Two hours later, Ise Mountain.
The jeep door was wide open. Yan Lanyu, wrapped in a coat, his hair disheveled around a bandage, sat exhausted in the back seat, drinking hot water. Not far away, Yu Jingzhong sat on the ground. Zhou Hui imperiously scolded him: “You’re old enough to use your brain when you do things! Why didn’t you drag Wu Bei along?! Why didn’t you wait for rescue?! Taking on the Tantric Master by yourself, you think you’re something special, huh? Is it too much testosterone, has your puberty finally arrived? Don’t even think I’ll help you next time! Don’t dream of being my third son-in-law!”
“…” Yu Jingzhong weakly said, “You shut the hell up…”
Ise Mountain was brightly lit. Helicopters with searchlights slowly descended over the forest, their rotors creating a massive roar. The Japanese police and Chinese embassy diplomatic personnel arrived simultaneously, engaging in fierce negotiations across the devastated Ise Mountain.
Wu Bei, after finally dealing with the Self-Defense Force and Tantric Sect disciples, lay motionless on the ground, pretending to be dead to slip away. However, he was dug out from the pile of corpses by the Northeast barber kid and his crew. A group of people cried and wailed around the Section Chief, celebrating happily, when Zhou Hui suddenly kicked over. Instantly, Wu Bei shot up like lightning, coming back to life.
Wu Bei was dragged by Zhou Hui by the ear to deal with the Japanese police. The Section Chief, in his crumpled Armani black trench coat, held a megaphone in one hand and effortlessly picked up a single-person rocket launcher from the ground with the other. His handsome face, stained with gunpowder and blood, was unusually solemn: “Cough—cough! Listen up, those above! National Security Section Six is clearing the area. You have three minutes to evacuate! You have three minutes to evacuate—!” Zhou Hui, listening from not far away, felt his temple twitch. For a moment, he couldn’t tell if Deputy Yu was more annoying or the Section Chief was more exasperating.
However, Wu Bei’s threat worked. The Section Chief, a soulful artist prone to melancholic musings, ruthless actions, and even lamenting “why is the wind so strong” before killing and disposing of bodies, had long been involved in gang activities in Northeast China and was infamous along the China-Japan border. To give a less bloody example, it’s said that half of Japan’s pirated CDs passed through his distribution network. There were many more gruesome examples: cross-province collaborations with Fujianese to hunt down Yamaguchi-gumi members; lovingly caressing a cherry blossom tree in front of a Japanese senator and saying, “I want the cherry blossoms here to bloom even redder next year”… Among the six section chiefs of National Security, Wu Bei’s notoriety in Japan was unparalleled, far surpassing Zhou Hui’s.
The Section Two members weren’t idle either. The barber kid and his crew rolled up their sleeves, picked out the Tantric Sect disciples’ bodies, tied them in a row, and used them as human shields in front. When the police looked down from the helicopter, seeing the ground littered with the bodies of Onmyoji dressed in hunting robes, they were instantly horrified. The local metropolitan police department knew they couldn’t control this kind of internal conflict between Onmyodo factions. If they used force to detain them, who knew what these inhuman, ghost-like beings would do. The police could only temporarily retreat, leaving a few words like “We will report to the superior police department, and the victims’ sects will conduct negotiations,” then the helicopter turned around and quickly left the mountain.
Wu Bei threw down the single-person rocket launcher and plopped onto the ground, gazing affectionately at the departing helicopter: “Damn it, why couldn’t they have just been this obedient earlier.”
Zhou Hui coughed and continued to turn his head to scold Deputy Yu:
“Only you can do it, only you can put on airs. Don’t you want to be a normal person? A normal person would have been killed by that Tantric Master long ago, okay? An old cow eating tender grass, a dead tree sprouting new flowers, look at your pathetic state. With an annual salary of less than two million, you dare to fall in love. China’s thirty million bachelors are thirty million of you. Even bricklayers earn more than you these days. If you keep showing off, you’ll kill yourself one day…”
Yu Jingzhong nodded in agreement while lowering his head to find a cigarette. The cigarette pack was soaked with blood, even the filter tip stained. Not far away, Yan Lanyu wanted to help mediate, struggling to get out of the car, but a voice behind him said, “How are you?” Yan Lanyu looked back to see Chu He getting into the back seat of the jeep from the other side. He hesitated, then sat back and smiled, “Thank you, Your Highness the Wisdom King. If it weren’t for you…”
Chu He interrupted him: “No need to say such things.” He leaned over and pushed aside Yan Lanyu’s hair, seeing that the terrifying contusion on his head had already scabbed over—it was due to being washed with water previously diluted with Phoenix blood. Besides that, he was covered in contusions and abrasions, and severely, one hand was burned, flesh sticking together, and several ribs were broken, both of these injuries only given preliminary emergency treatment by Zhou Hui.
