The smile froze on Lin Ji’s face, his mind blank for a split second.
Amidst the commotion of the surrounding crowd, gasps and shouts suddenly fell silent in his ears.
He heard Xu Yun’s muddy, blood-clogged voice: “I return your name to you… If there is an afterlife… may you be free of worries, safe and joyful…”
Lin Ji’s pupils gradually refocused, taking in the green-robed swordsman collapsed in the pool of blood, alongside the exquisitely carved little gourd clutched tightly in his hand.
Finally, amid distant memories, he traced the faint trace of the person he had once saved on a whim.
He had long since forgotten the man’s appearance, and he had never known his name.
“Ha… ha..” Lin Ji burst into unbridled laughter.
Just like back at the Black Wind Stronghold when he first laid eyes on this righteous hero named “Xu Yun.”
“‘The Breeze Traveler’ Xu Yun, whose Bright Moon Sword technique is peerless under heaven, aloof, upright, and boundlessly loyal… hahahahahaha…” He tilted his head back to gaze at the sky, his expression devoid of both sorrow and joy. “By what right are you Xu Yun?”
“By what right…”
Reeling from their shock, the surrounding crowd collectively turned their gaze toward him.
“He’s mad… he really is a lunatic!”
“Xu Yun committed suicide to escape punishment! But this villain can’t be let off either!”
“Catch him! Don’t let him run away in the chaos!”
“His head carries a bounty of a hundred taels, after all!”
With someone taking the lead to raise the cry, a flurry of swords and blades flashed instantly as they lunged toward Lin Ji.
With a heavy stomp of his foot, Lin Ji sent the Bright Moon Sword on the ground springing up right into his palm. Standing tall with his sword, half of his face drooped in meditation like Guanyin, while the other half glared with the wrath of an Asura.
This fierce battle dragged on for nearly an hour. Not a soul present expected a dying man capable of putting up such stubborn resistance clearly exhausted to his very last breath, battered by swords and blades with half his blood already drained away, he still stood firm, refusing to fall.
It wasn’t until his sword-holding hand remained completely motionless for a solid half-minute that a daring soul stepped forward to inspect him, only to discover that breath had already left his body.
Thus, the crowd swarmed forward in a rush, brandishing their weapons to carve their own contributions into the corpse.
Bandit and chivalrous swordsman perished within the same pool of bloody mud, separated by inches, yet divided by the two banks of the River of Forgetfulness—the most unreachable distance in the mortal realm.
Some people could never walk the road to the Yellow Springs together.
On the Luokou battlefield in 1945, a young soldier sank beneath the river water amid the roar of artillery fire.
When he opened his eyes once more, a soul from an entirely different spacetime inhabited his body.
He had not fallen into hell; he had returned to the human world.
Song Aiguo stood at a moderate distance, watching the cycle of life and death play out within the Samsara Realm like a dream, an illusion, a bubble on water.
Rubbing his cheeks with sluggish movements, he discovered his face was already streaming with tears.
Then, amid the shifting, morphing scenery, he caught sight of himself.
In the rustic courtyard of the old street, an elderly man past fifty rested in a rocking chair beneath the wisteria trellis, while a chubby toddler of five or six sprawled across his knees, tilting his head upward as if acting spoiled.
“Then Grandpa, let me tell you a story.”
Stroking the child’s head, the old man looked up toward the sky, his gaze fixed on somewhere very far away.
“Once upon a time, there was a little young master from a wealthy family whose childhood dream was to become a hero upholding justice for the weak. When he was eight years old, the young master casually rescued a little beggar. Later on, the beggar was taken in as a disciple by an expert and grew up to be a young swordsman. Yet when passing by the young master’s home, he learned that the family had been wiped out by bandits years ago, leaving only the young master unaccounted for.”
His phrasing was obscure and difficult to grasp, leaving the toddler clueless yet listening with absolute earnestness.
“The little young master’s father was a widely renowned philanthropist, yet it was precisely because of his benevolent deeds that he provoked the fury of the bandits. Because bandits refuse to believe that unselfish kindness exists in this world, nor do they believe anyone can avoid sinking into depravity. The bandits slaughtered the young master’s entire family, cutting his parents’ hands from their corpses, but took only the young master back to their stronghold. They forced him to eat soup boiled with his own parents’ severed hands, and forced him to eat one of his own eyes. They wanted to strip him of his humanity, burden him with sin, and leave him with no path of return. Harboring hatred, the young master accepted it all; he pretended to be muddle-headed, sinking into depravity alongside the bandits. He burned, killed, pillaged, and committed every evil, gradually climbing to the position of second-in-command, until finally, he murdered the chieftain and half the stronghold…”
“Yet his hatred could not be diminished, nor could he ever return to his past self. With no place in the world left for him, he became the new leader of the stronghold.”
“And then later on, when he was poisoned by his subordinates and hunted down to the brink of death, he was rescued by a self-proclaimed righteous hero. That hero was a fool, completely played for a sucker by him, and in the end even died taking the blame for his crimes.”
The old man paused, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
The toddler burst into loud, wailing tears. Hearing the commotion, the woman inside the house hurried out, scooping him up to soothe him carefully while scolding the old man for spouting nonsense.
Unfazed, the old man simply kept staring up at the sky, laughing heartily.
Inside the Samsara Realm, Song Aiguo wept as loudly as he had when he was a child.
That had happened when he was six years old, an event he had long since mostly forgotten.
So this was what Grandpa Xu had been talking about—it was his very own story.
The scenes that followed traced the life of Xu Lin as a surviving veteran: ordinary years slipped swiftly past, his remaining years accompanied by a wife; though lacking children or grandchildren, his days were peaceful and content, right up until he passed away peacefully of old age at ninety-four.
The scene before their eyes gradually faded, dissolving into wisps of white mist that scattered across the surroundings.
