Chapter Forty-Eight: Revenge (I)

Jin Xiaodao had no idea where Long Ye was. Day after day, she remained at home in a state of anxious dread. Even when a gust of wind swept through the courtyard, she would start in terror, thinking Meng Xiaoli had returned for revenge. If a bird flew overhead, she feared it might be one of Meng Xiaoli’s spies.

While working during the day, her eyes kept darting toward the road beyond the courtyard. She was always certain that Meng Xiaoli would appear at its far end with an armed force and come to kill her. At night, she dared not sleep deeply, terrified that Meng Xiaoli would take advantage of the darkness, storm into the house, and flay mother and daughter alive.

After several days of this, Jin Xiaodao grew utterly jumpy. She would suddenly turn and stare behind her, remain frozen for a moment, then turn back and resume her work. At the slightest rustle, she would scream her daughter’s name and shout for her to run. Only after discovering that nothing had happened would she cautiously call the girl back.

Two days later, Jin Xiaodao passed from fear to wishing that Meng Xiaoli would come sooner. Living in such constant alarm, seeing threats in every shadow and enemy soldiers in every blade of grass, was unbearable.

Another day dawned beneath a cloudless sky. Jin Xiaodao was sorting mountain mushrooms in the courtyard when a chill wind suddenly swept past. A faint smell of blood spread through the air, mingled with a distant yet familiar fragrance. Jin Xiaodao abruptly raised her head and saw a mass of dark clouds rising on the horizon, rolling heavily and swiftly toward her.

The cold wind howled, each gust more violent than the last, lifting the clothes Jin Xiaodao had hung out to dry. It seemed a storm was about to break. But Jin Xiaodao did not think so. Her instincts told her that the person she both feared and longed for had finally come: Meng Xiaoli.

Sensing that Meng Xiaoli had returned for revenge, Jin Xiaodao hurriedly called for her daughter. The little girl came running out and said with a smile, “Mother, it’s going to rain. Aren’t you coming inside?”

Jin Xiaodao shouted, “Run! Go through the back yard. No matter what you hear, do not come back.”

Her younger daughter had been put through this several times already and had long since grown helplessly exasperated. This time she no longer believed her mother and simply stood where she was, refusing to run.

“What are you standing there for?” Jin Xiaodao cried anxiously. “Run! Go into the mountains, go to the town, and find your father. If you insist on coming back, wait until tomorrow night. If you don’t see me, stay here and wait for your father. Do you hear me?”

When the girl still did not move, Jin Xiaodao rushed forward, seized her, and shoved her toward the back yard.

“I said run, so run! If you dare come back, I’ll beat you to death!”

The little girl burst into tears, bewildered and frightened, and could only hurry toward the rear hills.

As for Jin Xiaodao, she calmly walked to the center of her courtyard and sat down, making every preparation to receive Meng Xiaoli. She looked imposing, fearless, and utterly unyielding, like a lone guardian holding a pass against an invading army.

The dark clouds brought wave after wave of icy wind, tossing Jin Xiaodao’s loose hair into disarray. From the wind, she caught Meng Xiaoli’s scent—that faint, long-forgotten fragrance. Jin Xiaodao knew that Meng Xiaoli had arrived.

Suddenly, a cry rang out. Jin Xiaodao recognized her daughter’s voice and immediately lost her composure. She turned toward the back yard and saw two women in red seize the girl by the arms and leap down from the roof into the courtyard.

Jin Xiaodao sprang up and rushed toward her daughter, all her former majesty transformed into disheveled panic.

“What are you doing? Let go of my daughter!”

Before she could reach the girl, a melody suddenly drifted through the air. Zithers, flutes, and lutes blended together as an opera singer’s melodious voice rang out:

“Ah, all this riotous color in full bloom
Is given over to broken wells and ruined walls.
What use are fair days and beautiful sights?
In whose courtyard may delight be found?
Clouds roll at dawn and dusk above jade terraces;
Rain threads the air, the breeze stirs painted boats.
Those hidden behind the jeweled screen
Know all too well how lightly spring is valued...”

