Chapter 129: Am I Really That Ugly?
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At those words, Zhao Wenshang suddenly glanced behind him. There stood Baili Mo, the azure Daoist robe around his body rustling violently beneath the tremors of his spiritual energy. His long hair streamed upward, and his handsome features were faintly twisted. At some point, a long sword had appeared in his hand.
“Baili Mo... you didn’t leave?” Zhao Wenshang stared at him in utter disbelief.
A scream rang out. Zhao Wenshang’s right arm was hurled high into the air before falling heavily to the ground. Blood gushed from the severed limb in an unceasing torrent.
“How dare you!” The cultivator surnamed Wang roared upon seeing this, then launched himself at Baili Mo.
“Those who approach as soldiers, battle, and array themselves before advancing! Rise, weapon!”
Baili Mo shouted as well. The long sword in his hand suddenly burst into dazzling light and shot toward the cultivator surnamed Wang with a sharp whoosh.
Man and weapon immediately clashed, neither gaining the upper hand. In fact, the cultivator surnamed Wang was gradually forced into a disadvantage.
“What are you waiting for? Kill him! Kill him for me!” Zhao Wenshang clutched the wound on his severed arm, where white bone was visible, and shouted at the elite troop. The overwhelming pain was slowly driving him out of his senses.
“Be still.”
The moment the words fell, not one of the dozens of soldiers could move. No matter how powerful an army might be, mortals were still mortals—fragile and utterly helpless before a cultivator.
“None of you will escape. Not a single one.”
Baili Mo walked slowly toward Lu Qinglian, so slowly that there was even a hint of fear in his steps.
He had told her. He had sworn it with absolute certainty. He had said that no one in the Zhao residence would lay a hand on him. He had sworn in his heart that he would protect her.
Yet now, the vow he had made to himself seemed so laughable. In the end, he had never truly understood the human heart, nor had he imagined that everything would happen so suddenly.
“More than a decade of secluded cultivation, and this is what it amounted to? I cultivated all the way into a pile of dog shit. Baili Mo, you’re a damned useless coward.”
Baili Mo lowered his head. His long hair concealed his face, making his expression impossible to read.
At last, he stood before her. Lu Qinglian kept her head bowed. She did not want to look at him; she did not want the person before her to see what she had become.
“Raise your head. Look at me.”
Baili Mo slowly crouched down and spoke softly.
“Am I very ugly now? Did I frighten you?”
After a long while, Lu Qinglian finally lifted her head. She gave him a faint smile, bitter and fragile.
Baili Mo simply looked at her, studying her with solemn attention. Then he pressed his lips to hers. He had never cared what she looked like. He knew only that the first time he had seen her, that single glance had already determined far too much.
“Mm...”
A muffled sound escaped Lu Qinglian. Her terrifying face was streaked with blood, and her eyes widened as she stared at him. Yet with his lips against hers, she could not utter a word. Crystalline tears slowly slid from the corners of her eyes.
It was as though her heart had been struck without warning, completely defenseless.
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“I’m sorry. I’m late.”
After a long while, he pulled away from her lips and spoke slowly, gently, tenderly.
Baili Mo raised his hand and softly caressed her face. In his eyes, that face—which should have seemed hideous and terrifying—remained as beautiful as it had in daylight: delicate, graceful, and composed.
“Don’t... don’t touch me. I’m not beautiful. All I ever do is bring trouble to you. I’m nothing. I’m just a harbinger of disaster.”
Lu Qinglian shook her head faintly and dragged herself backward. Fear and terror filled her.
“I’m here. I’ll take care of everything.”
Baili Mo embraced her at once, his eyes filled with heartache and self-reproach. He did not want to live with regret again. If only he had arrived a little sooner, acted a little more decisively, none of this would have happened.
“I’m just... just a harbinger of disaster. I’ve lost everything. I have nothing left. Why? I only wanted to live in peace. Why did they all have to treat me this way? What did I do wrong?”
