Chapter 32: So This Is How Much It Hurts

"You're being too good to him."

It was Xie Changji who said it, and he was not wrong. The engagement had been broken by her own mother. Wen Shaoqing had still come to the Hehuan Palace to make trouble. He had poisoned the Heavenly Sword Sect's disciples at her wedding banquet for reasons that were entirely his own. In every one of these things, he had given no consideration to her at all.

And still she protected him.

Xie Changji looked at her and waited.

Hua Xiangwan looked at the fire for a moment, her expression quiet. "He liked following me around when we were small."

Xie Changji said nothing.

"When we were young," she said, with a tone that carried its memory lightly, "Hehuan Palace was still the most powerful sect in the Western Region. He and the Qin sisters — Yunyi and Yunshang — were all sent there to study. He was a chubby little boy. Lazy, and always hungry. The training at Hehuan Palace was strict; he used to find corners to hide in and cry. I felt sorry for him, so sometimes I would bring him buns in the middle of the night."

She paused. "His talent was ordinary. Among the three young masters of the palace, he was always the least remarkable — people said so, privately, and he knew it. His temper got worse as the years went on, but he always kept it in check around me." She looked into the fire. "When I was eighteen and left the Western Region, he came to see me off. He asked me suddenly whether I had considered marriage. He said his mother wanted him to ask if we might be matched — that with my position and the state of the Western Region, there was no one more suitable than him."

"And you refused," Xie Changji said.

"Of course I did. With my talent, with the Hehuan Palace's standing, why would I need a marriage alliance? I refused him and went to Yunlai. But what I didn't expect—" she stopped. Started again. "What I didn't expect was that the Hehuan Palace would fall. That I would lose everything. And that I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, and the only person who came to me would be him."

Xie Changji was quiet.

He had heard this story before, more than once. Every time, it lodged somewhere in him that no injury he had sustained in two hundred years had reached.

"When I woke up," Hua Xiangwan said, continuing in that same unhurried voice, "Mingluan Palace was demanding that Hehuan Palace be downgraded to one of the Nine Sects. Every sect that falls in grade loses access to resources — and Hehuan Palace was already devastated. Downgrading would have made recovery almost impossible. The Demon Lord opposed it. So did everyone else, in the other direction. Only Shaoqing stood in the main hall and said he would marry me — that Qingle Palace and Hehuan Palace would form a marriage alliance, and he would personally guarantee that Hehuan Palace would recover to match the Three Palaces within a hundred years. He nearly lost his position as young master of Qingle Palace over that. His mother eventually brought him back."

She was quiet for a moment. "In two hundred years, he has been difficult sometimes. But mostly he has taken care of me." She glanced down at Wen Shaoqing, still and unconscious in her arms. "This engagement — the breaking of it happened while he was away. He had gone to find a spiritual infant to repair my golden core, and then there was an accident involving the Demon Lord, and his mother used the opening. I had decided to wait for him. But then Qin Yunyi came and told me I was a burden to him."

Wen Shaoqing's body went rigid, almost imperceptibly. Hua Xiangwan seemed not to notice.

"I had already been a burden for two hundred years. I didn't want to make it longer. So I went to the Heavenly Sword Sect to propose a match, and I found you instead."

She looked up at Xie Changji, and something genuinely apologetic came into her face. "He came back to find me already married, and lost his temper — that's understandable. Please don't hold it against him. I'm your wife now, and I will be fully that. Only—"

She looked back at the fire, quiet for a moment.

"He is, in the end, the most particular person in my life. I hope you'll allow me to keep him in my heart."

The charcoal popped softly.

Xie Changji looked at her. He had known, he thought, what she would ask. He didn't answer.

Hua Xiangwan seemed to know he wouldn't. She lowered her head slightly, breathed out once, and gently removed Wen Shaoqing's hand from wherever it had found its way. She set him down carefully and covered him with a blanket.

She turned to Xie Changji. "You should sleep. You've been up."

"You're unwell," he said. "You take the bed. I'll stay with him."

She looked at him, then looked back at Wen Shaoqing, who appeared still unconscious.

"Thank you," she said, politely, and went to the bed. She lay down with her back to both of them, pulled the blanket up, and — with full composure, methodically — reached inside it and wiped Wen Shaoqing's hands clean.

Xie Changji looked at Wen Shaoqing on the ground for a moment. Then he sat down beside him and looked at the fire.

The flames moved. High, low. Bright, dim.

Wen Shaoqing, facing away from both of them, slowly closed his fist.