Chu He maintained this leaning posture, staring at him motionless. The two looked at each other closely in the dim car. Yan Lanyu clearly saw his own reflection in Chu He’s eyes and couldn’t help but lean back slightly: “This… Your Highness the Wisdom King…”
“Don’t move.”
“…”
Yan Lanyu was full of questions. After a while, he saw Chu He blink, his eyelashes slightly damp. After a full thirty seconds, Chu He blinked again, this time his eyes were dry. Yan Lanyu’s lips twitched slightly: “Your… Your Highness…”
“I can’t help it,” Chu He reluctantly released him and plopped down onto the seat: “I just can’t cry.”
Yan Lanyu: “…”
Chu He, very regretfully, had to bite his ring finger again, took a drop of his heart’s blood, and dripped it into Yan Lanyu’s teacup for him to drink. The water immediately boiled and emitted a strong rusty smell. Yan Lanyu could only pinch his nose and swallow it in small sips. Soon, as the liquid entered his stomach, his almost numb, excruciatingly painful ribs and arms gradually eased. His internal organs felt as comfortable as if they had been ironed by a warm current, and he involuntarily let out a long breath. After drinking half a cup of water, he looked down at his hand. The burned skin was drying and scabbing over at a visible speed. Although his arm looked horribly scarred, it was much better than its previous bleeding state.
“So… so amazing…”
Chu He said, “It works faster on those without any magical power, as there’s no interference from their own antibodies.” As soon as these words faded, the car suddenly fell silent. Yan Lanyu’s long eyelashes drooped, staring intently at the teacup. In the curling white mist, his figure was thin and tired, his eyes hazy, as if even the sharp lines of his handsome face had melted into the dimness.
“I tried to save your five-pointed star, but it extinguished when we returned from hell. But I think it must have protected your soul, otherwise, a soul as weak as yours entering hell would have had a high probability of directly dissipating.” Chu He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a red string, and handed it to Yan Lanyu: “But the mirror heart is still there. I don’t know if it’s still useful, but I brought it back for you anyway.”
Yan Lanyu’s gaze was somewhat unfocused. After a while, he moved, slowly reaching out to take the fragment of the Yata no Kagami. “…I sensed it just now…” he whispered, “I just wasn’t sure for a moment, it was too sudden…” Chu He looked at him, a slight pity in his eyes. Yan Lanyu toyed with the fragment, his fair fingertips gently caressing its sharp edge. Chu He had seen this mirror piece pass through the hands of Zhou Hui, Zhang Shun, Yu Jingzhong, and others, yet never like this, feeling that the hand in contact with it was so perfectly matched. The Tantric Sect, having gone to such lengths to choose Yan Lanyu to refine the Yin-Yang Dual-Faced Soul, must have had a compelling reason to choose him.
“Originally, I was just an ordinary person. I learned these things only for self-preservation. I didn’t expect to suddenly lose it all. I’m still not used to it,” Yan Lanyu paused, a brief smile appearing on his pale face: “But it doesn’t matter… Anyway, the Tantric Sect is gone, so whether I need self-preservation or not… it doesn’t matter.” He lowered his head and put on the red string. His fingers, due to the burns, looked a bit clumsy.
“…You’ll get used to it eventually.” Chu He was silent for a moment, then added, “But, as time goes on, you’ll slowly get used to a normal life. You’ll be more peaceful, more grounded, more free… The shackles that bound you for two lifetimes are gone. From now on, you can have a life completely your own, go to school, work, fall in love, and enjoy family like a normal person…”
Yan Lanyu was stunned for a moment, “But… a person always needs to be useful, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t I just become a burden…” Not far away, Zhou Hui finally temporarily ceased his clamor. Yu Jingzhong casually flicked ash onto Zhou Hui’s pant leg, and amidst Zhou Hui’s angry shouts, leisurely stood up and walked towards them.
“Some people are willing to have you by their side not because you’re useful,” Chu He smiled at him, blinking: “I once felt like a burden to others too, and worried about being abandoned because of it. But that thought is actually a blasphemy to those who accompany you without asking for anything in return—your perceptions have been distorted for too long. Someone will help you slowly straighten them out.” Yan Lanyu responded with a confused look. Chu He looked up at the night sky, his gaze distant.
“Though it will take a long time, there will come a day…”
“Just don’t make others wait too long, like I did.”
Yu Jingzhong walked to the car, nodded to Chu He in greeting, then turned to Yan Lanyu: “How are you?” Yan Lanyu stared blankly at him, his gaze sliding from Yu Jingzhong’s blood-stained, messy eyebrows, over his face still smudged with gunpowder, and his camouflage uniform, disheveled and dirty with blood and soil. Despite the bitter cold, at such close proximity, even the warmth and sweat from his body permeated through the fabric, giving a strange yet profound sense of security.
