Chapter 44
Chapter 44
To a swordsman, a sword was a companion that would never betray them.
Ever since she was a child, Mu Yunshu had wanted a sword of her own. Later, her father was the one who made that wish come true.
Her father had once said, “Yunshu, your Sword Heart is purer than most. Perhaps you may even nurture a Sword Spirit one day.”
A Sword Spirit was something out of legend. Mu Yunshu had taken her father’s words as a joke. She had never imagined that a day would truly come when another soul appeared within her sword.
Only by then, she was already trapped in prison, with no hope of escape.
That day, Mu Yunshu sat on the stone platform and asked with a smile, “Bai Xue, can you hear me?”
The sword trembled lightly in response.
“Are you a girl or a boy?” Mu Yunshu’s hand brushed gently over the blade, her curiosity plain. “I really want to see the day you can take human form.”
The Bai Xue Sword had only just gained consciousness and did not understand what its master meant. It gave no response.
Originally, in this place cut off from the outside world, having her own sword keep her company was not so bad. But Mu Yunshu knew she was going to die soon.
In those final days when she could still force herself to walk, she took her sword and went to the water’s edge.
“Bai Xue, there is an underground river below, but I don’t know where it leads. Let us make a wager together.”
Bai Xue sensed what she was about to do and began to tremble violently.
Mu Yunshu said, “It is very lonely to be trapped here alone. I don’t want you to remain imprisoned in this place for countless ages after I die, without even someone to speak to.”
She smiled again. “My father once said that a Sword Spirit is not easily born, and must surely be favored by the heavens. Bai Xue, your fortune must be better than mine. Leave this place. Go somewhere farther away. Perhaps you will meet a new sword master, one more gifted than I am.”
And so the Bai Xue Sword was placed into the underground river, then swept away by the hidden current. No one knew how many years passed before it finally saw the light of day again.
Some travelers once tried to pick up the sword, only to find it dull and covered in rust. In the end, they tossed her back by the roadside.
She thought that she was someone who had been abandoned, and so she did not need a new sword master.
No one knew how many more years passed. Through wind and rain, she gained a human form.
Having only just become human, her mind was a haze of confusion. She remembered only that her name was Mu Yunshu, and that she was an “abandoned” existence. Her heart was filled with resentment. Whether she hated those who had once abandoned Mu Yunshu, or the Mu Yunshu who had “abandoned” her, even she herself did not know.
Driven by these inverted, disordered feelings, it was only natural that she had come step by step to where she was now.
It was only natural that “Mu Yunshu” should hate and resent.
Yet at this moment, Qiao Ying’s words made everyone realize a truth: Mu Yunshu had never been the Mu Yunshu they had imagined.
The real Mu Yunshu was someone who could make every self-righteous person feel ashamed to the point of having nowhere to hide.
Shen Qingyu stroked a lock of Qiao Ying’s black hair and laughed softly. “Why tell them your guess? Are you trying to persuade her to give up her hatred?”
Qiao Ying thought for a moment, then answered, “When I first saw those bones, I was wondering how many years she had been imprisoned. Later, when we came back here, I thought again: since she had the strength to hold up an entire city, then if she truly did not care whether anyone else lived or died, perhaps leaving might not have been impossible for her.”
Shen Qingyu said, “And then?”
“Then I remembered that sword energy in Phoenix Town. You said the swordswoman at that time must have been at the end of her strength. That sword energy was the only thing she could still do.”
Shen Qingyu nodded. “That’s right.”
Qiao Ying said, “If I ask myself honestly, if I had gone through the same thing she did, I wouldn’t be able to sacrifice myself to protect other people’s lives. Maybe I would be Bai Xue, hating everyone so much I’d want to kill them all.”
Shen Qingyu laughed despite himself. “You wouldn’t.”
Qiao Ying didn’t even understand her own nature, so she had no idea where he got the confidence to say she wouldn’t. Looking at the people present, she said, “Mu Yunshu had an unyielding heart. She did what ordinary people could never do. She should have been revered like a goddess by everyone, yet now they see her as a vengeful woman full of hatred. That isn’t fair to her.”
“So you’re clearing her name.”
Qiao Ying did not answer. Instead, she said to Shen Qingyu, “People all have one thing in common: they judge others by themselves. If they think they couldn’t do something, then they assume no one else could, either. So in their eyes, Mu Yunshu must have been a bitter woman abandoned by her lover. But from everything she did afterward, it was clear that a mere romance could never shake her true heart. What she held in her heart was the common people.”
Shen Qingyu smiled. “So the ones you want that Sword Spirit to spare are those common people.”
Qiao Ying knew she was overestimating herself, but it was hardly the first time she had done so. She looked at “Mu Yunshu” and said softly,
“She is a pearl. She should never have been covered in dust.”
She had once seen “Mu Yunshu” risk danger to save Ah Yuan when peril struck.
Now, as she touched the bracelet on her wrist, she could also guess that the reason she had not been taken by the Soul Summoning was because of this bracelet “Mu Yunshu” had put on her. What she did not know was whether Mu Yunshu had spared her because Qiao Ying had once spoken up for her, or because she did not want Shen Qingyu dragged in through Qiao Ying and ruining her plan.
But Qiao Ying was willing to believe the former. Whether it was Mu Yunshu or “Mu Yunshu,” their true nature should have been the same.
How ironic. For the past forty years, the people aboveground had been able to live in peace and prosperity because, beneath the ground, a person covered in wounds had been trapped there.
It was as if Zhao Fanhua’s blood had frozen through every limb and bone. He stared at the solid earth beneath his feet and felt that it was not made of stones and dust, but of one person’s forty years of blood and bone.
Guilt surged over him like a tide, drowning him. The taste of blood rose in his throat, and the apology that could only seem shallow now caught there, unable to come out.
He suddenly understood that many things should never have existed.
He should not have forgotten his promise and married someone else.
He should not have been surrounded by children and grandchildren, with three generations living under one roof.
And that Zhao family renowned throughout the world should never have existed in the first place.
Zhao Fanhua wanted to ask whether Mu Yunshu had ever mentioned him, but in the end, he did not have the courage. For some reason, he laughed aloud. “So that was it. So that was it. I should have died long ago. I should have died long ago!”
What fame throughout the world?
What peerless hero?
He was nothing but a faithless, treacherous villain!
Zhao Fanhua picked up the sword from the ground and laid it against his own neck.
Xue Heting cried out, “Master!”
Song Zhenzhu shouted as well, “Zhao Fanhua, stop!”
With a ringing clang, the Qingshuang Sword knocked the sword from Zhao Fanhua’s hand.
Whether the Qingshuang Sword had protected its former master, or whether someone had driven the Qingshuang Sword to stop Zhao Fanhua from seeking death, no one knew.
Mu Yunshu looked at the blood-red bead in her hand and was silent for a long time. At last, she murmured, “She threw away her life to protect something so weightless. How ridiculous.”
And yet that ridiculous person, while protecting everyone else, had chosen to protect her as well.
So from the very beginning, she had never been abandoned.