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Silky, gossamer curtains drape themselves from grand, ebony bed frames, like simpering concubines across the lap of an emperor. But instead of displaying eye-catching, coquettish colors, they’re painted white, the color of mourning. Shrouded within their deathly embrace, lying on a bed fit for an emperor, is indeed none other than the former emperor of the mortal world. As if welcoming the arrival of a savior coming to wake their sleeping husband, the cloud-like sheets sway ever so gently at the near silent opening of the door.
Gliding across the threshold, a pale gold boot steps noiselessly into the room. A slim, young man makes his way to the side of the bed, brushing aside the filmy curtains impatiently. He finds the all-white robes he’s wearing rather appropriate, seeing as they doubled as mourning attire. How could he not feel aggrieved? The precious pawn that he had spent so many years nurturing had almost gone to waste. If not for his own quick thinking and extensive knowledge of the darkest forbidden medicinal arts, all his efforts would have been in vain. He was not pleased.
With a disdainful look in his eyes, he pries open the sharp jaw of the handsome man lying motionlessly on the bed. After shoving a pitch-black capsule in the mouth he had just wrenched open, he leans over, roughly lining up those frozen lips with his own, wrinkling his brows with disgust as he blows forcefully to drive the capsule down that closed throat. Finished, he immediately snaps the other’s jaw shut and sits up, wiping his lips, grimacing all the while. It wouldn’t be long now. He sits stoically by the other’s side, waiting for his patient to wake up.
TaXian-Jun opens his eyes.
It feels all wrong.
It feels as if the blood in his veins has congealed, like the expanse of spidery vessels running from head to toe have been frozen solid. In a panic, he thrusts his hand out to grab a fistful of the white fabric swaying in front of him, trying to shake off that feeling. “WanNing,” he rasps. Had it all been a dream? The paralyzing numbness that had haunted him day and night, the excruciating pain that had melted his organs into bloody swill, the final resignation that had calcified his heart as he lay surrounded by the fresh earth of an open grave—had it all been nothing more than a long nightmare?
There’s an unsettling deadness ensconced in every part of his body that tells him no. Everything is far too still.
“You’ve really made me go through quite a bit of trouble,” a cold voice cuts in unkindly. “Who said you could die?”
That question stirs something in him, a chilling parallel of the words he had once venomously whispered to another, “ Whether you live or die is not up to you. ”
A hand colder than the voice that had just spoken reaches out, its palm aiming for his forehead. Even disoriented as he is, his reflexes are still lightning-fast, and he locks the slender wrist of that hand in an iron grip; but he slackens immediately as something ice-cold radiates from where the other had brushed his forehead, numbing everything in its wake.
The immortal treading emperor had returned.
The day he died, the world breathed a sigh of relief, believing it had rid itself of a tyrant. But their jubilation was cut short because not even a month later, the tyrant came back — this time as a vengeful god. There was no escape from the eerie flare of green that lit up the skies when he summoned his unsparing sword. Soon, the color became known as a harbinger of death. Even the poorest of beggars would burn whatever scrap of green they owned. It was all in vain though, because superstitions did nothing to ward off this demon.
At long last, Hua BiNan’s carefully orchestrated plan is coming to a close: history is a symphony and he is conducting its finale. The end of the world begins.
There’s a slight hitch in his plans, however, soon after he wakes TaXian-Jun. Being as clever as he is, Hua BiNan should’ve known his undead soldier wasn’t so mindless after all. He should’ve realized it the moment those purple eyes opened with a flicker of soul and those frozen lips parted with a gasp: “WanNing.”
To TaXian-Jun, a single thought burns brighter than the sun in that abyss. There’s something he needs to do, a place he needs to go; before long, he claws his way out of the pitch-black he had been swallowed by. The first thing he hears when he comes to is an ear-splitting cacophony. It’s coming from the mass of stinking bodies in front of him, strewn together to form some hellish bridge. Each face is contorted in agony and terror, eyes and mouth wide open. But corpses shouldn’t be able to make any sound, so perhaps it’s only the wails of their tortured souls, echoing ceaselessly in the bottomless chasm below.
Seeing his pause, Hua BiNan frowns but the undead emperor only tosses the child he’d been holding up by the collar carelessly into the heap of corpses below, then turns his head and leaves. Hua BiNan, ever so pragmatic, is well aware of the limits of his own spiritual reserves, so he lets it go. Besides, he knows exactly where that loyal mutt is heading, and there’s no harm in letting him see just how much is left of his master. Perhaps he’ll be more amenable to taking on a new owner once he does.
