Gu Mang was being strangled by the icy corpse behind him, his entire body already submerged in the dye. The female corpse’s strength was terrifyingly great. He could neither breathe nor open his eyes. After finally struggling upright, he had just begun to form a hand seal and cast a spell when the female corpse wrapped both arms around his waist and slammed him back into the vat!
The female corpse was far too enthusiastic, and Gu Mang slid down too quickly. This time, he did not even have time to close his eyes before the dye flooded straight into them. To his astonishment, it did not sting. Instead, he could feel the scrapes and cuts on his body healing rapidly.
What was going on?!
Clues flashed rapidly through Gu Mang’s mind.
Two identical faces. Poisoned wine. Liao black magic. The talisman pasted onto the earthen jar.
Mass Grave Hill. Su Qiao running after the black dog through the rain. The Lin couple bringing a pile of medicines to visit Su Qiao. The medicinal herbs that had never gotten the chance to be given to her…
These two women were…
“Gu Mang!”
Amid the chaos, he heard Mo Xi’s voice. Gu Mang hurriedly used all his strength to slash backward at the female corpse, then struggled to break through the surface of the water and shouted, “Junior Brother! Smash this vat! Quickly—! Ngh!”
As though she could not feel pain, the woman let out a long hiss and leaped up again, grabbing Gu Mang by the throat. With tremendous strength, she dragged him back beneath the dye.
Mo Xi pinched an igniting talisman between his fingers. With a forceful squeeze of two fingers, the talisman instantly burst into flames! Without another word, he flung it toward Bai Rouxia, who was standing outside the vat, and shouted, “Explode!”
Bai Rouxia was blasted backward more than a dozen steps. By then, a second talisman had already been stuck to the outside of the vat. Mo Xi detonated that one as well.
With a deafening boom, the vat shattered into pieces, and the dye rushed across the ground!
Strangely, the female corpse that had been strangling Gu Mang lost all her strength almost the instant the liquid drained away. She collapsed limply onto the ground, unable to speak or move.
Gu Mang gasped as he rose from the ground and pushed his wet black hair away from his face. Five finger marks were visible around his neck, and he had been squeezed so hard that he could barely make a sound. He could only lick his lips and give Mo Xi a thumbs-up.
Mo Xi walked over to him and drew an ordinary iron sword from his Qiankun Pouch, preparing to finish off the corpse on the ground.
But suddenly, a fierce gust of wind arose.
Another Bai Rouxia flew over despite her injuries and shrieked, “Don’t touch her!!”
The tip of Mo Xi’s sword rested against the corpse’s throat. Its cold gleam shimmered, but he did not immediately thrust it in.
Bai Rouxia’s features twisted with fury.
“Get out! All of you, get out! You ungrateful bastards! I was blind that night to have kindly let you stay the night! If I’d known, I would have killed each and every one of you with a single stroke! You beasts! Beasts!!”
Mo Xi stared at her face.
“…Are you Miss Su?”
“Hahahahahaha!”
She suddenly threw her head back and laughed wildly. When the laughter ended, her expression abruptly turned vicious.
“Does it have anything to do with you?! Put down your sword! Take your companion and get the hell out of here! Otherwise, I have a thousand ways to make sure you die without a—”
“You can’t.”
“…”
Su Qiao stared at him with bloodshot eyes. Slowly, she turned her head toward Gu Mang, who had just spoken.
Gu Mang rubbed his throat. His voice was still hoarse.
“You learned nothing more than a third-rate version of Liao black magic. You tried to kill us on the mountain, failed, followed us here, and tried to kill us again. You failed both times, and now you want to let us go.”
“…”
“Do you really want to let us go, or have you simply run out of tricks?”
A flash of fury and hatred appeared in Su Qiao’s eyes. But after that fury came a wave of bewilderment. She panted heavily without saying a word.
Gu Mang suddenly asked, “Miss Su, do you regret it?”
The question seemed completely disconnected from everything that had come before, yet it struck Su Qiao so hard that her entire body trembled.
She seemed extremely agitated. Her cheeks and lips were trembling, her eyes filled with viciousness and remorse, blood-red from end to end.
“Regret…”
She gave a strange, owl-like laugh.
