Wu Sanniang closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were filled with tears.
"I have two sons."
"Before coming to Lu Manor, I feared this trip held more ill omen than good."
"So I did not bring them along."
"Five li south of the city, there is an abandoned farmhouse."
"Behind the house is a vegetable cellar."
"I left them there."
As she spoke to this point, Wu Sanniang's breathing grew weaker and weaker.
"When I left..."
"The elder one asked me, 'Mother, when will you be back?'"
Two lines of tears finally broke through the fortitude deep in her eyes, trickling down her filth-stained cheeks.
"I... I lied to him."
"'Mother will definitely be back before dark.'"
"It is completely dark now."
"I take the liberty to trouble you, Great Hero Ke... to go there in my stead as soon as possible."
"Don't leave those two children waiting in misery."
Ke Zhen'e's body shuddered, and he slammed his iron staff heavily against the ground.
"Madam Wu, rest assured!"
"We Seven Freaks of Jiangnan have acted our whole lives without ever failing half a promise to anyone!"
"So long as this old blind man still has a breath left in him!"
"Not a single hair on your two little ones will come to harm!"
Wu Sanniang lowered her head.
"Thank you, Great Hero Ke."
Beside her, Wu Santong wept heartbrokenly.
"Sanniang! Those are our own flesh and blood, how can we trouble someone else?"
"I will take good care of the two brothers!"
"I will pass all my martial arts down to them!"
Wu Sanniang stared feebly at Wu Santong and said softly:
"You still remember you have two children?"
"When they were sick, did you ever guard by their side?"
"When they were hungry, did you ever kindle a fire to cook for them?"
"Sometimes late at night they would ask me, 'Where did Father go?'"
"I didn't even know how to answer..."
Wu Santong's entire body trembled, unable to utter a single word.
Wu Sanniang sighed softly:
"All these years, you have been chasing after someone who doesn't belong to you."
"Yet you never turned your head to look back."
"There were still two children waiting behind you."
"Wu Santong, if you still know what it means to be a father, you should never have harbored such thoughts toward your own foster daughter!"
"Entrust the children to you?"
"Entrust them to you, so you can teach them to turn out just like you—mad over a woman, abandoning even their self-respect?!"
Having said this, Wu Sanniang suddenly spat up another mouthful of black blood, her body slumping.
Wu Santong hurriedly embraced her.
"Sanniang!"
This time, Wu Sanniang did not push him away, for she no longer had a shred of strength left, and her vision was gradually beginning to unfocus.
She looked beyond the courtyard wall, as if gazing toward the south of the city, her lips trembling faintly:
"Da Wu."
"Xiao Wu."
"Mother cannot..."
The latter half of her sentence went unsaid after all, as her arm fell limp.
Wu Santong felt as if struck by lightning, freezing dead in place.
He stared blankly at his wedded wife in his arms, her eyes closed tight.
Subconsciously, his hands gently shook her shoulders:
"Sanniang?"
No one answered.
He shook her again, tears falling onto Wu Sanniang's cold cheeks.
He held her tight, tighter and tighter.
As if as long as he held her tightly enough, she could still come back to life.
"Sanniang... wake up, let's go home together..."
Still, there was total silence.
Only at this moment did the freezing touch truly pierce through flesh and blood, stabbing straight into this madman's heart.
Wu Santong buried his head fiercely into the crook of Wu Sanniang's cold neck, falling to his knees and letting out an agonizing, piercing wail toward the sky:
"Sanniang—!!"
Wu Santong had been mad for ten whole years.
He had chewed the name "Ah Yuan" to pieces in his mouth.
For a woman he could never have, he had abandoned his wife and children, raving and mad.
Not until this woman who sacrificed her life to suck out the poisonous blood for him breathed her last...
...did he finally understand who in this world truly stayed by his side and protected him.
Pity.
The path to the Yellow Springs was near; she could hear him no more.
Lu Liding turned his face away while Lu Erniang covered her mouth. Tears streamed down the faces of the couple watching from the side, feeling that Wu Santong was truly both pitiable and hateful.
Some people always feel that...
...what they seek but cannot obtain...
...is the single most bitter thing under heaven.
Yet they fail to see that the one who truly holds them in their heart is often right by their side.
