"Sister Xiaoxiao!"
Amidst the clamor of voices, He Simu heard Xue Chen Ying's call. She slowly turned her head to look. Chen Ying was still wearing armor covered in blood stains. In He Simu's trembling gaze, he saw a hint of despair. He wanted to say something but hesitated due to others being present.
He Simu closed her eyes. It seemed only for a moment. When she opened them again, that fragile emotion had vanished. All her feelings sank deep within her eyes, like the indistinguishable boundary between sky and sea in the night.
She slowly stood up, turned her head, and walked away from the room without speaking to Chen Ying. He hurriedly turned to follow her. In a quiet, secluded corner, He Simu stopped, and Chen Ying halted behind her.
"What happened to Duan Xu?"
He Simu's tone had a slight tremor, her fists clenched tightly.
Chen Ying wrung his fingers and briefly told He Simu about their experiences over the past few days. After listening, He Simu softly repeated: "Trapped for three days?"
Chen Ying nodded somewhat confusedly. "Yes…"
"Is he mute? Three entire days and he couldn't call for me once!" He Simu's fist smashed into a nearby ornamental rock garden, instantly reducing it to powder.
She turned back, and Chen Ying saw her ghost-infused eyes, completely black without whites. She lowered her head, rubbing her temple, and asked softly, "How is he?"
"The arrow wound is only an inch from Third Brother's heart meridian. The physician who was called is the most famous healer in Qi Prefecture. The doctor said he might be able to treat this wound, but… but…" Chen Ying's eyes reddened. He gritted his teeth and continued, "But there's poison on the arrow… The doctor said if there's no antidote by tomorrow, Third Brother will… the poison will enter his marrow, and there will be no cure."
Tomorrow.
This meant if she hadn't happened to visit Duan Xu today, the next time she would see him would be his corpse.
He Simu gazed toward the busy, noisy place full of people coming and going. After a moment of silence, she asked, "Who injured him?"
"The army from the Dan border. Don't know exactly who—they escaped."
"Understood." He Simu replied briefly. "Take good care of him. Within a day, I'll bring back the antidote."
With that, she vanished into the darkness, transforming into a wisp of blue smoke.
When Lu Da returned to his room to rest, he suddenly heard unusual sounds from the doors and windows. As he turned around, something grabbed his throat and lifted him effortlessly. He struggled desperately and saw a woman's figure materialize in the center of the room. The woman was tall and pale, wearing an elaborate three-layered red and white curved-collar robe with elegant silver hairpins swaying in her hair. She looked at him coldly with completely black eyes.
"I've been asking around. The poison on the arrow that hit Duan Xu was concocted by you." He Simu extended her hand and said simply, "Give me the antidote."
"The Ghost King herself has come… truly separating public duty from private matters…" Lu Da laughed softly. Though his face turned purple from suffocation, he still calmly said, "I've also heard… that the Ghost King always trades… one thing for another in the mortal world."
He Simu stepped closer to him. "What do you want?"
Lu Da raised his finger to point at the jade pendant emitting a faint blue light at He Simu's waist.
"The Ghost King's Lantern."
He Simu's pupils suddenly contracted. Lu Da was released to the floor and began coughing violently. Ghost energy densely filled the room, indicating the Ghost King's fury. He Simu laughed coldly. "Perhaps you know an evil ghost named Yan Ke?"
Lu Da lowered his hand from his chest and looked at He Simu without speaking.
He Simu mocked, "I never expected that the Grand Priest of Dan, the Grand Priest who worships the Azure God, would, like the father he despises, ally himself with evil ghosts."
Lu Da's face turned pale, whether from being choked by He Simu or for some other reason. He calmly said, "I know what I'm doing is heresy. As long as Dan can remain safe, I alone will bear all punishment. Duan Xu has borrowed your matchless power; he must die, or you must lose your power."
He Simu tilted her head at Lu Da, seemingly finding it absurd. "You think Duan Xu has won until now because I've helped him?"
If he were truly as good at seeking help as Lu Da claimed, she wouldn't be standing here now.
Lu Da simply said, "Ghost King, I made the poison, and I'm the only one in the world who knows the antidote. You can do anything, even bring the Emperor here, and I would only take my own life immediately. Without the Ghost King's Lantern, I won't give you the antidote. I may not match you, but you can't cut open my brain either."
The handsome and proud white-robed priest gazed at the Ghost King. The candlelight in the room flickered restlessly, illuminating He Simu's pale face and the deep emotions swirling in her eyes. Lu Da nervously gripped the corner of his robe.
After a moment, He Simu smiled faintly. "Lu Da, you fundamentally don't understand the battlefield and shouldn't have been involved in this. Of course, you're also unsuited to be a priest. You want to maintain this country fractured by foreign rule with a unified faith—such a wish itself is laughably naive."
She approached Lu Da, her icy finger poking his chest, the chill penetrating his heart.
"Lu Da, your life is destined to be out of place and fruitless. As for me…" she smiled lightly, "Although Duan Xu and I have some feelings between us, how could I give you the Ghost King's Lantern for his sake? You're far too naive."
Lu Da's eyes flickered, but he still insisted, "You only have one day. Without the antidote by tomorrow, he will die."
"All people die eventually. Today or tomorrow, what difference does it make?" He Simu's gaze was contemptuous.
