Yaohi Hill

Watching the living people turn into bones, the old man's tense nerves instantly collapsed.

His dry lips were trembling, but he couldn't utter a single word.

Unable to accept the facts in front of him, tears could not flow out at the moment of extreme grief.

Dragging his aging body, the old man walked towards the petite skeleton on the ground step by step.

"Azao...my child..."

When the hand touched the warm skin but the cold bones, the pain of getting it and then losing it completely crushed the last rational nerve in his heart.

The old man hugged the skeleton tightly, and muddy tears rolled down his no longer young face one by one.

The extremely similar situation reminded the monk standing aside of the scene when he saw this man for the first time on the battlefield.

"Azao...Azao!"

It is also a cry of extreme grief. One can imagine the pain of losing oneself and only one's relatives in the troubled times.

Is this... the right thing to do?

But against the sky, forcibly resurrecting the dead...

Sure enough, it shouldn't have been done in the first place.

The monk sighed deeply, looking at the bones on the ground, ready to save the poor child's soul.

Shi Kui picked up the bloody mermaid gall on the ground. Although it looked nothing special from the outside, it was this thing that caused the tragedy that Azao and Yongtai were doomed to do.

Just when she was about to ask the old monk how the mermaid gall was obtained, she heard a painful moan from beside her.

Yuta, who had been tied to a tree with bruises all over his body, woke up at this time. The first thing he saw was the old man holding the bone, and it was Tokioi on the side and the monk who closed his eyes and recited sutras.

His hands were tied, so he couldn't move at all now.

But just looking at this picture, he seemed to understand something.

An unprecedented sense of powerlessness enveloped his heart, like a deep shadow, making him unable to see any bright things anymore.

Shi Kui walked over and let Chung Tae down from the tree. Because the injury was too serious, although most of the wounds had healed, his body still hadn't regained normal mobility.

Yong Tai's eyes lost their light, he just looked at his hands, and asked Shi Kui, "Azao, is she... dead?"

Although he couldn't bear it, Shi Kui still nodded.

Yong Tai hugged his head in pain: "I'm sorry..."

Sorry, I couldn't complete the agreement with you.

Did not take you away.

Just as he was immersed in guilt and sadness, the desperate crying old man holding Azao's skeleton stood up staggeringly, and walked towards the edge of the cliff not far away.

He still hugged the pile of bones tightly, as if he was hugging the whole world.

The monk quickly followed and said in surprise, "What are you doing?!"

"What does this have to do with you?" The old man said coldly, "Why, do you think I will give you a chance to take away my Azao?"

"You're crazy..." The monk was stunned. For some reason, when he saw the old man's eyes of condemnation and hatred, he also felt a kind of pain in his heart.

This kind of pain stems from the fact that at the beginning, out of sympathy, he taught the spell of returning the soul to the person in front of him, but he didn't expect that things would develop into what they were later.

"Could it be... all this is my fault?"

he murmured.

"Oops, I have to stop him." Seeing the old man getting closer to the edge of the cliff, Shi Kui felt a little anxious, so he ran towards that direction.

Holding Ah Zao's body in his arms, the old man walked to the edge of the cliff step by step.

"Why stop a person who wants to die?" Just as she was about to stop the old man, Huang's voice suddenly sounded in her mind.

This remnant soul who is always elusive, seems to be consciously watching everything happening outside.

"He no longer has the desire to live. That girl...is everything to him. When the child dies, it means that there is nothing left."

Huang's voice was faint, much different from the usual gentleness.

"For human beings, it is the cruelest thing to live or die."

Huang's words suddenly reminded Shikui of that time.

When Master Cuizi and Master Yasha died...the self who was helpless but could only live on, had already tasted enough of the pain he said.

She stopped and looked at the old man standing on the edge of the cliff.

The darkness has faded, and the sky is now white, and the hazy light that seems to be covered with a layer of veil shines on the earth through the clouds.

"Azao." The old man looked at the bones in his arms lovingly, "Father will always be with you, so that you will never be lonely again."

After finishing speaking, he jumped off the cliff without any nostalgia.

"Azao!" Yong Tai, who hurried up, could only watch in despair as the corpse fell to the bottom of the cliff along with the old man.

His heart also gradually sank.

When they went down, the skeleton had been thrown to pieces, and the old man had been dead for some time.

Yong Tai just looked at A Zao's smashed bones without saying a word.

"This child's soul...let me save it."

Just as the monk finished speaking, he heard a cold answer: "Don't come here... Azao, she has nothing to do with you."

Shi Kui watched as Yong Tai picked up A Zao's broken skeleton bit by bit, then walked into the mountain with his arms in his arms, and followed.

"The spirit of that child... is still there, it hasn't gone away."

Shi Kui said.

"She still seems to have something to say to that man." Huang said softly, "If her wish is not fulfilled, I'm afraid she won't be willing to go to Hades."

