Chapter 59 The Eve of Destruction

—Yun Zhi is dead, but not completely dead.

His lingering soul stayed by the side of the murderer who killed him and witnessed everything that followed.

That night, Yun Yao returned to her residence in a daze, only to be seen by her clan chief father, who was also still awake. Although Yun Yao's words were evasive and stammering, the bloodstains on her body could not lie.

Yun Yao eventually confessed everything to her father. In the girl's version of events, Yun Zhi was the one who made the mistake first, and she accidentally stabbed him in a moment of panic.

“I… Father, I really didn’t mean to. If I hadn’t seen A-Zhi sneak out of the ancestral hall and try to leave with Yu Qingzhou, I wouldn’t have… Father, I just didn’t want A-Zhi to break the rules, and I didn’t want to involve the others here…”

Yun Yao cried her eyes out, her tearful and pitiful appearance making it seem as if she had been stabbed in the back.

Yun Zhi watched coldly from the side, watching the man she should call her father, hesitate for a moment, then reach out and help the blood-covered girl up, completely unconcerned that he would get blood on himself.

"Father believes in you, so Ayao, you must believe in Father too."

The Yun clan chief carefully wiped the blood and tears from his daughter's face, and asked in a voice gentler than usual, "Tell your father, where is he now?"

Yun Yao seemed surprised that her usually strict father hadn't reprimanded her immediately after such a serious incident. After a pause, she revealed the location.

The body was disposed of overnight.

Led by Yun Yao, their father, the Yun clan patriarch, personally carried the pale, blood-covered boy to that dark and sunless place and hid his body in the ancestral hall.

Throughout the entire process, the Yun clan patriarch did not harbor any doubt about the cause of Yun Zhi's death, even though the wound on the boy's abdomen was so gruesome that it could not possibly have been caused by accidental injury in a moment of panic.

After doing all this, the Yun clan chief instructed his daughter to go back and change her clothes and wash up.

"Go back and get a good night's sleep. When the sun rises again tomorrow, it will be a brand new day."

Seeing her father handle everything so calmly, Yun Yao felt a little uneasy.

—That's so strange. Even if it was to protect himself, didn't his father feel any sadness about A-Zhi's death?

As if sensing his daughter's thoughts, the Yun clan chief's slightly tired and weathered face suddenly revealed a reassuring smile.

He leaned down and looked into Yun Yao's eyes, saying softly, "A Yao, you must remember that you are not only my only daughter, but also my only child. You have never had a twin brother."

Upon hearing this, Yun Yao's eyes widened suddenly: "Father, what are you saying, Father?"

Yun Yao was clearly frightened by her father's words. She wondered if Yun Zhi's death had driven him mad.

The Yun clan chief simply shook his head slightly, then said with a slightly serious expression, "Ayao, your father is not lying, nor is he talking nonsense because he is overwhelmed with grief. In all these years, have you ever seen any other family here with twins?"

Yun Yao was stumped by the question.

It was at this moment that Yun Yao belatedly realized that she and Yun Zhi were indeed the only pair of twins in this place.

"No, the Yun clan has never had twins," the Yun clan patriarch emphasized again.

Yun Yao was completely dazed. She glanced instinctively at the wall where the body was hidden, then quickly looked away, her lips trembling as she asked, "Then...then A-Zhi..."

"Let's go back."

The Yun clan chief sighed and said one last thing before pushing the distraught Yun Yao out of the ancestral hall.

Then they locked the door from the inside.

In the dim firelight, the Yun clan patriarch slowly walked to the center of the ancestral hall and knelt down directly on the cold, hard bricks.

"This unworthy descendant, Yunzhu, humbly begs for forgiveness. I have failed in my duty to raise my daughter, spoiling her excessively, which led to her committing the grave mistake of manslaughter. I beg you to forgive my sins, considering Yunyao's youth and ignorance. I am willing to take the blame for her, even at the cost of my life, without any regrets..."

As the man spoke solemnly, a series of thuds came from the dark room, each one more forceful than the last.

Having heard everything, Yun Zhi felt no emotion whatsoever.

As the current clan chief of the Yun clan, who is kneeling in the ancestral hall, said, perhaps there was never a boy named Yun Zhi in the world.

He was merely born into the other family by chance, thanks to a wisp of fetal energy.

The Yun clan has existed for over a hundred years, and Yun Zhi has been in power for over a hundred years. Therefore, the previous generation of ancestral hall guardians, the generation before that, and so on, have all been just him from beginning to end.

The so-called secret treasure of the Yun clan that Yu Qingzhou was looking for was actually Yun Zhi, or rather, the wisp of soul residing in the body of a boy named Yun Zhi.

He was not the first ancestral hall guard to die at the hands of the Yun clan.

The moment the current Yun clan patriarch broke through the wall of the ancestral hall, Yun Zhi saw the densely packed bones embedded within it.

That was the ultimate fate of the ancestral hall keepers throughout the ages, and also a mark of his countless tragic deaths.

His abdomen was pierced, his neck was snapped, and his skull was smashed...

Each time Yunzhi dies, he is brought back to this place, and then there will be one more corpse in the wall and one more nameless memorial tablet in the ancestral hall.

Rather than calling this the so-called Yun Clan Ancestral Hall, it would be more accurate to describe it as a mass grave specifically used to bury him.

The name Yunzhi doesn't entirely belong to him. It's just that the first generation who died here had this name, and it has continued to be used ever since.

It is now the ninety-ninth.

Having survived ninety-nine gruesome deaths, he felt utterly weary.

Even if he didn't fully possess the memories of the previous ninety-eight times, he still didn't want to be born in this place as Yun Zhi again.

But do I even have a choice?

It's not entirely impossible; his chance lies with the person who killed him... Yun Yao.

Yun Zhi sensed in this girl the same intense desire to leave this place.

That almost insane obsession is exactly what Yun Zhi can exploit.

Sister…

Yun Zhi enters Yun Yao's dreams through her fears, constructing a series of dreams for her that are either beautiful or terrifying, watching as fear and desire intertwine and grow into a wildly alluring and poisonous flower.

It was a color as beautiful and intoxicating as the afterglow of a setting sun.

The orange-red fire snake coiled and rolled, engulfing the entire ancestral hall in one gulp.

The Yun clan chief and the other clan members who rushed over were stunned and stood frozen in place, staring at the place that was enveloped in flames and could not be approached. For a moment, they were unable to utter a sound.

They gazed at the slender figure standing in the distance.

That was Yun Yao, who had been claiming illness and hadn't appeared in public for a long time.

At this moment, the girl seemed to hear a sound behind her, and slowly turned her head to face the crowd. The firelight fell on the girl's pale cheeks, and suddenly spread a strange rose color as if she were burning up.

Then she laughed...

As the storyteller smiled softly at the strange smile of the girl in the story, who was driven mad by love and eventually went completely insane, in front of the astonished crowd.

His smile was faint, yet it inexplicably carried a hint of coldness.

In the silence of the room, Lan suddenly looked at the boy sitting opposite her: "Why are you suddenly making that face? Do you not like this story?"