Chapter 103
Pendiam paused for a moment, letting his final words about the silence that built a wall between Huan Zheng and his children settle in the air like a mist that never truly dissipated.
Then he exhaled—a breath that sounded like someone about to tell the worst part of a story that had already been terrible from the beginning, a breath carrying the weight of a truth that even he, as a monster who had destroyed entire civilizations, felt uneasy to speak aloud.
"And in the midst of all that, Ling Xu—among the endless arguments about money, among the hatred slowly poisoning Huan Mei's heart, among the thickening silence at the dining table that was once filled with the laughter of Huan Shu and Huan Yan—Huan Mei, unable to endure her husband's income as a cultivation laborer, made a decision she had perhaps been considering for a long time. Since the first time Huan Zheng refused her suggestion to reveal his identity, since the first time she realized that her husband would never change, would never become wealthy, would never give her the life she had dreamed of."
He raised his hand, pointing toward Huan Zheng who still lay weak on the ground with his eyes closed, and for a moment, his voice trembled.
Not because of emotion, for The Silent One no longer had any emotions left, but because of an irony so bitter, so piercing that he felt the need to emphasize every word so Ling Xu could truly understand how shattered the family he once thought was happy had become.
"Huan Mei chose separate beds and separate homes, Ling Xu. She did not demand a divorce—perhaps because she still remembered that Huan Zheng had once loved her, perhaps because she feared the consequences of officially leaving the number two, perhaps because she simply wanted to punish him, to make Huan Zheng feel what she had felt for twenty years living in hardship—but she left. Leaving the house she had once decorated with her own hands, leaving the bedroom she once shared with Huan Zheng, leaving all the memories she no longer wished to remember. And she moved to a place she never spoke of, together with Huan Shu and Huan Yan, who months earlier had already decided to stop speaking to their father."
Faahh!!
"And that situation, Ling Xu—separate beds and separate homes without divorce, the departure of a wife and children without certainty of when or whether they would return—lasted for two years," The Silent One continued.
His voice was no longer trembling, no longer heavy and deep, but flat, empty, like the surface of a lake undisturbed for far too long by wind, humans, or beasts, because he was not telling a story of sorrow or suffering, but of facts.
Of what happened, of how a man who could make the entire universe tremble simply by opening his eyes could do nothing but remain silent and accept it when his wife chose to leave and his children chose to hate him.
"Huan Shu and Huan Yan, who were around eighteen to nineteen years old at the time, moved with their mother to an inn belonging to a well-known cultivation sect. Which, unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you see it—was located very close to lodgings frequented by rogue men, places where wealthy men of questionable morals spent their nights with alcohol, gambling, and women. Not because they chose to be there, Ling Xu. Not because they wanted to be part of that dark world. But because it was the only place they could afford to live with the money Huan Mei had, with the income from the small jobs she obtained after leaving Huan Zheng, with the remnants of dignity she still held after twenty years of living as the wife of a laborer who was never enough."
The Silent One paused, staring at Ling Xu with an unusually sharp gaze, like a judge about to pass a sentence, like an executioner about to behead the condemned.
Like someone who wanted to ensure his listener truly understood every word he spoke, because nothing was more tragic than telling the story of a family's destruction to someone who did not understand that such destruction could have been prevented—if only someone had been willing to listen, if only someone had been willing to yield, if only someone had been willing to say "I love you" before it was too late.
"And during that time, Ling Xu—during those two full years in which Huan Zheng lived alone in the once lively house, returning each night to emptiness, sleeping on a cold bed with no one but himself—bad rumors began to spread. Like fire across dry grass, like a plague that could not be stopped, like a truth that could never be hidden no matter how desperately one tried."
The Silent One raised both his hands into the air, and from the tips of his pale, slender fingers, light began to emerge.
Not golden light like when he summoned The Singer's physical nature, not the grayish-green light like the Cancer plague dwelling within Ling Xu, but a dim, dull light made of gossip scattered across markets and teahouses.
Of whispers from mouths never satisfied with their own lives, of stories half true and half false, yet still painful because those who heard them preferred to believe in the worst rather than the good.
"Time and again, Ling Xu, rumors spread that Huan Zheng's two daughters were often seen entering and leaving the lodgings of those scoundrel men. Not as honored guests, not as visitors merely looking around, but as… as…."
He stopped, swallowing as if forcing down a thorn stuck in his throat, and for a moment, he looked uncomfortable.
Unlike The Silent One, Ling Xu knew—flat and empty, indifferent to everything but his own plans—The Silent One now, before Ling Xu, in this fabricated hell among smoldering ruins, seemed like someone struggling to say something he did not want to say.
But had to, because it was part of the story, because it was the truth, because without it Ling Xu would never understand why Huan Zheng, whom he had always known as a lazy man who cared about nothing, actually carried wounds so deep, so old, so absolute that nothing could heal them, not even the love of a girl who had died eleven times for him.
"—As… entertainers, Ling Xu. As prostitutes. As something sold, borrowed, abused, used as playthings by men who were never satisfied with what they had. Men who were always thirsty for new pleasures, who never thought that behind the bodies they touched with their filthy hands were someone's daughters, someone who had once been loved. Someone who, if circumstances had been different—if their father had not been so lazy, if their mother had not been so ambitious—might have grown into honorable women, respected, dignified, who would not have needed to sell themselves just to survive."
To be continued…