You Had Better Kill Me
Ever since the day Wangyu gave him leave to begin practicing 《The Clear Snow Reflection Art》, Zheng Nanlou’s days at the Hidden Snow Sect were no longer as hard to endure as before.
With his master’s guidance he had gradually found his way into the art.
When the first faint thread of spiritual energy was caught, frozen, and sealed away entirely as cold in a short stretch of meridian in his arm, he tasted for the first time in his life what “power” actually felt like.
Spiritual energy was no longer a passing stranger that ran through him fast as water and left nothing behind, but something truly his own that he could call up at once. It was a meager store, piercingly cold and not long-lasting, and even so it shook him enough that the blood boiled all through his body.
Probably no one could understand what this progress, which hardly amounted to anything, actually meant to Zheng Nanlou. It was as though a prisoner who had never been anything but at other people’s disposal had finally caught, in a boundless night, one thin ray of light that belonged to “tomorrow.”
Wangyu might have promised to find a way to take the love gu out of him, but he had always known that a “hope” resting on nothing more than another person’s passing thought was of no use to him whatsoever.
Only this power, so painfully won, was a stake that could truly buy him out of the trap.
Besides practicing 《The Clear Snow Reflection Art》, Zheng Nanlou had also asked Wangyu for the jade token that allowed free passage to the top floor of the library pavilion, meaning to look through those long-sealed texts for some way of shaking off the love gu.
But the art of the love gu was a truly obscure one, and he searched for several days without finding any clue at all.
This day, toward evening, he came out of the library pavilion as usual and was walking in the direction of Yujing Peak when he saw from some way off a figure in black standing on the road he had to take, by the look of it waiting for him.
He came closer without a flicker of expression, having recognized the man long before.
Xie Heng.
It had been many days, and he was thinner than in memory, his face carrying the pallor of one newly recovered from injury. Only those unmistakable phoenix eyes still tilted up as stubbornly and unrestrainedly as ever.
When he turned his head and saw Zheng Nanlou coming toward him, his eyes darkened a little; but he did not speak at once, only stood there without a sound, so still that he might almost have merged into the rock face behind him.
Zheng Nanlou was surprised at how much steadier he had suddenly become, but had no mind to say anything further to the man. The love gu was unresolved, he had only just entered the art, and the library pavilion had yielded nothing; a knot of gloom was turning in his chest, and he could not be troubled to spare even a glance, keeping his eyes ahead as he made to go around him.
Only then did Xie Heng speak:
“I hear from eldest senior brother that it was you who saved me in the Sunken Sword Abyss?”
Zheng Nanlou’s step halted halfway, and his brows drew together at once.
What did Lu Zhuobai mean by that? Why say such a thing to Xie Heng? He had plainly worked out long ago that Xie Heng’s injuries had something to do with him.
He thought it, but let nothing show, and answered briefly: “It was not me.”
With that he meant to walk on. But Xie Heng shifted half a step sideways and blocked his way.
Zheng Nanlou looked up, displeased, in time to see a cold smile open at the corner of the other man’s mouth.
“Don’t worry, of course I don’t believe it.” Xie Heng could not hold himself in after all, the sarcasm in his voice all but spilling over. “But eldest senior brother says that inside that cave and outside it, the only person he saw was you.”
“Zheng Nanlou. The one who snapped my ankle that day was you, wasn’t it.”
Having said it, he fixed his eyes on Zheng Nanlou’s face, as though trying to find in it guilt, or fright, or any trace at all of pretense.
But Zheng Nanlou gave away nothing. He did not even offer the false, injured protest Xie Heng had expected; he only looked slightly away, at the last of the sunset fading in the distance, and asked back calmly:
“What answer does senior brother Xie actually want from me?”
He sighed lightly, as though truly at the end of all patience. “Whatever I say, senior brother will not believe it. Is that not so?”
He drew his gaze back and looked straight into Xie Heng’s eyes, his voice low:
“If I say ‘no,’ you will only decide that I am quibbling; if I say ‘yes,’ that merely confirms what you already think. Since you have made up your mind already, why come and ask me at all?”
Three soft-edged answers in a row nearly left Xie Heng with nothing to say. It took him a moment to recover, and then he burst out:
“Zheng Nanlou, what are you still putting on an act for!”
After the shout he pulled in a hard breath, as though forcing down the fire in his chest, and came half a step nearer, his lips parting to show those rather sharp canines:
“Whether it was you or not, there is still a match between us that has never been fought. That is exactly why I am blocking your way today.”
Zheng Nanlou was rather at a loss for words. “I do not believe I ever agreed to it……”
But Xie Heng plainly no longer cared what he said. Before he had finished, a black shape flashed in front of him.
Xie Heng did not draw his sword at once, but came straight up the middle at Zheng Nanlou with nothing but his fists, fast and vicious, and with the force his spiritual energy drove into them, the very wind of the blows stung the cheek.
It was true that Zheng Nanlou had no wish to fight, but the killing intent coming down on his head was real enough. Fortunately he had been practicing more diligently these past days; a sharp shift of his feet carried him quickly backward and clear of that punch.
One strike having missed, the next followed like a shadow, and Zheng Nanlou could only keep giving ground.
