MO RAN'S TALE came to an end. No one spoke in Loyalty Hall. What was good and what was evil? Who was right, and who was wrong? They all had their opinions, but no one could make a definite judgment.
Mo Ran didn't look at the faces of the Xue family. He lowered his lashes. "I thought I would die in that fire. But when I woke up, I was lying in a room at Sisheng Peak with that investigator sitting by my bedside. He grabbed me as soon as I woke up and said—he said I would be the young master of Sisheng Peak from now on." He paused, then laughed softly. "Uncle's nephew."
The carpets of Loyalty Hall were embroidered with pollia flowers. Mo Ran trained his eyes on their beautiful patterns, his face serene. "The investigator didn't want to lose his commission. When Uncle pulled me out of the wreck of the House of Drunken Jade and asked if this was the boy he was looking for, he nodded. That one nod changed my life."
Master Xuanjing sighed. "Amitabha. Mo-shizhu, how could you rest easy? Have you never thought of confessing to Xue-zunzhu?"
"Of course I have. When I first woke up, I couldn't bear it. I wanted badly to confess the truth." Mo Ran's gaze was distant, as if looking into the past. "But when they heard I was awake, Uncle…immediately came to see me, and Auntie made me a bowl of noodles. There were three poached eggs in it, with runny yolks, all covered in meat sauce. She…told me she was afraid I'd have trouble keeping it down since I just woke up, and had minced it finely to help. Xue Meng also came by and brought me a whole box of sweets."
His eyes drifted shut. "I ate that bowl of noodles, and those cakes, and I couldn't form the words. They smiled at me and treated me so well… If I'd said I was the one who set fire to the House of Drunken Jade, I killed your nephew, your sister-in-law…what then?" Mo Ran murmured. "I couldn't do it. I swallowed the words down, and as time passed…I could no longer say them at all."
Master Xuanjing heaved a sigh.
"I knew what kind of person Mo Nian was—lazy and careless. In the beginning, I didn't know how much Uncle knew of him, so I tried my best to act as his copy. When I realized Uncle didn't know him at all, I stopped doing things as he would." Mo Ran was silent a beat. "Ultimately, I owed a blood debt to Mo Nian and his family, but I ended up taking advantage of their kin."
The members of Sisheng Peak were stunned; many of the disciples and elders who'd known Mo Ran were frozen stiff, their hearts in turmoil. Madam Wang and Xue Zhengyong were speechless, staring blankly at Mo Ran's lonely silhouette. They'd watched this boy grow up from a young and immature child to a once-in-a-generation zongshi. And now he was telling them it'd been a mistake from the very start.
Mo Ran wasn't their nephew; they shared no blood. Rather, what lay between them was only death and hatred. What could they say? What could they do? Neither Madam Wang nor Xue Zhengyong knew. They'd never met the real Mo Nian. They had poured all of their regret and yearning for Xue Zhengyong's dead brother into this boy named Mo Ran. Mo Nian was a stranger, but they'd patted Mo Ran's head, held Mo Ran's hand, and answered his cries of "Uncle" and "Auntie."
Xue Zhengyong had no idea what to think.
Mu Yanli shattered the silence. "Mo Ran, you may be pitiable, but your crimes are many and cannot be lightly excused. Do you know exactly how many major offenses you've committed?"
Mo Ran had never liked Tianyin Pavilion. He closed his eyes and said nothing.
Mu Yanli shot him a glance, her voice ringing like a bell. "Murder, arson, theft of identity. On Mount Jiao, you knew you had Nangong blood, but you looked on, acting in your own interests. At Guyueye, you committed a bloody slaughter—all for what?"
"I'll say it once again: I wasn't responsible for the murders at Guyueye. The Space-Time Gate has reopened and two worlds have comingled. That man was not me."
"The Space-Time Gate is the first forbidden technique, unused for millennia. Do you not find this excuse ridiculous?" Mu Yanli was unmoved. "Is it not that you are, in truth, dissatisfied—that, as a Nangong descendant, your own ambition drives you to throw both the upper and lower cultivation realms into chaos?"
"Pavilion Master Mu oversteps." Jiang Xi frowned. "I don't see how Mo Ran has any motive for overturning the cultivation realms. If that was his goal, he could've pulled off any kind of scheme at Mount Jiao. The ten great sects would've been decimated. None of this is adding up. Before the truth is revealed, please be careful what you say."
Mu Yanli cast him a scornful glance. "Jiang-zhangmen need not speak on his behalf. Even if he had no intent to overthrow the cultivation world, his past misdeeds are more than sufficient to place him in Tianyin Pavilion's custody." She gestured toward her retinue. "Seize Mo Ran. Take him away."
