757 Bon Voyage (2/2)
”Their gazes would turn from that of pity to that of despise. Even the pariahs, when they look at you, their gazes can also be mocking. Ah, look, it's the bastard living in the Marquis' residence. It is said that he is the son of a wh*re, he's more despicable than us.”
He paused in the middle of his actions and violently pulled the clump of hair out, together with a small, bloody piece of scalp. ”Ye Qingxuan, you know what? Every time I see their gazes, I hate that I am alive.
”I hate myself with a passion, and I hate my mother with a passion, I hate that wh*re for giving birth to me. I didn't visit her again, even on her deathbed.”
”But it isn't until her death that I begin to regret… I regret not loving her. You won't understand, Ye Qingxuan, you have never been lonely, so you will never understand...”
He lifted his eyes, and the dark eyes were full of a quiet calmness. One could see no madness in them, and his sobriety was frightening. ”In the whole world, except for my mother, my sister was the only one who loved me. Maybe it was not the love between men and women, maybe she just felt pity for her b*stard brother.
”In the entire City of the Cloud Tower, she was the only one who had cared about me.”
In the silence, Yunlou Qingshu murmured softly, ”I married her purely because I wanted to marry her.
”For this purpose, I killed my father, who never loved me, and expelled my brother who regarded me as an insignificant insect, and snatched all this. I don't f*cking want the goddamn power, I just want to be with her forever... Like how you are now, Ye Qingxuan, I was willing to pay any price.”
Ye Qingxuan kept his eyes low, but his face couldn't help but convulse.
It was because of fury.
It was because he could not tolerate being compared to such a thing.
He looked at Yunlou Qingshu coldly and glanced at Yunlou Chaoyue remaining quiet in a corner. The girl was like a marionette, sitting in the dust motionless, her gaze empty.
He asked, ”So, you treat her daughter like this?”
”Would you love someone who killed Bai Xi?” Yunlou Qingshu snickered and asked, ”Oh, you're right, I don't love them, of course not! Just looking at them makes me go crazy with jealousy and hatred. The thought of the only person who loved me having died because of them makes me wish that they have never appeared in the world!”
His face convulsing hysterically, he moved forward and stared at Ye Qingxuan's face. ”Can you understand the feeling? Ye Qingxuan… The kind of helpless anger, the kind of pain of watching your beloved die in front of you while you couldn't do anything!
”Yes, I hate Chaoyue, and I hate Bai Xi even more, the tumor destined to kill her mother before even being born!”
Ye Qingxuan lifted his eyes and looked at the face that was close at hand. A substantial chill spread in the ancestral shrine, the sword of the New Testament whistled, and an incorporeal chill pressed against Yunlou Qingshu's neck.
Facing death, which was close at hand, Yunlou Qingshu was still smiling, his smile twisted. ”But what could I do? I used everything I had to exchange for a way for her to continue living. I used every possible method in my power to persuade her not to give birth to that vile spawn. I even went to the lengths of torturing and scorning her, but she remained unwilling to give up that piece of rotten meat in her belly!!!”
Disregarding Chaoyue in the corner, Yunlou Qingshu screamed in front of Ye Qingxuan in what was almost mad anger. ”What could I do? I could only watch her die... watch her abandon me!”
At the moment, Ye Qingxuan finally glimpsed his true colors through the madness in his eyes, and thus felt like mocking and ridiculing him.
”Give me a break, Yunlou Qingshu.” He raised a finger and flicked away the speck of saliva suspended before his face, his gaze full of despise. ”You just can't tolerate the fact that she loved them more than she loved you.”
”So what?” Yunlou Qingshu looked at him as if he was describing the truth. ”Is it not the embodiment of love?”
Ye Qingxuan had no interest in looking at him anymore. ”Simply... disgusting.”
”Isn't it the desire of mortals? How is it worthy of despise?” Yunlou Qingshu reached out and patted the young man's shoulder. ”Lord Hand of God, when have you ever kept aloof from it? Can you tolerate it if Bai Xi considers someone else to be more important than you? If she won't hesitate to leave you, or to die, for that person's sake?”
Gazing at Ye Qingxuan's expression which had turned cold, Yunlou Qingshu laughed loudly and hysterically. The sharp laughter echoed in the dead city, infiltrating every corner. Combining with the stench from the corpses, it produced stinking echoes.
”Enough!” Ye Qingxuan used all of his rationality to restrain himself.
The laughter came to an abrupt end.
It was not because of Ye Qingxuan, but because of himself.
Yunlou Qingshu stood sluggishly frozen to the spot. He reached out and pressed a hand on his throat. As if it was struck by something, his limbs began convulsing involuntarily. His face was blue and it was difficult for him to breathe. In the end, he curled up into a ball in the filth on the ground.
Ye Qingxuan coldly looked at him as he curled up like a worm on the ground, watching him enduring the pain. It continued until Yunlou Chaoyue walked over from the corner, reached out, and helped him up from the ground. A palm pressed against his back, she helped him spit out the thick phlegm and vomit in his throat. Then, Yunlou Qingshu lay on the ground, painfully vomiting out stinking, half-digested food, tears and mucus flowing down his face. The ugliness made one feel like kicking him far away, never ever wanting to get close to him again.
”You should thank your daughter whom you hate. If she had not saved you, neither would have I.”
Ye Qingxuan's cold eyes looked down at him. ”Time for our chat to end, Marquis Yunlou, I am not interested in the twisted first half of your life. Now, let me repeat what I have come for: Give me the beacon to pass through the Great Wall, don't let me take it from you myself.”
Yunlou Qingshu was finally done vomiting. ”You want this?” He sat in his own vomit, not even wiping away the tears and mucus on his face. He reached out and took out the jade tablet that represented his identity, shaking it in his hand, his twisted smile full of malice. Then, he tossed it to Ye Qingxuan's feet. He did not put forward a price, nor did he make any demands, just casually threw the item that represented the orthodoxy of his identity into the dust like that.
”Congratulations, you have gotten it.” Yunlou Qingshu smiled and waved goodbye. ”Go, Lord Ye, go and pursue your grand dream!
”The truth will be waiting for you there.
”Go and let those beings that had decayed so much until not even their ashes remained sacrifice you to the so-called thousand-year fate, hahahaha... It's all a bad joke!”
Until Ye Qingxuan walked out of the residence of the lord of the city, he could still hear Yunlou Qingshu's mad laughter from the tall building behind him. ”Bon Voyage!”
He finally turned back and took one last look at the dead city, then turned and left.
Without the slightest reluctance.
…
Half a day later, a man named Jiu Ying [1] walked up to the pavilion of the lord of the city. The man, who was so burly that he resembled a giant god, looked down at Yunlou Qingshu, who was soaked in spirits and vomit. ”He has already left?”
Yunlou Qingshu kept his head low, minding his own business and singing songs. He said nothing as if he did not see the man at all.
”I see.” Jiu Ying nodded slightly.
…
That day, fire burned from the bottommost of the City of the Cloud Tower, consuming the corpses and bones, moving up layer by layer. The iron-like flames licked the city, shredding it inch-by-inch from the bottom to the top.
The fire burned for three days and nights, and all the magnificence and splendor it once had were buried in the brazier fortified by high walls.
In the end, the remaining ashes floated into the sky, blending into the rain clouds, and fell into the ocean.
Amid the ruins, no more luxurious scenes could be seen.
Only the souls of the dead lingered, the hoarse singing reverberating through day and night.
[1] The name literally translates as ”nine infants.” It is the name of a vicious beast in Chinese mythology that has nine heads, makes a crying noise similar to that of an infant, and can spray out water and fire.