6.

Master went down the mountain again to handle matters for the emperor. I tidied up the vegetable garden behind the house, and there should be fresh vegetables growing when Master returns.

I didn't leave a letter. I didn't want Master to know where I went, and she probably wouldn't guess either.

Master was right; I went through countless hardships to come here to learn the arts. I have my own purpose.

The only relative I have in this world is in the imperial tombs.

Two years ago, my father and a friend went out, and after a month, they sent a letter saying they had met a master and were going to the imperial tombs to find a peerless weapon. If they found it, they would certainly win the championship in the martial arts competition at the end of the year.

My mother and I worried about his safety and waited for news. But after two months, the letters stopped, and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get any news about my father. At the same time, there were rumors that my father had found the peerless weapon and hidden it at home.

That night, countless masked assassins rushed in from all sides, turning the house upside down in search of the so-called peerless weapon. But my father never came back.

They didn't believe it and started killing my family.

It was the uncles and aunts from the martial arts school who risked their lives to let me escape. I was injured all over, and when I looked back, I saw the flames rising, and one by one, my relatives fell. I didn't know where to go.

It wasn't until I heard people talking about her in the medical clinic.

Jin Wu, the only descendant of the Jin family, living in the Moonlight Valley, proficient in Qimen Dunjia and mechanism cracking, with extraordinary skills. I wanted to find her, I wanted to try to save my father in the imperial tombs.

Today, I finally have the ability to enter the imperial tombs. I've read about it in books; the imperial tombs built by the Jin family must have a large storage of food, and there must be water sources and ventilation to ensure enough air for people to survive for five years. This is also the strange thing about the Jin family's technology; even though there is water and air, you still can't get out.

As long as my father didn't die in the trap, he must still be alive.

It was ten days later when I arrived at the imperial tombs, a place so dangerous that no one dared to guard it. The tombs built by the Jin family were not a place for the living. I entered through the tomb entrance and saw the distinctive style of the Jin family as soon as I looked.

In front of the tomb gate was a giant dragon's head, containing a pearl, surrounded by five smaller dragon heads of different colors, probably representing the five elements of Chinese philosophy. Only after solving the mechanism of the dragon's head would the main gate of the tomb open.

I might die here, or I might see my father. No matter the outcome, I am already here. Along the way, there were countless perils, and when I finally solved the mechanism of the dragon's head to enter the tomb, I was met with a barrage of crossbow arrows, just like being in the room that Master had set up with mechanisms. After painstakingly solving one mechanism, it triggered a series of others.

But Master was right; no matter how dangerous the mechanism, it was created by the Jin family. I have learned the essence of the Jin family's skills and can gradually familiarize myself with the patterns, solving them one by one.

Everything was just as I expected, I was injured but not life-threatening, and I was getting closer and closer to the main burial chamber. That's where the food was stored, and if my father was still alive, he must be there.

But ultimately, my skills were not yet refined. As black mist enveloped me, I couldn't react in time to cover my mouth and nose. But the mist seemed to do me no harm, and I felt no discomfort. At the same time, more crossbow arrows rained down on me. I rolled back and hit a stone slab, which suddenly collapsed, and I was about to fall when someone grabbed my arm.

Slender, long fingers, but with countless scars on the back. I followed the arm up and saw the pitch-black hair dangling down, the ends dusty.

"Hold on."

She gritted her teeth and pulled with all her strength, lifting me up. I stared at her blankly, "Master..."

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She looked at me without saying a word. Quickly standing up, I saw her figure flashing in the tomb passage, like a black butterfly, her fingers adeptly solving one mechanism after another before they could be triggered. Compared to her, what I had learned was like a mere shadow of the real thing.

The main burial chamber door finally opened, and I saw Master rushing inside, her black skirt fluttering behind her like a blooming black flower.

There was no sign of my father inside; only a man lying on the tombstone.

It seemed he heard the noise, as he sat up with an expression of disbelief on his handsome face. Master rushed towards him but tripped and fell to the ground.

Both he and I exclaimed in surprise.

By the time I got there, he had already picked Master up in his arms. I saw the blood gushing from her mouth, but her lips still wore a satisfied smile.

"I finally came to save you. Please don't hate me."

"How could I ever hate you... why did you come, why did you come!"

The man cried out in distress, and Master tried to wipe away his tears with her hand but couldn't lift it, and she sighed in helplessness with a low laugh: "You should leave here and live the life that belongs to you. I owe you so much, and I'm paying it back with my life. In the next life, I hope you don't meet me again."

Her eyes dimmed, and her breathing was so faint it seemed it could stop at any moment. She looked at me, her apology evident.

"Disciple, I'm sorry... go to the Forgetful River Teahouse and find someone named Liu Sheng. She will tell you everything."

I didn't understand what had happened, all of it was so unexpected.

The man carried the dead Master away, and I, following Master's words, went to the Forgetful River Teahouse.

This is my story, and the story of Master and me.

7.

Liu Sheng poured him a cup of hot tea, with the steam rolling out, carrying a fragrant aroma.

"Are you feeling guilty? Do you think you were responsible for your master's death?"

