Chapter 720: I Found You

Chapter 721: I Found You

A silence fell over everyone the moment Bai Ye spoke.

"What should we do now?" Red Heart 9 asked, spreading his hands helplessly. "We originally planned to attend Lord Hongchen's funeral, but now Lord Hongchen is alive and well... We can't force him to die, can we? And Lord Wuji has also been put away by Lord Hongchen, so didn't we come here for nothing?"

Even Bai Ye didn't know what to do at this point. Their previous two domain funerals had gone smoothly; once Lord Ruoshui and Lord Jiguang's bodies were collected, they could leave. But they hadn't expected a war in the Hongchen Domain to last so long without a single Nine Monarch dying.

As everyone felt lost, a beam of moonlight pierced through the clouds, casting itself before them and gradually weaving into a line of text...

"This is..." Everyone was startled by the sudden moonlight.

Bai Ye slowly pulled down his baseball cap and spoke with resignation:

"It seems we won't be returning empty-handed this time."

Drip—

A single raindrop fell from the broken beam of a ruin, rippling outwards in a puddle.

Several refugees walked blankly through the ruined streets, their gazes sweeping around in bewilderment, seemingly trying to find familiar sights amidst the endless debris... But apart from the occasional fragments of shop signs on the ground, there was no trace of what had been there before.

Their homes were destroyed.

"Mommy, where's our home?" a boy asked blankly, holding his mother's hand.

"...It should be right ahead, no, that's not right, maybe we need to go one more block... No, that's not right either..."

"Hey, isn't that Old Zhao Xi's house? The walls are still standing, quite well preserved," a middle-aged man remarked, surprised to see a small building in the distance.

"Indeed, Old Zhao Xi is really lucky... This house could be lived in again with just a few repairs."

"By the way... where is Old Zhao Xi?"

"He's dead. It seems a silver monster split his head open with a single blow."

"Is there an old man lying over there?"

As the group searched through the ruins, someone with sharp eyes spotted a figure lying on the road in the distance, like a corpse.

The woman gasped, instinctively covering her child's eyes with her hand. The others exchanged glances before approaching.

"Is he still alive?"

"He seems to be alive; he's still breathing."

"Why does he have so many holes... and blood everywhere? How can he still be alive like this?"

"He's not a resident of this street, is he? I've never seen him before."

Drip—

Drops of rain drifted down from the sky, landing on the old man's wrinkled face and slowly trickling downwards... Amidst the surprised murmurs of the crowd, the old man's eyes slowly opened.

Confusion, emptiness, pain, stillness...

There was no life left in the old man's eyes, which stared blankly at everything before him, like those of a dying puppet.

"Hey, are you alright? Where do you live? Do you have any children still alive?" a kind passerby asked, bending down. "Never mind, I'll just take you straight to the hospital."

The old man didn't answer. He simply scanned the few people standing before him, then, after a long silence, used his wrinkled hands to push himself up from the ground, attempting to rise... A wheezing sound, like a broken bellows, came from his mouth. Seeing this, everyone immediately reached out to help him.

But the old man gently brushed their hands away, stubbornly stood up, and then stumbled off alone towards the far end of the street...

His figure grew smaller in their sight, eventually vanishing at the edge of their vision.

"What's wrong with that old man?"

"I don't know, so badly injured yet he won't go to the hospital?"

"Where is he going?"

"That way, it looks like he's heading out of the city... But outside the city, there's nothing left but ruins, right?"

The murmurs of the crowd gradually faded from the old man's ears. He simply walked on, silently and stubbornly, moving away from people... A hospital could never cure his old age; it would only expose his corpse to the world. He didn't want to die there, didn't want to die in public.

The wailing cold wind brushed past the old man's ears. Step by step, he trudged through the ruins, moving forward alone.

He didn't know where he was going, but a deep-seated instinct continuously urged him forward. Eventually, he left the broken city walls, passed through the ruins of town after town, and finally stopped before a small river.

He was tired.

All of the old man's organs had failed, and even breathing was incredibly difficult. He could only support himself with one hand on the trunk of a decaying willow tree, slowly lowering himself to sit by the river.

He painstakingly shifted his body so his feet dangled by the bank, his toes touching the cold river water, just as he had done as a carefree child sitting by the Gusu River.

After finding a comfortable position, he finally let out a long sigh, as if shedding all his burdens, and leaned against the willow tree.

The withered willow stood in the cold wind, quietly awaiting death.

"To end it here... wouldn't be so bad," Yao Qing murmured to himself.

In truth, Yao Qing had wanted to return to Willow Town, to the Su Residence where he and Su Zhiwei had lived for three hundred years, to die peacefully... But he knew how smart Su Zhiwei was. After dealing with Lord Wuji, she would very likely return to the Su Residence to look for him, so he had randomly chosen a place no one knew about.

Although this place was already a ruin, this river and this willow tree still bore some resemblance to Willow Town...

Dying here, at least, wouldn't be so lonely.

The old man's eyes slowly closed. The world was quiet, save for the soft plinking of raindrops falling into the river. He sat silently beneath the withered willow, like an ancient sculpture eternally fixed in place.

Rustle—

The next moment, footsteps appeared in the silent world.

Someone walked over the damp soil and sat down beside the old man by the river, their hands also resting on the ground... A voice softly whispered in his ear:

"From childhood until now, you've never beaten me at hide-and-seek, have you?"

The old man's body trembled violently.

He opened his eyes in surprise, his cloudy gaze falling upon the incredibly familiar figure beside him. For a moment, he froze.

"You... How could you..."

"First, I went back to the Su Residence and searched around, but I didn't find you. I figured if you were intentionally hiding from me, you wouldn't be there... So, I simply jumped beyond the Red Flower and searched every inch of the entire domain... Finally..."

A white training uniform gently brushed the bank, and the figure's dark hair swept over the old man's shoulder with the wind. She turned her head slightly, her glistening eyes gazing deeply at the unfamiliar, aged face before her...

"I found you, Yao Qing."