Chapter 343 - 327: What Did I Do Wrong?
"Reinforcements are here! Brothers, get ’em!"
With a furious roar, the handful of City Guard players who had just arrived charged forward without a second thought.
Their leader, [OneSwordDecidesAll], drew his longsword. After all, as a great Cultivator at the first stage of Qi Refining, he could at least hold his own against Ma Tietou.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Although the damage wasn’t high, their strength was in their numbers. [OneSwordDecidesAll] saw an opportunity and prepared to stab at Liu Yue’s calf, shouting, "Injure the woman’s legs first! Don’t let her get away!"
Ma Tietou was fierce, but even he couldn’t fight off so many opponents at once, especially while protecting a burden. He watched as the encirclement grew tighter and tighter.
"Yue’er! Go!!"
With a sudden burst of strength, Ma Tietou grabbed Liu Yue and hurled her out of the players’ encirclement with all his might!
"Don’t worry about me! Run!!"
Liu Yue was thrown by the immense force, stumbling and landing several meters away, right in front of Mu Ling.
Meanwhile, just as Ma Tietou was about to charge over to provide cover, he was completely pinned down by [OneSwordDecidesAll] and a mob of players with broken arms and legs.
"Trying to get past? Have you asked for permission from *me*, a great first-stage Qi Refining Cultivator?!"
"Cough, cough..." Liu Yue scrambled to her feet. She looked up and saw a haggard-looking man standing before her.
’Mu Ling?’
Liu Yue’s mind raced. ’This man shouldn’t know the truth yet. I’m Qinyao’s best friend. If I can just use that...’
"Mu...!"
"SQUELCH—!"
A muffled sound abruptly rang out between them, and the joyful look on Liu Yue’s face instantly froze.
She lowered her head, looking at her own abdomen in disbelief.
There, a carving knife was embedded, its blade halfway in. Blood flowed along the groove of the blade, staining her plain white mourning clothes red.
"You..." Liu Yue tremblingly raised her head and met Mu Ling’s bloodshot eyes. It was as if someone had hit the mute button on the clamorous entrance to the An Mansion.
But Mu Ling just knelt, his body trembling, and stared intently into Liu Yue’s eyes. "Why?"
"Tell me... why did you kill her? Why did you kill Qinyao?"
Liu Yue’s body convulsed in pain. She looked at Mu Ling’s face, so close to her own, and knew that this time... she was well and truly finished.
In her silent, deathly despair, a memory flooded her mind uncontrollably, pulling her back to the dusk that had changed everything.
It was the eighth day of the eighth month. The setting sun was the color of blood.
That day, she was supposed to meet Ma Tietou at the western water gate. A batch of "goods"—people whose arms and legs had just been broken—urgently needed to be shipped away by water under the cover of night.
But as fate would have it, the heavens played a cruel joke on her.
That day, An Qinyao was there too.
That foolish woman, her mind filled with the joy of her impending marriage to Mu Ling, perhaps clutching freshly bought wedding candies in her hand, was probably humming a song as she walked. Lost in her overflowing happiness, she had absentmindedly taken a wrong turn and stumbled into the forbidden reed marsh.
And then, she saw.
She saw the twisted human shapes in the boat’s cabin, and she saw the bloodstains that had not yet dried.
In that instant, her heaven plunged into hell.
An Qinyao’s face turned deathly pale. She turned to run, stammering that she was going to report it to the authorities. Meanwhile, that idiot Ma Tietou, busy moving the cargo with his back to her, was completely oblivious.
Only Liu Yue, who had just arrived, happened to run into her.
When An Qinyao crashed into her arms, the foolish woman thought she’d found her savior. She grabbed Liu Yue’s sleeve and cried, "Yue’er! That scared me to death! There are people over there... they’re moving bodies! We have to report them to the authorities! You have to help me!"
Looking at her best friend trembling in her arms, Liu Yue sneered inwardly. ’Ma Tietou, you really are a good-for-nothing. How could you be so careless as to get caught doing business that could get you beheaded?’
She gently patted An Qinyao’s back, but the warmth of a living person was already gone from her eyes.
It was as if she were looking at a dead person.
Then, a venomous resentment, fouler than the stinking mud of the reed marsh, surged up from the depths of her heart.
It wasn’t because An Qinyao had seen something she shouldn’t have. It was because everyone is born of a mother and father, so why was it that An Qinyao was born a high-born young lady, draped in silks and fed with jade, her ten fingers never touching dishwater, whose greatest worry in life was that the embroidery on her wedding dress wasn’t pretty enough?
And what about me? I was born to struggle in that gilded cage that eats people and spits out their bones! To survive, to keep from being trampled underfoot, what dirty deed haven’t I done? What degrading smile haven’t I forced? I even gave my body to Ma Tietou of the Bone-Breaking Lineage just to have a better chance at survival.
Though they called each other sisters, every time An Qinyao would take her hand and, with a blissful face, share details of her life—
"Yue’er, my father praised me again today..."
"Yue’er, Mr. Mu told me such an interesting story today, you should hear it too..."
"Yue’er, I’m getting married! I’m so happy..."
’Was she really sharing her joy? Or was she deliberately mocking me to my face?!’
’Every innocent, carefree word was like a reminder: Liu Yue, your life is rotten, filthy, and a complete joke.’
That glamorous life of hers was like a demon-revealing mirror, reflecting my own pathetic state until I had nowhere to hide, making me want to rip that innocent face of hers to shreds!
’Destroy her.’
’As long as I destroyed that face, as long as I shattered that mirror, I wouldn’t have to look at my own ugly self anymore.’
