Chapter 82: A Story Of Reincarnation
Watching the growing strings, Haimofen, who had also been immersed in his own world of music, was somewhat surprised. He scanned the audience seats and thought to himself: “So you’re still here?”
His strings were a kind of constantly growing human hair, the Threads of Worry from Boss Lin’s story that could not be cut. If the owner of the Threads of Worry still existed in this world and was worrying about something, then these few strings would naturally continue to grow.
The strings were growing, but merely lengthening was no obstacle for Haimofen, so he didn’t pay it much mind.
Haimofen glanced in one direction of the audience seats and nodded lightly toward it, as if greeting someone.
Xin Junmao in the audience seats was momentarily stunned. Looking at Haimofen facing him, he only felt that the other seemed to be greeting him, but he had never met Haimofen.
“How annoying.” Miss Zhao had at some point released Xin Junmao’s arm and faintly glanced at the area behind him.
Hearing Miss Zhao’s words, Xin Junmao then realized that he had at some point been enveloped in a thin layer of light membrane, which was the power belonging to the nun in the comb.
That nun of mysterious origin and compassionate appearance had unknowingly protected him once again. Xin Junmao couldn’t help but feel emotional. Then he looked at Miss Zhao with a serious gaze, finally mustering his courage to say: “Miss Zhao, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I might look very much like someone you know, but I’m not him. Please don’t place your emotions for him on me.”
Miss Zhao insisted: “You are him, always have been, you’ve just forgotten. As long as you become my executioner again, everything will come back to you.”
While the two were talking, Haimofen had already begun playing the second piece he brought for everyone《Reincarnation》.
This piece was a violin solo performance. When Haimofen’s superb violin technique once again sounded the first note of the movement, Xin Junmao, who was locking eyes with Miss Zhao’s autumn water pupils, suddenly felt a certain string in his mind being gently plucked. His consciousness slowly blurred, and the world before his eyes gradually became like the neon lights of drunkenness, dazzling and intoxicating.
Consciousness was falling, soul was rising. When consciousness and soul’s “brain” intersected, the world was like experiencing a cosmic big bang—some things disappeared, some things quietly resurrected.
When his vision gradually cleared, Xin Junmao had forgotten who he was. He was simply clad in battle armor, holding a broadsword, standing atop corpses everywhere, blood flowing into rivers all around. He stood in the center of the bloody torrent and rotting corpses, living like an outsider.
He shakily picked up the military flag fallen to the ground and walked like a walking dead toward the small mountain piled up of countless corpses in the battlefield, raising the flag to climb the corpse mountain and blood sea, finally stopping on the body of the enemy general at the mountaintop. With his last bit of strength, he thrust the heavy flag into the enemy general’s chest, piercing the opponent’s body so that the flag fluttered unwaveringly in the wind.
After doing all this, Xin Junmao contentedly fell from the pile of corpses, collapsing onto the battlefield with the other corpses, as if merging into a part of the blood sea.
But when Xin Junmao awoke again, he found himself deep in a cold damp dungeon, where darkness and cold brewed a bitter wine of fear that poured over his body covered in wounds.
Sneaky, treacherous, greedy, and lecherous rats lurked menacingly in the darkness, regarding him as their prey, waiting every minute and second for him to lose consciousness again, then the cowardly and cunning creatures would swarm him, gnawing and feasting on his emaciated flesh and blood.
He had not died after falling on the battlefield but was instead captured by the enemy forces. Under cruel torture day and night, he had to keep company with fear, befriend the cold, and intimately kiss death.
After an unknown number of years, he was released.
The war had ended, and friendly forces had rescued him when his life hung by a thread.
Having walked the gate of hell hundreds of times, he had lost his once spirited and passionate vigor. Time and torture had stripped away his upright and handsome appearance; he became a loathsome cripple, a freak walking the streets enduring cold stares and fear.
But he… had clearly been their “shield,” fighting the war for them.
Because the shield was broken, ugly, they just discarded it at will?
Why… why!?
Stumbling and staggering, Xin Junmao wandered lost on the official road. No one paid him any mind. He only wanted to return as soon as possible to the place where he once lived, to find that person he thought of day and night.
He wanted to apologize to her, to fulfill the promise of growing old together with her—no… he hoped… he hoped… he hoped she could abandon that promise from back then…
Being with someone as ugly, ferocious, and physically maimed as him would not make her happy.
