The first ray of morning sunlight fell across the boy’s half-open eyes. Cen Yuchi raised a hand to block the light squeezing through the gaps in the leaves. But that hand only lingered quietly before his eyes for a moment, then swept aside and plucked a wild fruit.
Cen Yuchi sat up with a jerk, took a bite of the fruit in his hand, then spat it out with a ptooey.
“Tastes awful.”
He had rarely been so diligent running out here before dawn, and since it was still early, he’d taken a nap in the tree. Just then, a boy happened to pass beneath the tree. He was around ten years old, dressed in a worn, tattered green outfit, struggling under the weight of a large basket stuffed full of flowers and plants.
The boy was quite tall but very thin and frail, his body swaying left and right with the wind as if he might fall over at any moment. His hair was a tangled mess of curls, the stray strands at his forehead especially disheveled, patchy and uneven. When the wind blew, it revealed a silver-white withered-leaf mark between his brows. The boy hurriedly smoothed his hair, covering the silver patch.
Cen Yuchi clicked his tongue and tossed the half-eaten fruit at the boy below the tree, hitting him squarely on the head.
Struck so suddenly, the boy fell to the ground, but he only let out a brief “ah” at the moment of impact, then crouched down where he’d fallen, hands over his head, making no sound and not getting up.
Cen Yuchi jumped down from the tree, circled the boy once, then kicked over the basket with all his strength.
The boy lost his balance and toppled to the ground, but immediately scrambled back up, watching as Cen Yuchi trampled every last one of the scattered herbs into the mud. He didn’t try to stop him, just kept doing what he’d been doing before.
Cen Yuchi sneered, “What are you doing?”
After a long while with no response, the smile faded from Cen Yuchi’s face, and he said in a tone of deep disgust, “So ugly to watch.”
At that moment, the boy suddenly said, in a voice so small it was nearly inaudible, “I’m sorry.”
“What did you say?” Cen Yuchi asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
The boy was silent for a moment, then mechanically repeated, “I’m sorry.”
Not resisting, not running away just curled up in a defensive posture, repeating his apology.
Cen Yuchi felt inexplicably furious, like throwing a punch with all his strength only to land it in a wad of cotton and the cotton even politely cried out “ouch.”
Punching cotton was no fun, so Cen Yuchi could only slam his fist into the tree instead. Half-ripe fruit and leaves came raining down, pattering onto both of them, and the whole tree looked as if it had been struck by lightning shaken to its roots by that fist carrying a trace of Dharma power, drooping as if dying.
Eight hundred wounds dealt to the enemy, a thousand taken in return.
And the boy still only crouched on the ground, arms over his head. After the last leaf had drifted down, he said softly, “I’m sorry.”
His vision suddenly blurred. Cen Yuchi rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them again, a dazzling bright red filled his sight.
A great fire was burning fiercely, dyeing even the sky red. And in the very heart of those raging flames, Cen Yuchi saw a striking spot of green. Amid that searing sea of fire, that spot of green was like a small boat carrying someone away from purgatory, more like a life-saving straw, making one unable to resist the urge to draw near.
It was a tree, the last living tree on this mountain peak, amid this sea of raging flames. The tree seemed to have suffered some grievous wound and was slowly dying, its leaves nearly all fallen. On its sickly branches hung a few bitter fruits, drooping and on the verge of dropping. But it was indeed alive, for at the tip of its highest branch, a tiny tender shoot had emerged. That single point of green, amid the blazing inferno, brought a strange sense of comfort.
Beneath the tree stood a young man, dressed in a green robe washed so pale it seemed almost white, so clean he looked like a spirit who had wandered out of a deep valley. He gently placed his hand on the trunk, his slender, jade-like fingers brushing slowly over the aged bark in a soothing caress.
With a sigh, that lone boat upon the endless ocean finally sank beneath the vast sea.
The young man’s clothes were stained with dust, no longer clean. He turned his head, a pair of amber eyes looking toward Cen Yuchi, and two tears slid down his face, dripping onto this barren, dead land.
……
“Sniffle… sniff…”
Who was crying?
Cen Yuchi opened his eyes and, through blurred vision, saw a green-clad figure sitting by the bed, wiping away tears while sobbing uncontrollably.
Senior Brother Liu?
As the figure gradually came into focus, Cen Yuchi finally saw that the one crying was Gong Zhizhi.
“Sister Zhizhi, tell me honestly, how many days do I have left at most?” Cen Yuchi said.
Gong Zhizhi was startled by his voice, too flustered even to wipe her tears. She stared at him with reddened eyes, then, as if suddenly coming to her senses, began crying even harder. “What are you saying? Ptui, ptui, ptui!”
Cen Yuchi couldn’t help laughing at her. “I was about to ask what you’re crying about. Wailing like that, anyone who didn’t know better would think I was about to die!”
“How can your mouth be so foul! I’m done with you!” With that, Gong Zhizhi ran out the door, nearly colliding with Yin Xiaoyang, who was just coming in.
Seeing Gong Zhizhi storm out in a huff while still crying, Yin Xiaoyang said nothing more. He walked to the bedside, set down what he was carrying, and said, “Eat it while it’s hot.” Then he turned to leave. But the moment he turned, he seemed to remember something and stopped. “Senior Sister Gong has been worried sick. She took care of you for days and nights, and today she rushed back to see you the moment she had a spare moment. Don’t upset her.”