---

The three of them slept, each with their own thoughts, and were quiet about it.

By morning, Wen Shaoqing was still seriously injured. He woke to find Hua Xiangwan and Xie Changji already dressed. Xie Changji was packing. Hua Xiangwan sat by the fire, a handkerchief in her hand, holding it in the flames and watching it burn.

Wen Shaoqing watched this with confusion. "Awan. What are you doing?"

She looked up, easy and unhurried. "It got dirty, so I'm burning it." Her expression shifted to something warmer, looking at him properly. "How are your injuries?"

"Much better."

He sat up. She hesitated, then asked: "You're here for the Blood Token?"

It didn't need an answer, really — they were both participants in the Demon Lord's Trial, both in the same mountains. But she asked anyway. Before he could answer, she said: "You're here for Qin Yunyi, aren't you?"

She had reasoned it out: Qin Yunyi was also in the Trial, and their engagement must have been settled between their families already.

"No," Wen Shaoqing said, quickly. "Awan, I came because—" He became aware of Xie Changji in the room. His voice stopped. He didn't finish.

Xie Changji set down what he'd been packing and turned to Hua Xiangwan. "Let's go."

Hua Xiangwan stood, with a small reluctance in her expression. "Shaoqing. Our positions are opposed now. We shouldn't travel together."

Wen Shaoqing's face went pale. "Awan, I'll come with you."

She stopped. Looked uncertain. Then she looked at Xie Changji.

That glance — Wen Shaoqing felt it in his back teeth.

He brought himself under control. He had lost his composure last night and knew it. He made his case steadily: "I have the Dragon-Seeking Compass. Goddess Mountain is the largest range in Qingyue — without direction, you'll waste days. And—" He looked at her directly. "Awan. I can't do this without you."

Wu Li had betrayed him. He was still injured. There were other trial participants somewhere on this mountain. He couldn't guarantee his own safety if he was left here.

Hua Xiangwan considered this. Then she nodded. "All right. Come with us."

His face changed completely — relief, brightness. "Do we know the direction?"

"We need to wait a quarter hour," he said, the Dragon-Seeking Compass already in mind. "I can confirm the route at the juncture of morning and afternoon. Only then does it work, and only once a day."

Hua Xiangwan sat back down. The question she asked next — so you came to Yunsheng Town using it? — led him to explain that they hadn't relied on it to get here; Lin Lu was from Qingle Palace, her movements predictable, and they'd come directly.

He paused, and his voice shifted. "Awan. I'm sorry. The woman I arranged to enter Hehuan Palace — I didn't mean harm. I only wanted to know about you."

Hua Xiangwan looked at Xie Changji, who had sat beside her. "It's all in the past," she said, not quite meeting anyone's eyes.

All in the past. Wen Shaoqing felt that phrase close around something in his chest.

Xie Changji, watching the two of them, asked calmly: "After arriving in Yunsheng Town, you went to the Lin family?"

Hua Xiangwan turned to Wen Shaoqing immediately, her full attention swinging back to him.

He felt the relief of it even as he registered the mechanism — something about being asked about the investigation made her eyes return to him. He held onto it and told the story: the Lin family mansion, sealed by the Dao Sect twenty years after the massacre. The corpses accounted for except one — a woman, found quietly in her bed, who turned to ash the moment the door was opened. And the paintings throughout the house, every one of them, showing the same woman without a face.

He produced the scroll from his qiankun bag. "Awan, come look."

She came and sat beside him. He watched Xie Changji across from them, reading his stillness carefully, and unrolled the painting: a man with a gentle smile, a woman in wedding dress, the woman's face entirely absent from the image.

The woman in the painting, Hua Xiangwan noted, had legs concealed by the dress, but the fall of it suggested something too long, tapering to a point like a fishtail.

Not fully human, then.

Wen Shaoqing walked her through it: none of the paintings showed her face. The Dao Sect official said when the soldiers entered, she turned to ash before anyone reached her. He suspected a paper doll — from the Witchcraft Sect — or a puppet, used in her place.

"She didn't want her face preserved," Hua Xiangwan said slowly. "Because she still uses it. She's still alive."

"She's still alive," Xie Changji confirmed.

A light activated on the Dragon-Seeking Compass, a blue needle settling to point upward — toward the summit.

Hua Xiangwan reached out to touch it, curious, and caught her finger on a reverse scale. Blood welled immediately. Wen Shaoqing caught her hand before she'd registered the pain, turning it over, his voice briefly urgent: "You have to be more careful—"

"It's time," Xie Changji said.

