Best Prize: Best Love-Liu Xin's Sorrow

Author: Stubborn Persistence!

First, I wanted to explain why I chose Xia Jie and Liu Xin from Witch's Song. In all of Pighead's books except this one, the male and female leads ended up together. Even when it was not explicitly written, all kinds of clues showed that they were together. Only Witch's Song was different.

In Ascension Dragon, Yi Chen and Fili ended up together. In Evil Wind, Lu Feng and Zhao Yue'er ended up together. In Reverse Dragon, Reinhardt and Wei ended up together. In Dragon War Starfield, Distel, Lan Jing, and Ling Xue ended up together. In Rogue, Yang Wei, Little Girl, Stini, and Ya Ling ended up together too. In Human Path, Fang Wen and Martina ended up together and even had their own child. In Gods and Demons, Lei and Li ended up together as well; although Li died in the end, no one cared anymore. In almost every book, the male and female leads could be together. Only Witch's Song could not.

When I first began reading Witch's Song, I truly never expected such an ending. From the moment Xia Jie first met Liu Xin, no one could have imagined that their ending would be so tragic.

That girl who loved blowing bubbles, that Liu Xin who always treated Xia Jie as a laborer she could bully and beat however she pleased, yet would not allow anyone else to touch him—even the smallest details were unforgettable.

I thought that whether it was Xia Jie or Liu Xin, that accidental touch between them would remain unforgettable for all eternity. That light, shallow kiss that stopped at the first taste made everyone's hearts leap—not just Xia Jie and Liu Xin's, but everyone's, including mine. The feeling was so wonderful. Just look at how Pighead wrote it: Liu Xin's face was very, very close. She had apparently eaten some kind of fruit just then, and a sweet, fresh fragrance drifted onto Xia Jie's face, giving him the instinctive illusion that he was hungry. As if possessed, Xia Jie leaned his face slightly forward. Heaven and earth could bear witness—Xia Jie could ask Hongjun Daozu and the Three Pure Ancestors to testify that he had only instinctively wanted to nod. But Liu Xin's face was too close to his. When he moved his head forward just that tiny bit, his lips lightly met Liu Xin's.

A kiss that came in haste, like the first bolt of lightning born in the universe when Primordial Chaos Beginning first opened—so sudden, so uncontrollable, a kiss! Gradually, Xia Jie felt a trace of warmth appear on Liu Xin's cool lips, as cold as ice chips. A faint, faint blush also emerged on her face, which had always been as tender and clean as clear water touched by a few drops of green grass juice, like a young peach lightly kissed by two days of sunlight—barely noticeable. Naturally, the kiss began. Xia Jie's movements were hurried and unskilled, but he at least knew how to kiss a girl. It was just that his heart was beating wildly, at a terrifying rate. As for the panic brought by a first kiss, Xia Jie was actually an old hand at such things, yet he did not have that hazy, innocent feeling. And Liu Xin? Her whole body was stiff as a wooden post. She stood there foolishly without moving, holding her breath as she bewilderedly and passively accepted this sudden first kiss.

When I read this part, I was really happy. I really laughed, laughed from the bottom of my heart. Perhaps you do not know, but I knew that I had just gone to see the girl I liked, only for it to... Yet when I saw Xia Jie and Liu Xin's kiss, I truly smiled, and I smiled so happily. How many people in this world could have such a kiss? For Xia Jie and Liu Xin alone.

This was the beginning of their love. One was no veteran, while the other was absolutely a rookie. An accidental kiss between the two of them began this romance that made countless people curse Pighead, and countless others weep, ache, and grieve. Even now, when I thought back on it, I was still afraid, still sad, still heartbroken. I still wanted to cry so badly.

Yet after their kiss ended, Liu Xin's reaction was absolutely the sort of reaction one would get from being spoiled by her grandmother. Her demands of Xia Jie made me laugh uncontrollably. Xia Jie's only hobby was eating Gou Rou—uh, were there even dogs in that era? I was very curious—and because of that kiss, it was completely lost to him forever.