Already a considerable distance away, TaXian-Jun smiles bitterly. Hua BiNan. He knows that name now and understands his plans without the need for an explanation, courtesy of the twisted bond between the two that allows him to be manipulated like a puppet on strings. So this is what it feels like to have the choice of living or dying taken away. Not even Chu WanNing had truly experienced that, had he? Always with a trick up his sleeve, he was able to summon JiuGe even with a shattered core. What matters is that, in the end, he could still choose death. All to get away from me.
TaXian-Jun turns his head, gaze lifted up towards the moonless sky. He has needed to see it with his own eyes since the moment he was first called back to this world. It could still be there. After all, it was not impossible for the lotuses with their strong medicinal qualities to preserve it. At least the skeleton should be left , he thinks, and perhaps, even a few strands of hair .
Impossibly fast, feet lighter than air, he makes his way to the southernmost summit, through clusters of young bamboo stalks. He remembers the last time he visited this place - where he had uttered one final plea to be looked at, paid attention to. But he was ignored. So in front of that body, he took the poison that had killed him, its acrid taste melting on his tongue, but not nearly as bitter as the sight of Chu WanNing laying there indifferently. Look, your disciple is coming to meet you. Why won’t you look? But the other’s eyes had remained closed, hands folded primly across his chest. That day, with his life as payment, he had tried to buy one last look from Chu WanNing - only to learn that he would never be able to afford a single glance.
He didn’t have to live with that knowledge for long, though. “Are you happy now?” he had muttered after swallowing the last of the poison down his throat, sealing his own fate. There had been no response.
The lake comes into view. Without the careful tending of the pavilion’s master nor the abundant spiritual energy that was but a drop in the ocean for Mo Ran to provide, the formerly flourishing pond had suffered greatly. Dead stalks, withered leaves, and wilted petals litter the surface of the once clear water, now murky with decay. He stares at the ugly, rotting mess, an indescribable tightness pushing bile high up into his throat. Where is it? Where is he?
Red creeps into the edge of his vision as his eyes sweep across the empty clearing. The hand resting on the hilt of his blade trembles under the force of his grip, blue-black veins throbbing. His spiritual energy pulses wildly, charging the air with tension. A sinister wind picks up, rustling the overgrown grass and causing small ripples to appear on the surface of the pond, stirring up the decaying foliage. Where is he?
Disregarding dignity and pride, he jumps into the freezing water. Bones, there must be at least a few bones left . He could live with just a few fragments; he has always been able to live off scraps. His eyes scan through the turbid depths for just a hint of white. Finding none, he sifts desperately through handfuls of soil, muddying the waters even further. It’s too slow though, with just his hands, despite the fact that he doesn’t need to resurface for breaths. Tighter and tighter the knot in his throat winds itself. Standing in the center of the pond, his madness manifests itself in an electric surge of spiritual energy, churning the waters into a swirling vortex of rotting flowers and dirt.
But within that muddy storm, there is not a single glimpse of white.
As if the last of Chu WanNing’s disgust for him had been infused into the water, the whirlpool spits him back onto the grassy shore, filthy and dripping wet.
He sits there, not breathing, because he doesn’t need to, not shivering, because he no longer has any warmth to recover. The night is unkind - not willing to spare the light of a single star to cast its feeble glow on his back. The bejeweled crown he had been buried with is gone, lost to the churning waters. His face, his hair, his robes - all are soiled with mud and grass. It seems as if before Chu WanNing, he will never be anything more than a dirty beggar. He feels impossibly cold.
In his heart he knows, had known since the start - there is nothing left. Raising his head to the starless sky, he roars, anguish and madness intertwining like twin dragons in flight. In an instant, the surface of the lake is set ablaze by a wild explosion of spiritual energy, ghostly green flames leaping ten, twenty meters in the air. They illuminate the entire mountaintop like some unholy sun. The savage conflagration incinerates the decaying remnants of the once brilliant lotuses covering the lake - but what were the ashes of those rotting flowers worth?
It’s the thought of that, of ashes , that makes him feel as if he can’t get enough oxygen in his half-dissolved lungs. The intensity of the monstrous flames would have sucked all the air out of his lungs if he were alive; yet even with the way he is now, he chokes, falling to his knees with a thud drowned out by the roaring of the flames.
