The more Xie Lian thought about it, the more confusing and complicated this matter seemed to him. He asked, "General, why did Imperial Preceptor Ban Yue open the gates and lead his troops to massacre the city?"
Unexpectedly, Ke Mo said, "You killed my brother. I won't answer you. I will fight you!"
San Lang said, "I killed him. He didn't do it. You can answer him and then fight me."
“…”
Xie Lian thought, this is so logical that it's impossible to refute it. Ke Mo angrily said, "You're all just that bitch's helpers. You're all the same!"
Xie Lian immediately said, “General Ke Mo, you must have misunderstood something. We originally came to this desert to eliminate Imperial Preceptor Ban Yue. How could we be her hired help?”
Upon hearing that he came to eliminate Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor, Ke Mo fell silent. After a moment, he added, "If she didn't send you, why did you kill my brothers? Only she would want to do that!"
Xie Lian reasoned with him, “Isn’t it because you abandoned us that we had no choice but to protect ourselves?”
Ke Mo was furious and shouted, "Nonsense! I didn't mean to throw you off at all! I clearly caught you just now, and it was you who insisted on jumping down!"
“…”
There was really no way to respond to this. Xie Lian was almost confused by it, so he could only say, "Well, well, even if we weren't thrown down, someone else would have been. We can't just stand by and watch this happen. You're cannibalizing people."
Ke Mo seemed to be filled with hatred when he thought about it, and said, "Eating people was also caused by that bitch!"
It seemed he truly hated Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor. Xie Lian said, "General, we're all trapped in this pit right now. Stop cursing and figure out how to get out. What's going on with Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor?"
Ke Mo said coldly, "You two are so cunning and despicable. If you attack me together, I won't be able to defeat you. But I won't answer any more of your questions."
Xie Lian felt a little depressed. He rubbed his brow and said, "I only hit you once. Really just once."
He didn't mind being called despicable and cunning. If the situation was dire, let alone two against one, he wouldn't be embarrassed to bring a hundred people to beat one person, so who would want to fight you one on one? But just now, Sanlang clearly believed that he had the upper hand, and he also told Xie Lian not to attack, but Ke Mo seemed to think that he could defeat him in a single fight. Xie Lian was really upset for him. Sanlang didn't seem upset at all, and said happily: "Yes, I did it. What do you think?"
Ke Mo remained stubborn and said, "Just now you two teamed up to beat me up, and now you're teaming up to criticize me. How despicable! I won't answer you."
He was extremely uncooperative, but Xie Lian wasn't impatient. Judging from his demeanor, he thought it would be easy to win him over. He thought, "Take your time. It'll be fine." Sanlang, however, showed little patience. He casually said, "For your brother's sake, it's best if you answer him."
Ke Mo said, "You have already killed them. Don't try to threaten me with them."
Sanlang said: "He is dead, but his body is still there."
Ke Mo seemed unable to lie still any longer and asked cautiously, "What do you want?"
San Lang smiled and said, "Then I have to ask you, what do you want?"
Just by listening to the voice, Xie Lian could already imagine the way he narrowed his eyes as he said this: "Do you want them to be healthy in the afterlife, or do you want them to be born as a pool of blood?"
Ke Mo was stunned at first, then he understood what he meant. He seemed to be about to explode and roared, "You?!"
The Banyue people attached great importance to funeral rituals. They believed that the appearance of the deceased's body at death would determine their future in the afterlife. For example, if one died with one arm missing, they would be reborn as a one-armed person in the next life. If the body at the bottom of the pit was truly crushed into a pool of blood, wouldn't this afterlife be worse than nothing?
Judging from General Ke Mo's attitude and actions just now, he was a true Ban Yue person. These customs and philosophies were undoubtedly deeply ingrained in him, and he valued his "brothers" immensely. Using this as a threat was a good strategy. Sure enough, Ke Mo held his breath for a moment in the darkness, suppressing his anger. After a long moment, he finally said helplessly, "Don't touch the bodies of my brothers! They were all brave and good soldiers. It's unfortunate that they've been confined to this prison for so many years. Killing them today, I wonder if it's a relief. But their bodies must never be subjected to such an insult again."
