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Exiting from the west gate of Fenglin City and walking straight along the imperial road for about seven or eight miles before turning left into a small path, you would see the Green Willow River entangled with drooping willows in less than half an incense stick's time.
At this moment, the evening breeze caressed the face, and the bright moon reflected in the ripples of the water, shimmering.
When Jiang Wang emerged from the small path, he saw the lean silhouette of Ling He, standing by the river like a silent tree.
"Hey let me see, let me see." Zhao Rucheng darted in front of him, craning his neck, "You must be hiding and crying your eyes out, right?"
Ling He felt somewhat helpless, "How did you guys get here?"
"Your voice is a bit hoarse. You definitely cried!"
At that moment, a rough voice emerged from the bushes by the river, "Zhao, you know sometimes you really need to be put in your place?"
"Brother Hu, you're here too?" Zhao Rucheng shrank his neck. Du Yehu, the barbarian, was one to initiate a fight at the drop of a hat and care little for his handsome face.
"I was already here drinking." Du Yehu grumbled, his breath reeking of alcohol in the evening breeze, "I didn't expect him to bring that guy over too, what bad luck."
"Exactly! Why even bury him?" Zhao Rucheng continued, "Such a heartless creature should just be thrown into the river, let him float downstream to feed the fish and shrimp."
Jiang Wang glanced in the direction from which Du Yehu had emerged, "Is he buried there?"
"Little Brother." Taking into consideration Jiang Wang's feelings, Ling He explained, "I haven't forgotten the bad things Peng Ju did, but I also remember the good. My family was poor, and I often went hungry. Peng Ju would always use the excuse of having me instruct him in martial arts to keep me from leaving, dragging it out until mealtime. He got what he deserved in death, but I couldn't bear to see his body left in the wild... Of course, you've been good to me too. That year when we fought Qing Niu Village, you saved me..."
"What's the point of saying all this?" Jiang Wang interrupted him, "When my dad was alive, he told me that adults are different from children. The first thing adults must learn is to agree to disagree. That thing where you say, 'if I don't play with him, you can't either,' is what children do. You and Fang Pengju are your business, and mine are mine. I won't influence your deep loyalty to him, nor will you affect my decision to cut ties with him."
"That's true," Ling He said.
He looked around at the banks of the Green Willow River under the night sky, "There's always this illusion as if it was only yesterday. The place hasn't changed much, but we're all different now."
"There's nothing that doesn't change, the only constant in this world is change itself," Zhao Rucheng said with profound meaning, then shamelessly leaned in closer to Ling He, "It shouldn't take this long to bury someone. You two must have been sobbing in each other's arms, right?"
No sooner had his voice faded than he sprang up, deftly dodging the hairy leg that Du Yehu sent flying at him.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, getting angry out of embarrassment…" He was halfway through his taunting when he hurriedly bowed with hands clasped, "My bad, my bad, Brother Hu."
Du Yehu, already gearing up for a fight, chased after him, "You're not wrong, I was just about to 'sob in your arms' a little."
Watching the two tussling, Ling He said leisurely, "But I believe there are some things that will never change."
"I agree with you halfway," Jiang Wang said.
The "sparring" between Du Yehu and Zhao Rucheng somehow turned into a four-man brawl. Fists and feet flew, with each trying to trip the other. In the end, everyone was out of breath, and they all burst into loud laughter, then sobbed together.
If someone had passed by the Green Willow River that evening, they might have spread stories of water ghosts or something similarly strange.
In the end, the four brothers left the Green Willow River side by side, leaving the place that had recorded their youth and friendship.
No one spoke again.
Only Zhao Rucheng looked back one last time and muttered:
"When you get there, don't harm your friends again. You dead ghost."
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...
Moonlight streamed into the sparkling green waters of Willow River, and also poured down from the broken roof of the still Huanzhen Temple.
Perhaps it was the effect of the moonlight, but the faces of the two people speaking in these broken halls appeared extremely pale.
