Gu Mang sat by the window of the inn.
He had been awake for a long time. Seeing the boundary set by Mo Xi, he knew what was going on would go for the time being. So he didn't worry at all. He sat there waiting for someone to come back.
Today, he was tortured so much that his senses and emotions were so dull that he could hardly feel any distinct emotions. Happiness, anger, sorrow and joy seem to have been mixed with water and become light.
But he looked at the white belly of the fish slowly rising in the sky, and thought that after dawn, it would be the day agreed by "brother." He was about to have an elder brother and a home. He could not help but show some happy look. Lying at the window, looking forward to the red clouds all over the sky, the rising sun came out of the ground.
He thought about it, got up, and took out the white clothes that Mo Xi bought for him.
He felt that he was always skittish. Such clean clothes were easy to get dirty, so although he liked them, he didn't dare to wear them. But today he wanted to see his brother, so it must be different.
When Mo Xi went out, it was the time when the sky would not be bright and the morning and dusk would crisscross.
He opened the door and saw the man standing by the window in a trance. He was tall and beautiful, his long hair tied with jade buttons and white as snow. For a moment, his heart pounded. He wished that everything in Huntian Cave last night was a dream. That at the window was Murong Chuyi, who came to make the appointment.
But no.
Slowly he saw clearly, standing there and looking at him was Gu Mang who put on new clothes.
Quietly, meekly, expectantly——
Wait for him to bring his brother.
"Mo Xi?" Gu Mang was happy to see him coming back. Then he saw his clothes full of blood. He felt at a loss. He went to him. "What's wrong with you?"
Mo Xi didn't say a word. In fact, he couldn't say more.
There were only three people coming back from Huntian Cave. Apart from Xiao Lan'er, who was sent to the hospital for treatment, he and Yue Chenqing were both near to aphasia. Yue Chenqing experienced sobs and wails, and sat beside the blood pool all the time. He was afraid he had been thinking about what he said and did to Murong Chuyi, and how he listened to Jiang Yexue and pushed his fourth uncle, who was alone, into a colder abyss.
There were no relics left of Murong Chuyi. The only one that could be barely counted was probably the broken and damaged bamboo warriors in the cave.
They all listened to Yue Chenqing's order now, because they had lost the man who carved them by hand.
However, in Huntian cave, when Mo Xi accidentally touched one of them, it still shrank to the size of a palm and lied quietly on the ground, as if it was to fulfill someone's last wish, waiting for him to bring it back.
Mo Xi took out the little bamboo warrior and handed it to Gu Mang.
Gu Mang was stupefied, but he was only slow, not stupid. He had always been very understanding, although this kind of understanding sometimes brought him only more suffering. After a while, Gu Mang asked in a low voice, "He won't come, will he?"
"..."
"He is… He doesn't like me?"
Mo Xi put up his hand and held him in his arms. He suppressed his sadness and said to Gu Mang, "No, he has some things to do and had to leave first. He likes you so much that he asked me to give you this little bamboo man. When he has finished his work, he will come back."
"How long does that take?"
"Maybe… For a long time..."
"..."
Gu Mang stood silently. After a long time, he asked softly, "Mo Xi, why are you crying?"
Why did he cry?
The change in Huntian cave was only over a short night, but it seemed that it had brought a great deal of things that had been deposited for more than ten years.
Jiang Yexue's width and gentleness were false, his love with Qin Mujin was false, Murong Chuyi's selfishness and ruthlessness were false, and all the words of the emperor were false.
He seemed to live in a connected chain. He treated people with sincerity and showed them with sincerity. What he could get was just one mask after another.
He used to think that what he did for his family and country was right, and the right and wrong of gratitude and resentment were so clear. However, after a surprise, he found that they were just pieces of a chessboard.
How ruthless is the emperor's heart today? Could he plan to let Jiang Yexue bewitch Lu Zhanxing, lose the lives of seventy thousand soldiers, and then have Gu Mang earn no choice but to obey his orders?
Five years of spying.
Bearing the guilt and blood alone to support it.
Even in order to recapture the last remnant of the blood demon beast, once again lost the consciousness of being a human being and missed the chance to recognize his brother.
——They had paid so much that they hoped the war would subside and Kyushu will be peaceful.
But it turned out to be just sharpening the sword for the emperor.
He just felt exhausted.
Because of the sudden change of the Huntian cave, Mo Xi couldn't stay in Lin'an with Gu Mang for the hermit's overhaul. The tragedy of the Yue family spread quickly from Lin'an to Chonghua.
The whole country was in shock.
Mo Xi and Gu Mang helped clean up Yue Chenqing and take care of him, and accompanied him back to the imperial capital.
The funeral was like a silent absurdity. The royal family had to keep their face and not expose Yue Juntian's ugly behavior. But there was no wall in the world. In fact, everyone knew what the truth of the matter was. The mourning and caroling were particularly amusing.
Mo Xi looked up to the white streamers and the mourners at the altar. The wine on the altar looked solemn and the fingernails were deep in the palm of the emperor's hand——
What does this man think of his subjects, his soldiers, and his people?
