After some silence, Lan WangJi finally spoke, “There is no need. You can help…”
Before he could finish, he suddenly realized that Wei WuXian didn’t move at all. He had been squatting on the side, watching them. When he left the farm, he casually took with him a melon, and now he seemed to be trying to figure out how to open it.
Meeting Lan WangJi’s gaze, he protested, “HanGuang-Jun, don’t look at me like that. I have nothing in my hands and my spiritual powers are low, am I right? For every field there are professionals, it’s true. Digging graves, he’s the fastest. Why don’t we talk about how to eat the melon? Bichen had gone into the dirt and we won’t be able to use it as of now. Does anyone have anymore knives or swords or those kinds of things on them?”
Wen Ning shook his head, “Sorry, I didn’t bring any.”
Wei WuXian, “HanGuang-Jun, uh, is Suibian with you?”
Lan WangJi, “…”
Eventually, he took Suibian out of his qiankun sleeve. Melon in one hand and sword in the other, he showed off a sword routine and cut the little watermelon into eight pieces. After he finished, he squatted on the ground, watching them dig graves diligently as he ate melon.
On the other hand, within half an hour, Wen Ning had digged an entire row of pits exactly the same in size. He lay the corpses that he had broken up inside as he rambled on, “Everyone, I’m really sorry. I can’t tell anymore which of your corpses belonged to whom. If I buried anyone’s wrong, please excuse me…”
Having finished the melon and buried the rest of the corpses, Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi set off again.
A few days later, the two arrived at Yiling.
Burial Mound was less than three miles away from the town before them. Although they didn’t know what was waiting for them there, Wei WuXian had a hunch that it wasn’t anything good.
However, Lan WangJi was right beside him. His strides were steady and his eyes were calm. Wei WuXian didn’t have any sense of emergency to begin with. Looking at such a person, he couldn’t feel nervous no matter what. Walking through the town of Yiling, it was the accent of his home all around him. Refreshed by the familiarity, in spite of how he wasn’t going to buy anything, he couldn’t help but chat with the vendors by the streets in the the local accent.
After he felt satisfied with how much he had spoken, he finally turned around, “HanGuang-Jun, you remember this town, don’t you?”
Lan WangJi nodded lightly, “I do.”
Wei WuXian grinned, “I knew that your memory is better than mine. In this town, we’ve met once before. You happened to be night-hunting in Yiling and I said that I needed to treat you a meal. You remember this too?”
Lan WangJi, “I do.”
Wei WuXian, “But it’s quite a shame. You ended up paying in the end anyway, haha!”
He sat on the donkey with his legs criss-crossed. He swayed as he pretended to be unconcerned, “Speaking of it, HanGuang-Jun, do you plan on ever retiring?”
Lan WangJi paused shortly, as though he was thinking for a moment. Wei WuXian struck the iron while it was still hot, “Have you thought of what to do after you retire?”
Lan WangJi gazed at him, “Not yet.”
Wei WuXian thought to himself, It’s perfect if you haven’t thought of anything yet! I’ll think for you.
He was going to find a place beautiful though sparsely populated and build a large house there. He could build one for Lan WangJi next to him as well. Everyday there’d be two dishes and a soup. Of course, it’d be best if Lan WangJi was the one who cooked, or else they had to eat the things he cooked. It’d be best if Lan WangJi was responsible for the account of their money as well. Before his eyes even appeared the scene of Lan WangJi wearing coarse cloth, patches at his chest and his knees, sitting expressionlessly at a handmade wooden table, counting coins one by one. After he finished counting, he grabbed a hoe and went out to work. And, on the other hand, he’d… he’d… he’d do what?
Wei WuXian thought seriously about what he’d be doing. People often said that to exchange for food one either plowed the fields or spun cloth. Now that somebody was plowing the fields, somebody had to spin the cloth as well. Just thinking of him crossing his knees and shaking his legs in front of a loom was enough for him to cringe. He’d rather grab the hoe. It’d be more suitable for Lan WangJi to spin cloth. In the day they’d fish and plow the fields, while at night they’d get their swords and go night-hunting for beasts and demons. If they got tired of it, they could pretend that they’d never retired and it’d be fine for them just to enter the world again. But, as he had thought, they were missing a small one…
Lan WangJi suddenly spoke up, “A small what?”
Wei WuXian, “Huh?”
He suddenly realized that he had spoken the last sentence out. He immediately regained himself, “I meant, Lil’ Apple is missing a small friend.”
Lil’ Apple turned around and spat hard. Wei WuXian slapped its donkey head. Pulling its long ears, he laughed, but all of a sudden, he couldn’t laugh anymore.
It wasn’t because of anything special, but only that he remembered. Back then, he really had a little child beside him. If he had lived until now, he’d be close to fifteen years old already.
Burial Mound sat in the depths of the mountains of Yiling.
The world called Burial Mound a mountain of corpses. Over the hills, if one stuck their shovel anywhere into the ground, they’d be able to dig out a dead person. This wasn’t wrong. Burial Mound used to be an ancient battleground. In the years afterward, people had gotten used to tossing inside nameless corpses, causing there to always be dark, resentful energy throughout the year. In the end, it became the nightmare of everyone in the Yiling area.
As though tainted by the energy of resentment, within the woods on the mound, all of the leaves and branches were as black as death. From the most bottom part of the mountain, there was a tall wall dozens of feet in height. Carved onto the wall were tightly-packed incantations, preventing both the living and the dead from passing through. The wall of incantations that surrounded the entire burial mound was at first built by the third sect leader of the QishanWen Sect. However, since they couldn’t purify the overwhelmingly powerful spirits that dwelled here, they could only choose the second best option, to isolate them with a wall. Wei WuXian had once pushed this wall down. The one here now was a new wall rebuilt and strengthened by the LanlingJin Sect’s people.
However, when they arrived, they discovered that a long section of the wall had been pushed down again.
Chapter 68: Tenderness—Part Six
Translated by K of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Wei WuXian left the donkey down at the bottom of the mountain. He stepped over the remains of the wall and walked up the mountain path. Soon later, he saw the stone statue of a headless beast. The statue was thousands of pounds in weight. It had guarded the mountain path for many years. Vines climbed over it and moss gathered at the dents. The head of the beast had been chopped off by an axe and tossed somewhere near. As if to assert power, it had been smashed into small pieces. The cut was still new, revealing the whiteness inside. Farther along, similarly, the next statue that they saw had been cut into two halves, from head to toe.