Feeling the warmth of Baili Mo’s embrace—so different from the cold stillness of the night—Lu Qinglian sensed a warmth she had known only from her parents. She clung to it, sobbing out her grief.
“My father and mother died protecting me. They were cruelly murdered by those people. They burned down my home—my only home. I lost everything.”
“Now I can’t even do something as small as burying my parents. They burned it all. It’s gone. Everything is gone. They even took away the final meaning of my existence.”
Lu Qinglian broke down completely, at last releasing every emotion she had kept suppressed. Before him—and only before him—she wanted to weep without holding anything back.
“I’ll shield you from every calamity. I’ll bear every disaster.”
“Your pain—no matter how little of it—I’ll share it with you.”
“You haven’t lost everything. You still have me. I’ll give you a reason to exist. I’ll build the home you long for.”
“I’ll avenge you! Your suffering—I’ll repay it tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.”
“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell everyone who hurt you that from this day forward, I stand behind you!”
The boy who had spent more than a decade cultivating in solitude atop the Southern Profound Immortal Mountain seemed to have grown up in that instant. In that instant, he too began to take on the color of blood.
People were always like this. They suffered through loss, regretted what they had lost, and only then learned to grow within that loss.
“Wait for me a little while. It will be over soon.”
Baili Mo whispered those words gently beside Lu Qinglian’s ear.
Lu Qinglian suddenly felt terribly tired. Everything before her eyes blurred, and at last she quietly fell asleep in Baili Mo’s arms, tears still glistening at the corners of her eyes, yet utterly at peace.
Perhaps, at some fleeting moment, an accidental meeting—a chance encounter—could become the entirety of another person’s world.
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Baili Mo gently settled her on the ground. Then, with a wave of his right hand, the raging flames burning behind him were extinguished in an instant.
Afterward, he turned his cold gaze upon everyone present. The chill in his eyes was like falling into an icy cellar, and everyone shuddered.
“For this crime, the extermination of nine generations would not be excessive. I will deal with you one by one. Old or young, woman or child—I will spare none.”
“Whether right or wrong, good or evil, I no longer care about any of it. Even if the world condemns me, I do not care.”
Baili Mo’s voice lingered in everyone’s ears. It was cold and soft, yet utterly unquestionable. No one dared meet his gaze, and no one dared speak.
Meanwhile, the cultivator surnamed Wang, who was locked in a desperate battle with the long sword, was suffering miserably. He had never imagined that the junior Zhao Wenshang had dismissed so casually could be this powerful.
“She’s only a mortal—just a mortal you met today! Why?” Zhao Wenshang roared, clutching his still-bleeding right arm. The veins on his face bulged, making his expression utterly savage.
“I am the son of Zhao Yuan! I have power and influence throughout Chang’an, while she is nothing but a woman—a disfigured woman!”
“If you want women, I can arrange them for you! Ten, a hundred—however many you want! Just let me go, and I’ll arrange enough to satisfy you!”
Zhao Wenshang screamed hysterically. His former arrogance had become utterly ridiculous, and he begged incessantly for mercy simply so that he could stay alive.
“Compared to her, your lives are not worth a single coin.”
Killing intent filled Baili Mo’s eyes, and fine red veins spread across his eyeballs.
“Brother Wang! Wang Shi! Save me! If you rescue me, I’ll have my father give you anything you want!”
Zhao Wenshang babbled incoherently. Seeing that Baili Mo clearly had no intention of sparing him, he hurriedly called out to the cultivator named Wang Shi for help.
Baili Mo watched them coldly. With a sweep of his right hand, the long sword battling Wang Shi in the distance curved through the air and instantly returned to his grasp.
He swung the sword once.
The troop frozen in place by Baili Mo was decapitated all at once. Long pillars of blood sprayed from the severed necks, and the speed was so great that not even a scream escaped.
With a single stroke, the elite troop—an army capable of slaughtering its way through any mortal battlefield—vanished into silent death.
Mortals were ultimately only mortals. However formidable they might be, without some extraordinary opportunity, before a cultivator they were nothing more than slightly larger ants, utterly incapable of fighting back.
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