Chapter 29: Black Hair Turns to Snow
The Feng family, armed with a divine halberd, held a reverent devotion to their ancestors, prioritizing martial arts and self-cultivation, and scorning underhanded tactics. Feng Xiaoming, however, was obsessed with poisons, spending his days in the company of vipers and scorpions. The halberd's wielder at the time—Feng Yanyuan's grandfather—had repeatedly admonished him to no avail, ultimately confining him to Moon-Watching Valley to protect him from disgrace. Back then, Moon-Watching Valley held no remains of convicted slaves, only the howling mountain winds as Feng Xiaoming's new poison, "Impermanence," gradually took shape.
Feng Yanyuan's slender fingers gently stroked the yellowed map.
Yun Yuan said that there was a lingering smell of poison on it, but if it was really drawn by her mother, how could she have come into contact with the "Impermanence" that had not yet been revealed?
The moonlight filtered through the window, casting tiny shadows between his brows.
This diagram must have belonged to Feng Xiaoming; only he could have left a trace of the poison recipe when it was first created. Back then, my mother was merely the first person to test the poison.
The night wind blew through the hall, sweeping away the haze that had accumulated for many years.
Feng Yanyuan looked at the starry sky outside the eaves, and suddenly felt that even the darkest night was filled with warmth, as if a spring breeze had melted years of ice.
As the corners of his lips slightly raised, doubts suddenly surged in his heart.
The handwriting on the map was very similar to that of my mother's manuscript, and the letter of confession was written by my mother in front of my father.
Why did the mother plead guilty?
The candles in Yuanshanzhai finally burned out before dawn.
Feng Yanyuan sat alone all night, until the morning light penetrated the window paper, casting mottled shadows on the blue brick floor. The door hinges creaked softly, and Ruyue walked in, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Suddenly, she was startled by the scene before her, and all her sleepiness disappeared. Her young master's pale face was filled with a smile she hadn't seen in days, and her eyes, which were usually gloomy, were now frighteningly bright.
"Sir?! What are you doing..." She hurriedly wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes, and even forgot to stop her half-started yawn.
"Finally you're here!" Feng Yanyuan stood up suddenly, his sleeve knocking over the teacup on the table. The sound of the porcelain shattering startled Ruyue, but he was completely unaware and only held her wrist tightly. "Think carefully, was there anything unusual before Mother became seriously ill?"
Ruyue was shocked by the bloodshot eyes and asked, "Master, did you not sleep all night? What happened?"
"What are you talking about? Speak now!"
Ruyue thought about it, but nothing came to mind. She muttered, "It was the Master who never allowed anyone to mention Madam Yu Rong. After all these years, who would still remember something from so long ago?"
"How could I not remember!" Feng Yanyuan's voice suddenly rose in anxiety, then fell back abruptly. He loosened his grip, his fingertips trembling slightly within his sleeve. Ten years old should be the age for remembering things, but his memories of his mother's final days were like a waterlogged ink painting, only a hazy outline remaining.
I have been deliberately avoiding the past over the years, and now I don’t even know how to actively pursue it.
Ruyue cleared the teacup for him and poured him some hot tea. She looked up and saw that his expression was gloomy again. Her heart sank. She bit her lip and thought hard, then suddenly said, "There's nothing unusual about Madam, it's just..."
Feng Yanyuan's dim eyes suddenly lit up with a glimmer of light.
"But you, young master... once had a serious illness."
"Me?" Feng Yanyuan frowned and took the teacup from Ruyue. "Why don't I have any impression of this?"
"Young Master, don't you remember?" Ruyue frowned. "That illness came on strangely. You'd occasionally talk nonsense, as if..." She lowered her voice, "as if you were possessed. But every time the Young Master came, you'd wake up. So, after a few interactions, the Mistress started to think Madam Yu Rong was using the Young Master to win her favor. Her sarcasm and cunning attitude made the Mistress feel very aggrieved."
Feng Yanyuan sat stiffly where he was, his ears buzzing.
"Later, when the Madam fell ill, the young master's illness inexplicably healed." Ruyue's voice grew softer and softer, her eyes gradually reddening. "Everyone said that it must have been the Madam's prayers day and night that cured the young master's illness..." At this point, Ruyue suddenly choked up. She pursed her lips and tried to hold back tears for a long time, but the bean-sized tears still rolled down. She hurriedly wiped her face with her sleeve. "The Madam only hoped for the young master's well-being. Now seeing him like this, she must be delighted..."
Feng Yanyuan was struck by lightning, and the teacup in his hand fell onto the table with a clang.
He understood all too well what Ru Yuewei had said—the poison of impermanence leads to old age and death. After refusing the antidote, his mother rapidly aged, her hair turning white, her body emaciated, and she withered away. Therefore, the servants believed his mother had prayed to the gods to exchange her life for his.
Feng Yanyuan's eyes were red, and after a while he said, "I see."
Perhaps the mother had indeed saved her life. However, it wasn't a god, but a living devil who held her own child hostage and forced others to take the blame.
