34: Chapter 34 Similar Broken Swords

The night wind, like the wailing of a vengeful ghost, carried the scent of scorched earth from outside the city, fiercely pouring into the dilapidated, crumbling temple.

Ding Qing sat cross-legged in a corner, his bare upper body covered in fine beads of sweat and the lingering Evil Qi.

His bronze skin, under the flickering firelight, resembled cooling lava.

Nine Body- town Black Runes slowly pulsed beneath the outline of his bulging muscles.

His hat brim was pulled extremely low.

Shadows devoured most of his face, revealing only tightly pursed lips, sharp as if carved by a knife and axe, and the taut muscles of his jaw.

Those eyes, which once burned with molten Battle Intent, were now as still as the ice surface of a ten-thousand-year-old cold pond, reflecting the swaying flames.

The Old Daoist in Yellow Robes huddled on the other side of the fire, very close to the flames.

The firelight illuminated his withered face, which resembled old tree bark, deeply lined and filled with Death Qi.

His coarse official robe had turned into true rags, and the exposed skin was covered with large patches of bluish-black, frostbite-like marks.

Those were the imprints left by the shadow's erosion.

He coughed violently from time to time.

Each cough brought up strands of dark red and black blood, viscous as asphalt.

His entire being was as weak as a candle in the wind, threatening to extinguish at any moment.

The Black Mountain, suppressed to its limit within him, seemed to become even more restless from being forcibly activated.

Invisible chains faintly appeared on his hunched back, emitting a faint yet piercing clatter.

As if they would crush him and the mountain together, dragging them into the abyss at any moment.

The Old Daoist in Yellow Robes' turbid eyes were half-closed.

Occasionally, he would lift them, glancing at Ding Qing's silent, mountain-like figure.

There was no trace of blame.

Only a deeper calm and a sense of 'it was bound to happen' understanding.

He understood why Ding Qing had acted.

A martial artist, a hegemon pure to the bone, who only believed in his own iron fists.

How could he be willing to be trapped in a false cage?

And believe his one-sided story?

Doubt, probing, and then breaking the situation with force—this was inevitable, etched into Ding Qing's very blood.

It was just that the price... was too tragic, attracting a true nightmare.

It almost buried both of them completely in that graveyard called Baiye City.

Now, like two stray dogs, they hid in this desolate wilderness temple, licking their wounds.

A heavy, suffocating silence enveloped the dilapidated temple.

Only the dry branches in the bonfire crackled, struggling against the boundless darkness and chill outside the temple.

"Cough... cough cough..."

A suppressed cough, thick with the smell of blood, accompanied by stumbling, heavy footsteps, abruptly shattered the stagnant silence.

Ding Qing raised his head.

The nine black runes beneath his skin suddenly glowed faintly.

The Old Daoist in Yellow Robes' turbid eyes also snapped open, looking towards the temple door.

A figure stumbled and pushed open the already rotten temple door, bringing with him a pungent smell of blood and the aura of dying despair, and collapsed inside.

It was a man.

His clothes were already soaked with bloodstains and some kind of charred marks.

His exposed skin was covered with deep, bone-visible wounds, crisscrossing haphazardly.

One of his arms was twisted at an unnatural angle, clearly broken, connected only by a bit of flesh.

He held a knife in his hand.

No, it could no longer be called a knife, but merely a broken blade.

The blade was broken in the middle, the fracture jagged, and the remaining part was also full of nicks and curled edges, stained with blood.

The wrapping cord at the hilt was already soaked with blood, revealing the smooth, blood-soaked wood beneath.

The man was severely injured.

Every breath was a wheezing sound like a broken bellows, his chest rising and falling violently.

His face was covered in blood and dust, making his features indistinguishable.

Only his eyes, beneath his messy, blood-stained hair, shone with astonishing brightness.

It wasn't the fierce glow of burning Battle Intent like Ding Qing's.

But a light of almost obsessive determination, burning the last embers of life.

In his arms, he tightly clutched a swaddling cloth barely wrapped in rags.

