those emotions were about to crush him into pieces.
No.
They had already crushed him.
Amidst all that devastation, the only thing he could tremblingly piece together was one powerless question.
“Why did you… Why did you do this…?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Jiang Yexue stood before the wheelchair.
He had sat in this very chair for so long.
And now, at last, it was someone else’s turn to sit in it.
The complicated feeling this brought him made a dim light flicker in his eyes.
“Yue Chenqing, you and I are both children of the Yue family. What kind of life have you lived? And what kind of life have I lived?”
Yue Chenqing raised his eyes.
In a hoarse voice, he said,
“Everyone says you’re a gentleman…”
“So you… you hide filth and corruption inside you… deeper than anyone…”
Jiang Yexue had remained calm all this time.
Sometimes aloof.
Sometimes sinister.
Sometimes vicious.
Sometimes hypocritical.
But never angry.
Yet those words were like a golden key, prying open the most rusted lock inside his heart.
The fury that had accumulated there for years but had never once been allowed out came surging forth.
His eyes brightened with rage, and even his expression became somewhat twisted.
He savored each word between his lips and tongue, like a storm about to break.
“I hide filth and corruption, unworthy of being called a gentleman?”
Jiang Yexue let out a chilling laugh.
“Yue Chenqing… Yue Chenqing…”
“Anyone in this world can say that about me.”
“Anyone but you.”
“Do you even know who you’re speaking to?”
His laughter abruptly broke off and tightened into something sharp.
Jiang Yexue swept his sleeve and turned around.
When he glared at Yue Chenqing, his eyes were filled with hatred and bloodshot veins.
He seized Yue Chenqing by the collar and stared fiercely into his face.
Every word that came from his lips was saturated with hatred, forming a sentence so chilling that it made one’s blood run cold.
“If I hadn’t saved you, Yue Chenqing…”
“You would have been nothing more than bones in a grave and a dead man beneath the earth by now!”
“Your life was exchanged for the death of that so-called gentleman of yours!!!”
That twisted hatred had been suppressed for far too many years.
When it finally erupted, Jiang Yexue trembled from head to toe with the force of his hatred.
He suddenly released Yue Chenqing.
The force was so great that the wheelchair rolled backward an entire turn.
Jiang Yexue raised his head.
His eyes were blood-red as he glared at Yue Chenqing.
Then he looked around at Hundong Cave, which represented the Yue family’s most sinister and ruthless powers.
He looked at the Yin Corpses that obeyed only the summons of the Yue family’s head.
His gaze passed over Mo Xi, whose limbs had been paralyzed by the Corpse-Stiffening Grass.
Then over Little Lan’er, who stood there in a daze.
And finally, it fell upon Murong Chuyi, who lay unconscious on the ground, grievously wounded.
It felt as though a tiny needle had been driven viciously into his chest.
The pain was not unbearable.
Yet it made his breathing heavy and labored.
It reddened the rims of his eyes.
He shot him a vicious sidelong glance and stared listlessly at Yue Chenqing.
Once again, he repeated that sentence like a curse.
“Your life was exchanged for the death of that so-called gentleman of yours…”
Yue Chenqing did not understand exactly what he meant.
But those few words alone were enough to drain all the color from his face.
Yue Chenqing whispered,
“What do you mean…?”
“What do I mean?”
Jiang Yexue sneered.
The air was thick with the stench of blood, bearing witness to everything that could never be undone.
Only Jiang Yexue himself knew that more than twenty years ago, if he had chosen another path—
Then none of this slaughter would have happened.
Everything belonging to the Yue family, everything he had ever wanted, should have been his.
Twenty-three years ago.
There had once been two roads laid out before him.
——
That year, when he was still very young, his mother summoned him to a side room.
Even after all these years, he could still remember his mother Madam Xie.
Her face had been extraordinarily beautiful, yet equally gloomy.
She said to him,
“Yexue, how are we supposed to live from now on?”
Inside the room, dragon’s-saliva incense burned, filling the air with a drowsy fragrance.
The expensive incense curled around Madam Xie, who was dressed in equally extravagant clothing.
Her head was covered in pearls and jade ornaments, while her snow-white, lotus-colored arms were adorned with gold bracelets and silver bangles.
In his memories, his mother had always dressed herself in such extravagant luxury.
It was not necessarily beautiful.
But she adored such dazzling splendor.
Because it represented Yue Juntian’s favor toward her.
At the Chonghua Music Academy, there were as many beautiful, talented qin girls as grains of millet.
But how many of them could rise smoothly through the ranks and reach the position she had reached?
Madam Xie was proud of her past success, yet endlessly worried about her future.
She knew very well that Yue Juntian was betrothed to Murong Huang.
And her ambition did not stop at becoming a lowly concubine.
