Chapter 39: Returning to the Underground, My Heart is No Longer There
The entrance to the Tianji Pavilion headquarters was hidden behind a nondescript spice shop on one of the capital's busiest streets. A thick, concealed door, cast from the hustle and bustle of the living world, completely cut off from it.
Behind the door is another world.
A world without sunshine, without four seasons, only eternal coldness and dead silence.
Chen Ye once again stepped into the place where he grew up, but felt extremely unfamiliar.
The air was filled with a familiar scent—damp rock, flaming kerosene, and a faint, lingering scent of stale blood that had seeped deep into the cracks of the stone. He could walk this long corridor, carved from the dark blue rock, with his eyes closed. Every corner, every loose tile, was once a memory of his childhood and youth.
This is his "home".
But now, every time he took a breath of the air here, he felt a deep sense of suffocation. His heart had been left somewhere else.
It was left in a small farmyard on the outskirts of Beijing.
There was the morning mist, the dew-drenched wildflowers, the tearful aroma of smoke from the stove fire, the chirping of cicadas on summer nights, the aroma of clumsily brewed medicine, and a woman who would frown when his cooking was too salty, yet couldn't help curling her lips to tease him.
Those images, like the warmest imprints, were deeply engraved on his soul. So much so that when he was once again in this cold darkness, those memories became even more vivid and burning, burning his internal organs.
He once thought the Tianji Pavilion was his world. Missions, orders, and killing were the sole purpose of his existence. He was like a finely tuned machine, precise, efficient, and emotionless. He even took pride in this, for he was the most perfect creation the Tianji Pavilion had ever produced—its chief assassin, "Zhuying."
But now, he just felt ridiculous.
On the walls on both sides of the corridor, there was a perpetually burning lamp embedded every ten feet. The dim flames swayed in the enclosed space, stretching his shadow long and short, like a struggling ghost.
He passed the training ground.
In a vast underground cavern, dozens of young children, shirtless, expressionlessly repeated the most basic movements of stabbing, chopping, and slashing. Their eyes were vacant and focused, as if they held not wooden swords but their entire futures. An instructor, armed with a rattan whip, patrolled the ranks, lashing out at the slightest irregularity, leaving a trail of blood. No one cried out, no one flinched, only the more mechanical repetition.
Chen Ye's footsteps paused imperceptibly.
He seemed to see himself many years ago. At a similar age, he had been dug out from the dead and brought to this place. He had forgotten his own name, his parents' appearances, and was only given a code name. He worked harder than any other child here, because the instructor had said that only the strongest would survive.
He survived and became the strongest one.
But now, looking at the boy who just bit his lips and looked more fierce after being whipped, he felt an unfamiliar emotion in his heart for the first time.
That's not superiority, nor is it indifference.
It's mercy.
The mental method of the Lightless Heart Sutra circulated within him, attempting to erase this extraneous emotion and return him to a state of calm. However, that pity was like a thorn piercing his flesh; the mental method could suppress the pain, but it couldn't remove it. This thorn stemmed from the seed of "humanity" that Su Qinghan had planted in his heart.
He continued forward, passing the Weapon Shop.
The dull, rhythmic sound of hammering echoed faintly from behind the heavy stone door. This was the birthplace of all the deadly weapons of the Tianji Pavilion. His sword, "Momenta," was crafted here by the finest swordsmiths, taking three years to create. Its narrow blade, as thin as a cicada's wing, was designed for ultimate speed and penetrating power.
He once regarded "Moment" as a part of his body, with man and sword becoming one and their minds connected.
But now, the hand gripping the hilt felt as cold as a piece of black iron, so heavy it almost choked him. He could clearly sense the resentment of countless dead souls entwined in the sword, the clearest and most piercing of which belonged to a man named Su Zhenting.
The life he ended with his own hands in order to prove his worth and to get the code name "Zhuying".
The father of the woman he loved.
Whenever he thought of the unconcealable admiration and sadness in Su Qinghan's eyes when he talked about his father, the sword named "Moment" seemed to burn his palms.
He passed the Intelligence Hall.
Rows of towering wooden shelves were filled with a wide variety of files. This was the brains of the Tianji Pavilion, recording countless secrets and crimes. He remembered that the mission file regarding Su Zhenting had inscribed the charges of "forming a clique for personal gain, embezzling vast sums of money, and attempting to undermine the foundation of the nation."
At that time, he believed it without a doubt. The reason given by the Tianji Pavilion was the reason for him to swing his sword.
It wasn't until he met Su Qinghan, a woman who risked her life to go undercover in the underworld in order to avenge her upright father, that he realized that the "truth" of Tianji Pavilion was nothing more than the "truth" his employer paid him to believe.
He, Shen Ye, is nothing more than a knife wrapped in lies and handed over.
Along the way, he encountered several colleagues from the Tianji Pavilion. Those assassins, known by their code names, trod in the shadows. They nodded in greeting or brushed past, their gazes as still as the surface of a frozen lake, unmoved.
In the past, he took this for granted. An assassin was supposed to be lonely and silent.
But now, he saw a bottomless sorrow beneath those numb faces. Like him, they were prisoners imprisoned in this underground cage, but they themselves were unaware of it.
And because he encountered that ray of light, he could no longer endure the darkness.
Finally, the corridor came to an end.
Ahead stood a massive, three-meter-tall black iron gate. Standing before it were two guards, each wearing pitch-black soft armor and wearing a demonic mask. They were the "Shadow Guards," the most loyal guardians of the Tianji Pavilion Master, answering only to him.
Seeing Chen Ye, the two shadow guards made no response, neither stopping him nor bowing. In their minds, the arrival of "Zhu Ying" was expected.
With the dull sound of a mechanism turning, the heavy iron door slid silently open to both sides.
Behind the door lay a hall even more empty and silent than the martial arts training ground. There was nothing inside except an enormous screen in the center. It was made of twelve panels of fine Hetian jade. The jade was warm and smooth, yet under the dim light, it exuded a chilling chill.
The Master of Tianji Pavilion is behind that screen.
Shen Ye walked in, and his footsteps echoed in the hall, creating a hollow echo, as if he was stepping on the grave of his past.
The iron door slowly closed behind him, isolating him from the outside world.
He walked to the center of the hall, stopped ten steps away from the screen, and stood quietly.
He passed through layers of checkpoints and arrived in front of the huge screen. This time, he was not here to accept a mission or report the results of the battle.
He came to end his career as an assassin.
In the name of "Zhuying", he performed one last act. Then, he buried this name along with all his sins.
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