No… rather than letting the beautiful her in his heart say those cruel words, better for him to be the villain who severed their relationship.
While painfully struggling and sadly thinking, Xin Junmao finally returned to the small town where he was born.
But when he saw the once beautiful and peaceful safe small town of his memory turned into the desolate and ruined ruins before his eyes, Xin Junmao nearly went mad. He ran desperately through the streets that could not return to old times, crossed the small river where sky lanterns had once been released, stepped over the stone bridge where people no longer embraced… and finally returned to that home which was no longer familiar.
Bare walls, deathly stillness… everything was destroyed…
His beloved Little Flower, his beloved river, his beloved snacks… the people he loved were all gone. While he was away at war, a sudden epidemic had taken everything in the small town. His most important family died in the epidemic disaster, and the girl across his favorite river had long gone missing.
He had wanted to be the villain who made her happy, but instead he became the true sinner.
Losing everything, Xin Junmao was heartbroken and nearly lost his reason, ultimately deciding to cast aside his own love and beauty.
Walking in the wilderness, he encountered a lone wolf that wanted to kill him. Fearless, he bit the hungry beast to death with his own mouth. He met bandits who wanted to rob him, and in a state of seeming madness, he personally slaughtered those irredeemable thugs.
Unknowingly, he became a true evil person.
When he grew tired of walking, he occupied a mountain stronghold as king, becoming a bandit. Unknowingly, he gathered a group of fierce but useless drunkards and rice sacks, becoming a cruel bandit who only knew to vent desires and abandon all emotion.
He thought he would continue like this forever, becoming the kind of person he once despised most, an irredeemable wretch. He would endlessly plunder peace from others, burn and kill their happiness, becoming the most evil figure in everyone’s eyes… until one day, a former version of himself appeared—passionate, righteous—and would kill his current self, this self-abandoned waste.
But one day, in the forest at the mountaintop of his mountain stronghold, he encountered an injured woman.
She was the woman with the most perfect appearance he had ever seen, and the face most unforgettable to him.
His beloved girl, whom he thought had passed away, had actually returned, returned to his side!
But in a flash, twenty years had passed, and her appearance hadn’t changed a bit.
Xin Junmao had considered that she might not be the person he thought, that she might not be as beautiful as the one in his memory, but he wanted to seize this hard-won beauty. Only those who have lost know the happiness of possession.
At that moment, his closed and frozen heart slowly thawed and softened for this injured girl.
In the days afterward spent with the girl, he still realized this point. She indeed was not that her, but she was equally unique and beautiful, though in a different manner.
She was cruel and bloody, gluttonous and indiscriminate in killing… but also innocently pure, deeply emotional.
One night, Xin Junmao saw her gnawing on a mountain bandit from the stronghold, a beast tempted by her beauty. He was neither disgusted nor afraid; instead, he proactively approached her, even breaking down her favorite “delicious” for her, doting on her like feeding a child, full of confusion.
The girl always gladly accepted his kindness and curiously asked why he wasn’t afraid of her.
Xin Junmao simply and clearly told her his feelings. Though the girl still didn’t understand why he loved her so, she knew how to respond to his affection. She said: from then on, she wouldn’t eat him.
Xin Junmao dominantly cupped that face stained with flesh and blood, full of bewilderment, and kissed those lips that had devoured countless sins and vengeful spirits. Then he earnestly told the girl: from then on, he would be her executioner. All her sins would be borne by him alone henceforth. She need not personally end others’ lives; she just needed to be the girl cared for and doted on by him.
The girl looked at Xin Junmao, still full of doubts about the so-called love he spoke of, but she felt intense joy… She had come to like the feeling of being loved.
From then on, Xin Junmao became an even more brutal mountain bandit. No travelers passing through his territory had a chance of survival—only death. Meanwhile, with the girl’s help, he gained some power beyond humanity, greatly improving his efficiency in hunting “prey.”
After retaining a thread of humanity for her, Xin Junmao became a demon completely devoid of humanity.
And one day, the demon still returned to the human world…
One day, Xin Junmao raided a merchant caravan passing by the foot of his mountain stronghold. A one-armed nun suddenly appeared, blocking the survivors of the caravan. The slaughter ritual was interrupted, and Xin Junmao was quite furious. In a rage, he grabbed his broadsword and approached the nun.
