The young man who was forced to a dead end was like a mad beast. In his despair, his ferocity was aroused, and for the first time, people saw another side of the Suzaku knife.
Its evil and unpredictable nature only further ignited their determination to capture Ning Chengfeng.
No matter how powerful he was, he was just a sixteen-year-old boy in the Golden Core stage. His age was not even a fraction of theirs, they were just careful not to accidentally kill him.
It was at this time that Wen Zaiye rushed out.
He was too familiar with the mountain protection formation of the Thirteenth Peak. He had followed Wen Si into it countless times. Even though he was young, he was able to stand out in Yunzhong Sect and was selected into the Wanxuan Academy as one of the best. He must have some skills.
Most importantly, no one would have thought that he would have the courage to openly oppose the Yunzhong Sect and Chongzheng Alliance.
In order to open a way for others, he was willing to gamble with his life, which was too foolish.
On Changsheng Cliff, the mountain wind was howling. A young man in a green robe stood straight, creating a path with his body, his body was covered in blood. The friend in the formation shouted, “Ning Chengfeng! Run!”
Under the bright moon, Ning Chengfeng looked up in surprise.
“Run!!” Wen Zaiye shouted angrily.
“Wen Zaiye!” Wen Si was greatly alarmed when he saw what was happening. He rushed forward to stop it, but he was a step too late. He could only manage to protect half of his disciple’s spirit.
The formation pressed down, crushing the young man’s rigid spine.
Ning Chengfeng, who had escaped from the Life Gate, suddenly turned back, only to see a rich color of blood under the desolate moonlight, shattered and reflected in his pupils.
(TL: Life gate or Shenmen(生门)The Shengmen is one of the eight gates in the ancient Chinese prediction and metaphysics classic “Qi Men Dun Jia”, perhaps the name of the gate/door of the Yunzhong Sect)
The sleeping child suddenly woke up.
“Brother?” Wen Heshen got up from the bed, subconsciously wanting to find his elder brother.
But the room was empty, and the talisman paper that his brother had drawn half of last night was still quietly lying on the desk.
He was a little afraid of the dark, and it took him a while to remember that his brother had said before leaving that he would bring him sugar-fried chestnuts and would be back soon.
Outside the window, the lights were bright and the voices were noisy.
He only felt that a part of his heart was suddenly empty, which made him feel uneasy. Wen Heshen stepped on the ground with his bare feet and pushed open the door of the Qingfeng Pavilion.
A small child walked in the crowd, very inconspicuous. Although his aptitude was passable, his master and elder brother were very indulgent towards him. After several years of study, he had barely learned a few mental methods and formulas, and he hadn’t even learned to control the sword yet.
There were many strangers in white clothes and red belts on the Thirteenth Peak, and many injured fellow disciples were rushing down the mountain in a hurry.
“Brother, Master, where are you?” He looked up at the people who were chaotically descending the mountain, trying to find the figures of Wen Zaiye and Wen Si.
“Brother…Wen Zaiye…” He shouted loudly, but as a child, his voice was quickly drowned out in the crowd.
“Quick! Elder Wen Si is seriously injured! Go find the disciples of the Medicine Peak!” Someone passed by on a sword in a hurry.
“Master…” Wen Heshen was startled and quickly ran up the mountain.
But he saw those white-clothed and red-belted cultivators walking down in twos and threes.
“He actually let that kid Ning Chengfeng run away…He took the Suzaku knife…”
“It’s all because of that little disciple from Yunzhong Sect who came out to make trouble. Is his brain broken? He’s seeking his own death…”
“Tsk, I think his master is also stupid, he even ran up to protect…Although Yunzhong Sect is not very good, that mountain protection formation is really powerful, that kid’s spine must have been crushed, right?”
“Tsk, don’t say it, it hurts just thinking about it.”
Wen Heshen listened to their conversation in a daze, struggling to climb up the mountain, “Master, Brother! Where are you?”
“Where did this kid come from, get out of the way, don’t make trouble here!” Someone impatiently pushed him, making him stagger, “Hurry up, someone come and help!”