Where are you? Is this hell?
The sick loneliness which he had killed himself trying to escape from settles itself once more into his unbeating heart, somehow even more deeply than ever before. It chills him to the deadened bones sitting within his frozen flesh, those hateful things propping up his carcass like some demonic marionette.
Along with the loneliness is fear: a dread thousands of times worse than all the nights he remembered Chu WanNing was gone. That the last ember meant to light his descent into hell had been extinguished. Now, even the curtain of death had been ripped away. He could no longer hide behind it. He could no longer escape his sentence: to be forever tormented by the monstrous despair that had long since driven him to insanity.
“Hell is too cold. Chu WanNing, you’re coming with me,” he had once said. But here he was, all alone, without a single bone, not even a speck of ash to keep him company.
From where he’s sprawled on the ground, he crawls, towards the inferno in front of him, hot enough to splinter bone — hot enough to cremate a body . It would be best if his ashes are gone too. But before a single fingertip of his outstretched hand can so much as brush a lick of flame, the suffocating force of Hua BiNan’s control crushes him in its maw again and drags him back to drown in that endless abyss. This time, he does not have the strength to fight back. This time, there is no light to guide him out.
Time stops. He all but vanishes in that place with no day or night, no dusk or dawn.
After an eternity there, he hears a familiar voice calling him: “Mo Ran, wake up”
But he’s so tired. So cold. So hungry. It’s like he’s trapped in the ice and snow again. Like he has lost the only person in the world who had been kind to him again.
“Please... I really can’t go on anymore.”
“It’s dark. I’m scared. Somebody bring me home.”
The hoarse rasp of a weary emperor overlaps with the frightened plea of a child, both voices lost instantly to the infinite abyss.
Yet that voice, deep and soft, is insistent: “Mo Ran, please, wake up.”
He wants to turn away. It’s not real. Yet the warmth of a white fur coat enveloping his back feels very real. The taste of rice porridge on his tongue feels very real. And a light wisp of haitang - it’s real.
Slowly, there is light again. He finds himself staring at graceful, inky strokes arranged neatly on paper. There’s something wet sliding down his cheek. What he’s looking at are three characters: they read “Chu WanNing.”
“A letter,” elucidates the voice he had come to hate, “Because you’ve been so obedient these past few months and my accomplice has a soft spot for you.”
“ Butterfly Town - we were sent to exterminate the demon plaguing the Chen family…” the letter begins. He reads carefully, drinking in every mention of the name that had called him out of the darkness, until his eyes inevitably snag on “ Chu WanNing was hurt badly protecting you from the Ghost Mistress of Ceremonies.” His entire body tenses, the grip he keeps on the thin paper almost piercing through.
Yet the initial blossom of warmth is choked immediately by dark tendrils of bitterness and smothered under whispers of “ He would never do that for you,” “He never thought you were worth saving,” “He’s willing to save everyone, even the you of another world, but not this you.” The jealousy makes the scars on his back burn more violently than the raging inferno he had made of the lotus pond all those months ago.
Still, it’s nothing compared to the rage that erupts when he learns of the punishment that his person, his WanNing, received at the hands of others. The very thought of it awakens some feral beast in him. The only one allowed to punish him is me . I’m the only one. The other him, that imbecile—how had he allowed this to happen? He should have stopped them. Even if he had to slaughter all of SiSheng Peak to do it, he had already done it once before, so what was once more?
He can see it, crystal-clear: that ramrod-straight back refusing to bend under each brutal strike, that priceless crimson dye seeping through each fiber of white cloth, drop by precious drop. His blunt nails puncture through the words “two-hundred strikes.” Regret immediately follows, and his fingers loosen their grip right away, thumb smoothing over the tiny tear.
A soft snort brings his glare up to that naturally gentle looking face which is now twisted into a malicious sneer. Even he himself finds it strange, the way he could only associate the man who looks and sounds just like Shi Mei with that other, unfamiliar name. “Done reading?” Hua BiNan asks. “Here,” a slender, white hand beckons, the way one would call a dog, a pet. He doesn’t realize he’s obeying until he’s already standing in front of the other, pride crushed beneath the eagerness, the desperation for just another crumb of hope incarnate—of Chu WanNing.
A blood-red seed is pressed into his palm. “For when he returns,” Hua BiNan says, with no further explanation, and leaves.
He looks down. It’s the seed of the lotuses unique to the lake he had set afire, a new generation of the crimson flowers he had burned to extinction in this world.