"Wait!"
Mu Yanli turned to Xue Zhengyong. "Does Xue-zunzhu have something to add?"
Xue Zhengyong looked ill, as if he himself didn't understand why he'd called out to Mu Yanli. After all these years of seeing Mo Ran as his own flesh and blood, it had become second nature for him. He couldn't stand by as Tianyin Pavilion dragged him off. But what could he do? Urge them not to?
He closed his eyes, teeth chattering. He felt cold, his chest hollowed out, as if something crucial had been carved away. He buried his face in his palms. This man, who had always been bursting with vitality, suddenly looked old and frail.
"Does Xue-zunzhu wish to bid his nephew farewell?"
These words were cruelly chosen. Xue Zhengyong shook harder when she said the word nephew, shuddering like willows in the wind. "I…" Xue Zhengyong rasped. "Ran-er… Mo Ran…" He didn't know how to address him anymore.
It was Mo Ran who moved to ease things—closing his eyes, he stepped toward Xue Zhengyong and knelt, kowtowing again and again in the most formal bow.
"Aren't they just wasting time?" came a murmur.
"Putting on airs…"
Mo Ran ignored them. When he had completed the bows, he rose and made ready to leave.
Yet before he could start forward, Xue Meng rushed back into Loyalty Hall. Black blood dripped from Longcheng as he shouted in horror, "There's—"
"What's going on?"
"There's an army of Zhenlong pawns outside—tons of them are cultivators from Rufeng Sect's Mount Jiao!"
Terror shook them. The crowd rushed out of the hall and saw countless cultivators aloft on their swords outside Sisheng Peak, their robes fluttering in the wind. Half were like the cultivators who had streamed from the rift, wearing those same black robes with masks over their faces, but the others were dressed in crane robes with a ribbon over their eyes—corpses from the heroes' tomb of Rufeng Sect.
"Wh-what's going on?!"
"Didn't Nangong Si suppress them? How are they back?! Who countered the spell?"
The answer was self-evident. Who could counter a suppression spell cast by a member of the Nangong family? Furious eyes swung to fasten on Mo Ran.
Even if he knew who was behind it, there was nothing Mo Ran could say in his own defense. Worse still, his spiritual energy was still depleted. He couldn't stop the pawns from attacking; he could only watch as thousands of undead soldiers swarmed toward them.
Just as in the previous life, Sisheng Peak would be swept up in a bloody maelstrom. It seemed the surprise Shi Mei spoke of wasn't over yet.
"Fight them!"
"Drive them off first! Drive them off!"
The crowd rushed up to meet them, but they had been caught badly off-guard, and there seemed to be no end to the enemy's numbers. Chaos reigned.
Mo Ran stood before the hall, watching the pawns land. They crossed swords with the Sisheng Peak disciples and met the other cultivators with spells. Blue robes and silver armor whirled around black cloaks, an impenetrable mass of dark color.
He stood on the jade steps, temples throbbing. The sight before him seemed to mirror his past life. Back then, it was he who'd sent an army of pawns, both dead and alive, into Sisheng Peak to kill all who dared stand in his way. He'd grown used to killing without mercy, to slaughtering thousands without a care and leaving mountains of corpses in his wake. He remembered standing just like this before Loyalty Hall, the traitorous disciple Mo Weiyu looking down on the charging soldiers and grieving crowd with a smile on his lips while the bodies of Xue Zhengyong and Madam Wang lay at his feet.
"Your blood will pave me a path that begins at Sisheng Peak."
His deranged cackling from that bygone lifetime seemed to echo in his ears. Mo Ran's eyes twitched. "Stop, you can't win!" he shouted at Xue Meng. "Run, all of you—run!" But the din was too great, and Xue Meng was too far away to hear.
Mo Ran took in the clanging blades and frantic struggles of the cultivators. He saw Jiang Xi fending off a dozen pawns and remembered how the other Jiang Xi had fallen before Mo Ran's own blade.
"You won't kneel?"
"No."
"You won't accept this venerable one as emperor?"
"No."
The blade descended, blood splashing across the ground.
They couldn't win…
Mo Ran watched the leader of Taxue Palace play her ocarina, its sound piercing the skies and sending the pawns swaying. He recalled how this palace master's fingers had been shattered, her tendons snapped—
"Why resist?"
"As the leader of Taxue Palace, I will not run, even if I cannot ensure its safety."
The ocarina had shattered, never to sound again.
They couldn't win.