“Wen Zaiye really went crazy! He messed around in the mountain protection formation, and for a stranger, he sent so many disciples in! He’s heartless and ungrateful!” Someone grumbled angrily.
“He’s not clear-headed.” Someone echoed, “Hurry up, hurry up, the Medicine Peak is over here!”
Wen Heshen heard his brother’s name and grabbed the person, “Where’s my brother?”
The person didn’t recognize him, “Who’s your brother?”
“Wen Zaiye!” Wen Heshen looked up, his eyes unconsciously filled with tears, “Where’s my brother?”
“He’s dead! He deserved it!” The man spat out a mouthful of saliva, sneered and pushed him away.
Wen Heshen was stunned for a moment, then angrily said, “You’re talking nonsense! How could my brother die!? You’re lying!”
“Heh, why would I lie to you? The body is lying on Changsheng Cliff, I don’t know if it’s going to be thrown down the cliff or thrown to the chaotic burial mound to feed the demon crows——”
Before he finished speaking, the fierce child ran towards Changsheng Cliff, was knocked down many times by people, and all the way he heard people angrily cursing his brother and Ning Chengfeng, but he never shed tears.
His brother was covered in blood, his usually meticulous green robe was tattered and torn, and he was casually thrown onto a pile of rubble, lifeless.
“Brother?” He squatted down, shook Wen Zaiye vigorously, and called him, “Brother, Brother.”
Wen Zaiye’s body was icy cold, motionless.
“Brother? Wen Zaiye?” He knelt beside Wen Zaiye, grabbing his cold hand, “Brother, Brother, wake up, it’s me, Xiao He.”
The noise on Changsheng Cliff was chaotic, and the moon was as cold as water.
The young man lying on the ground did not respond for a long time, and unlike usual, as long as he called ‘brother’, he would pick him up and comfort him, taking him to fly over the Thirteenth Peak with his sword.
Wen Heshen looked at him in a daze. He was too young and had been protected too well by his master and elder brother. He had never faced death directly, but he began to fear and grieve instinctively.
He couldn’t find his master, so he grabbed the disciples of Yunzhong Sect and pleaded with them, “Quickly save my brother!”
“You guys save him!”
“Please save him!”
But no one paid any attention to him.
Even some people rudely ridiculed him, “Wen Zaiye brought it upon himself, he deserved to die!”
“Do you know that because of a stranger, he implicated so many people in Yunzhong Sect!? My junior brother also died! It’s all because he got involved with Ning Chengfeng!”
“He’s dead…He can’t be saved…”
A familiar senior brother saw him in such a state and couldn’t bear it, wanting to take him down from Changsheng Cliff, “Xiao He, your elder brother is dead, your master was seriously injured in order to protect him, and now his life or death is unknown, come down with me.”
“You’re talking nonsense! My brother said before that he wanted to live for a thousand years! He won’t die!” He loudly refuted, broke free from his senior brother’s hand, and ran to Wen Zaiye’s corpse.
Thinking of what those people said on the road, he thought, he couldn’t let those people throw his brother down Changsheng Cliff, nor could they throw him to the chaotic burial mound to feed the demon crows.
He carried Wen Zaiye’s corpse towards Qingfeng Pavilion.
To say he carried it, a ten-year-old child couldn’t carry a nearly adult corpse, but he dragged and pulled it, falling and getting up again after only a few steps.
In the past, his brother would take him to fly over the Thirteenth Peak with his sword in less than the time it took for an incense stick to burn, but now it seemed out of reach.
The people around him were getting fewer and fewer, the moonlight was thin, and he accidentally entered a large maple forest, unable to distinguish the direction, surrounded by pitch black, and the shadows of the trees were looming.
Wen Heshen fell and scraped his knees, wanted to cry but still held back, shaking Wen Zaiye’s shoulder, and called him with a crying voice, “Brother, you have to get up, I can’t find the way, I’m scared.”