“Hahahaha—regret? What kind of nonsense are you talking about?! What would I regret?!”
“You killed the wrong people.”
“I didn’t kill the wrong people!!”
As though he had struck a nerve, she abruptly screamed over him, her face contorted with rage.
“What did I kill wrong?! They deserved to die!! That pair of bastards! That thieving couple!!”
In the ruined courtyard, she clawed and gestured wildly. Perhaps her extreme emotions were affecting her magic, because her face no longer looked quite so much like Bai Rouxia’s. Instead, it was gradually twisting and blurring into something between Bai Rouxia’s face and her own original appearance.
“He married her, but he was as spineless as a worm! Every time I went to the Bai residence to beg for medicine, I had to endure the servants looking down on me! Did he ever say a single word?! When Father and Mother were sick to the point of dying, I knelt outside their residence and kowtowed. Just to see him once, I kowtowed four thousand nine hundred times! By the end, my entire forehead was dripping with blood, the flesh was smashed to pieces, and what did he do? He wouldn’t even listen to me for one sentence! His parents—our parents—were about to die of illness!! And he couldn’t even hear me!”
At the height of her hatred, Su Qiao grabbed at her disheveled hair, a sharp light flashing from her eyes.
“Tell me! Why shouldn’t I kill him?! Because he had his own difficulties? Because he didn’t know? Because he was dependent on someone else and had no status or influence—ha! Spare me!”
Su Qiao suddenly spat.
“He was a spineless coward from childhood! A useless wretch!”
The little wooden man had been so frightened earlier that it had scurried into the Qiankun Pouch. Now it poked its head back out and muttered,
“…I thought the person who moved my corpse was some kind of formidable expert. Turns out she’s just a crazy woman…”
“You’re the crazy one!” Su Qiao snapped angrily. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
She suddenly turned toward Gu Mang.
“Yes! You saw his memories, but did you see mine?!”
“Liansheng Town was completely shrouded in miasma. The people there were desperately poor. Many of them couldn’t even afford to leave their homes and flee elsewhere. No one could live long there—including his parents! I thought that once he married the Bai family’s young lady, everything would get better. But what did he do? He said in his letters that he had his own difficulties, that he had no choice—who doesn’t have difficulties? Who gets to live a carefree life?!”
Perhaps these words had been bottled up inside her heart for far too long. Su Qiao became hysterical.
“Is that supposed to be a reason for him to stand by while his parents were dying?!”
“Because of his cowardice, our parents died in agony, and even when they were about to die, they never got to see him one last time! How could I not hate him?!”
Gu Mang looked at her.
It was already nearing dusk. The blood-red setting sun poured across the crumbling stone walls and ruined bricks, illuminating Su Qiao’s pupils in a terrifying crimson.
Gu Mang said, “So you concealed the fact that your adoptive parents had died. They had already been seriously ill, and the villagers were afraid of catching the disease, so no one dared visit them. From that day onward, you began searching everywhere for a way to take revenge. Am I right?”
“…So what if I did?!”
Su Qiao glared at him.
“Originally, there was no way I could possibly have taken revenge on them. But even Heaven couldn’t stand his betrayal and ingratitude. That was why I found Liao black magic…”
Mo Xi frowned.
“How did black magic from Liao end up inside Chonghua?”
“It should have been an incomplete manuscript, and not some particularly powerful spell either,” Gu Mang said. “Books like that occasionally appear on the black market. Usually, the cultivation palaces buy them just to look at them for fun. No one actually dares practice them. Liao magic is bizarre and sinister. Who knows what the consequences of practicing it might be? Even if someone gave those spells to me for free, I wouldn’t touch them.”
At this point, Su Qiao gave a cold snort.
“Yes…”
She narrowed her eyes.
“It was an incomplete manuscript, and the price was indeed enormous.”
She curled her lips into a sinister smile.
“But no matter what, all those so-called respectable techniques of Chonghua require someone with cultivated spiritual power to wield them. Liao magic doesn’t. Whether you’re a beggar or a prostitute, as long as you’re willing to pay the price, anyone can become a cultivator—hahahaha! What’s wrong with that?!”
Mo Xi said, “…You really are insane.”