"But...ordinary people seem to have no way to see the existence of the soul." Shi Kui frowned in distress, "It seems wrong to force the supernatural..."

"Don't worry, I'll help her realize this wish." Huang's voice was gentle, since he withdrew part of his memory, he seemed to have transformed from an autistic boy into a warm adult.

After a person dies, his soul will hover in the mountains.

Yong is too convinced.

He came to the deep mountain alone, and placed the shattered skeleton in the open space.

Cremate it.

He made up his mind.

Shi Kui walked to his side and stopped his upcoming move.

"Azao wants to see you for the last time."

"What do you mean...?" Hearing this sentence, Yong Tai was taken aback for a moment.

But in the next second, he suddenly saw a translucent shadow appear on the young skeleton.

The slightly swaying shadow was like a faint candlelight, and it took a while for the human shape to appear.

"Yong Tai." The girl's face was as delicate as before, and her smile was a gloomy sunshine.

Yong Tai looked into the air in disbelief: "Ah... Ah Zao?!"

"It's great to see Mrs. Yong still alive." Azao's eyes were full of nostalgia, "Where is Mrs. Yong going next?"

"I have no idea……"

"No matter where you go, Ah Zao will go with you..."

The girl's voice gradually disappeared, and her translucent shadow drifted into the distance with the wind blowing in the woods.

Yong Tai silently looked at the place where her soul dissipated, and after a while said to Shi Kui, "Thank you."

"Now... are you leaving?"

Shi Kui looked at his back and asked.

"Yes." Yongtai's expression was calm, but his eyes were full of pain and loss. "I'm... used to living like this."

"Actually, when Ah Zao said he wanted to walk with me, I was actually a little happy."

"Maybe it's because I've been lonely for too long... Ah Zao is actually the same person as me. Only when she is with me can she feel that she is not a different person."

"I don't know where I'm going now, maybe I'll keep searching. At first I left my hometown to find the mermaid, but now... it's not just to find that thing."

Speaking of this, he smiled wryly: "It's really strange, I don't know why I said these meaningless things to you, Miko."

"No..." Shi Kui shook her head, "I can understand your feelings very well. To some extent, we are the same kind of people."

"Maybe we met somewhere before, although I can't remember it anymore." Yuta said, "Finally, can you... tell me your name, Miko-sama."

"Shikui." She said softly, "My name is Shikui."

this name...

Certain vague memories seemed to pass by.

"If we can meet again next time, I won't forget it." Yong Tai suddenly turned around and smiled at her.

Then he took a deep breath, perhaps because the sky was getting brighter, and the sadness on his face could not help but eased a little.

He carried his burden alone and walked towards an unknown distance.

Now... where are we going?

The world is so big, there is no place that can be his shelter.

Keep looking, Yuta... keep looking.

……

Shi Kui slowly withdrew her gaze.

"Did you see yourself in him?" Lord Shenming looked at her with extremely gentle eyes in a place where he could not see.

"But he and I...are still different after all."

"What's the difference?"

"...By the way, Lord Huang, how do you know about my past?" Shi Kui was a little puzzled, "After you left the imperial guard, the time of your appearance seems to be more and more unpredictable..."

"...cough." Huang didn't answer her first question, out of curiosity, he peeked at Shi Kui's previous memories.

For Shi Kui who rescued herself, she is indeed the first person with special meaning.

After all, his consciousness has been hidden in a dark place for a long time, although he doesn't know why he changed from a god to a remnant soul.

Everything in the past is unknown, he only knows that Shikui let him see the outside world again.

"I can't communicate with you for a long time, and I can't maintain the state of my soul... Maybe this has something to do with me being just a remnant soul now."

"But... just now I noticed that thing you picked up just now... mermaid gall, I don't know why, but when I look at that thing, I think of something. Could it be that I used to have something to do with it?"

"...I think, maybe after collecting the remaining remnant souls, you will be able to return to your original appearance, Mr. Huang." Shi Kui thought for a while, "I probably can't remember it now, but the remaining remnant souls... Where are you going to collect it?"

"That place before." Huang said, "In that shrine...no, it was that world, and I can feel the existence of the remaining souls."

"Then I'll take a look over there through the Well of Bone Eaters after a while..."

Huang is a god after all, according to what he said... there must be some kind of connection with the mermaid before, but the most important thing at present is to collect the jade fragments of the four souls again.

The jade fragments of the four souls were scattered all over the place, but some of them were on Naluo's body.

Before Inuyasha and the others told her the location of Naraku Castle, it was a city he built with demon power and miasma, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it was the base camp.

Is the monster Naraku...

The author has something to say:

It took hundreds of years for Yongtai to finally find the real fish, the destined kind, which is considered lucky.

Shi Kui is not an ordinary person. Although she is as lonely as Yuta, she cannot let go of everything like him.