Fengfeng was also cautiously lying by the cliff edge, gazing at the waterfall in mid-air and A'Shui, who had disappeared into the water. He was so small that when Cao Wufang passed by, he didn’t even notice him.
Fu Zhumei supported Tang Lichen as the two slowly made their way up from the base of Yujing Mountain.
Fu Zhumei had a small earthen house here, but he hadn’t visited in a long time and wasn’t sure if it still stood. Both of them were severely injured inside and out, in desperate need of a place to rest and recover. Thus, Fu Zhumei brought Tang Lichen to Yujing Mountain.
Just as they returned to the earthen house, Fu Zhumei and Tang Lichen suddenly noticed the area before the cliff was in disarray, littered with various crawling marks. Fengfeng sat by the cliff, staring blankly at the pool below while sobbing.
"Fengfeng?" Tang Lichen exclaimed in alarm.
"Fengfeng?" Fu Zhumei was even more astonished. How could this little baby be here?
In an instant, Tang Lichen pieced it together—he had originally planned to use his severe injuries as bait, allowing himself to be taken to Tianqing Temple naturally, where he could investigate Qing Hui and his so-called "evidence." But things had gone awry from the moment Xue Xianzi was taken away by Zhong Chunji. Xue Xianzi, unexpectedly subdued by Zhong Chunji, revealed Shui Duopo’s secret. This led to the fall of the Jiang Family Garden, the deaths of Mo Ziru and Shui Duopo, and Tang Lichen rushing thousands of miles to the Jiang Family Garden—though he still used his injuries as bait to infiltrate Tianqing Temple, he was a step too late.
That one step too late had caused A'Shui to meet with misfortune.
In Tang Lichen’s meticulously planned scheme, whether it was Fengliudian or the mastermind behind it, they should have been overwhelmed by the multiple fronts—the fierce battle at the Soul Prayer Mountain’s Piaoling Mei Garden, the secret location of the Nine Hearts Pill antidote guarded by Mo and Shui, the Central Plains Sword Conference at Haoyun Mountain, and the uncertainty of Tang Lichen’s whereabouts. They should have had neither the time nor the need to track A'Shui’s whereabouts.
All he needed was to naturally appear severely injured, allowing himself to be effortlessly captured by the mastermind behind Fengliudian, diving straight into the deepest layer of this game.
But he hadn’t known that A'Shui had once seen the remaining two volumes of The Book of Rebirth . A'Shui had earned Hao Wenhou’s favor not just because of her innate beauty and uniqueness.
To Tang Lichen, she was a special woman.
To Hao Wenhou, she was as well.
To Liu Yan, the same.
But these three kinds of "special" were not the same.
Perhaps his mistake lay in assuming they were.
Fengfeng looked up and saw Tang Lichen, immediately bursting into loud wails. He pointed at the pool below, crying, "Mama... bad people... big water... big water... knife..."
Tang Lichen glanced down at him, then leaped straight off the waterfall. Fu Zhumei, holding Fengfeng, quickly followed.
The two stood on the rocks where A'Shui and Xie Yaohuang had fought to the death, spotting marks where sharp weapons had struck the stone. The pool still held a faint red tint, carrying a pungent, acidic odor—some kind of corrosive poison. Tang Lichen reached out, steadying himself against the cold cliff wall. For a moment, all he saw was a sea of crimson.
There was no trace of anyone in the deep pool.
A book, blurred by water, swirled in the pool.
Fu Zhumei picked it up.
It was a newly written, unfinished private poetry collection.
Most of the characters were already illegible, but a few words remained visible: "...solitary withering, never doubting."
Tang Lichen stared at those words—they were A'Shui’s handwriting.
When they first met, she had come carrying a baby, her entire demeanor filled with tenderness.Then she came under the cover of night, willing to share a drunken moment with him beneath the moon. She recited, "The breeze fills the jade cup, tonight blossoms grace the branches. Meeting you beneath the moon, you gift me strands of emerald silk."
In the end, she said, "Thank you, Young Master Tang, for saving my life... I will repay you a hundredfold. Binding grass and holding rings in my mouth, braving fire and water—nothing is too much... Is this enough?"
Yet when it came to the very end, he never answered. He said nothing at all.
What had he ever done? He handed her another’s child, intending to deceive her into lifelong gratitude—and he felt no remorse.
He had thrown her out as a human shield, and to this day... never once uttered an apology.
The final bond between them was nothing but a silver note.
He had given favors only to demand repayment—repayment in the form of her walking through fire, binding grass in servitude, best if she remembered him all her life, tormented by him every moment, carved into her bones with regret for not having willingly submitted from the start, for not having bowed her head and offered her life to him from the very beginning.
To A’Shui, from beginning to end, Tang Lici had always been hell.
She had always been clear-headed.
And he had always... believed himself to be clear-headed.
But A’Shui was not someone who could only die for Tang Lici. There were others for whom she would gladly lay down her life—Tang Lici was not the only one.
Lifting his head, he saw Fu Zhumei, panic in his eyes, running downstream, searching everywhere for any trace of A’Shui.
Fengfeng was crying.
The blood in the pool had long since thinned, only a trace remaining in the crevices of the rocks.
Tang Lici smiled faintly and sat down on the bloodstained boulder.
Beside him, the roaring waterfall thundered like a lion’s roar, like a bell tolling for the soul, shaking the very core of one’s being.
Beneath his hand was the mark of a blade driven deep into the stone.
The blood had not yet dried.
The blood... had not yet dried.
There were many things he had never said.
He wondered if she would have believed him.
Most likely... she would not have.
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