“Insane? No, no. I’m perfectly clear-headed!”
She laughed.
“That incomplete manuscript contained all kinds of spells. I followed its instructions and spread the word that the temple here could grant fertility. The Bai family are selfish and self-serving. The only way to lure them back to this poor little town was to tempt them with the thing they wanted most.”
The little wooden man was so furious that it cried out, “Waaah!”
“So you were using me?!”
Su Qiao replied coldly, “What else?”
“…You used corpse-moving magic to make them believe they could come to Liansheng Town to pray for a child, kept building up the rumors, and caused the deaths of so many couples.”
Gu Mang closed his eyes.
“Miss Su, why did you have to go this far?”
“I wanted to!”
She shouted.
“Why did you ask why when I met you on that rainy night? I already told you—the people who go to that temple are all wealthy masters and wives. If they die, then they die! Haven’t we suffered enough in our lives?!”
The little wooden man thought that sounded rather reasonable and almost raised its hands to clap. But when it saw Gu Mang’s expression, its hands trembled and slowly lowered again.
Gu Mang looked directly at her.
“When you first set this trap, you believed that if you invited the couple back for any other reason, they wouldn’t return to Liansheng Town. But after you poisoned Lin Yun to death, you read his memories.”
Su Qiao’s gaze trembled, but she did not deny it.
“You should know by now that all they had been waiting for was a letter from you. As long as you stopped being angry, they would have come back the moment you invited them.”
Gu Mang continued, “And Bai Rouxia understood you even better than Lin Yun did. She herself said that she felt guilty about everything the Bai family had done over the years.”
“Lies!!”
Su Qiao suddenly screamed as though she had exploded.
Her pale face flushed red in an instant, her eyes bulging.
“She was pretending! She was a hypocrite! She was putting on an act! They… they…”
Suddenly, she could say no more.
Her bloodshot eyes filled with tears.
Gu Mang spoke slowly.
“They came to you carrying guilt and trust. They brought that many exorcism artifacts and spiritual medicines with them, and they died from your poisoned wine before they ever had the chance to give them to you.”
Upon hearing those words, Su Qiao’s body jerked strangely.
Yet there was little surprise on her face.
Clearly, after the Lin couple died, Su Qiao had gone through their belongings and discovered the Qiankun Pouches they had never had the chance to take out…
“Lies!! Lies!!! That was a false memory! He was deceiving me! He wanted to trick me!”
“Memories don’t lie.”
“How do you know they don’t?!”
Su Qiao screamed at him with all her strength, tears streaming down her face.
She seemed to be in unbearable agony, yet also completely unhinged.
“I didn’t kill the wrong people! I didn’t hate the wrong people! All these years, I’ve planned everything step by step, exhausted myself scheming—I did everything right!”
The little wooden man trembled and shrank back into the Qiankun Pouch.
Gu Mang sighed.
Clearly, he knew that he could not awaken someone who was determined to pretend to sleep.
He watched the woman collapsing beneath the setting sun, his expression complicated.
Su Qiao stumbled forward and grabbed the limp corpse on the ground.
“I didn’t do anything wrong… She doesn’t deserve to have so many things. I’ve already come this far. There’s no turning back. I have to replace her… I have to replace her… None of you can stop me…”
The moment her hand grabbed Bai Rouxia’s corpse, the flesh on her body suddenly began to rise and twist, as though molten lava were boiling beneath her skin.
Her face began transforming into Bai Rouxia’s once more.
But the process was clearly excruciating.
She threw her head back and screamed in agony. After a while, her breathing grew increasingly rapid, and she kept muttering,
“Black dog blood… black dog blood… I need to drink black dog blood…”
Her condition was truly horrific.
Although her face was beginning to resemble Bai Rouxia’s, blood began pouring from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. She clawed desperately at her clothes in unbearable pain.
And then it became even more horrifying.
The body beneath her clothes had already turned completely black and rotten…
Mo Xi could not bear to watch any longer. He stepped forward, seemingly wanting to do something, but a hand stopped him.
Gu Mang’s face was bathed in the familiar golden light of dusk. For the first time, his expression looked so heavy.
His gaze remained fixed on Su Qiao as he said to Mo Xi,
“You can’t help her.”
