The Compassionate Heart

With one step forward, all the sheep beside him vanished, leaving only Yu Ziqing standing alone on the narrow path.

The right side remained unchanged, but the withered trees on the left were no longer quite so withered.

The woman poked her head out from a hollow behind one of the dead trees. A trace of pity showed in her eyes. After hesitating again and again, she called out to Yu Ziqing.

"Come this way. It's dangerous over there."

Only this time, her appearance was somewhat different. Her cheeks were sunken, her face was withered, and she was so thin that she was all skin and bones. Her hair was like dry straw. She wore a dirty, thin gown, with a grass mat and tree bark draped over her body.

Before Yu Ziqing could answer, another filthy, emaciated woman emerged from the place where he stood and cried out with faint delight.

"There really is someone else!"

As soon as her voice fell, several men charged out from beneath the nearby hillside.

Their bodies were hunched, yet they ran extremely fast. Their eyes were bloodred, and their mouths hung open unconsciously, revealing sharp fangs.

They laughed loudly as they rushed toward the woman on the hillside.

The woman's expression changed slightly. She immediately realized she had been tricked, turned, and ran out from behind the dead tree—and in doing so, revealed the swaddled baby in her arms.

When the men saw this, they immediately burst into wild laughter, looking utterly deranged as drool streamed from their mouths.

"There's a little brat too! Hahahaha!"

The woman's face was filled with despair and terror. She tightened her hold on the swaddled baby and turned to flee for her life. When she reached the end of the hillside, she seemed to remember that a hidden cliff lay there. She looked back, and the thick, inescapable despair stabbed into Yu Ziqing's eyes.

He knew this was only an illusion—or rather, an illusion from the past.

He stood where he was and saw a White Feather Arrow appear from nowhere, abruptly piercing through her chest. She staggered and fell to the ground, gritting her teeth. With the most desperate expression and the last of her strength, she threw the swaddled baby in her arms into the bottomless Abyss of Despair behind her.

After that, she collapsed completely and lay motionless.

The woman's form also changed from solid to translucent and slowly dispersed. Then, after only a few breaths, her figure once again changed from insubstantial to solid, reappearing on the hillside.

She poked half her head out from a dead tree once more. Hesitant and reluctant, she called out again.

"Come this way. It's dangerous over there."

The other woman, who was also a woman but had appeared as bait, appeared as well and cried out in delight.

"There really is someone else!"

It was indeed a replay, but it kept replaying without ever moving on to the next scene.

Yu Ziqing knew that if he could not deal with this woman—whether she was a Ghostly being or something else—he really would never get out.

Unfortunately, he knew too little right now. He lowered his head and looked at the short sword, but it remained completely still.

Based on what he had discovered so far, his ability could only be activated with a specific purpose after he learned certain essential information about his opponent. Once triggered, it would definitely grant him the power to kill them.

More precisely, that only applied to the enemies he had encountered so far. He had no idea what would happen against stronger foes.

But if he knew nothing at all, he was merely an ordinary man who went hungry every day and was on the verge of starving to death.

And now, he did not even know the woman's name.

Yu Ziqing tried hard to recall the scattered information he had overheard earlier. He also took out the recipe book and flipped through the complicated, fragmentary information he had recorded inside lest he forget it.

Unfortunately, there was nothing. Those powerful men had never mentioned anything about the strange circumstances here.

The greatest possibility was that these things had not existed the last time those men came.

The right side was the strangest. The layers of fallen leaves, which flowed like quicksand, looked like the gaping mouths of ravenous beasts waiting to be fed.

As for the woman on the left, he had more or less figured her out by now.

She was probably a Ghostly being with an exceptionally deep obsession. From what he could tell, she would not take the initiative to harm anyone. Her resentment and obsession were simply too deep, trapping her in the Abyss of Despair, unable to escape.

She had bound herself to this place. All she could do was experience the moment of her greatest despair over and over again. It was a fairly typical case.

