Chapter Eighty-Three: The Demonic Saber Immortal Runs Amok and Kills; Han Mo Incinerates His Debt in a Single Blaze

Han Mo could bear no longer. Just as he was about to leap down and fight the Demonic Blade Immortal to the death, Fang Wanru gave a faint shake of her head, and Han Mo seemed struck by lightning, lying frozen on the beam without moving an inch.

At that very moment, the Demonic Blade Immortal suddenly let out a scream. His right ear had been bitten by Fang Wanru, and blood was streaming down it.

“Damn it, seeking death!” In fury, the Demonic Blade Immortal drew his blade and drove it straight into Fang Wanru’s heart.

Fang Wanru fell straight down. The instant before her eyes closed, she looked toward Han Mo, but he turned away. He did not dare meet the resentment in her gaze.

Clutching his ear and cursing all the way, the Demonic Blade Immortal stalked outside and roared, “Kill them all! Leave no one alive!”

Then came one scream after another. Han Mo had believed the people of Three Banner Town would come to help the Han family, but no one came. Not until the Han household had been slaughtered to the last person, not until all its valuables had been hauled away, did a single soul from Three Banner Town step forward.

When every one of the Demonic Blade Immortal’s men had departed, Han Mo finally fell from the beam. In a daze, he carried Fang Wanru to the bed and covered her with a quilt, as though she were only asleep.

August sixteenth.

The blinding sun had already dimmed, and a blood-red full moon had somehow risen over the sky above Three Banner Town in the northern desert.

Only the day before had been the Mid-Autumn Festival. Many shops and houses in Three Banner Town still hung lanterns and colored paper, and even the low roadside trees were plastered with red paper. A great double-happiness character written in black ink still sat quietly on one of those red sheets.

Yet before night had even fully fallen, all light had already vanished from Three Banner Town. Only the blood-red moonlight still spilled mercilessly over the ground.

Before a tall compound in Three Banner Town stood Han Mo, dressed in black-and-red official robes with a red flower pinned to his chest. He stood motionless, staring at the Han family compound before him. Now and then, the air carried the stench of blood.

A gust of wind swept past, and the two great doors of the Han residence swayed on their hinges. Inside, the scene was like hell itself: bodies lay scattered across the courtyard, each bearing the slash marks of blades upon their faces and bodies. Farther in, seated on the wooden chairs in the main hall, were a man and a woman, both around sixty years old. The blood that had seeped from their hearts had already dried, and they had long since been dead.

They were none other than Han Mo’s father, Han Kongnian, and his mother, Mu Yuan.

Han Mo finally moved. His face was blank, and he walked into the Han residence step by step like a wooden puppet, into the place he knew better than any other. Beneath his feet lay one corpse after another; he stepped over their hands, their backs, even their faces and heads, until he stood in the Han family hall. He lifted his head and met the wide, staring eyes of his father Han Kongnian and his mother Mu Yuan. Their eyes were filled with terror, as though even at the moment of death they still could not believe what stood before them.

Han Mo removed the red flower from his chest. First he carried Han Kongnian out to the courtyard, then returned to carry Mu Yuan out as well.

When that was done, Han Mo hesitated, but still went around the courtyard to the side room on the left. A double-happiness character still clung to the window there. When he pushed open the door, the room was unmistakably a bridal chamber, and in truth, this was indeed Han Mo’s bridal chamber.

For just yesterday, he should have spent his wedding night here.

Yet now, thinking of it, Han Mo felt that everything was like a dream, a nightmare from which he would never awaken.

He walked slowly inward. Inside the side room, a bed was draped with red gauze curtains. Such a custom did not exist in the desert, and this curtain had been specially bought from the Central Plains by a friend of the camel caravan. According to the friend, it was famous silk from Suzhou.

Each step Han Mo took toward the red curtains made the pain on his face harder to conceal. At last he reached the bedside.

With gritted teeth, he drew back the red gauze. Within lay a stunning woman dressed in bridal finery and a phoenix crown. Her brows were slender and long, her ears small and lively, her lips a vivid red as though stained with blood. More precisely, they were stained with blood, for blood still clung at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were closed as if she were merely sleeping, but Han Mo knew he would never wake her again.

The woman in the bridal finery on the bed was Miss Fang of the Fang family, Fang Wanru, the most beautiful woman in Three Banner Town, the wife Han Mo had legally taken into his home.

Han Mo carefully wiped the blood from the corner of Fang Wanru’s mouth with his sleeve. Then he lifted her from the bed and carried her outside. He walked very slowly, because each step was a parting.

When Han Mo reached the courtyard, he gently set Fang Wanru down. Then, without pausing, he went to the Han family storehouse, where three large vats of lamp oil were kept.

His father, Han Kongnian, had specifically arranged for the lamp oil to be brought back from the Central Plains. Originally, it had been intended for a lantern festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, Mid-Autumn Day, to celebrate Han Mo’s wedding and invite the people of Three Banner Town to enjoy the lights together. But now the oil remained, while those who would have admired the lanterns were already long silent.

Han Mo carried the lamp oil out from the storehouse and poured it over the corpses in the courtyard, vat by vat. First came the servants, and in the end Han Kongnian, Mu Yuan, and Fang Wanru. Finally, with great effort, he scattered the remaining oil into every corner of the Han residence.

When all this was done, Han Mo bent down one last time and gently kissed Fang Wanru on the forehead. Then he walked out without once looking back. As he stepped over the threshold of the Han family gate, he tossed the lit tinder behind him, and in an instant a raging fire burst up at his back.

Han Mo walked away, yet outside the Han residence stood another person, a middle-aged man in a Taoist robe and black skirted cloak. His features were so ordinary they would be forgotten at once, yet remembered again upon seeing him a second time.

Han Mo did not even glance at the man in the Taoist garb. He simply stood there in silence, watching the fire inside the Han residence spread from the courtyard to the main hall, until the entire place became a sea of flames.

“Do you hate?” the man in Taoist dress was the first to break the silence. His words were strange. Clearly only Han Mo stood before him, yet he said, “Do you hate?”

“Yes,” Han Mo said coldly, staring at the burning Han residence. His eyes were filled with death.

“I am not speaking to you. I am speaking to them.” The man’s voice remained calm, as though he had long since become used to such family annihilations, and there was no change in expression at the sight of the fire before him.

“Who are you talking about?” Hearing this, Han Mo abruptly lifted his head and looked around, but the surroundings were empty. Aside from himself and the man in Taoist robes, there was no third person.

From the fire before Han Mo came the occasional crackling and popping: the burst of a water vat boiling over, the collapse of a beam burning through, the sharp crack of leaves curling in the heat. He could even smell the many odors within the blaze: the scorched stench of burned bodies, the smell of cloth and leather catching fire, and the medicinal fragrance of herbs temporarily stored in the Han residence and not yet taken out, now igniting at last.

But aside from the great fire before him, red-black and roaring, Han Mo saw no one at all.