The mass mourning didn't last long.
In addition to Yue Chenqing's lack of mind, it was more because Chonghua and Liaoguo were frequently at war. The emperor here was still praying, and there were people from the military department waiting to report about the battles at the border to him.
The wind was filled with heavy smoke.
Jiang Yexue was right. The battle between Chonghua and Liaoguo did not subside because of the blood demon beast. Instead, it became very close.
At the funeral, people were in a state of panic. Even the most optimistic princes knew that there was a war between Chonghua and Liaoguo.
"It is said that the guoshi of Liaoguo has created a new spell, which he used when fighting at the border. The spell is like a plague, and it can make all the people in several cities infected with demonic energy in just two or three days."
"My God, what should I do?"
"Alas, I don't know. It's said that Sishutai and Shennongtai have been thinking about the way to solve this problem for a long time. I only hope that this idea can be thought faster. Liaoguo has been constantly sending troops to the border these days. I'm afraid it will be a big fight soon." The speaker's face was gray. "If there is no way to resist these evil spirits, who dares to fight? Isn't that death?"
"I will never go to the front anyway..."
There was a murmur.
This was the great pain of the Yue family. There were several old nobles quietly discussing how to protect their lives in the coming war. People's joys and sorrows were different.
Yue Chenqing had no intention of staying in the mausoleum and accepted those people's not-so-sincere grief. He went back to Yuefu, where so many people died. Now it was so empty. He walked slowly under the veranda. Wherever he went, he thought of some past events, and his heart hurt. He bent down like he couldn't breathe. He had to sit in place for a while before he could go down again.
He was still so young, but he seemed to have rusted all the bones and joints of his body overnight, making walking so stiff and difficult.
He came to the door of the weapon refining room of Murong Chuyi, and was in a daze for a long time.
This was one of the most difficult places for Chonghua to enter. It required secret skills and spiritual techniques. But Yue Chenqing seemed to be blessed to the soul, as if he believed in something. He raised his hand to push the door, and the puppet watchman came out of the dark box and asked him, "Who is it?"
The sound line was low and as beautiful as jade, but it was the voice left by Murong Chuyi when he was alive.
Yue Chenqing seemed to have been hurt by the voice. His chest was so sad that he couldn't say anything. He didn't know the secret technique and the password at all. He just bowed down, buried his face in his hands and choked.
"Fourth uncle."
Sobbing became wailing. And the little one just looked at him quietly.
Yue Chenqing knelt outside the exerciser and sobbed, "I miss you, fourth uncle…"
This was not the magic formula, but the closed door of the refining room made a dull sound, squeaking and opening to both sides. Yue Chenqing stood up slowly and walked in.
There were some disordered things in it. The owner was a very busy person. The drawings were nailed to the wall. There were all kinds of machine armour and magic tools drawn on them. Many of them were just the imaginations of Murong Chuyi before he died. They couldn't be realized one by one. Yue Chenqing looked at them one by one——
In Chonghua, there was greed, hate and ignorance. It was clear that his fame was so poor. Murong Chuyi kept himself in the refining room to refine, but it was full of things that benefit people.
Wooden armour for taking water, a spiritual weapon for avoiding evil…
These sketches were still piled on his case. Murong Chuyi was cursed and couldn't get close to anyone, so all his good intentions to this world were left on these voluminous charts.
He probably thought his life would be long. Although he could not bear loneliness, he could at least realize these ideas one by one.
Yue Chenqing turned over the things on his desk: some mortise and tenon, some round nails, and the details of a bamboo warrior's joints. Every time he got something, he would take a close look at it for a while. When he thought about what Murong Chuyi was making before he died, he felt the pain in his heart - greed, hatred and ignorance, greed, hatred and ignorance, the most ruthless cultivator - all the names outside the window, and the world in the window.
The detailed works under each drawing made Yue Chenqing choke and his eyes wet. Sometimes he had to endure the pain for a while before he could read it. He understood that this wooden armour was for the convenience of the elderly and that the treasure was to protect the children.
Yue Chenqing even found a stack of unbroken talismans that imitated Yue's handwriting.
He held the stack of rune paper in his hand, and suddenly realized that when Li Qingqian, a sword spirit, was worried and the poor couldn't buy the Yuefu mantra, the one who sent the rune paper to the poor was not Jiang Yexue, but… Yue Chenqing held the yellow paper as if he had been punched in the stomach. He bowed and cried——
It was Fourth Uncle.
For a long time, greed, hatred and ignorance were not him, he was discipline, meditation, and wisdom.
That gentle, broad person, even if forced to a desperate situation, had always insisted on being a man with a clear conscience… It was all Murong Chuyi, his fourth uncle…
"Fourth uncle… Fourth uncle..."
Yue Chenqing cried in a broken voice. He trapped himself in this small refining room. The drips in the refining room were still flowing quietly. The ink in the inkstone was not washed. A brush was still beside the white rice paper.
It was like Murong Chuyi had just walked out in a hurry because of something.
The dead are merciless. The armor manuals, the whole house, their owner would never come back.