SS CH21

One has to do many things in a lifetime. Sometimes, doing it right isn’t even worth mentioning, but doing it wrong may result in an endless debt.

He had been in this bitter, frozen land for over a month. No one knew who he was, not even he himself. Everything he possessed in the first half of his life had largely been stolen from others, and now that it had all been paid back, he was left with nothing but his own solitary existence. Thus, when registering his name, he frowned and thought for a long while. He still used the surname “Xie,” and, pondering that he was a year or so older than that person, he wrote down “Xie Dala.”

“Dala” had nothing. He followed the soldiers into the thick of battle with his clumsy right hand, napping in piles of corpses and drilling in the freezing mid-winter. Gradually, many died, but he remained alive.

He endured much hardship and suffering he had never tasted before, and witnessed many people and events he had never seen. The man who was once as gentle as jade had his soft interior hollowed out and filled with cold, icy iron.

When he buried his comrades with his own hands, he shed no tears; when he struck off the head of a garrison commander, his hands did not tremble. He simply looked at the head, eyes still wide with death, and felt an inexplicable sense of exhaustion.

He understood clearly: once on the battlefield, life and death were in the hands of heaven; half a step into the imperial court, one’s body was no longer one’s own. Having agreed to the Emperor’s recruitment, he had turned himself into a blade held in someone else’s hand. Where the blade pointed was where the Emperor desired.

Yet, he had no regrets.

In those two years, he killed many people and did many things he once would have scoffed at. Only after several brushes with death did he learn what it meant for black and white to depend upon each other. Before witnessing the hidden currents and churning tides of the world, he thought himself a man of integrity with his own internal measure; after rising and sinking in those tides, he realized he was more ignorant and humble than a small child.

He understood much, but understood even less.

There are always things in this world that one is helpless against, and too many rights and wrongs that leave nothing to be said.

The night the urgent report came from Jinghan Pass, he was leaning against a tree, looking into the distance. A bright moon hung in the pitch-black sky, its light bathing the world—and surely, a corner of it fell upon his distant home.

Calculating the time, the three-year term should have arrived. The vows of the past still rang in his ears, yet he was more bewildered now than he had been back then.

Regrettably, he didn’t have time to think it through clearly before he was sent off to the field of life and death.

The situation at Jinghan Pass was worse than their worst expectations. The old, the weak, the women, and the children in the city had already used their own flesh and blood to seal the city walls, fearing that even the slightest breach would bring the sky crashing down.

One hundred and seventy-eight members of the “Shadow-Raiding Guards”—in just a few short days, over half were lost. The city soldiers suffered heavy casualties, and their grain and fodder had run out. A battle of desperation awaited them at dawn; it would be a case of either the fish dying or the net breaking.

They decided to take a dangerous gamble.

The commander placed the majority of the remaining Shadow-Raiding Guards at various crucial points in the city, while he himself prepared to take four subordinates, disguised as wounded barbarian soldiers, to infiltrate the battlefield. He was supposed to have stayed on the city walls to assist with the defense, but as if possessed, he swapped duties with a brother and followed the commander closely.

“I am going because I am the commander of the Shadow-Raiding Guards; I must be at the vanguard. They are willing to follow me because they have no ties left and are content to die in battle. But what about you?”

The commander looked at him, wiping a dark-hued long saber in his hand—on it, a wild goose appeared to be vibrating, almost ready to take flight.

He said, “No reason, no goal, I don’t know.”

He answered “I don’t know” to everything, yet he followed nonetheless.

It was fortunate that he followed.

The Northern Barbarians had been fighting for days, and their casualties were not light. Throughout the camp, one could see wounded soldiers wailing and faces numb with indifference.

They blended in, but danger clung to them like bone-eating maggots. A squad of assassins, no less skilled than the Shadow-Raiding Guards, was also hiding in the camp and soon set their sights on them.

The moon was high in the sky, and it was not long before dawn.

Two Shadow-Raiding Guards exposed their identities to draw the enemy’s lethal attention, and one sacrificed himself to burn the camp and create chaos. He and the ruthless assassins engaged in a series of deadly strikes, stalling for time so the commander could sneak into Huta’er’s main tent.

A man is like his blade; a blade is like the man—the passing of a wild goose, leaving no trace in the blood.

He was covered in wounds, snatched a warhorse to charge into the encirclement, and grabbed the commander’s hand to break out together.

Regrettably, the saying “Heaven never closes all doors” is, more often than not, absolute nonsense.

Faced with a dead end in front and hunting hounds at their backs, the two of them had only one chance for survival.

A substitution—one life for another.

The commander could no longer hold on, yet he was more stubborn than him. In a half-conscious state, he kept muttering a person’s name, remembering only a ten-year pact.

He, too, had a pact.

Three years ago, before setting out for the battle at Lingyun Peak, his wife had gently tied his hair and dressed him. His son, barely up to his knees, held a wooden sword and stared at him unblinking.

The child’s voice was as soft as rice cake as he asked, “Where is Father going?”

He avoided the serious topic, speaking with gentle words like every adult making excuses to a child: “I will be back very soon.”