After a pause, he continued, "Are you really here to kill that bitch?"
Xie Lian said gently, "I'm not lying. As the saying goes, knowing yourself and your enemy ensures victory in every battle. Outsiders know very little about Imperial Preceptor Ban Yue's deeds, and it's difficult to know how to deal with her. But General Ke Mo, since you've worked with her before, you should be able to offer us some pointers."
Perhaps it was because they shared a common enemy, Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor, that engendered a shared hatred for the enemy. Or perhaps it was because he had fallen into an abyss from which he could not climb out. Sitting atop a pile of his soldiers' corpses, disheartened, Ke Mo seemed to temporarily relinquish his attack on the murderer. He said, "Don't you know why she opened the gates and let the Central Plains people in to destroy our country? Because she wanted to oppose us. She hates us! She hates Ban Yue Nation!"
Xie Lian asked, “What do you mean by Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor…”
Ke Mo corrected him, "Demon!"
It seemed that he was no longer willing to acknowledge the black-clad girl as his country's Imperial Preceptor. Xie Lian said, "Alright, demonic Taoist. What do you mean by she hates you? If she hates you, how did she become the Imperial Preceptor?"
Amidst Ke Mo's words, punctuated with curses, Xie Lian finally grasped the general thread of events.
The Banyue Imperial Master was the son of a Banyue woman and a Central Plains man. In this borderland, where the peoples of the two nations loathed each other, this interracial couple faced immense hardship. After several years, the Central Plains man, unable to endure this life, left the border and returned to the Central Plains. Although they had agreed to separate, the Banyue woman died soon after from a heart attack.
They left behind a six or seven-year-old daughter, unattended, wandering the streets, growing up hungry and hungry. The couple was looked down upon, and so were their children. The Ban Yue people were all tall, and both men and women valued strength and vigor. But this girl, a mixed-race child, stood out among the Ban Yue children, looking incredibly thin and frail. As a result, she was often bullied, gradually developing a gloomy and eccentric personality. Ban Yue children wouldn't play with her, but some children from the Central Plains were willing to pay attention.
When the girl was twelve, a riot broke out on the border, and the two armies fought another battle. After this battle, the girl disappeared. She had few relatives or friends in Ban Yue Country, and no one asked about her whereabouts for several years. However, when she reappeared, the situation was very different.
It turned out that over the past few years, she had trekked thousands of miles alone through the Gobi Desert to the Central Plains. Somehow, she had encountered something extraordinary there, but she had learned some incredibly uncanny magical skills, even the ability to control the scorpion-tailed snake, the most venomous creature feared by the Half Moon people.
Seeing her return, some of the Banyue people were impressed, but also felt fear. This was because the girl's personality had not changed at all, she was still so gloomy and withdrawn. Many Banyue people had bullied her in the past, but now she had entered the palace and became a highly respected mage. If she wanted to retaliate against them one day, wouldn't she cause trouble for them?
So these people reported to the palace, saying that the girl was an envoy sent by the vicious scorpion-tailed snake to harm the Half Moon Kingdom and should be hanged.
By then, Ke Mo was already a renowned and valiant general of the Ban Yue Kingdom. Having worked with the young woman several times, he felt her actions were very much to his liking: prudent and disciplined, she harbored no intention of harming the state. He therefore vouched for her, rebuffing any malicious voices. Furthermore, Ke Mo, having suffered bullying from his peers as a child due to his frail health, empathized with the young woman and naturally paid her considerable attention. The more he observed her, the more he realized her immense abilities. He recommended her throughout his career, single-handedly securing her the position of Imperial Preceptor, and, as later generations recorded, she became Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor's most devoted supporter.
Who knew that this imperial teacher was actually harboring evil intentions, only disguised extremely well? She hated the Banyue Kingdom so much that she returned from her training to seek revenge on this country, and her method of revenge was to suddenly open the city gates at the most intense moment of the battle!