And that line—"It's dangerous over there"—was not bait meant to lure people here at all.

It was nothing more than pure compassion.

She had probably regretted those words the most.

When she saw a lone, helpless woman about to enter the Locust tree forest on the right, she had acted on a moment of compassion and issued a warning. Who could have guessed that it would bring disaster upon herself?

Now that Yu Ziqing was trapped here, she had done nothing to him. For the moment, the only dangers he could speak of were dying of thirst, hunger, or cold.

By the third replay, Yu Ziqing could not hold back any longer.

"Miss, may I ask your surname? Would you be so kind as to tell me your name?"

"I'm going to erect a gravestone for you. It needs a name engraved on it, doesn't it?"

"Big sis, what good does it do you to trap me here? We've never had a grudge, past or present. Besides, I've never eaten my own kind. Ever since I came to this freezing, miserable place, I even gave up my favorite mutton!"

The woman neither spoke nor paid Yu Ziqing the slightest attention. She simply remained trapped in the Abyss of Despair, repeating the same scene again and again.

Yu Ziqing was nearly desperate as well.

Honestly, he had never imagined that a Ghostly being refusing to bare its fangs and harm someone, ignoring him completely instead, could be even more despairing.

"Big sis, what good does messing with me do you? What good is it for you to stay here, unable to escape? If your resentment really won't fade, go kill your enemies.

"Taking ten thousand steps back, even if you can't leave, let me go. If I happen to run into your enemies, I'll do a good deed and chop them down for you. That's still better than keeping me trapped here.

"Taking another ten thousand steps back, if you're afraid I'll turn against you after getting out, I might still remember this incident. Taking a gamble won't hurt you, will it?

"What if?

"What if I'm a good person? What if I happen to encounter your enemies? What if I suddenly feel merciful and avenge you by chopping off their heads and bringing them to you?"

At that point, Yu Ziqing paused, having nearly stopped believing it himself...

After less than an hour, Yu Ziqing was shivering from head to toe. He felt around inside his clothes and found that only a few strips of beef jerky remained, the last resources he had hidden away to save his life.

"Hey, big sis, let me go already. Just take a gamble that what I said is true. You won't lose anything either way.

"If this drags on, you may never be able to avenge yourself. That part is absolutely true."

Kind words and earnest persuasion were useless. The woman still ignored him. After watching the scene repeat over and over, Yu Ziqing had run out of words and abandoned the thought of persuading her to let him go.

All he could feel was that he was about to freeze to death like a stray dog. This entire world was filled with despair.

Despair left no room for the slightest bit of compassion.

Something was wrong. It should not be like this.

It shouldn't...

Yu Ziqing's mind stirred, and he forced himself to calm down. When a new replay began, he quietly sensed it, quietly immersing himself in it.

Especially when the woman threw the swaddled baby off the cliff, the despair felt like seawater pressing in from every direction in the depths of the ocean, omnipresent and suffocating him.

Feeling it anew and thinking it through again, Yu Ziqing came to a realization. He seemed to have gone astray from the very beginning.

From the start, he had assumed that Ghostly beings were evil. From the start, he had believed that this female ghost wanted to set him up.

If that premise itself was wrong, then everything that followed might also be wrong.

This female ghost might not have intentionally trapped him here, nor had she deliberately wanted to harm him. He needed to consider the matter from the perspective of an ordinary person and a perfectly normal psychological response.

Surely no one would want to expose their most desperate wound to someone else again and again, let alone force that person to watch.

Since she did not want to harm anyone and had even ignored the person who came here, surely she was not one of those exceedingly rare, psychologically twisted perverts. Besides, she did not look like one.

So if she was not trying to set him up, then from the very beginning, she had been trying to warn him: the woods on the right were dangerous, and this way was safe.

Then...

Yu Ziqing shivered, tucked his hands in, and kept pacing in place to warm his body and avoid freezing to death while continuing to think.

Since the female ghost did not want to harm him, the problem lay with this place beneath his feet.