In the mayhem, Mo Ran looked toward Madam Wang and Xue Zhengyong in the distance, fighting together—yet what he saw was their dead faces, grief and fury frozen in their sightless eyes. They stared at him across lifetimes, hate-filled and accusatory.
It was cold. So cold.
Mo Ran was shivering, his fingertips numb. To think Shi Mei had gone so far… Shi Mei had done this!
He'd known the threat Shi Mei made as he'd taken Chu Wanning was not an idle one. It was because of this that he'd so resolutely returned to Sisheng Peak. But now, he felt a prickling over his skin. If he'd ignored Shi Mei's warning and chased him down to save Chu Wanning, what would've happened? The leaders of the cultivation realm were all here. If they died in mysterious circumstances at Sisheng Peak, what would have happened?
Shi Mei's interlocking schemes allowed him no moment of rest. Mo Ran looked up and saw a field of Zhenlong pawns, living dead that feared no pain and needed no rest, a writhing, endless mass of bloody corpses and rotting bones…
They couldn't go on like this.
Shi Mei said this was a surprise for him, so it must have been set up with specific intent. Since he'd returned here as Shi Mei wanted, there must be something he could do to stop it. He couldn't let those remembered tragedies play out again; he couldn't see Sisheng Peak destroyed again, couldn't bear watching his aunt and uncle die in front of him again. If the past repeated itself, how could he face himself—how could he face Chu Wanning?
Mo Ran jolted back to awareness. He shoved his way past the crowd and sprinted toward his aunt and uncle. "Stop fighting! Retreat, get out of here, stop fighting! There's no way we can win!"
His voice tore out of his throat. His face was twisted into a mask of desperation; he was a drowning man struggling for the opposite shore, a dying man running to those still alive. He was a moth throwing himself toward the flame, one life chasing down the other.
"Stop fighting! Run—run away! You can't win!"
You can't win. I've watched you die once before. Run, I'm begging you.
A blade appeared before him, flashing silver as it blocked his path. Mu Yanli's icy visage came into view. "Trying to take advantage of the chaos to flee?"
"Step aside!" Mo Ran shouted.
"You're a criminal of the cultivation realm, I have every right to—"
Mu Yanli felt air stirring behind her and turned to see a masked pawn descending on her with sword extended. She met the pawn's blade with her own, face dark with murderous intent. "Mo Ran!" she shouted. "So it is you behind this!"
Her voice was as crisp as a frozen spring, ringing out over the din of the crowd. Many around them turned, watching as the pawn engaged Mu Yanli in bitter combat while ignoring Mo Ran entirely. In fact, all of the pawns on Sisheng Peak seemed to take Mo Ran for one of their own. They avoided him in their attacks, never touching a single hair on his head.
"So it is that bastard Mo Ran's doing!" someone snarled.
"They're on the same side!"
Angry faces turned in his direction, ears tuned to those whispers and growls of accusation, eyes red-rimmed with rage fixing upon him. Past and present overlapped. In those hateful eyes, he was once again a murderous monster. He was the emperor who'd trampled all these cultivators underfoot in another lifetime—undefeated in battle, beholden to no principles, scornful and wholly insane.
"Take him down!" someone cried.
"Don't let him escape!"
"Let's see how long he can keep up his act!"
His ears rang with those same shouts, filled with the same wrath, castigation, and condemnation.
These sights were too familiar. He could almost see his and Chu Wanning's decisive battle. Mo Ran had used Zhenlong chess pieces to take control of both the living and the dead, along with beasts of both the land and air. His army had spilled onto the peak like ink, their weapons shining like snow upon a high mountain. From his lofty vantage point, he'd lowered his gaze and smiled thinly, watching as the skies flipped and daylight turned to dusk.
Then, it was Chu Wanning who'd stopped him. Chu Wanning who had given all he had against the tens of thousands of pawns, wielding Tianwen, then Jiuge, then, finally, Huaisha.
Huaisha. Mo Ran would never forget the grief and agony in Chu Wanning's eyes as he summoned his longsword.
"I heard this is the blade Shizun uses to kill. It seems today I finally get to see it."
"Mo Ran," Chu Wanning had said. "What will it take for you to stop?"
Mo Ran had thrown his head back and laughed. "I can't, Shizun. My hands are covered in blood. I killed Aunt and Uncle, I killed my own sect siblings… Now I only have to take your head and I'll be the ultimate tyrant. No one will be able to stand in my way."
Chu Wanning looked like he had been run through.
Yet Mo Ran remained unsatisfied; a malicious impulse beat in his heart. "Once I kill you," he bit out, each syllable crushed between his teeth, "there will be no one on earth I cannot kill."