“…”
“This is what happens when someone recklessly uses Liao’s forbidden magic for cultivation. She’s almost finished. Until now, she’s just been stubbornly refusing to give in, fighting like a trapped beast. But did you see below her collarbone? It’s already completely rotten.”
“Why would she…”
Gu Mang said, “You heard what she just said. She believes Bai Rouxia doesn’t deserve to have so much. She must have found a permanent transformation spell in the black magic. She wanted to kill Bai Rouxia and take her place. If she succeeded, Su Qiao would return to the imperial capital as Bai Rouxia and continue doing whatever it was she wanted to do.”
The woman in the courtyard was still screaming and laughing hysterically. Her appearance grew more and more like Bai Rouxia’s, but the amount of blood spilling from her body also increased, until the blood itself had turned an ominous black.
Gu Mang said softly,
“But clearly, she failed. The corpse aura from Bai Rouxia’s body infected her. She had been using black dog blood to suppress the decay in her body, but that could not change anything.”
He lowered his eyes. His eyelashes shattered the fading sunlight, while the setting sun and the woman’s screams painted the ground red with blood.
“Do you know why we couldn’t detect anything unusual about her before?”
Gu Mang closed his eyes.
“Because she really wasn’t dead. But once she began using that forbidden magic to devour Bai Rouxia’s body, she was no longer alive either.”
Once a move is made, there is no taking it back.
No matter how much Su Qiao refused to admit it, killing the wrong people was still killing the wrong people.
And none of this could be undone anymore.
After a long while, dusk settled completely.
Drowsy crows croaked from the branches. Only the last trace of golden-red remained between heaven and earth before even that was swallowed by darkness.
Dead leaves skittered through the courtyard on the wind.
Su Qiao, who had struggled against that rotting body for nearly a month, was finally completely devoured by the black magic, becoming a sacrifice to the forbidden art.
In the end, that pretty embroiderer who had once carried herself with such confidence in Lin Yun’s memories was reduced to a pool of blood in the very courtyard where she had spent her life working.
The little wooden man crawled out of the Qiankun Pouch. With a mixture of emotion and melancholy, it circled the pool of blood once, staring at it for a long time.
Every so often it muttered,
“Serves you right. That’s what you get for using me.”
Then,
“Sigh… Actually, you’re just as unfortunate as I am. You’re just a lot crazier than me.”
And finally,
“Living women are terrifying. Dead women are better.”
After muttering for a while, it suddenly noticed that Gu Mang was standing nearby in silence, examining Bai Rouxia’s corpse.
Mo Xi had just found the black magic manuscript Su Qiao had obtained inside a hidden compartment in the loom.
Gu Mang flipped through its contents. Every spell Su Qiao had used could be found within it.
Except for one very strange point—
The permanent transformation spell did not require the original person’s corpse to be preserved.
In other words, Su Qiao only needed to remember Bai Rouxia’s appearance. There was no reason at all for her to hide Bai Rouxia’s corpse in the rear courtyard and use a healing immersion solution to keep the body from decaying.
The little wooden man slowly walked over and plopped down beside Gu Mang.
Gu Mang was staring blankly into space.
The little wooden man said, “That female corpse was strangling you just now.”
“…”
“She could move before, too.”
Gu Mang ignored it, resting his chin in his hands as he fell into a dazed contemplation over that one strange detail.
After a while, footsteps sounded behind them.
Mo Xi emerged from the building and placed a broken wooden box beside Gu Mang.
“What’s this?”
“Something that’ll make you feel even worse after you see it. I found it at the very bottom when I was clearing out those black dog corpses. Think about whether you want to look at it now.”
Gu Mang pulled the box toward him and opened it without hesitation.
Inside lay two thin sheets of paper. They had clearly been torn from the black magic manuscript.
Su Qiao must have treasured these two pages especially. She had probably feared that someone would discover or damage them, so she hid them beneath the horrifying pile of dog corpses.
Gu Mang picked up the two brittle sheets.
The first was titled:
Research Notes on the Sacred Formula for Driving Away Miasma.
It was a book published by Physician Jiang’s residence, containing medicinal formulas used by the people of Liao to drive away miasma.