In order to monopolize Yue Juntian’s heart, she had exhausted every possible means.
Not only did she constantly go out of her way to please her husband, she had also brought Jiang Yexue to study under the most virtuous Mr. Song in the household at the time.
She asked Mr. Song to teach him not only the art of artifact refinement, but also the principles of how to conduct himself and handle affairs.
Thus, Jiang Yexue had not spent much time with his mother during his childhood.
Instead, he often studied and discussed things with Mr. Song.
The old gentleman was kind and upright, and he had taught Jiang Yexue to become gentle, modest, tolerant, and refined.
With all this effort, Yue Juntian naturally became utterly enchanted by Madam Xie.
At the time, he was also immensely pleased with Jiang Yexue.
When he was deep in his cups, he had even once said that after his death, he wanted Jiang Yexue to inherit the Yue family and become the head of this family of artifact refiners.
When his mother heard those words, even though she knew they had been spoken under the influence of alcohol, she was so delighted that she pulled Jiang Yexue into her arms and kissed him again and again, overwhelmed with joy.
Unfortunately, no matter how lustful or romantic Yue Juntian was, he was ultimately a man without much gratitude or affection.
Madam Xie understood his temperament very well.
Thus, after those brief moments of happiness, she would still anxiously tell Jiang Yexue,
“Don’t think your father will always treat us well just because he is treating us well now.”
“That woman is still going to enter the Yue household.”
“Once she becomes the mistress of this household, you and I will have to live humbly beneath her.”
“Our lives won’t be easy.”
And on this particular day, Madam Xie summoned him to her room and held his hand.
She carefully examined him for a while.
Then she suddenly pulled him into her arms and hugged him tightly.
“Mother only has you…”
“Only you…”
“Mother…?”
The woman sobbed for quite some time before finally saying,
“Xue’er… Murong Huang…”
“Murong Huang is going to marry into the Yue family.”
“…”
“It will be on the first day of next month.”
Madam Xie released him, but her hand still tightly clutched his sleeve, as though she were gripping a straw that could save her life.
Her eyes were bloodshot as she stared at him.
Those beautiful eyes were no longer beautiful at all.
They were filled entirely with hatred and obsession.
“Xue’er… Mother can’t accept this…”
“How could I possibly accept it…?”
“Mother…”
“We have to fight for it. We have to struggle, seize it, take it for ourselves.”
“Do you understand?”
But Jiang Yexue had no intention of fighting for anything at that time.
The wealth and status his mother was so obsessed with meant very little to him.
Everything he already possessed felt sufficient.
More than sufficient, in fact.
If he were given the choice, he would have preferred the quiet life described in books—a simple dwelling among people, yet free from the clamor of carriages and horses.
But when he looked into his mother’s sorrowful, almost obsessive eyes, he could not bring himself to say those things.
He had always been kindhearted and unwilling to make others sad.
Especially not his own mother.
“Don’t worry. There will be a way.”
“There will always be a way.”
“Mother won’t simply let her take everything that belongs to you. And Mother won’t just let you be bullied.”
“In this entire Yue household, only you and Mother are truly on the same side.”
“Yexue, Xue’er… Mother’s good child, everything Mother does from now on will be for you.”
“You must stand by your mother too, understand?”
“Everything will return to our hands.”
He blinked.
He had always been unusually mature and intelligent for his age.
He did not agree with his mother’s intense desire for wealth and power.
But he understood her humble origins.
He understood how difficult her journey had been.
And he knew how terrified she was that the magnificent tower she had painstakingly built would one day collapse.
So he was able to make peace with her in his heart.
He simply had no desire to fight.
On the day Murong Huang married into the household, his mother dressed herself in her finest clothes, displaying all the beauty and elegance she possessed.
She had originally been a qin girl.
She had spent years accustomed to flattering and accommodating others, so putting on a refined smile was hardly difficult for her.
She greeted Murong Huang with proper courtesy.
She yielded to her with humility.
She fawned over her with an almost servile deference.
Jiang Yexue felt deeply uncomfortable watching it.
So when the wedding banquet began and the guests filled the hall, he quietly slipped away from the bustling room filled with exchanged toasts and laughter.
The sky was very dark.
Snow began falling late that evening.
He tightened his fur cloak around himself.
Remembering that the plum blossoms in the rear courtyard were in full bloom, he decided to break off two branches and place them in his mother’s room and Mr. Song’s room.
Thus, stepping through the thin new snow with a soft crunch, crunch, he made his way toward the garden.
And that was where he saw a young man dressed in white like snow, wearing a bright red cloak, standing in the heavy snowfall.
The young man was looking up at an old plum tree beside the pink walls and dark-tiled roof.
——That was the first time Jiang Yexue met Murong Chuyi.