Transmigrated as the Villain and Driven Crazy by the Vengeful Male Lead - Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Zhiqing Knows Not the Soul – Have You Ever Tried Losing… Simultaneously in One Day?

Jiang Zhiqing (the sister) was petite, but the person standing before them now was tall. Even though their faces were strikingly similar, it was no longer possible to view them as the same person.

Regarding the trio of Chang Huaichen and the Jiang siblings, Lyu Shuyao had guessed half-right. Chang Huaichen and Jiang Zhiqing (the sister) folded octagonal paper the same way, held brushes with the same posture, and sometimes even spoke in perfect sync. He had boldly theorized they were the same person, most likely thinking Chang Huaichen was possessing Jiang Zhiqing’s body.

Even when he saw the corpse in the ice coffin that looked like Chang Huaichen, he only assumed the opposite: that Jiang Zhiqing had occupied Chang Huaichen’s body, forcibly keeping his physical form active in the palace, refusing to let him die.

As it turned out, he was wrong on both counts.

Both of them were being controlled and utilized.

“I could tell from the moment you drew out your living soul,” Su Cheyue said, looking at the despondent Jiang Zhiqing (the brother). “It was clearly a male form.”

Lyu Shuyao asked, “Where is Jiang Zhiqing (the sister)?”

Jiang Zhiqing did not answer, only staring blankly toward the ice coffin.

“I’m afraid she never returned after disappearing that day,” Su Cheyue said sternly. “Am I right, Master Jiang?”

To ask this of Jiang Zhiqing was, in a way, cruel.

“Then why do you dress as your sister? Why… treat Palace Master Chang’s remains this way? How did you achieve ‘two bodies, one soul’?”

Su Cheyue said, “Soul-Rend Slash.”

Jiang Zhiqing murmured, “Yes.”

“I believe Palace Master Chang taught you the Soul-Rend Slash hoping that one day, when you mastered it, you could join him in sweeping away the evil ghosts of Huailing. Sadly, you gave up halfway and used this technique for other purposes.”

“He is dead; what does ‘mastering it’ matter now?” Jiang Zhiqing laughed bitterly. “He is no longer in this world. The Soul-Rend Slash is a moot point.”

“But he hoped there would be a next ‘him,’ because Huailing will always need a protector. Jiang Zhiqing, he hoped that person would be you.”

“Protect… protect?” Jiang Zhiqing repeated the word as if he had never heard or seen it before, as if it were utterly foreign.

“You were pulled into the dreamscape with us just now, but unlike us, you couldn’t see clearly what kind of man he truly was.”

“Did he go in? Why didn’t we see him?”

Lyu Shuyao turned his head, causing a sharp, stinging pain across his face. He grumbled about how the residual sensations of the dreamscape were lasting so long, only to hear Su Cheyue’s voice turn cool: “Don’t move.”

“His physical form was already in the dreamscape; he would naturally be trapped within his own body.” Su Cheyue looked at Jiang Zhiqing. “His soul watched clearly as his past self acted and spoke, yet he could change nothing.”

Jiang Zhiqing’s mind hadn’t fully returned. He was weeping yet laughing, his fingertips clawing bloody marks into the ground. “I watched it again… I actually watched him leave me again, powerless to do anything…”

The agony was almost pitiable.

Lyu Shuyao felt a lump in his throat. If Jiang Zhiqing was like this, how was Su Cheyue any different? Yet the moment Su Cheyue left the dreamscape, he seemed to recover instantly. Despite witnessing the tragic loss of both parents, once he knew it was an illusion, he forced all the grief and pain back into the depths of his heart.

His expression was one of extreme restraint—so restrained it possessed a poignant beauty. His hands were hidden in his long sleeves, perhaps gripping himself tightly, furious with his own helplessness.

However, facing Jiang Zhiqing, they could not show any major emotional upheavals.

Su Cheyue continued, “Jiang Zhiqing, do you know that Palace Master Chang left something within the Bounty Order?”

Jiang Zhiqing had become a mere answering machine: “No.” He feared the secrets of Zhuohua Palace being exposed and hadn’t dared let the Bounty Order reappear in the world.

“You always believed Chang Huaichen was the lecherous, wicked man the rumors claimed. Do you know what we saw in the dreamscape?”

Jiang Zhiqing still said, “No.”

