“Ha!” Ao Xin laughed. “You’re the first person I’ve seen who would give up immortality for a zither. At this rate, without ascending, you’ll have no more than twenty years left to live.”
Gazing at the zither, Mu Jin seemed lost in thought before whispering, “Better to abandon a thousand years of cultivation, better not to ascend to immortality, than to destroy this zither.”
Ao Xin froze, caught off guard by Mu Jin’s expression. For a moment, he couldn’t tell whether Mu Jin meant he wouldn’t destroy the zither—or wouldn’t abandon his feelings.
“Thank you for your kind offer, but if you wish to stay, I can only offer a cup of tea. If you wish to leave, I won’t see you off,” Mu Jin said calmly.
Furious, Ao Xin flicked his sleeves and left. “Ungrateful!” he muttered as he vanished.
Ungrateful? Perhaps it was simply that neither of them understood what was truly good or bad in Mu Jin’s eyes.
* * *
“Zi Qin.”
* * *
“You wretched disciple!”
The soul-scattering whip lashed across my back, its pain cutting as deeply as its name implied. Through the haze of agony, I heard the sect leader’s furious voice booming, “This strike is for breaking sect rules and indulging in mortal desires.”
Yet in my mind, I could only see the refined figure of a man in white robes, sitting under the peach tree on Qingzhu Cliff, listening to me play a melancholy tune on the zither. He always smiled faintly after the song, half amused, half exasperated: “Qin’er, you’ve played the wrong notes again.”
The sound of another lash echoed in the vast, empty hall, its reverberation seemingly endless.
“This strike is for your disgraceful transgression—harboring improper thoughts about your master!”
The pain made my fingers curl involuntarily, but my gaze remained steady, meeting the sect leader’s furious eyes without faltering. My lips curled into a faint smile. “Master… improper thoughts or not, Zi Qin’s only devotion is to Mu Jin alone. What does it have to do with you… or anyone else?”
The elders gathered below the punishment platform turned livid with rage, their faces ashen. Only Aunt Qi Ling’s eyes reddened as she mouthed silently, “Don’t say any more, don’t say any more…”
Even she believed I was wrong. The entire sect deemed me wrong, guilty of the gravest sin. But what was my crime?
If there was a mistake, it was merely a mistake of fate.
0 Comments