The feeling of losing a loved one
The shining arrow tips are as dense as white snow.
Looking at the layers of arrow lights in front of her, Song Tiaotiao's heartbeat and breathing accelerated.
Now, they are in the middle of dozens of stone steps. Faced with such a situation, they are in a dilemma.
But the shimmering arrows above the dome did not intend to give them any chance to think. In the blink of an eye, they came from all directions and pointed directly at their vital points.
"Gu Chengjue, it's best to leave his body intact... The rest of you, kill them without mercy. Release!"
As soon as Li Huan finished speaking, the group of people who decided to move towards the front of the hall were greeted by the first wave of flying arrows.
At the critical moment, Gu Chengjue held the sword in one hand and chopped off several arrows that were hitting Song Tiaotiao's vital points. With the other hand, he hugged Song Tiaotiao in his arms without thinking and ran towards the open space in front of the hall.
Li Huan's archers had been deployed in advance, so after the first wave of arrows shot their arrows, the archers behind them took their place in time.
When another wave of arrows came again.
Song Tiaotiao and Li Huan are only seven levels away from each other.
"Shoot! Shoot!"
When Li Huan's obviously panicked command sounded under the eaves, the archers crawling on the dome no longer cared about hitting the target, and shot their arrows like meteors towards the place where the two might land next.
Obviously, this approach will cause the hit rate to drop rapidly, but it will effectively block the next movement of the two.
While Gu Chengjue was blocking the arrows with his sword, he also had to pay attention to the obstacles that were constantly appearing under his feet. He was unable to do anything.
Song Tiaotiao had just blocked a few flying arrows with his sword when he saw a hidden arrow with a very tricky angle coming straight towards Gu Chengjue's neck.
Song Tiaotiao's pupils constricted: "Cheng Jue, left! Get out of the way!"
Hearing the sound, Gu Chengjue reacted immediately, but he only had time to avoid the vital points and did not have time to split the hidden arrow into two.
Seeing that the arrow was about to pierce Gu Chengjue's shoulder, Song Tiaotiao found the right moment, raised the sword in his hand, and blocked the arrow. Then, he and Gu Chengjue blocked the following arrows together.
However, her wrist was numb and painful during the process. In the subsequent fight, she was unable to cope and was unable to escape unscathed, and was scratched.
Before that, there was an arrow flying straight towards her forehead.
But while she was blocking, her wrist began to lose strength due to trembling.
Gu Chengjue had noticed this at some point, and in an instant, he came forward to block the arrow for her.
But the arrows that followed were like a swarm of bees. Before he knew it, an arrow hook had scraped against Song Tiaotiao's wrist.
Song Tiaotiao was completely unaware of it at first, until they had already walked to the front of the hall.
Amid the sounds of fighting between the secret guards, soldiers and archers, Song Tiaotiao half came to his senses.
Her wrist, which had been numb for a long time, finally regained consciousness.
Thinking of this, she moved her hands secretly for a long time and skillfully pulled out the prepared anesthetic needle from her sleeve.
Just as Li Huan, with a murderous look on his face, was walking backwards towards the palace gate, Song Tiaotiao found the right moment, aimed at the exposed skin on his body, and threw needles at them one by one.
Although the aim was off due to poor recovery, the anesthetic needle still hit the target.
The silver needle, as thin as a hair, was no longer within Song Tiaotiao's sight, but had pierced Li Huan's left fourth white acupoint squarely.
From time to time, Li Huan's face, which had suddenly turned pale, was covered with circles of blood along with these barely visible blood spots, which were reflected in his dark eyes like a surging sea of blood.
Li Huan expressionlessly brushed away the slight itch on his cheek. Then, as he looked down at the bloodstains on his fingertips, his eyes tightened. Then, his ferocious, cold eyes, like a venomous snake, locked onto Song Tiaotiao's body.
But before he could look for a moment, Gu Chengjue blocked his gaze with a cold face.
Li Huan reluctantly shifted his focus, finally finding the wound on Song Tiaotiao's wrist from the arrow. He sneered contentedly, "Gu Chengjue, you survived a three-thousand-mile exile, but along the way, so many of your beloved relatives and friends turned to skeletal remains before your eyes, perishing in a foreign land. Why don't you learn your lesson and come back to annoy me? Have you truly forgotten the pain? Do you really have to experience the pain of losing your loved ones all over again?"
Gu Chengjue's already dark eyes darkened even more upon hearing this. But if it were night, to be more precise, it would be a night of murder and arson.
The pent-up hatred of two lifetimes was the sorrow and shame he felt day and night, unable to do anything about the past, and wishing to kill himself. It was also the overwhelming desire that washed over him during sleepless nights, seeking to exact the lives of all those who had assisted him.
Thinking of this, Gu Chengjue fixed his eyes on Li Huan's smiling face, raised his sword, and said word by word, "Because you deserve to die."
Hearing this, Li Huan stared at the longsword pointed at his chest, then raised his eyes to gaze at the countless casualties outside the palace. As if knowing the outcome was lost, his eyes were tinged with a red, fiery madness. He laughed heartily, looking up to the sky, "I deserve to die, I do. But who in this world doesn't deserve to die? Are they all innocent? Have they never had selfish motives? After their country and family were destroyed, wouldn't they choose to endure humiliation and feel the joy of slaughtering the real culprit? You, the Gu family, all deserve to die! And I, too, did my best to give these executioners the most entertaining death possible... An orphan of the previous dynasty, with just a few words, was able to drive that bastard emperor and Gu Ning, his brothers, apart, into fratricide. How delightful, how delightful!"
