Twilight War

08

"When will it be?" Wihipel asked.

"You take a rest first, I'll wait." Huang Xuanjin said.

"Waiting for what?" Vehipel asked.

"If you just leave like this, it's too dangerous to keep these jewels here." Huang Xuanjin gritted his teeth and said.

Not long after, there was a creaking sound from the steps of the Black Tower.

A big white dog ran to the attic with cheerful steps, and then looked at Huangxuan Jin and wanted to pounce on him, but when he saw Huangxuan Jin's cold face, he immediately stopped his cheerful steps, and then put his whole body He huddled into a ball and lowered his head in aggrieved manner.

"How dare you come back." Huang Xuanjin squatted in front of Xiao Peizi.

"Tell me, where did you get my guard badge again?" He raised his hand and pinched Xiao Peizi's furry dog ​​face, with an expression of judging the enemy's undercover agent.

Hearing Huang Xuanjin talk about the badge of the Guards, Wispel turned around silently, hesitated for a while, and then said, "It may not be the one who took it."

"Could it be that I lost it myself?" Huang Xuanjin turned back and said.

"...Maybe," said Wichpel.

"This guy must have done it." Huang Xuanjin poked his finger on the top of Xiao Peizi's head with a look of resentment, and directly poked a hole, "Take my gold coins to buy bread, and even put My money is directly given to the beggar at the street corner, please, maybe I am actually poorer than that beggar!"

Xiao Peizi had no choice but to lower her head with a guilty face, letting Huangxuan die.

After saying this, Huang Xuanjin took the whole bag of jewelry and put it in front of Xiao Peizi, "Did you see these? It's very important! It's very valuable!"

"If you dare to touch these, I'll... click." He scratched his neck as a threat, then stood up, threw the bag of jewelry into the cabinet, and clapped his hands.

"Okay, we can go."

Vehipel: "..."

He suddenly felt that if he really wanted to rob a bank one day, it would probably be to raise money for his teenager to cure his brain.

09

"Go get something to eat first." Huang Xuanjin turned around and asked Wisipel.

Vesper nodded.

"There are a lot of Donghuang laborers at the wharf in Corinth. There is a noodle shop that tastes pretty good. Do you want to try it?"

Vehippel still nodded.

Huangxuan Jin looked back at Wisipelle, "Why do you feel that you are more obedient than little Peizi?" He hooked Wisippel's shoulder and whispered into Wisipelle's ear, saying in a hoarse voice: "Last night has passed Now, you are no longer mine..."

He has grown a lot taller than when he first came to Westland, and now he looks only a little shorter than Wihipel.

Before Vehipel could answer, he let go of his hand and ran to the front.

The owner of the noodle shop is from Donghuang, and he seems to be an honest man.The noodles are very ordinary Yangchun noodles, clear soup and white water, not even a piece of meat, but the taste is good.

Huangxuanjin changed into a white double-breasted jacket, which looked no different from ordinary Donghuang laborers.And Visipel didn't look like he would come to this kind of place to eat, no matter in his clothes or demeanor, the Donghuang people passing by frequently looked back at the man.

The pier was very busy. There were dozens of steamships loading and unloading materials a day, and many Donghuang laborers shuttled between the deck and the pier carrying the cargo.

Halfway through the meal, a heavy iron bar was suddenly thrown on the table.

Wisipel raised his head vigilantly, and looked at the person who came. It was a muscular man wearing a bamboo hat. The man put the iron bar on the table and shouted directly at the noodle shop behind: "Boss, Yangchun noodles!"

The man was carrying a five-stringed pipa on his back, which seemed a bit inconsistent with a stout man.

Huangxuan Jin didn't lift his head, and continued to eat the noodles in the bowl. There were many people at the pier, but there were few tables with noodle shops, so it's okay for someone to join the table.

After finishing the noodles, the man sat directly on the bench.

There were many people on the pier, and the boss accidentally tripped over some debris while delivering the noodles, and the noodle bowl slipped off the plate, Huang Xuanjin directly raised his hand to catch the noodle bowl, and placed it in front of the man.

The man looked at Huangxuanjin, "Did you practice before?"

