And so Mo Ran spent the night with the earth as his bed and the sky as his blanket, lying on the ground covered in fallen peach blossom petals, staring blankly at the sky.
His little shidi… Shi Mei… Shizun… Xue Meng… The fake Gouchen from Jincheng Lake, the unknown killer… Chu Xun and his son in the illusion…
A series of hazy figures flashed through Mo Ran’s mind. He vaguely felt like something was off, but the feeling was so faint that it disappeared before he really noticed.
Peach blossoms bloomed splendidly, their petals drifting gently down. Mo Ran caught a fallen blossom in his hand, holding the perished flower up against the moonlight.
He recalled the final moments of his previous life, when he had laid himself down in the coffin he had prepared ahead of time. That day, the sky had also been adrift with fallen blossoms, soundless and fragrant. Only the blossoms back then had been from a haitang tree.
Haitang…
The person he liked, in this life and the last, was Shi Mei. But for some reason, moments before death, he had chosen to bury himself under the haitang tree in front of the Heaven-Piercing Tower, where he had first met Chu Wanning.
Many of the things Mo Ran had done in his past life now frightened him to think about. The more time passed since his rebirth, the less he understood why he had been so cruel. Slaughtering entire cities, oppressing the weak, killing his master… Even forcing Chu Wanning to do things like that with him…
Mo Ran tossed the peach blossom away and laid his hand across his forehead, then slowly closed his eyes. The words his little shidi had said earlier, “I also feel hunger and sadness, I’m human too,” circled in his mind. The one who had said it had been his little shidi, but for an instant, Mo Ran saw the silhouette of another person.
A person dressed in snow-white robes.
Then he blinked and the white robes became red wedding robes that dragged on the ground. It was just the way they had looked on that man during the cermony in the ghost mistress’s illusion.
“I’m human too…”
I also feel sorrow and pain. Mo Ran… I also feel pain.
A suffocating pressure suddenly filled Mo Ran’s heart, as if something was trying to burst out. A sheen of cold sweat covered his forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut, drawing labored breaths, and murmured, “I’m sorry…”
He didn’t know to whom he was apologizing—to his little shidi, or to that person in wedding robes…
Inside his bedroom, Shi Mei sat up.
Padding quietly over to the window without turning on the light, he looked through the gap in the shutters. He gazed from afar at Mo Ran, lying amongst the fallen petals with an arm wrapped around that clay jar, his own eyes dark and his thoughts unknowable.
Early the next morning, Mo Ran wrinkled his nose where he lay in the flowers and grass, inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air, and stretched lazily before getting up.
He only got halfway through the stretch when a shriek shattered the peace at Campsis Pavilion.
“Aaaah!”
Mo Ran’s eyes flew open as he rolled to his feet. The sight before him made his blood run cold, and all he could do was stare in shock.
Each and every one of the fifteen feathered tribe elites assigned to guard Campsis Pavilion had been murdered overnight, and in the exact same manner as Eighteen: a willow vine glowing brightly scarlet was wrapped around each of their necks—Jiangui!
All of them dangled amidst the grove of peach trees in full bloom, their crimson sleeves drifting in the breeze and long skirts reaching to the ground. Their bodies swayed in time with the wind like so many preserved flowers, eerie yet uncannily beautiful.
The one who had screamed was a low-ranking member of the feathered tribe who had come to deliver breakfast. She trembled in fright, the bamboo basket she’d held now lying on the ground, congee and pastries spilled everywhere.
She trembled even more violently upon seeing Mo Ran standing in the courtyard and reached behind her for something.
Mo Ran stepped forward without thinking. “No wait, it’s not what—”
It was too late. She had activated the Seal of Imminent Crisis tattooed on her lower back. The seal functioned as an urgent summons to the feathered tribe, and in an instant, the people of the feathered tribe across Peach Blossom Springs sprouted fiery wings and descended upon Campsis Pavilion.
They were stunned by the sight that greeted them.
“A-Jie!”
“Jie—!”
After the initial shocked silence, they erupted in screams and wails. The commotion drew cultivators as well. In an instant, shock and suspicion, anger and grief surrounded Campsis Pavilion.
“Mo Ran! What defense could you possibly have at this point?!”
“Murderer! Lunatic!”
The gathered people of the feathered tribe were beyond furious as they screamed and cried. “He has to pay with his life! Kill him! Kill him!”
It would have been a struggle for Mo Ran to defend himself even if he had a hundred mouths to argue, and he only had the one. “If I really was the killer, and I could kill all of them this easily, then why would I stay? To wait to get caught?”
“You shut up!” spat a feathered tribe member with flame-red hair and a tear-stained face. “Y-you’ve already gone this far, and you still, you still dare to…”
“If you’re not the killer, then why was everyone but you killed?” someone else snarled.
“That’s right!”
“Deceitful and treacherous!”
“Even if you aren’t the killer, he’s absolutely related to you! Why else would he not kill you?! Huh?!”
“Blood for blood!”
Mo Ran was so mad that he wanted to laugh. He had slaughtered with wanton abandon in his past life and hardly anyone had ever dared to say something like “blood for blood” to him. Yet now, when he wasn’t actually the killer, he was being accused to the high heavens. This world was truly… He closed his eyes for a moment and was about to say something when a crimson light shot through the sky.
The Elder Immortal of the feathered tribe descended lightly from a cloud and coldly scanned her surroundings, her expression exceedingly dark. “Mo Weiyu.”
“Elder Immortal.”
The Elder Immortal stared him down for a while, then walked over to one of the corpses and lifted the bloodstained willow vine wrapped around its neck. “Where is your weapon? Take it out and show me.”
Mo Ran was silent.
“Are you refusing?”
Mo Ran let out a sigh. His weapon was Jiangui. A large number of people had already seen it during training, and a bunch more had seen it at the site of Eighteen’s murder. If he were to take it out now, it would be compared with the willow vines around the necks of the murdered guards, and doubtless it would be used to implicate him. But if he refused, it would look like he had a guilty conscience.
A scarlet blaze appeared with a whoosh in his palm as Jiangui took form, coursing with a fiery, crackling flare. “Feel free to look, Elder Immortal.”