The melody, which would ordinarily have been a pleasure to hear, now sounded like torture.

Jin Xiaodao saw that the musicians on either side were all women dressed in red. They floated lightly onto the fence, while two long red sleeves descended from the sky. A woman in red sang a graceful aria and drifted down between Jin Xiaodao and her daughter. Before Jin Xiaodao, she performed with serene delight, her slender waist swaying beneath the moon, her long sleeves dancing like spring wind. She was breathtakingly beautiful, a vision rarely seen in the mortal world.

Enraged, Jin Xiaodao shouted, “What do you want? Get out of my courtyard!”

Then she turned and saw, far along the road, a procession dressed in red. Several men in red carried an exquisite sedan chair veiled in scarlet gauze. A woman sat within it, leaning lazily to one side, and the procession was advancing straight toward Jin Xiaodao’s home.

The clouds thickened overhead until they covered the entire sky above the courtyard, pressing down in a dark and oppressive mass. From time to time, lightning tore across them.

When the procession reached the gate, the bearers lowered the sedan chair. The woman inside swept aside the gauze and sprang lightly out, touching the ground on the tips of her toes. Only then did Jin Xiaodao see clearly that she was Meng Xiaoli—the woman she had not seen for nine years.

With a faint smile, Meng Xiaoli said, “It has been a long time, old friend. I brought no gift for our reunion, so I invited Li Yaorao, the most celebrated opera singer in Jiangnan, to perform for you. Tell me, Lady Long—do you like it?”

Jin Xiaodao glared at her with bitter hatred and replied through clenched teeth, “So you truly are the Demon Yama Ghost Empress. Meng Xiaoli, you’ve come for me after all.”

Meng Xiaoli raised a hand, bringing Li Yaorao’s performance to a halt. Li Yaorao gathered her sleeves and joined the others beside the courtyard wall, though her passion for the performance had not yet faded; she continued idly waving her long sleeves to one side.

Meng Xiaoli walked up to Jin Xiaodao and reached for her hand.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, little sister,” she said gently. “I was tied up with other matters. The moment I learned you were here, I wanted to come and see you.”

Jin Xiaodao snatched her hand away.

“Stop pretending, Meng Xiaoli! You came to kill me, didn’t you? Then go ahead and do it. Why put on this show of a cat mourning a dead mouse? Do you enjoy tormenting me?”

Meng Xiaoli shook her head with a smile and sighed.

“It seems I truly am inferior to you when it comes to acting. Your performances are so convincing that people believe them, while even my honest words are mocked.”

Jin Xiaodao turned to pull her daughter close, but one of the women in red stopped her. She turned back to Meng Xiaoli and pleaded, “You can kill me if you must, but my daughter is innocent. The grievances between us have nothing to do with her.”

Meng Xiaoli lifted one eyebrow and lowered the other, staring at Jin Xiaodao in disbelief.

“You know the child is innocent? When you pushed my daughter off that cliff, did you spare even a thought for her?”

Jin Xiaodao knew she had no defense. Clutching her hair, she walked to the stone table in the courtyard and dropped heavily onto the bench. Her voice softened.

“I know you hate me. All these years, I’ve lived with regret as well. But I cannot undo what happened, sister.”

She raised her head and looked pleadingly at Meng Xiaoli.

“I made a terrible mistake. Tell me how I can make amends, and I’ll do anything. But please, spare my daughter.”

Seeing Jin Xiaodao begging beside the stone table, Meng Xiaoli knew that she was about to display her talent for acting once again. She looked at the woman before her: small and withered, her skin darkened by years of wandering beneath the sun, her features roughened by hardship. The delicate beauty she had possessed in youth had long since been stripped away, layer by layer, by the passing years.

Meng Xiaoli could not help sighing.

“Once, I thought you were a terrifying adversary. Now you seem so utterly powerless.”

Meng Xiaoli lowered her gaze toward Jin Xiaodao.

“I truly did not come to kill you. In my eyes, you are no more than an ant. I gave up hating you long ago. I still came because I owe my dead daughter an answer. I spared you for all these years, but my daughter cannot be brought back. She must not have died for nothing.”

