I blew again, the candle flame went out, and a drop of grease slid down the back of his hand.
He frowned, glanced under the lamp along the dripping lamp oil, and his gaze froze.
—A drop of lamp oil was falling on the ring that I swallowed and embedded in my spine, like tears.
“Bang!” The lamp fell to the ground with a dull sound, and he fell to the ground with his eyes wide open. The lamp in front of the shrine was knocked away by my lamp, and it fell all over the place.
He stared at the flames spreading in front of the altar, his pupils shrunk to a minimum, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. He stared for a long time, until the flames burned the ring in my bones, exposing it completely. Then, as if suddenly awakened, he threw himself into the roaring flames and dug out my bone lamp, paying no mind to the fire scorching his sleeves.
“Nalin! Nalin!” I cried out, frantically trying to put out the candle on his body. The flames licked at his hair and scorched his clothes black, but thankfully, not a single strand of hair or inch of skin was harmed.
Realizing that this was because he had cultivated an immortal golden body, I breathed a sigh of relief. I saw him holding my bone lamp with both hands, staring at the ring embedded in my spine with wide eyes.
“Why is the Ascension Tower on fire? Saint Lord!”
“Quickly fetch some water!”
“Saint Lord, don’t burn yourself!” Two priests barged in, one of them thin.
The fat priest reached out to grab the lamp from his arms, but he shoved him away fiercely. “Get out of the way!”
The fat priest was shoved to the ground, and he was grabbed by the collar. “Whose bones were used to make this new offering lamp? Why is the ring I gave to Mi Jia years ago embedded inside it?!”
“I, I don’t know. The production of the lamps was left to the craftsmen. I, we didn’t see it…”
“Get out of the way! I want to go see him. He must have lost the ring…”
“Saint Lord, please stay!” Suddenly, the fat priest shouted. The thin man looked at him, closed the palace door, and knelt in front of Nalin. He kowtowed and said, “Saint Lord, please don’t go!”
“What are you doing?” Nalin stared at them. “Why are you stopping me? Get out of the way!”
“Saint Lord, Saint Lord,” The fat priest crawled in front of him, bending down deeply, his face trembling with fat shaking. “The Goddess Consort… has already… perished. Shengzun and the Elders have consumed all his blood, leaving only his bones, which were made into the offering lamp, right here in your arms. Shengzun forbade us from telling you about this. We beg the Saint Lord to protect us!”
I burst into tears and couldn’t bear to look at Nalin’s expression.
After a long silence, I finally heard his hoarse voice that was not human: “Impossible…”
“Impossible… Just now, I saw him just now!”
Nalin stumbled towards the door but was stopped by the two people.
“That’s fake! Saint Lord! Shengzun sent you away to take the Goddess Consort’s life. Once the Goddess Consort died, she found someone to impersonate him, all to deceive you! If the Saint Lord goes to Shengzun now, it will be seeking your own death! Shengzun has kept you alive until today, all for her own sake!”
Nalin stood there stiffly: “What did you guys… say?”
“They killed the Goddess Consort because he was Shengzun’s chosen sacrifice to dissolve the backlash!” The fat priest crawled to him. “Saint Lord, you too are a sacrifice — one that Shengzun and the Elders use to cultivate immortality! For all these years, they’ve been feeding on your blood. They never saw you as a spiritual medicine to relieve the backlash; they’ve been using you to absorb the spiritual power buried in the corpse of the Champa Sect Leader, because you are the Champa Sect Leader’s own child! The moment you ascend, it will be your death!”
I was startled, looking at the fat priest, and suddenly understood something.
He was probably the priest the madam mentioned, the one who makes poisons!
What is his purpose?
“If you don’t believe me, take a look at this human skin scroll. It contains the cultivation methods Shengzun researched, that was your mother’s handwriting. Once you see it, you’ll recognize it!” With that, the fat priest took a scroll from the other person’s arms, unrolled it, and presented it before Nalin.
The scroll was covered in dense, tiny characters, with a peculiar writing style that was not in the ancient Chinese script. It was clearly in a foreign language, looking almost impossible to replicate.
I don’t know if this is really that female demon’s handwriting. I just saw Nalin lowered his eyes and glanced at it, then closed his eyes. Two lines of blood and tears seeped out from under his long eyelashes.