Su Cheyue was silent for a long moment. “You thought he painted ‘Yin-Summoning’ makeup on them, but it was actually just ordinary flower ornaments that women love most.”

He couldn’t distinguish between the two at all.

“You thought he summoned ghosts to do his bidding, but he was using his own strength to protect the entire city of Huailing.”

“Why,” Jiang Zhiqing sat on the ground, “Why didn’t he tell me?”

Lyu Shuyao said, “He likely intended to tell you; otherwise, he wouldn’t have taught you the Soul-Rend Slash. But fate is cruel. It was too late.”

That phrase—”too late”—completely shattered Jiang Zhiqing.

His lips froze. His eyes seemed to have two small pebbles cast into them, turning with agonizing stiffness. Then, the pebbles grazed his eyes, causing him to weep tears mixed with blood.

“I thought… I thought…”

“What exactly have you done to his Zhuohua Palace?” Su Cheyue demanded.

“I only… I only wanted to make him happy… I promised him, as long as he didn’t leave me, as long as he was willing to come back, he could do anything…”

“Anything? So to make him happy, you began doing the things he did?—Or rather, the things you thought he would do? Things you thought he would like?”

“The Yin-Summoning makeup? Summoning ghosts? And Palace Master Chang’s body—how exactly is it perfectly preserved? Why does it rot after the hour of the Pig? The female disciples who come here every night, into this ice cave… what exactly are they facing?”

Su Cheyue questioned him word by word, his voice vibrating with the resonance of his soul. “Jiang Zhiqing, what have you done?”

“I had no choice! I had no choice!” Jiang Zhiqing held his head, his handsome features twisted into a knot. He was handsome, but like the pillow he gripped in his sleep, once he fixated on something, his sharp features revealed a terrifying madness. “I need the spirits of those women to nourish Huaichen’s body. I need them to help me summon Huaichen back… I want him back!”

“So the one who truly painted Yin-Summoning makeup on the disciples… was you, Jiang Zhiqing.”

It was never Chang Huaichen. It was the very Jiang Zhiqing who had once tried to dissuade him.

Lyu Shuyao thought: Is this what they write in books? The dragon slayer eventually becoming the dragon?

In his mind, he saw the young man in the grey-white robe from the dreamscape, confronting Chang Huaichen for the first time, unafraid even without a weapon. He remembered him silently picking up the girl who was to be burned, remembered him telling Chang Huaichen not to hurt his disciples, and remembered him holding the brush, calmly asking Chang Huaichen to paint the makeup on him instead.

Later, he had turned and walked, step by step, into the darkness.

Thinking of this, Lyu Shuyao felt the same regret one feels when reading about a paragon falling from grace. He said sorrowfully, “If your sister knew you were doing this…”

Jiang Zhiqing shook his head. “Master Lyu, what is the point of such a hypothesis? My sister will never know what I have done.”

“She must have been sucked into the Ghost Hell. Like Huaichen, she can never return.”

Lyu Shuyao grew angry. “Then do you feel no guilt for usurping her identity, pretending to be her to lure the women of Huailing into the palace?”

“Say what you will.” Jiang Zhiqing was numb and indifferent. “Master Lyu, have you ever tried losing the two most important people in your life simultaneously in a single day?”

Lyu Shuyao’s heart jolted.

He said, “I suppose I have.”

…

The day he crossed over, before the car accident, his father had brought home the divorce papers for the umpteenth time. This time, his mother didn’t go mad. She didn’t tear the thin, hard sheets into pieces. Instead, she calmly signed her name.

Shen Yun.

She was so calm it startled Lyu Shuyao.

After his father left, his mother said, “Yaoyao, you’re in college now. You’ve grown up. You’re an adult.”

Lyu Shuyao: “And?”

“Lyu Yizhou isn’t the only one who can have his ‘fated’ love.” His mother sneered at the door through which Lyu Yizhou had departed, then suddenly softened her expression. She told Lyu Shuyao, “Yaoyao, Mama is pregnant.”

Lyu Shuyao couldn’t react in time.

“Lyu Yizhou can start over. Why can’t I?” A flash of resentment crossed her eyes when she spoke the father’s name, but it was quickly washed away by a new joy. “Yaoyao, aren’t you happy for Mama?”

Lyu Shuyao heard himself laugh.

“If that’s the case, Ma, then all these years… what exactly were you obsessed with?”

