Sorrow In Autumn

Chapter 39. Nexus

I rewrote this chapter a few times. Different point of views and slightly different endings. Eventually, I decided that the best person to tell this part of the story is Zhao Yunlan himself. So the final chapters and the epilogue will be in Shen Wei's point of view.

This is the final action scene. The next two chapters will be all reunion and new life. Soo...that means it is a giant chapter...

To my wonderful, beautiful friend Evy. You are a light in this world and to me, a hero.

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Things always run in circles, Ma Liyan once said. If you look, you'll find the shape but not the beginning or the end.

At the grand age of twelve years old, Kunlun had no  idea what she meant by that. Everything that had happened to him, had clear beginnings and he was living the outcome. Years and countless battles later, even with all he had experienced, tragedies and joys among them...it still took nearly dying....and a lot of time burning alive to think about a lot things he had avoided thinking about.

Being trapped with yourself, buried in your own mind to be able to function in such pain...well everything was something. A distraction and a way to hold onto the essence of who he was.

Da Qing and Sang Zan needed him to function, so he could protect them. Simple.

Lao Ming was relieved and awed that he had kept his mind after ten years. So was he. But the reason he still had his own mind and will wasn't anything special. No secret techniques or mental fortitude. He was too stubborn and he loved too fiercely.

And it was there sheltered temporarily from agony, that he had examined his choices, experiences and thought in more detail than they would probably be comfortable with...about the people he loved.

He realized that Ma Liyan was right. The clear lines he had felt so strongly about when he was twelve had blurred over the years. There were official records and dates, but when he thought about it, when had everything begun to go so wrong?

This, Zhao Yunlan thought as he surveyed the wreckage of the once pretty, tranquil courtyard, was definitely a circle. Here, desperate and bloodied, his heart raw and anger boiling in his veins, he had made what he had hoped was not going to be his final stand.

Here, on this plateau dipping down in a green lush valley, the past seeped through the rocks, shifted in memory but always lingered, creeping like winter shadows. He had found it eerie. Rich with power if you knew where and how to look. Verdant and beautiful with wildflowers and clear skies.

Bitter with resentment, blood spattered with a revolution. A story told and retold in every culture, in the history of every tribe. The uprising led by Sang Zan was not the first of its kind. The hate that ran in cracks, revenge that promised the slice of a honed knife. It seethed in these lands.

The Immortals had their battles and their escape plans. Giving up their power or having it taken, was what ended the immortality part giving death instead. If he was sentimental or truly believe, as some scholars from all the lands did, that the Immortals were somehow pure and perfect, he might have considered this special land. As it was, Kunlun had spent a lot of time with one foot in his own grave. For many reasons, not all of them righteous, he had hunted demons, purified yao and purged evil for a number of years. He had a Soul Tool that liked murder and which had given him like a wedding gift, thousands of years of power and knowledge overnight.

Which at eleven years old was a bit much.

Zhen Hun seethed in his hand, coiling around his arm like a snake, biding its time ready to lash out in defense, already craving the fight.