Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Sorry

Moonlight lay over the world like frost.

The Lone City was hollow and still. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Gu Chang An turned a Buddha shrine in his hands. Auspicious colors drifted across its outer walls; inside, intricate patterns coiled and tangled. A lotus pedestal was carved beneath, and a gold-lacquered Buddha sat within.

Ordinary. Unremarkable.

In a city that bloomed amid slaughter, could a Buddha shrine really drive away the stench of blood?

He gave a soft laugh, set it in a corner of the watchtower, and let the smile drain away as he stared into the distance.

Under the moon, a man and two women approached the Lone City.

The one in front wore a striking purple robe. His cloud-soled shoes were spotless, not a grain of sand clinging to them. He led a horse as white as fresh snow with one hand.

A peach blossom branch lay across the saddle.

“Eldest Senior Brother… do we really have to kill him?” The woman in martial garb looked toward the Lone City, pity flickering in her eyes.

“Mm.” Fu Shang nodded. His voice was flat, almost gentle. “For the public, he has offended the Empire’s dignity. For the private… we owe Adjudicator Zhe Lan Su.” He paused, gaze calm. “We repay a favor.”

“What a waste.” The other woman—cold-eyed and sharp—shook her head, as if the matter were already done.

Thirty zhang from the Lone City, they stopped and watched the blood-red Abyss beyond the walls. A weapon that could split stone and flesh alike was nothing rare in the world. But the murderous aura rolling up from that place was… horrifying.

They could not sense even a ripple of inner power from Gu Chang An.

So how had he produced such terrifying force?

“The peach blossoms are beautiful.” A warm, steady voice drifted down from the city wall.

Gu Chang An stood above them, studying the branch. In this life, he had never seen peach blossoms.

Things that had once been common now felt like treasures from a faraway world.

“Yes.” Fu Shang lifted the branch slightly and smiled. “Picked in the Central Plains, then raised in the Holy City. The Holy City’s soil suits it better.”

Gu Chang An leaned against the railing. “So it was taken by force.”

Fu Shang neither agreed nor denied. He stared at the decayed city wall for a long moment, then said in a low voice, “The gifts of heaven were wasted by the Central Plains. If they don’t know how to cherish them… we can’t let them wither away.”

“Gu!” The martial-garbed girl snapped her chin up, her delicate face twisting with anger. “Surrender now! If Senior Brother draws his sword, you won’t even get the chance to leave a whole corpse!”

She pointed toward the walls as if the city itself were an insult. “Shen Zhou and the eastern lands abandoned you long ago. In the Central Plains and the Seven Kingdoms, who even knows your name? Keep resisting and you’re nothing but a fool—loyal to a dead throne!”

Gu Chang An’s face stayed calm, still as deep water.

The pressure bearing down on him was heavier than anything he had ever felt.

And yet… how could he retreat even half a step?

“Begin.” Fu Shang’s three words were quiet and final.

He walked toward the city gate one step at a time. In his hand, the peach blossoms unfurled as if time itself were being coaxed forward—one petal, then another. Dew gathered on the twigs, bright under the moon.

A sharp ring cut the air.

Murderous aura surged without warning. A wooden sword, crimson as blood set aflame, shot out like a bolt—fast, vicious, aimed straight for Fu Shang’s skull.

“Go back.”

Fu Shang strolled forward as if he were walking a garden path. He extended one finger. Before the blood sword could close within a single zhang, he flicked it aside.

Clang!

A clear, violent note of impact rang out. The blade sank into the watchtower wall, and blood seeped from the wound in the stone, running down the bricks.

Gu Chang An narrowed his eyes. His black hair whipped in the wind.

He slammed his left palm into the wall.

The blood sword shuddered—then began to bleed in a steady stream. That blood condensed into a web of sword qi and fell over the outside of the city like rain.

The world turned red. Droplets fell as densely as spider silk, and each one could scorch on contact.

Fu Shang smiled.

He admired Gu Chang An’s will. But admiration was not permission.

