Volume One: Scroll of Fresh Rain Chapter Thirty-Three: Fate and Blade
An extraordinary and torrential rain swept across heaven and earth. Atop a towering peak, a figure soaked in blood staggered upward, climbing with desperate determination. With each step, an ever-increasing weight descended upon him, as heavy as a mountain; crimson beads of blood oozed from his skin under the terrifying pressure, and his vision became a sea of red.
Intense pain and overlapping terrifying illusions alternated with reality, as if he were walking through a roaring inferno. His body suffered, yet he continued forward, crying and laughing wildly, for only such agony could briefly allow him to forget reality and escape a deeper torment.
The visions were horrifying. Endless demons surrounded him, whispering in strange voices about how best to devour him. Enormous fiends, as massive as mountains, opened their bloody jaws to bite him, and the mountain beneath his feet transformed into a hill covered in razor-sharp blades.
Yet he never retreated, facing the blade mountain, the blood-stained maw, the monsters, sobbing, laughing, and raging as he pressed onward.
He realized that in this world, no one is without fear; only a deeper terror forged into obsession can overcome it.
He passed the midpoint of the mountain, a place he had never crossed before, still climbing. The blood seeping from his body had grown scalding hot, and when the rain struck him, it rose in a mist tinged with blood.
Step by step, he reached the final stretch before the summit. He raised his head, gazing at the last terror blocking his path.
It was not a ghost, nor a demon, but a radiant deity without features, shining with boundless light.
The majestic god slowly bent down, its faceless visage turned toward him, divine brilliance blazing forth, and an awe as vast as the abyss and sea thundered down from the heavens.
A weight a hundred, a thousand times greater than before crashed down. He nearly fell to his knees, seeing nothing but blinding white and the deity’s faceless, lofty countenance.
A thunderous voice echoed again and again within his heart:
“Why do you not kneel before the deity?”
“Why do you not kneel before the deity?”
Ye Mingke struggled to keep himself upright, but the oppressive awe descended once more, forcing him down into the muddy ground, splattering filth everywhere.
He fell heavily, but laughed amidst the mud, raising his head to gaze at the awe-inspiring god and laugh.
He laughed until tears fell.
Softly, he began to chant:
“If the gods possess spirit, why do they not see my eternal descent into boundless darkness?”
It was an ancient ballad, sung many times by Da Bai, desolate and tragic, full of despair. In that moment, he understood its meaning.
It spoke for those who had fallen into everlasting night, yet refused to deceive themselves with faith in gods—a clear-eyed despair.
They sang songs of renunciation, alone in their hopeless night, preferring to die awake, suffering, and noble.
Ye Mingke suddenly understood why, in his despair, he had climbed this mountain—just as he once chose arduous, painful training six years ago. He did not wish to die ignorant, like the infant in the tale of the Zhao Orphan, who perished without knowing or understanding anything. He wanted an answer.
Even if it could change nothing, he refused to die muddled.
He roared with laughter and raged, struggling up from the mud once more.
The obsession within him thundered, drowning out the god’s majestic interrogation. The overwhelming pressure parted before it. Dragging his battered body, step by step, he advanced toward the deity, passed it, and reached the summit.
Even in his deepest nightmare, he would choose to live awake, to live proudly.
The moment he set foot on the peak, the majestic god shattered, and the omnipresent oppressive force vanished.
He stood alone atop the mountain, surveying the surrounding peaks.
Emptiness, only emptiness.
Many mountains around the town had vanished, just like the disappeared houses, leaving behind vast, abrupt voids.
The once-beautiful landscape had become broken, misshapen, grotesque.
“What kind of world is this? What am I, then?”
He tapped lightly upon his heart, but heard no answer.
...
In the midst of the rain, at the Sword Hut’s bamboo cottage.
The heavy, powerful sound of hammering echoed through the rain. Sword Uncle sat beside the blazing furnace, swinging his hefty hammer, his face in the firelight as hard as iron.
Bang.
The half-shut door was suddenly pushed open, and a drenched, slender figure entered with the storm and rain. He took only one step inside, then paused, his back framed by the dim daylight, his bowed face shadowed by the fire’s glow.
“Uncle, I climbed the mountain behind the house,” he said quietly.
Clang.
Sword Uncle did not turn, but brought the hammer down hard on the iron block, producing a piercing sound.