It listed hundreds of precious medicinal herbs. According to the text, if the herbs were refined through incantations and then scattered over a town plagued by miasma, the miasma could be dispersed, with the effects lasting for as long as ten years.
Gu Mang gave a bitter smile and looked up at Mo Xi.
“Looks like Miss Su intended to use this method to drive away the miasma and disease from Liansheng Town after she became Miss Bai.”
Mo Xi asked, “Do you think it would work?”
“Liao’s other spells are sinister, but the formula for dispersing miasma should be legitimate. Much of Liao’s territory is plagued by miasma, so formulas like this are widely circulated there.”
As he spoke, Gu Mang tucked the medicinal formula into his robes and reached for the second sheet.
But before he could lower his head, Mo Xi stopped him.
“You…”
“What?”
“…”
Mo Xi was silent for a moment before finally shaking his head.
“Nothing.”
Gu Mang lowered his gaze to the second page.
Soul-Rejoining and Corpse-Restoration Technique.
He read the name once and did not understand what it meant, yet for some inexplicable reason, a wave of sorrow swept over him.
So he read it again, this time with a sense of exhaustion.
Gu Mang was an exceptionally intelligent person. There were very few spells in this world that he could not understand after reading them twice.
Yet he read this Soul-Rejoining and Corpse-Restoration Technique four times before finally looking up, his heart already surging with shock like a stormy sea.
Perhaps he had not failed to understand it before.
Perhaps he simply had not dared believe that this was really what it meant.
Perhaps from the moment he first saw those five words, he had already understood, deep down, what they meant.
Soul-Rejoining and Corpse-Restoration Technique.
Offer your own life as a sacrifice to summon the soul of the dead back to the mortal realm. The deceased’s corpse must remain intact and undecayed. To confuse the Underworld Judge, the appearance of the sacrificer must first be transformed through the “Permanent Transformation Technique” until it is completely identical to that of the deceased. The transformation cannot be accomplished in one attempt and is often unstable. The materials required for the ritual are listed below…
The many lines of tiny writing that followed became impossible for Gu Mang to read.
The only thing he could make out was the final line:
This technique is extremely dangerous. At first, the corpse may speak and move. As the days pass, however, the sacrificer will suffer unbearable agony, which can only be partially suppressed by a black dog blood formation. The decay of the flesh cannot be stopped. When the deceased truly returns to life, the sacrificer’s internal organs will have completely rotted away and transformed into pus and blood. Of one hundred people who attempt this technique, fewer than five succeed.
Consider carefully before proceeding.
Gu Mang stared blankly at the sheet of paper, gradually feeling a chill seep through his body.
He understood now.
At first, Su Qiao really had intended to kill the Lin couple and take Bai Rouxia’s place, returning to the Bai family.
But perhaps while dealing with the corpses, she discovered the Qiankun Pouches they had brought with them.
That discovery must have made her uneasy, so she read Lin Yun’s memories.
Perhaps after emerging from Lin Yun’s memories, something inside her had already collapsed.
She had always been proud and stubborn. Although she refused to admit that all the schemes and plans she had spent years carrying out had been wrong, her remorse and guilt ultimately drove her to abandon the plan of using the “Permanent Transformation Technique” to become Bai Rouxia.
Instead, she chose the far more dangerous “Soul-Rejoining and Corpse-Restoration Technique,” hoping to exchange her own life for the lives of those she had mistakenly killed.
Gu Mang had guessed almost every secret correctly.
But he had guessed this final piece wrong.
Su Qiao did not want to live in Bai Rouxia’s place.
She wanted to die in her place.
Night deepened.
The clouds gradually grew thicker, and flashes of lightning appeared faintly on the horizon.
Early summer brought frequent thunderstorms.
It was the same kind of weather as the day they had first arrived in Liansheng Town.
Mo Xi had arranged Bai Rouxia’s corpse properly. He turned and looked at Gu Mang, who was still staring blankly at the thin sheet of paper.
He sighed.
“It’s going to rain. Come inside and take shelter.”
Gu Mang slowly raised his head. He stared blankly at Mo Xi for another moment before sniffing and forcing a rather weak smile.