Huang Xuanjin shook his head, "It's just that his hands and feet are quite dexterous." After speaking, he got up and planned to pay the bill and leave.

The man looked up and saw the sword tied around the young man's waist, "They all have swords, come, come, pass two hands."

He directly picked up the iron rod on the table, and stopped the boy with a silly smile, "My name is Ye Qi, and others respect me and call me the instructor."

Seeing that the young man had no intention of declaring his family name, Ye Qi had to ask again, "What's your name, sir?"

Huangxuan Jin shook his head, "The rivers and lakes don't return guests, so why ask for their names?"

This sentence is from the storybook of Donghuang. Back then, Huangxuan Qiechen asked the imperial court for 30 cavalry to fight the world-famous Chisong Battle, but was deprived of all military power by Emperor Qingming in the end. The man in the arm left Chang'an alone, this is how he answered the old man on the roadside who asked his name.

Seeing that the young man was unwilling to say his name, Ye Qi didn't force him, so he directly swung the iron rod at the young man from bottom to top.Huang Xuanjin immediately raised his sword, and tapped the unsheathed sword on the iron rod from bottom to top three times.

Every time the sword fell, it was fast and fast, strangling the man's stick.

The boy pointed at Ye Qi's stick with his scabbard.

"Walking geese style." Ye Qi looked at the young man and said with a bold smile: "Young master also knows how to stick."

Huang Xuanjin didn't speak, Ye Qi suddenly pulled the stick backwards, and then sent the iron stick forward sideways.

The boy immediately turned sideways, bent over and used the scabbard to lift the heavy iron bar away, then took a step forward, clasped the man's wrist with his left hand, and twisted it to the opposite side.

The man turned over in the air indifferently, holding the iron rod in his hand and sent it towards the boy again.

Huang Xuanjin jumped onto the table, holding the still unsheathed sword in his hand, and slashed at the man's wrist.

The iron rod in Ye Qi's hand fell to the ground, and the man pressed his numb wrist.

"Young master, this set of clothes is good for eighteen falls."

As soon as the two stopped, there was bursts of applause, and many people on the pier looked at them.

Huangxuan Jin tore off the sword and its sheath by the red ribbon around his waist, and now he had to tie it back.

"It's not Zhanyi's [-]th fall, it's back then..." Huang Xuanjin felt that there was no need to talk too much with this person, so he turned around and prepared to leave.

"My lord, what do you think of my stick skills?" Ye Qi shouted unceremoniously.

"Massive and powerful, but also has quick and ingenious momentum. Mister's stick technique is still very good." Huangxuanjin said.

"My name is Bamboo Forest Bird. Come on, young master, you can go later. I'll play it for you again. Take care."

"There are so many people in here, don't worry about it."

"It's okay, it's okay, just watch." The man didn't care.

He directly swung the stick in his hand, "This first form is called - beating the bamboo forest and the bird out of the mountain with the stick. What you want is the word 'surprise', and the bird comes out of the surprise."

Ye Qi then sent out the iron rod in his hand, and then swept it downward, "This is called sweeping the rod into a prison bird, and the movement should be so fast that the flying bird can't get out."

Huang Xuanjin fastened the sword belt around his waist and looked up at the man.

"The last pose - the bird returns to the forest and the wind is calm." The man slowly retracted his stick, like a Zen monk in meditation.

Huang Xuanjin smiled and said, "Are you the bird catcher or the bird."

"Both." Ye Qi smiled naively, completely ignoring the young man's contempt.

"Is the young master optimistic?" Ye Qi asked again.

Huang Xuanjin nodded.

"Is the young master meeting?"

"The matter of martial arts is a matter of day after day, year after year, how can it be possible to read it once." What's more, he didn't care about it at all.

"That's right, if the young master wants to ask me when, he can come to this noodle shop to find me. I have to stay here for a while." Ye Qi said.

"Farewell." Huang Xuanjin turned around.

On the pier, a man in a bamboo hat was holding a pipa and playing the song "The Overlord Disarms His Armor" by himself.

People around cheered from time to time, and the man smiled naively when he heard the applause, "What else do you want to hear, I will play it for you."

