Leaving Maple Forest City through the western gate, follow the Official Path straight ahead for seven or eight li, then turn left onto a narrow trail. In less than half an incense stick's time, you'll reach Green Willow River, where weeping willows drape the banks.
The evening breeze brushed their faces, and the bright moon shimmered in the rippling water.
When Jiang Wang emerged from the trail, he saw Ling He's thin back, standing by the river like a silent tree.
"Hey, let me see, let me see." Zhao Rucheng darted in front of him and craned his neck. "You were hiding here crying, weren't you?"
Ling He looked a little helpless. "What are you doing here?"
"Your voice is all hoarse. You must've been crying!"
Just then, a gruff voice burst out of the grass by the river. "Zhao, do you know how much you get on people's nerves sometimes?"
"Brother Hu, you're here too?" Zhao Rucheng shrank his neck. Du Yehu was a brute who really would throw a punch at the slightest provocation—and wouldn't spare his handsome face, either.
"I was drinking here already." Du Yehu grumbled, the reek of wine around him drifting in the evening breeze. "Didn't expect him to lug that guy here, too. What a buzzkill."
"Exactly! Why bury him at all?" Zhao Rucheng chimed in. "A heartless bastard like that should've been tossed straight into the river and sent downstream to feed the fish and shrimp."
Jiang Wang glanced toward the spot Du Yehu had emerged from. "You buried him there?"
"Third." Mindful of Jiang Wang's feelings, Ling He explained, "I haven't forgotten how bad Pengju was, but I still remember the good he did, too. My family was poor, and I often went hungry. Pengju always made up an excuse to ask me to help him with his martial arts, then wouldn't let me leave, keeping me there until mealtime. He deserved to die, but I couldn't just leave his body exposed in the wilderness... And you've always treated me well, too. When we suppressed Green Ox Stronghold that year, you saved me..."
"Why bring that up?" Jiang Wang cut him off. "When my father was alive, he told me that adults are different from children. The first thing adults have to learn is to agree to disagree. 'I won't play with him, so you can't play with him either'—that's how children think. You, Fang Pengju, and I are all our own people. I won't let what happened between us affect your deep affection for him, and you won't let it affect my absolute break with him."
"That's true," Ling He said.
He looked around the banks of Green Willow River under the night sky. "It always feels as if only yesterday we were here. This place hasn't changed much, but we're all different now."
"Nothing in this world stays the same. The only constant is that everything keeps changing." Zhao Rucheng delivered this profound observation, then shamelessly sidled up to Ling He again. "It doesn't take this long to bury someone. You two were clinging to each other and crying, weren't you?"
The words had barely left his mouth when he sprang into the air, nimbly dodging Du Yehu's flying leg.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Getting angry out of shame..." He'd barely begun taunting him when he hurriedly cupped his hands and bowed. "I was wrong, I was wrong, Brother Hu."
Du Yehu was already chasing after him, fists clenched. "You weren't wrong. I was just about to cling to you and cry."
Watching the two of them mess around, Ling He said pensively, "But I believe there are some things that will never change."
"I agree with half of what you said," Jiang Wang replied.
Somehow, the "sparring" between Du Yehu and Zhao Rucheng turned into a four-way brawl. They threw punches and kicks and tripped one another up. By the end, they were all panting, then burst out laughing together—and clung to one another, crying.
If anyone had passed by Green Willow River that night, who knew what kind of ghost stories they'd have started telling?
The four brothers finally left Green Willow River shoulder to shoulder, leaving behind the place that had witnessed their youth and friendship.
None of them said another word.
Only Zhao Rucheng turned back at the end and muttered:
"Don't hurt your friends again over there, you dead bastard."
Moonlight flowed across the rippling waters of Green Willow River and poured through the ruined roof of Huanzhen Temple.
Perhaps it was the moonlight, but the faces of the two people speaking in the ruined temple looked deathly pale.
