[Gintama] Immortal

"The nearest village? At least ten miles away." The woodcutter with the bamboo basket on his back stopped, "You want to find a doctor?"

Yae felt the other party's gaze move over, paused for a moment, and then moved back to Xu.

"Mountain roads are not easy to walk on." The other party's tone was a bit condemning, as if to say, "Are you going to let your wife go on the road in this situation?"

The remote mountains are too far away from Edo, and the people here still maintain a way of life that has not changed for a hundred years.Although the new government has abolished the checkpoints and hand signs, women's travel is no longer subject to heavy restrictions, and it is still very rare for women to go out without their husbands or brothers.The so-called tradition is such a hard thing to undo.

Yae lowered her gaze, the haori covering her head obscured her features, well hiding the crystallized marks on her neck.

Along the way, Xu Xu was gentle and elegant, and his acting skills were impeccable.He is like a phantom wandering in the eternal world in Noh drama, and after wearing a human mask, he becomes another existence.

The person he was talking to stood in front of him completely unaware of death, and even warmly invited him to stay at home for a night.

Xu politely refused, the old woodcutter seemed a little sorry, and before saying goodbye, he asked him to be careful of wild animals in the mountains when walking at night.

The crooked figure walked away slowly, and the smile on Xu Xu's face disappeared completely, as if someone rolled up the corpse with a dilapidated straw mat and threw it into the mass grave without hesitation. indifferent.

There was a wind blowing in the mountains, and the chill of late autumn blew on my body, and there was an indescribable bleakness.

The two left the mountain road, followed the opposite direction pointed by the woodcutter just now, and disappeared into the forest covered by the trail of wild deer.

With a dizzy head, as if it was stuffed with cotton, Yae followed behind in a daze, stepping deep and shallow in the river of dead branches and broken leaves.

When she was acting, she didn't say a word.This is the basic quality of being a hostage.

When Xu Zhense was acting, she didn't say a word.Because she really didn't have the strength to speak.

Thinking intermittently, thoughts lost coherence, Yae looked at the ground under his feet, and the Jizo Bodhisattva on the roadside appeared in his mind just now.The Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva made of stone folded his hands, and most of his gentle and compassionate face has been corroded by the years, leaving only a vague smile around his mouth, mottled and covered with thick moss.

She didn't know what this picture was trying to do.Why is human memory always such a capricious thing?

The vague and insignificant scenery that I want to remember is always vivid in my mind.

Yae vaguely knew that she was burning badly, her feet were soft, but she didn't subconsciously try to hold on to something, but let herself fall down.

The soil covered with autumn leaves is soft, and only in this season, the rotten smell is not unpleasant.

Yae closed her eyes, then opened them again.It turns out that what is soft is not the ground covered with rotten leaves.

Xu picked her up and held her in his arms with one hand.He is much taller than her.The child who once required her to bend down to meet his gaze was like some kind of imagination that only existed in her memory.

Conversely, she might also be a hallucination imagined by someone.

Helping him when he needed it most, then disappearing for a hundred years, and reappearing after his mental breakdown and self-split, no matter how you look at it, it is too convenient.

The loose thoughts can't be taken back for a while, and the reality seems to become light and without substance.Yae leaned on Xuru's shoulder and asked him:

"...Could I be something you imagined?"

Xu seemed to let out a sneer.Yae knew he understood what she meant.

He really didn't care about her condition at all.Yae thought, under normal circumstances, no matter who she was, she would think she was a fool, right?Now that she has such a severe fever, can he still make a mocking sound leisurely.

It's fine if he doesn't care about her, doesn't he care what will happen to the earth's dragon veins?

...Oh, by the way, he is the one who is eager for the dragon's pulse to explode and the earth to be buried with him.The sicker she is, the happier he should be.

Yae felt that she should have gotten used to it long ago.It's not like Xu hasn't done more egregious things before.

"You are not." Xu replied.

Yae: "It will appear when you want it, isn't it in line with the standard of an illusion?"

"That's why I said," Xu's voice did not fluctuate, "You are not."

The red shadow quietly fell from the sky, and Yae came back to his senses, and the two walked to the middle of the maple forest without knowing it.The crimson and golden leaves are like dry rain, converging into colorful rivers on the ground.

The wind is rustling softly, the colors of autumn are overwhelming, and the silence is like an ancient painting left in the mountains.

There was a protruding rock in the middle of the forest, Xu put her down, and Yae looked up at the distant tree crown, the crisp autumn leaves kept falling one after another, and when they brushed her cheeks, it was as soft as a dream.

The crimson maple leaves floated down, Yae stretched out his hand, the tip of the leaf swirled in the wind, and fell lightly to another place.

She has no strength to chase.

Another red maple leaf fell, Yae tried to stand up, the maple leaf brushed against her fingertips, and was caught by another hand just before it hit the ground.

Yae looked at the maple leaf that was handed to him.

She reaches out.

The leaf stalks detached from the branches are thin, and when pinched between the fingers, the leaves rotate gently like a scarlet flag.

She twirled the maple leaf in her hand.The delicate lines on the surface of the leaves are like the blood vessels on the back of a human hand.

"...I thought you had disappeared." Yae didn't raise his eyes.

She watched him disappear with her own eyes.

Swallowed by the rushing dragon veins, submerged by the scorching light, the flesh melted like snow, not a single bone remained.

Born from the veins of the dragon, the heart beating again in her hands belongs to no one.That is neither Xu nor Songyang.If you have to say it, it should be the seed that has continued from the same existence.