Ke Zhen'e gripped his fine steel staff tightly, letting out a long breath of turbid qi:
"To sacrifice one's life for righteousness, fierce and resolute like this—Madam Wu truly deserves the title of heroine!"
He turned, cupping his fists toward Lu Liding:
"Manor Master Lu."
"This old man has been entrusted by another and dares not delay."
"I shall go search for those two little ones now. I take my leave."
Lu Liding hurriedly raised his hand and said:
"Great Hero Ke's grand favor, the Lu family..."
Before he could finish his words, a fierce, whistling wind exploded by his ears.
Ke Zhen'e exerted force with both feet, his body launching off the ground as that heavy iron staff traced a sharp arc in the air.
Like a giant bat spreading its wings, his entire body swept over the broken walls and ruined structures, vanishing completely into the vast, dark night in the blink of an eye.
...
Wu Santong suddenly looked decades older.
His hunched back resembled that of an old man with one foot in the grave.
Unkempt black hair hung beside his face as he held Wu Sanniang's cold corpse tightly in his arms.
Dragging two wet tracks of blood behind him, step by step, he shuffled forward.
Looking at his lonely back, Lu Erniang said to Lu Liding with bloodshot eyes:
"Husband, let us find a few nimble servant boys to follow him."
"We ought to help procure a coffin to bury Madam Wu."
Lu Liding let out a long sigh of foul air and shook his head:
"While she was alive, he failed to protect her."
"Now that she is gone... let him escort her on her final journey himself."
Lu Erniang spoke no further, and the two stood in place.
They watched Wu Santong step out of the courtyard gate until his figure grew farther and farther away, finally disappearing.
The servants in the courtyard also began busying themselves with clearing the aftermath.
Broken tables, shattered bricks, and weapons littered across the ground.
As well as the finger-holes lining the walls.
Several guards crouched by the wall stroke their chins, watching intently, growing quieter the longer they looked.
Before today, they all thought they possessed a bit of skill.
Encountering ordinary thieves and bandits, a dozen or so surrounding them would make quick work of it.
But after today, they thoroughly understood.
The martial arts of jianghu figures and their house-guarding tricks were not on the same level at all.
Lu Liding withdrew his gaze, turned his head, and looked toward the underside of the crooked tree.
Yang Guo was slumped against the rough tree trunk like mud, his face white as paper.
His entire right arm oozed a purplish-black qi of death.
Aniu crouched in front of him, desperately using his coarse cloth sleeve to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.
From some unknown nook or cranny, Little Shitou had dug up half a broken cattail fan.
His arm spun like a cartwheel, fanning wind onto Yang Guo's face with loud huffs.
Lu Liding watched this scene. The corners of his mouth twitched—he wanted to smile, yet a sour ache clogged his throat.
Just moments ago, all of Lu Manor had been turned upside down in a flurry of blades and swords.
High masters had appeared one after another.
Yet in the end, the one who stood in front of his daughters multiple times...
...turned out to be this little beggar dressed in tattered rags who usually begged for food on the street corners.
Lu Liding spoke slowly to the servants on both sides:
"Support me over there."
Two servants supported him, carefully shuffling over to the underside of the tree.
Lu Liding bent at the waist, the fingers of his cupped hands trembling slightly:
"Little Brother Yang Guo."
"If not for your repeated interventions earlier..."
"...my Shuang'er and Ah Ying would likely have already fallen victim to vile hands."
Yang Guo lifted his heavy eyelids, forcing his unpoisoned left hand up to give a weak cupped-hand gesture:
"You are too polite, Manor Master Lu."
"It was such a mess back then."
"Where would I have had the time to think about saving someone or not?"
Lu Liding asked:
"Then why did you charge forward time and time again, Little Brother?"
Yang Guo thought about it.
Truth be told, he couldn't explain this question clearly himself either.
The first time he blocked the needles, his body had moved before his brain.
It was much the same when he blocked the poison needles again later.
With things happening right in front of his eyes, he couldn't just stand by and watch the two of them die.
Leaning against the tree, Yang Guo let out a small smile.
"If I really had to say..."
"...maybe I owed them in a past life."
"And came in this lifetime to pay my debts."
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