Ye Shiyuan’s voice landed in the great hall like a fingernail struck against porcelain, ringing on and on.
Clearly, the words Yixuan had tossed off so lightly had hit her disciples’ ears with a deafening crash.
Ju Fufu and Pan Yinhu still hadn’t come back to themselves.
Ju Fufu, eldest senior sister of Yunkui Summit, had both furry ears standing bolt upright on top of her head, while the tail drooping behind her swept back and forth without her noticing.
Her mouth hung open.
She had forgotten even the tragedy of her precious meat ration being cut in half.
As Yixuan’s first disciple, she knew a great deal about that “Azure Empyrean Sword” of their sect.
And it was precisely because she knew that the shock hit her so hard.
As for Pan Yinhu, he had joined the sect a little later than the other two, but he cared just as much about their junior sister’s situation.
Hearing now that the entanglement between her and the Azure Empyrean Sword might actually be undone, he was overjoyed.
Against those two straightforward reactions, Ye Shiyuan’s, off to one side, was far more complicated.
His head snapped up, and that face of his, always so unruffled, showed something raw for once.
Shock.
Hope.
Scrutiny.
And, buried deepest of all, a thread of doubt.
His gaze fixed on Miguel and would not let go.
Under his sleeves his fists clenched without his willing it, knuckles gone bloodless from the pressure, the veins standing out along the backs of his hands.
Miguel took all of it in.
He didn’t cut in.
He simply stood where he was and let the man look his fill.
Yixuan, standing in the middle of the hall, had noticed her second disciple’s strange behavior too.
The ease that bringing Miguel up the mountain had put into her expression visibly drained away.
She understood exactly what Ye Shiyuan was feeling.
Ye Shiyuan’s blood sister, Ye Shunguang, the youngest female disciple under her, was the new Sword Master of the Azure Empyrean Sword, the one who had taken up the burden after Yijiang.
The same contract.
The same price.
The Azure Empyrean Sword was a pit with no bottom to fill.
Sooner or later it would strip its Sword Master of everything, memory, senses, and soul alike, until nothing remained.
Yixuan and Ye Shiyuan stood on the same dead-end road.
The difference was that Yixuan faced a tragedy already finished, while Ye Shiyuan faced one still counting down.
For thirteen years, to wake her sister and to keep her youngest disciple from walking the same path, Yixuan had tried everything.
She had gone to New Eridu’s finest neurologists.
She had brought in back-alley mediums who claimed they could lay hands on a person’s soul.
She had even swallowed her pride and gone begging to the conglomerate families that hoarded relics of the old era.
And what came of it?
Nothing but shaken heads.
Every one of them reached the same conclusion.
There was nothing to be done.
Hope kindled, then reality pinched it out.
Again.
And again.
Yixuan had been tasting that particular slow torture for thirteen full years.
So when she said aloud today that this young man standing before them could deal with the Azure Empyrean Sword, how was Ye Shiyuan supposed to stay calm?
A faint glimmer passed through Miguel’s eyes.
He didn’t need to reach for anything dramatic.
At his current station, the last dozen-odd years of Ye Shiyuan’s life simply unrolled before him like a painted scroll.
This one’s ruthless too, in his own way.
That was the verdict Miguel handed down silently.
In corners where Yixuan and the rest never saw, Ye Shiyuan had driven himself nearly past his limit looking for a way to break the contract.
To keep his sister and his master from catching on, he slipped into the archive pavilion in the dead of night, working through Yunkui Summit’s dust-caked fragments and ancient tomes again and again.
When that turned up nothing, he moved on to the great libraries of New Eridu.
A few times the trail led deep into a Hollow, into places that should have stopped anyone cold.
The young man never so much as furrowed his brow.
He invented some excuse and went alone into high-risk zones the Defense Force itself preferred not to set foot in.
And when he came back covered in wounds, he acted as if nothing had happened, changed into a clean plain-colored robe, and went on being the steady, dependable senior brother his juniors relied on.
He had been groping through the dark far too long.
And now, all at once, someone was telling him the sun had come up.
Put anyone in his place, and they wouldn’t dare believe it either.
“Junior Brother Ye.” “Junior Brother Ye—!” Ju Fufu’s bright voice rang through the hall, half confused and half anxious.
She stuck out a small hand, waved it hard in front of his eyes twice, and gave his sleeve a tug for good measure.
Ye Shiyuan sucked in a sharp breath and tore himself out of that near-trance.
Only then did it hit him that he had been staring straight at Miguel for a long while.
It was appallingly rude.
He dropped his head at once.
A cold sweat had already soaked his back, and his throat had gone dry as sand.
“Mr.
Miguel, I sincerely apologize.” Yixuan stepped forward quickly, putting herself in front of Ye Shiyuan to smooth things over for her disciple.