“Nalin…”
My heart ached as I reached out, wanting to wipe away his tears, yet I couldn’t even manage that.
Even though he had been forced by his mother to cultivate since childhood, with no freedom, he still deeply loved her and was willing to repay her debts with his own life. But how could he have known that, from the moment he was born, he was nothing more than a sacrificial pawn on his mother’s path to immortality?
The truth was so cruel; how could he bear it?
“It’s not true. I’ll go and ask her myself. Mi Jia is definitely still alive…”
He opened his eyes and walked towards the door in a trance. The fat priest jumped up and blocked the door.
“Saint Lord! We were there when the Goddess Consort died! We saw with our own eyes as he swallowed the ring. He said he wanted to wear the token of your love you gave him… Saint Lord, the Goddess Consort poisoned himself to kill Shengzun in order to save you — he took his own life ah!”
These two priests have ulterior motives, Nalin!
Nalin looked down at his arms and shook his head, still unwilling to believe what they said, but turned my bone lamp upside down. The lamp bowl was made of my skull. I realized what he wanted to do, and sure enough, I saw him touch the left corner of the forehead with his finger—
There is a tiny crack there.
It was where my scar was. The healer gave me acupuncture there the day before yesterday.
His fingers froze there, and the color on his face was completely gone.
“No… it’s a coincidence… this is not Mi Jia… not my Mi Jia…”
He murmured but held my bone lamp tightly and staggered towards the depths of the palace.
Soon, I heard the sound of bird wings flapping coming closer and closer.
“Bai Ha’er…” I heard his hoarse voice. “Go, catch a snake, and find a secret entrance to the holy temple. I want to borrow your eyes to find out if the person in the wedding dress is him… It must be him, it must be him.”
I stood in front of the burnt shrine, and soon I heard a rustling sound fading away.
In truth, perhaps all he needed was to enter the holy temple. There would be no need to look at the fake; just seeing his mother’s condition or hearing or seeing any subtle clues would be enough to confirm what had happened before. My heart ached like a knife was twisting in it, and I couldn’t bear to look at his reaction at this moment.
After a long while, a beast-like, sorrowful howl echoed from behind the burned altar.
Nalin, my Nalin.
I kneeled amidst the ashes of the burnt offering lamp, not yet in hell, but already in purgatory.
“Saint Lord, Saint Lord, please stay calm!” The fat priest crawled behind the altar. Before I could follow, I heard him scream, “Saint Lord!”
Nalin?
I hurriedly floated behind the altar, only to have my heart pierced by a pair of blood-stained blue eyes.
He lowered his head, staring at my bone lamp, his eyes bloodshot, and to my horror, blood flowed from his eyes like a torrent. The shocking blood tears rolled down his cheeks, each drop falling into the remaining lamp oil in my lamp.
The fat priest crawled in front of him, obviously heartbroken by the blood he had shed. He wanted to beat his chest and stamp his feet: “If the Saint Lord wants to avenge the Goddess Consort, we can help you!”
I’m sorry, Nalin, I shouldn’t have left you to face all this alone.
“Help me? By telling me all this, what is it that you seek?” Nalin slowly lifted his eyelids, fixing his gaze on them. His blood-filled eyes were like a bottomless pool of stagnant death. “Do you two not wish to ascend as gods alongside my mother and the others?”
“I seek nothing. I only wish to repay the Saint Lord in some small way!” The fat priest raised his voice. “All these years, my brother and I have received much care from the Saint Lord. Thanks to your protection, we have escaped death from backlash. We could not bear to see you kept in the dark by Shengzun and die without knowing the truth.”
“That’s right! We only wish to repay the Saint Lord!” The thin, grim-looking man echoed in agreement.
“Repay me?” Nalin let out a quiet, eerie laugh. “Do you guys think I would believe your words?”
The fat and thin priests immediately prostrated themselves. “Shengzun will only take a few Purple-Robed Elders to ascend, while the rest of us will be nothing more than their stepping stones! When they ascend, all their karmic backlash will fall upon us, we will all suffer the consequences and die. Not a single one of us will survive! Only the Saint Lord can save us. If you join forces with us, then apart from Shengzun and the Elders, both you and we can be spared. The human skin scroll contains records of our sect’s cultivation methods. With your innate spiritual veins and our assistance, you could master the techniques to counter them in less than a day…”
Nalin stared at them, his smile deepening.