He had never spoken to her in such a questioning tone. Shen Yun froze, revealing that same sorrowful, aggrieved look she had worn for over a decade.

“What do you mean? Yaoyao, are you blaming me? If I had agreed to the divorce back then, wouldn’t that mean I lost?”

“There is no winning or losing in matters of the heart. What ‘loss’ are you admitting to?”

“Get this straight: it was Lyu Yizhou who pursued me relentlessly! It was the Lyu family who begged me to marry him!” Even in her fury, it was undeniable that his mother had been a stunning beauty in her youth. She perhaps didn’t realize that by saying this, she had instinctively categorized her child as part of the “Lyu family.”

“I am a member of the Lyu family,” Lyu Shuyao said. “Mama, are you saying you don’t want me anymore?”

“…” Shen Yun finally realized she was being too emotional. “But you’re an adult. An adult is a home unto themselves.”

“An adult,” Lyu Shuyao nodded. “A home unto themselves.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand. If his mother wanted to remarry, he would be a burden. He didn’t lack understanding; on the contrary, he felt he could even offer his blessing.

He just felt lost. For so many years, his mother had forced him to stay with her, entangled with his father.

In the end, she discarded him the moment she decided to let go.

The suddenness made Lyu Shuyao feel like his years of effort were a joke—like a failed comedy that had an accident halfway through.

Shen Yun saw his shock and tried to explain: “You were small before. If I hadn’t stuck it out with him, do you understand how hard it would have been to raise you alone? Back then, the Lyu family…”

Lyu Shuyao lifted his thin eyelids to look at her. She changed her tune: “Back then, to marry me, how many vows and promises did Lyu Yizhou give me? He’s the one who made me quit my job to focus on taking care of you. If I had really divorced him with no income, how would I have raised you?”

Lyu Shuyao said, “If you truly couldn’t work, the court would have given him custody of me.”

Shen Yun’s face changed violently. “What are you saying? You’d be willing to follow him?! A heartless man who abandoned his wife and child? A lunatic with an abnormal sexual orientation?! If you followed him, how would he treat you? How would that disgusting dog of a man treat you? You’re using the law to lecture me? Don’t think that just because you’ve read a few books, you can talk back to me without restraint! I was the one who raised you!”

“But Mama,” Lyu Shuyao looked at her, enduring the heartache, “you also hit me with iron hangers and scalded me with boiling water.” He truly didn’t understand, yet seemed to understand everything. “Didn’t you also just treat me as a target for your anger, as a tool to bind—”

A slap landed.

Lyu Shuyao was nearly a head taller than his mother; he simply let her hit him. Shen Yun’s breathing was rapid. She probably really was pregnant; she propped herself up against the table and forced herself to calm down.

Her gaze fell on the divorce papers. She looked at them for a long time and smiled.

“Lyu Shuyao, Lyu Yizhou’s good son. Since you favor him so much, go and find him.”

She had always been like this. When angry, she disregarded everything, willfully hating all people and things, leaving her most poisonous words for those closest to her.

“But let me tell you, I argued with him over those papers so many times. We discussed the timing, the reasons, the division of property—everything.”

Lyu Shuyao sensed what her next sentence would be. His eyes stung, and he instinctively bolted for the door.

But not once was it for your custody.

He ran blindly through the crowded streets. At first, he didn’t know what he was looking for, but he had to find a focal point for his vision, or he would collapse.

Then he saw a familiar car, a familiar person, and he began to give chase.

He was an adult now. He was no longer the pathetic child who could only cry and beg for Lyu Yizhou to look back. He even felt he could get into a fight with Lyu Yizhou.

And then, before the fight could happen, he ended up here.

…

Jiang Zhiqing’s voice interrupted his thoughts: “No need to lie to me. If you truly had [those people], you would be like me—using any means necessary to keep them by your side.”

He turned to Su Cheyue: “The Second Master should understand me, right?”

Any means necessary? What kind of means?

Should I have personally hacked that man named A-Zhou to pieces? Should I have carved the child out of my mother’s womb?

Lyu Shuyao said, “I have no means.” He couldn’t do something so heinous.

Jiang Zhiqing sneered. “Listen to that. Do you even believe yourself?”

Su Cheyue said calmly, “I believe him.”