Wen Shaoqing released her, turned back to the compass, added his blood to activate it properly, and closed his eyes to read the direction.

Xie Changji took Hua Xiangwan's hand, channeled his spiritual energy carefully into the cut. She let her own energy close the wound and looked across at Wen Shaoqing while Xie Changji, without any comment or explanation, ran his thumb slowly over the place where Wen Shaoqing had held her hand a moment before. As if cleaning something away.

The compass needle steadied: the summit.

They went.

---

Wen Shaoqing, who was a zither cultivator and not a sword cultivator, who had not spent years hardening his body in ice and snow the way Xie Changji had, walked in the cold with his teeth clenched. He would not shiver. Not where Xie Changji could see.

The three of them walked most of the day. Toward dusk, Hua Xiangwan heard singing.

She stopped. "Listen."

It was different from before — different phrasing, different cadence. Wen Shaoqing lifted his head and listened carefully. Then the ground shook.

Xie Changji pulled Hua Xiangwan's hand, turned, scanned the surrounding landscape, and took the sword from his qiankun bag — the one she had produced the night before, which he had quietly kept.

"Beast taming," Wen Shaoqing said, the recognition arriving with an almost excited edge. "That's the sound — it's summoning beasts tonight."

A wolf howled. Then they were surrounded.

The fight lasted until the mountain face presented an exit: a sheer cliff above them, high enough to feel the pressure of something like a sect's ascension ladder, radiating a force that intensified with altitude. Below them, a tide of animals. Above, an unclear summit.

They had no other direction.

Xie Changji sent Hua Xiangwan up first and stayed below, working steadily through the animals that followed.

Higher up, the pressure increased. The animals stopped mid-cliff, sensing it and retreating. The three humans kept going.

By the midpoint, Hua Xiangwan was struggling. Wen Shaoqing's face had drained of color. Xie Changji felt the press of it too — in such places, the higher the cultivation, the greater the burden. No exceptions.

Hua Xiangwan had no spiritual energy. Her body was beginning to go cold.

She didn't say so.

She kept climbing, breathing hard.

Xie Changji looked at her, looked up at the distance left, and placed his hand over hers on the rock face.

He didn't exert any downward force — two people's weight on one grip would be dangerous. He only laid his hand over hers. Which meant he was holding the cliff with one hand.

Spiritual energy flowed from him into her — warmth, immediate and thorough, melting the ice from her fingers, the cold from her arms. Hua Xiangwan felt it arrive and turned to see him: five fingers dug into the rock, his face set, holding double the suppression force with a single grip so she didn't have to feel half of hers.

"Let go," she said, breathless.

"Climb," he said.

She looked at him. He looked up. "Climb."

There was no argument to be made. She had to get through. She turned back to the rock and moved faster, and he stayed below her, bearing what she couldn't.

Half the night. Every foot, harder than the last.

At the summit edge, Hua Xiangwan pulled herself onto the platform first. Xie Changji, behind her, let go of her hand — he was clearly exhausted, his face the color of paper. He nodded once. She went over.

A gust of wings.

A giant eagle struck the cliff face.

The rock beneath them came apart. Xie Changji and Wen Shaoqing both lost their footing in the same moment and fell.

The snow peaks shuddered. An avalanche began to unspooling from above — white weight pouring down the mountain in every direction.

Both men reached toward her simultaneously.

Hua Xiangwan lunged forward.

She grabbed Wen Shaoqing's hand.

Xie Changji saw it. His eyes went wide — the single instant of it — and then he was falling, and the snow was coming down, and Hua Xiangwan was already being pulled back toward the cave by Wen Shaoqing's shout — he's at the Tribulation Transcending stage, he'll survive, run! — and then they were gone. Gone from view. Snow covered everything.

He fell.

The wind was very loud.

He was thinking, in the falling, about Wanwan — about a hundred years ago, and a high platform, and a person turning away. He had watched it. He had never understood, quite, what it cost. He had told himself the reasons, the necessities, the logic of what was owed.

Below him, the animals waited the way demons had waited then, watching something divine descend.

The cliff face blurred past him. He was out of strength.

He thought: so this is how much it hurts.

He thought: her own Wanwan, back then, must have felt far worse than this.

He hit the ground.

The avalanche came down and covered everything. Darkness closed completely.

He understood, in the last clarity before it did:

It doesn't matter the reason.

It doesn't matter the justification.

The one who is left behind suffers like this.