“What?” Yu Jingzhong raised an eyebrow and asked.
“…My… magic is gone,” Yan Lanyu said hoarsely. “The Yin-Yang power that protected my soul burned out before my soul returned to my body…”
Yu Jingzhong was stunned, probably not having expected it at all, but then subconsciously asked, “So?”
“…”
“You’re so badly injured, of course your Yin-Yang power is gone. What, do you still want to go to the front lines?”
“…” Yan Lanyu blinked. Yu Jingzhong looked at him quizzically. After a moment, he reached out and abruptly lifted him from the car: “Don’t think about nonsense over there! Come on, the embassy sent a helicopter to pick us up. Hurry back to Beijing to face the consequences.” Yan Lanyu was carried forward, then suddenly struggled: “No… wait! Just wait a moment!” He managed to slide down, stumbling several steps because of his sprained ankle, luckily bumping into Zhou Hui who was walking into the jeep, and grabbed onto him for support. Yan Lanyu quietly and urgently asked, “Are we leaving already? Can you wait for me?”
“What are you doing, third daughter?”
“I want to go to a place, there’s an open space at the foot of Ise Mountain…” Yan Lanyu looked at Yu Jingzhong. In the night, for some reason, his eyes were slightly red: “I’ll be quick, I’ll be back very soon.”
Half an hour later, at the foot of Ise Mountain.
He said it would be quick, but walking there was actually quite an effort. The mountain had collapsed, and the bumpy mountain path was very dark. Yu Jingzhong turned on his powerful flashlight and saw that the path was covered with fallen dead trees and broken branches. The mountain path descended, and at the very bottom was an open space enclosed by a wooden fence. One could vaguely see tombstones standing, but most had been smashed in the vibrations.
Zhou Hui quietly said, “…Tsk.” His voice was very low, only Chu He heard it, who turned back and subtly gave him a “shush” gesture. Yu Jingzhong walked on, carrying Yan Lanyu on his back. Zhou Hui and Chu He followed closely behind. They saw that the wooden fence in the open space had completely rotted away, crumbling at a touch. Yu Jingzhong simply kicked it down. Upon closer inspection, it was a graveyard!
The standing stone slabs were all gravestones, with names and death dates crudely carved in Japanese. Some coffins had been shaken partly out of the ground, revealing decayed, blackened wood.
“Still inside,” Yan Lanyu whispered. Yu Jingzhong vaguely understood something but didn’t say it, only patted his hand and walked deeper into the graveyard. The open space wasn’t large. After crossing a few old graves, a relatively less dilapidated tombstone appeared ahead. A thin wooden coffin had been shaken halfway out of the ground, its edges cracked and decayed. The white stone stele was cracked from the vibrations, but the flashlight revealed the inscription was still very clear. The grave’s owner was named Yan Jing.
Yan Lanyu struggled to get down, staggered forward, and stared blankly at the tombstone. The dark night was like a long river, endless. The wind blew through the decaying coffins in the graveyard, carrying ancient resentment and wails, rushing towards the vast, snow-covered plains under the distant moonlight.
Yan Lanyu knelt on the ground, scooping up dirt and sprinkling it on the coffin. He probably wanted to rebury the coffin, but the exposed area was too large, and the frozen ground was too hard. It was impossible to bury this cold, thin coffin. Yu Jingzhong slowly knelt down and pressed his trembling hand.
“Don’t…” he choked, “Don’t be like this…”
Yan Lanyu looked at him blankly, a deep, bone-chilling confusion in the depths of his eyes, as if he were in a world of ice and snow, surrounded by cold winds and heavy snow, completely lost.
“When I return to Beijing…” Yu Jingzhong’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently, his voice sounding as if a bitter, hard lump was caught in his throat: “When I return to Beijing, I’ll send someone to transport this coffin back to the country… back to the country for burial…”
“We can bury him in his hometown, where he was born, a place he never got to return to…”
Tears welled in Yan Lanyu’s eyes, dripping onto the ground along his paper-white, cold cheeks. Yu Jingzhong pulled him up forcefully, gazing at the cold, broken stone stele under the moonlight, and bowed deeply. When he straightened up, he looked up, feeling a hot liquid flowing backward from his eye sockets into his nasal cavity—a sensation he had never experienced in his life, one of extreme sourness and pungency.
“Thank you…” Yan Lanyu said softly. Yu Jingzhong held him tightly, as if they would never be separated again, even their heartbeats rising and falling together through their chests.
Not far away, Zhou Hui rubbed his nose, pretending to look around casually, then suddenly asked, “Will you cry when you bury me?”
