Chapter 298

Better to break than to remain intact...

Li Piaocing stood before the window looking at the cold autumn moon, thinking blankly.

In these days, there was no one she could pour her heart out to.

But she still truly hoped that all of this would not happen, hoped that everyone could believe in her one more time, that everyone would work together to pull Cuiyu out of the predicament again.

But this day finally arrived.

In the deep, lonely night, cold sword light cut through her bedroom window.

Li Piaocing was still sitting at the table under the candlelight. In these past few days, she had almost not touched the bed. When these familiar faces surrounded her, the young girl looked at them wearily, unable to say a word.

She had never wanted to see this moment, but she had indeed prepared for its actual occurrence.

She bypassed everyone and went directly to see every frontline disciple. They had grown up with her, practiced swords with her, skipped classes with her. Now, they had also promised to fight the rebels with her.

However, when she drew her long sword, not a single one of the people she had arranged responded.

There was only her one sword, facing the five surrounding her.

So they had long since contacted each other.

In the coldness of body and mind, Li Piaocing, with her wounded body holding the sword, supported herself under the swords of several people for a full two quarter-hours, but in the end, she was still defeated and captured.

Li Weiru never appeared.

They took her away from the bedroom.

Yet even though her mind and body were exhausted to the extreme, Li Piaocing still did not give up or collapse.

She looked back and carefully considered the process, guessing which link had gone wrong, wanting to find the mole who had revealed her arrangements.

She was also constantly observing every detail, looking for every shred of possibility to turn defeat into victory.

She could endure betrayal and lack of understanding, because she firmly believed that if the people of Cuiyu still had a shred of life, it could only be in her hands.

And these people did not hurt her, nor did they take her to the prison cliff dungeon, nor did they take her down from Cuiyu, looking like they were surrendering to the enemy.

They took her to that side hall of secret meetings. Behind the door panels and window shadows, the lamp light was still shining there.

"Go in, Little Junior Sister." Arriving before the door, Shen Yao at her side said in a low voice.

"Okay." The young girl's expression was calm. Even at this time, she still tried not to reveal any fragility. "I'll just take a look and see who all disagrees with me."

She walked in first.

She froze completely in place.

In the silence, the young girl opened her mouth, but there was only trembling and mumbling; for the first time, genuine panic and helplessness appeared on her face.

It was never any secret meeting; the people of an entire side hall quietly cast their gazes toward her. Those people she had arranged were, without exception, among them.

There was no mole or betrayal; the entire Cuiyu mountain gate was hostile to her alone.

"Little Junior Sister, we intend to send you away," Shen Yao said in a low voice.

Li Piaocing turned her head abruptly to look at her, speechless.

"We never blamed you," she looked at the pale young girl with pity. "Junior Sister, when we parted at the Changdao Martial Arts Hall, I told you, 'I can never understand and would never dare to do such a thing.' You dared to do it; you are truly amazing... so you were wrong, and we don't blame you either."

"But you cannot keep going wrong, Little Junior Sister," Shen Yao lowered her brows. "You are still young; your future is the brightest among us. We will send you away from Shaolong. As for what follows, we will follow the Sect Master to do it."

The hundred people in the hall looked at her with the same gaze; in those eyes was the same rejection and tolerance... Li Piaocing could not say a word.

Even in such a predicament, they did not pour their anger upon her, nor did they commit acts of internal strife.

Cuiyu had not lost its soul; they just... really did not accept her anymore.

Li Piaocing really wanted to say that a desperate fight was necessary, really wanted to say that Master's inaction had no chance of survival, really wanted to say that our Cuiyu now must break before it can stand... But facing these pairs of eyes, she suddenly could not find any reason to insist on herself at all.

You can never give up on Cuiyu in the face of any test, but what if Cuiyu... does not choose you itself?

To continue insisting, is it for Cuiyu, or is it forcibly extending one's own solitary will?

After a long silence, "... Okay," Li Piaocing lowered her head, and she heard herself say.

The world fell into darkness.

Just as predicted in the ancestral land, before Miss Yi Chengxin, who had already obtained one hundred and eighty years of heart-candle cultivation, Li Piaocing lost this candle-trial completely.

In this round, she could not remember the heart-poison candle-sword at all, nor could she remember what she was fighting against. The heart-poison used the maximum power it could erupt with to drown out the flame of the candle-head in one fell swoop.

This heart-refining came to an end here.

But when those pitch-black waves were about to completely annihilate the flame-flower, they suddenly encountered a firm obstruction.

In the pitch-black heart, the wrapped flame seemed to have condensed into gold and iron. No matter how the pitch-black surged, it could not extinguish this golden flower.

In the gray-white world of all things, the young girl's soft murmur suddenly rang out: "Where the will tends, there is no distance that cannot be reached; even the poorest mountains and the farthest seas cannot limit it."

She suddenly was no longer a part of the gray-white; she became agile and came alive.

There was no need for the step of chaos dividing into yin and yang, because the so-called heart-poison candle-sword had long been incomparably clear in the young girl's heart.

Light and shadow began to divide, brightness and darkness, up and down. This process was the first step of practicing "Transmitting the Heart-Candle"—forming the heart-candle.

Just now, before the young girl withdrew her gaze from the wall, the next paragraph of the art-text had already been deeply branded into her mind: "... The heart-candle also has three levels, with the candle of the five poisons being the most brilliant. There is only one candle-sword, but there are five heart-poisons. To form a heart-candle is to be the candle of the five poisons. The five poisons are: affection, self, confusion, fear, and love. Those who cannot stop affection, cannot control self, cannot be confused by confusion, cannot end fear, and cannot punish love are the 'five-poison heart-candles'."

A sword that can harm both sides must never be held only in the enemy's hands. Li Piaocing had understood this principle very early on.

It was her first time seeing this scripture, and she did not know if she could cultivate these five poisons, but she had no time to think. At the moment Miss Yi Chengxin made her fourth move against her, things were already out of her choice.

Now, the light of this fourth heart-candle gradually merged with the candle-swords tempered by the previous three. Just as the difficulty of one candle-sword resisting four heart-poisons, now, this one heart-poison could no longer overturn the candle-swords supported by the four heart-poisons.

The candle flame brightened suddenly. Within the mind, the darkness retreated, and the light returned.

"... Okay," in the side hall of the Cuiyu Sword Sect, Li Piaocing said in a low voice, "Everyone does not wish for me to do tragic and radical things again, so I will not do them."

The young girl, with four candles merged into one, raised her head, her eyes looking as if they were burning with blood: "But I will never leave Cuiyu. We live and die together. Next, whether facing the Seven Serpents Cave or the Huan Si Lou, we will only do one thing—hold the sword."

(End of chapter)