The moon reached its zenith, and the clamor of Qi Prefecture gradually subsided. Chen Ying sat by Duan Xu's bed, holding his hand, anxiously wiping the fine beads of sweat from his forehead. The doctor had just treated Duan Xu's wound and redressed it. Now Duan Xu was deathly pale. Lost in some dream, his eyeballs moved rapidly beneath his eyelids. His unease escalated to a peak, and he began to speak in an extremely faint voice.
Chen Ying bent down and heard Duan Xu calling weakly—"Simu… He Simu…"
Chen Ying thought that this was how his mother had called his name before she died.
He tried to hold back but ultimately couldn't keep from crying. He kept praying in his heart, begging that his loved one would not leave him again. He would never slack off in his training again. The next time danger came, he would protect Third Brother properly.
Duan Xu's feeble calls scattered into the wind, crossing countless mountains and rivers to reach He Simu's ears.
"He's calling for me."
He Simu had already left Dan and was now in Yu Zhou City. In the darkness, only the Ghost King's Lantern at her waist emitted a faint blue light. She said softly, "Now he finally knows to call for me."
This was the top of Mount Xu Sheng, perhaps the most scenic spot in all of Yu Zhou City. Looking one way, you could see the white houses of Yu Zhou City covered as if in heavy snow; looking the other way, you could see the myriad lights of the mortal world—half in the human realm, half in the ghost domain. She had buried her parents together in one grave here.
She crouched down, leaning against the tombstone as if leaning on their shoulders when they were alive. Outside, she was the Ghost King, admired by thousands and feared by countless ghosts. But here, she was merely someone's daughter.
"It's been a long time since I visited you. I'm about to avenge you soon, Father. Look at you, so troublesome, getting schemed against. Your daughter still has to help you clean up your mess."
He Simu stroked the characters on the tombstone, the names she had carefully written stroke by stroke three hundred years ago, now somewhat blurred. Three hundred years didn't seem like such a long time. It was as if she had slept in confusion and suddenly awakened to find three hundred years had passed.
"I truly don't understand why Yan Ke so desperately wants to be the Ghost King. All these years I've watched him, trying to find something that would make me interested in the position of Ghost King, but I can't find anything."
"What is the Ghost King? Upon the throne, there is only sacrifice."
Those evil ghosts fighting for the throne didn't understand this at all.
He Simu looked up at the night sky, her fingers tapping on her bent knee. She said carelessly, "If it's just sacrifice, what's one more loss in Duan Xu? He's just an ordinary part of all sacrifices."
Perhaps it was only because this person was too vivid and passionate that she felt sad. Before this, she had never associated the word "death" with him. She had briefly forgotten that he was human, forgotten that his temples would turn gray and he would become nothing but bones.
Since he was mortal, what difference did it make whether he died tomorrow or lived several decades longer? It was all but the blink of an eye.
"Life and death go on in cycles. There will be many more people like him in this world. But I might have to wait a few hundred years to meet another curse-binder. Just a few hundred years—I can still afford to wait."
He Simu leaned against the tombstone, gently caressing the Ghost King's Lantern at her waist, and laughed softly. "Looking at it this way, he's just an ordinary person after all."
A long silence followed. In the darkness, a desolate north wind arose, making the trees rustle. Threads of wind wrapped around the world, blowing He Simu's long hair and robes, strands of hair brushing across her eyes and lips.
"The weather is turning cold," He Simu said softly.
—Your hands are so cold, but if I warm them, they'll be fine.
"He's always so warm."
"He also said he wanted to build a colorful palace in Yu Zhou City. So gaudy—I never thought he would like such things."
"I still haven't learned to ride a horse. Last time I fell off, and he said he would teach me again. I told him I wouldn't ride horses anymore, but actually, I was embarrassed. I seem very clumsy as a mortal."
He Simu spoke and began to laugh, then fell silent again. It felt as if magma was seeping through cracks in her heart, flowing everywhere, burning wood and grass.
She slowly pressed her forehead against the hard stone tablet and said softly, "Father, Mother, I seem to have become very strange lately. Was I always this afraid of being alone?"
"Mother, I went to find your reincarnation. She's a very cute and beautiful little girl. I watched her walk away but never spoke to her in the end. She will have a new life, lover, and children. She is not my mother; she is not you. I built this tombstone here for you, but you're no longer in this world. I can never find you again. No one can hear anything I say now. This is what separation means."
"Duan Xu is the same. When Duan Xu dies, there will never be another Duan Xu in this world."
He Simu stood before her parents' tombstone until the first light of dawn appeared. Then she poured the fine wine she had brought onto the tombstone and said softly, "I tasted this wine when I still had my sense of taste. It's excellent."
"I can win without the Ghost King's Lantern. But doing this would probably disappoint you." After a pause, He Simu said, "Perhaps I'm not fit to be the Ghost King at all."
Then she slowly bent down to embrace the tombstone, holding it tightly, murmuring, "I don't want to be the Ghost King either."
—One day, you will, like your father, maintain the balance between ghosts and humans to protect this world.
The memory was too distant; she could barely remember her mother's voice and appearance when saying these words. He Simu laughed softly. She straightened up and once again became the formidable Ghost King of the ghost realm, whose moods were as unpredictable as they were powerful.
"Very well, I will do my best."
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