Eh? Eh…

“Even you won’t help me, Cheyue?” Jiang Zhiqing’s voice sounded exhausted. “You are Master’s only child. He is suffering down in the Ghost Hell with Huaichen. Can you really remain indifferent?”

Su Cheyue’s lips were pressed into a tight line. “Father would not want me to do this.”

“But Huaichen wants it,” Jiang Zhiqing looked over with deep, dark eyes. “I cannot retreat. He left his physical body to me—doesn’t that mean he wants to return to life? What if, one day, he comes back?”

“Lyu Shuyao, where is Qin Zhu?”

Obsessed beyond reason.

“For your personal feelings, how many innocent women have you harmed?”

Jiang Zhiqing gave a bitter, pained smile. “Indeed, it is personal. So what? I have decided it is him, so it is him. What you say doesn’t count. I don’t believe it. I want him to tell me personally.”

Su Cheyue said, “He has already told you.”

Jiang Zhiqing froze.

“You still don’t understand even now. He left his body to you not so you could revive him in this insane manner. On the contrary, he wanted to tell you…” Su Cheyue looked calmly at the ice coffin. “His feelings for you were the same as yours for him.”

“The same?” Jiang Zhiqing chewed on the words, tasting the salt of tears. “How could they be the same?”

“As he said, I was merely a dog he picked up. When he was happy, he could release his desire to coax and play with me, but at other times, I was never allowed to overstep.” Jiang Zhiqing muttered like a madman, “It must be me. I disobeyed his wishes. On the bed, I forced him. Off the bed, I questioned him with that attitude… it was me!”

“…”

No wonder he had split half his soul into Chang Huaichen’s body. Though the remaining half was dressed as his sister, deep in his subconscious, he still believed he was Jiang Zhiqing.

That was why such an uncomfortable scene—the Palace Master publicly forcing and insulting the “senior disciple”—had occurred.

In his subconscious, he wanted Chang Huaichen to punish him.

This complex case of dissociative identity was something even a modern psychologist would struggle to explain.

Su Cheyue said lowly, “He did not think it was ‘forced.'”

Lyu Shuyao gave Su Cheyue a strange look, feeling he was empathizing far too much with Chang Huaichen. What more is there to say to a mental patient? Just use the sword and be done with it.

Hearing this, Jiang Zhiqing sneered again. “You aren’t him; how would you know? He personally gouged out the Twin Lotuses I painted for him. Did you not see? The scar on his forehead—did you not see?”

“I saw it,” Su Cheyue said.

“Yes, he hated it so much—”

“We also saw that the lotus he gouged out… he pricked it over his heart.”

“…What?”

Lyu Shuyao’s tone turned sharp. “Every night, you only care about finding the Yang energy of disciples to nourish this corpse, but you have never carefully and seriously looked at what unspoken words this body left behind. Jiang Zhiqing, you simply don’t have the courage to face him.”

Jiang Zhiqing’s pupils shrank violently!

“What are you saying… impossible… impossible!”

Thinking of all the vulnerable women who had come to Zhuohua Palace only to be harmed by him, Lyu Shuyao wanted to strike at the very core of his heart. “Just like when you painted Yin-Summoning makeup on the female disciples he worked so hard to protect—after his death, the truly unforgivable disobedience and betrayal began with you. Jiang Zhiqing, you never understood him.”

Driven mad, Jiang Zhiqing scrambled toward the ice coffin. With trembling hands, he pulled back the blood-red robes.

Rotting flesh, scorched bone.

Nothing remained.

Jiang Zhiqing laughed long and loud. In his true voice, no longer disguised, his hatred was hoarse, burning, and despondent.

He laughed until he couldn’t breathe, then wept until he couldn’t speak.

What should he hate?

Jiang Zhiqing and Chang Huaichen—they had fallen in love long ago. That was fate. But they didn’t have time to truly know each other. That was also fate.

The Twin Lotuses over the heart—he had never seen them.

He wanted so badly to see. He wanted so badly to see him.

Jiang Zhiqing lay prostrated by the ice coffin for a long, long time, as if he were dying along with Chang Huaichen. But before long, he lifted his eyes—now so red they were almost black—like a trapped beast waking up again, continuing to act on the obsessive desires in his bones.

To have loved someone so breathtaking in youth… what did it matter if he was damned for eternity?

“Lyu Shuyao, I will ask one more time. Where is Qin Zhu?”