Chapter 4 - Moxi, may peace follow you in life (2/2)

If I said I was the spirit of a stone on the Wangchuan bank, I was pretty sure he would insist I was a ghost. I pondered for a moment and asked, “Why are you so sure I am a demon?”

“We’ll know whether you are or not once I use my Samādhi Fire to verify the truth.”

I thought for a while and then nodded in agreement. “Alright, but you must do it in a crowded place and burn me on a scaffold. Let the people see it. If I am burned in the end, it proves that I am not a demon, and you must use your honor as the Imperial Reverend to proclaim to the world that you have killed the wrong person.”

He was flabbergasted by my words. At length, he said, “There better not be some tricks up your sleeve!”

“Hey, you’re a man of religion, how can you have such impure thoughts? All right, all right, I’m in a hurry. Please quickly drag me away to burn.”

I briskly walked out the door. On the other hand, he remained rooted inside the house. I frowned questioningly, went back, and pulled his arm: “Why are you being such a woman? You weren’t this hesitant when you last tried to help the old monk kill me.”

When we reached the market’s entrance, soldiers were already there to set up the scaffold. These few soldiers looked very familiar to me; I presumed they were also people from the general’s household. They became briefly stupefied when they saw that I wasn’t harmed in the least, but that I was even dragging the Imperial Reverend here. I turned around and leapt onto the scaffold, with elegance and grace, of course, sending the onlookers aflutter with wonderment.

I tied a rope haphazardly around me, waved to the reverend beneath and called out, “Hey, it’s done!”

The Imperial Reverend made no movement besides looking at me with a scowl. I also just watched him back.

Suddenly, a woman came out from the side. It was the same woman who had accompanied Shi Qianqian the other day to stir trouble in our home.

She yelled once she saw me: “It’s her! She’s a demon! She has bewitched the Chancellor and even hurt our young lady. It was so terrible that our young lady has yet to wake. Your Eminence, you must help us eliminate this monster. We must stamp out the seed of evil!” She pulled on the Imperial Reverend’s sleeve while she cried, weeping so much that the audience had to shed tears along with her. If the person she was pointing at and castigating weren’t me, I fear I would also share the same hatred with her.

The Imperial Reverend’s eyes frosted up as he brushed her off of him and coldly asked me, “Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“I’m really not a demon,” I sighed.

An egg came hurling at my dress. A little kid in expensive-looking clothes made his way out of the crowd as he threw another egg at me. “You bullied my sister! You’re a bad person! You even stole my sister’s love from her! Brother Moxi clearly likes my sister. It’s all because of you!”

My brow unconsciously furrowed while looking at the two smashed eggs on my dress. But what had provoked me more was the words he said. I smirked and wiggled a finger, lifting the little brat into the air. “Kiddo, your sister likes him, but the one he likes is me.”

He thrashed about in the air. The middle-aged woman’s wailing was now trumpeting even more loudly as she kept on yelling: “Vixen, don’t you dare harm our young master!” The surrounding crowd was also starting to buzz.

“Don’t harm others!” The Imperial Reverend icily shouted. The rope bounding me tightened, strength left my finger, and the little brat was released from the air, caught by the woman.

Forthwith, a burning sensation climbed over me as a fire ignited at the soles of my feet.

The Samādhi Fire.

This mortal had really practiced the Samādhi Fire. A difficult feat, that.

In truth, I was afraid of fire. There were few spiritual beings in the underworld who weren’t afraid of fire. If one needed to differentiate a demon from a spiritual being, using fire would indeed be a good method. A demon would leave behind an orb after incineration, but spirits and humans would leave nothing behind.

I was not afraid of death, because from every point of view, I had never lived. My hometown was at the River of Oblivion in the netherworld. I was, in fact, born in the land of death itself.

The scorching fire stung me painfully. In my trance, I saw my old acquaintances.

They floated in the air as they watched me being licked by the flames. I wanted to say hello to them, but I was in so much pain I could scarcely do a thing.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. As the burning sensation on my body gradually receded, the Black and White Guards of Impermanence waved their hands and called me to their sides. I hadn’t felt this light and airy in a very long time. “Haha!” Black Impermanence guffawed as he patted me on the shoulder. “I’ve seen so many types of death, but the way you looked bathed in fire gave us several rounds of shock.”

His face was filled with such delight that I didn’t know what to say. I just placed my palms together to greet them and said a few courteous words then turned around and looked to the ground. The crowd and the woman were ecstatically cheering the Imperial Reverend’s name. As for the reverend, he was now ascending the tall scaffold alone, his eyes searching in the pile of ashes while his face gradually paled.

“Let’s go, come with your big brothers and tell us how your life has been.”

“Hold on, wait here for me just a second. I… I have something unfinished I need to do.”

They glanced at each other. White Impermanence asked, “The God of War?”

I nodded.

“Come back quickly.”

The imperial family’s royal aura was still as overwhelming as ever. Luckily, I had now become a spiritual entity, and it was much easier for me to enter the palace.

When I detected Moxi, he was standing opposite the emperor’s desk.

“I hope Your Majesty can protect my wife and see to her safety,” he was saying with a bow.

The emperor took a sip of tea before answering him: “A woman will always be just that.”

“Your Majesty, Sansheng is my heart and soul, and life itself.”

Warmth filled my heart. I landed near him and hugged him from behind. “Moxi, I was fortunate to have met you.”

Moxi slightly tensed. He sharply turned around, his gaze passing through me and landing on a place I knew not where.

As if he had sensed something, Moxi suddenly rushed outside. “Insolence!” The eunuch by the emperor’s side shouted. His Majesty waved his hand to stop the eunuch as Moxi left the hall running along the palace road.

I followed him the entire way.

He first returned home. When he saw the house empty with no one in sight, his face blanched white like a sheet of parchment. He stood frozen for a moment, then ran out again. After stopping and asking everyone on the street, he finally staggered to the marketplace.

At this time, the Imperial Reverend was standing atop the high scaffold, holding a handful of ashes as he solemnly stated, “Upon my honor as the Imperial Reverend, I declare that the woman named Sansheng was not, in fact, a demon.”

The clamor by my ears all seemed to have faded away. All I saw was the emptiness in Moxi’s eyes as he reeled two steps backward.

I lurched forward to hold him, but my hands passed right through his body.

0031

I sighed.

“Sansheng…” he whispered my name with a grief beyond words.

“Yes,” I answered, but I suddenly remembered he could neither hear my voice nor see me anymore.

“Sansheng.”

“I’m here.”

But I was not; I was no longer in his eyes.

Just as Sansheng was no longer in Moxi’s life.