Ke Mo, who was fighting hard with the enemy, became furious when he heard that the imperial teacher had opened the city gate.
No matter how brave he was, he was powerless to turn the tide. But even if he was destined to die in battle, he would kill the traitor before dying!
So he led a team of soldiers to rush up to the city wall, dragged down the imperial teacher, and hanged him on the prisoner pit.
As the army passed through, the entire Banyue Kingdom was transformed into a dead country. The imperial preceptor and generals who died in the war were trapped in this dead city, transformed into "evil".
Neither side could leave the ruins, yet their hatred for each other persisted. Ke Mo led his Half Moon Army, searching for the Imperial Master. Whenever they caught her, they would hang her once more over the Sinner's Pit. Meanwhile, the Half Moon Imperial Master, elusive and unpredictable, hunted down the Half Moon soldiers and shoved them into the Sinner's Pit. She had set up a powerful formation around the Sinner's Pit, preventing anyone from climbing out. The resentment of the fallen soldiers was so deep that they could only devour their flesh and blood to assuage their hatred, otherwise they would wail night after night, unable to find relief.
Seeing his once-brave soldiers reduced to this state, Ke Mo was filled with anguish. Fortunately, the scorpion-tailed snakes of Ban Yue Imperial Master were extremely aggressive, occasionally crawling out of the ancient city to bite anyone. Caravans wounded by the scorpion-tailed snakes would enter the city in search of the Good Moon Grass and be captured by Ke Mo. They would be thrown into the Sinner Pit to feed the soldiers who could not escape.
Xie Lian listened in rapt concentration as he heard this fragmented account. After a long pause, Ke Mo fell silent. He finally asked, "Did you cultivate that patch of Good Moon Grass in the palace? Did you bury that man?"
Ke Mo said, "That's right. The man buried in the ground wanted to steal the treasures from the imperial palace. But all the treasures in our country were looted two hundred years ago. He didn't find any treasure, but he wants to use them as fertilizer for us."
Hearing this, Xie Lian fell silent again.
He felt that Ke Mo was lying.
Or, at least, Ke Mo was hiding something.
The fact that these Half Moon soldiers were willing to cultivate the Good Moon Grass, even using living humans as fertilizer, showed that even though they were no longer human, their fear of the Scorpion Tailed Snake hadn't diminished in the slightest. This meant that when they were alive, this fear must have been even greater.
However, if Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor could control the very scorpion-tailed snake they feared most, how could he be so easily dragged off the city wall and hanged by a group of soldiers? Moreover, according to Ke Mo, he had captured the Imperial Preceptor time and again over the past two hundred years, and he had hanged him time and time again.
The scorpion-tailed snake that crawled out of the ancient city to bite people is also of concern. Was it an accident? Could such a coincidence really be so? Was it intentional on the part of the Imperial Master? But if so, wouldn't that be tantamount to paving the way for Ke Mo to capture people alive and feed them to his soldiers? Wouldn't the opposing narratives be contradictory?
The formation surrounding the Sinner's Pit was set by the Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor. If she could set it, she could also break it. In other words, even if she swept a group of soldiers down, she could still release them. But, if that was the case, what was their purpose in feigning hostility?
But before all these confusing clues, there is still a mystery - the identity of the lady in white and her companions.
After thinking for a moment, Xie Lian decided to ask a few more questions to determine how credible Ke Mo's words were. He said, "General Ke Mo, when we entered the city just now, we saw two people on the street, one black and one white..."
At this moment, Saburo whispered, "Shh."
Although he didn't know what was going on, Xie Lian immediately stopped talking. A strange intuition made him look up.
It was still the same square patch of dark blue night sky, the same cold white half-moon. However, beside the half-moon, he saw a person in the distance, a small figure in black sticking out, looking down.
After watching for a while, the man's half body suddenly turned into his whole body - and jumped down.
As they fell, Xie Lian could clearly see that this person had long hair and a thin body. It was none other than the Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor who had been hanging on the long pole earlier!
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