knife marks
Holding a wooden carving the size of his palm, Chu Ba asked, "Seventh Brother, what exactly is this?"
Cen Ji said, "What do you think?"
On the eighth day, after examining the wooden carving from all angles for a long time, he said, "I still can't figure it out."
Cen Ji said, "Then whatever you say it is."
On the eighth day of the lunar month, Chu Ba rolled his eyes and said, "You carved this, not me."
Cen Ji smiled and extended a hand.
Seeing this, Chu Ba put the wood carving in his hand and said, "I never saw you carving wood carvings when I could see them before, but now that I can't see them, you've started playing around with these tricks."
Cen Ji remained silent. He carefully traced the carved patterns, slowly searching for the hair bun he had just sculpted. He thought for a moment; the person he remembered never seemed to wear any pretty hairpins, so he figured she probably didn't like them.
How could someone like her like the kind of things that young girls like? Thinking this, Cen Ji unconsciously curved the corners of his mouth into a smile.
Chu Ba crossed his arms and looked at the inexplicable smile on Cen Ji's face, saying, "Seventh Brother, you're in bad shape."
Cen Ji asked curiously, "What's wrong with me?"
Chu Ba looked Cen Ji up and down and said, "Do people tend to have delusions after they go blind?"
Delusion? Perhaps. Cen Ji neither admitted nor denied it. He began to carefully touch every inch of the wood carving again.
Unbeknownst to Cen Ji, within half a day, rumors about "Master Cen's personality undergoing a complete reversal" spread like wildfire throughout the entire Kongshan Ridge.
Chu Ba reached out and brushed the dagger Hua Ying from Cen Ji's hand, saying, "Alright, stop carving. Let me take you down the mountain for a walk."
Cen Ji thought for a moment and nodded, "Alright."
Cen Ji was indeed "taken" down the mountain because he was blind.
The south side of Kongshanling is connected to a sea of bamboo. Because people see it so often, few think about going there for a walk.
So it was the same on the eighth day. When the eighth day heard Cen Ji say he wanted to go to the bamboo forest, he immediately told Cen Ji that he would go alone.
"Okay." After saying that, Cen Ji turned around and walked forward.
"Hey, you've gone the wrong way, turn right." After a long sigh, Chu Ba finally said helplessly, "Fine, fine, I'll go with you."
Cen Ji stopped and looked in the direction of the voice, saying, "I want to take a walk by myself."
On the eighth day, he ignored her, saying, "I'm afraid you'll run into a tree."
Cen Ji sighed, "It's not completely dark in front of me; there are always blurry shadows."
On the eighth day, he really wanted to pick up a stone at his feet and throw it at him to see if he could dodge it. But when he bent down to find the stone and picked it up, he realized that Cen Ji was already far away.
"Is this blind man really blind...?"
This was Cen Ji's first time visiting this bamboo forest.
For more than a decade, he had passed by this bamboo forest countless times on horseback, but never once thought to go in and explore it. Things so close at hand are often easily overlooked, let alone cherished.
The fresh scent emanating from bamboo leaves becomes increasingly lingering and profound with the changing seasons.
Cen Ji sat down, leaning against a purple bamboo.
The ground was littered with fallen bamboo leaves, which felt dry to the touch and occasionally made a crisp cracking sound.
Cen Ji closed his eyes, picked up a dry bamboo leaf, and brought it to his nose to smell it. The withered leaf emitted a faint sour and rotten smell, and he could also vaguely smell a trace of a struggling, undying fragrance. But for some reason, the sour smell seemed to grow stronger and stronger, rushing into his heart all at once.
Cen Ji just stood there, like a piece of rusty iron.
Suddenly, Cen Ji's hand, which was holding a bamboo leaf, trembled.
A blind person's hearing is always much more sensitive than that of an ordinary person, let alone a bodyguard specializing in assassinations.
A series of rustling footsteps came from deep within the bamboo forest. Cen Ji's eyebrows twitched. There was more than one person coming, and they all walked with steady steps, clearly indicating that they were not weak in martial arts.
When they carried the woman into the bamboo forest, Guan Zhen and Zhang Liang never imagined there would be someone there.
"Struggle! I'll teach you to struggle again!" Guan Zhen threw the unconscious woman to the ground violently.
The woman was awakened by a sharp pain. As soon as she opened her eyes, she saw Guan Zhen staring at her with a sinister smile, while Zhang Liang couldn't wait any longer and began to pounce on her and tug at her clothes.
The woman screamed in alarm, trying in terror to push away the man on top of her. Her legs were long, and her smooth, fair skin was marked with fine red lines from the withered bamboo leaves.
Cen Ji remained seated. It wasn't that he hadn't understood what had happened; he had simply seen too much of it.
People say that the world of martial arts is full of bloodshed and violence, but what is truly more prevalent than licking blood from the edge of a knife is the filth in people's hearts.
Cen Ji was neither a knight-errant nor a hero. He simply understood that in this world, being too discerning about right and wrong and intolerable to evil would only make his life more tiring and painful.
So he will always remember that he was just a bodyguard.
A bodyguard who can't change anything.
The woman's fierce struggle caused Zhang Liang to completely lose his patience.
"Shut up!" Zhang Liang waved his hand and slapped the woman hard across the face.
The woman cried out in pain, like a bird with broken wings.
Cen Ji suddenly opened his eyes as if pricked by a needle.
Zhang Liang ripped hard, and the woman's clothes tore open.
"Go ahead and scream, scream as loud as you want, don't expect anyone to come to your rescue!" Guan Zhen said as he reached for his belt. Just as his fingers touched the hem of his pants, he suddenly noticed someone in his peripheral vision.
