Three Days Later – On the Road to Jiuhua
The path was narrow, winding through cliffs that never saw sunlight. Mist clung to the rocks like old breath, and even the birds kept their distance.
Jiang Xuan stood at the edge of the valley, eyes scanning the ridge ahead.
Below them, the ruins of Jiuhua stretched — a city half-swallowed by time, its rooftops broken, its temples overgrown.
He didn't speak.
Just stood there, motionless.
Sang Lian broke the silence.
"You know this place?"
He nodded. "This was one of the first cities to abandon me when the heavens turned."
"You burned it down," Emei added softly.
"No," Jiang Xuan said. "I left it standing. So the world could remember what cowardice looked like."
---
Jiuhua – The Fallen City of Masks
They entered near dusk.
The gates had long collapsed, vines coiled like nooses around broken pillars. Faded sigils lined the archways — once a proud sect city, now just a husk. Yet something strange lingered in the air.
A kind of stillness that wasn't just silence.
It was fear.
And it hadn't faded.
---
They passed through an old market square where statues of heavenly saints lay crumbled in the dirt. Emei glanced around warily.
"There's cultivation here," she said. "Dormant. But strong."
Sang Lian nodded. "I feel it too. Old wards. And something deeper. Something underground."
Jiang Xuan paused beside a broken shrine, his hand brushing the stone.
The name carved into it was familiar.
"Yun Qing."
He stared at it a moment longer.
Then said, "He was one of mine."
---
They reached the central pavilion — a wide stone platform surrounded by four towers, all cracked and leaning.
And in the middle of the platform stood a single figure.
Unmoving.
Cloaked in black.
No face.
No aura.
Just… waiting.
Sang Lian reached for her glaive. "That's not a survivor."
Emei frowned. "It's a construct."
"No," Jiang Xuan said. "It's a warning."
---
They approached slowly.
The figure didn't move.
But as Jiang Xuan stepped within ten paces, its head lifted.
A voice came, hollow and echoing — male, but warped by time.
"Shenlian. You return."
Jiang Xuan didn't flinch.
"I'm not him."
"You wear his mark. You carry his blade. And Jiuhua still remembers what it owes."
Sang Lian narrowed her eyes. "This thing can talk?"
"It's not a thing," Emei murmured. "It's a memory."
---
The cloaked figure raised one hand — and the earth beneath the platform cracked open.
An entrance.
A staircase leading down into the dark.
Then the figure said,
"Come see what betrayal looks like after five hundred years."
---
Jiang Xuan – Descending the Ruins
The stairs spiraled downward, cold stone pressing close around them. No torches. No natural light. Only the glow of their weapons lit the descent.
Jiang Xuan's breath came slow, steady.
Every step brought back something hazy:
A night of betrayal.
A gate that didn't open.
A voice whispering through the rain—
"Run. We've changed sides."
---
At the bottom, the path opened into a chamber.
Circular.
Lined with statues — not of gods, not of saints.
But of Demon Crown generals.
Decapitated.
Burned.
And at the center…
A blade was nailed into the floor.
One Jiang Xuan recognized instantly.
Yun Qing's saber.
---
He stepped forward slowly.
The moment his boot touched the circle, voices began to echo across the chamber — old, broken, snarling in tones of hate and regret.
"You left us."
"You said we'd be remembered."
"Where were you when they chained us?"
The past wasn't buried.
It was screaming.
---
Jiuhua's Memorial Vault
Jiang Xuan stood alone in the circle of statues.
The others hung back.
The blade in the center — Yun Qing's saber — still pulsed faintly, as if life clung to its steel out of sheer stubbornness.
He knelt beside it, brushing the hilt with his fingers.
The whispers didn't stop.
"You promised."
"You were our king."
"We died with your name in our mouths."
He whispered, "I didn't forget you."
---
Behind him, Sang Lian stared at the decapitated statues.
She recognized three of the names carved beneath them.
"They weren't just loyal," she said. "They were legends."
Emei moved beside her. "Jiuhua turned them into warnings."
Jiang Xuan stood.
"This wasn't cowardice," he said.
"This was vengeance."
---
The air changed.
Something sharp cut through the silence — not wind, not sound. A tension in the qi. The room darkened at the edges, and one of the statues trembled.
The stone cracked.
Then split.
A figure stepped out from the statue's broken core — not human anymore. Not spirit either.
A shell of flesh and memory bound by bitterness.
Its voice rasped, dry and cold:
"You remember us too late."
---
Jiang Xuan didn't draw his blade.
He faced the half-statue, half-soul directly.
"You are Yun Qing," he said.
The figure nodded, slow and stiff.
"I was. Now I am what Jiuhua made me. A guardian of regret."
Sang Lian raised her weapon. "If it attacks—"
"Wait," Jiang Xuan said.
---
Yun Qing's eyes — glowing slits of sickly green — locked onto him.
"You gave us your empire. We gave it everything. And when the heavens fell…"
"We died alone," he said flatly.
"I was betrayed," Jiang Xuan said.
"We all were."
---
The figure didn't answer.
Then it raised one arm and pointed to the saber in the floor.
"Take it."
Jiang Xuan hesitated.
"If I do—?"
"Then you carry our shame."
Sang Lian looked at him. "It might be cursed."
He nodded.
"Maybe I deserve it."
---
He reached down.
Wrapped his fingers around the hilt.
And lifted.
The saber screamed.
A long, echoing wail — not in the air, but in his bones. It burned cold, heavy with memories that weren't his but now lived inside him.
For a moment…
He saw flashes:
Yun Qing falling.
Hands reaching for help that never came.
The banner of the Demon Crown trampled in mud.
---
Then silence.
He opened his eyes.
The saber had gone dark.
But it no longer resisted.
It pulsed once in his hand — in recognition.
Not forgiveness.
Just… connection.
---
Yun Qing's ghost stepped back.
And knelt.
"You wear our burden," he said. "We will not forget again."
Then his form dissolved — scattering like ash in windless air.
The other statues cracked.
One by one, stone faded into dust.
Until Jiang Xuan stood alone again.
But not empty.
---
Outside the Ruins
Later, they emerged into the fading light of sunset.
Jiuhua felt different now.
Still ruined. Still broken.
But something heavy had been lifted — not cleansed, not redeemed, just acknowledged.
Emei looked back once. "The city sleeps again."
Jiang Xuan looked at the saber now slung beside Echo Fang.
Two blades. Two ghosts.
Both his.
---
Sang Lian broke the quiet.
"Where next?"
He looked toward the east, where mountains loomed like teeth.
"There's a place in the old empire," he said. "They say even the gods never went near it."
"Why?"
He glanced at her.
"Because I built it to keep something locked inside."
----
End of Chapter 23