Chapter 1492: Mutt (2/2)

It was a macabre name.

He had always assumed his life would go on in the same way forever. But two years later, after he finished yet another mission, he was walking through a town and saw an old woman, a beggar. Her eyes had been dug out, her tongue cut off, her legs broken.

As Mutt stood in front of her, he smelled a noxious odor. He looked down and could see that her legs were putrefying, and had been broken so many times that the bones would never heal properly.

For many years, not a single emotion could be seen on his face, but now, his expression flickered. He looked at the woman somewhat blankly, and shivered.

This was the first time that, not only did he not return to the headquarters after the mission, he also killed someone other than his target.

He slaughtered many people in that town. Anyone who had threatened or harmed that old beggar woman ended up having their throats slit by Mutt, and their ears cut off.

There was one rich household in the town who was said to have once been a family of traveling merchants, and were thus particularly at fault. He exterminated the entire family. In the end, he took the old woman away with him.

The event caused a huge stir in the entire country. Numerous constables and inspectors closed in on the area, and the assassin’s guild also sent people to try to silence him in death.

The following years were spent on the run, in exhaustion. He killed many people, and found himself in many dangerous situations.

Eventually, the old woman died. She wasn’t killed; she simply succumbed to her previous injuries.

In all the years she was with Mutt leading up to her death, she never knew the identity of the person caring for her. After she died, he wrote a few words on her gravestone.

My mother.

- Mutt

He stood quietly in front of her grave for a long time. As he did, people began to appear nearby. They were familiar faces, each one being an assassin from the guild.

None of them spoke. After a long moment, their killing intent exploded out, and they began to converge on Mutt. He looked up, and began to fight like a wild dog.

One enemy after another fell. In the end, he was the only one left standing. To him, these opponents were simply too weak. Shaking his head, he cut off their ears and then left. He ended up traveling to a place where he assumed nobody would go looking for him, the desert. He was tired of killing people, and wanted to live alone in peace. Eventually, he took up the same line of work as his father, and began to guide people through the desert.

Years passed, an entire decade. One day he awoke to find his house surrounded. When he walked out the door, he found himself facing a group of assassins led by the same old man from years ago. He stood there looking at Mutt, legs trembling from the ravages of age.

After a long moment, the old man spoke out in a soft voice. “Kill him.”

A spectacular slaughter ensued. Corpses fell left and right, and wounds opened up all over Mutt’s body. He didn’t care, though. After killing all of his opponents, he sighed and walked up to the old man. The old man looked on in bitter silence at the man who he himself had brought into the guild as a boy, seemingly waiting for him to say something.

Instead, a blade flashed.

Mutt frowned as he looked around at all the bodies. He left, going to the first training facility in the desert, then the second, and finally to the guild headquarters.

He had no idea how many people he killed. It was like back in the old days when you either killed or were killed.

After slaughtering everyone in the assassin’s guild, he felt very tired. He returned to the desert, where he once again began to work as a guide. A year passed. Then another, and another. Eventually he lost track of time. One day he realized that he was an old man, and his body was very weak. There he was, was looking out at the desert, absent-mindedly feeling the right side of his head where his ear should be. Snowflakes began to flutter down from the sky, and at the same time, a beam of light appeared off in the distance. Within that beam of light was a woman.

The snow fell, and Mutt’s eye slowly closed.

Thus ended his seventh life. As his soul flew out to once again enter reincarnation, the woman flew toward his body at breakneck speed.

She was beautiful, and when she finally reached Mutt's corpse, she could sense the power of reincarnation. Tears began to stream down her face.

“Master....” It was Yan’er. She had searched for years and years before coming to this place and sensing familiar fluctuations. However, she had been just a bit too late.

She knew that her Master was already in the cycle of reincarnation.

After a long moment of silence, she buried Mutt's corpse. Then she turned, her eyes flickering with determination as she began to follow the already fading aura of reincarnation.

She was convinced that... she was getting closer and closer to finding her Master.

That year, Meng Hao’s clone completed the seventh sealing mark. Then, his eighth life began, on the second continent. With every reincarnation, the branches of the Immortal Root would shine even more dazzlingly than before. However, his memories came to be sealed even deeper. It was really as if he were experiencing a brand new life each time.