A sword was not meant to be used like this.

One hand behind his back, he moved with effortless grace. His wide sleeves fluttered like an opera performer’s, every step flowing into the next. The peach branch stayed exactly three chi from the blood-web sword qi—never an inch farther, never a hair closer.

Then—suddenly.

A single peach petal withered in an instant.

At the same time, the thick murderous aura blooming from the blood sword shattered as if struck by an unseen palm. The force burst outward, whipping Fu Shang’s hair and sleeves.

Fu Shang simply raised his hand.

His palm pressed against the sword’s tip.

His fingers curled like hooks, and he seized the blood sword by sheer control, his voice turning cold. “I stand in the New World. You’re still trapped in the Old World—lost, and ignorant.”

He tossed the blood sword back toward the wall.

It landed neatly at Gu Chang An’s feet.

The gap between them was humiliating.

Gu Chang An stared down at the weapon for a long moment. The fireseed in his shoulder bone hummed, angry and restless.

Would his trump card win?

He didn’t know.

Tonight—this night of chaos and darkness—the faint haze of dawn might be snuffed out for good.

The two women watched with indifferent eyes. A one-sided fight was what they had expected.

Could Senior Brother face three thousand elite soldiers alone?

No.

That had never been Fu Shang’s strength.

Perhaps Gu Chang An’s monstrous gift was precisely that—born to endure a battlefield alone. But here, in single combat, he looked like a trapped beast, fighting with teeth and claws.

Just as Fu Shang had said… this was the New World.

The Holy City Abyss was the center of the world favored by the Heavenly Dao. Everything had been overturned. Borrowing the strength of heaven and earth was the foundation of martial arts now.

And Gu Chang An… Gu Chang An was still struggling in the Old World, refusing to let go.

The Empire had offered him a door. He could have stepped through.

Instead, he chose to die with an old dynasty already doomed.

A tragic hero at the end of the road.

“Bring the wine.” Fu Shang kept his eyes on the watchtower, but the order was for his Junior Sister. His face was calm. “I came to kill you with no personal grudge. We simply serve different masters.” His gaze sharpened. “Adjudicator Zhe Lan Su calls you a burial offering for a dead throne. I disagree. You’re a martyr to your own faith.”

Two wine jars flew toward the wall. One was tossed into the watchtower.

Gu Chang An steadied the blood sword and caught the other jar cleanly. His eyes were cool and distant as he looked across the silent streets of Kucha City, as if he wanted to remember them—one last time, just in case.

“To you.” Fu Shang’s voice carried that old, strange romance the Martial World never quite abandoned.

He pushed off the ground and rose, hovering in midair as if the wind itself held him up. It was the limit of his skill—but from there, the battle standard atop the wall was close enough to touch.

Gu Chang An’s gaze froze.

Thunder cracked through his mind.

He caught the instant Fu Shang’s qi moved—the subtle coil of invisible force, the way heaven and earth answered it. He had killed countless enemy invaders, but he had never faced anything like this.

Ignorance made him blunt. No teacher had ever shown him the path.

And yet in that moment, he saw it.

He had relied on the fireseed for too long, clinging to it as if it were the only strength he had.

But his body—his will—had always been part of the answer.

[So I can do it too.]

Fu Shang watched him, expression mild. “What are you waiting for?”

Gu Chang An answered evenly, “The wind.”

The night exploded.

A gale roared up and swallowed the Lone City, as if storms from ten thousand li of desert had gathered in a single breath. Yellow sand blotted out heaven and earth.

Gu Chang An stood unmoving amid the howl. He imitated the flow he had just seen. In his vision, a shimmering gate appeared—colors layered like stained glass, vast and indistinct. It vanished in the blink of an eye, and in its place the image of the Abyss flashed through his mind, dark as hell.

The last ten years of belief. Courage hammered out by despair. The loneliness of standing watch in endless night. The murderous aura sharpened by cutting down enemy invaders again and again.

All of it surged together.

