The wind and snow grew even more violent.
The entire Northern Region seemed to tremble beneath the massive flesh lotus platform.
Li Zhaoye felt his body becoming heavier. Every swing of his sword required a tremendous amount of effort.
Wolf fur sprouted more thickly across his skin, his nails grew longer, and his vision began to bleed into a deep crimson.
Yet, he was happy.
Because his senior sister was by his side.
Just like ten years ago, they stood back-to-back, blades facing outward, fighting through the massed demons of the Wolf Court.
It felt as if time had never passed; he was still the adoring junior brother, and she was still the most dazzling genius of the Heavenly Sword Sect.
"Watch out!"
A sharp cry shattered his brief moment of intoxication.
A massive, rotting demon wolf lunged from the side, its claws aimed directly at Bai Ling's heart from behind.
Bai Ling was currently lost in a demonic frenzy. Her single eye saw only the dense pack of enemies in front of her; she was completely oblivious to the lethal threat at her back.
Thump!
A small, slight figure slammed into Bai Ling, knocking her out of the way.
It was Qingque.
Qingque’s small body stood where Bai Ling had been, and the claws tore through her chest.
Rotten Buddhist light spread rapidly from the wound. Qingque’s body shook violently, but she did not fall. Instead, using the last of her strength, she wrapped her arms tightly around the demon wolf's limb.
Wolf fur began to grow wildly across Qingque's face.
"Qing... que?"
Bai Ling’s movements froze.
She stumbled from the impact and turned around blankly.
She could no longer recognize what Qingque had looked like as a human; ten years of wind, frost, and madness had long since eroded those fine details of memory.
But now, seeing the wolf-like features rapidly emerging on Qingque's face, the deeply buried fragments of her memory were violently unearthed.
Countless images flashed by.
In front of the mountain gate, a small girl shivered in the cold, yet her eyes sparkled as she watched Bai Ling practice her sword.
On the training grounds, the girl clumsily imitated her moves, falling into the mud but laughing happily anyway.
On a snowy night, the girl secretly tucked half a piece of dry ration into her pack...
"Senior... Sister..."
Qingque gasped in pain, her muzzle protruding and fangs growing.
"Don't... be afraid..." Bai Ling slashed the demon wolf dead and pulled Qingque into her arms.
She didn't know if she was comforting Qingque or herself.
She could only press her trembling hands against the wound, trying to plug it, but the blood would not stop.
"I'm not afraid." Qingque looked at her hand as it turned into a wolf's claw, yet a trace of a smile appeared on her face.
It was just like the time she had first managed to execute a full set of the Heavenly Sword Sect’s techniques, running to Bai Ling to ask for praise.
"Senior Sister finally recognized me. Qingque is so happy."
Qingque was already very weak; her voice grew smaller and smaller.
"Senior Sister, do you remember?"
Using her final strength, her gaze drifted past Bai Ling, as if seeing the snowy mountains from long ago.
"Back then, I watched you practice your sword on the cliff of the snow mountain... The snowflakes fell on your blade, and the sunlight shone on you... You looked just like a celestial."
"That's why Qingque followed you secretly, walking for three days and nights... begging the elders to let me join the sect."
Bai Ling’s lone eye widened as bloody tears spilled out.
She remembered.
That figure with poor aptitude but excessive stubbornness.
The girl who fell and stood up again and again during the entrance trials.
The junior sister who always looked at her with eyes full of admiration.
"Senior Sister is a hero who stands tall between heaven and earth... my role model."
"Senior Sister, you must always keep a pure sword heart and slay demons and eliminate evil... promise me?"
As the last word fell, the light in Qingque's pupils vanished completely.
The wolf-like features on her face stopped spreading, frozen forever in a grotesque, half-human, half-wolf state, yet she still wore a smile.
She was happy.
Even if she had turned into a monster, even if she died looking so hideous.
To die in her senior sister's arms, to be able to protect her just once—it was enough.
Bai Ling held her, sitting in a daze.
Around her were the deafening roars of battle, the strange cries of the paper people, and the sound of the umbilical cords writhing.
But she heard none of it.
Only Qingque's last words echoed repeatedly in her ears.
"Senior Sister, you must always keep a pure sword heart and slay demons and eliminate evil... promise me?"
"A pure sword heart..."
Bai Ling gave a bitter smile. Bloody tears traced the hideous scars on her face, dripping onto Qingque’s cooling skin.
"Silly girl, my sword heart... it shattered ten years ago."
"The rest of my life has been driven only by an obsession with revenge."
"I simply wasn't willing to die just like that. I thought I had to drag a few enemies down with me."
"But look at what I've become." Bai Ling’s voice was eerily calm. "A madwoman, a monster. Even you almost didn't recognize me."
She gently smoothed Qingque’s messy fur, just as she had straightened the bangs of that new junior sister at the mountain gate years ago.
"But don't be afraid, Qingque. I will avenge you all."
"I'll help you punch a hole right through this sky."
Bai Ling gently set Qingque down and stood up.
She picked up the death sword embryo that was thrust into the ground.
The embryo had been forged from the resentment of a thousand corpses in Frost-Snow Fortress. Its material was peerless, yet it had never become a true sword.
Because it lacked 'fire' and a 'soul'.