The way 《The Clear Snow Reflection Art》 circulated its particular cold through the meridians was not only for storing power; it had also tempered his body without his noticing, so that his movements had grown nimble and light, and each time he just barely got clear.
Seeing this, Xie Heng suddenly stopped. His right hand went to his waist, the somewhat loose robe was swept aside, and a very familiar sword appeared before Zheng Nanlou’s eyes.
The sword was very thin and very white, the brilliance moving over it like the Milky Way of the ninth heaven poured down and then frozen entirely by the cold it gave off, condensed into that one edge.
How could Zheng Nanlou fail to know it? This was plainly the one he had taken out of the stone chamber at the far end of the Sunken Sword Abyss.
“How is this sword in your hands? Master said plainly that he had given it to the head of the Xie clan.”
Xie Heng looked at the shock on Zheng Nanlou’s face and let out a sneer full of malice. He drew the sword and spun it once, carelessly:
“What belongs to the Xie family naturally belongs to me. A little bastard with no father and no mother wouldn’t understand that.”
Zheng Nanlou’s eyes turned cold.
Matters had gone far enough that any further pretense was pointless. Looking at the sword in Xie Heng’s hand, he remembered that many years ago, when those people took the wooden sword out of his hands, they had said something much the same.
Only at that time he had not been able to take back what was his.
Getting no answer, Xie Heng wasted no more words and struck.
Countless keen sword energies came at Zheng Nanlou wrapped in a blinding cold light. He raised a hand and drew the utterly ordinary iron sword at his own waist.
There was a “clang” as the two blades, so plainly unequal, met, and sparks scattered.
The iron sword gave one last hum, and then it was cut mercilessly through the middle; the broken point spun away and buried itself deep in the rock face some distance off.
The shock split the web of Zheng Nanlou’s hand, and in that streaming, bloody grip only half a sword was left.
The smile at Xie Heng’s mouth widened; he had always loved this pleasure of crushing an opponent flat. So he advanced with the sword, and that blade thin as a cicada’s wing became a lethal streak of light again, thrusting at Zheng Nanlou’s right arm.
Zheng Nanlou had time only to block with the stub that remained, and after a great crash another length was shorn off it, leaving nothing but a piece of scrap iron.
Xie Heng knew the match was decided. One more strike and……
But at that very moment, Zheng Nanlou, who had been driven back the whole way and seemed capable of nothing but wretched defense, suddenly moved.
Not backward. He came at the sword light that had not yet finished its arc, throwing himself forward past Xie Heng’s flank as though he had no fear of dying.
At the same time, in the left hand he had kept empty all along, “The Clear Snow Reflection Art” turned swiftly and condensed a transparent blade of ice barely half a foot long; he picked out a gap and drove it in at an angle so improbably cunning it scarcely seemed possible, straight at one of the great points of Xie Heng’s body.
With a small sound, the ice blade, holding all the cold stored in Zheng Nanlou’s meridians, went precisely into Xie Heng’s body.
The expression on Xie Heng’s face, smiling an instant earlier, froze in place. An indescribable cold poured in through that point and in a moment had frozen every scrap of spiritual energy in him.
The long sword that was about to run Zheng Nanlou’s chest through lost all its light at once and fell to the ground with a “clatter.”
Xie Heng looked up in shock, and saw only Zheng Nanlou’s expressionless face, and a blood-smeared fist coming at him.
The blow knocked him flat to the ground.
Zheng Nanlou’s fists came down like a rainstorm, each one carrying a fury that demanded release.
The beating blackened Xie Heng’s vision and set his blood running, and he had no chance at all to strike back.
Zheng Nanlou seized him by the collar, hauled that face, in which little of its original shape could still be seen, up in front of his own, and said to him in a low voice, one word at a time:
“My master taught me not long ago that if you want revenge on a man, it is best to make one fatal blow of it, so that he can never rise again as long as he lives.”
“Unfortunately I am not overly fond of killing, so today I will let you off.”
He seemed to smile, but it was gone too quickly to make anything of.
“If there is a next time, I do not care what method you use, but you had better kill me on the spot.”
“Otherwise, the one who dies……”
“Will be you.”
With that Zheng Nanlou let go, and Xie Heng’s upper body dropped heavily back onto the ground; he broke into violent coughing he could not control.
Zheng Nanlou paid him no further attention. He straightened, shook out his trembling hand, and turned to see the thin sword lying in the mud beside them, every trace of its brilliance gone.
He thought a moment, then reached down and picked it up.
For some reason, touching it this time did not cut open his palm as it had in the Sunken Sword Abyss; he could not even feel the faintest ripple of spiritual energy from it, as though…… something had sealed it.
He was holding the sword and had not yet looked at it closely when a clatter of footsteps came from one side.
His head snapped around, and in the darkness he saw Lu Zhuobai coming his way with several inner disciples, all of them grim, artifacts in hand, plainly having hurried over at the noise or at word of it.
At the sight before him, shock showed on Lu Zhuobai’s face and then turned into a grave and pained anger.
“Zheng Nanlou! You have wantonly attacked and injured a fellow disciple, seized his artifact, and set the sect’s laws at nothing. Submit at once!”