“I’ve accomplished two goals. I don’t want your answers anymore. I want to trade my two achievements for the answer I truly desire.”
He lifted his head, eyes burning red, staring at Sword Uncle’s iron-hard face.
He asked—
“Is the town truly real?”
Crack.
Sword Uncle abruptly stopped hammering, raising his head to look at him.
Boom.
A thunderclap split the sky, lightning illuminating Ye Mingke’s eyes, blazing like flames.
Sword Uncle gazed at him, silent.
Silence, like an invisible chasm between them.
After a long while, Sword Uncle asked,
“What counts as real?”
“What counts as real...?”
Ye Mingke suddenly burst out laughing, his laughter full of absurdity and mockery. He laughed until tears fell, looked through his tears at Sword Uncle, and said,
“Uncle, I understand now.”
What is real? True reality requires no proof; reality that needs added premises—is it still real?
He laughed again, then asked,
“I want to ask another question: are you and Aunt real?”
Sword Uncle was silent.
“That will be the next answer.”
“Even now, you still want to hide the truth from me!”
His calm voice suddenly sharpened. Nameless rage burned in his heart; his fiery eyes, every word like a blade.
It was the first time he had spoken to Uncle this way.
Sword Uncle was silent for a long time, but could only repeat his previous answer.
“What... counts as real?”
Crack.
The last string broke.
Ye Mingke stepped back, retreating into the storm outside, his lips curled in a cold, merciless smile.
“Heh, you said you’d never lie to me—so what does your existence mean?”
He cast one last cold glance at Sword Uncle, then turned and ran into the storm, never looking back.
Rain poured down; Sword Uncle sat alone in his wheelchair, watching the boy’s figure disappear, eyelids lowered, his gaze sorrowful.
All these years—had he still done wrong?
What more could he do for him?
He turned back, staring into the fire, and began hammering again. The monotonous sound of forging echoed through the rain.
In the blazing flames, a sword case was taking shape.
Amidst the hammering, Long Yinling, dressed in white and carrying an oil-paper umbrella, entered the bamboo cottage from the storm.
She closed her umbrella, looked at Jian Nantian still absorbed in his work by the furnace, and softly said,
“Most of the outsiders in town have left, and many took their magic arrays with them as well.”
“The Six Wilderness Array, activated six years ago to avoid the High Heaven, has reached its limit. At most, it can last a few more days.”
“The town can barely hold together.”
She turned to look at the torrential rain outside, now streaked with crimson blood. The daylight seemed frozen, no longer shifting, always gloomy and oppressive.
“I understand,” Jian Nantian replied, nodding without pausing his hammer.
Long Yinling watched him and continued,
“That child is by the old banyan tree. If there’s danger, Da Bai will wake and protect him. You needn’t worry.”
“And don’t dwell too much on what he said just now. He’s just...”
She paused briefly.
“He’s simply unable to accept it all at once; it’s all too sudden and cruel for him.”
“Why didn’t you tell him sooner? Perhaps then he would have suffered less.”
Clang.
Sword Uncle kept hammering at the iron, speaking slowly,
“I didn’t know how to tell him, nor when, so that his pain would be lessened.”
“Besides, how much wind and rain can a heart not tempered by hell’s flames endure?”
“He is my student. I have practiced swordsmanship my whole life, yet I cannot give him a blade to cut through everything.”
“All I can do is forge for him a sheath that can contain all the sharpest wounds, to help him find that sword.”
“That is all I can give him.”
“You’ve done all you could, haven’t you? In such a treacherous situation, you managed to win him sixteen years of peace.”
Long Yinling looked at his greying temples, her gaze gentle.
“No matter how much suffering an adult endures, it is never truly innocent, for suffering always stems from their own choices. But children are innocent; their suffering is pure fate, unrelated to their choices, and they have no time to prepare for it.”
“But Mingke has grown up. He’s no longer that child, unknowing and unprepared, forced to face harsh fate. All these years, we’ve readied him with blades and armor.”
“I believe that when the battlefield comes for him, he will have the courage to don his armor, take up his blade, and confront his destiny.”
PS: The line “If the gods possess no spirit, why do they not see my eternal descent into boundless darkness?” comes from Er Gen’s “Seeking the Devil,” though this is from memory and may differ slightly. The plot has become intense lately—friends, feel free to share your thoughts and discuss!