This sound of “stop” was like a bell of doomsday.

     Mo Ran almost knew what he was going to see next. His hair stood on end, and his blood surged. He wanted to get out of the illusion and escape, but at the same time, he also wanted to rush into the past and protect Chu Wanning.

     “No… Huaizui… you can’t…”

     But he couldn’t do anything to stop it. All of this had already happened a long time ago.

     He could only watch the scene in front of him, his mind numb. He could only watch as Chu Wanning furrowed his sharp eyebrows, his expression resolute and unyielding as he calmly met Huaizui’s gaze.

     Mo Ran couldn’t help but shout at him, “Run! Run!”

     The young Chu Wanning had always trusted Huaizui, his adoptive father and benefactor—trusted the master who raised him as a sacrifice. So, even though he was extremely disappointed, he didn’t see the killing intent in Huaizui’s stern eyes. Mo Ran stood in front of him—he knew it was useless, but he couldn’t just stand by and watch.

     “Please, run quickly…”

     Chu Wanning didn’t leave. He was as unwavering as a pine tree, walking step by step toward Huaizui. Finally, he stood still. His high ponytail was tousled by the wind behind him, and his bloodstained robes were disheveled.

     Huaizui’s lips opened and closed. He said slowly, “If you want to leave the temple and go down the mountain, you can.”

     “Shizun?” Chu Wanning’s eyes widened slightly. He didn’t understand the sinister nature of people’s hearts. He only saw the executioner’s knife as a bright moon by the window. For a moment, he was even grateful and happy.

     He thought that Huaizui had finally understood him.

     But the knife was cold and murderous, and his killing intent was already apparent. Huaizui said, “When you walk out of this courtyard tonight, you will no longer be a member of Wubei Temple. The fourteen-year relationship between you and me as master and disciple is now severed.”

     “...” His phoenix eyes were still wide open, but the emotions inside changed from joy to shock and grief.

     Chu Wanning probably didn’t expect Huaizui to be so adamant at this point. He stood there stiffly for a long time before he finally moved his lips. Mo Ran was so anxious beside him that he kept muttering, “I beg you, hurry and leave. Leave this place. Don’t say any more, just leave.”

     His lips moved, but he couldn’t utter any complete words.

     Huaizui stared at him. This was the heaviest bet he had ever made. Wanning was a very sentimental person. The two of them had been companions for the past fourteen years; if he cut off this master-disciple bond, it would be like cutting his heart with a knife. He probably wouldn’t…

     Chu Wanning knelt down.

     “...” Huaizui was stunned.

     He was still numbly thinking, No, how can he be so decisive and stubborn?

     Chu Wanning knelt down and kowtowed.

     One bow, two bows, until nine bows.

     He lifted his head again. His eyes were clear and free of moisture, but his cheeks were wet.

     “Disciple Chu Wanning thanks Shizun for your kindness in raising me. From now on…” His adam’s apple moved. From now on, what? He didn’t know. He couldn’t continue.

     Perhaps it was because of the strong wind and cold weather, but Huaizui’s body swayed slightly in the wind. His robe was blown into disarray, and the wind filled his sleeves. His face grew darker and colder, his lips bloodless, as he stared at the person kneeling in front of him.

    That piece of…

     Wood! Wood!

     He had carved and painted it, then used blood to give it life. He taught it attentively with great care and dedication.

     He had done so much and waited fourteen years to send this piece of wood to the ghost realm, so it could become a shell to carry Chu Lan’s spirit—not to see it here today talking about the worries of the world and its people. What is it?

     A piece of scrap!

     Chopping wood!

     The fire in his chest burned into his eyes. He was impulsive to the core, to the point of recklessness.

     Like this, Huaizui was too dangerous. Mo Ran bent down and tried to hold Chu Wanning, but he couldn’t touch him. Chu Wanning was still as stubborn as ever, kneeling obediently in place, stubborn because he had his own morals in his heart, and obedient because he felt guilty.

     Chu Wanning’s eyes reflected Huaizui’s increasingly sinister face. His chest was filled with burning blood that couldn’t be quelled.

     Every part of him was made for someone else. He was only chopped wood—a piece of wood without a soul.

     He knelt on the ground. The only thing he had never thought about was himself.

     “Wanning…” Mo Ran suddenly choked up. He raised his hand to touch the face he couldn’t touch. “Please… I beg you… let’s go… let’s go…”

     Clang! There was the sound of metal falling to the ground.

     Mo Ran slowly turned his head. There was a scimitar lying on the bluestone floor. It was Huaizui’s weapon.

     Under the moonlight, the executioner’s eyes glowed with bloody light. He kicked the scimitar again and sent it flying to Chu Wanning’s knees.

     “No, no, no. Don’t, don’t.”

     Mo Ran was panicking. He tried to grab the scimitar, but the tip of the blade passed through his fingers. He couldn’t grab it. No matter how desperately he tried, he couldn’t grab hold of it.

     Finally, a slender hand reached over and grasped the scimitar that Mo Ran’ couldn’t hold no matter how hard he tried.

     Chu Wanning’s expression was calm. The initial shock had already disappeared, and the great pain had subsided when Huaizui threw the scimitar at him.