This was the beginning of their love. I had originally thought their love would last a very, very long time—long enough that one day, while walking down the street, I might suddenly come across a strange group: a muscular man over ten feet tall, with bizarre earthy-yellow skin covering his body and arms longer than his knees; a petite woman wearing a moon-white short jacket with a front opening, black coarse-cloth trousers, and delicate moon-white bamboo-patterned shoes; and an incomparably beautiful young girl with dark green hair and lovely emerald-colored eyes, though two ghostly green flames burned within those eyes, making her look terribly eerie. Then I would go over and say a few words to them, point them in the right direction, and perhaps, if fate allowed, eat some Gou Rou with them. How wonderful that would have been. Honestly, I dreamed of it.

Sadly, Pighead destroyed my dream. I hate him!

Only a few years later, disaster descended. The battle against the Heavenly Realm drained Great Xia's national strength dry, and the feudal lords in every direction eyed it like tigers. They had barely managed to preserve a trace of their inheritance when those fucking, murderous Outer Demon Race bastards arrived—those bastards who deserved to be chopped bit by bit with a dull blade and fed to maggots. Then those Atlantis bastards came to add to the chaos as well. Fuck! The rage in my heart! Fuck their mothers, those bastards, bitches, scoundrels... Sadly, my vocabulary was too poor to know how else to curse them. If anyone knew, tell me, thanks. Because of their arrival, everything was destroyed. Everything was gone.

So this was what that old man Hongjun meant by, "The Witch Tribe must perish, and the Human Race must rise"? Fuck. This was the first time I had hated Hongjun so much.

Barbarian King Pan Geng's tribe was annihilated. The Dong Yi People's great grasslands were massacred. The Qi Cultivators could not stop it. All living things under heaven were plunged into misery. Lü Gui died. Tai Yi died. The four great families died. The Nine Great Witch Venerables died. The whole world was nearly destroyed. Just as Xia Jie prepared to lead the surviving witches home, the scene that filled everyone with grief and fury, that made everyone wish they were dead, that made everyone want to wail aloud, appeared: Xia Jie stared blankly at Liu Xin. Liu Xin threw herself into Xia Jie's arms and bit hard into his lips.

"I do not know who Xiao Hua is, and I do not know who Yang Tou is. But anyone whose name can be called out in the dreams of someone with such tremendous power must be very hard to forget, right?" Liu Xin smiled softly and gently flew up. She gazed tenderly at Xia Jie, then suddenly giggled. "It is just a pity that I did not leave you a child. But that is your fault... If you had not disappeared for ten years, our child should have been running all over the place by now."

"Ancestors of the Witch Tribe, please protect our people!"

Liu Xin, floating silently in the void with her arms spread wide, began to sing a mysterious song.

Its melody was slow and ethereal. Every living creature on the great road heard the song.

The song was filled with the power of life. It was like tender shoots growing from the soil, young beasts just being born, fledgling birds flying through the sky. It was a song of life, a song understood by generations of forebears from Li Wu Hall as they traveled across the boundless lands of the Nine Provinces and witnessed flowers bloom and fade, grass grow and eagles soar, witnessed the changes of "wind, flowers, snow, and moon," and came to understand a song that matched the root of life itself.

Amid the singing, Liu Xin said faintly, "Star Sacrifice!"

Liu Xin's body exploded, and a mass of green light appeared in the sky.

In the void, the star representing the natal star of the Li Witch... countless rocks of all sizes shot into the endless void.

That mass of green light became a green sun. Liu Xin's soul merged into the light. There was no longer any Liu Xin in this world. All that remained was this green radiance, possessing the power of life's origin.

Star Sacrifice again. This was the second time I had written about Star Sacrifice, and the second time I had cried. At that time, eight thousand great witches went mad. Hundreds of thousands of Qi Cultivators went mad. Countless common people went mad. I was about to go mad too. Liu Xin had vanished completely, body and soul.

Who could understand the pain in my heart? In that instant, I had the illusion that I was Xia Jie—or rather, that the same thing was happening to someone beside me. The person I loved most had completely disappeared. Uh... I was numb. It no longer hurt. What did pain at its limit feel like? I had tasted it. I knew. Whether it was the first time I read it or this time I wrote about it, tears streamed down my face at first. But later, I did not want to cry anymore. Instead, I wanted to laugh. Such a tragic love, a love carved into one's life and soul, a love that could not be forgotten, dared not be forgotten, and could not bear to be forgotten even after ten million reincarnations—was completely laid before me in that instant. Yi Chen and Fili, Lu Feng and Zhao Yue'er—I forgot them all at that moment. All I remembered were Xia Jie and Liu Xin, me and her. At that instant, it was as if I had personally experienced everything. I could no longer distinguish reality from the world in the book.

