The sixty-fourth time.
She opened her eyes again.
Before her was the same filthy and chaotic prison cell, the still-sleeping Chu Wenruo, the not-yet-returned-from-torture Huo Hengxuan, and the silently motionless... corpse of Chen Kuang.
This was already the sixty-fourth time she had returned to this place.
The first time, she had been an ignorant four-year-old child. After breaking through a siege, she was taken under the wing of a man who introduced himself as a disciple of Liberty Mountain: Zhang Zhizhou.
Liberty Mountain was a beautiful peach-blossom mountain. Endless flowers in bloom, students in white robes reciting phrases she could not yet understand, their eyes reflecting the light of the world.
It was there she met the one everyone called "the Master."
A constantly smiling old man, short and not particularly imposing. He always carried a discipline ruler in his hand, and if anyone slacked off, he would leap up and knock them on the back of the head.
He didn't seem impressive at all, just a very ordinary elder.
Zhang Zhizhou had led her to meet the Master and the moment the Master saw her, he smiled and praised her for being a good child.
She put her hands on her hips and solemnly refuted, "I'll be killing a lot of people in the future, so I definitely can't be a good child."
Chu Wenruo, who had nervously followed behind, nearly fainted hearing this.
To say in front of the Master that she intended to kill a lot of people, what was this child thinking?
The Master merely chuckled and patted her head. "You were hungry but still gave your bun to your mother, does that not count as good?"
"This is one of the hardest things in the world. You've already done it, which means you've surpassed 99% of people. You're certainly a good child."
"As for killing..."
The Master asked, "Why do you want to kill people?"
She cried out, "Because a lot of people want to kill me and my mother. Only by killing them can I protect her."
The Master said, "But there are many of them, and you only have two hands. Can you kill them all? If you're exhausted and can't protect your mother, what then? And what if you lose? What then?"
She was stunned, clearly troubled by the thought.
The Master smiled gently. "No rush. You'll stay on Liberty Mountain for a long time. Think it through, and tell me when you've figured it out."
So she spent six years at Liberty Mountain, growing from ignorance to partial understanding.
She saw countless people come and go, travelers from various lands and nations, both cultivators and mortals. Those who planted a peach tree on the mountain became disciples of Liberty Mountain.
When they left, they might walk away empty-handed, or take a peach blossom, or eat an entire tree's worth of fruit, or maybe carry off a new seed.
Some would return, transformed..
One who left empty-handed became the world's greatest assassin, and died beneath his planted peach tree.
One who took a blossom became a powerful minister in some nation. When he returned, his eyes were heavy with burdens and his belly empty. He merely stood silently beneath the peach tree for a night, then placed the now-dried flower beneath it and left.
Others never returned.
One who ate a whole tree's fruit vowed to wipe out the Night Barbarians of the Northern Wastelands, and fell in a bloody 3,000-mile battle against their king A Chi Le.
One who took a seed gave the life-saving elixir meant for his wife to a dying messenger who had fought in the same war, then knelt facing south and took his own life.
Nine years later, the Master went into seclusion, and she herself left Liberty Mountain.
She was thirteen that year, just beginning to bloom, dressed in white.
The young girl had no sword at her waist, yet her presence was as sharp as any blade.
Nine years on Liberty Mountain had taught her the truths of the world.
But she still harbored one unanswered question, when she was little, still in that prison cell, why had she grabbed that musician's corpse, and cried so desperately?
Who... was he?
But that question now only occupied a small corner of her heart, she had more important things to do.
In just a year, her name, Su Huaiying, became known from the Canglang Evaluation to the Rouge Pavilion.
At fourteen, she returned to Liang and gathered the remnants of the Liang royal faction, only to learn that the group Soil True Officials, founded by Huo Hengxuan, had already crumbled under Zhou's purges, leaving no more than two or three dozen survivors.
At fifteen, she formed her first core team, rapidly expanding her influence and preparing to ignite a rebellion from within Liang.