She sighed, and there was a helpless, bitter edge in her voice.
“This disciple of mine is never so lacking in manners.” “It’s only that…
he stands in the same trap I do.” Yixuan turned her head and looked at Ye Shiyuan, her eyes aching for him.
“The current Sword Master of the Azure Empyrean Sword is his own little sister.” “He’s kept it pressed down inside all these years and carried it alone.
Hearing there might be a way out, he lost himself for a moment.
Please don’t take offense, Mr.
Miguel.” Miguel only gave a small nod at that.
Then he lifted a hand and waved the whole thing away.
“You’re worrying over nothing, Sect Master Yixuan.
It’s only human.” Miguel’s gaze traveled past her and settled on Ye Shiyuan, and his tone carried the warm, everyday texture of neighbors chatting over a fence.
“What older brother doesn’t fret over his sister?” “If it were me, if my family were caught in something that could kill them, I’d be in worse shape than he is.
I’d probably have torn the whole place apart by now.” “That you can still hold on to your reason like this, I’d say that’s no small thing.” As he spoke, Miguel walked over and clapped Ye Shiyuan on the shoulder.
“Brother Shiyuan.
It’s been rough, hasn’t it.” It was nothing more than plain acknowledgment and comfort.
Yet somehow Ye Shiyuan’s strung-tight nerves loosened a little, as if by a small miracle.
He raised his head and met those amber eyes.
There was no offended temper in them.
Only calm, the kind of peace that saw through everything and made room for it anyway.
“Thank you for your understanding, sir.” Ye Shiyuan cupped his fists and bowed deeply.
He said nothing further, but his faintly trembling shoulders gave away the gratitude churning through him.
Miguel let the subject go.
He turned and took in the old, austere hall around them.
“All right.
The situation’s clear, so there’s no sense standing here wasting daylight.” Miguel looked over at Yixuan.
“Is this a good time to take me to see your sister?” Yixuan nodded instantly, her breathing already quicker.
“Of course it is!
My sister has been kept in the Tranquil Heart Pavilion on the rear mountain.
I’ll take you there now.” Miguel nodded and started to move, then stopped.
He turned back toward Ju Fufu and Pan Yinhu, who still hadn’t shaken off their daze, and toward Ye Shiyuan, who had only just straightened up.
“Oh, one more thing.” Miguel raised a finger and tapped it lightly in the air.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like the three of you to make a trip.” “Go bring that little junior sister of yours here as well.” Miguel paused.
His tone stayed easy, but the words he said next set every heart in the hall hammering.
“And while you’re at it, bring the Azure Empyrean Sword along too.” With that, the air in the hall changed all over again.
Ye Shiyuan’s head jerked up, the hope he had spent years crushing down no longer possible to contain.
Even Yixuan’s breathing stalled for half a beat.
Bring the Azure Empyrean Sword?
What did that mean?
It meant this Mr.
Miguel intended not only to heal Yijiang, the former Sect Master already ruined by the backlash, but to tear the sword’s hidden curse out of Little Guang by the roots while he was at it.
Thirteen years of a knot no one could untie, and today it was all going to come loose at once?
“What are you standing there for!” Yixuan came back to herself first, her voice gone shrill with excitement as she turned on her three disciples.
“Go get Little Guang, now!
Not one moment’s delay!” “Yes!
Right away!
We’re going!” Ju Fufu seized Ye Shiyuan by the sleeve and hauled him toward the hall doors.
“Junior Brother Ye, come on, come on!
We’re going to fetch Little Guang!” Pan Yinhu got his two thick, stubby legs going and puffed along after them.
“Wait for me, Senior Sister!
My legs are short, I can’t run that fast!” Watching the three of them barrel off into the distance, Yixuan drew a deep breath and forced her elation down.
She turned and made an unusually formal gesture of invitation to Miguel, bending slightly at the waist as she did.
“Mr.
Miguel.
Yunkui Summit, every last one of us, will never forget a kindness this great.
This way, please.” “You’re making too much of it.” Miguel slid his hands into his pockets and fell into step beside her.
The two of them crossed the hall and started toward the rear mountain along a quiet path of blue flagstones.
The air turned colder and cleaner with every step.
Mist coiled between the pines, carrying a rarefied stillness that had nothing to do with the world of men.
And just as the two of them were nearly at the hall that stood at the very center of Yunkui Summit’s grounds, Miguel’s steps slowed.
He turned and looked back the way Ju Fufu and the others had gone.
There was a power over there he knew quite well, and it was steadily drawing closer.
“Interesting…
though it isn’t quite the same as ‘Tailless.'” he murmured under his breath.
Walking ahead of him, Yixuan didn’t catch it and turned back, puzzled.
“Mr.
Miguel?
Did you say something?” “Nothing.” Miguel drew his gaze back.
“Let’s go.”