As she spoke, Meng Xiaoli rested one hand on Jin Xiaodao’s shoulder. Turning her head, Jin Xiaodao saw that the hand was fitted with a weapon of astonishing hardness, thick with the stench of blood. Sharp points gleamed at the fingertips with a terrifying light. Jin Xiaodao could imagine how many lives had already been claimed beneath those weapons—perhaps countless lives—and how she might soon become the next.

A thunderbolt split the heavens.

Jin Xiaodao shuddered from head to toe. Meng Xiaoli’s words had lifted her heart into the sky, only to hurl it brutally back to earth. Though she had spoken fearlessly, the truth was that she did not want to die. She was alive and well—why should she die? If not for herself, and not for Long Ye, then for her daughter at least, she had to go on living.

Slowly, Jin Xiaodao knelt before Meng Xiaoli. After one deep breath, tears began to stream down her face.

“I am only an ant. With the slightest lift of your hand, an entire family may live; with the slightest lowering of it, an entire family may perish. Whether you raise or lower your hand depends on nothing more than a thought. I know I have no right to ask you for mercy, but I still beg you to spare my daughter. Spare me. Without me, she cannot survive in this world. Long Ye left me long ago. Who else can I rely on?”

When she finished, she began to sob uncontrollably.

Meng Xiaoli closed her eyes and fell into thought, remembering everything that had happened in the past.

“If you had understood certain truths back then, none of this would have happened. My poor daughter was still so young. Now even dreaming of her feels like a blessing.”

Ignoring Jin Xiaodao, Meng Xiaoli turned and walked toward the little girl. She bent down and lifted the child’s chin. The golden-scale blood armor covering her hand was hard as iron, its fingers gripping the girl’s tender face. The child, who had been trying to remain calm, began to cry again.

Meng Xiaoli sighed.

“This little girl was about the same age as my daughter was then. If you had only allowed me to say a word, if you had given me the chance to reason with you, my daughter might not have been pushed from that cliff while she was still so young.”

The memory of that day rose within her. The hatred buried deep in her heart took root and began to grow with violent force, gathering sinister energy until her eyes turned blood-red.

Meng Xiaoli looked back at Jin Xiaodao, who was kneeling on the ground and begging for mercy. Even Jin Xiaodao was so terrified by those eyes that her soul nearly fled her body. Trembling, she pleaded, “Xiaoli, everything that happened then was my fault. I owe you an apology. I should never have done it—I should never have killed someone in a moment of blind rage. But I will never forget that when I collapsed from hunger, you gave up a bowl of porridge for me. Without you, I would never have survived to this day...”

“So this is how you repay a kindness?”

Meng Xiaoli spun around, seized Jin Xiaodao by the collar, and hauled her up from the ground. Her eyes blazed with hatred.

“I will make you regret ever entering my home.”

With that, she flung Jin Xiaodao to the ground and ordered, “Bind her.”

The disciples obeyed, rushing forward to seize Jin Xiaodao’s arms and legs. Not knowing what Meng Xiaoli intended, Jin Xiaodao cried out repeatedly in terror. Seeing this, her daughter burst into loud sobs and shouted for them to release her mother.

Meng Xiaoli turned back, lifted the little girl from the ground, and placed her on the stone table in the courtyard. The child continued to sob. Looking at her tear-streaked face, Meng Xiaoli said gently, “Little girl, your mother once pushed my daughter off a cliff for her own selfish gain. My daughter was about your age when she fell. Tell me—does that make your mother a cruel and vicious woman?”

The girl shook her head again and again, crying, “My mother isn’t cruel! My mother is a good person! Let her go! Let my mother go!”

Meng Xiaoli stroked the girl’s hair and revealed a sinister, twisted smile.

“There are things you did not see, so I do not blame you for not knowing. But as they say, an eye for an eye. I will repay her in her own manner. I should follow your mother’s example and push you from a cliff as well, so that you can experience the terror my daughter endured back then.”

She paused, her smile growing colder.

“But I am more merciful than your mother. I need not take your life, because I never kill children.”