He lowered his head, his expression unclear, but his voice was deep and hesitant, "It seems so, yet it doesn't. If it weren't for me, Master wouldn't have gone there. But Master clearly wasn't going there to save me..."

Liu Sheng smiled and pushed the teacup filled with clear water towards him. He remembered that before the story, the water was clearly red, but now it had become clear and crystal.

"I'll tell you what you want to know."

The ripples on the water's surface calmed, and the image slowly appeared.

It was a scene of children playing, with features that faintly resembled Jin Wu's, holding onto a string of bells, while a boy jumped excitedly nearby, saying, "That's my bell, that's my bell."

He ran over and picked her up, clearly still a child but trying to act like an adult: "Would you like to be called Jin Wu? You like my bell, and I like you."

A man nearby laughed and said, "Since the prince has given her the name, Jin Xiao will take the liberty to thank the prince on behalf of his daughter."

The scene depicted the years they grew up together, playing as childhood friends, innocent and close. Jin Wu was the descendant of the Jin family, and the boy was the current prince, secretly in love as all young people are.

Jin Wu was forced to practice on wooden stakes all day by Jin Xiao, and Prince Chu An stood by her side for the entire day. When Jin Wu's fingers were injured during training, Chu An would blow on them tenderly while applying medicine.

On her birthday, he gave her an exquisite hairpin carved from jade, with a bluebird in flight, luxurious.

Until she grew up, elegant and beautiful, and he became a refined young man, and everything changed unexpectedly. Jin Xiao's theft of the imperial tombs was discovered, and the entire Jin family was imprisoned. Chu An and the Crown Prince pleaded for Jin Wu's forgiveness. The emperor, considering that the Jin family's skills could not be lost, finally pardoned Jin Wu but imprisoned her in the palace.

But the Crown Prince used his connections to replace Jin Wu's parents with death row prisoners. This was done extremely discreetly, as at that time, Chu An and he were in a fierce struggle in the court, and he was not afraid that Chu An would discover it. Chu An would never expose him; he wanted Jin Wu's parents to survive more than anyone else.

So the Crown Prince used this leverage to successfully bring Jin Wu under his control, to serve him.

The first task the Crown Prince asked Jin Wu to do was to lure Chu An into the imperial tombs. At that time, Chu An was the only person who could threaten the Crown Prince's ascension to the throne.

No one knew how she made this decision or how she led Chu An into the tombs. Half a year later, Chu An was announced to have died, and the Crown Prince got the throne as he wished.

The Crown Prince had promised to let them all leave after getting the throne, but he later went back on his word. He valued Jin Wu's skills and made her steal treasures from various tombs and treasuries to fill the national treasury. He poisoned her, so if she encountered the special black mist in the imperial tombs, she would die from the poison, thus ensuring that Jin Wu would never enter the imperial tombs for the rest of her life.

Everything was going smoothly; she served him, and he protected her parents. However, the talisman she had kept, signifying her parents' lives, shattered. This was something connected to her bloodline; when a person died, the talisman would break.

The emperor would never do such a foolish thing, which meant only one possibility - her parents either committed suicide or died from illness, knowing that their daughter was being used because of them, and they sacrificed themselves to free her.

She suppressed her grief and continued to pretend she knew nothing while preparing to save Chu An. It was then that she met Shan Yuezhe. She saw him chase a spirited horse out of the miasma, which even she avoided.

So she started investigating him, a prodigy with an eidetic memory, intelligent, and naturally resistant to all sorts of poisonous insects and miasmas. She brought his father into the imperial tombs, but in fact, his father was killed by the hired killer the day after sending the letter. She also spread the news of the peerless weapon, luring various robbers and bandits to his house.

She designed a desperate situation for him and even bribed people around him to talk about her, all to lure him into the valley to become her disciple.

He was able to walk up to her unharmed because she had closed all the mechanisms, leaving only the rising pink mist, which was a poisonous fog that could confuse one's mind. He was indeed unaffected in the slightest.

Jin Wu had done so much and should have been waiting for him to enter the imperial tombs to save Chu An. But as she looked at him, with that slender, solitary back, step by step, Jin Wu remembered those days when he tenderly called her "Master" by her ear, treating her as the most respected person, taking care of her with the utmost concern. The guilt in her heart was gradually expanding, no matter how many gifts she brought him each time she went out, or how sincerely she treated him, it could not make up for the debt she owed him.

And yet, he was convinced that he was the one who had harmed his master, filled with guilt.

It should have been her who felt guilty.

She owed only two people in her lifetime, and she finally died in front of these two people.

Liu Sheng looked at him, and he was still in disbelief, his eyes wide and his lips trembling. She took back the teacup and poured the clear water into a white porcelain bottle, her voice tinged with a sigh.

"You don't need to feel guilty about anything. Your master sent you to me so that you wouldn't live with guilt in the future."

He looked at her, and the bitter smile on his lips finally started to spread wider.

Yes, he no longer had to feel guilty.

But what kind of feelings should he harbor? Hatred? Heartbreak? Resignation?

Liu Sheng watched him stagger away, hanging up the wooden sign to close the shop.