He glanced up at the cliff at the end of the hillside, and Yu Ziqing suddenly formed a conjecture.

This place beneath his feet was like an abyss—the Abyss of Despair. Anyone who stepped into it would fall in and become trapped here. The female ghost might have been the same. She had been trapped by the Abyss of Despair she had inadvertently created herself.

With that thought in mind, when the next replay began, Yu Ziqing pulled a small cloth pouch half the size of his palm from his clothes. After opening it, he painfully took out one strip of beef jerky, no longer than his little finger, and shivering, rushed to the female ghost's side and stuffed it into her hand.

The woman froze slightly and stared blankly at the beef jerky in her hand.

"Take it. Eat something. You'll definitely be able to hold on."

At the same time, the surrounding environment began to change. The change did not center on the female ghost, but on Yu Ziqing.

A trace of surprise and complexity appeared in her eyes. In the next moment, ripples like waves spread outward with Yu Ziqing at the center.

Yu Ziqing felt a faint sensation of weightlessness. In the blink of an eye, everything returned to normal. He was standing on the hillside, the female ghost had vanished, and the flock of sheep had reappeared below the hill.

The despair weighing on his heart and making it difficult to breathe also vanished with her.

Yu Ziqing's expression was somewhat complicated. With a quiet sigh, he realized that his deduction had indeed been correct. That endlessly replaying illusion was an Abyss of Despair, a wretched place that could not tolerate even the slightest compassion.

Before being crushed by despair, he had shown the tiniest bit of compassion—without even knowing whether it had been sincere—and had actually been spat out.

Old Yang stood beside Yu Ziqing and kept nudging him with its head, pulling the dazed Yu Ziqing back to reality.

"Old sir, I'm fine. Let's go."

After walking two steps, Yu Ziqing stopped. He paused for two breaths, then decisively turned back. He took out his short sword, walked to the dead tree, and carved several crooked characters into it.

"Tomb of Cece. Erected by Ziqing."

After thinking about it, Yu Ziqing added another line beside it.

"Tomb of Cece's Child. Erected by Ziqing."

"I still don't know your name. I was nearly too weak even to speak, let alone dig stones for a gravestone. I gave you a nickname, and the dead tree serves as your monument. The thought counts, so don't complain."

"See? The 'what if' I mentioned came true."

"And don't blame yourself. Your child definitely doesn't blame you. Really."

If he did not do something, Yu Ziqing could not shake the feeling that something was stuck in his chest. This wretched place would not allow anyone else even the slightest bit of compassion, whether genuine or not, yet it insisted on using Cece's compassionate heart to torment her. If she had truly become completely corrupted, she might have escaped long ago.

What kind of wretched place was this?

Ghosts did not harm people. People were the ones who harmed people.

Yu Ziqing turned and left. Old Yang stretched out its neck to look at the writing, its expression somewhat strange. In the end, as though unable to bear looking at it, it shook its head and followed him.

Yu Ziqing was furious.

"There isn't even that character in the Register Script you taught me. I used another character with a similar meaning. What's wrong with that?

"Besides, it's not my fault that the writing looks ugly. It's cold, I'm hungry, and my hand was shaking."

Old Yang shook its head, indicating that was not what it meant, then nudged its mouth toward Yu Ziqing's chest.

"You think I'm stingy? That I gave her the smallest piece? What do you know? This is my lifeline. My life depends on these few strips of beef jerky..."

When Old Yang saw that Yu Ziqing still did not seem to understand, it stopped gesturing and simply grinned, listening to his furious explanations.

By the time Yu Ziqing and the remaining sheep had gone farther and farther away and vanished along the narrow path, the woman floated out from the hollow behind the dead tree. With one hand, she gently touched the freshly carved characters. With the other, she held the tiny strip of beef jerky Yu Ziqing had left behind, gazing at it quietly for a long, long time.

A moment later, when the abyss descended again, the woman clenched the beef jerky in one hand and was dragged into the abyss once more.

This time, it seemed that something was a little different.