At sixteen, she died.
Sometimes, the world really was that absurd and abrupt.
Only then did she understand, after nine years, the remaining Liang loyalists and citizens had already grown used to their new lives.
They saw themselves as Zhou people now, whether their edges had been ground away or they had willingly submitted.
Some even had spouses from Zhou...
Su Huaiying's return was not welcome news, it was an inconvenience.
And so, she died at the hands of her own people.
Just as the one who opened the gates to Zhou had been someone inside the city.
She thought to herself, she hadn't yet answered the Master's question, nor solved that lingering mystery in her heart.
But this wasn't the end, it was the beginning.
When she opened her eyes again, she was back in that filthy cell, staring blankly at her now-small hands.
Chen Kuang's corpse still lay silently nearby.
Memory flooded in like a tidal wave.
She remembered!
This wasn't reality, it was a dream!
No, it was not a dream..
Now with her sixteen-year-old consciousness, Su Huaiying realized, the sword she had once pulled from that musician's corpse, there was something wrong with it!
This place wasn't a dream. No dream could be this long, this real.
Or... change a person's consciousness.
She was stunned, then quickly got up, only to fall back down due to her short limbs, landing on her rear.
As tears welled up in her childish body, she gritted her teeth, stood again, and looked at the still corpse.
It was too strange, why was Chen Kuang the only one who changed?
Su Huaiying tried to find clues from the corpse, tried to speak to the others about what she knew, but it was useless as things kept following the original trajectory.
And once again, she died.
This time at seventeen, after reclaiming Liang, she was killed by the Eastern Emperor Saint.
Again and again and again...
She never lived past twenty.
The longest loop, she nearly made it to her twentieth birthday. The Eastern Emperor died in a power struggle with the Three Calamities Sect, engineered by Zhang Zhizhou.
She was preparing to unite the other nations to launch a counterattack against Zhou.
The day before, she met a roguish, nameless musician.
He asked her if she had ever met a musician named Chen Kuang.
Startled, she said yes, but also that he had died.
The man simply replied:
"If the Dao loses its One, it can no longer be called the Dao."
"Your Highness, remember to check, does his corpse cast a shadow?"
Su Huaiying froze, but the musician had already turned and vanished, she couldn't catch even a glimpse of him.
That was the thirtieth time.
She died to a Martial Saint who broke through at the Ancient Battlefield of Meditation.
The thirty-first time, she was in a daze for a long while. When moonlight spilled into the prison, she looked and saw..
That Chen Kuang's corpse cast no shadow.
"Why is that?"
Su Huaiying was baffled. This wasn't a dream, everything should follow logic.
How could a corpse lack a shadow?
And Chen Kuang... clearly had one.
He was the only variable.
In the fortieth loop, she tried refusing Zhang Zhizhou's aid.
She died immediately in the chaos.
This was now the sixty-fourth time.
She wanted to find the answer to her question.
After breaking through enemy lines, she refused to go to Liberty Mountain. Instead, with Zhang Zhizhou, she quickly gathered people and snuck back into the palace.
There, she found the not-yet-fully-rotted corpse of Su Yu, and discovered it had no shadow either.
She was soon found by Li Hongling...
...
The sixty-fifth time.
Su Huaiying silently counted in her mind.
She sighed and lay in Chu Wenruo's arms, soul-weary.
How many centuries had passed by now?
It really seemed like there was no way out...
Out of habit, she turned her head toward that familiar corpse.
In countless cycles of death and rebirth, it had become her only anchor.
Only by seeing it could she remember that she wasn't in reality, but inside an illusion.
But this time, she froze.
In the cell across from hers stood a young man.
At his feet lay that all-too-familiar musician's corpse..
He wore strange clothes she'd never seen before, soaked almost completely in blood. He also seemed stunned, but then he smiled at her and waved.
"Uh... Your Highness, I've come to get you out again."