The unnamed boy revived Songyang's emotions and memories, and chose the path of living as a human being.

Let those who want to live live, and those who yearn for the end to obtain eternal rest—the ending that was finally reached after hard work, now seems to have subtle deviations.

"It's a pity." Xu said, "Your expectations seem to have failed."

Yae laughed silently, shrugging her shoulders slightly.

"Yeah, what a pity." She put down the maple leaf in her hand, "You guy who was supposed to go down to the eighteenth floor of hell."

"For a person like you, you will go down as many floors as there are in hell."

"So please take me with you."

She saw autumn again.

In the same season, after reincarnation thousands of times, you must remind yourself: every autumn is different, and if you go, you will never come back——if you want to keep your heart fresh, you must pay this kind of experience. The level of effort will do.

Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it's as difficult as death.

"Why are you back?" Yae said.

She realized that it sounded more like a plea than a question.

Really bad.She must have been burned out, and both her judgment and self-discipline were falling off a cliff.If she was still awake, she would never have asked such a question.

"I thought……"

You have always wanted to die.

Something interrupted her.For her, that kind of thing is called intuition, but Xu's reaction seemed to have anticipated the arrival, and the two looked at the clearing in the forest almost at the same time.There were 12 uninvited guests, all of whom were ordinary-looking, all dressed as civilians, and quietly sealed off all the escape routes around them.

"It's finally here." Xu Xu bent his eyebrows, and his gentle voice was so soft that the hairs stood on end.

He seemed to be extremely tired of Songyang's peaceful life for these years, once he smelled the blood that was about to rise in the still air, he was like a venomous snake sneaking in the dark with its head raised and no longer hiding its sharp fangs.

Twelve people may not be enough.

Yae sat on the rock and the fight ended quickly. The No.13 killer suddenly jumped down from the branch. She raised her face and realized that the enemy was coming straight towards her. When she turned her head to avoid it, the blade pierced the haori with a sharp sound, and the cold wind rushed towards her face. He heard the other party gasp.

"There's still one?"

... What does the quantifier mean?

Yae wanted to raise his hand to touch his neck, but a cold light flashed in the corner of his vision, and bright red blood spurted out.The killer was nailed to the tree trunk by a knife coming from the sky, his limbs twitched and convulsed, his head tilted and he was silent.

Raising her hand in the air and changing direction, she wiped the blood spattered on her face.Xu walked up to the corpse hanging from the tree trunk, and unhurriedly drew out the knife that pierced the enemy's throat.

"Impossible." The killer, who fell to the ground clutching his stomach, still breathed a sigh of relief. His eyes widened and his body trembled unconsciously. It might be because of blood loss, or it might be because of fear.

"You obviously..."

"Obviously it should be easy to slaughter, isn't it?" Xu admired the blood on the blade, "Indeed, I am no longer indestructible, and using a weapon made of Altana from another star against me can indeed be effective. To some effect - the premise is that you can touch me."

"The centipede is dead but not stiff. The old ministers of the shogunate are fairly well informed, but that's all."

The explosion of the central tower and the pollution of the dragon veins were all deliberately done by the conservatives of the former shogunate, with the purpose of bringing down the reformers of the new government.As for what agreement they reached with Altana's illegal research organization, although the details are unclear, the existence of the Altana variant must be fatally attractive to this organization.

Xu turned around and stretched out his hand to Yae who was sitting on the rock: "Come."

He smiled and said, "If you don't know how to relieve your anger, I can teach you."

The blood-stained tip of the knife drooped slightly and landed above the man's eyeballs.

"Sealing the acupoints can stop the bleeding. Before people die, there are many kinds of pain that can be tried slowly."

Yae looked at him for a while, then shook his head: "No need."

"Why?" Xu's hand stopped in mid-air.

"There's a hole in my stomach, that's enough."

"Even if these people plan to ruin Songyang's life and what Songyang's disciples have built, don't you mind?"

"Who said I don't mind?" Yae looked at him, "but this man is already dying."

She looked him in the eyes and said, "Is it that unpleasant for you to let this man die happily?"

There is no echo in the forest, and the long and falling maple leaves are like a grand red rain, silently burning the remaining life.

"...Really." Xu's voice was calm, "That's fine."

He cut open his palm with a knife, and the dark red blood dripped down and fell into the wound on the man's abdomen.

"What are you doing?!" Yae fell to the ground this time.She staggered to get up, half-run half-run half-pounced in front of Xu, and snatched the knife from his hand.

The man trembled in pain, as if the hot magma was poured into his body instead of dragon blood, but the convulsive trembling only lasted for a while. When the man got up from the ground again, the shattered wound in his stomach was gone. , the expression on his face became as numb and calm as a corpse.

There was no need to give verbal orders, that person turned around and left the maple forest as if he hadn't seen the corpses of his companions around him.

Yae tore off his sleeve to bandage him, Xu withdrew his hand indifferently.

"No need." The bone-deep incision did not start to heal immediately, and scarlet blood dripped continuously along the arc of the wrist.

Yae grabbed his hand, squinted his eyes, the blood in his pupils was dark, gloomy and cold.

What the hell are you mad about.

These words flooded into my throat and got stuck in my throat, making it extremely uncomfortable.

The speed at which the blood leaked out of the wound gradually slowed down, the flesh and blood cut by the knife closed towards the center, the broken blood vessels were reconnected, and the meridians were connected again.The incision in Xu's palm kept shrinking, and finally formed a pale flesh-colored scar.

a scar.