"Zhang, Zhang Liang..." Guan Zhen's hand trembled, and he hurriedly called Zhang Liang's name.
As soon as Zhang Liang turned around, he saw the man in black with black hair standing about ten feet away.
The man wasn't particularly handsome, but he had captivating eyes. His gaze was like a still autumn lake, and his quiet aura seemed deeper than the vast ocean. No one would consider him to have a striking face, but no one could deny the calm and detached charm he possessed.
Is this person... a ghost? How did they manage to stand silently behind them without them even noticing?
Guan Zhen and Zhang Liang were both covered in cold sweat.
"Who are you?" Guan Zhen asked loudly.
“Cen Ji, the secret guard of Kongshan Ridge,” Cen Ji said calmly.
Cen Ji's vision was blurred with indistinct light and shadow. He couldn't make out the two men in front of him or the woman lying on the ground trembling. Nor did he want to see clearly, because he didn't recognize any of the three.
He only remembered a cry of pain just now, which sounded exactly like her voice.
He remembered that when he massaged her injured foot, he deliberately applied more pressure, and she screamed in pain.
He also knew that all women in the world, when suffering, cried out in pain in a similar way.
But he still stood up because of that slight resemblance.
A gust of wind blew by, and Guan Zhen suddenly felt much colder. The cold sweat on his back seemed impossible to dry, no matter how the wind blew.
"Oh, it's Master Cen!" Guan Zhen yanked Zhang Liang, who was about to speak, and stammered, "I...I was blind to your greatness, I've disturbed your peace..."
As Guan Zhen spoke, he pulled Zhang Liang backward. He wanted to turn and run, but he couldn't move his legs. He noticed that Cen Ji had a pair of sharp, deep eyes, but Guan Zhen couldn't figure out his gaze. It seemed as if he was looking at them, yet also as if he saw nothing at all.
"You should go." Cen Ji felt the light and shadows before him seemed to be dimming. Was it getting late?
Upon hearing this, Guan Zhen felt as if he had been granted a pardon, grabbed Zhang Liang, and turned to run.
Zhang Liang was furious at being pulled along. He took a couple of steps and flung his hand away, saying, "Are you seeing things? He's just a bodyguard, and he's dressed like a grandson!"
Hearing Zhang Liang's words, Guan Zhen also got a little angry: "If he weren't Wen Moyin's man, would I even bother with him? Get out of here!"
Zhang Liang was quite skeptical and asked, "How do you know it was him who married Wen Moyin and not someone else?"
Guan Zhen, impatient with his question, said, "Get out of here! All you do is frequent prostitutes, gamble, and hang out in taverns. Everyone in the world knows that the man surnamed Cen married the young lady of Kongshan Ridge. Master even took Senior Brother Feng and Junior Brother Zhou to congratulate him."
At this point, Guan Zhen suddenly paused and said, "But Old Zhang, Master has been gone for so long, and he still hasn't returned."
Zhang Liang retorted, "You also said that all I do is visit prostitutes, gamble, and hang out in taverns all day long. The other day was the annual sect ceremony at Kongshan Ridge. You've forgotten all that. All you remember is playing around with women!"
Guan Zhen snorted, "What's wrong with me playing around with women? Unlike that Junior Brother Zhou, who clearly craves women to death but pretends to be indifferent."
Zhang Liang echoed, "That's true. I wonder if there were countless beauties at the wedding banquet, making Junior Brother Zhou dizzy and unwilling to come back, haha..."
Guan Zhen couldn't help but laugh along: "Now that you mention it, I do remember. I heard that the wedding banquet was ruined by a little girl surnamed Ban, who completely humiliated Kongshanling, hahaha."
Zhang Liang's eyes lit up, and he hurriedly asked, "What exactly happened? Tell me about it."
Guan Zhen shrugged and said, "You should wait for Junior Brother Zhou to come back and ask him yourself. I wasn't there. But it seems that it was because that girl surnamed Ban took a fancy to Cen Ji but couldn't get him that she went and caused such a scene."
Zhang Liang said with some surprise, "This woman is incredibly bold and rebellious; she must be quite shrewish."
“That’s true, but…” Guan Zhen rubbed his hands together, a smirk playing on his lips. “After playing with those obedient women so much, I’ve really lost my appetite. If I could pin that girl surnamed Ban down, tsk tsk, I really don’t know what kind of intoxicating feeling that would be, haha…”
Zhang Liang couldn't help but feel excited as he thought about it. He swallowed hard and was about to respond when he suddenly realized that his side was empty. Guan Zhen's arrogant laughter just now seemed to have been cut off and stopped abruptly.
A faint smell of blood wafted through the air.
"Hehe..."
The hoarse, tearing sound behind him was even more jarring and jarring to Zhang Liang than the sound of a snapping silk thread.
He slowly turned around and saw Guan Zhen's eyes gradually bulging out. The increasing number of pupils made Zhang Liang feel like vomiting.
Guan Zhen wanted to say something, but Zhang Liang couldn't hear him.
Zhang Liang couldn't hear clearly because Guan Zhen's throat had been slit open.
The knife was very fast.
But Zhang Liang couldn't figure out exactly how fast it was.
All he knew was that the slash was so fast that even Guan Zhen couldn't feel the pain, because his face was filled with fear and shock, not immense pain.
Guan Zhen swayed and fell backward. As he fell, he was still staring at Zhang Liang, his wide-open eyes seeming about to burst out of their sockets.
Cen Ji slowly sheathed his dagger, Hua Ying, and never looked at the two of them again.
As he turned to leave, he looked up at the sky.
The deathly gray sky seemed heavy, as if it were about to press down.
Unfortunately, he can't see it.
All he saw was a lifeless shadow.