“I just soaked myself in corpse water. A rinse in the rain will do me good. You go inside. I’ll stay here for a while.”
After saying that, he stood up and casually brushed the dust from his clothes as though nothing were wrong.
The little wooden man, completely oblivious to the mood, said,
“Then should I stay here and get rained on with you? I fell into the corpse water too. And I’m a tree person now. If I don’t get rained on, won’t I wither?”
Before it could say anything else, Mo Xi had already picked it up and put it inside his Qiankun Pouch.
He glanced once at Gu Mang’s back before walking into the building.
The entire room was filled with layers of silk and brocade, jade-green draperies, and embroidered curtains.
One curtain, one dream of wandering through a garden.
From the edge of the sky came a deep rumble of thunder.
After a while, torrential rain poured down, bringing another long night.
Mo Xi stood inside the building, looking at the place where Bai Rouxia had stood before.
That night when they had come here to take shelter from the rain, Su Qiao had been performing the Soul-Rejoining ritual, hadn’t she?
Later, when they arrived, the corpse could obey commands, but it was stiff and unable to climb the stairs, so it could not be hidden upstairs.
And Su Qiao could not even bear to let Bai Rouxia’s body return to the courtyard and be drenched by the pouring rain outside.
So she had simply ordered the corpse to stand behind the curtain, despite the danger that they might discover it.
She was not stupid.
She simply carried guilt in her heart and could not put it into words.
Even at the very end, when she was dying, when the ritual was about to fail completely, she refused to admit that she had softened in front of them.
She refused to admit that she had been wrong.
That she had lost.
Or perhaps, before her death, Su Qiao had been tortured so badly by everything that she had already descended into madness.
No one could know for certain.
Outside, amid the wind and rain, a distant mournful sound suddenly arose.
The suona pierced through the thunder and lightning, its sound soaring into the heavens.
But the melody sounded bewildered.
It was not even one complete song.
It was as though the person playing the suona had no idea what he was supposed to do with himself. He was simply playing whatever came to mind.
The clear notes began as “A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix,” then became “Granaries Full of Grain,” and finally turned into a wedding procession tune, “Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair.”
The melodies tangled chaotically with the thunder and rain.
Only after a very long time did the suona finally fall silent.
Gu Mang walked in from the courtyard, soaked completely through. His black eyes were bright and wet.
Mo Xi asked him,
“Was everything washed clean?”
Gu Mang paused.
For a moment, he did not know whether Mo Xi was asking about the corpse water on his body or the blood that Su Qiao had left on the ground.
But Mo Xi walked toward him from the shadows and stopped not far away.
He looked at Gu Mang.
Those eyes told Gu Mang the answer without holding anything back.
So Gu Mang sniffed and lowered his gaze, giving a bitter smile.
“With that much rain, it’ll all be gone soon.”
Mo Xi said nothing.
After a long while, the two of them suddenly spoke at exactly the same time.
“I want to personally take their remains back to the Bai family.”
“…”
“…”
Gu Mang fell silent for a moment, staring at Mo Xi in a daze.
Mo Xi still had that detached expression of his, arms folded as he leaned against the wall.
But he nodded.
“There’s also the person you locked inside the wooden puppet. When we return, find someone to guide him to the afterlife. He was falsely accused, and then his resentment was intensified by the influence of the black magic. What happened to him was the result of that corruption. None of it was truly his will.”
Gu Mang froze.
Then he smiled.
This time, he truly smiled.
He pushed his wet hair away from his forehead and gave Mo Xi two very serious thumbs-up.
“Okay.”
“But before we leave, there’s one thing I still want to do for Miss Su and the others…”
Gu Mang pointed toward the thin sheet of paper Su Qiao had left behind, then looked seriously at Mo Xi.
“I wonder if Young Master Mo would be willing to help me with something?”
The ingredients listed in the “Research Notes on the Sacred Formula for Driving Away Miasma” hidden by Su Qiao were all extraordinarily expensive.
But Mo Xi came from one of the most distinguished families in the imperial capital, and his personal Qiankun medicine pouch was stocked with every kind of precious medicinal herb.
The two of them quickly prepared the medicinal powder for dispersing the miasma.
They went to the town gate, and the little wooden man was released as well, following closely behind them.