     He looked relieved.

     “If Shizun wants my life, I’ll give it to you,” Chu Wanning said. “There is no difference between living fourteen years and living a hundred and forty years if you only sit here in this world.”

     Huaizui’s eyes suddenly became nothing like those of that otherworldly monk at all. For a moment, Mo Ran clearly saw the shadow of Xiao Man on his face.

     It was the shadow of the youth who had appeared on the rainy night before the rebellion in Lin’an.

     “Chu Wanning,” Huaizui said coldly, “if you want to end things with me, I won’t hold you back. I won’t consider the food or clothing you have worn in the past fourteen years. But you must return to me what you have learned.”

     “...”

     Huaizui narrowed his eyes. “I am going to take away your spiritual core.”

     Spiritual cores were a cultivator's purest condensed crystal. It was the same as the Divine Wood. As long as one had a spiritual core, it was possible to reconstruct Chu Wanning.

     This time, he definitely wouldn’t teach him about morals and the common people. He definitely couldn’t let him learn about benevolence and kindness.

     He wanted Chu Wanning’s spiritual core.

     The heart of a living person.

     Chu Wanning looked at him for a while. The light and shadow in the courtyard flickered. There were monks attending evening class in the great hall. The sound of chanting came from afar, along with the scent of sandalwood.

     Huaizui’s voice sounded in Mo Ran’s ears again. But this time, he only said two sentences. These two sentences seemed to have exhausted all his lifelong courage and strength.

     His voice seemed to have aged a hundred years in an instant.

     “He knelt on the ground and looked at me. I suddenly felt that when the Buddha forgave the mortals who hurt him, he had that kind of look in his eyes.”

     “He was pitying his executioner—the living creature under the knife on the blood-stained butcher.”

     “No!!!” Mo Ran screamed.

     But the light of the knife flashed, and he suddenly closed his eyes. There was an audible piercing sound, and Mo Ran curled up on the ground.

     “Don't…”

     Blood splattered, and bones and flesh were separated.

     Mo Ran crawled over to Chu Wanning’s side, wailing in pain. He kept shaking his head in disbelief as he cried miserably. He hurriedly blocked Chu Wanning’s wounds, trying to infuse spiritual power to stop the bleeding.

     Nothing worked.

     Nothing worked.

     He watched helplessly as Chu Wanning endured the pain and used a spell to prevent himself from fainting. He watched as Chu Wanning stabbed the knife into his own chest, inch by inch, hot blood flowing everywhere.

     Hot, flowing, and blazing.

     How could he not be a living person?

     Flesh, flesh that was torn apart.

     It was bright red, broken.

     How could he not be a living person? How?!

     Huaizui stood there stiffly in the same place. His expression was still fixed at the last moment, looking ferocious and cruel. However, the light in his eyes flickered, trembling, and at a loss…

     Was this really what he wanted?

     At that moment, the memory scroll suddenly became turbulent and blurry. The scene in front of Mo Ran became distorted and chaotic because of Huaizui’s emotions when he created this scroll.

     He saw so many memories emerging in the blood, and every one of them was soft and true.

     Mo Ran saw an eleven or twelve-year-old Chu Wanning preparing to leave after obtaining Tianwen at Jincheng Lake. But a wooden guqin with a haitang branch tail emerged from the lake. The instant it floated up, Chu Wanning’s body also shone with a dazzling light, as if he resonated with it. He touched the strings of the guqin with surprise and confusion. “What’s going on?”

     Huaizui immediately guessed that this guqin was probably also made from a part of the Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood. Since it and Chu Wanning came from the same source, naturally they could sense each other. His expression looked very excited, a little surprised, and a little happy.

     “This should be your destined holy weapon.”

     “Destined holy weapon?”

     Huaizui was pleasantly surprised, but his eyes were a little evasive. “...Yes, some people are born with unique bone structures, and they are born attuned to a holy weapon.”

     Chu Wanning laughed. “My bones are unique?”

     “...” Huaizui avoided answering. He only stroked the wooden body of Jiu’ge and sighed. “This guqin is fated to be yours. It can be summoned without a spiritual core… It is connected to your blood.”

     The scene changed. Mo Ran saw two people walking outside Lin’an City. Huaizui followed behind little Wanning and kept asking him to slow down.

     He saw the steaming flower pastries and Chu Wanning’s innocent smile through the steam.

     In the inn, he saw Chu Wanning holding a small cattail leaf fan, trying his best to cool down Huaizui, who was meditating.

     He saw Chu Wanning eat a sweet lotus root for the first time. The sweet juice filled his mouth, and he smiled at Huaizui.

     Finally, the illusion stopped at the edge of a lotus pond in the summer of a certain year. The lotus leaves were endlessly green, and the pond was full of lotus flowers in full bloom. Red dragonflies rose and fell gracefully, flying around in spirals. It was a perfect evening.

     The five or six-year-old Chu Wanning smiled and sat cross-legged like Huaizui, looking up at his Shizun with a pair of dark and gentle phoenix eyes. “Shizun, let’s play again. Let’s play one more time.”