Not far away, Huang Xuanjin suddenly lowered his head and saw a black mark on his cuff.

Vehipel looked at the boy who stopped, "What's wrong?"

"The stick that the man should have just landed on me, but he held back so much that I didn't feel it at all." Huang Xuanjin said while tugging at his cuffs.

"Do you want to go back?"

Huang Xuanjin shook his head, "It's not necessary."

He chuckled lightly and said, "My lord, look at this river and lake. There is a swordsman in three steps, and a chivalrous woman in five steps. Everywhere you go, there is a river and a bowl of wine."

In the storybook of Donghuang in 800, the old man who asked for directions turned into an old man with green coir, drunk Chang'an.

You don't know where there are peerless masters hiding, when there will be swordsmen who draw their swords, and someday there will be heroes who use martial arts to decapitate corrupt officials.

So everyone can look at the stars in the dust of 800 years, always with awe and yearning in their hearts.

09

Two people walked among the ruins of the old noble district.

Vines grow around the long pillars. A fire 30 years ago burned out the bustle here. After all the people left, everything here returned to another kind of hustle and bustle.

Wild dogs looking for food shuttled among the ruined walls.

"Does Your Highness like ruins?" Huang Xuanjin turned around and asked.

"It's okay, what's the matter?"

"I really like it here. Every ruin is a slow dusk." The boy looked at the burnt black wall and said, "It's like the remains of a giant beast slowly rotting between heaven and earth, and we Scavengers walking among its bones."

"You will use those dilapidated traces to imagine its once magnificent splendor, and you will also infer its more decayed and dilapidated appearance through its cracked gaps. It's like walking on a road, but this road is It's built over time."

Standing among the wreckage, the boy looked up, watching the wind blow through the clouds in the sky above western Corinth.

"Sometimes I will come here to have a look and look at these ruins. Occasionally I can feel my powerlessness, but I also feel relieved. It is irreversible to become dilapidated and decadent, and it cannot be changed."

Wischpel looked at the boy, and he remembered that Granny Waffle had told him that the boy had lived here for a long time.

He thought about how the boy had walked through these ruins.

Alone and detached.

All ruins are a lonely and silent memory.

Inscribed with the former prosperity and slow barrenness.

Lives of souls with nowhere to go.

"Oh, the imprint I mentioned is right here." Huangxuan Jin pushed aside the fallen broken wall and brushed away the dust on it.

Red sigils are painted on fallen Doric columns.

Vehipel looked at the pattern and cut the palm of his hand.

"What are you doing?" Huang Xuanjin asked.

Visipel dripped the blood from the palm of his hand on the imprints, and those imprints seemed to come alive for a moment, devouring Visipel's blood greedily like a red snake.

The blood was slowly swallowed by the red mark and disappeared, and the red snakes returned to their previous appearance as if they were satisfied and retreated into the cave.

Vehipel stood up, "Are there any other marks?"

Huang Xuanjin nodded, "I don't remember exactly, but I still remember the general location."

A large piece of weeds grew in the ruins, and the two of them waded through the weeds.

"There is another one in the underground wine cellar." Huangxuanjin and Vihipel walked down the collapsed tunnel, where moss and unknown grass grew in the gaps of the tunnel, "I found it when I was looking for wine to drink here." .”

The bloody imprint in the underground wine cellar has faded somewhat, blurred by the damp ground.

Vehipel dripped the blood from his palm again.

Those marks turned into red snakes spitting out letters again.

There is also an imprint in the garden of the past, where roses and weeds grow in symbiosis today.

When Vichypel's blood dripped, all the roses began to grow wildly.

Wischpel immediately pulled Huangxuan Jin beside him into his arms.

The two stood in the middle of the rose garden, watching those gorgeous roses bloom in an instant.

However, after Vehipel's blood was devoured by the red snake, the roses suddenly shattered, and the red petals seemed to be blown by a storm, floating in mid-air.

Among the rose petals in the garden, Wisipel closed his eyes and released a large group of crows.

——It’s hot, it’s hot.

—flames, flames everywhere.

--help me.

Those crows carried back a sentence of fragmented words for him.

