Chapter 158 — Struggle
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 6
Lu Xueling shook her head silently. "That's not it. That was the very day I contradicted Master and provoked her anger, and so you were dragged into it as well. Otherwise, with Uncle-Master Su Wan there and Uncle-Master Tian willing to give such face as to come propose in person, your affair would most likely have succeeded. But... Senior Sister, I am truly sorry!"
Wen Pei smiled and let out a long breath. "All right, stop blaming yourself here. Am I not doing well enough? Besides, Master was only angry for the moment; there may well be a chance in the future." At this she glanced at Lu Xueling. "Never mind my affairs. What about you—what do you actually plan to do? You can't keep deadlocked with Master forever, can you?"
Lu Xueling's face paled a little, and she was silent. Wen Pei pondered for a long while, then said, "Young Sister, I know a little of what is in your heart. But carrying on like this will never be the way. Zhang... that man has in the end entered the demonic path and is despised by the orthodox world. And, setting that aside, on your journey to the southwest this time, to the battlefield where the demon cult and the beast-demons fought so fiercely—the sights there, you..."
Wen Pei suddenly stopped and said no more, because at that moment Lu Xueling's face seemed to lose all color in an instant, and even in her clear bright eyes there seemed carved a deep pain.
The room was silent for a long time. Outside the window the rain pattered softly, lonely and wordless.
At last Wen Pei still spoke in a low voice: "I fear he truly is no longer among the living. Clinging on like this, the only one who suffers is you."
Lu Xueling's face was pale, and she did not speak. Slowly she rose and walked to the windowsill, gazing out. The mountainside rain and mist lay dense and lingering, like a dream, like an illusion; even the rain-mist and droplets that now blew against her face seemed to carry, within their chill, a trace of unreality.
"I know..." In that river of misty rain, the cool, lovely woman said softly, "Perhaps he really is gone. Sometimes I have thought that, for him, this may not be a release. I know too that Master was not wrong to rebuke me—the fault is all mine. I should not have indulged in foolish hopes. I should not have... should not have..."
Her voice suddenly carried a note of choking. Wen Pei stood up and was about to go comfort her, but unexpectedly Lu Xueling turned around, her white robes fluttering as she moved like a solitary cloud.
At the corners of her eyes there seemed to be drops of water, crystalline and translucent, bearing a desolation she had never shown before. "Senior Sister, I know it all, but I simply cannot let go. Even if I cut this thread of feeling a thousand times, ten thousand times, in the end I still cannot sever it, cannot escape it. Since returning from the southwest, I cannot count how many times I have told myself: he is dead, he is dead, it is all over. But every night after I fall asleep, I dream of that scene of carnage in the Viper Valley, I dream of him being..."—by the beast-demons—
Lu Xueling suddenly stopped. Her expression was so agitated that even Wen Pei grew worried, but Lu Xueling quickly calmed herself; only in her eyes did that wounded feeling remain. "And then I wake with a start, drenched in cold sweat, as if I had been cast into an ice cellar!"
She looked silently at Wen Pei, and gradually her expression grew fragile, as though her body too had begun to tremble slightly. "Senior Sister, what—what is wrong with me? What on earth is wrong with me?" Suddenly she threw herself into Wen Pei's arms. Wen Pei held her by the shoulders and felt her frail body trembling slightly; at her ear came her low voice:
"Senior Sister, I cannot bear it any longer. I truly am about to be unable to bear it..."