Gu Mang stared at this man in a daze. Hesitation and vigilance, confusion and perplexity, it all passed through his eyes.
In the end, he surged forward. Prodding around, he raised his hand and met it with Mo Xi’s neck.
Mo Xi immediately lifted his head and glared at him with his slightly red eyes.
His breathing was somewhat heavy because of his agitation. His lapel were slightly opened and the Lotus Curse on his neck was heaved, pulsing vigorously in his arteries. Undoubtedly, he was not one who practiced demonic arts, yet his expression at this time was no difference of that of a beast.
“What are you doing.”
“I…” Gu Wang’s heart palpitated, “But I… Don’t know you…”
“...”
“Why do you also have…”
Stabbing pain rushed at Mo Xi and his self-esteem combined with resentment moulded cruelty in him . He slapped his hand away in one motion and said sharply, "—— I had never needed this kind of thing. It was you who forced me."
“...” Gu Mang looked upward at this man who’s reasoning had overturned.
In this dim firewood room where no one could pry around, in the face of Gu Wang, the well established Xi Hejun were out of control like a juvenile of yesterday.
"Hasn't it always been you?" Mo Xi’s chest trembled. The corner of his eye was getting a little red, "It was you who provoked me, it was you who found me..."
When he was facing disappointment.
When he was complacent.
Or was it in times of penurious and opulent, or when the future was not a certainty.
It was all you who actively approached me with a smile so bright.
“It was you who made me believe that…”
Believe that there were an undeserved friendship, that there will be someone will show kindness to another with disregard to any rewards.
Believed that in this superficial era, there were purity and sincerity, as well as an unwavering loyalty to the country.
“It was you who pulled me back——”
Mo Xi was truly losing his reasoning. He had been suppressing for so long, waiting for so long. Now that the day he was waiting for had come, was it just not to ask Gu Mang for a word of truth?
He just wanted to see what exactly was Gu Mang carrying in his heart...
Why could he not even achieve this slightest relief?
Deceived, abandoned, betrayed.
The fondness you spoke of was a mockery. The willingness you spoke of was a lie. The words of never leaving was a sham.
There was nothing at all, just two lotus marks on the neck that corroborated what had happened in their past. It was a prove of their foolishness, their unrestrained, their dauntless and their decisiveness heart in their younger days.
The proof of an ignorant teenage that knew nothing about love.
Silly enough to want to hollow out his heart and gave it to him.
Silly enough to think that all the promised words would came true.
Silly to this day… Silly to this day that he still would feel painful.
His overly agitated emotions made his mind buzzed and his vision was spinning in strand.
Mo Xi looked at the Gu Mang who was in front of him in confusion. In between his dizziness, his vision began to gradually withered, it was somewhat less clear.
He seemed to have seen the youth from the previous years standing on the ship's deck again. So far yet so near. So familiar yet so unfamiliar. He stood against the sea breeze draped in a black robe with his waist wrapped in bandages. The silk ribbon on his head was skewed and he said coldly.
"I'll really kill you."
Mo Xi held him in one grasp and pushed him against the wall. It was irrelevant if today was a good day, "Yes... I know you will kill me. Didn't you stabbed one once... Why do you refuse to stab me the second time in Leisurely Moon Mansion?!”
He was aware that he had lost his composure, aware that his actions were laughable. But a person who had always tightly repressed himself, how could he retain his composure once he lost all control?
What's more, what Mo Xi had always wanted was, after all, just a starting over. / a turn back.
It was just one answer.
"It you who made me believe… In the end, it was you again who make me unable to believe ..."
"You said I don't have anything to care about, that I have nothing to lose, that’s why I do not care..." The voice softened, and eventually it choked, "But do you know what I lost after you choose to walk that road?!"
DId you know what I have lost...
Mo Xi suddenly turned his face sideway. His head was downcasted, and it remained like this for a while. There were two words quenched between his lips and teeth, shattered into incoherent pieces by hatred.
"The person who cares about nothing is not me."
"..."
"It was you."
"..."
"I hate that I couldn't have you ——"
A sudden loss of words.
Because Gu Mang suddenly stretched out his hand. It was very cautiously and hesitantly as he held his face and said, "You... Don't be so sad."
Mo Xi’s head turned instantly and he met a pair of clear blue eyes; like seawater had washed on it.
"... I don't know what you're talking about.”
"But can you... Don't be so sad." Gu Mang slowly, painstakingly, spoke each word one by one. It was so clumsy, "... Don't... Be sad. "
Like a burning blade that was on the verge of melting abruptly dipped into water.
Hissing sound emerged and the frantic heat was instantly extinguished.
The blood chilled down bit by bit. The reasoning came back bit by bit.
Gu Mang glanced at him and slowly said, "You are not a bad person..."
He said cautiously and his eyelashes quivered. He added, "I don't know you, but you... Are not bad..."
"So... Don't be sad…”
Mo Xi had an extremely discomfort in his heart. Hatred, restlessness, rage, and there was some other stuff, but he could not distinguish them clearly. He looked at the familiar face of Gu Mang and the unfamiliar blue eyes.
At one time, this person looked at him with a pair of black and deep eyes. He called him with a smile and said, "Mo Xi."
"It's all right. You don't be sad."
"No matter what, we'll always be together, and we’ll survive any hardship."
"Come on, let’s go home together."
A sudden sense of fatigue came upon his mind. Mo Xi closed his eyes like he was almost weary. As if the dying vulture had exhausted its last strength and w as maintaining through its stubbornness: "... I'm not sad."
Undoubtedly, he hated him so much, so much that he wished he could strangle him with his own hands. See if he could escape again, if he could deceive again, and see if he could leave him again.
Wishing that he could witness with his own eyes to see his head broken, his flesh and blood flowing endlessly. Take all the hope and despair and make a closure.
