If in the end she finds that her enemy is nothing more than a pawn in someone else's game, will she still want revenge?
“Xiao Yin.” Yin Bitong stood beside her with her hands behind her back, speaking inscrutably, “If you are willing, I will go and kill her for you right now.”
Yin Wuxiao shook his head.
"Yin Bitong, why is it that people like you can view killing so simply? You kill because you love, you kill because you hate, you kill because you're happy, and you kill because you're unhappy."
Yin Bitong remained silent.
After a long pause, he said, "Perhaps you're overcomplicating killing. In this world, killing is actually a very simple thing."
Yin Wuxiao smiled bitterly: "Perhaps I'm wrong. After all, I was never a member of the martial arts world."
She turned to look at Yin Bitong: "Yin Bitong, where are you going in the future?"
"Wherever I go, I will take you with me." Yin Bitong looked at her, her green eyes sparkling.
Yin Wuxiao shook her head seriously: "I'm not going with you." She looked down the cliff again, "I'm going to wait for him here."
Yin Bitong was stunned.
He had never heard Yin Wuxiao refuse so clearly and simply before.
Anger gathered in his eyes: "Could it be that you've really fallen in love with Baili Qingyi?"
Yin Wuxiao nodded: "Yes, I've fallen in love with Baili Qingyi. Turn me into a human skin purse."
"..."
Yin Bitong was rendered speechless by her words.
“Yin Bitong.” Yin Wuxiao looked into the distance. “Sometimes I’m really curious about how you grew up. You’re an extraordinary person.”
Yin Bitong frowned: "Is this a compliment?"
Yin Wuxiao smiled and said, "No."
Yin Bitong was suffocating.
"Xiao Yin, you are a woman who makes one's teeth itch with hatred. But for some reason, I can't bear to kill you."
"Yin Bitong, you don't even understand what love is. So don't do this kind of thing, forcibly taking women from the people. Wait until you understand how to love someone before you talk about it." Yin Wuxiao sat down on the cliff top; she was too unsteady to stand.
How do you know I don't understand what love is?
"What do you know besides killing people?" Yin Wuxiao rolled his eyes at him.
Yin Bitong remained silent for a long time.
“Xiao Yin, you’re absolutely right.” He sighed, then took Yin Wuxiao’s hand. “My father-in-law said that if you love someone, you should indulge her, go along with her, and only do things that make her happy. I really don’t understand this. I’ll come back to you when I understand it.”
“Okay,” Yin Wuxiao readily agreed.
"You cannot marry Baili Qingyi before that."
"I can't guarantee that."
Yin Bitong gritted her teeth in fury: "Even if you marry him, I can still snatch you away!"
"I'll wait and see," Yin Wuxiao said with a smile.
“…I wish Baili Qingyi would just die here,” Yin Bitong muttered.
"He won't. He promised he'd come back to me." Yin Wuxiao gazed confidently into the distance, yet a hint of worry crept into his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Though There Is No Sunshine, There Is (Part Two)
In the dark room, Mu Li and Qiao Fenglang faced off.
Ruan Yun and Baili Qingyi did not take action directly. Ruan Yun suggested that Mu Li and Qiao Fenglang resolve their issues in front of her.
Baili Qingyi did not object. After all, it was a matter between the two of them.
"Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten everything he did to you? Didn't you say you would get it back tenfold or a hundredfold?" This was said to Qiao Fenglang.
"And you? Are you willing to give up everything you have now? Everything you've worked so hard to achieve?"
"You two, if you're men, fight me to the death!" Ruan Yun uttered harsh words. She finally understood that all these years she had waited for was just this moment—this moment of fratricide.
The two stared directly at each other, but neither moved, as if they were looking into each other's souls one last time.
Finally, one of them raised his sword.
It is wood.
He raised his sword, but turned to look at Ruan Yun: "Are you so eager to watch us kill each other?"
"Yes, so what?" Ruan Yun laughed. "Now that things have come to this, what haven't you two brothers done, things you should and shouldn't have done? Can you still hold back? Even without me, can you pretend none of this ever happened?"
Mu Li smiled bitterly: "It's impossible." He looked directly into Qiao Fenglang's eyes without flinching. "When I pushed you off the cliff that day, I should have known this day would come."
Qiao Fenglang sneered: "You're not going to say you regret it, are you?"
"No, I don't regret it." Mu Li put his hands behind his back and moved his longsword behind him. "I'm sorry for what happened before. But I will never regret what I did. If you want to kill me, then do it."
"I will never regret what I'm about to do," Qiao Fenglang said with a cruel smile. "From this point of view, we really are true brothers."
"But I don't want us to both suffer losses."
"You have no choice." Qiao Fenglang impatiently brandished his sword, the sound of the blade piercing flesh not making him hesitate for a moment. He viciously thrust the longsword to its end before stopping in surprise.
"Are you serious?" He abruptly withdrew his blood-stained longsword.
As soon as the sword tip left his body, Mu Li collapsed to the ground, unable to continue.
"What do you think?" he smiled.
Qiao Fenglang stabbed again with disgust.
"You don't deserve to be my brother. It's ridiculous that you're begging for mercy at the last minute."
"I did not beg for mercy." Mu Li covered his wound with his hand and forced himself to stand up, the sword still inside his body.
“Whether I fight or not today, I’m destined to die here. I don’t want to see the way Xiao’er looks at me after she knows the truth.” He lowered his head, making his expression unreadable. “Of the two of us, it’s enough if one of us lives. The one who lives can also live on for the one who died.” He looked up. “When I pushed you off the cliff, that’s what I thought. I wanted to live on for you too. Now… now that the roles are reversed, it’s not impossible. You can live on for me too. Anyway, it makes no difference whether you live or I live.”