Ordinary fire could not melt vow power, and ordinary souls could not carry such overwhelming killing intent.
Bai Ling looked nearby. Li Zhaoye was lost in his bloodlust; half his body had become a wolf as he tore at the umbilical cords with his teeth.
"Zhaoye!"
Bai Ling suddenly shouted.
The voice wasn't loud, yet it pierced through the clamor of the battlefield and drilled clearly into Li Zhaoye's ears.
Li Zhaoye’s body jolted. He spun around, a flash of clarity appearing in his blood-red wolf eyes. "Senior... Sister?"
Bai Ling stood in the wind and snow, her white robes as pure as the frost, clutching the cold sword embryo. A gentle smile touched her face.
"Zhaoye, has my hair turned very white?"
Li Zhaoye blinked, reflexively answering, "What?"
"For these past ten years, the wind and snow in the Northern Region have been too harsh. They've bleached my hair."
Bai Ling lightly stroked the blade, her voice ethereal. "Zhaoye, my sword heart broke long ago in this life."
"But I still have this ruined body and this hatred that has burned for ten years without fading."
"Ten years ago, in the entire Heavenly Sword Sect, you were the one with the purest sword heart besides me."
"So Zhaoye, promise me one last thing, alright?"
Before she finished speaking, ice-blue flames suddenly erupted from Bai Ling's body.
Li Zhaoye seemed to realize something and charged forward frantically.
"Senior Sister! No—"
"Help me..." Bai Ling’s smile grew even more tender. "Slay this false Buddha."
Li Zhaoye was a step too slow.
Without hesitation, Bai Ling clutched the unfinished sword embryo and leaped. Her entire being transformed into a brilliant burst of light, merging into the storm of the disintegrating embryo.
Casting the sword with her body, sacrificing the sword with her soul.
"No!!!"
Li Zhaoye reached out to grab her, his fingertips brushing her sleeve, but he caught only a single strand of her white hair drifting in the wind.
Boom!
The sword embryo devoured Bai Ling’s form. A pillar of ice-blue light shot into the sky, dispelling the blizzard and even overpowering that disgusting Buddhist light.
The sword was complete.
It was a slender, transparent longsword of ice-blue, appearing as if carved from ten-thousand-year ice essence.
In the center of the blade, the faint phantom of a woman could be seen, knees pulled to her chest, sleeping peacefully.
A blizzard unlike any seen in ten years suddenly fell over the Northern Region.
Every snowflake was like a tiny sword.
As they spiraled down, they emitted faint sword hums.
Li Zhaoye knelt blankly on the ground. With a trembling hand, he grasped the death sword hovering in the air.
The blade seemed sentient. The moment he touched it, a bone-chilling cold rushed from his palm straight to his heart.
The sensation was like the temperature of his senior sister’s finger when she used to lightly tap his forehead whenever he made a mistake as a child.
"I often wondered... if I had chosen to believe you and stand by your side back then, when everyone accused you of colluding with the demon wolves..."
"Would the ending have been different?"
Li Zhaoye murmured to himself, tears freezing into ice on his cheeks.
"But there are no 'ifs'. I understand now. Some paths are destined to be walked alone."
"Some sins are destined to be atoned for by oneself."
The snow fell in flurries.
In a trance, Li Zhaoye saw the falling snow transform into faces.
There was his deceased master, Qingque, and the countless civilians of the Northern Region who had died in the maws of the demon wolves.
And... there was the sixteen-year-old Bai Ling, smiling brightly at him.
"Zhaoye, focus on your practice."
"Zhaoye, I'll protect you from now on."
"Zhaoye, we must eliminate evil and defend the Way."
Li Zhaoye closed his eyes. In that moment, he finally understood the "pure sword heart" Jian Huaishuang had spoken of.
If one draws their sword for a single person, that sword can withstand ten thousand armies.
The ice sword in his hand vibrated as if responding to his heart.
It also seemed unable to bear the weight of this heavy, tragic wish; fine cracks began to appear on the blade.
"Senior Sister."
"Today, I will slay the gods and Buddhas that fill the heavens for you."
Li Zhaoye snapped his eyes open. They were no longer blood-red, but a clear, translucent ice-blue.
He gripped the shattering death sword and poured all of his life, his soul, his hatred, and his adoration into it!
One final strike.
"Slay!!!"
Li Zhaoye transformed into a beam of ice-blue sword light that pierced through heaven and earth!
Carrying ten years of wind and snow, the memories of a thousand people, and the tragic wishes of ten thousand souls, the sword light was like an ice dragon swimming against the current. It slammed violently into the massive umbilical cord that connected the Buddha and man, which was frantically draining the flesh and blood of all living beings.
Crack—
Time seemed to stand still.
The vow power umbilical cord, which was nearly impossible for ordinary weapons to sever, was as fragile as thin paper before this strike of ultimate emotion.
A massive sound of snapping echoed through the clouds. Golden Buddhist light erupted out, only to be instantly frozen solid.
After that single strike, the sword shattered, and the man died.
As the sword light faded, Li Zhaoye’s figure also dissolved into the wind and snow.
Only a single strand of white hair drifted down, buried beneath the heavy accumulation of snow.
The boy who was once carried out of a wolf's den on his senior sister's back had finally caught up to her at the journey's end.
Between heaven and earth, only a vast, clean white remained.
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