A ball of fire suddenly ignited on Baozhu’s body.
She screamed in shock, frantically slapping at herself.
Her skin visibly charred to a crisp before their eyes, yet she remained alive.
She rolled wildly on the ground, howling.
The water vat in the courtyard was so close, she wanted to rush towards it, but was thrown back by the transparent wall.
“Save me, Old Madam! Save me, Young General!”
“I don’t want to die! I know I was wrong!”
“It was all the Old Madam’s orders! Please spare me, Immortal One!”
Yun Chunfeng curled his lips: “No, no, no. You don’t know you’re wrong. You’re just afraid to die.”
The flames did not diminish, yet Baozhu remained alive.
It was equivalent to being punished by burning alive at every single moment.
Huo Ci couldn’t bear to watch any longer. He raised his precious sword, intending to give her a quick release.
With a wave of Yun Chunfeng’s hand, the sword instantly shattered into dust.
“General Huo,” Yun Chunfeng said, “It’s no good playing the humane one only now.”
He flicked his finger, and Jinzhu was flung backwards, her head plunging directly into the water vat that Yuzhu had desperately wanted to reach.
Gulug, gulug.
The sounds of choking and sputtering were incessant.
Jinzhu’s hands clutched desperately at the rim of the vat, trying to pull her head out, but it was futile.
Yinzhu fell to her knees with a thud, weeping and begging, “Immortal One, let me take my sister’s punishment! Let me bear it!”
Yun Chunfeng tilted his head, feigning confusion. “What’s the rush? You’ll get your turn too.”
Outside the transparent wall, dark clouds gathered, crackling with thunder and lightning, ready to strike down at any moment.
Yun Chunfeng, however, showed no fear. He formed a hand seal, and several wild dogs, drool dripping from their maws, materialized out of thin air.
The dogs sniffed the air, their eyes gleaming with greed, and step by step, they advanced towards Yinzhu.
A primal fear made her retreat uncontrollably until her back was against the transparent wall.
With a low growl, the dogs pounced.
Huo Ci turned his head away, unable to stomach the sight.
Suddenly, a tremendous force, like a giant hand, pressed down on his head, wrenching his face back around by force.
He saw Yinzhu, under the tearing bites of the dogs, rendered completely mutilated.
Baozhu was still burning, her screams unceasing.
Jinzhu’s belly was now swollen like a bucket, looking ready to burst at any moment.
Yuzhu vomited a section of her tongue with a wah sound, her entire body trembling with cold. Her breath formed white mist in the air, and a layer of white frost coated her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Broken pieces of tongue kept falling from between her chattering teeth, yet she couldn’t make a single sound.
Crucially, all four of them remained fully conscious.
Unable to live, yet unable to die.
For a moment, it was impossible to distinguish who was suffering more.
“Look, General Huo,” Yun Chunfeng’s voice cut through the horror. “Weren’t you completely indifferent to everything the young lady suffered?”
“Why show compassion now? Found religion all of a sudden?”
“Where were you when the young lady was burned by the brazier, forced to kneel in the ice and snow? Where were you when Xiao Ya was drowned alive? Where were you when their bodies were thrown into the mass graves to be devoured by wild dogs?”
Huo Ci felt as if his heart were being sliced by a knife.
It was all his fault!
His fault!
Old Madam Huo’s face was as pale as paper. She sat on the ground, a yellow and white stream rushing out from under her robes; she had lost her mind entirely.
BOOM!
A bolt of heavenly lightning struck the barrier, only to be deflected.
The cost was a crack appearing in the barrier, followed by its complete shattering.
The Heavenly Way spoke for the first time in a human tongue: “Cease, Yun Chunfeng.”
“I have allowed you this one indulgence.”
“No. It’s still not enough.”
Yun Chunfeng raised his hand, and an ethereal, fleshy palm materialized, slapping Old Madam Huo and sending her flying through the air.
Huo Ci burned with shame and remorse. “Stop! Let my mother go! Direct all your wrath at me!”
Accompanied by slap after slap, Yun Chunfeng said earnestly, “Precisely because she is your mother, she must die before you do.”
“So you can collect her body.”
“Otherwise, wouldn’t that leave you with the charge of being an unfilial son, Great General Huo?”
Huo Ci’s face flushed red then paled green. He could only watch as Old Madam Huo’s head was slapped clean off her shoulders.
“Mother!”
“How dare you, you fiend!”
BOOM!
This time, without the barrier to block it, the heavenly thunderbolt charged straight down towards the crown of Yun Chunfeng’s head.
“Such noise!”
Yun Chunfeng reached out and grabbed it. The immense power of the thunderbolt was caught in his hand.
He casually tossed it towards Huo Ci.
In that instant, Huo Ci felt an immense regret for ever having been born into this world.
——-
He didn’t know how much time had passed when Huo Ci awoke.
Thinking it had all been a dream, he found himself instead sitting upon a mountain of corpses.
His mother’s head lay not far in front of him, her eyes wide open, a terrified expression frozen on her face.
A pang of agony struck Huo Ci’s heart. He crawled over, embraced his mother’s head, and confessed from the depths of his soul: “Mother, you never, ever should have been so vicious. Did you not know that good and evil always receive their due retribution in the end?”
A sharp pain erupted in his chest. Looking down, he discovered his heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys had all been scooped out.
Only then did the excruciating pain belatedly register, yet he could still move freely.
Gazing at the courtyard filled with grotesquely shaped corpses, he broke down into loud, wracking sobs.
“Ah Yan, I failed you! It was all my fault!”
——-
Yun Chunfeng had vanished.
Whether captured by the Heavenly Way for punishment or gone to follow Ah Yan, Huo Ci did not know.
He didn’t dwell on it. He set a great fire, burning down the General’s manor.
He gathered his mother’s bones, enshrined them in a temple to be cleansed by the recitation of Buddhist scriptures, hoping to atone for her sins.
He journeyed all the way to the mass graves, where he collapsed to the ground with a thud, unable to get up again.
Within his line of sight, the box containing his mother’s bones was haphazardly discarded right in front of him.
He sighed.
So be it.
After death, he was willing to descend into the eighteen levels of hell, never to be reincarnated for all eternity.
If only to atone.
His body, prone on the ground, gradually overlapped with Jiang Xingyan’s, who had died with unclosed eyes.
Only in death is there rebirth.
He finally understood.
So, in his previous life, he had died too.
——-
“Ah! Help me!”
His mother’s shrill, terrified scream suddenly sounded by his ear.
Huo Ci sat bolt upright like a carp leaping from the water.
His clothes were already soaked through with cold sweat.
Looking down at himself, he saw he was still Jiang Xingyan.