"You..." Qiao Fenglang was somewhat agitated, and he gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. "Do you think I'll soften my stance just because you say that?"
“Whether you are soft-hearted or not…” Mu Li gripped the sword in front of him, ignoring the excruciating pain from the friction of the blade inside his body, and slowly walked towards his twin brother step by step.
“I won’t survive. But you must remember, we still have a mother.” He turned and looked at Aunt Yun with disdain. “Of course, not this terrible woman. Our mother, you don’t owe her anything, but I do. Now only you can repay her debt. And Xiao’er… Xiao’er, she can only have one Feng Lang brother, only one…”
"What are you doing!" Ruan Yun, who had been watching from the sidelines, could no longer contain herself and cleaved the sword connecting the two men with a single blow. "You should be fighting! Fight! Not giving your last words with such sentimentality! Qiao Fenglang, you coward! You're no different from your father! Why don't you just kill him? And you, where did your ruthlessness go? Why are you crying like a woman now? I... I'm going to kill you all, kill you all!"
"Enough!" It was Qiao Fenglang who shouted to stop her.
“Those who deserve to die, I will kill. Those who deserve revenge, I will avenge. But we have no obligation to let you have your way! Mother!” He paused, then uttered each word slowly and deliberately: “Or should I call you Master? In any case, this is the last time I will call you that, you terrible woman, you have deceived me so badly, so badly.”
Ruan Yun was startled, and her face suddenly turned pale. Her stepson, whether before or after her disfigurement, had never said a harsh word to her, not even once.
She opened her mouth, suddenly realizing that she had lost something this time. She had always thought she had nothing left to lose.
Qiao Fenglang turned his head to look at Mu Li, who was on the verge of death.
"No matter what, he's my brother."
“Well said. For those words alone, I, Baili Qingyi, respect you.”
Baili Qingyi slowly stood up. He knew that during the time he had stalled, the people of the Nine Manors and Eighteen Societies had already moved most of the martial arts practitioners off the cliff. Although he wasn't confident he could defeat Ruan Yun's Soul-Destroying Kill, he could give more people time to escape.
He pondered that although Yin Wuxiao had destroyed Ruan Yun's explosives activation mechanism, it couldn't be ruled out that Ruan Yun still had a way to ignite the explosives. Thinking of this, his heart grew heavy.
Qiao Fenglang scoffed dismissively, "I'll still kill him."
"No!" It was Ruan Yun who shouted to stop her. "What...what's the point of killing him like this for me?" She backed away, muttering to herself, "It's all in chaos, everything's in chaos."
Suddenly she looked up to the sky and roared, "Qiao Baiyue! Qiao Baiyue, you persistent ghost! Even in death you still won't let me have my way? I've painstakingly planned for so many years, so many years... Hahaha... You have such a good son, such a good son!"
Her once meticulously styled black hair fell in disarray due to her rage, distorting her face and making her appear ferocious and terrifying. In a daze, she approached Mu Li, looking at his face that was about to lose all color, and suddenly smiled sweetly like a little girl.
She reached out and cupped Mu Li's face in her hands: "But that's what I like about you. Love is love, and not loving is not loving. But whether it's someone you love or someone you don't love, you can be so heartless, so heartless..."
"Then let's die together, let's die together... What do you say?"
Baili Qingyi shouted alertly, "Watch out!"
But it was all too late.
Ruan Yun solemnly and swiftly removed the gold hairpin from her head, and with a flick of her hand, the hairpin accurately inserted into the crevice in the stone.
The ensuing explosion swallowed everything.
This explosion blew up the entire Seven Absolutes Cliff, killing and injuring many martial arts practitioners who were unable to escape after descending from the cliff.
This explosion brought many people into the annals of martial arts, while also causing many others to be forgotten by the martial arts world forever.
On a cliff top not far away, Yin Wuxiao suddenly stood up.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Half of the Trees in the Garden (Part One)
Fifteen years ago.
He stared intently at the lost little girl.
The little girl looked to be about six or seven years old, but her eyes gleamed with a mischievous light. She was currently fiddling with flowers and plants in the garden, occasionally finding some strange or unusual herbs and exclaiming in surprise, oblivious to whether anyone was around. She was unlike any other girl her age he had ever seen. He vaguely remembered that there were many girls her age in the Northern Desert Dome Sect, mostly with pale skin and dull eyes. From the moment they could speak, they were either constantly professing loyalty to the sect leader or mechanically practicing martial arts to rise through the ranks in the sect.
But this girl was different. Her skin wasn't very fair; it was rosy, like a ripe apple. She bounced around everywhere, completely oblivious to her panting. He felt she was very innocent, the kind of innocent that had been well-protected and untouched by any defilement. Yet, her eyes made him wary, because underestimating this little girl would lead to a terrible setback.
"That girl is so clever, she can often make you feel happy even when she's taken advantage of. She's practically a little devil." He thought of Qiao Fenglang, his twin brother, who mentioned this to him with a doting smile.
This must be the legendary eldest daughter of the Yin family, right?
To be honest, he had absolutely no good feelings towards the Yin family. If it weren't for his aunt taking his father away, perhaps his father and mother could have lived together forever, and perhaps he wouldn't be in this state now.
The twelve-year-old boy lurked in the grass like a wolf, quietly watching the playful girl. He himself was not quite sure what he wanted to do.
"So you were here." Another boy, who looked exactly like him, quietly approached from behind. He followed his gaze and looked ahead, seeing the little girl playing. He smiled: "You're looking at Xiao'er. This little girl is really clever and cute, isn't she?"
The boy suddenly blushed: "Who? Who looked at her!"
The boy chuckled teasingly, "What are you being shy about? Xiao'er is my cousin, so naturally she's your cousin too."