Suddenly, someone in the crowd cried out, “Gongzi, you can’t! You can’t drop the barrier. You would doom the hundreds of people left in Lin’an—that’s their ploy! Gongzi! You can’t drop the barrier!”
“That’s right, the barrier must be kept up!”
The common people’s desire to live made them kneel one after another and grovel before Chu Xun, pleading.
“Gongzi, please! You can’t take down the barrier or everyone will die!”
“Madam, please…” One of them knelt and bowed before Madam Chu. “Madam, please have mercy. Please be benevolent. We will be grateful to you forever, just please don’t make the gongzi take down the barrier. You were always so compassionate, please, we’re begging you…”
In an instant, other than the guards and a handful of others, everyone was on their knees begging and crying, their voices drowning out those of Madam Chu and her son outside the barrier.
Chu Xun felt like he was standing on the point of a needle while being stabbed by thousands upon thousands of sharp knives. Each blade grew barbs within his flesh and tore through his organs.
Before him were his wife and son, and behind him were the lives of hundreds. Thus tormented, he felt as if he had already died—as if he had been swallowed by flames and burnt to ashes.
Nevertheless, the chanting continued, even more piercing than before.
“The heart is no more, let emotion be expunged. The heart is no more, let desire be dissipated—”
More and more curse marks climbed up Madam Chu’s fair neck, nearly covering her face, and they began to bleed into her eyes. She could hardly speak anymore and only stared at her husband in despair as she strained to utter: “If you… I…will…hate you… Take…take Lan-er… I hate…I…”
The curse marks oozed into her pupils. Her body shuddered as if in agony, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
“I—hate you!”
A wretched scream tore through the air, but by the end it turned into a bestial cry.
Madam Chu’s eyes flew open. Her gentle almond-shaped eyes were stained the color of blood, and the whites of her sclera had disappeared, for there were now four pupils in each eye.
“Wan’er!” Chu Xun cried out with boundless sorrow, forgetting for a moment that the Shangqing Barrier required its caster to remain inside, wanting only to be with his wife.
Just as he was about to step out of the barrier, an arrow pierced the sky and landed firmly in his shoulder. The arm he had raised dropped back down to his side.
It was a young man of the guard, still posed with bow in hand. “Gongzi! Wake up!” he self-righteously said to Chu Xun. “You’ve always taught us that the righteous put the people before the self. Were those just pretty words? Will you throw away the lives of hundreds to save one person the moment your own interests are at stake?!”
“P-put that bow down,” an old woman next to the young man said shakily. “How could you hurt the gongzi? Everything—everything is the gongzi’s choice. Gongzi has already done his utmost. How, how could you… How could you be so ungrateful?!”
As they argued, fearful cries broke out at the fore.
Madam Chu had entirely transformed. Only a moment ago, she had held her child with such love, but now she was no different from a beast. She howled toward the sky with saliva dripping from her mouth, her teeth growing longer by the second.
In her arms, Chu Lan’s voice had gone hoarse from crying, but in between sobs he still called out, “Mama…”
What answered him were Madam Chu’s bloodred claws, which pierced through his throat.
All sound disappeared from the world. Droplets of blood drifted through the air like so many blossoms.
It was just like that moment years ago when Madam Chu had stood by the window holding her newborn child as she watched the petals of newly bloomed haitang flowers dancing in the courtyard. She had cradled the child gently in her arms as she sang softly. “Red haitang, yellow haitang, floating gently in the wind. Children in a land far away, missing their mom and dad.”14
Red haitang…yellow haitang…
The hand that had caressed Chu Lan so tenderly that year tore into his skull, his limbs, his flesh.
Floating gently in the wind.
The rain came down in a deluge, blood pooling and flowing along the ground. The mother devoured her child’s entrails.
Children in a land far away.
The eaves of the City God Temple towered solemnly above.
The year Chu Lan was born, his mother had knelt before this temple and clasped her warm, delicate hands in prayer. The chime of a clock had scattered the birds nearby, and in the haze of the fragrant candles, she had bowed low to pray for her child’s health and happiness, that he might live a long life free from worries…
Missing their mom and dad.
Chu Lan’s heart was torn from his mangled body. Madam Chu sank her teeth into it, insatiable, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth.
“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”
Chu Xun broke. He clutched his head where he had fallen to his knees and bashed his skull repeatedly against the ground. He wept, wretched and miserable, kneeling in the rain and the blood in front of his wife and son, in front of all the people of Lin’an. He knelt before the image of divinity, and he knelt in the mud underfoot.
He knelt in the depths of sin, and he knelt in the heights of virtue.
He knelt in untold gratitude, and he knelt in utmost hatred.
He hunched over in the dust, his very soul torn apart and extinguished.
Disintegrated into dust.
A long while passed before the people finally spoke in quavering voices.
“Gongzi…”
“Gongzi, condolences…”
“Gongzi’s benevolence will not be forgotten…”
“Chu-gongzi is righteous. Truly a kind person! Truly a kind person…”
Someone had pulled their own child close and covered his eyes so that he wouldn’t see the bloody scene. They only now let go to say to Chu Xun, “Gongzi, you saved all our lives. The madam and the little gongzi, they’ll…they’ll surely ascend to paradise…”
“Take your child and get lost!” someone else spat. “Why didn’t you and your child go to paradise instead?!”
The parent backed timidly away.
It all seemed so distant. Chu Xun felt like he had already died. The voices sounded as if they came from across an ocean, from across a life.
In the torrential downpour, a man was covered in mud, and a thin layer of transparent light separated him from his wife and son, the dead on one side, the dying on the other.
When Mo Ran looked at this scene, he suddenly thought of his past life, in which he had wantonly slaughtered the innocent. He wondered if he had created more than one Chu Xun, more than one Chu Lan, more than one Madam Chu…
He looked down at his hands. For a split second, they seemed to be covered in blood. Then he blinked, and it was only the ice-cold rain gathering in his palms and flowing down his hands. He trembled.
In the next moment, a warm hand took his. Mo Ran snapped out of it as if he were waking from a nightmare and found his little shidi gazing up at him with concern. He looked so much like Chu Lan.
Mo Ran slowly knelt down to eye level with his shidi, like a sinner begging forgiveness from the souls of the dead, and stared at him with eyes welling from both rain and tears.
Chu Wanning said nothing, only reached up and patted him on the head. “It’s already happened,” he said softly. “It’s all in the past.”
“You’re right.” A while passed before Mo Ran wrangled out a sad smile. Lowering his lashes, he murmured, “It’s all in the past.”
However, even if it was all in the past, he had still done all those things. He hadn’t killed Chu Lan, but how many people just like Chu Lan had died because of him?
The more Mo Ran thought about it, the more scared he became, and the more it hurt.
Why had he been so cruel? Why had he been so unrelenting?