One of them was an enchanting woman dressed in bright red, her figure exquisitely curved. Especially at the slightly open collar where a dazzling patch of fair skin made it hard to look away.
Her face, too, was quite pale, which should have made her appear somewhat frail and sickly, but she somehow exuded an astonishing sense of glamour. Perhaps it was due to those overly vivid red lips?
Seemingly unconcerned, she sat on the dusty incense table, as beautiful as she was composed.
With a gentle swipe of her little finger across her red lips, she said, "All the beggars in this temple have died out, truly troublesome, what shall we use to summon the divine decree?"
Her voice seemed to circulate through the spiderwebs in the eaves before reaching its destined place, sounding somewhat hollow.
"The soul of a cultivator will suffice."
The speaker stood at the doorway, unlike the woman in red, seemingly unwilling to even set half a foot into this filthy, broken temple, covering his mouth and nose with an embroidered handkerchief featuring plum blossoms.
"Ah, you say that so casually," the woman in red said. "We must sneak around even to kill commoners, and to kill a cultivator? Aren't you afraid the Zhuang Country's Daoist institute will come knocking?"
"Everyone in this city, sooner or later, is going to die." The man continued, furrowing his brow, "Must we really choose such a place to talk?"
The woman in red chuckled, "The famed Zuo Guanglie fell here. The people of Zhuang Country have turned this place inside out at least ten times, there's nowhere cleaner nearby."
As she mentioned Zuo Guanglie, she even closed her eyes slightly, showing a rapturous expression, and her pale face quickly flushed with color, "I can almost smell his mighty scent~"
"Back to the matter at hand." The man cut off her reverie impassively, "Wei Quchibi is not easy to provoke, and now there's Dong Ah. We must quickly find a Daoist child. Those Qin and Chu barbarians are creating chaos here, disrupting the sacrifices of Huanzhen Temple. In my opinion, instead of kidnapping commoners one by one, it's much simpler and more straightforward to sacrifice a cultivator."
"There's more than one way to seek death, why are you so fixated on this? Isn't drawing a sword and slitting a throat or summoning lightning to devour the body good enough?"
Perhaps annoyed by the interruption to her thoughts, the woman in red opened her beautiful eyes and her smile faded, "You'd best learn what it means to be discreet before the Daoist child manifests!"
The man seemed somewhat irritated, covering his nose he said, "Miao Yu! As if the attack on Fenglin City's Daoist institute wasn't your idea! Now the entire city is in turmoil, one false move and our grand plans could be ruined!"
"What do you know? The world is too big, with too many unforeseen events! Who could have expected Zuo Guanglie to die like this? And just at the right time to disrupt our sacrifice. The bones have laid silent at the bottom of the river of forgetfulness for far too long! We can't afford any more accidents! Now, Dong Ah is critical to Fenglin City, we must ascertain his strength and limits! Some sacrifices are inevitable. Furthermore..."
The woman named Miao Yu licked her lips, "Do you know, the beggars in this broken temple are not all dead? I've scented something familiar in the Fenglin City Daoist institute..."
The filthy environment increasingly tested the man's patience: "Should I be concerned about whether some beggar lives or dies?"
Miao Yu simply stretched languidly, her beautiful figure fully revealed, "Fool."
The man narrowed his eyes, barely concealing a flash of desire, "Don't think just because you're nominally the Daoist child's woman, you can be so insolent. The church has seen many saints over thousands of years, whether the Daoist child wants you, acknowledges you, that's still up for debate."
"Beauty and bones, empty and illusory. Can't you see through this?"
"Heh heh heh heh." The man turned and walked towards the outside of the temple, "What does it matter whether I see through it or not? It is what it is."
It was long after before the tempting murmurs slowly rose in the silent and dilapidated temple, spreading like the moonlight.
"How could he not love me? How could he not want me? I've waited for so many years, expected for so many years..."
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