He was timid and useless, always liked to cry when something happened, and there was always someone to coax him.
But this time there was no one.
He dragged his brother around in the maple forest all night, but he couldn’t get out of that maple forest, calling the sky and the earth for help, but there was no response.
That maple forest became his lingering nightmare.
After dawn, he found that Qingfeng Pavilion was just a stone’s throw away, but he had been looking for it all night.
He exhausted all his strength to get an ice coffin, hid his brother in it, and hid it in Qingfeng Pavilion.
His master, Wen Si, might not know, or he might know very clearly.
When Wen Si woke up, he looked at him with an apologetic face, “Xiao He, it was me who harmed Zaiye.”
Wen Heshen grabbed his sleeve and shook his head vigorously.
He only had his master left, how could it be his master’s fault?
It was clearly Ning Chengfeng.
If he hadn’t come to Yunzhong Sect, none of this would have happened, his brother wouldn’t have died, his master wouldn’t have been injured, and they could have been just like before.
Why did Ning Chengfeng come to Yunzhong Sect? The young Wen Heshen couldn’t understand.
As he grew older, Wen Heshen understood many things, but he still couldn’t understand, but he needed to find someone to hate.
Later, he surpassed his brother in age, height, and cultivation.
He sat in front of the ice coffin every day, looking at the young man lying quietly inside.
“Brother, where are my sugar-fried chestnuts?”
“Weren’t you saying you’d be back soon?”
He always had to ask two questions, as if in this way Wen Zaiye could come back to life.
Even later, when Wen Si fell, he became the peak master of the Thirteenth Peak, and the unchallenged elder of Yunzhong Sect, but he still had to come to the ice coffin every day to ask his brother.
“I changed the name of Changsheng Cliff to Duanchang Cliff, it sounds pretty good,”
“Wen Zaiye, do you regret it?”
“Wen Zaiye, what were you thinking when you died?”
“Wen Zaiye, how could you be so great, risking your life to save Ning Chengfeng?”
“Wen Zaiye, did you forget about me?”
“Wen Zaiye, say something.”
“Wen Zaiye, I have taken many disciples, they should call you martial uncle.”
“Wen Zaiye, say something.”
…….
“Brother, where are my sugar-fried chestnuts?”
Wen Heshen thought for five hundred years, turning it over and over in his mind, he couldn’t understand why Wen Zaiye had to abandon him and his master to save Ning Chengfeng.
****
Wen Zaiye tightly held the Xianfeng Sword, forcibly changing its direction, “Back then, Master protected half of my soul, and you nurtured it with countless heavenly materials and earthly treasures, I heard everything you said.”
“I never thought about abandoning you and Master.” Wen Zaiye smiled bitterly, “It’s just that I didn’t have time to think so much at the time, so I did it.”
He saved his friend, but harmed his fellow sect members, caused his master to be seriously injured, and caused his younger brother to live alone for five hundred years. But if he didn’t save him, Chengfeng would undoubtedly die, and his conscience would be unsettled.
No matter how he chose, it was wrong.
It’s just that at the time he didn’t have time to think about right or wrong, didn’t have time to think about the result, he was reckless and angry, all because of a hot head, and then he paid the price, his body died and his path was extinguished.
He was indeed useless, couldn’t think of a better way, when the chestnut in his sleeve sent a warm feeling at the moment of death, there was also a moment of regret.
He thought at the time: I haven’t given Xiao He his chestnuts yet, why didn’t I buy them for him two days earlier?
But now he could only look at the five hundred-year-old Wen Heshen with calm eyes, and say to him with some regret, “Xiao He, no one can’t live without anyone in this world.”
“You’re not hating Chengfeng, nor me.” Wen Zaiye let go of the Xianfeng Sword, looking at the man in front of him who was both strange and somewhat familiar, “You just don’t want to face reality.”
The child of that year worked hard to cultivate for five hundred years, but he never got out of that dark maple forest.
TN: Decided to change Suzaku Sword to “Suzaku Knife”.
Awww ಥ_ಥ