For when he returns.
Those words seem to ignite something in his hollow chest. He closes his palm around that tiny seed of hope, clutching it tightly to his sternum. This time, he would not let go.
So he plays his part as the obedient hunting hound. Day after day, piling corpse after stinking corpse on that infernal bridge. Forming oblivion-black chess pieces by the handful, until they spill out from between his long, calloused fingers. Forcing men, women, and children alike to their deaths, entire villages at a time. The blood of an entire godless world staining his hands.
Not needing to eat, not needing to drink, stripped of every human need, he can easily trek across the forsaken earth, to even the most obscure of corners. Like that, he empties it of human life, destroying every last shelter his foolish cousin sets up in vain with the Mei brothers. He’s sustained only by those letters, one on the first of every month.
Then comes one letter he will never forget, though he has read them all enough times to recite each one from memory. It comes late. When Hua BiNan hands it to him, he says: “You’re lucky I’m giving this to you at all. I’m going to tell you this ahead of time so you don’t lose your mind. He’s alive.”
He doesn’t understand what that means, but a vague inkling of unease makes him frown when he reads “ You took my place in the Discernment Barrier to repair the Heavenly Rift. ” So it had been him and Chu WanNing fighting together in that world. He has a very bad feeling.
The agitation stirring low in his gut makes him shift his gaze up, intense purple eyes staring distrustfully at Hua BiNan’s dispassionate countenance. Even with the mental preparations he makes, the next sentence strikes him like a bolt of lightning. “ Chu WanNing died bringing you back home. ”
It’s like he’s back at KunLun TaXue Palace again, holding a rapidly cooling body. It’s like he’s back at Red Lotus Pavilion again, digging through handfuls of soil. Either way, all he knows is that Chu WanNing is gone again.
This is his worst nightmare come true: two worlds without you .
His vision darkens. The ornate throne room he had just been standing in disappears. He can feel a gaping, bloody hole in his chest. That’s how he knows this is an illusion; his long dead nerve-endings shouldn’t be able to register pain. Step by arduous step, the trembling back he’s being carried on crawls. The usual entrance guards are nowhere to be seen, displaced in the chaos of the devastating calamity. There is nobody around to help. Beneath him, he feels a quivering arm reach out to grab the edges of the last, alabaster step. With that final push, the back carrying him shudders, a feeble tremor running down its length, before collapsing.
He can’t stop staring at the bloodied hand in front of him. The fingertips have been scraped down to a raw, bloody mess, torn skin clinging to ruined flesh. He had seen these porcelain hands battered so badly only once before - in the water prison, when Song QiuTong had ripped out his nails. Back then, high off bloodlust and conquest, certain he hated this person to the bone, he had only felt a savage mixture of delight and pity. But the years he spent kneeling by that corpse had changed him. All that time was enough for the insanity and obsession stoked by Chu WanNing’s existence to go from a roaring blaze to a flickering ember until finally, it went up in smoke entirely. He had not known how warm it had kept him.
It was all gone again, collapsed in a bloody heap at the foot of SiSheng Peak’s gates. He knows how many steps there are to those doors. He had counted them before, after going back for a last look in honor of murdering his aunt and uncle at TianYin Pavilion. That time, it had been the blood of his enemies dripping from his sword on his way down. This time, it was the blood of Chu WanNing spilling from his torn chest as he struggled his way up.
Three-thousand, seven-hundred, ninety-nine bone-white steps, splattered by a crimson trail.
He closes his eyes. Three times now, he has lost him. Once, when Chu WanNing lay dying in his arms. Twice, when he returned to this world and the last trace of him had crumbled to dust. Thrice, when his last chance, the Chu WanNing of another world, had perished.
When he opens his eyes again, they’re blacker than ever.
If last time, his spiritual energy had been explosive like fire, this time, it’s dense and thick like coffinwood. The very air seems to condense itself, solidify. Hua BiNan stifles a bloody cough, choked by the immense pressure.
“He’s alive,” Hua BiNan reminds him, blood trickling from his lips. The words ring in his ear. So he keeps reading, clinging to that singular thought like it's the spider’s thread dangling in the abyss. He learns about Master HuaiZui. About the elusive Rebirth technique. About the five years of seclusion.