Chu He coldly said, “No.”
“…Hey!”
“When you’re dying, dig your own grave, and dig one for me too. Then call Maha to fill it in, and Jia Louluo to chant scriptures and perform a shamanistic dance. That should be enough, don’t be sentimental.”
Zhou Hui blinked at Chu He, but the latter looked straight ahead, his handsome profile showing no expression under the moonlight. “…After a while,” Zhou Hui finally asked, “Are you really going to do that?”
“Yes.”
“No, you can’t. Although I’m touched by what you said, the problem is…”
“That’s not for you to decide,” Chu He interrupted him. “It’s not even for me to ‘decide’; it’s been my natural thought all along… Do you know what the world after death is like?”
Zhou Hui frowned slightly.
“We have always lived in Hell, but Hell is not the end of the journey. A more distant realm exists in a place that even gods cannot see, hear, or perceive. It is a land of eternal stillness, with no light or sound in its perpetual darkness. Lonely souls, like dust, become eternal, drifting into the distance…”
“That is the land of death.” Chu He turned his face, his clear eyes looking at Zhou Hui.
“When I was very young, I once wanted to live forever with someone I thought I loved, for an endless eternity. But later, I realized how naive and foolish I was back then. Spiritual nirvana and rebirth are ten thousand times more painful than physical ones.”
“At my most painful, I thought, Let someone take me away, anyone will do. Sometimes, I even considered compromise, but then I thought that there might be someone truly meant for me in the distance, rushing towards me, and I couldn’t leave before they arrived…”
“Then, when I saw you, I thought, This person has finally arrived, thankfully I didn’t betray him.“
“…Phoenix…” Zhou Hui murmured.
“At first, I felt ominous, very afraid of you discovering me, and then turning away. Actually, if you had left then, I wouldn’t have chased after you, because I was truly too terrified.” Chu He paused, smiling with a touch of self-deprecation: “But later, when I thought you might like the Snow Mountain Goddess, that anger suddenly overwhelmed my fear. I don’t even remember what state of mind I was in when I furiously went to war with the Three World Wisdom King and the Snow Mountain Goddess; I just felt incredibly angry. Only after you brought me back to Mount Buzhou did I realize, Ah, I actually threw a tantrum. It turns out that when a person is truly full of love, they will do hysterical, irrational, and overambitious things.”
“That wasn’t overambitious…” Zhou Hui hoarsely denied.
“I thought so at the time,” Chu He laughed: “My perceptions were distorted for a very long time, I was constantly worried about gains and losses, treading on thin ice, self-suppressed and disgusted. I greatly avoided admitting my love, because it was truly… too fragile, like personally placing the knife that could kill me in your hand, like a fish on a chopping board, ready to be slaughtered. I had never experienced that terrible feeling. My blind infatuation and dependence on Shakyamuni back then, though so dangerous, even life-threatening at any moment, never made me feel this kind of despair—a weakness as if I had found my own death point, powerlessness, and a sweet reluctance to extricate myself.”
Zhou Hui looked at Chu He for a long time, finally asking, “…When did it start?”
“I don’t remember,” Chu He thought for a moment, then said, “It was probably the first time Shakyamuni invaded my six senses, almost killing you. When I woke up, you were covered in blood and told me ‘it’s okay’.” He raised his hand and gently pressed Zhou Hui’s chest and abdomen, carefully stroking for a moment. That was exactly where Zhou Hui was severely injured by the Phoenix’s attack, but it had healed many years ago, leaving no scars.
“That’s true,” he smiled slightly: “Falling in love with someone is like having your entire body become a soft spot, dying at a touch; and yet it’s also like suddenly putting on armor, becoming invincible from then on.”
Zhou Hui held his hand, their palms pressed tightly together.
“But you are the Phoenix, you can actually live forever, never aging, never dying…”
Chu He shook his head.
“It’s dark and cold there,” he said, “I want to go to that world with you. For you, I can be invincible forever.”
The full moon gradually set in the west. In the distant, endless snowfields, cold winds howled, and majestic temples stood atop glacial peaks. The lonely little phoenix finally lifted its tear-stained face, smiling as it faded from the void. Further away, the Iron Wheel Mountains of Hell stretched for thousands of miles; the Peacock Wisdom King stood on the Blood Sea cliff, looking up, as the Great Peng Bird spread its magnificent golden wings, soaring down from the firmament. In the Buzhou Mountain of Hell, a faint red mist from the demonic eye permeated the mountains.
On the mountaintop was a small wooden house, with a courtyard, a grassy path, and a crooked fence. The cluster of Ashura flowers, personally planted by the Phoenix Wisdom King by the steps, finally swayed and bloomed slowly in the unchanging winds of Hell.
