The Memorial

Li Huowang watched the light fade from Zhuge Yuan’s eyes, and his heart ached like it was being carved with a knife.

His mind was chaos—a tangle of noise and static. He felt like he should say something, but facing his dying friend, he couldn’t force the words out.

“Brother Li… the bugs in your belly are almost gone. Are you truly all right?” Zhuge Yuan used his last breath to ask, looking at Li Huowang’s increasingly hollow chest.

Li Huowang forced a smile uglier than tears and shook his head hard. “Brother Zhuge… do you… do you have any last words you want to leave? Just tell me—I’ll do it, no matter what!”

Zhuge Yuan exhaled slowly, his voice breaking into fragments. “No. I… I have lived this life… openly. There is nothing… nothing I regret.”

The snow that had stopped earlier began to fall again, landing softly on Zhuge Yuan’s dilating pupils.

As Li Huowang watched Zhuge Yuan slip away, a sudden thought struck him. He lunged forward, frantic. “Brother Zhuge! I just thought of something! You can still be saved! You can still be saved!”

He raised his hands—veins bulging—and clamped them around Zhuge Yuan’s neck, squeezing with all his strength.

Staring into Zhuge Yuan’s blank, unseeing eyes, Li Huowang pressed his lips to the man’s ear and whispered, trembling, “Brother Zhuge… I’ve killed some people before! And some people who died around me… For some reason, they turned into hallucinations that stay by my side! You might be able to do the same!”

“If you can become a hallucination, then when I complete my cultivation of the true into reality… I can make you real again!”

As he spoke, Li Huowang’s hands tightened wildly. He squeezed so hard that, with a final, brutal twist, he wrenched Zhuge Yuan’s head clean off.

Kneeling on the ground, he cradled Zhuge Yuan’s head in his arms and looked around frantically. Jin Shan Zhao. The monk. Hong Zhong. Peng Longteng. Four hallucinations—no more, no less. Zhuge Yuan was not among them.

Zhuge Yuan hadn’t become a hallucination. That meant Zhuge Yuan was truly dead.

His pale lips quivering, Li Huowang hugged the severed head close. His upper body slowly curled forward. His left hand—missing two fingers—clenched into a fist and slammed into the ground.

The hard-packed earth cracked under the blows, mingling with the blood seeping from his wounds, splattering in every direction.

But no matter how much he vented, it changed nothing. Zhuge Yuan was dead. Dead people didn’t come back. Tears dripped steadily onto the hair of the head in his arms.

Why? Why did every person in this world who was good to him end up like this?

Or was it the world itself that was the problem? Was it true, what they said—that good people died young, and the wicked lived a thousand years?

A surge of indignation rose in Li Huowang’s chest—a profound rage against this chaotic, broken world. This wasn’t right! The world was wrong! The way of human life shouldn’t be like this!

He kept pounding the ground for the space of half a joss stick’s burn. Finally, he stopped, his hands a mess of blood and torn flesh. Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t lift them anymore.

The Intercalating the Five Phases ritual was almost out of time. If he didn’t fix his body soon, he would follow Zhuge Yuan into death.

A flicker of hesitation crossed Li Huowang’s eyes. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. He didn’t care anymore anyway.

But then he slammed his forehead hard against the ground. The sharp pain of the impact—blood streaming, skull cracking—drove the suicidal thoughts from his mind.

“Zhuge Yuan gave everything to save your life! What right do you have to die?! Do you have any idea what that would do to him?!”

“If you kill yourself now, Zhuge Yuan’s sacrifice becomes a joke! No dying! You’re going to live, and you’re going to live like a real man!”

Li Huowang bashed his head against the ground several more times, until the white bone of his skull was visible through the torn flesh. Only then did he stop.

Gritting his teeth, he staggered to his feet just as Li Sui, controlling his original body, walked toward him.

Li Huowang’s vision was starting to dim. He shook his head hard, raised the sword in his hand, and slashed it across the forearm of his own body. “Stop pretending. Even now, you’re trying to set a trap? Li Sui, withdraw all your tentacles!”

At those words, Li Huowang saw Bei Feng—who had seemed thoroughly drunk—open his eyes with perfect calm.

“Your body is almost broken. Swap us back. Now. I can’t die yet. I have to live.”

Regaining his sight, Bei Feng winced at the pain and studied Li Huowang from head to toe. A sneer curled the corner of his mouth. “And why would I do that?”

“Because you owe me a favor from five years ago at Woman Mountain! What, you’re going to pretend that never happened?”

Hearing this, Bei Feng looked Li Huowang over again, slowly, deliberately. Then he clasped his hands in a respectful salute. “Hong Zhong, congratulations on finding your way back. You sure played this one big. I almost thought you weren’t coming back.”

With that, he blinked, and their bodies swapped.

Back in his own body, Bei Feng felt its near-empty shell and immediately started complaining. “Oh, oh—you’ve wrecked my body. It’s completely useless now.”

His eyes landed on a member of the Daliang Secret Guard lying on the ground nearby, missing a leg. Another blink, and their bodies swapped. Before the guard could even register the broken body he now inhabited, his expression froze, and he collapsed—dead.

Now in the guard’s body, Bei Feng hopped toward Li Huowang on one leg. “Hong Zhong, why are you just standing there? Let’s go help Dice and the others. Sheesh, look over there—they’re beating the brains out of each other.”

But he got no response. He saw Li Huowang staring, tears streaming, at an empty space to his left.

Bei Feng frowned and reached out to touch the air. He felt nothing.

Then he heard Hong Zhong’s voice, trembling. “Brother Zhuge… it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Li Huowang’s heart pounded wildly as he stared—shaking, overwhelmed—at the figure before him.

Zhuge Yuan stood there, calm, still dressed in white, holding the folding fan inscribed with “Heaven-Born Talent,” fanning himself lightly.

The other hallucinations nearby looked at the newcomer with a mix of curiosity.

Zhuge Yuan closed his fan and gestured toward the others. “Brother Li, won’t you introduce your friends?”

Li Huowang stammered, his whole body trembling. It took him a long moment to finally force the words out. “My god… I did it! You really did become a hallucination!”

It seemed Zhuge Yuan hadn’t appeared earlier simply because he hadn’t been inside Li Huowang’s Heart-Element body at the time.