Seeing this, the nun was preparing to recite Buddhist dharma and explain reason to persuade Xin Junmao to lay down his butcher’s knife, but when her gaze carefully noted his features, she suddenly seemed to lose the ability to move, looking at him in disbelief.
It was in that moment of daze that the sinful butcher’s knife fell, cleaving the nun in one stroke.
Before dying, a smile hung on the nun’s pale face: “So you’re still alive… that’s really great…”
With that, she used her last bit of strength to take out a comb made of chicken blood stone materials from her bosom, murmuring: “I really want you to comb my hair for me once more…”
Hearing that familiar voice, looking at that aged yet still somewhat familiar face, watching her die with a satisfied smile, Xin Junmao felt an immense terror and regret surging into his mind.
However, before his emotions could erupt, the girl he had vowed to be “her executioner for life” suddenly appeared. She had become a huge monster, swallowing the girl he had personally killed into her belly, leaving only the comb dropped on the grass.
Witnessing this scene, Xin Junmao completely broke down.
He shrieked hoarsely as his spirit and soul fell into the boundless dark abyss.
He was in the human world, yet in hell—and it was a hell he had personally forged, then cast himself into its torments.
In the days that followed, Xin Junmao became a decadent walking dead. He no longer moved or spoke. He was alive, but his heart had left with the nun.
Faced with such a Xin Junmao, the girl who had devoured the nun became very emotional. She felt panicked and confused for him. To rouse his spirit, she told Xin Junmao that she would no longer be gluttonous, eating only one lavish meal on her birthday each year—as long as he recovered and doted on her as before, she would promise him anything.
But what the girl didn’t know was that Xin Junmao’s heart was already dead; he didn’t care what she said. One night, he finally could not endure the pain and personally ended his own life…
Deng deng!
With the final two string plucks, Xin Junmao snapped out of his shock. Unknowingly, tears streamed down his face, soaking his clothes.
He seemed to finally understand the reason for Miss Zhao’s obsession with him, and also why the comb had come to his side.
“It might be better if you didn’t remember, isn’t it? Amitabha.” The nun finally spoke, with a compassionate smile, her narrowed eyes looking at Xin Junmao as she said, “Unfortunately, you, I, Him… all things in this world cannot escape the destiny of this reincarnation.”
“I… I’m sorry…” Xin Junmao said painfully.
The nun smiled faintly: “All things are dharma, all things have their fixed number. In this life, you have not wronged me, nor Him.”
“Reincarnation? Destiny? Heh, I’m not one of you humans—how could I experience these? I never die, nor will I in the future.” Hearing the nun’s words, Miss Zhao sneered a few times and said.
The nun looked at her with a touch of pity, her voice calm: “If you are not in reincarnation, how could you meet him again?”
Miss Zhao’s face darkened, her form slowly changing.
Just as Miss Zhao was about to revert to her true body, she suddenly found herself falling into black void. After a long fall lasting dozens of seconds, He finally steadied His body and landed on the ground.
During the long fall, Miss Zhao had completed her transformation, fully becoming a huge white flesh mountain composed of countless tangled male and female limbs. Beneath the flesh mountain was a huge ruptured wound, with vast oceans of blood flowing madly, squeezing out pus-filled tumor-like blisters and bubbles from the flesh mountain.
This was the true form of Miss Zhao, the Gluttonous Daughter—a hideous and detestable thing impossible to describe precisely in language.
“Miss Zhao, sorry, but I must ask you to leave the scene.” Haimofen walked out from the darkness, holding the violin in one hand and flexing his fingers with the other, controlling the five nimble sharp knives corresponding to those fingers.
The now corporeal Miss Zhao seemed to have lost human speech ability, Her face gloomy as She glared at Haimofen, low-roaring something at him.
But Haimofen seemed to understand what she said. He suddenly adopted a look of loyal faith, clasped hands together, and said softly: “I’m not deliberately picking a fight; I just don’t want your presence to ruin this performance. It would damage the image I have in Boss Lin’s mind.”
Then a fierce glint appeared in his eyes. One hand held the violin, the other placed the sharp knife on the violin’s strings. Haimofen said: “If you don’t cooperate, I don’t mind letting you hear the music I played for that abnormal god back then.”
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