"Get your hands off me!" Jie Moshu barked at Si Ming, his blackened eyes practically glowing with anger. My eyes caught a glimpse of his features that had twisted and bottled up with rage. Lips flat, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed to slits.
"She can't be saved and you know that," Si Ming growled, dropping his honorifics, holding his hand with the initiation to stop him. "This is only a waste of effort, she's nothing more than a shard of the incomplete soul to the goddess' missing six senses. She has to die to complete the others. And that's beyond saving."
I stared at Si Ming speechlessly. He wanted me dead. But oddly, I felt that it was for my own good.
A tiny voice at the back of my head seemed to be protesting something, but I couldn't hear it properly and I didn't want to. I wanted to know what happened. I wanted nothing but the truth.
Jie Moshu's mouth pinched with frustration, and blotchy lines of veins webbing out around his temples. He cocked his head, squeezed his eyes shut as if pain radiating through his skull, ripping him apart.
Letting out a weary breath, he swallowed hard. "Please. Don't try to stop me. I can't watch her die again."
"I can't let you," Si Ming's hand on him grew tighter. His eyes reflected both grief and anger at Jie Moshu's action. "Think about your son. Think about the time and effort you've put through. With finding the last shard of her soul, she'll come back to you."
He continued, "Your powers haven't fully recovered when you took out your hundreds of years of cultivation to merge her three missing senses into one soul. If you insist on saving her, you could get yourself killed."
When Jie Moshu opened his eyes, there was something about the intensity of his gaze that shifted. A myriad of emotions flickered over his face, too hard for me to identify. His chest moved, and his breathing became heavy. Looking at Si Ming, his gaze hardened and his power ablazed. "But she is her!"
I watched Jie Moshu in wide-eyed horror as he concentrated his power on Si Ming, slamming him against the wall. The sharp, stinging crack reverberated along with the room, seeming almost as loud as a bomb blast.
Jie Moshu was so serious that I almost felt myself shuddering in a mixture of veiled fear and simmering worry. To anyone who didn't know him, it would have appeared he was enraged. But I knew every expression, every change of his face.
Behind his anger, those blackened eyes seemed terrified. As his gaze latched onto me once again, I realized with a flash that he was angered for me.
"Re-remember, the thing inside you," Si Ming rasped with his hoarse voice. "Calm yourself. You... can't use up your reiki on her."
"No!" I almost heard Jie Moshu shouting. The veins in his neck bulged, his face contorting into a combination of agony and rage. "This is her. Each one of them is her!"
The magic channeled from Jie Moshu's body began flaring along with his fury. I could see Si Ming screamed, or at least he tried to. Seconds ticked by where I could do nothing but stare at both of them. Sweat poured down on Si Ming's face as he struggled against Jie Moshu's hot, invisible waves of fire magic. With every ragged breath Jie Moshu took, I worried that he was the one who collapsed first than Si Ming.
Now I understood why Si Ming had been trying to stop him, why the idea of Jie Moshu saving me would have cost up his life. I didn't know what sacrifices he had made like what Si Ming said, but he was going to break. He was consumed by his own power.
The throbbing pain made it hard for me to think straight. But I knew one fact, surely I had to do something about it.
No, not me, but this woman had to, said the tiny voice at the back of my brain.
With a deep breath and impulse, I tried to move my hands, even if I was only acting inside of a memory. As if the deaf-mute girl also thought the same as I did, my bloody hands subconsciously cradled up to either side of his face, reaching for him.
At once, Si Ming was dropped to the ground with a thud. Jie Moshu's eyes slowly turned back to normal, they formed into tears.
"Yuhua…" he muttered.
For some reason, that name came out from his lips like knives to my chest. Every part of me hurt and burned and throbbed my pulse with pain. I whimpered, thrashed from the horrible burning sensation. The hot feeling inside me stabbed up and down my body in a slow, relentless, agonizing path. It made everything hurt even worse than before.
Even if my ears couldn't hear anything but the way Jie Moshu shook my shoulders, I knew I was about to leave him again. I closed my eyes briefly, recollecting my senses back to me. I had to shift Jie Moshu's perfectly magnetic features. I pictured his slowly turning into crimson-red dark eyes which turned to merry in his handsome face.
'I'll wait for you. So, don't cry for me.'
A woman's voice that was as light and delicate as wind chimed in the back of my head. It would have been pure and lovely if not for the sad tone in her voice. But who would—
Argh! The burning continued, blood continued to pump out from my chest, dribbling down to the side of my mouth. I gasped, arched my back, my hand now clawed at the piece of his cloth, but I knew it was over, just like Jie Moshu did.
It was then I felt his hot tears tingled on my cheeks.
I kept staring at him. Emotions welled up in my chest made me barely breathe normally. Or maybe the sensation was just from the internal bleeding I was suffering. Either way, it hurt like acid rain. An odd, cold wetness ran down my face. Tears this time, instead of me coughing blood.
Crying, it was contagious. I was crying. I hadn't expected me crying again when I knew I was going to die as this was my past. Hadn't expected to feel this icy tightness, this cavernous ache, this intense longing that made me want to scream and wail at the same time.
Wait, I couldn't go like this—
Then my vision spun as the light went out from my eyes. Something cold and heavy dragged me out, as in my very soul away from the deaf-mute girl's body. I was no longer feeling Jie Moshu shook my shoulders to keep me awake. But my consciousness remained as a bright, white light exploded in front of my eyes. Yanking me out until I reached another place with only darkness surrounded me.
The first thing I aware of was the torture was over—at least for now. But the pressure gathered in my chest was so real, I thought it might explode here and there. As if I was losing my mind as if I was already dead. And this was some sort of my bizarre dream or my final wish before I eventually set off to face King Yama. A brief, tantalizing glimpse of my true feelings for Jie Moshu, only to meet tragic endings as quickly as it started.
Again, I had left him all alone. My heart ached with guilt, knowing the truth that Jie Moshu had been longing for me. I couldn't imagine the feeling of losing someone you've loved over and over again.
Hot tears trickled out of the corner of my eyes before I could stop them. The stab pierced my heart, overpowering me more than anything else. Deep down, I knew that I didn't have anything to do with those memories.
I was myself, Liu Huayu. A girl who had barely started to get on her feet after losing everything. I would still be Liu Huayu if he didn't show up at my front door one day.
Still, I wondered what my life would have been like right now, right this very second, if I hadn't met him. And I couldn't have possibly known so many truths. My life would be so plain. So much simpler. So much closer to normal than experiencing this freak-show deities world that I was trapped in.
And I wouldn't know I was already having feelings for Jie Moshu without even realizing it.
"Liu Huayu," a familiar low voice murmured in my ear, soft and soothing away all my fears. "Can you open your eyes for me, please?"
I wasn't sure whether I had fallen asleep or not, drifting in and out of consciousness. But a soft, cold hand stroked my forehead, gently pulling me from the soft blackness I was swimming in. Instead of cold, I felt the faintest trickle of warmth glide over my body, evolving me in its sweet and comfortable caress.
A feeling of tingle relief rose through me which made my mind stuck to the touch: at least at the time, I leaned to it.
"Liu Huayu," the voice whispered in a low, warm, soothing manner. "Open your eyes for me, please."
So I did.
"Finally, you're awake. I've waited for you for a long time, wife."