She remembered the moment she watched Tietou stage her best friend’s body—drugged unconscious by her own hand—to look like a suicide by hanging. She remembered writing the suicide note herself. In that moment, the suffocating resentment in her chest finally lifted. It felt so real, and so... satisfying.
’Didn’t... she deserve to die? Wasn’t she the one who forced my hand?’
This twisted jealousy did not dissipate with the end of the memory. Instead, it flowed along the currents of time, right into the present moment in the An Family’s ancestral hall.
Liu Yue’s head snapped up, her once-beautiful face now contorted.
She looked at Mu Ling and his bloodshot eyes, and suddenly let out a wretched laugh. "Why? You’re asking me why?"
"Why can people like you... fall in love so naturally? Why can you find happiness so easily?!"
"What did she do wrong? Hah..."
"Her biggest mistake, her one unforgivable sin, was flaunting her life in the clouds!!"
"Every time she mentioned you in front of me, mentioned your future together, it was like she was carving my flesh with a knife!"
"Since we’re all human, why did she get to live in the sun while I was left to rot in the mud?!"
"I killed someone who flaunted her happiness in my face day after day, someone who tortured me day and night... What did I do wrong?!"
The entire scene fell silent. No one had known the truth. Everyone was stunned by this jealousy, twisted to its absolute extreme.
There were actually quite a few players nearby who wanted to make a move, but they were stuck.
This was because the "AFK army" that couldn’t squeeze in through the An Mansion’s main gate earlier was now acting as a thick wall of flesh, blocking the way. Some were running in circles, some were attacking thin air, and others were glitching and twitching due to server lag.
These cyber-roadblocks not only blocked Ma Tietou, but also successfully cut off any path for others who wanted to either rescue her or finish her off.
This was the will of heaven.
At this moment, Mr. An, Mr. Wang, and the An Mansion’s steward, who had been watching from the inner hall, finally snapped out of their shock from Liu Yue’s confession.
Seeing Mu Ling raise the carving knife, they began to panic.
Mr. An’s heart broke the moment he heard the truth. So the real culprit behind it all was Liu Yue, the woman he had always treated like a second daughter! And just moments ago, he had been speaking up for the murderer...
The fat on Mr. Wang’s face trembled. "Mr. Mu! Murder is a capital crime! It’s not worth throwing your own life away for a venomous woman like her!"
Zhao Decang, trembling behind a pillar, was practically jumping with anxiety.
He kept a terrified eye on Ma Tietou, who was still rampaging, afraid that if he didn’t seem to be helping, the big oaf would come after him next. He strained his voice to shout at Mu Ling, "Mu Ling! Calm down! The City Guards are here, she can’t escape!"
"The authorities will definitely handle this! I guarantee she will rot in jail for the rest of her life! Don’t be rash! It’s not too late!"
Zhao Decang was miserable. ’For heaven’s sake, if you stab her, what if you provoke Ma Tietou and he goes crazy and comes to kill me?!’
However, all the pleas, all the shouts, faded into a dull drone in Mu Ling’s ears.
"HUUUMMMMM—"
It was the tinnitus caused by the intense emotional shock as fragments of memory flashed through his mind.
It was Qinyao’s cute pout after pricking her finger with a needle while embroidering her wedding dress under the lamp; it was Qinyao’s gentleness as she held the bracelet he had modified for her, smiling and saying, "This is perfect. It means only I can wear it"; it was the sight of Qinyao’s back as she left, full of joy, promising him a surprise...
His wonderful Qinyao, the Qinyao who loved to laugh so much.
’And she was killed... by this woman... for a reason like that?’
"What do you mean, it’s not too late..."
"Qinyao... She’s already dead!!!"
"SQUELCH—!!!"
Without a shred of hesitation.
The carving knife in Mu Ling’s hand, carrying all his hatred and despair, plunged into Liu Yue’s chest!
"What did... I do... wrong... cough... cough..." Liu Yue let out a piercing shriek as her body went limp and collapsed.
"SQUELCH!" Another stab!
"SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!"
Lying in a pool of her own blood, Liu Yue’s vision began to blur.
In the last moments of her life, Liu Yue’s gaze passed through a chaotic mess of legs to look at the entrance of the Spirit Hall.
There, Ma Tietou, covered in blood, was tirelessly breaking the bones of those around him, trying to break through the blockade of "undead" people, trying to rush over and save her...
’That fool... He’s hopeless...’
’I’m already dead cold, what are you still fighting for?’
In a daze, she seemed to return to that day, back when Ma Tietou participated in the "Heaven-Ascending Run"... He couldn’t outrun the others then... ’how is it that now, at a time like this... you’re still so slow...’
’Tie... tou...’
’Stop fighting... Run...’
’Hurry...’
’Run...’
Her pupils dilated. Her breathing stopped.
Liu Yue, Shopkeeper of the Tongli Money Shop, died in the An Family’s ancestral hall...
...
In the instant after Mu Ling killed her, the winds in the Spirit Hall seemed to shift.
Ma Tietou, mad with rage and vowing to avenge his love; a portion of the City Guards, greedy by nature and eager to capture a weak murderer; and the government soldiers, who bullied the weak and feared the strong, desperate for a scapegoat to report back to their superiors.
Three entirely different torrents, each with its own desires and killing intent, simultaneously turned their spears.
Mu Ling remained kneeling on the ground, tightly clutching the blood-drenched carving knife.
But he just kept his head down, quietly looking at Liu Yue’s body. His eyes were empty, as if his soul had been buried in the yellow earth along with her...
And so the Storyteller seemed to be left all alone, at the center of all this malice...