Birdsong drifted in from outside the Tranquil Heart Pavilion.
Inside the room.
Not a sound.
It had been only a few words.
Yet those few words laid the girl’s truest feelings bare in front of everyone, with nothing held back.
No earth-shaking declarations.
No tragic vow to lay down her life for a righteous cause.
Only an eighteen-year-old girl’s longing for an ordinary life, and the calm that comes after seeing clearly the weight one is meant to carry.
“Brother.” Little Guang tilted her head up and looked at Ye Shiyuan’s pale face.
“The truth is, what I want is really simple.” She reached up with both hands and closed them over the big hand clamped on her shoulder.
“Every morning, eating the breakfast Senior Brother Yinhu makes, all of us together.
Every afternoon, going down the mountain with Senior Sister Fufu to buy osmanthus cakes fresh out of the oven.
Every evening, listening to Master tell the old stories about Yunkui Summit.” “Laughing when I’m happy.
Crying when I’m sad.” “Remembering every one of your names.
Remembering every single day we spent together.” Her voice was clear and light, and it made everyone in the room ache.
Small, simple pieces of daily life.
For an ordinary person, nothing more than the plainest routine.
But for Ye Shunguang, who bore the curse of the “Azure Empyrean Sword,” they were a luxury forever out of reach.
Her five senses were slowly withering.
Her memories were bleeding away, a little at a time.
The sweetness of osmanthus cake had begun to taste thin and flat.
And those precious, ordinary memories were blurring in her mind.
Watching yourself disappear while fully awake for every moment of it — that was the cruelest torture of all.
Ye Shiyuan’s breathing turned ragged and heavy, his chest heaving.
He turned his hand over, wanting to seize his sister’s wrist and never let go, and yet he couldn’t bear to grip hard.
In the end all he managed was to let his hand shake and shake.
“That’s exactly why, Little Guang!” “That’s exactly why I have to drag you out of the fate that sword has chained you to!” This was the Senior Brother of Yunkui Summit, the man whose composure never cracked, who wouldn’t change expression if a mountain collapsed in front of him.
Now there was nothing steady left in his voice — only a brother’s agony over everything his sister had endured, and his own bitter, helpless rage at being unable to stop any of it.
“I’m begging you, Little Guang!” “Let that damned sword go far away from here!
Let it ruin somebody else!” “If it comes to it, I’ll take you away from Yunkui Summit!
Anywhere you want!
The Outer Ring, another city, anywhere — as long as you’re free of that death sentence, I’ll do anything!” Ye Shiyuan threw out plan after desperate plan, grabbing at any straw left to grab.
He didn’t care about the fate of the world.
He didn’t care whose memories and soul that sword drank dry next.
He only wanted his sister to live.
Faced with her brother’s pleading, close to a howl now, Little Guang only shook her head gently.
Ye Shiyuan’s crumbling face was reflected in her red eyes, and something tender and sorry moved behind them.
“Say I give it up.
Then what?” “It goes looking for the next Sword Master.” “Maybe a girl my age.
Maybe some ordinary person with a little brother or sister to look after.” Little Guang pressed a hand to her own chest, feeling the faint beat under it.
“They’d go through everything I’m going through now.” “They’d wake in the middle of the night unable to remember their family’s faces, and hide under the covers to cry where no one could see.” “They’d have to watch the people closest to them tear themselves apart trying to save them.” The girl’s voice firmed, and she looked straight into Ye Shiyuan’s eyes.
“Brother, you taught me from the time I was little — live honestly, act honestly.” “I don’t want to force this fate, with all the regret in it, onto some innocent stranger.” “After all…” “So long as Ye Shunguang still walks this world, why should Azure Empyrean go seeking another master?” In that moment, Yixuan their Master, Ju Fufu, Miguel, all of them — They found themselves looking at a girl barely eighteen years old and seeing in her the bearing of someone who could grieve for the whole world.
It wasn’t the surrender of someone crushed by pressure.
It was the peace of someone who had seen her own responsibility, and the road ahead, with perfect clarity.
By now Ju Fufu, the Senior Sister of them all, had cried her face into a streaky mess like a little calico cat.
She might act loud and careless most of the time.
But underneath she felt things keenly.
Since childhood she had helped their Master look after her junior brothers and sisters, and because of that, she cared about Little Guang hardly less than Ye Shiyuan, the girl’s own brother, did.
It was only that Ju Fufu never wanted Little Guang to catch her wearing a worried face, so in front of her she always played the bright, sunny Senior Sister.
And the more she learned about how her little junior sister had been quietly, privately waging an endless war against the “Azure Empyrean Sword” where none of them could see, the heavier the weight in her chest became.
It didn’t hurt.
It just sat there, stifling, more than she could stand.
She wanted to rush over and crush this painfully sensible little junior sister in her arms — and didn’t dare, for fear of breaking into what passed between brother and sister.
Pan Yinhu’s massive frame had gone rigid where he stood.
The most good-natured of Yixuan’s disciples, this Panda Thiren had a past of his own that he never spoke about, and because of it, he understood better than most what kind of resolve Junior Sister Little Guang had needed to say what she’d just said.
All that showed on his round panda face now was raw grief and stunned silence.
Yixuan turned her head slightly away.
This young Sect Master, who could meet anything with perfect calm, found her throat gone dry and tight.
She knew far too well what it felt like to watch someone you loved walk toward a dead end and be powerless to stop it.
Thirteen years ago, when her elder sister Yijiang stepped in front of her and forced the Azure Empyrean Sword to full power, that same unshakable resolve had been written on her face.
History repeated itself with terrible precision, and the pain it brought had not dulled by so much as a hair.
Ye Shiyuan heard every word his sister said.
The strength drained out of the hands gripping Little Guang’s wrists.
Those hands, calloused from a lifetime of the sword, slid slowly down her thin arms and finally hung limp at his sides.
Ye Shiyuan staggered back half a step.
He lowered his head and stared at the moss-grown flagstones under his feet, hollowed out.
He didn’t understand.
All he had ever wanted was for his sister to live an ordinary, happy life.
Why did that have to be so hard?
Were good people simply meant to suffer?
He knew his sister’s nature too well.
Once she made up her mind, wild horses couldn’t drag her back.
And if he forced her to give it up, the guilt of having handed her fate to some innocent stranger would eat at her for the rest of her life.
But if she accepted the trial, Little Guang would be walking into an ordeal she had no chance of surviving.
No way forward, no way back.
A dead end from every angle.
Watching her brother like this, Ye Shunguang felt her own heart twist in slow, tearing pulses.
Just as her brother understood her — Ye Shunguang understood exactly what was going through Ye Shiyuan’s mind.
For as long as she could remember, no matter how big the trouble, her brother had charged out in front and shouldered every ounce of the pressure alone.
Even in front of their elders he put on the face of the steady, grown-up one, and never once complained of pain or exhaustion.
She had gotten used to acting like nothing was wrong in front of everyone, and her brother had gotten used to playing the unbreakable Senior Brother in front of everyone.
Both of them, in their own clumsy ways, protecting each other.
But today, in this dim little Tranquil Heart Pavilion, the disguise they had both called strength was torn away completely.
Walnut-chan🔥👻 🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: