"IT WAS BECAUSE of Hua Po'an."
"What did Hua Po'an do?" asked Gu Mang.
"After founding the Liao Kingdom, he delved into the ancient writings of the demon race and used other unorthodox methods to hatch a Demonblood Beast of devastating power."
"A Demonblood Beast…"
"Indeed," Mo Xi said. "This Demonblood Beast possessed terrifying abilities. Once it grew and matured, it threatened to swallow the entire population of Chonghua in a matter of days."
Gu Mang's blue eyes widened. "Then what did they do?"
"It happened too quickly. The nation's forces were helpless in the face of it." Mo Xi paused briefly. "The only person in Chonghua who understood Hua Po'an's spiritual techniques was Chen Tang. He felt every kind of regret and shame at having taught Hua Po'an magic and believed it was his failure of judgment that had led Chonghua to this calamity. Thus, in the final battle with Hua Po'an, he chose to die with the demon, using his own spiritual core and souls to seal and slay the Demonblood Beast."
Gu Mang was caught in his words as if in a trance. In his mind's eye, he could almost see Preceptor Chen colliding with the Demonblood Beast's spiritual power, their spells arcing and exploding across the battlefield.
"Chen Tang met his end with a destroyed core and a consumed corpse," Mo Xi said. "Forget ascending as an immortal: his souls and those of the demon beast's perished together. Reincarnation isn't even a possibility. So there's no way you could have seen the Wise Gentleman." Mo Xi met Gu Mang's azure gaze. "You probably met someone who looked like him."
Gu Mang lowered his head. "But…" He hesitated for a long while, but no words came. After a long beat, he could only concede haltingly, "Probably, then."
In the days after he heard this story, Gu Mang became somewhat absent-minded. His dreams were full of scattered reflections. Sometimes they were things he'd dreamed about before, sometimes the scenes were completely new. Sometimes, he even dreamed of Preceptor Chen Tang from the story. Clad in snow-white robes, the man from the painting stood amid flower petals raining from the sky. Gu Mang couldn't quite make out the man's face, but he was vaguely aware that this was indeed Chen Tang. Yet when he tried to step closer to see his features more clearly, the falling haitang blossoms turned into a great deluge of blood.
Chen Tang's voice was dark, filled with resentment, disappointment, heartbreak, hatred. "Traitor," he said. "How could you be worthy…" Traitor… "When did Chonghua ever do you wrong? When did I ever do you wrong?"
Every word seemed to weep blood.
Traitor. Traitor!
Gu Mang stared blankly; he didn't know why he would dream of Chen Tang or why Chen Tang would speak to him thus. Still, he thought… why had he committed treason? He writhed in misery, his thoughts a roil. Under Chen Tang's questioning, his dream-self knelt, clutching his head… Why had he committed treason?
The vision shattered; Chen Tang and the bloody rain dispersed. Gu Mang slowly raised his head to find he was kneeling in the throne room, covered in filth and weeping in sorrow.
Up on the throne, the emperor's expression was one of apathy. Within the hall, ridicule was written on the officials' faces. Gu Mang resembled a soul boiling in the bloody pits of asura hell, ceaselessly slamming his forehead against the ground as he kowtowed. "Please…just let us build gravestones… Please, I'm begging, there're too many dead… There're really too many dead…"
Your Imperial Majesty… Marquis… I beg of you…
This nightmare plagued him for days. On the evening of the fourth, the situation became dire—even dinner couldn't lift Gu Mang's spirits. He sat on his little stool, chewing on his chopsticks as he stared into space.
Since Princess Mengze's visit, Gu Mang had stopped sitting in the seat across from Mo Xi. Li Wei would bring a small stool for a seat and bench for a table, and Gu Mang would hunch over to eat there. Each day Mo Xi directed the servants to send Gu Mang food from his table, using excuses like "This doesn't taste good, I don't want it" or "It's too much, I can't finish it." Gu Mang would happily take the offending morsel off Mo Xi's hands.
Today was no different; Mo Xi picked at his food before pointing at the roast goose on the table, the sweet-and-sour crispy meats, and steamed perch. "Give these to him," he said to Li Wei, clearly referring to Gu Mang, who was sitting at his little bench.
Gu Mang had been well-behaved recently; he had long ago learned to say "thank you" after receiving each dish. But today, Gu Mang didn't say anything. He stared with empty eyes at the servants placing the sumptuous dishes before him, not even the ghost of happiness appearing on his face.
Mo Xi dismissed the servants and took a couple mouthfuls of hot soup. "Your eyes used to light up at the mere sight of a pork bun. Now, you have all sorts of meat before you, but you don't speak a word of praise."
Gu Mang turned his head, hands clasped around a meat pie. "I'm thinking."
"What are you thinking about?"
Gu Mang lowered his head. "I've been thinking all day about why I would defect," he said in a muffled voice.
Mo Xi was still for a moment. "I've told you before, Lu Zhanxing was the fuse, and your ambition was the gunpowder. His Imperial Majesty stripped you of authority, but you refused to bend the knee."
"But…" Gu Mang said softly. "But I remember…it seems like many people died."
Startled, Mo Xi looked up, a chill in his expression.
"I only remember a little," said Gu Mang. "I remember kneeling in the great hall—I kept kowtowing, begging you all for leniency… But no one listened to me," he murmured.
Mo Xi was silent for a long while. A question issued from his mouth, deep and low, burdened with accumulated suffering. "When…did you remember this?"
"Just yesterday," Gu Mang answered. "Is something wrong?"
Mo Xi's heart pounded, his eyes flashing with complicated feeling. He hadn't expected that Gu Mang would recover this scrap of memory. Even if Gu Mang didn't understand the context of that scene, this information would be enough to shock all of Chonghua. It was this dispute in the throne room that had led Gu Mang to lose faith, and it was difficult to judge who had been in the right. If Gu Mang recovered this memory alone from among his destroyed recollections, he would be prone to develop hatred and the desire for vengeance against the nobles of Chonghua.
"Mo Xi?"
After a moment's silence, Mo Xi decided to speak frankly. Firstly, he disliked lying; secondly, telling Gu Mang everything from the start might at least prepare him for the truth.
"Listen, Gu Mang, this matter is not as simple as you think. No matter what memories you recover related to this, you must come to me for an explanation first. Don't try to guess anything on your own."
Gu Mang nodded. After a while, he raised his hand. "Then I have something to ask right now."
"Go ahead."
"When I was kneeling in the great hall, was I begging for mercy for Lu Zhanxing?"
"Not entirely," Mo Xi replied.
Mo Xi hadn't personally witnessed this confrontation at court. When Gu Mang returned to the capital to make his report, Mo Xi had still been on the battlefields at the western frontier, unable to extricate himself. He had only learned what happened later from watching the imperial scribe's history mirror. All he knew was that Lu Zhanxing, Gu Mang, and Murong Lian had led the army to Phoenix Cry Mountain, where Gu Mang had split off from the others. Gu Mang had gone directly to the hinterlands of the Liao Kingdom's southernmost city while Lu Zhanxing and Murong Lian kept watch over their troops.
It should've been a flawless plan, if not for Lu Zhanxing's quick temper. An envoy from a neutral country started an argument with him. In the heat of the moment, Lu Zhanxing beheaded the envoy. This third country immediately sided with the Liao Kingdom as a result and attacked Chonghua's encampment from behind Phoenix Cry Mountain. Disaster befell Chonghua's armies.
At the time, Gu Mang had been personally leading his troops on the front lines; they had planned to infiltrate enemy ranks and splinter the Liao Kingdom's power from within. However, this effort was unsustainable for long; by the third day, Murong Lian's imperial army was meant to rush over to reinforce their numbers. Then, coordinating the offensive from within and without the enemy forces, they would be poised to break through in one blow. But thanks to Lu Zhanxing's rash action, Murong Lian's troops were diverted into fighting the third country and couldn't provide assistance. Gu Mang bitterly waited for reinforcements that never came, and their original plan of attack became a fatal dead end.
When the besieged Gu Mang learned that the third nation had allied with the Liao Kingdom because Lu Zhanxing killed their envoy, he burst out cursing in indignation and sorrow. "Lu Zhanxing, are you fucking trying to kill me? Why the fuck are you so stupid? How selfish can you be? How selfish can you be?!"
But what use were his complaints? A hundred thousand soldiers had put their lives on the line with Gu Mang. They'd come from nothing to reach the heights of fathomless glory at his side—but overnight, they were annihilated. How many of them would return in one piece?
At that time, Gu Mang could think of nothing else. When he was done cursing, he wiped his tears and clenched his teeth, setting his shattered heart on fire to light the way home for those hundred thousand brothers. He counted each and every one—every man he kept alive, every man he brought back to their homeland. In so many battles, Gu Mang had fought for victory. This time, he fought to go home.
Later, he realized that the one at fault in this campaign hadn't been Lu Zhanxing—it had been him. He was well aware of Lu Zhanxing's fiery temper, but he'd still believed this brother of his could handle such a weighty responsibility. It was Gu Mang who had made an outrageous mistake, who had erred beyond belief.
Gu Mang had no intention of absolving himself of responsibility. He had been prepared to make penance with his own death—but he couldn't let his hundred thousand comrades be tarred with the same brush. The mistake had been his. All who had lost their lives and shed their blood—they were innocent. They deserved respect; they shouldn't be erased. He was willing to sacrifice all he had achieved so those brothers who died in vain could receive a gravestone with their names on it. It was he who led them to their deaths. Whenever he closed his eyes, he recalled those humble names, those dirty smiling faces, their eyes shining with boundless trust. Some of the cultivators were so young—barely fifteen years old—dressed in shabby clothes, their voices full of reverence and hope when they called him "General Gu."
General Gu… General Gu.
Each cry echoed; each word was stained with blood. Was he worthy? He wasn't! The General Gu they admired was a useless good-for-nothing who cared only for the code of brotherhood. He'd led them to die inglorious deaths on the battlefield—he simply couldn't let them go to their graves without even a name.
So he begged. He knelt at the foot of the throne, covered in blood and filth, mud streaking his face, and he begged.
Please, give them a name. I'll take all of the blame myself. Give them a gravestone. An army's defeat is the fault of the commander; the soldiers are blameless. Please…I'm begging you…
But His Imperial Majesty refused, and the hall full of onlookers sneered at his grief. He was like the lowly Hegemon-King who had finally reached the battlefields of Gaixia on the eve of his defeat. What did his enemy, Liu Bang, care if he was alone and doomed? 1 They wanted nothing more than to hand him that fatal sword—their eyes flashed red and they longed to see him bare his neck for the blade. Only when he was dead would they be at ease. Only then could they be sure that there wouldn't be another slave in this century who would upend the heavens and tread upon the heads of the aristocracy. No few of the onlookers brimmed with secret delight, practically on the verge of clapping and cheering at Lu Zhanxing's error—for without this defeat, how else could they have brought Gu Mang and his slave army to heel? The timing couldn't have been more perfect.
"There will be no gravestones, no state funeral. Deputy General Lu Zhanxing will be interrogated and executed at the end of autumn. General Gu will be stripped of his military rank. The remaining soldiers will be provisionally detained to prevent any violence."
This was the emperor's final judgment and punishment.
Battlefields were fickle things; there was no such thing as a god of war who could weather a hundred battles unscathed. Murong Lian, Yue Chenqing, and Mo Xi could afford to lose battles because they stood shoulder to shoulder with imperial power. The same noble blood ran in their veins. It was only Gu Mang who couldn't. He needed to fail but once for these powerful officials to come swarming, trampling over him so he could never rise again, nor lift his head.
So the emperor's refusal was quite correct. The callous voice that floated down from the imperial throne became the final straw that broke Gu Mang. "It is at our mercy that you keep your life. You are standing here today because of the late emperor's divine grace. Do you think your life is worth the cost of a formal burial for these defeated troops? You have no right to discuss it with me."
Thus was Gu Mang's last attempt and only plea mercilessly dismissed by the emperor before the watching court. He couldn't honor his promise in the end. The dead were denied grave inscriptions, the living were taken into custody, and Gu Mang's brother-in-arms had his head lopped off and his corpse displayed at the eastern market for three days and nights.
He lost everything in the blink of an eye.
Mo Xi had been far from the imperial capital during all of this. By the time he held up the history mirror and saw what happened—by the time he saw Gu Mang slamming his head into the ground until it was bloody, sobbing as he knelt and cowered, plummeting from hope to despair, from impassioned pleading to despondent silence—by the time he saw all of this, Gu Mang had already left the capital. Everything was already over.
Perhaps his obsession ran too deep; Mo Xi dreamed of this sight for years. He dreamed of Gu Mang howling in grief, smashing his head against the floor in heartbreak. The palace hall filled with the mocking faces of court officials, and the emperor handing down his verdict without mercy.
In Mo Xi's dreams, he would often be in the hall too—perhaps because he'd always thought that everything might have gone differently had he been there. Or perhaps none of this would have happened if, after Mo Xi returned to the capital, he had noticed Gu Mang's growing desire to defect.
What a fool he had been. He had seen clearly Gu Mang's deterioration and heartbreak when he returned from the front lines. But Gu Mang then had seemed so listless, like he might spend the rest of his life in a morose stupor. Mo Xi had feared that Gu Mang wouldn't be able to get back on his feet, but he'd never thought that Gu Mang would defect.
He'd never imagined that Gu Mang could defect.
Gu Mang had always been like a god to him. Mo Xi had been so young then; how could he know that even gods could crumble and collapse. He had thought Gu Mang invincible. When he considered that righteous, enthusiastic, smiling shixiong—the shixiong whom nothing could break, the General Gu who could endure any misery—Mo Xi simply couldn't believe that Gu Mang's heart had died in that throne room, that it had shattered into fragments and been crushed to dust, never to be put whole again.
"Actually, I couldn't argue when you left and defected," said Mo Xi. "But out of all the Nine Provinces and Twenty-Eight Nations, why did you have to choose the darkest one?"
Gu Mang didn't immediately respond. After a lengthy pause, he said, "I don't know." He was struggling to relate to his former self in the story Mo Xi had told. His mind was in a mess. He could perhaps understand the despair he felt and the motives he had, but it was just as Mo Xi said—he couldn't understand why he'd gone to Liao. What could he do in the Liao Kingdom?
Forced to guess, he could only believe it was for revenge. The Liao Kingdom alone could give him the requital he wanted. If he made a name for himself in the Liao Kingdom, he could avenge himself upon the emperor who had humiliated him, had disdained him.
But if that were the truth, he would really be as Mo Xi said—a person fighting only for his own ideals and vengeance, regardless of how much blood he shed.
Gu Mang buried his face in his palms, then clutched at his hair in confusion. "I don't know…" he mumbled. "I can't think of another reason either…"
"Neither can I. Gu Mang, you had your code of brotherhood and your unbreakable promise, and I have mine," Mo Xi said. "Since you chose revenge, then you and I—you and Chonghua—are destined for this sort of end."
Gu Mang sat disconsolately on his little stool without a word. He vacantly stared at the brick flooring in front of him through his fingers.
At last, Mo Xi stood up. "You should take two more doses of calming medicine today. His Imperial Majesty wouldn't want you to remember too many details about your defection. If you want to live a little longer, don't think on these things again."