All of it became inner power.

The two women exchanged a startled look. Fu Shang remained unruffled, his wine jar steady in his hand.

“The annals of history will forget you.” Fu Shang took a small sip, then spoke with quiet certainty. “But every year, when the peach blossoms bloom, I will remember you, Gu Chang An.”

The peach branch trembled in his fingers.

Blossoms opened one after another—like sword rain, beautiful and lethal.

Facing the destruction about to fall, Gu Chang An stood as still as a carved statue. He drove the blood sword through his shoulder bone.

Pain spread through every inch of him.

And with it came a fierce, almost ecstatic thrill.

That thrill proved something—proved the Lone City could hold.

Proved Death God’s scythe would not reach his neck tonight.

He ripped the blood sword free.

The world roared.

Within a few zhang of Gu Chang An, the air became a human purgatory. Blood mist rolled in thick waves. With the battle standard in hand, he looked as if he could cut down King Yama himself.

Last time, when he had destroyed his fireseed, the blood had been chaos.

This time, with inner power behind it, the blood mist formed streams—rivers in the air.

The martial-garbed girl’s eyes went wide. She stared at the Abyss beside the city as the earth split and the chasm widened.

“Cut!” Fu Shang’s expression hardened.

He flicked the peach branch into the blood mist—

—and then, to his own shock, his hands began to tremble.

Fear.

A thin, shameful edge of it.

Gu Chang An forced himself upright, refusing to sway. His voice was rough, but steady. “I would rather sink in the Old World.”

The blood mist swallowed the peach branch.

The blood sword brightened, its crimson deepening as if newly fed. It surged forward like a living thing, tore past the peach blossoms, and slammed through the purple-robed swordsman.

Fu Shang twisted violently in midair, trying to evade—

—but his body still fell, straight down into the yellow sand.

He stared at the hole in his chest. It looked like a red peony blooming—bright, cruel, impossible.

“Eldest Senior Brother!” The two women went white. Their screams tore the air. The cold Junior Sister sprinted forward, sword in hand.

Fu Shang lay in the sand and stared at the sky. With effort, he pulled his mouth into a faint smile.

Why had everything happened so abruptly?

Why had it ended just as abruptly?

In this dead, scorching night, in this desert of endless sand… he had stepped onto the last point of his life.

One sword stroke had ended everything.

It hurt.

Gu Chang An sat down heavily. With his free hand, he opened the wine jar and took a sip. The scent was rich, warm, almost unbearably human.

“The Lone City is my life,” he said quietly. “Sorry.”

The cold Junior Sister supported Fu Shang, her eyes red with killing intent.

Fu Shang lifted a hand and stopped her. His smile turned bitter. “Don’t let me die on enemy soil. Take me with you.”

He exhaled, his voice thinning. “A bet is a bet. The Martial World is fair.”

His flesh was charred black. Sword qi had shredded his organs. His life force was dim—flickering, almost gone.

The two women wept as they helped Senior Brother onto the white horse. Hooves thundered across the desert as they fled. The cold Junior Sister looked back again and again, grief and hatred burning in her eyes as she stared at Kucha City.

…

The Lone City sank back into silence.

Only the Abyss outside the walls was wider now. A peach blossom branch lay on the ground, as if nothing had happened at all.

Gu Chang An coughed until it felt like his lungs might tear loose. Black blood stained the front of his white robe. The broken fireseed appeared again in his shoulder bone—smaller, and set a little lower than before.

He still couldn’t hover.

He stumbled down from the wall, one hand braced against stone, and carried the peach branch outside the city. With careful fingers, he planted it in the sand.

Maybe next year, it would bloom.

“I envy those who wander the Martial World in white, sword in hand,” he murmured. “But I like this city more.”

He swallowed, voice roughening. “I’m not dead yet.”

Then he raised his head and shouted into the dark, toward whatever might still be listening. “I, Gu Chang An, am not dead!”

Afterward, he lay down alone beside the Abyss, letting the wind carry his words away.