He suddenly stood up and left.
The door of Yuanshanzhai was slammed with a deafening roar, startling a pair of birds perched under the eaves.
He understood that it was not easy to clear his mother's name.
Yun Yuan's sense of smell wasn't enough evidence. And Feng Xiaoming's poison was an unprovable mystery. The bodies of those convicted slaves who perished under the spell of "Impermanence" were never found to contain any trace of their origin—merely signs of illness and old age. Because of this, even his usually cautious father ultimately acquiesced to Feng Yanhao's poisoning of Feng Dian, and even allowed Feng Xiaoming to test the drug on living people. After all, the Feng family's hands remained clean.
He first visited Qianfeng Pavilion, where secret reports from the Feng spies were stored. Comparing the yellowed files page by page, he found a clue in Feng Xiaoming's annotations—the turns of certain characters inadvertently revealed his grandfather's vigorous strokes, his father's neatness, and... his mother's uniquely graceful style. Feng Xiaoming, he had been imitating everyone's handwriting.
He clenched the file in his hand. This wasn't enough; these clues were more like figments of the imagination than anything else, and couldn't convince his father, who always protected his younger brother.
Feng Yanyuan looked out the window - the direction of Wangyue Valley was dark, like a huge mouth waiting for prey to fall in.
He went to Wangyue Valley.
Feng Xiaoming's residence was extremely simple. Within the vast Wangyue Valley, stood a solitary, small, blue-brick courtyard, three times more cramped than Yuanfeng Courtyard. Three gray-tiled houses were scattered among them, with a few strings of dried herbs hanging from the eaves, swaying gently in the breeze. The courtyard consisted of three or five rooms. Sometimes convicted slaves were sent to one of them, but most of the time, they were empty. He had no servants, and did not want them.
The courtyard was remarkably clean. The bluestone-paved courtyard was spotless, as if freshly washed by spring rain. Of his few rooms, the outermost was reserved for the drug-testing slaves. It was spotlessly clean, its ventilated windows bringing in the fragrance of valley flowers and plants. The bedding on the common bunk was neatly folded, as if awaiting the return of the hardworking slave.
Who could have imagined that in such a mountain villa, which was like a place for hermits in a deep valley to cultivate their body and mind, there was a deadly poison locked in a sandalwood box on the wall, and that bones were buried under every inch of soil in the corner of the courtyard?
At this moment, Wangyue Valley was deserted. Feng Yanyuan understood - Feng Xiaoming had always feared the Queen, and now that the Queen had passed away, he must be waiting for an opportunity to leave the valley.
This suddenly reminded him that Feng Xiaoming had also roamed the martial arts world.
Shortly after his mother's passing, his grandfather also passed away suddenly. When the Wind God Formation briefly dissipated, Moon-Watching Valley became an ordinary valley. Out of compassion for his younger brother, his father tacitly allowed him to escape, allowing Feng Xiaoming to travel the world. Unfortunately, he was weak, lacking martial arts skills, and attracted trouble. After being seriously injured, he was rescued by the youngest daughter of the Mo family, and unexpectedly, a match was made. Because the youngest daughter refused to marry out, and he, unwilling to return to the Feng family, a place that had once constrained him, married into the Mo family as a live-in son-in-law. The Mo family was a family of pharmacists, legendary for their ability to bring the dead back to life. Therefore, while his father disapproved of his younger brother marrying into his family, he welcomed the match.
Of course, this beautiful story came to an abrupt end eight years ago. Like many other great martial arts sects, the Mohist sect was utterly annihilated overnight by the Queen's followers. Feng Xiaoming, desperate to survive, hid in a manure pit, fleeing back to the Feng family, covered in filth. Claiming to be a descendant of the Feng family, he knelt before the Wind God Halberd and begged for protection. From then on, he retreated to Moon-Watching Valley, never to leave again.
At that time, Feng Yanyuan was still unable to control the Wind God Formation. The barrier of Wangyue Valley was still set up by his grandfather, and the entrances and exits of the Slave House still needed to be controlled by guards.
But he is no longer that child now.
As soon as he learned of the coup in the Imperial City, he had meticulously re-established the barrier formations—completely sealing off all exits. Now that Feng Xiaoming had returned to the valley, he could not leave. Firstly, Feng Yanyuan knew Feng Xiaoming's methods for testing poisons. Feng Yanhao still had some humanity, and even when using poison, he was wary. But Feng Xiaoming was a demon. Secondly, this was also his grandfather's wish. Even if his father was willing, he couldn't explicitly demand his release.
Feng Yanyuan searched carefully among the dusty bookshelves, his fingertips skimming over the yellowed tomes. Suddenly, a copy of "Compendium of Materia Medica" slipped off the shelf, and a piece of plain silk fluttered out from between the pages.