The swaddling cloth was equally dirty and old, but he protected it fiercely with his only intact arm and body.

The swaddling cloth rose and fell slightly, and an extremely faint breathing sound came from within.

The man's gaze, like a wounded lone wolf, swept across the temple with beast-like vigilance and undisguised exhaustion and pain.

Ding Qing's mountain-like figure, with his lingering Evil Qi, and the Old Daoist in Yellow Robes' withered, eerie aura, as if he had crawled out of a grave, were certainly not benevolent.

His body visibly tensed, and his remaining right hand instinctively tightened its grip on the broken blade.

His knuckles turned white from the effort.

But he was too exhausted, and his injuries were too severe.

There was almost no room for hesitation, or rather, he was simply too weak to choose a safer place.

Dragging his nearly broken body, the man did not choose a farther corner.

Instead, he walked to a relatively dry haystack not far from Ding Qing.

Every step was incredibly heavy.

Slow, painful, leaving a dark red wet trail on the ground.

He knelt down extremely slowly, with great difficulty, his entire body's bones groaning.

He first carefully placed the small swaddling cloth from his arms.

Then, supporting himself with the broken blade, he barely maintained a half-kneeling, half-sitting posture.

To prevent his heavy body from pressing on the child.

After doing all this, he seemed to have exhausted his last shred of strength.

His head hung low, his messy hair obscuring his face.

Only his heavy, blood-flecked gasps echoed in the dilapidated temple.

Silence descended again, but it was different from the previous dead silence.

The air was filled with a strong smell of blood, despair, and an unspeakable sorrow mixed with a glimmer of fatherly love.

Who knows how long passed, perhaps a few minutes, perhaps just the interval of a heartbeat.

The man suddenly coughed up a large mouthful of dark red blood clots, mixed with tiny pieces of internal organs, splattering on the ground in front of him.

He seemed to have been momentarily sobered by this cough of blood.

He suddenly raised his head.

His bloodshot eyes stared intently at the broken blade in his hand.

That look was like gazing at an old friend he was about to part with forever, and also like contemplating his own predetermined fate.

Then, he moved.

He painstakingly shifted his body and found a roughly shaped stone, covered in dust and moss, beside the haystack.

With his still relatively intact hand, he laboriously pressed the broken edge of the blade against the stone.

Then, his left hand trembling, he used the last bit of strength in his entire body and pressed down.

"Scratch... scratch... scratch..."

A monotonous, astringent, and ear-piercing sound of metal grinding against stone suddenly broke the dead silence of the dilapidated temple.

He was using that already useless broken blade to grind a stone.

Or rather, he was using the last strength of his life to do something that carried all his beliefs and his final hope.

Each push, as the broken blade rubbed against the rough stone surface, sparked a few faint, almost invisible sparks.

Emitting a grating sound.

The man's heavy head hung low, and thick, hot blood continuously seeped from his cracked lips, nostrils, and even ear canals, dripping down.

One drop, one drop, and another drop.

Blood beads, like broken red agates, fell onto the cold broken blade.

Falling onto the dusty stone, falling into the dry grass beneath him.

The dark red liquid quickly spread and congealed on the cold metal and rough stone surface, then was covered by new drops of blood.

This scene, how similar it was to the broken blade from the Buried Era that the Old Daoist in Yellow Robes had first shown!

The same dilapidation, the same sorrow, the same... carrying an unspeakable weight.

The Old Daoist in Yellow Robes' turbid eyes also stared intently at the man.

Watching his every difficult breath, watching the blood continuously dripping from his mouth.

The old Daoist's withered face showed no expression.

But in those turbid eyes, for the first time, there was no longer a dead calm.

"Scratch... scratch..."

The sound of grinding became slower and weaker.

The man's left hand, pressing the broken blade, was trembling like an autumn leaf in the wind; each push seemed to expend all his strength.

Blood had almost completely covered the front half of the broken blade, congealing into a dark red, blackened scab.

Finally.

"Scratch..."

The last grinding sound, faint as a sigh, abruptly stopped.