     Huaizui said, “I won’t play anymore. Shizun is going to the hall to recite scriptures for an old friend.”

     “Play one more time. It’s the last time. It’s really the last time.”

     Then, without waiting for the big monk to speak, the little boy rolled up the sleeves of his green and gray monk robe. The lotus flowers swayed, and he reached out his little hand and excitedly touched Huaizui’s hand. The child’s voice was sweet and tender, like fresh water chestnuts and sweet lotus roots.

     “You are against one, I am against one, what blooms in the water? Lotus blooms in the water.

     “You are against two, I am against two, what blooms in clusters? Elm trees bloom in clusters.”

     There was nothing Huaizui could do about it. Looking at his smiling face, he could only shake his head in the end. Then he smiled and high-fived him, playing a childish game.

     “You are against nine, I am against nine, what flowers bloom and go with the wind? Dandelions bloom and go with the wind.

     “You are against ten, I am against ten, what flowers have no leaves? Wintersweet flowers bloom without leaves.”

     Blood stained his lapels, and the red lotus was soaked in blood.

     In the temple courtyard, Huaizui closed his eyes.

     It’s… a broken piece of wood.

     The happy laughter of the past was still in his ears.

     Yes, a person without a soul.

     “What blooms in the water? Hahaha, Shizun is so slow; lotus flowers bloom in the water.”

     It was an empty shell. The body he wanted to sacrifice to Chu Xun was the wood of atonement he had spent hundreds of years of his life to obtain! It wasn’t a living person! It didn’t have a soul!

     “Shizun, I’ll share half the flower pastry with you. You eat the big one, and I’ll eat the small one.”

     Huaizui’s tears streamed down his face.

     He trembled, trembled violently. He ran towards the child who had already plunged the blade into his heart, whose spiritual core had already begun to crack and was about to be dug out.

     He knelt down and howled in pain, his voice hoarse. He was like Mo Ran, who was holding Chu Wanning but could only pass through him. The sobs coming from his throat were like weeping blood, like a knife stabbing not into Chu Wanning’s heart, but into his throat, into his soul.

     How could there be no spirit soul…?

     It was he who closed his eyes and refused to listen.

     He had always known; he had always been aware of it in his heart.

     From Chu Wanning’s smile, from Chu Wanning’s seriousness, from Chu Wanning’s tolerance and gentleness, from Chu Wanning’s stubbornness and persistence, he had always seen that person’s soul.

     But for his own selfish interests, for his so-called atonement, he pretended to be deaf and dumb. He numbed himself.

     Chu Wanning had never been a wooden sculpture, an empty shell. He was a person of flesh and blood, who could cry and laugh…

     “I watched him grow up day by day ever since he was a child. He was like Chu Lan when he was young, and when he grew up, he looked like Chu Xun. But I have never mistaken him with either of them.”

     Huaizui’s voice sounded like a broken gong, hoarse to the extreme.

     “It was he who gave me half of the pastry, who pulled me along and called me Shizun, who secretly brought me a cattail leaf fan to keep me cool, thinking I didn’t notice. He was the one who accompanied me at Wubei Temple for fourteen years, smiling at me and trusting me, saying that I was the kindest Shizun in the world.”

     His voice was bitter.

     Huaizui murmured, “The kindest Shizun…”

     In the memory scroll, Huaizui restrained Chu Wanning’s hand and suppressed his spiritual power. Chu Wanning fainted from pain almost the moment the spell stopped working.

     Huaizui hugged the living, bleeding body in his arms. It was as if he was holding Chu Xun, who dug out his heart to illuminate the escape route for everyone two hundred years ago when the sky cracked in Lin’an.

     But it was different.

     Chu Wanning was stubborn and proud. Chu Wanning had his own little habits and quirks, such as sleeping without a quilt and biting his chopsticks when he was tired from eating. He also never liked to wash his clothes, only knowing how to soak them all together.

     Those were all his own habits, his own preferences.

     Not like anyone else.

     The scene went dark again.

     It was a good thing it went dark again. If Mo Ran saw it again, he would probably go crazy.

     In the darkness, Huaizui sighed faintly.

     “Actually, when he looked at me coldly and said he wanted to go down the mountain to help the people—that he didn’t want to sit on the ground and ascend—I knew he was a living person.”

     “I was weak and selfish. I almost destroyed the child I raised with my own hands.”

     “He is not Chu Lan. He is not my sacrifice to atone for my sins.”

     “He is Chu Wanning, because when I woke him up, it was a quiet and peaceful evening. The temple bell tolled, and he was born under the solemn gaze of the majestic gods and Buddhas in the heavens. I gave him a name.”

     “But what I gave him was actually only a name. I had always thought of myself as being the one who created him. Because of this, I believed he should be used by me, owned by me, and sacrificed by me. But when I looked at him, and just like Chu-gongzi, he didn’t hesitate to cut open his own heart for the sake of his morals…”

     Huaizui was so choked that he couldn’t speak anymore. After a long time, he spoke in a hoarse voice:

     “I finally understood that I had never given him a soul or a life. Those were all his own, because… because a dirty and weak sinner like me could never create a life as pure and resolute as his.”

     “Never.”