Five years of lying there motionlessly. A memory wells up, unbidden, in his mind. Shallow waves soaking the edges of his robes, its quiet trickling mocking his loneliness on New Year’s Eve. Their tenth year together. That was the only time he had been able to bring himself to touch that frozen body floating in even colder waters. Just a single grasp of Chu WanNing’s rigid hand, truly no different from porcelain now. Chu WanNing had always hated his touch, always hissed and spat and bit and clawed. So why didn’t he do the same now? Why didn’t he slap his hand away?
But Chu WanNing didn’t move a muscle; he was finally showing the docility TaXian-Jun always thought he wanted from him. It makes him more miserable than ever. “Look, you’ve won,” he acknowledged. “So get up, won’t you?” That was the last holiday he had passed before ending his own life.
Now, there would be five more years like that. Five more New Year’s. Except this time there would not even be a frozen hand for him to hold. Only a letter bearing some flimsy words along the lines of “ Shizun remains in seclusion. ” It makes him want to tear open the life and death gate of time and space right there. To watch over Red Lotus Pavilion everyday for the next five years. To make sure that flickering flame doesn’t go out.
Except, already he can feel Hua BiNan’s response to his agitation: the force of his control pressing down, blacking out the edges of his vision. A warning.
He grits his teeth and levels the other with a fierce glare that very clearly says “I will skin you alive and add you to your damned bridge myself.” And although he knows he’s nothing more than a collared beast now, he flares his own oppressive spiritual energy, the air around him rippling with power. Then he takes a step forward and bares his teeth in a mocking sneer. Tiny fissures spread from beneath his feet, the sheer domineering force of his aura cracking the marble.
Hua BiNan chokes on another mouthful of blood and he takes what little satisfaction he can get from that.
Then, without a word, he turns and leaves.
Upon entering his personal chambers, he quickly stores the letter that marks the day the nightmares begin. He doesn’t need to “sleep,” but the remaining scrap of that soul of his wars constantly with the body it should have long since left. Within a few days, if he doesn’t yield his consciousness, he pays the price of subverting the laws of nature: corruption seeps into his very being and bones, damaging both body and soul.
Before, during these resting periods, he had only been enclosed in an awful, endless darkness. But now, he can see very clearly. He’s a child again, dragging a burden far too heavy for his age. It stinks and he has to keep going even when large slabs of decaying flesh keep falling off, leaving a trail of putrefaction in his wake.
When he finally lays the body down in a grave far too shallow, he can’t help but cry out: because it’s not his mother’s rotting face. It’s Chu WanNing’s. The face that he had preserved for so long because deep down, he could not bear to see it infected by death - it is ruined beyond recognition. Maggots crawling out of his eye sockets. Flesh caving into the hollows under his cheekbones. Teeth glinting from beneath the barely there remains of his lips. And the stench. The hideous stench of decay mixing with, polluting , the scent of haitang.
It’s the smell that does him in; he can’t help but turn his head to the side and retch miserably. But the moment he opens his mouth, that revolting stench invades, forcing him to taste it, spreading across his tongue and into every crevice of his mouth.
Then, he’s buried under mountains of ice and snow. The cold splits his knuckles to the bone. Those deep lacerations spread from his hands until they cover his entire body, like he’s been sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. And cruelest of all, while his body is still wracked by the force of his retching, he’s tormented by excruciating pangs of hunger. He’s starving to death but the only thing he can taste is Chu WanNing’s demise.
When he wakes, the taste is still lingering on his tongue. He stares at the filmy screen of white curtains surrounding him. They used to be red.
After that night, TaXian-Jun develops the habit of forcing himself to stay awake for as long as he can, often weeks at a time, until black blood begins to well out of his eyes and he feels something dark and primordial eating away at his soul. All the while, his pile of letters grows and the number of people in the world dwindles.
During the few times of the year he returns to WuShan Palace, devoid of people except the few fortunate servants not sacrificed, he spends all his time in one place - Red Lotus Pavilion. It is once again worthy of its name, brilliant, crimson petals unfurling themselves gracefully among the emerald green leaves dotting the entirety of the crystal-clear lake - the last oasis on this earth. Before he leaves, he pours his boundless spiritual energy into the water, enough to nourish the flowers for months. Then he sets off once more, ingraining the sight of that empty Pavilion into his mind and clutching the newest letter tightly to his chest.