At this point, Li Huan looked at Gu Chengjue, clapping his hands and laughing. But after the madness subsided, his downcast eyes held an unusual calmness. "Gu Chengjue, they all say that revenge never ends... In my life, I was born without a father or a mother, and to this day, I have no wife or children. I believe that after my death, the monkeys will scatter like the trees fall, and no one will miss me at all, except, of course, those who curse me and curse me for eternity. However, my clan, young and old, has been completely wiped out. I, a useless person, am dead today, and I don't think anyone will inherit my hatred... So, Chengjue... do you think this hatred will end here?"
The words had fallen, but no one answered his question because no one cared.
At this moment, apart from the swords circling around him from all directions, reflecting his miserable appearance, there was nothing responding to him.
In the silence that no one paid attention to, Li Huan also saw the civil and military officials who were supposed to be imprisoned by him.
Those old men who usually endured their anger and humiliation under his command were now walking across the stone steps without breathing, their faces filled with anger and resentment that they wished they could kill him as soon as possible.
Finally, it has come to this.
Li Huan felt the uncontrollable tingling all over his body. His fingertips trembled as he touched the source of the itch and smiled at himself.
The next moment, as if he had exhausted all his energy, he leaned against the palace door, smiled miserably, and chose to finish his last monologue: "Gu Chengjue, but I am unwilling to accept this? I have hated your Gu family for almost my entire life, and you only realized it now. This is not fair at all... I still remember that when we first met, we tacitly agreed not to tell each other our real names, but in those brief days, I sincerely treated you as a younger brother... So, it's not too much for me to want you to remember me. How about hating me for the rest of your life...?"
Song Lingshan dragged Li Huan to his feet, slumped over on the ground, and said coldly, "Li Huan, you've committed countless evil deeds, and you've already gotten what you wanted, haven't you?"
Li Huan passed by his shoulder and looked towards Gu Chengjue, smiling weakly, "But it's not enough... How can a person's hatred withstand the test of time? Only someone like me who has tasted the bitterness of blood feuds can understand."
At this point, Li Huan stared into Gu Chengjue's already blurry eyes. He used the last of his strength to repeatedly wipe his own eyes. But this world, which was about to no longer belong to him, didn't seem to want to give him a chance to say goodbye properly.
As his eyelids grew heavy and threatened to close, he clenched his palms tightly and spoke haltingly, "Gu Chengjue, you really like Song Tiaotiao, right? But that arrow's feathers are laced with every poison I can think of... Soon, the warmth in your palms, which you've been clenching all this way, will no longer be there. It will become cold and icy, like the snow in the northern borderlands. Never again will there be a warmth that people can rely on..."
After saying this, Li Huanhan smiled and slowly closed his eyes.
Song Tiaotiao looked down at the wrist where the antidote had just been applied, her dazed eyes blinking slowly.
It turned out that what she and her master did to be on the safe side was not wrong after all.
And they certainly weren't wrong about people's hearts. But... was this a deadly poison, or a poison that combined the strengths of many different poisons...?
Thinking of this, Song Tiaotiao's thoughts were like a kite with a broken string, floating unsteadily.
The only thing that could awaken a little of his consciousness was the urgent call in his ears:
“So far… so far…!”
She knew it was Gu Chengjue.
I can also feel those calls, each one more thrilling than the last.
But the intense pain from her internal organs was like a pair of tangible black hands. Not only did it tear at her wounds and burst out, but it also, along with the rush of her blood, climbed up to her neck, strangling her throat as she tried to respond, preventing her from uttering a single word.
Her world was plunged into darkness.
But there is still half a thought left.
"Tiaotiao, open the mall quickly!"
This voice had been around her ears many times, but she was unable to respond to this urgent voice.
Mall… ?
To her ears, it sounded like shattered fragments, and she couldn't make out the meaning.
She racked her brains to think, but the myriad thoughts that flashed through her mind were like the shattered snowflakes on a TV screen, or like a violent storm that swept across the world, breaking the string of the fluttering kite and causing Song Tiaotiao to lose consciousness in the silent struggle.
Somehow, Song Tiaotiao felt that a very long time had passed.
But now, she was trapped in a dark place, and her perception was particularly dull. Therefore, she had no way of distinguishing whether her feelings were true or not.
The only thing she felt right now was this silent and still silence.
It was so quiet that he couldn't even feel her breathing or heartbeat.
It's as if only the mind is active.
But after replaying all the laughter, anger and scolding in the past in her mind, the feeling she got was a rippleless calm.
It was like the moment when I accepted that my mother had truly passed away.
That day, she was alone, holding the square wooden box, following Jiang Liu's wish, watching her mother gradually move away from the shore, following the undulating waves under the setting sun.
In the days that followed, she became accustomed to this tranquility. To be more precise, it was like her shadow, following her everywhere.
Whether she should cry or laugh, in situations where she needs to express such emotions, she needs to put on a suitable mask and act according to the situation.
She was so indifferent and peaceful in all her perceptions, like a person frozen in a glacier, not moving at all.
until……
She came across a book.
That day, she worked overtime until the early morning, and suddenly she couldn't help but think of her mother.
She curled up on the sofa and looked at everything in the house related to her mother.
But the fact is that even though the layout of this house has not changed at all, the traces related to the mother are fading silently.
Thinking of this, she began to walk around the house aimlessly.
Just like that, she came to the study.
My mother's bookshelf is full of books because of her diverse interests. She has sorted all the books into different categories.
In the recent favorite column, Song Tiaotiao found the last one according to her mother's habit.
But this book has no cover, only a blank space with the words:
"A-Liu, this is the preliminary version of 'The Wind and Rain Record', and it's only available to you and me. And for the next installment, I've already decided on the name, based on your suggestion, 'The Wind and Rain Record'. It's an inspirational comeback story, so it shouldn't leave you wetting your pillow at night..."
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