“Come on. Big Brother Gu Mang is going to put on a show for you.”
As the young man spoke, he bit the packet of medicinal powder between his teeth, spread his arms, and swiftly leaped up the towering gate tower as though walking on level ground.
He stood on the eaves and waved at Mo Xi.
At that moment, the waning moon hung in the sky.
Dawn had not yet arrived, but it was close.
There was already a streak of blood-red light along the horizon.
Gu Mang took the paper packet from between his teeth and summoned the suona known as “Wind and Waves.”
With one hand on his hip and the other holding the suona, he tilted his head back, filled his lungs, and blew—
“Wuuu—”
In an instant, several streams of thick blue mist drifted from the bell of the suona.
More and more mist gathered until, before Gu Mang, it condensed into a flock of magpies whose bodies were a deep, ghostly blue.
The magpies spread their wings.
Flap, flap—
Points of firefly-like light fell from the tips of their feathers.
“Good boys. Good, good.”
Gu Mang smiled as he walked among the blue magpies.
He raised his hand, and a magpie king with long trailing tail feathers landed steadily on his fingertip.
“You know what to do with this.”
He handed the packet to the bird’s crimson beak.
The magpie king gave a muffled chirp in response.
Gu Mang affectionately rubbed his forehead against its head.
“All right. Go on, then. Drive away all the miasma.”
The blue magpie spread its wings and flapped twice before suddenly soaring into the sky.
It scattered the medicinal powder behind it.
The other birds followed close behind, powder clinging to all their wings.
In a magnificent stream, the flock flew in all directions, plunging into the dense fog that had lingered for years without dispersing—
Amid the circling magpies, the miasma was continuously diluted and faded away.
The dawn light grew clearer and clearer.
Gu Mang watched the birds flying low through the air.
Smiling, he raised his suona, closed his eyes, and began to play:
“The jade casket rolls away the hanging clothes,
the needle tower opens its doors at night.
Chang’e follows the moon as it falls,
the Weaver Girl chases the shifting stars.
Before parting, the night is hurried by anger;
after separation, she can only face the loom alone.
Speak sweetly to the magpie of Diaoling—
the river cannot yet be filled for them to fly across.”
When the melody ended, the sun was rising.
He stood atop the towering gate tower, between the changing hours of night and dawn.
His silver hair was tied back in a ponytail that fluttered in the wind.
The white silk in his hand streamed against the wind, dyed a faint crimson by the first rays of dawn.
Suddenly, he cupped his hands around his mouth and, like a little madman, shouted in the most earthy, rustic voice imaginable:
“Hey—brothers! Sisters! Ancestors! Grandsons! It’s morning!—IT’S—MORNING—NOW!!”
Gu Mang shouted as he turned back toward Mo Xi standing beneath the city gate tower.
Backlit by the dawn, he could not make out Mo Xi’s expression.
But Gu Mang himself was already smiling.
The smile lines spread from the corners of his lips into his black eyes.
Day had broken.
The miasma and plague slowly dispersed.
After that long, endless night, the world finally welcomed a brilliant and radiant dawn.
The colors of the clouds were beautiful, as delicate and gorgeous as the tenderest hues of a flower.
Yet they seemed almost unreal precisely because they were too dazzling.
Just like him and him in their youth—
This stretch of the past that had felt like a dream.
— AU Extra: A Young Man’s Illusory Dream — END —
The poem Gu Mang played—
“The jade casket rolls away the hanging clothes,
the needle tower opens its doors at night.
Chang’e follows the moon as it falls,
the Weaver Girl chases the shifting stars.
Before parting, the night is hurried by anger;
after separation, she can only face the loom alone.
Speak sweetly to the magpie of Diaoling—
the river cannot yet be filled for them to fly across.”
—is taken from Yu Jianwu’s “Qixi Poem.” Just mentioning it here in case anyone misunderstands and thinks it was written specifically for the story, haha~~
And that’s the end of the AU extra!
A-Lian may have officially become the biggest scapegoat of them all!
Thank you so, so much to everyone who followed along! I’m incredibly grateful!!!
Hope we meet again someday!
Wishing all my brothers and sisters happiness every single day!
Kisses!