He Simu had only tried calling out to Duan Xu, but he truly awakened at her call, his rigid body collapsing like a rapidly melting glacier. As if finally beginning to feel the pain, he sat down powerlessly on the ground, breathing rapidly.
In the flickering firelight, this wilderness resembled the legendary hell. Duan Xu hung his head, his expression hidden, only his steady yet weary voice could be heard: “There’s still such a long road ahead, but I’m… so tired.”
He finally admitted he was tired.
He Simu thought she had assumed he was someone who reveled in pushing himself to the brink of death. So he could get tired after all.
After these seemingly disheartened words, Duan Xu suddenly raised his eyes. Though blood-soaked, they still held a gleam of exhausted light.
He suddenly said, “You want to make a deal with me, you want my five senses, and you say you’ll return them to me on schedule. But that’s because you’ve never experienced having five senses. Once you know the five colors, five tastes, six tones, warmth, and cold, can you bear to lose them again? Won’t there come a day when you take all my senses, maintaining only the minimum of my life, turning me into a living corpse?”
It was remarkable that he could still remember this deal at such a moment.
He Simu was silent for a moment, then said coolly, “Perhaps. Never mind, let’s forget this deal. I see that if you don’t hurry back to the city to find a doctor, you’ll die here.”
Duan Xu stared at her for a moment, then suddenly smiled faintly, a smile so quiet without a trace of madness. He reached out to He Simu, saying in a joking tone, “Help me up. Pull me up, and I’ll agree to your terms.”
He Simu raised an eyebrow, wondering what new madness this young general was up to. She said, “Seventeenth…”
“Call me Duan Xu.”
She didn’t understand his insistence on this false name, but simply said, “Duan Xu, are you still clearheaded?”
“Very clearheaded. This is so interesting.”
Duan Xu’s hand hung in midair as he smiled and slowly said, “I bet that when that day finally comes, you won’t bear to do it.”
A firework burst in the night sky between them with a thunderous sound. Duan Xu’s blood-covered hand was illuminated, bright red and intense like burning flames, his fingertips trembling almost imperceptibly.
It was unclear whether from excitement or fear.
He Simu looked at him for a long while, at those eyes that were always clear yet unfathomable.
This reckless, audacious gambler never considered consequences.
She smiled faintly: “Very well.”
She extended her hand—pale, with fine deep purple veins winding beneath the grayish-white skin. This cold and deathly hand grasped Duan Xu’s warm, bloody one, stained with his blood, gripping his hand inch by inch.
The Oath Pearl flew out, hovering above their clasped hands, drawing a drop of blood from each of them and merging them together, flowing into the grooves of the talisman pattern, taking effect immediately.
From now on, he would be connected to her fate.
He Simu raised her hand to pull Duan Xu up from the ground. He truly exerted no strength at all, lazily allowing her to pull him like a kite, then using the forward momentum to stagger and lean against her.
He was taller than her but bent down to bury his head in the crook of her neck. Thick fresh blood stained her collar, his forehead pressed against the cold skin of her neck.
He placed his entire weight on her as if entrusting his life to her.
“What are you doing?” He Simu didn’t push him away but asked coolly.
“Am I abnormal?” Duan Xu asked softly.
He Simu knew what he meant and said, “Blood-crazed killing can be considered abnormal?”
Killing excited Duan Xu.
Only now did He Simu realize that she had seen that look in Duan Xu’s eyes on the battlefield, as if suppressing something—he had been suppressing this excitement.
He seemed to have experienced years of extensive killing, to the point where killing had become a trigger for excitement, inducing a state of physical and mental exhilaration that was difficult to control.
Perhaps deep down, he craved slaughter.
This slaughter had once pleased him.
The long time he spent in Heaven-Knowing, everything he had experienced, had merged into his blood and bones.
Duan Xu was silent for a while, then said to her, “Just now, before Senior Brother Fifteen died, he told me… ‘You’re a monster too, you can’t escape it.'”
He Simu didn’t answer. In the biting cold wind, Duan Xu’s body trembled slightly as he slowly said, “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m a normal person disguised as a madman or a madman disguised as a normal person.”
He Simu laughed softly, with a hint of disdain. She finally reached out and placed her hand on his back, patting it neither too lightly nor too heavily.
“You’re leaning on the most abnormal being in the world, what nonsense are you talking about?”
Duan Xu was quiet for a moment, then suddenly laughed softly. Recklessly, he reached out to embrace He Simu’s back, saying cheerfully and contentedly, “You’re right.”
He Simu patted his back, composed: “Don’t get too familiar. Let go of me.”
“Don’t you want to know who I am?”
Duan Xu didn’t obediently release her. His entire body relaxed as if opening a sealed door. He spoke calmly by her ear: “My name is Duan Xu. My maternal grandfather was a famous literary master. When I was born, he was watching a Chunsheng Troupe performance and named me after ‘Conquering the Wolves of Ju and Xu’ from the play. My maternal grandmother was a Princess Imperial of the previous dynasty. My family has been scholars for three generations—the Duan family of the Southern Capital. I grew up in Southern Capital until I was seven.”
Here he goes again.
He Simu frowned, about to interrupt his nonsense, when she heard Duan Xu laugh and say, “Then, when I was seven, I was kidnapped.”
He Simu’s hand stopped patting his back.
Duan Xu continued, “The Hu Qi people kidnapped me to threaten my father to trade intelligence with them. At that time, factional struggles were life and death. My father not only refused to agree with the Hu Qi people but couldn’t let others know he had such a vulnerability in Danzhi’s hands. So he told the Hu Qi people they had kidnapped the wrong person—the one they took wasn’t the Duan family’s third young master, Duan Xu. The third young master had been sent back to the ancestral home in Daizhou to accompany his grandmother.”
“That third young master sent back to Daizhou was the fake Duan Xu.”
“The Hu Qi people were deceived, thinking they had kidnapped the wrong person. I took the opportunity to escape, wandering the streets of Danzhi… then I was chosen by the Heaven-Knowing leader, my master, who was out selecting disciples and entered Heaven-Knowing. They didn’t know my background. After completing my training at fourteen, I blinded my master and escaped back to Great Liang, returning to my ancestral roots with the courtesy name Shunxi. My father arranged that incident of being robbed on the way from Daizhou to Southern Capital, so the fake Duan Xu could disappear, allowing me to return.”
“This is who I am. I am Duan Xu, courtesy name Shunxi. I have never lied to you. You see, once again I’ve… turned misfortune into blessing.”
Duan Xu spoke very calmly, and at this point even smiled mischievously, like a pleased child.