“Brother…” Song Aiguo cried so hard he was gasping for breath, resembling a crowing rooster. “It hurts so much… I feel so much pain… Grandpa Xu, he…”
Reaching out to pull him into an embrace, Song Huaiyan patted his shoulder gently: “Xiao Ai, do you want to help him?”
Endowed since childhood with an empathy far surpassing ordinary people, Song Aiguo usually acted boisterous and chatty, yet he was deeply sensitive and tender-hearted. Inside the Samsara Realm, he found it even easier to resonate with the original owner’s emotions.
Struggling to control his trembling lips, he asked with hiccups: “How… how do I do it? Is this what you call resolving an obsession?”
“Mhm, find his obsession and forge a dream for him either dissolve the tragedy or fulfill a wish, and he’ll be able to enter reincarnation in peace.” Pressing a hand onto his shoulder, Song Huaiyan asked, “Do you know what his obsession is?”
Raising his tear-stained face to look at him, Song Aiguo shook his head.
“You need to enter his world and experience his life.” Song Huaiyan gave him a gentle nudge forward. “Follow the soul-guiding incense and take another good look.”
“But once I find it, how am I supposed to forge a dream?” Song Aiguo called back over his shoulder.
“You’ll know what to do.” Song Huaiyan smiled at him.
A paper-crafted zoetrope abruptly materialized in Song Aiguo’s hand, though its lamp-shades lacked any painted images, glowing solely with a flickering white light emanating from within.
Lifting the lantern, he stepped forward and followed the trail of the soul-guiding incense, experiencing the previous scenes all over again while feeling the full spectrum of Lin Ji’s tragic, joyous, turbulent lifetime.
Finally, he stopped at the moment right before “Xu Yun’s” death.
He watched Lin Ji burst into roaring laughter before the man’s corpse. He laughed at the destruction of his family years ago, at how not a single person he had once rescued came to his aid, while someone used his name to uphold justice and search for him for a full eighteen years simply to repay a single meal. He laughed at the man’s stupidity and naivety in foolishly trying to drag him out of the abyss. He laughed at his own pathetic, pitiable self for turning into the very person he once loathed the most…
Grandpa Xu… Lin Ji must have regretted using such a method to drive this sole person who wanted to save him to his death…
The two of them shouldn’t have met such an ending.
As these thoughts raced through Song Aiguo’s mind, the zoetrope in his hand suddenly flared with dazzling white light, spinning at high speed and projecting imagery as the scenes inside the Samsara Realm shifted right along with the lantern.
After Xu Yun rescued Lin Ji, the pair fled all the way, undergoing several mutual heart-to-hearts where Lin Ji slowly unburdened his past and recognized that Xu Yun was none other than the little beggar he had saved in his childhood. Fate played cruel tricks; though this life was already ruined, a faint, fragile glimmer of light had been cast into the endless abyss before him. He had originally intended to drag this untainted flower into the mire, to let this faint light be swallowed by darkness, sinking into hell together with this man.
Yet in the end, he did nothing. Xu Yun brought him to a secluded mountain village; after nursing him back to health, they lived in reclusion there, passing their remaining years in peace surrounded by mountains and rivers.
The zoetrope abruptly ground to a halt, its white light dimming sharply.
Song Aiguo furrowed his brows in confusion: Could it be that I simplified things too much, and merely changing the ending isn’t enough?
With thoughts racing furiously, he set the zoetrope spinning once more.
This time, it jumped to an even earlier node in time: when the bandits broke into the Lin family residence, Xu Yun and his master happened to be traveling nearby and rescued Lin Ji’s family. Meeting again as kindred spirits, they became sworn confidants. Since Lin Ji had yearned to become a martial arts hero since childhood, he joined them as an apprentice to learn martial arts, and the master-disciple trio traveled the mortal world together, upholding chivalrous justice…
The zoetrope halted once again.
Song Aiguo pushed the altered timeline even further back. This time, there were no bandits, no hardships. Lin Ji left home at sixteen to wander the martial world, assisting the weak and fighting injustice, and a year later accidentally crossed paths with a young knight-errant; the two met, understood one another, and traversed the ends of the earth hand in hand…
No, still not right…
Bathed in sweat, thoughts swirling uncontrollably inside his brain, Song Aiguo watched the zoetrope spin at breakneck speed.
Suddenly, white light burst forth, shattering the radiance and countless paper scraps into millions of fragments.
Ever since a moment ago, Song Aiguo’s figure had gradually faded into the white mist. Song Huaiyan and Shen Yu could only watch as the scenes projected by the giant zoetrope within the Samsara Realm shifted repeatedly, completely unaware of the specific condition of Song Aiguo, who was stationed right at the heart of the realm’s mental domain.
As the surrounding scenery cracked apart abruptly, a wave of palpitations struck Song Huaiyan, knitting his brow tightly in an instant.
“Xiao Ai!”
He shouted at the top of his lungs, but received no response.
Turning his head to look at Shen Yu, Song Huaiyan said, “The mental domain is the core and support point of the entire Samsara Realm; the more people who enter, the more unstable it becomes. That kid is trapped inside, I’m going in to pull him out.”
Understanding his intent, Shen Yu gave a slight nod, watching as Song Huaiyan’s figure likewise vanished into the white fog.
With the chiming of copper coins, Song Huaiyan followed the sound forward as the dense fog gradually thinned, revealing Song Aiguo half-kneeling on the ground with his eyes tightly shut, clutching a shattered zoetrope in his hand, with blood staining his chest and corners of his mouth.
How could dream- backlash have turned this severe?
Half-squatting down, Song Huaiyan patted him down thoroughly, only to come up empty-handed.
“Disobedient little rabbit!”
Song Huaiyan cursed under his breath.