But his questions were destined to remain unanswered, and to make matters worse, he couldn’t take a single step back.
To be precise, he could step back, but no matter how fast he retreated, he couldn’t distance himself from the mysterious figure. Although the other’s steps were slow, they were closely pursuing him. The pressure was almost making Nalan Shuo forget to breathe, and his hands couldn’t stop trembling.
This feeling was very strange. Nalan Shuo realized that his trembling wasn’t due to fear; it was more like a form of self-torture.
It felt as if so force was forcibly awakening a mory within him, a mory too painful to recall.
Countless fragnts of mory surfaced in his mind, but none were clear, more like garbled codes, leaving him utterly clueless.
But there was a feeling that couldn’t deceive him. He had experienced all of this firsthand. Each fra of those mory fragnts was deeply etched in his heart.
At this mont, Nalan Shuo only wanted to escape, without knowing why, as if a voice inside him was constantly urging and guiding him.
Nalan Shuo turned to flee, but he couldn’t. No matter how many tis he turned around, he was always facing the relentless advance of the mysterious figure, who kept approaching him step by step.
Nalan Shuo threw out a steel pen, his magic artifact, capable of pinning a person’s shadow to restrict them in place. Yet it was ineffective against the mysterious figure.
The steel pen accurately pinned the shadow down, but the opponent continued to advance.
Suddenly, Nalan Shuo seed to notice sothing and imdiately looked to his side. The ground beneath his feet was moving. In the next second, a bloody hand erged from the soil, groping aimlessly. He had no ti to fear, for his attention was drawn to the ring on the naless finger of the bloody hand.
It was a delicate silver ring with beautiful snake-like patterns, quite rare.
Coincidentally, Nalan Shuo had seen a familiar person wearing this type of ring.
Before he could recall the face, a face suddenly erged from the soil below. It was covered in blood and mud, and its long, disheveled hair was matted together, making it impossible to discern the features.
"Director!!"
With an ear-piercing scream, Nalan Shuo shivered. He knew this voice too well; it belonged to the deputy captain of his forr investigation team.
"Director, save , I’m Mingxi!" the woman buried under the bloody soil pleaded in agony, her hands clawing out bloody marks on the ground.
"Mingxi!!" Nalan Shuo imdiately crouched down, trying to pull his subordinate out from the earth, but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t.
"Director! Director!!"
Before Nalan Shuo could co up with a solution, another scream ca from behind, this ti from a man.
"Xingye!!"
Nalan Shuo looked at the struggling man in the soil behind him. He recognized him too. Like Mingxi, Xingye had been his subordinate and even the captain of the investigation team.
Just as Nalan Shuo was preparing to rescue Xingye, a scene of utter despair unfolded. Seven or eight hands stretched out from the nearby soil, cries of pain, wailing, and pleas for help ford a cacophony.
"Director, it hurts... it hurts so much!!"
"Director, save , save !!"
"Director!"
"Director, where are you, director..."
At this mont, Nalan Shuo’s heart shattered. He rembered this scene. Back then, it was his reckless advance that led them into the ambush of the evil mage Xiang Fengchen, causing the total annihilation of the investigation team.
Nalan Shuo knelt on the ground, desperate to save everyone, but he couldn’t do it, not at all. He could only watch helplessly as they were dragged underground, blood seeping from the holes.
Just like back then, back then he couldn’t save them either.
History repeated itself, yet the outco remained unchanged; every scream was like a knife cutting into Nalan Shuo’s body.
"Tap-tap"
"Tap-tap"
Finally, that footstep sound had reached right in front of Nalan Shuo.
At this mont, Nalan Shuo silently knelt on the ground, head bowed, like a lost soul, unresponsive to any external stimuli, all the golden scales on his body had also dissipated.
A black parasol tumbled to the ground, revealing the true face of the person beneath it; it was none other than the instigator of all this, Xiang Fengchen.
Xiang Fengchen lowered his head, looking at Nalan Shuo from above, reaching behind to slowly draw out the katana hidden there, moving slowly as if afraid of waking the person in front of him.
He placed the katana against the distraught Nalan Shuo’s neck, a cold gleam slid across the blade. Xiang Fengchen’s lips curled into a smile as he slowly raised the katana to gather strength. He had shattered the divine heart of many an Angel Envoy using similar thods, and had taken many heads.
He could replay the deepest agonies of another’s heart in a blood-hued world. Once they were trapped in painful mories and their psychological defenses pierced, they would fall under his control, becoming sheep awaiting slaughter.
He had killed many, reveling in their hysteria, their despair brought about by pain. He relished this feeling of control, the feeling of making life worse than death.
More accurately, he was obsessed.
Many of those he killed no longer cared about life or death in the end. So even hoped he would finish them off quickly, to liberate them.
"Since ancient tis, there’s a saying, without death there’s no life, ten thousand miles of clouds cleared, the Yangtze River runs clear." Transford into Xiang Fengchen, the Curse Blade chanted the parting words of an ancient daimyo, raising the long blade to bring today’s slaughter to a close.
This was his habit. If he could, he would wish to be under a hotown cherry blossom tree, with the long wind blowing, the flowers falling like snow, preferably with the accompanint of sheng, ryuteki, and pan pipes.
"Farewell."
With a final soft sigh, the sharp katana swung down. But the imagined scene of blood splattering and severed heads didn’t appear. The katana was arrested halfway, caught by a hand firmly grasping the blade, the palm covered in golden scales.
At that mont, the Curse Blade holding the sword was stunned, his mind blank. He couldn’t understand why this happened, when Nalan Shuo was already thoroughly defeated, a delirious wreck of a man.
The Curse Blade desperately tried to pull the sword out to regain the upper hand, but he couldn’t do it. It was as if the sword had grown into the hand of the man before him.
"They’re already dead, why are you still defiling them?!"
"What?" (in Japanese)
Thud!
After a muffled sound, the Curse Blade looked down in shock to see an arm covered in golden scale armor had pierced through his chest, penetrating into his torso.
"They’re all dead, I’m asking you why won’t you let them go?!" Nalan Shuo, nearly face to face with the Curse Blade, roared, now standing fully upright, towering over the Japanese Apostle.
The Curse Blade ceased to resist because Nalan Shuo’s right hand had already plunged into his heart, shattering ribs, and the scaled hand had gripped a scorching heart, still beating thump, thump.
Nalan Shuo didn’t imdiately end the other’s life but slowly exerted force, pulling the heart outward. The Curse Blade’s narrow eyes widened with pain and fear, lips trembling as if wanting to speak, until finally, the heart left the chest cavity, and his whole body collapsed, falling to the ground, face up, like a dead dog.
"Xiang Fengchen is dead, I am free of Heart Demon." Nalan Shuo crushed the still-beating heart in his hand in the next second.
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