The son nodded obediently. The wife held his hand and said nothing, yet her palms were covered in cold sweat.

As the battle began, she finally said, “Don’t forget what you promised.”

He turned back and smiled at her, saying the same thing: “I will be back very soon.”

But he had not returned then, and now, he could not go back.

Before turning to run out of the mountain cave, he had actually felt regret, and had thought of turning back.

Yet, in the end, he did not.

The person had once called him a coward. Now it seemed, it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

His life could be called magnificent and unparalleled—the first half spent roaming the jianghu, and the last three years spent for the country and the people. But ultimately, it was nothing more than pretentious self-deception. The years of gaining fame in the martial arts world were years of fraudulent theft and being manipulated; the three years of drifting in light and shadow were years of abandoning his family and living as a coward.

He finally understood: he had let everyone down. He was in debt to his wife, had failed his young son, and had betrayed an old friend.

But in the end, he did not turn back.

Carrying a corpse as he fled through the night of gunfire, his blood, which he thought had long since cooled, was gradually reignited. He seemed to have returned to that time at the Saber and Sword Gathering, for the only time in his life, feeling unbridled joy.

The various ranks and conditions of humanity probably all look the same before the face of death.

Unfortunately, even a dead end has an end. The boiling blood would eventually run dry. After hollowing out his pride, only empty silence remained, leaving behind a faint shred of regret.

His left hand leaned on his saber for support; his right hand, missing three fingers, tremblingly touched his heart. Behind him was a sheer cliff; before him were countless barbarian soldiers, weapons drawn, bows bent, strings taut.

Thirty-four years of gratitude, grudges, and past loves—it would all come to an end in this way.

At the moment the arrows were released, what was reflected in his eyes was not the sky-covering rain of steel, but that bright moon in the sky.

I entrust this heart to the bright moon, may it follow the wind to the west of my home?

Xie Wuyi did not sleep well that night.

His body was broken, and he often struggled to sleep, but that night he tossed and turned until dawn. He heard the wind howling outside the window and saw the candles flickering within.

A gust of wind blew open the half-closed window, and the candle on the table went out.

They say a person’s death is like the extinguishing of a lamp… A shiver ran through his heart for no reason.

Xie Wuyi sat up from the bed, poured a cup of cold tea, and drank it slowly; his hand was trembling for some reason. It wasn’t until his door was suddenly knocked that he pulled back the bolt and saw the young boy holding a wooden sword, looking up at him.

He had always felt an awkward helplessness regarding this child. He didn’t intend to vent his anger or scold him, but he couldn’t be a loving father either. Other than teaching him martial arts, they had little interaction. He had watched them grow distant over the past three years and hadn’t expected the boy to visit tonight.

Xie Wuyi hadn’t figured it out when Xie Li let go of the wooden sword, hugged his leg, and buried his head against him. A few warm droplets soaked through his inner garment, leaving him even more bewildered.

“You… what’s wrong?”

“Father, I had a dream.” Xie Li looked up, his eye sockets red. “I dreamt you went to a very far place and would never come back. You even told me to take care of myself and not to follow you.”

Xie Wuyi’s hand stiffened.

After a long time, he said, “A man should not act like a child. It was just a dream; go back to sleep.”

Xie Li nodded meekly, but couldn’t help asking: “Father, what place in the world is the farthest?”

Far?

North and South, the ends of the earth—did those count as far? But as long as one has the will, there will always be a day to meet again.

The only things that are truly unreachable are, perhaps, the paths of life and death.

Xie Wuyi said, “There is a place; once you go, you cannot return, and others cannot find you…”

Xie Li looked at him, puzzled: “What place is that? Why can’t it be found?”

“Because you must be alive.” Xie Wuyi hesitated and touched his hair, looking down with heavy eyes. “You will know where that is sooner or later. But even if you know, you are not permitted to go there early. I do not allow it.”

Xie Li was still too young. He was a stubborn child; whatever cleverness he had, he used it to drill into dead ends. He appeared composed, but in reality, he was more naive and pitiful than anyone else.

Xie Wuyi’s life had been defeated by schemes, so he naturally knew that life and death were unpredictable. But he had never believed in destiny, so this child he had raised personally for three years, of course, was not permitted to believe in it either.

He looked back at the extinguished lamp, and suddenly felt a premonition that his own end was approaching.

Sending Xie Li back to his room, Xie Wuyi carried a white lantern and paced slowly to the front gate of Duanshui Manor. The inscription on the basalt stele came into view: The world’s winds and clouds arise from our generation.

Yet, alas… once entering the jianghu, time accelerates.

Xie Wuyi had only just passed thirty, but at this moment, he felt he had grown old. Perhaps people facing death all become sentimental.

The wind grew stronger, making the lantern in his hand sway. The night was heavy, and the bright moon was gradually obscured by dark clouds; it seemed a heavy rain was about to fall.

Xie Wuyi suddenly remembered that the three-year pact should be time to be fulfilled.

Yet, that person had not returned.

He stood holding the light in the coming wind and rain. In his eyes, there was no vast landscape of mountains and rivers, nor was there the traveler returning in the night.