Chapter 5
Chapter 5
After leaving Wangxiang Cliff, we stopped to rest at a courier station up ahead.
Though Xiaohu had survived, his injuries were too severe, so we sent him to the nearest country doctor to recuperate.
In the front hall of the station, the people from the Seven Mirrors Bureau were scattered about-some standing, some sitting, and some cracking melon seeds as they chatted idly.
They made a stark contrast to the grief-stricken escort guards on the second floor.
Yang Cheng and I sat in a corner on the first floor. Before us were two plates of side dishes and a few ounces of beef.
Yang Cheng also ordered a pot of good wine.
“Let’s get one thing straight. This meal is on you.”
Yang Cheng’s hand paused in the middle of pouring wine. He lifted his eyes to look at me, and I spread both hands.
“You saw it yourself. The goods I was escorting are gone. When I get back, I’ll have to pay compensation.”
Yang Cheng laughed despite himself. “Fine. This meal is on me.”
He handed me a cup of wine, and I reached out to take it.
After a few cups, the awkward distance from when we first met faded along with the warmth of the wine.
Pointing at my nose, Yang Cheng cursed, “You heartless thing. Back then, you left just like that. The brothers took turns trying to stop you, but none of us could hold you back.”
“After you left, Master smiled less and less.”
A sour ache rose in my chest. Thinking of that old man whose face would wrinkle all over when he smiled, his eyes disappearing completely, I could not help asking in the end, “Is Master… doing all right?”
“Want to know?”
Yang Cheng tipped his head back and drained his cup. “Go to Capital City and see him yourself.”
Seeing me fall silent, he sighed again.
“Qiniang, are you really content with this?”
His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked out into the dense night beyond the door. “I remember when you first came to the Seven Mirrors Bureau. You held up that sword taller than you were and said you would become the greatest demon subduer in the world…”
That sword…
I looked at the longsword resting beside my hand.
It seemed that ever since I left Capital City, even it had lost much of its luster.
In the tenth year of Yongle, I first entered the Seven Mirrors Bureau.
With the ambition to slay every demon and monster under heaven, I acknowledged a master, joined the Bureau, and trained hard day after day. I escaped death countless times, and in desperate situations, my progress was astonishingly fast.
At nineteen, I received the waist token of a Black-rank demon subduer of the Seven Mirrors Bureau. I was a genius demon subduer whom everyone envied and all demons feared.
I could no longer remember how many demons this sword had killed. I only remembered that, in the end, its killing aura had grown too fierce, so fierce I could barely suppress it.
I myself nearly succumbed to cultivation deviation as well. It was Master who came looking for me and saved my life.
Master said my heart was neither calm nor at peace. When I subdued demons, the powerful obsessions and emotions they carried before death would affect me.
If it went on for too long, I would go mad.
So I returned to my hometown to recuperate-to heal my body, and also to temper my state of mind.
But I never imagined that the wolf demon who had once escaped from my hands would follow me back to my hometown.
Wolf demons held grudges.
I had cut off one of its tails, so it slaughtered my entire family.
That night, Mother dragged my gravely wounded body and fled. My wounds were festering, already tainted with demonic energy, and I could not bring out even a tenth of my strength.
I crushed my waist token, but it would take time for people from the Seven Mirrors Bureau to arrive!
We had no time.
Mother hid me in a cave and went to lure the wolf demon away herself.
I clutched her hand tightly. “Don’t go!”
Mother stroked my face. Her palm was sticky.
I could not tell whose blood it was.
She said, “Qiniang, if you can survive, can you promise Mother one thing?”
I grabbed her clothes. “Don’t go. I’ll promise you anything.”
“But if Mother doesn’t go, you won’t live.”
Mother smiled. “Qiniang, if you live, let’s stop being a demon subduer, all right? I hope you can marry into a good family and live out this life in peace and safety.”
“You don’t know this, but when you were out there hunting demons, Mother often couldn’t sleep all night.”
“I kept thinking, the Qiniang in my memory was so small, a child who would cry when she fell. How could she possibly defeat those vicious, desperate demons?”
She wiped her eyes. The blood on her hand smeared across her face, tears and blood blurring together, leaving her looking utterly wretched.
“Enough of that. Mother is going now.”
She sighed, hid me away when I had nearly lost consciousness, then rose and walked outside.
In my vision, her back grew blurrier and blurrier.
She never looked back.
The wind was strong that night-so strong that even inside the cave, I could smell the blood outside.
From then on, my blade could no longer unleash the Demon Slaying Art…
And I was no longer the genius demon subduer of the Seven Mirrors Bureau.