Chapter 391

"." Pei Ye felt for a moment that the sword hilt in his hand was somewhat scalding.

He looked dazedly at the young girl before him, but she seemed to have only spoken of a trivial matter, her gaze still looking at the swords on the wall: "Look at that ochre-red one; can you guess what it is made of?"

Pei Ye raised his eyes to look, and that was indeed a strange sword.

"Ochre", from the great fire, yet not arrogant, fierce, or impetuous; solid, firm, and textured, like jade.

This sword was precisely the essence and refinement of the "ochre" color. It was eye-catching at a glance but not abrupt, and deep within it seemed to be born with fine, dark-black threads, which further suppressed the pure red and also made the layers deeper.

Its texture was as tough as jade, calm, restrained, and pleasant to look at, with a unique shape. Pei Ye took a close look and was immediately captivated.

"This is..." Pei Ye froze and frowned, "A kind of jade?"

This was obviously not gold or iron, but the feeling of luster was also not wood. This material indeed made him feel quite unfamiliar.

"It is bamboo." The young girl said.

Pei Ye opened his eyes wide. He had indeed not expected that there was such a color of bamboo; it really did not look like a natural object.

"It is a kind of bamboo material from deep in the Shu region of the southwest. It is said that it only grows on the two banks of a hundred-li river section." Ming Yun said, "Legend has it that this bamboo is born dyed with ancient blood. It is the sword with the purest yet most restrained killing intent here—I think you should like it very much."

The young girl's clear eyes looked at him. Pei Ye could not help but nod. This was indeed a sword that made him quite fond of it. What the young girl had just said about "as if touching the 'Sword Path' itself" made him feel somewhat empathetic at this moment.

". So beautiful."

Ming Yun smiled slightly: ". Hmm. Which sword move you have learned do you think it resembles?"

"【Jade Old】." Pei Ye blurted out.

But after this answer came out, he himself froze—【Jade Old】 was definitely not a deep and heavy killing sword.

Ming Yun had no strange look. She placed "Talks on Swords at Washing Sun Pavilion" on her lap and flipped through it: "Can you show it to me?"

Pei Ye rose holding his sword. The moment 【Jade Old】 rose from his palm, a point of clear, bright light bloomed from his heart sea. He looked at the bamboo sword on the wall, as if penetrating its thick surface and entering a completely opposite world.

It was not fierce fire or killing intent; it was the secluded, hazy riverbank in the misty rain and cold. A man in blood-stained iron armor raised his sword and threw himself into the river, a woman in shaman's robes weeping bitterly, cold, dark blood dispersing in the river water, and cold ancient scales flashing past his field of vision.

He did not know how many years ago this old event was. This great river was rushing through the thin mist as always, and the women on the bank were laughing and washing clothes before returning home.

This was 【Jade Old】.

After using the sword, Pei Ye looked at the bamboo sword, dazed and soul-lost. The young girl held the "Washing Sun Pavilion" upright on her lap with both hands, looking at him with clear eyes.

Pei Ye came back to his senses and turned his head: ". What's wrong, Miss Ming? Sorry, I don't use the sword very well—"

Ming Yun shook her head and pursed her lips into a smile: "You use it very well... When I made the sword, that is how I thought."

"At that time, I thought that perhaps no one would ever perceive this deep and subtle artistic conception." The young girl looked at him somewhat happily and moved her eyes again, "Then, what about this one?"

Pei Ye looked at her dazedly. The young girl was indeed different from the Ming Qitian he knew. She certainly had that clear, indifferent nature, but she was by no means forever facing everything peacefully.

Whether it was her occasional tilting of the head, her clear eyes, or her fingers flipping through the pages, every tiny detail revealed her current joy.

She really liked swords, and she really liked chatting with him.

Pei Ye suddenly did not dare to look at this beautiful face and turned to the wall according to her gaze: ". This one, it's like..."

Ming Yun looked at him quietly.

". 'Wine'?"

"Hmm!"

Ming Yun gently clapped her hands and clamped the book: "Because I have never drunk wine... actually, I haven't really seen it much either. This charm only comes from poetry and prose. So, I think this one is mostly off-topic and self-righteous..."

"No, you did it very well!" Pei Ye looked at this sword of bold and unrestrained style, "If you asked me to use a sword to talk about wine, I definitely couldn't do it... No, even if you asked me to talk about it with my mouth, I couldn't explain it clearly."

Ming Yun smiled: "Hmm... Do you often drink wine?"

". I often drank it when I used it as an auxiliary medicine in the last two years." Pei Ye raised his eyes to think for a moment and smiled reluctantly, "If I say that, I actually haven't really drunk it. The Wine God surely wouldn't be happy to see wine used as medicine water."

Ming Yun shook her head gently: "'A hundred years pass by like a dead dream; only in this extreme state of intoxication does one begin to feel alive.' How could wine only have leisure and heroism? Only in the illness of wine can one see the intensity of life; it is also a very high artistic conception in the sword."