One of them was a captivating woman in a bright red dress. Her figure was exquisite, curving in all the right places. Most striking of all was the dazzling glimpse of pale, smooth skin at her slightly open neckline—it was impossible to look away.
Her face was much too pale. Ordinarily, it might have made her seem frail and sickly, but instead she had a breathtakingly seductive beauty. Perhaps it was because her lips were so vividly red.
She sat on the dusty altar table without the slightest concern, so beautiful and so completely at ease.
She lightly brushed her red lips with her little finger and said, "All the beggars in this temple are dead. What a nuisance. What are we supposed to use to summon the divine decree?"
Her voice seemed to circle the spiderwebs beneath the eaves before reaching its destination, leaving it sounding strangely hollow.
"The soul of a single cultivator will suffice."
The speaker stood in the doorway. Unlike the Red-Robed Woman, he seemed unwilling to set even one foot inside the filthy, ruined temple. He even covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief embroidered with plum blossoms.
"Oh, that sounds so easy." The Red-Robed Woman said, "We have to sneak around just to kill a few mortals. You want to kill a cultivator? Are you hoping the Zhuang Kingdom's Dao Academy won't come knocking?"
"Everyone in this city is going to die sooner or later." The man frowned as he spoke. "Do we really have to talk in a place like this?"
The Red-Robed Woman giggled. "The famous Zuo Guanglie fell here. The people of Zhuang Kingdom have turned this place inside out more than ten times. There's nowhere nearby cleaner than this."
At the mention of Zuo Guanglie, she closed her eyes slightly, her expression dreamy. Even her pale face quickly flushed. "I can almost still smell his powerful presence~"
"Back to business." The man coolly interrupted her reverie. "Wei Quji is no pushover, and now Dong A has arrived as well. We must find the Dao Child as soon as possible. Those Qin and Chu barbarians have been fighting here, disrupting the sacrifices at Huanzhen Temple. If you ask me, instead of sneaking around and capturing mortals one by one, we should just sacrifice a cultivator. It'd be much simpler and cleaner."
"There's more than one way to get yourself killed. Why are you fixated on this one? Why not draw a sword and slit your throat? Or let lightning strike you?"
Perhaps still annoyed that he had interrupted her reverie, the Red-Robed Woman opened her lovely eyes and let her smile fade. "Until the Dao Child appears in the world, you'd better learn what it means to keep a low profile!"
The man seemed irritated, too. Still covering his nose, he said, "Miao Yu! It's not as if you had nothing to do with attacking Maple Forest Dao Academy! Now the whole city is in turmoil, and one wrong move could ruin everything we've worked for!"
"What do you know? The world is vast, and there are too many things that can go wrong! Who could've expected Zuo Guanglie to die like that? And right when he ruined our sacrifice plan, too. The bones at the bottom of the River of Oblivion have lain dormant for too long! We can't afford any more surprises! Dong A is crucial to Maple Forest City now. We must find out exactly how strong he is and where his limits lie! Some sacrifices are inevitable. Besides..."
The Red-Robed Woman called Miao Yu licked her lips. "Did you know the beggars in this ruined temple aren't all dead? At the Maple Forest City Daoist Academy, I caught a familiar scent..."
The filthy surroundings made the man even more impatient. "Why should I care whether some beggar lives or dies?"
This time, Miao Yu merely stretched languidly, displaying every curve of her beautiful figure. "Idiot."
The man narrowed his eyes, concealing a flicker of desire. "Don't think you can act so outrageously just because you're the Dao Child's woman in name. The Teaching Gate has had plenty of Saintesses over the past few thousand years. When the Dao Child appears, whether he wants you or even acknowledges you remains to be seen."
"A beauty becomes white bones; all is emptiness, all is illusion. You can't see through that?"
"Heh heh heh." The man turned and walked out of the temple. "Whether I can see through it or not, what difference does it make? This is how things are."
Long afterward, in the quiet, ruined temple, a seductive murmur finally drifted out, spreading like moonlight.
"How could he not love me? How could he not want me? I've watched over him for so many years, waited for him for so many years..."
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