Of all the hidden secrets revealed by the Jade Sign, only this one remained.
The truth about that pill was not complicated. It could be summarized in just a few words.
It was a special Mother-Child Gu that Kanzaki had refined.
Its function was simple and absolute: all injuries and pain suffered by the one who consumed the Child Gu would be transferred without fail to the one who had taken the Mother Gu. The time required for wounds to heal and the energy consumed for physical regeneration would likewise fall upon the latter.
Upon learning the truth, Jingliu's knees gave way. She collapsed onto the ground, weeping with her head bowed, her throat letting out only unintelligible sobs.
The time she had taken the Child Gu was long before the Shuhu Campaign.
During that period she was rarely injured, so the matter gradually faded from her mind. She had simply assumed that what her Master gave her was a pill beneficial to her health, or perhaps one capable of enhancing her strength.
Until that incident occurred…
Shortly after capturing Hoolay, the Yuque Incident forced a rapid deployment for reinforcement.
On the eve of departure, comrades gathered, and Master brought farewell wine.
He claimed that after years of retirement he was willing but unable to reinforce Yuque…
Liar!
At the time, a sense of unease had surged within her. She felt her Master was strange, yet she could not pinpoint why.
It was clearly a farewell without any intention of return.
It was clearly an eternal parting concealed from his disciple.
It was clearly… a cruel scheme designed to make his disciple kill her Master with her own hands.
That was why Master had spoken those words back then, was it not?
Before leaving, she had looked at her Master's broad back and asked the question she had longed to have answered for a millennium.
Was Master willing to admit his true feelings?
His answer had been: Never had them. No need to admit them.
Big liar… Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar!!!
Clearly, the person he cared about most in his heart was her, his disciple.
Clearly, he had fallen in love with her long ago.
Yet Master had regarded himself as a monster indistinguishable from Shuhu—one who had plundered countless blessings of the Abundance to achieve his goals.
Monsters are too hard to kill…
He had left a sharp blade for that future in which he could not die, achieving a future in which he killed himself through her hands.
Master's reluctance to follow his heart had largely been due to that blade meant to end himself.
To enable her to kill him, Master had not hesitated to speak those heartless words.
To make her leave his tutelage.
To say she was no longer his disciple.
Uttering the most cruel words possible to her, hoping to incite her hatred for him.
Hatred born from unrequited love can be terrifying at times.
But Master… did you ever consider?
Your disciple does not care. She does not care about any of this at all!!!
Whether you were a monster or an Abomination, as long as it was Master, as long as it was you… no matter what you became, your disciple would accept it…
Clearly, all that was needed was to speak the truth. There could have been no barrier between Master and disciple.
But Master chose selfishness.
Selfishly deciding everything for her. Selfishly choosing her future path. Selfishly choosing mutual destruction with Shuhu…
She could almost picture the scene after she left that night.
Master, his heart consumed by pain, would bend his desolate back, picking up the fragmented jade pendant piece by piece.
Piece by piece, carefully and with immense patience, reassembling and gluing it back together.
That was the token his disciple had given him, and the only item he had worn for a millennium without ever taking off.
She could also imagine countless days and nights away from her—Master holding that jade pendant alone, gazing at the object and thinking of the person.
All the selfish things Master did for her stemmed from deep love…!
Xueyi and Hanya only received this selfish love at the very end.
But she was different. From the moment Master began deliberately treating her differently, she had already received it—for a full millennium…
From the day she became his disciple until Master's passing, she had lived within a carefully woven lie.
Master's lie was filled with heartlessness and cruelty, devoid of tenderness and pity.
Yet this very heartlessness and cruelty was the deepest affection for his disciple.
A thousand words converged into one sentence: To protect her well-being, Master was willing to lose everything. Willing to use any means necessary.
And this was also Master's original intention for refining the Mother-Child Gu.
Because… that was the last thing Master could do for his disciple before he died…
"…Wuwu… Master, you truly are a bastard!!!"
Jingliu could no longer suppress her emotions. She burst into loud sobs, her fingernails raking several bloody marks across her cheeks.
She wailed like a child of only a few years old, yet she also let out a low, eerie chuckle—stranger than her crying.
"Hehehe… Master, you have deceived your disciple terribly…"
"It hurts so much, so much…!!"
"A future without Master is meaningless…"
"I will find you, Master. Until that day comes, your disciple will obediently heed your words and strive to live."
Master's thousand years of silent love had been only for her survival.
Yes. It must be so!
Master must have wanted to reunite with her in the next life. That was why he had eradicated her affliction of mara, freeing her from the trouble of becoming mara-struck.
Because only she, who was not a sinner, could stand proudly beside Master as he welcomed a new life.
This must be the future Master desired!
The more Jingliu thought about it, the more certain she became. A strange glimmer flashed across her pupils, and the corner of her lips curled slightly.
"Your love for your disciple is so twisted and deformed. Naturally, you must allow your disciple's love for you to be abnormal too, right?"
Under the moonlight, the woman half-covered her face, her tone full of deep affection.
"…My dearest… Master…"
If not for the terrifying red light flickering in her eyes, her flushed cheeks, and the chilling strangeness in her expression, anyone would have drowned in this seemingly affectionate ocean…
===
Several days later.
After Jingliu finished sorting through Kanzaki's belongings, Black Swan arrived.
In fact, apart from some unimportant objects, the only things truly left were the broken Zhanhui sword and the Silver Moon Jade Pendant he had given her.
But there was no way she could hand these two items over to Black Swan.
Fortunately, Black Swan only used these important items to perform memory-related techniques in an attempt at a location fix, returning them all once finished.
"Well, is there any result?" Jingliu's eyes held a glimmer of hope.
"I regret to say, we found nothing." A look of pity appeared on Black Swan's face.
"It seems collaborating with you alone isn't all that effective. You rely on the Garden of Recollection, don't you?"
"That is correct."
"What about you all?"
Jingliu turned her gaze to Ruan Mei, who was seated across the table, and then glanced at Yu Qingtu, who was sitting beside her.
"Could it be that you, like me, don't have many ways to find Master… to find him?"
Unlike Jingliu, who was still immersed in grief, Yu Qingtu knew that over a thousand years had passed since Kanzaki's departure.
She was not utterly devastated by the fact that she had missed the little guy again.
She smiled faintly and explained lightly:
"We have our own methods, but those methods are undesirable. Now that we know the little guy might have a next life, out of respect, I will follow the natural way and be patient."
Speaking of this, Yu Qingtu suddenly looked at Ruan Mei.
"Of course, Ruan might be different. Heaven knows if she will go mad with love and do something crazy that defies common sense."