A withered body on a sickbed, ignited by cold wine... it indeed had the feeling of 【Pulling the Sun to Shine on Feathers】 following 【Jade Old】.

And that rainy night in Fenghuai also flooded into his heart sea. When he drank wine and took medicine that day and then turned back with his sword, wasn't that also the intent of wine?

Pei Ye was dazed and convinced: "Miss Ming, your insight is truly high..."

"It is you who are lost in the situation, walking without seeing." The young girl said clearly.

Pei Ye shook his head: "Even if I saw it, I couldn't explain it. Miss Ming, you read so many books... That sentence at the beginning about 'dreams, life' or whatever, I don't know which old predecessor wrote it, but it's really well said."

"Oh, that was just something I made up on the spur of the moment." Ming Yun looked at him with her clear eyes, her fingers flipping through the pages, her voice like clear water, "In short, that's the meaning... Anyway, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it."

"."

"."

"Why don't you look at that sword?" Ming Yun swung her lower legs gently and moved her gaze back to the sword wall.

Even in this situation, Pei Ye felt somewhat amused and angry. He took a deep breath and was about to argue... but the next moment, the young girl's gently swinging lower legs entered his field of vision. The youth's smile froze and vanished, and his throat became somewhat tight again.

This discussion continued for seven or eight more swords. The young girl's sensitivity to "swords" was enough to make anyone marvel. Each one was an exquisite topic.

And seeing that not even one-tenth of the entire sword wall had been passed, Ming Yun stopped talking, drank some water, and looked at the sky outside the window: "Hmm... do you want to play a game?"

This action made Pei Ye's heart and lungs choke again: ". What?"

"I will point to the swords on the wall, and you will draw your sword based on the feeling you get at first glance." Ming Yun said, "Then we will see if it matches the feeling I had when I made the sword."

"."

"Of course... this is something I thought of myself, and I haven't played it with anyone else," Ming Yun flipped through the book pages with her fingers, "If you find it boring..."

"Alright." Pei Ye came back to his senses, "It's fun... This way, time passes much faster."

"Hmm. Then do you want any stakes?" Ming Yun looked at him with clear, indifferent eyes, "I heard that games need some bets of victory or defeat to be fun."

". No need, Miss Ming." Pei Ye's throat moved, "No need. If our thoughts can coincide without words, that is already a very happy thing."

Ming Yun immediately curved her lips and nodded: "I think so too—then let's start."

There was no more conversation in the main hall. The young girl pointed to the swords in their scabbards one by one, while the youth silently drew his sword based on his first feeling. Sometimes it was short, sometimes continuous, and it was inevitable that he would get stuck at times.

There was no need for words to reveal the result. If he was right, the young girl's demeanor was the best reward for Pei Ye. Most of the time, he was still not quite right, but the young girl would often be lost in thought... This game lasted for about an hour, and when Pei Ye stopped his sword, the daylight was already somewhat dim and yellow.

"How do you feel?" Ming Yun looked at him.

"."

Pei Ye had no way to say his true feelings. He felt somewhat unable to breathe.

Throughout the process, the young girl was completely focused and invested. Someone familiar could clearly feel the soaring lightness of her emotions, but Pei Ye's heart only sank bit by bit.

As time passed bit by bit, as the brightest moment passed, as the sun outside the window began to slant to the west... his smile became more and more forced, his sword drawing became more and more low and heavy, and he hoped countless times that time would stop right here.

But obviously, no one pressed pause for him.

"I heard that musicians have a way of playing." Pei Ye lowered his eyes, pursed his lips, and raised a smile, "That is, without following the musical score, two people play together with two kinds of instruments without consulting each other. Sometimes they can play very unique music—this game also has a... a..."

"A wonderful effect of different paths leading to the same destination."

"A wonderful effect of different paths leading to the same destination. A swordsman must have a broad sword field, keen sword sense, and nimble sword moves... This kind of instantaneous intuition is the greatest test of sword talent."

Ming Yun nodded and extended her finger to add: "And, if the fit is consistent, it is naturally a tacit understanding. Even when it is different, there is occasionally the beauty of flowers blooming on two branches, which can reveal the other person's sword path."

"Hmm."

"Then, how do you feel?" The young girl's clear eyes looked at him. The tone of this repeated question was different from the previous one.

Pei Ye froze for a moment: ". I had a lot of fun playing."

"Hmm." Ming Yun nodded with satisfaction, gave him a clear, indifferent, and gentle smile, lowered her head, and began to tidy up the books spread out on the table.

The main hall fell into silence again, with only the uniform and soft sound of paper pages rubbing against each other.

A dim orange light shone on his face. Outside the sky, the setting sun was level with the window.

Pei Ye finally could not endure the suffocating torment of his heart and lungs and said hoarsely: "Ming... Miss Ming."

"Hmm?"

". Must you be killed?"

He stood before the table, pressing his sword and lowering his eyes. In the gradually darkening room, both bodies were very quiet.

Ming Yun stopped the movement of her hands and looked at him peacefully: "The collapse of the 'Ice and Snow Body' will kill this body."

"."

