I Am Loaded with Passive Skills-Chapter 3422 - 1697: No Disaster Beneath the Stairway to Heaven, Still Playing Injury Nan Ting_3

Chapter 3422 -1697: No Disaster Beneath the Stairway to Heaven, Still Playing Injury Nan Ting_3

“Hallmaster, can you also play ‘Injury Nan Ting’?” The only response he received was a tormenting cycle of nightmares entwined.

Yuegong Hui collapsed, mumbling mindlessly, her lips giving out a strange sound of powerlessness, like a woman’s voice:

“Can… can… maybe?”

Dao Dai’er immediately followed up: “Hallmaster, come to my Qianshi Emperor Realm, I happen to have an open position there, missing a successor to the Holy Emperor.”

“I… I’m not worthy…”

“You’re indeed unworthy, so you’re not here to take the position, but just to come by, tonight.”

“Come… come for what…”

“Nothing.” Dao Dai’er condescendingly, indifferently replied: “This hall merely wishes to hear you play ‘Injury Nan Ting’ alone for me.”

…

Thud!

Yuegong Hui collapsed limply onto the ground.

The sound emitted was eerily reminiscent of the peculiar noise Yue Gongnu had heard back then through the ice wall.

Screech—

The Buddha Sword Furious Immortal scratched a deep mark into the ground.

Yue Gongnu trembled all over, not from cold, but anger.

The greatsword, initially too heavy for her two hands to even topple, was now being raised with all her might!

“Injury Nan Ting…”

Yue Gongnu shook her head in a daze, her face frosted over.

She couldn’t imagine, if back in the corridor back then Dai’er wasn’t Dao Qiongcang but truly Dai’er…

She didn’t even dare to imagine, if she wasn’t Yue Gongnu, not Ali’s big sister, not the Cold Palace Holy Emperor’s daughter, but merely a lowly sinner half a level below…

She never judged the world with the utmost malice.

Yet, thirty years in the cold prison, where she’d thought she’d seen through all the warmth and indifference of human nature, she was opening her eyes wide all over again.

“Injury Nan Ting!”

Yue Gongnu gritted her teeth, lifted the Angry Immortal Buddha Sword, and stepped one foot at a time to the corner where Yuegong Hui cowered, utterly cornered.

“Yue Gongnu, you cannot kill me!”

“I am the Hallmaster of Guardian Spirit Hall, are you trying to collude with outsiders, to assassinate the elders of the clan… Yue Gongnu! Wake up!”

“…”

“Miss! Miss Yue! Spare me, miss, it’s all his illusion, he forced me to do it, this isn’t my original intention…”

The demonic noises of roaring and begging resounded in her ears.

The twisted faces of madness and pleading shifted before her eyes.

Just like the intersection of reality and the imagined world, the collapse of self and the self others perceive, as the Angry Immortal Buddha Sword rose high, Yue Gongnu had already ceased hearing any extraneous noise.

The flashes in her mind consisted only of herself, and countless versions of herself over the years.

Trapped inside the cold prison.

Stripped of everything she was supposed to have.

Thirty years, sitting in this lifeless place, repenting, accompanied only by Luan Xue, still convinced this was “right.”

Was it right?

“Bang!” freēwēbηovel.c૦m

With one swing, blood splattered.

Yuegong Hui’s lower half abruptly departed her body.

“Ah—” The heart-piercing scream echoed in her ears, but it remained distant, it did not awaken Yue Gongnu.

As Yue Gongnu swung down her first blade, she tasted destruction.

Blade after blade crashed down relentlessly, almost uncontrollably.

She stood here.

She had absolutely nothing left.

And yet her shoulders bore the weight of an entire cold prison, an entire cold sea, an entire Cold Palace Emperor Realm!

It was an unshakable responsibility from birth, a destiny, a rule, and undoubtedly a burden.

But as the successor of the Cold Palace Emperor Realm, she ought to shoulder these, should she not?

The upbringing she’d been instilled with since her youth left Yue Gongnu naturally accepting everything; she knew she’d made mistakes in the past, and was willing to pay the price for them.

Thus imprisoned in the cold prison, she never sought an escape, leaving it all to Ali.

This was “repayment.”

Was it repayment?

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

No answer.

After so many years, Yue Gongnu realized she still hadn’t found the answer.

Only when swinging the greatsword could she vent the suffocating torment that had plagued her for thirty years, the question she dared not even think about in later years, the unbearable pain.

She wanted to chop apart the filth, chop apart the dirtiness, chop apart the ugliness, chop away all that she had seen, experienced, endured, but had lied to herself and said she should abandon herself to save the greater good—this “should”!

She slashed at the path of the past.

The Buddha Sword purified the tortured souls.

“Injury Nan Ting…”

“Injury Nan Ting! I’ll make you Injury Nan Ting!”

Yue Gongnu never dared to contemplate how “Injury Nan Ting” could entangle with such depravity, rendering thirty years of bitter confinement meaningless.

“Die!”

As the Buddha Sword fiercely thrust downward for the final time…

Clap.

An ivory hand stretched in from the side, clasping her pale wrist.

Yue Gongnu was startled to find her palms completely shattered, blood and flesh mangled, her snow-white dress stained thoroughly crimson.

“Enough.”

Turning her head, the grotesque Dao Dai’er of male head and female body had already vanished; seemingly even he had been purified by the Buddha Sword, and everything returned to normal.

Dao Qiongcang, no longer daring to wear a dress, had switched back to his Star Pattern Robe, his hand gripping Yue Gongnu’s arm while his body shrank back fearfully.

As she turned her gaze toward him, he hastily released her, retreating several steps.

Thank goodness I didn’t provoke her… Dao Qiongcang shrank to the edge of the ice table, instinctively attempting to sit back on his chair, only to spring back up as if electrified, not daring to sit again.

After hesitating for a moment, he barely forced a smile onto his face, deliberately avoiding the corner filled with blood and filth, and in a half-joking tone, though anyone could tell it was a joke, he said:

“Young Mistress, you’ve fallen.”

Yue Gongnu supported herself on the sword, her waist bent low, her head turned away as she gasped heavily.

She was covered in fragrant sweat, but her voice, though weak, was concise and firm:

“Take me out of the cold prison.”

“I wish to see Bazhun’an.”

That’s good, that’s precisely why I came here… Dao Qiongcang nodded silently: “No more staying here? No more guarding it?”

“Ha.”

Yue Gongnu laughed coldly, raising her eyes: “Even if I was wrong, thirty years should’ve repaid it in full. Now I only want to leave, I wish to see him.”

Yes, certainly, that’s perfectly fine… Dao Qiongcang had always trusted Yue Gongnu and believed she would accept accountability for her decisions, yet he said:

“You’re wrong.”

“If it’s just that, there’s no need for me to take you away.”

Yue Gongnu leaned on the sword, straightened her back, smoothing out the blood-creased skirt hems she’d battered uneven.

Standing amid the cold prison, standing amid the icy chill, she thoughtfully considered Dao Qiongcang’s words, and finally nodded slightly, saying:

“Yes, I was wrong.”

“I wasn’t wrong.”