“Oh? So that’s how it is.”
“Saint Lord,” The fat priest looked up at him, the reverence in his expression gone. “Right now, we are the only ones who can help you. Otherwise, Saint Lord won’t live to see tomorrow morning.”
“Saint Lord only needs to meditate and let your soul leave your body. The rest — we will handle it for you.” The thin priest glanced at the lamp in his arms, leaned in slightly, and lowered his voice. “If the Saint Lord does not survive to avenge the Goddess Consort… then the Goddess Consort will have died in vain.”
Nalin stared at them in silence for a moment before finally speaking. “Fine. Leave first. When I call for you, you may come back in..”
The fat and thin priests looked at each other, looking somewhat hesitant.
“What are you afraid of? At this moment, I have no way out, my only choice is to comply with you. I possess an indestructible golden body; even if I wished to die, I couldn’t either. Do you still fear that I would seek death? I merely wish to mourn my Goddess Consort alone for a while. What, you won’t even grant me that much time?”
The fat and thin priests finally got up and withdrew.
Nalin, what are you planning? Do you truly believe them?
I anxiously followed him, watching as he stood up, circled to the burned altar, and knelt before the charred bundle of felt. He stared at the only item on the offering table that hadn’t been destroyed by the fire—
An incense burner shaped like a camellia flower, with wisps of smoke curling up from the incense sticks nestled inside.
He gently touched the bone lamp in his arms, lowered his head to kiss it, and stared at the incense stick. Leaning closer to the lamp, he whispered, “Mi Jia, do you know what I saw during these three days of closed-door meditation? My soul left my body and ascended to the heavens. I saw the Blissful Divine Realm, I saw the beings of this world, and I also saw countless souls of the dead. They surrounded me, trapped me, telling me I was unworthy of becoming a god, that I must go to hell to repay my mother’s debts. One ghost even told me…”
His gaze was deep and solemn, and he let out a few light laughs.
“If I want to ascend, it would be difficult, but if I wish to leap down, it would be so easy.”
“Nalin, what do you want to do? What are you planning?” The sense of unease in my heart grew stronger, and I shouted at him. I watched as he threw the human bone scroll into the censer, then raised the sharp lamp wick in his hand. Starting from his forehead, he traced the eerie, winding characters with each stroke.
I cried out desperately, but it was of no use. I could only watch helplessly as he carved into his perfectly handsome face, from his neck to his chest and down his arms, causing blood to pour from every incision.
In just a moment, he had transformed himself into a grotesque, malevolent figure.
“I will never, ever fulfill any of you guys’ wishes.”
Nalin gazed at the divine statue above, slowly extended his hand, and grasped the incense stick in the censer. He turned it around and thrust it downward. In an instant, the ashes from the censer swirled up, forming a whirlwind, with black ash dancing around him. He stood up, walked to the palace gates, and pushed the door open, stepping outside.
Outside, there was an immediate uproar as the guards shouted and rushed toward him. But Nalin had already reached the arch bridge in front of the Ascension Tower. The cold wind lifted his robes and long hair as he stood there, unmoving.
In that instant, I understood his intention. I cried out in desperation and flew toward him, shouting, “Nalin!”
“Nalin!” At the same time, a woman’s sharp cry came from the direction of the holy temple.
He turned his head, looked in the direction of the temple, and smiled.
With the stars so numerous and the moon shining brightly, he jumped off the bridge.
On the cliff, with clouds and mist condensing, he was like a bird with broken wings.
But I am just a new soul and cannot support his falling body.
I drifted down with him, but in the blink of an eye, he crashed hard to the ground before me, beneath a large tree at the base of the cliff, his bones shattered, tendons torn, and blood splattered in every direction.
A branch had pierced his heart, yet he still clutched my bone lamp tightly in his arms. The lamp, crafted from my skull, was lodged deep within his fractured chest, as if it had become one with him.
The evening breeze blew by, bringing with it a familiar fragrance. I caught my reflection in his blood-streaked blue eyes, and then I realized that the flowers above my head were blooming in full splendor—
This is the tree where we fell in love and made our marriage promise when we were young.