The young girl lowered her head and continued to tidy up the books on the table as usual, just like every sunset that had passed in the past: "The struggle between the Bright Heart and the Gu She needs to have a result. You are the only person who can do this now. Have you forgotten?"

"."

—This is the only method.

Pei Ye slowly lowered his eyes, feeling his throat blocked by something unknown, his nose feeling somewhat sour.

The young girl stood up, quietly putting the books back on the shelves neatly, and then the used pot and cups, and every sword that had been taken down for display... The white hem of her clothes appeared and disappeared in his frozen field of vision.

Yes... no matter how hard it was for him to accept, this was the task the woman had given him.

Behind him was the woman's life.

The clear, beautiful young girl before him was just her old shadow at seventeen... She should have long since gradually faded away in time, but under the influence of the 【Heart Candle Lead】, she had manifested, cutting off the woman's cultivation path toward the "Gu She".

"Heart Chaos".

He certainly could not use his own emotions to arbitrarily change the woman's choice. The young girl before him had long been abandoned by the woman... and because of weakness, causing the agreed-upon plan to fail, was something he disdained even more.

It surely also made the young girl before him disdain it.

Pei Ye raised his head, closed his eyes, blinked, and tried hard to control his somewhat trembling hand on the sword hilt, turning to look at the young girl's final appearance.

The entire main hall had been tidied up properly and neatly. She was standing with her back to him, lowering her head to neatly stack some small square pieces into a wooden box. Her slender, graceful back looked like a young crane.

But it was at this moment that Pei Ye froze.

He looked at the small pieces the young girl was stacking into the box one by one, his voice suddenly trembling: "Ming... Miss Ming, what is this?"

"Hmm? These are cards." Ming Yun looked at him, "Do you want to play? It's a pity there's no time."

"Who do you play cards with?"

"I play with myself." Ming Yun answered without much concern, "Sometimes after reading books and practicing swords for a long time, I will play two small games."

She looked at him with a pair of clear, beautiful eyes: "What's wrong?"

That coldness that spread through his limbs appeared on his body again. Only the heat in the deepest part burned his heart and lungs. Pei Ye looked at the young girl before him, unable to breathe, his lips trembling without words.

—"Then, do you want to play cards?"

"Ah? What play cards?"

"It's... play cards. Play games, count cards; I often played when I was a child."

Pei Ye naturally remembered the clear and bright eyes the woman looked at him with beside the campfire on the night he left Bowang.

They overlapped perfectly with the clear eyes of the young girl before him.

Pei Ye suddenly felt that he was somewhat ridiculous.

How could he be so stupid as to... believe that the bullshit "Heavenly Heart" of a cultivation method was her true appearance?

There had never been any struggle of two hearts.

—From the thin, thread-like ". Sorry" to the weak, low, and hoarse ". One for each."

From "Do you want to learn swords?" to pursing her lips, "Alright. Then I will continue to wait."

From the somewhat helpless "You don't recognize characters... then you'll have to learn eventually, right?" to that decisive and stunning sword light in the night forest of Xincang.

The one he had known all along was the young girl with clear eyes before him.

She went up the mountain at three, living in such a cold, secluded, and uninhabited fairyland. Before she had grown into a "person", she had already been defined as a "God-Man".

Growing up accompanied by swords, she was accustomed to silence and distance, but she would also remember the appearance of every bird in the forest, would hang the carved swords on the wall with satisfaction, and after reading sword books late at night, she would quietly play two games of cards by herself under the candlelight.

That high and distant aloofness that looked down upon the human world and was unreachable was just her clothes. When she put on the "Gu She", she transformed into a celestial being descending to the human world... It was just that she was originally as clear as a fairy, so people felt that this set of clothes fit her perfectly, as if she were born with it growing on her body.

Including him, Pei Ye.

He suddenly hated himself for being so dull. The woman sat at the cave entrance looking at the rain curtain over and over again; wasn't she quietly saying goodbye to herself?

She had never chosen the "Gu She".

Pei Ye felt his heart and lungs trembling as if they were being twisted, and words carrying heat squeezed out of his throat: "Miss Ming, why must you keep the Gu She? Can't you win?"

She was just... forced to...

Just as he had realized, the young girl raised her eyes and looked at him quietly: "Because, the 'Gu She' will not let you kill me."

She did not want to choose the "Gu She"; she was just forcing herself to choose the "Gu She".

Placing her life on the youth's sword blade, letting the God of Gu She return to this body... when the enemy chased after them... what they would face was the indifferent woman picking up Liuli again.

It was just that that Ming Yun would never come back.

Pei Ye bit his teeth tightly, and vague muscle bundles bulged on his face... Don't be stupid, Pei Ye. He heard his own inner voice say.

But the stupidest words came out of his mouth: "【Gu She Heavenly Heart】... will it like 'swords'?"

Ming Yun froze slightly: "What?"

". I refuse, Miss Ming." The youth lowered his head, his voice squeezing out from his throat, "I want you to live. Let's kill the Gu She Heavenly Heart together."

(End of chapter)