But when Gu Mang so cautiously persuaded him, asking him not to be sad. He suddenly thought of ——
Many, many years ago, Gu Mang sat at the edge of a bloodstained trench and took out his ridiculous —— but mighty suona horn which was never used after the treason and blew it with with indignation and discontentment.
It was such a rotten melody that everyone blocked their ears and scolded him for blowing. Was it wailing for an funeral? He only laughed, laughed until he was staggering forward and backward, and then he continued to puff his cheeks, blowing a song for those who died in the war, <Hundred Birds Paying Homage to a Phoenix>. He was so affectionate, so serious.
When he looked at him with a sidelong glance, the bottom of his eyes were wet.
Gu Mang was intentional.
After so many years of deceiving everyone, but Mo Xi knew that it was intentional.
He still wanted to believe him —— That what he had done in those years would not be entirely false.
For the sake of this outcome, he could wait.
"... Forget it. If you can't remember then just forget it."
The wet voice of the Mo Xi always said so.
"It's me who spoke too much."
"Whether you have really forgotten, or you are just faking about forgetting." After a few moment of silence, Mo Xi stood upright and slowly straightened his clothes until there was no trace of any excess wrinkles. He then covered the lotus mark around his neck. "I'll wait."
"I'll wait for an outcome. Wait for you that one truth from you.”
His eyes were still a little red, and so was his nose.
Gu Mang was in a daze: "You... Wait for me...?”
"Yes, I'll wait for you."
"I'll wait for you no matter what. No matter how long I will have to wait.”
"But you better remember, if you lie to me again, if I find out you're still deceiving me —— the same spot on my chest can't be stabbed again."
"I'll make you wish that you died instead."
The surrounding was very quiet.
"..." Gu Mang bowed his head and thought for a moment. He couldn't understand, "What's called… wished that I died instead?”
The puzzled and innocent tone of his voice made Mo Xi looked at him coldly. However, because the red and wet end of his eyes had yet to fade, the gaze did not appeared as sharp as usual.
Gu Mang sensed his gaze and he lifted up his head to look at him. He knew that the man had broken his sword array and dismantled his ‘sharp claws’, but he had not bitten his neck broken or humiliated him like other people.
So Gu Mang tentatively asked, "Wished that I died instead... It is... does it mean letting me go?”
Mo Xi: "... No.”
"But you didn't kill me or hit me."
"... I don't hit fools."
Gu Meng did not speak and continued to looked at him. However, in split seconds, he went up to him and sniffed.
Mo Xi held up his hand and stopped his nose. "What are you doing."
Gu Mang licked his dry lips and said softly, "Remembering you."
"..."
Remembering him? Remember what about him, face? Scent?
Or remember that he was not someone who beat up a fool?
But Gu Mang did not explain anything. At this point of time, he let down his guard slightly, perhaps not because he wanted to let down, but because the more than ten days of hunger had made him feeble. He didn't bothered about Mo Xi anymore, in any case, his last fang were futile in the face of the other party.
Gu Mang slowly lowered his head and curled back to his corner. His eyes that like akin to wolves shone in the dim and blinked languidly.
"Thank you." He said, "You are the only one who wants me to be `wished I was dead'."
This phrase caught him unprepared and fell into his heart. Mo Xi’s chest abruptly felt soured.
He stood there for a moment and looked at the shabby hut, the cotton mattress, and the figure curled up in the corner.
"..." Mo Xi closed his eyes and his long eyelashes trembled slightly.
In the end, he went out and brought back some biscuits and hot soup. It was fed to the starving man.
"Eat it."
"..." Gu Mang rushed there, smelled it and gulped, but he hesitated again. "But you didn't get my service..."
As soon as he uttered the word “get my service”, Mo Xi went out with his black eyebrows in a fury. Without saying anything, he patted the biscults directly on his face.
It was already late at night when he returned to his mansion.
"Lord, you are back—— ah! What's happened to you?:
"I'm all right."
"But your eyes..." Why was it red?
"The wind blew sands in." After that, he left Li Wei and went to his room without looking back.
After the jactation in Fallen Blossom Court for so long, he didn’t had any seam of sleepiness in him at all. Since he had trouble sleeping in bed, he might as well as stood under the corridor in a black fur and looked at the moonlight in the hall. Yet the haggard face of Gu Mang keep on waving in front of his eyes, refusing to be driven off.
Did he really became stupid...
Was it true that Liao Country sent him back only for the purpose of negotiation or was there other evil intentions harbouring?
He tried to bring clarity to the situation, but no matter how many times he tried, in the end, his thoughts always stopped at the pair of blue iris akin to the wolves.
"Thank you. You're the only one who wants me to wish I was dead."
Mo Xi immediately closed his eyes.
For a long time afterwards, he never went to Fallen Blossom Court to see Gu Mang again.
One was that there were more things piling up. Two was that Fallen Blossom Court was afterall, a territory that belonged to Mu Rong Ling. It was not good to always go there.
He once glanced at the backyard of Fallen Blossom Court when he leading the army in the city. Gu Mang was crouched over, looking at the fishes. He was also accompanied by a dirty big black dog. Everything remained unchanged.
In the twinkling of an eye, it was already the end of the month. The first heavy snow of this winter was blowing outside the military Affairs Office.
Under this strange coldness in this dusk, most of the officers of the Military Affairs Office went home early to play with their grandchildren. Several young practitioners also take the opportunity to return to the capital to drink and feast in groups before the weather had completely settled down.
Mo Xi was preparing to go back to his mansion when he heard a timid voice rang in front of his case: "Xi He Jun, Can I... Can I ask you for a favor?”
Dante's Notes:
Translated by red with Lianyin's assistance: Currently doing major editing the backlog, but decided to post a triple update.