Hearing this, Cen Yuchi froze for a moment, then lowered his head.
A healer’s compassionate heart Cen Yuchi had long understood this deeply.
His Senior Brother Liu was just such a person.
Cen Yuchi was notorious, yet there was someone even worse than he and that person was Nan Xunliu.
As for why Cen Yuchi never outdid Nan Xunliu in the matter of being scolded, it was probably because Nan Xunliu had a mother even more wicked than the two of them combined.
Withered Poison Woman Liu Ao back in the day, she was truly a figure whose very name struck terror across the entire Shangyang Continent.
The middle of the Shangyang Continent is a great plain, bordered by glaciers to the north and a vast sea to the south, with mountain ranges lying across the east. But in the west, there was a valley cut off from the world, known as Withered Leaf Valley. Withered Leaf Valley was shrouded in miasma year-round, making it impossible for those inside to leave and for outsiders to enter. Legend had it that the people of the valley differed from those of the Central Plains in customs and appearance, all had broad foreheads and high noses, thick brows and deep-set eyes. They were skilled in medicine and healing, and also practiced the arts of witchcraft, gu poison, and toxins. And Liu Ao was the only person to walk out of that valley in a hundred years.
When the Withered Leaf emerged, the world fell into chaos. From the very first day Liu Ao stepped out of Withered Leaf Valley into the Central Plains, she became the enemy of the entire Shangyang Continent.
“The Withered Leaf Poison Woman kills people and takes their hearts, melts bones into water, and leaves nothing growing wherever she passes.” Rumors like these never ceased, and how could the Immortal Sects and the hundred clans tolerate such a dangerous figure running rampant across the Shangyang Continent? So there were always “righteous heroes” volunteering to rid the people of this menace. Unfortunately, Liu Ao happened to have a perverse temperament and unpredictable moods, she killed one who came, killed a pair when two came, and after killing them, she would make a great show of it. Those who kill are killed in turn, yet this killer refused to die. The scourge could not be cut down, and vengeance could not be avenged. The righteous heroes pressed on wave after wave, and the snowball grew larger and larger, until the snow mountain could no longer bear its weight, and the icy peak lay dying under the immense pressure. Yet the expected eruption never came. That enormous snowball, with two soft “puffs,” shattered into flakes of snow as it rolled forward one last time, gently settling upon the vast land.
And so, after making an enemy of the entire Shangyang Continent, Liu Ao simply rose on tiptoe, light as a feather, and vanished without a trace.
Years later, someone happened upon Little South Mountain and saw a young woman sitting leisurely high in a tree her long hair slightly curled, a withered leaf mark on her forehead, breathtakingly beautiful. Below the tree stood a man in a green robe carrying a bamboo basket on his back, his features gentle and warm. In the basket stood a small child, reaching up to the woman in the tree, begging for fruit. Only then did the world learn that Liu Ao had been living in seclusion in the mountains all along, married to a mountain herbalist, with a son now three years old.
Upon hearing the news, people secretly made preparations, and days later stormed the mountain. Liu Ao happened to be away, and facing a horde of ferocious, menacing immortals and Daoists, the herbalist could only be at their mercy. When Liu Ao returned, all that awaited her was the herbalist lying cold on the ground, and Nan Xunliu, trembling with fear, hiding inside a medicine jar.
Grief-stricken and vowing revenge for her husband, Liu Ao set fire to Little South Mountain and went to the Cen family, brandishing a Magical Artifact she had picked up on the mountain, engraved with the Cen family crest, demanding to know who had made it. The Cen family head, Cen Lan, Cen Yuchi’s father refused to search the ledgers known as the “Spirit Score,” which recorded the Magic Treasures and Spirit Tools they had crafted. In her fury, Liu Ao killed him, cut out his heart, slaughtered the entire Cen family, seized the Spirit Score by force, and then, following the names recorded within, sought out each one and launched a massive massacre of their sects, sparing no one wherever she went.
In the end, Liu Ao was eliminated by the combined forces of the Immortal Sects and the hundred clans. And three-year-old Nan Xunliu and Cen Yuchi, just as people said, were brought back to Immortal Feather Peak by Mu Lian, who had arrived too late.
The Withered Poison Woman Liu Ao was Cen Yuchi’s sworn, irreconcilable enemy. But Nan Xunliu was the best brother Cen Yuchi would ever have in this life.
The first time Cen Yuchi lost control, Nan Xunliu laid waste to a mountain. The first time Nan Xunliu went mad, Cen Yuchi burned down a city. As youths, they stood side by side countless times raging flames at their backs, a bottomless abyss before them invincible and unstoppable.
Yet while Nan Xunliu bore a notorious reputation in the outside world, he was in fact such a kind soul that he couldn’t bear to harm so much as a flower or blade of grass, let alone small animals.
Nan Xunliu had studied medicine since childhood, and after leaving Immortal Feather Peak he traveled far and wide practicing it, saving people by the hundreds and thousands. And yet the world refused to accept him. Nan Xunliu was different from Cen Yuchi: when people outside cursed and reviled him, Cen Yuchi simply went on his own way without a care. But Nan Xunliu was like an injured snail, withdrawing into his shell.