He leaned over to pick it up, his fingertips trembling slightly. The silk painting depicted verdant spring mountains and blooming flowers, the brushstrokes graceful and elegant, a true depiction of his mother's handwriting. A line of delicate, small characters etched the words "Spring Mountains, Hundreds of Flowers in Full Bloom" in the corner. The ink had faded somewhat, but he could still imagine the gentle smile on his mother's lips as she wrote. This silk painting had been hidden between the pages of a book for countless generations, but now, as if sensing his heart, it gracefully fell into his palm.
But this manuscript alone was not enough to convince his father and the tribe. He needed to find more solid evidence—the works that Feng Xiaoming had imitated his mother's handwriting.
My fingertips brushed across the dusty bookshelf, and suddenly I heard a hoarse voice behind me, like the rustling of dead leaves: "What are you looking for, Third Young Master?"
Feng Yanyuan's back stiffened. Turning back, he saw Feng Xiaoming's gaunt figure. The setting sun shone obliquely from behind him, stretching his jagged shadow far out, reaching all the way to the tips of Feng Yanyuan's boots. In the backlight, two pinpricks of light flickered in Feng Xiaoming's sunken eye sockets, like two will-o'-the-wisp flames about to die.
Feng Yanyuan looked at the emaciated Feng Xiaoming in front of him, feeling somewhat dazed. When did the tall figure in his memory become so hunched over?
He calmly hid his mother's silk painting in his sleeve and said calmly, "I recently recruited a spy and came to ask for the antidote."
"Didn't the Third Young Master just take all of Wangyue Valley's Impermanence Antidotes?" Feng Xiaoming's bony fingers rubbed the doorframe, making a rustling sound. "Those antidotes, if they were just to control a single Feng spy, would be more than enough to last two years." He suddenly narrowed his cloudy eyes. "Could it be... that the Third Young Master wants a few more?"
Seeing Feng Yanyuan's stern expression, he grinned through his cracked lips and said, "That's fine, it's just a matter of words. There's no need for us to be so formal between uncle and nephew. Uncle will make a few more doses next time, and you can come and get them whenever you need them." "Uncle is right. I'll come and bother you again another day."
Feng Yanyuan swept across the valley in the twilight and landed in the peony bushes on the back mountain. The mountain breeze blew, stirring up layers of crimson waves of flowers.
Slowly unrolling the piece of plain silk, the setting sun's afterglow penetrated the thin, cicada-wing-like surface. Suddenly, the painting's spring mountain blossoms seemed to come alive—twigs outlined in ink stretched in the light and shadow, petals stained with pastel colors trembled gently in the breeze. The inscription on the silk, "Spring Mountain Hundred Flowers in Full Bloom," glowed warmly in the sunset, complementing the swaying sea of flowers before my eyes.
Feng Yanyuan was immersed in the afterglow of the silk painting when he suddenly heard a familiar voice behind him: "What are you doing here?"
Turning back, he saw Feng Yanxuan slumped behind a rock, his head tilted to examine the silk painting in his hands. "Spring mountains, a hundred flowers in full bloom..." Feng Yanxuan squinted as he recited, then suddenly laughed out loud. "What a wonderful word 'in full bloom'! I didn't expect Third Brother to have such a leisurely and carefree mind?"
Feng Yanyuan flipped his wrist, and the silk painting disappeared into his sleeve. He stood up and brushed off the grass debris on his clothes. "Second brother, have you recovered from your heroic rescue? And you dare to come to this mountaintop to enjoy the breeze?"
Feng Yanxuan sat there in a slumped state, sighing exaggeratedly: "I've been fumigating in the room all day long, and I'm so stuffy." He glanced at Feng Yanyuan who was about to leave, and hurriedly shouted: "Hey, don't go!" Before he finished speaking, he suddenly cried out in pain.
Feng Yanyuan frowned and turned around, only to see Feng Yanxuan holding his back with a grimacing face. "I'm afraid the wound has torn... I was too hasty going up the mountain just now..." He blinked pitifully, "If Third Brother doesn't take care of me, I'll be feeding the wolves here tonight."
"Second brother is so spoiled," Feng Yanyuan turned back helplessly, "How dare you run into the mountains alone?"
"I heard you were here," Feng Yanxuan said with a playful smile, "You can scold me back if you want. First, help me down the mountain, okay?"
When Feng Yanyuan leaned over to hold his arm, he suddenly felt a stab in the chest!
He lowered his head in a daze.
The short blade had pierced his heart, and blood was gushing out from the blood trough, staining the white front of his clothes into a glaring scarlet.
"Second...brother?" He looked up in disbelief, but was met with a pair of completely unfamiliar eyes - there was no longer the laughter and warmth of the past, only a biting coldness.
Feng Yanxuan flipped his wrist, and the blade twisted cruelly in the flesh for half a circle before yanking it out. Blood immediately splattered on the rocks between them.
"Why......"
Feng Yanyuan stumbled and fell to his knees, his fingertips digging into the soil. In a trance, he saw only Feng Yanxuan's sleeves flash by the edge of the cliff, then disappear into the twilight like an owl.
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