Though Fili died, her soul remained and she was eventually revived. Zhao Yue'er went through all manner of hardships, yet she and Lu Feng still became lovers united in the end—at that time, Wandering had not yet been written. But what about Xia Jie and Liu Xin? They vanished completely, beyond even the Three Pure Ancestors' power to save. Pighead, how could your heart be so cruel?!!!

Liu Xin died just like that, bringing us endless sorrow and pain. This love was so beautiful and tragic. It made people happy, made people heartsick, made people want to cry, made people want to go mad. The hardships of parting and reunion, the emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—all of humanity's feelings were displayed to the fullest in this love that was destined to be a tragedy.

I wanted to say that this love was sadder than Yi Chen and Fili's, more tragic than Lu Feng and Zhao Yue'er's, more bitter than Lin Xiao and Yao'er's. To me, this was the most beautiful, sorrowful, and melancholy romance ever written by Pighead. One was a pure witch, and the other was a Qi Cultivator wearing the body of a great witch. Their love was destined to have no good ending, but I had never imagined it would be this tragic, this heartbreaking, this painful.

Love—what was love? To some, it was everlasting devotion. To some, it was forgetting each other in the wider world. To some, it was sweet words. To some, it was spending money beneath the moon. To me, it was marrying the person I liked and living an ordinary yet happy life together. But to Xia Jie, it was being able to see Liu Xin one more time, kiss her one more time, hold her one more time, hear her curse him once more, let her kick him once more—even if it could happen only once more. Sadly, even that one chance was gone. Everything was gone. With one cry of Star Sacrifice, it was all gone.

Following that cry of Star Sacrifice, Liu Xin's incomparably beautiful figure fell from the sky. Her dark green hair fluttered in the wind, and those emerald-like eyes gradually lost their color. Slowly, slowly, she fell from the sky. Yet below, bloody slaughter covered the ground. Blood gathered into an ocean, while severed limbs and broken bodies filled every corner of the earth. Violent, bloody, yet so tragically beautiful—it drove people mad and shattered their hearts.

It seemed that even heaven could not bear to let such a beautiful woman fall into that filthy sea of blood. As she fell, Liu Xin turned into specks of green light and scattered between heaven and earth. No, it should be said that she melted into heaven and earth. Whether it was Xia Jie, the eight thousand great witches, the hundreds of thousands of Qi Cultivators, or the endless common people, Liu Xin's green light was within all of their bodies. At that moment, Liu Xin existed alongside heaven and earth.

Even now, when I closed my eyes, I could see that scene. It was so heartbreaking, so sorrowful, yet filled with such joy!

At last, everything ended. Liu Xin had completely vanished, leaving Xia Jie alone. Had this love ended? No, it had not. Even on that Sohu website, I still believed it had not ended. On the contrary, I felt it had only just begun!

People often said there was no greatest, only greater. But here, I wanted to tell every friend who read this: among no fewer than two thousand books, along with so many short stories, films, and television dramas, among all the love stories I knew, Xia Jie and Liu Xin's love was the greatest. There was no second place. It alone was the greatest—the best, the most tragic, the most painful. This love deserved that title: the one and only "greatest."

I would forever remember the final scene of this love. This love would never end, never end at all, and no one would ever surpass it. Witch's Song, Xia Jie and Liu Xin—forever engraved in my heart, never to be forgotten!!!

Written by Stubborn Persistence at 2:00 a.m. on September 21st

For classmate Liu Xin

Pighead could only say

This was a beautiful lucky find.

He simply happened to find such a female character.

How did he write her?

Even Pighead himself was muddleheaded about it.

In any case, he felt she ought to be that kind of person, so he wrote her that way.

The love between Xia Jie and Liu Xin...

Well, let us call it love for now. It was one-sided on Liu Xin's part.

Xia Jie passively accepted it.

Well, the main point was this: tragedies really were what left the deepest impressions! (To be continued)