This way, he can trudge on - no matter how nauseous it makes him to hear the ghoulish screams of the murdered cursing his name day and night, no matter how viciously the howling gales at the ends of the earth bite at him as he chases down the last survivors of this barren land. On nights when he wakes to the starless sky, choking and sweating from nightmares of the unthinkable ( two worlds without you ), he lights a candle, shuffling as quickly as he dares through the pile of fragile, age-worn letters. He absorbs them character by character, as though he’s reading them for both the first and last time, until the all-consuming fear is lulled back to an uneasy slumber.
This is how he spends nearly a decade of his corrupted existence.
So when TianWen strikes across the deadened nerves in his abdomen, it hurts. It hurts when viscous, inky blood spills out, staining his black robes an even gloomier shade. It hurts more than the deadly poison that had eaten away his insides and killed him once before.
Why? Why is it that, to you, I am the only irredeemable one, the only one not worth saving, the only one not worth protecting in two worlds - out of two lifetimes?
The cavity within which his rotten heart lies is caving in on itself. A newfound hatred erupts, buttressing the collapsing walls within, keeping him from sinking into the quagmire of the one thought he can’t stand: he doesn’t want you .
His eyes stray to where Chu WanNing’s hands clutch his beloved Mo-zongshi in a tight embrace. He remembers that those hands had once been broken by three-thousand, seven-hundred, ninety-nine steps. He remembers Chu WanNing died for him . And now, he’s willing to wage war against the entire world to protect him. A gruesome smile twists TaXian-Jun’s handsome face into something unrecognizable. He looks back up into Chu WanNing’s anguished eyes, reddened at the corners and brimming with barely concealed tears. Those tears seem to be the last straw.
You cry freely for him, when he’s hurt. But me - that’s who you don’t hesitate to maim, kill, destroy. Every tear you’ve shed because of me, I’ve had to wrench from your eyes.
He wants to yell, “What has he ever done for you? I’ve spent a decade killing and killing and killing - all for a chance to see you!” Yet the one Chu WanNing is holding is still Mo-zongshi. The bitterness forces the words out from between his cold lips: “Chu WanNing. Why don’t you just carve out my heart.”
And he almost lets him do it. When, in the dead of the night, he hears the low, soft voice he had yearned to hear for almost ten years summon “HuaiSha!” - he almost lets him do it. There, in Red Lotus Pavilion, with the heady smell of sex still hanging in the air, he had lain next to Chu WanNing with Mo-zongshi’s core beating in his chest. He had lain there, with his eyes shut, not moving even when he saw the unmistakable golden flicker of Chu WanNing’s ultimate weapon through his closed eyelids. Because he had hoped. Hoped that he had some little, tiny place in Chu WanNing’s heart. Just big enough that the other wouldn’t want to have his red-again blood on his hands.
Then, HuaiSha stabs downward and he lets the tip of it scratch his chest as a reminder. Just a little nick to remind himself that Chu WanNing wants him dead. That Chu WanNing - whose body had arched so sweetly beneath his just now, whose lips had called his name so desperately just now - could still bear to kill him. That even as a carbon copy of the Mo-zongshi he loved so dearly, TaXian-Jun wasn’t wanted. What about me isn’t good enough for you?
Bitter disappointment is a familiar taste on his tongue. With a deadly calm, he dislocates the arm that had clung so tightly to his back and then tried to stab him in the chest.
How ironic, that he had waited for nearly a decade, but now that they’re reunited, Chu WanNing wants to cut what little time they have left short. Perhaps his shizun doesn’t understand just how exactly he had spent all these years, just what kind of world he had been living in.
He says as much and invites with a grim smile, “I’ll bring you over to take a look now.”
I’ll make you understand what it was like.
Towards the grand project he had been building he strides. The wind whips his hair and the rain lashes at his cheeks - a taste of the apocalypse to come. When Chu WanNing turns his pretty face to level him with a glare filled with horror and despair, he finally feels at ease.
Standing before the bridge to the end of the world, he thinks, “ It’s better this way.”
This way, he doesn’t mind paying the price of abusing the laws of heaven and earth: Armageddon. For how could he afford to die if Chu WanNing looked at him the way he looked at Mo-zongshi? How could he afford to lose it all if he woke, not to the stab of his lover’s dagger, but to the gentle press of lips against his?
So it’s better instead to spend these last few days looking his fill at Chu WanNing’s hate-filled eyes and tear-stained cheeks.
Then, they can be buried together in this ruined world. Reduced to ashes together by heaven’s wrath.
Do you see now? Chu WanNing, even if you hate me to death, you’ll never have anyone else.
This is how they will end.