Chapter 45: Sever and Protect
The moon beamed through sparse clouds, casting its cool, silvery light across the land. In the quiet of the night, amongst a vast landscape of rolling hills, a small forest was disturbed. The night crow's cry echoed, as if calling to the afterlife. A man with silver hair stumbled through the moonlit trees at great speed, his hand clutching a shoulder. The sound of the pursuit followed him.
Changyi turned his head and looked at the soldiers chasing after him. Ji Yunhe was among them. With no time to get emotional, he clenched his teeth and kept running. The surrounding trees receded and a clearing appeared before him. He ran a few steps forward then stopped abruptly as a gust of wind blew across his face.
A cliff. He had nowhere left to run. Changyi turned around. The well trained soldiers formed a semicircle and quickly surrounded him. They held their blockade firmly and did not move again. Only Ji Yunhe dismounted and walked step by step toward him with a sword in hand.
Changyi looked at the cliff behind him, and then turned back to look at her. A Ji Yunhe that was no longer gentle and sweet.
The strike he suffered from her back at the camp had damaged his power and ability to ride the wind. Behind him was a steep fall into unknown depths, and in front of him… she was also like a bottomless abyss. Ji Yunhe stopped ten feet away from him.
The clouds parted up in the sky and allowed the moonlight to pour down over the cliff. Changyi saw his own shadow stretched to Ji Yunhe's feet as she stepped onto its throat.
She said, "There is nowhere to run."
Changyi stared at his shadow in silence. It was so helplessly bound to the ground, defenseless and trampled on by her.
Ji Yunhe raised her sword, unsheathed it, and threw the scabbard aside. Then she pointed the tip at Changyi. He finally shifted his gaze from his shadow onto Ji Yunhe, and his eyes reflected the sheen of her sword.
"I don't believe it," he said as he stared at her. His words drifted into Ji Yunhe's ears, but they did not stop the sword in her hand. Her eyes were cruel, and she made her move under the chill of the moon.
When her sword entered his chest, Changyi felt no pain, only despair. His chest was numb, and his entire body was numb. He only felt cold. A bone-chilling cold.
Ji Yunhe's sword had plunged through him with a force so great that it pushed him over the edge of the cliff. He was unable to resist. Or maybe he did not want to. He just looked at her, and his own reflection inside her dark eyes. He saw himself broken, desperate, foolish, and lost. And Ji Yunhe's face did not show the slightest wave of emotion.
The howling of the wind blocked all other sounds from his ears as everything grew distant and faint, finally vanishing from his sight. His body fell under Ji Yunhe's gaze, her eyes as cold as the moon.
I don't believe it... He wanted to say it again, but he no longer had the strength to. The darkness under the cliff took everything away. His world fell silent...
"Stop! The princess wants him alive!" Zhu Ling's voice pierced the night sky. It did not reach the ears of Changyi, but Ji Yunhe heard it loud and clear.
A white figure on a sword flashed over along with Zhu Ling's voice. He flew past Ji Yunhe and headed straight for the cliff, trying to retrieve the jiaoren who had fallen off. But after he made barely an inch beyond the edge, the sword under his feet was deflected by a strong force.
Ji Chengyu turned his body and stabilized himself in mid air. Before he could make a second attempt down the cliff, his sword cracked and broke in half. He had no choice but to leap down onto the ground. Along with Zhu Ling who rushed over just now, they stared at the broken sword in shock.