He opened his bloody right eye, turned his soul consciousness into a black crow, and followed the crows.

There are broken souls everywhere, stripped, anguished, struggling.

When he came here for the first time, he felt a little strange, it was too open, what he saw was not the ruins that other people saw, but a desolate emptiness.

There is no remaining soul breath.

No matter where it is, as long as there are creatures who have lived, there will always be residual soul breaths, and those breaths are like ice mist.

Now that the seal was released, he finally saw the painful souls who were sealed here under the disguised emptiness.

He gritted his teeth and brought those souls into his soul domain little by little.

Those broken souls are gradually resonating with his soul domain, and he will also feel all the pain and despair of those souls.

His soul consciousness turned into a black crow, shuttled through the ruins after the seal was released, and those souls wailed in his soul domain.

Red rose petals hang in the air, as if time has stood still.

Huang Xuanjin frowned, and Vehipel hugged him tighter and tighter behind him, but he didn't understand what happened at all.

He couldn't see those souls, he could only see a large number of crows flying by.

The crow turned into a silver-haired man, and Vehipel walked in the corridors of the ruined palace with his soul consciousness.

The silver silk clothes fell to the ground, he was like an elf in mythology, eating the wind and drinking the dew.

At the end of the corridor, in the room, the little girl whose body has turned transparent is still playing the piano, as if she doesn't know that she is dead.

Wischpel leaned against the door, "What are you playing?"

The little girl looked up at Vichypel, "Who are you?"

"Come here." He knelt down and said to the girl, reaching out his hand to the little girl.

The little girl ran over and put her hand on Vehipel's.

Wischpel closed his eyes, he guessed right.

These surviving souls are all incomplete, some of them have been taken away, so they can't go to rebirth, they can only be trapped here.

He turned into a crow again and flew away from the long window.

The little girl stared blankly at the falling black feather.

"Mom, he can fly!"

He brought the entire ruins into his soul domain, and he turned into a black crow again and again, trying to talk to all the struggling souls.

Those souls gradually resonated with his soul domain, as if under his command, a symphony orchestra of hundreds of musicians gradually became in sync.

And they will be in one of the greatest operas ever!

He recalled the structure of the entire ruin, trying to reproduce the old noble district before the fire.

The stage must be set up before the drama can be staged.

In his soul domain, the barren ruins were rebuilt into the former prosperous palace, the weeds faded, the broken walls rose again, and the collapsed statues returned to their places.

The charred arches washed away the black, revealing the original exquisite and magnificent murals, the fallen candlesticks were lifted up, and the scattered pages returned to the bookshelves.

Wherever the black crows pass, everything becomes prosperous.

It was like a performance by a god, with the vast ruins between heaven and earth as the stage.

The gods performed their miracles, so black and white were reversed, and the sun and the moon rotated.

And the silver-haired man walked in reverse time, those souls whispered in his ear.

The grand symphony has been played.

Although this score has been sealed for a hundred years, this aria was finally sung again.

Vehipel walked in the long corridor, the road in front of him was like a black hole of nothingness, but when he walked forward, the broken corridor was filled up bit by bit.

It's like the actors are already on stage, and then those scenes are recreated.

This is his soul domain, the skeleton is provided by him, but the blood and flesh are filled little by little by the remnants of those souls.

The time here is not uniform, because here are the remnants and memories of hundreds of souls.

Memories and remnants will become blurred, changed, and confused.

Every time a door opens, it may already be another time, and every time you walk down a set of steps, you may already walk into another palace.

The waiters in the corridor came out carrying the decorations and tableware to be used for the banquet, and Wisipel walked past them.

He looked from the railing on the second floor to the first floor, and many guests had already arrived in the main hall.

He went up to the third floor and randomly opened a room. The old man in the room was wearing tortoise glasses and was reading a book to the little boy beside him.He walked directly past the old man and jumped out of the window.

Outside the window is a large field of roses, which can be seen to be well taken care of.

Vehippel plucked a rose and wiped off all the thorns from the stem.

The wind blows up swaths of red.

He remembered that one of the marks was found here, so he turned to look for the mark in the rose field.

But the next moment, all the roses started to burn!