THE YILING MATRIARCH

Chapter 25 : Alone at last

Her words, while heavy on his heart with affection, suddenly took on a whole new meaning when he considered her phrasing and his eyes lit with an expression of shock at her unapologetic eyes smiling at his face when he recognized what she meant. It was something that Wangji had only dreamed about before when they had begun their courting, keeping him awake at night when those scenes bled into his sleep. Wei Meifeng, the girl he had been loyal to for the past fourteen years and three months, had basically proposed to him in a manner that was completely unique to her. This caused a feeling to explode in his chest with such sheer happiness that he couldn't stop a tiny smile from forming on his lips.

They would outlast this darkness and, when Meifeng could walk away from this experience as a free woman, they would be able to finally call each other theirs.

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After consulting the arm once more for any clues they had not caught before with Inquiry and Meifeng's own Diabolism, they were led back into the direction pointing towards Qinghe; even with Soul Expeller, they could only summon an incomplete soul to show them where their new trail would lead. Qinghe, however, was a large area and would be impossible to track down where the arm was specifically pointing at. "Uhg, this is impossible! I feel like I'm gonna start pulling my hair out!" Wangji's hand warmed the small of her back in comfort towards the woman as she whimpered this out. Of course, when the couple overheard two men talking about a large number of men from the Jin and Nie clan on Traverse mountain, they both wondered if possibly the Yiling Matriarch was back, and Meifeng couldn't help but snort at their narrowed idea. "So now everything is my fault. Sometimes I wish Huaisang didn't encourage those rumors about that place. People are starting to suspect I'm behind anything that goes wrong in towns like this even when I would never do something like that. What total nonsense."

Walking away, the town folks words however struck a question out in Wangji's mind that he and many others had long since been wondering and since Meifeng was here and they had reconnected, the Lan couldn't find it within him to let this particular subject answer itself when his partner was ready to tell him. Glancing over at Meifeng, who was ogling a random shop, he spoke up. "Meifeng, there is one thing I do not understand that I wish for you to explain." This inquisition instantly gained her attention, naturally having never heard Wangji not know something and asking her for an answer and wondered what he wanted to know with a teasing smile. "After you died, everyone said that you were consumed by your ghost army, but is that true?" The reaction he received happened instantaneously; Meifeng's smile dropped into thoughtful remorse at the memory, and her eyes fell into that same expression as she lost herself to that day. "I know you would not wish to remember, but I walked across the Burial Mounds, looking for your body. No one in fourteen years ever found it, so do not lie to me that the story is true... Please."

Their long pause was gently lengthened by a wind that nipped at their robes, flapping with the gust that made the ribbon in her hair look like a live string of blood teasingly dancing behind her, like the echoes of bloody footprints that stained Meifeng's past. "The day I died doesn't matter. Nor how my life was taken from me." The melancholy smile that ghosted her lips made Meifeng appear indifferent, like it was not her death that she was blatantly disregarding despite their recent conversation. Even though they had promised their lives to one another in the most sacred way, there were still some things that Wangji did want to know, even when the knowledge of how Meifeng had died would hurt him terribly. While he suspected she didn't tell him out of the fact she hardly remembered it as well, he knew she remembered more than what she let others believe, so he allowed the conversation to drop for now as she ran to a cart selling rattle-drums with a child-like grace endearing her to him even more.

At least, for now.

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In another life, one they had previously known together many years ago, the sky had been filled with dancing bodies of white as they decorated the ground below with a cold blanket of snow. A young girl, barely clothed in dirty rags too big for her malnourished body, sat in place on the frozen spot with three straw figures laying in front of her exposed feet. Despite her poor state, a song was sung in a hushed voice that didn't rise above a whisper from the air that invaded her weak lungs. "Leaving mountains behind, crossing countless rivers~. Bathed in moonlight, the melody is frozen....."

The lyrics were something the little child barely recalled of her mother's sweet voice that would sing to her often on cold nights. She unfortunately couldn't remember the whole song, knowing only the tune that had lulled her young mind, and even that was slowly ebbing away as time slowly passed.

Suddenly, a boy not much older than her and dressed in fine pale clothing crossed the path she lived on, and saw her with wide eyes of golden light. In his hands was a rattle-drum, something she had seen other kids play with yet could never have due to being so poor, and he gave it to her when he saw the little family of straw-people at her feet. The boy doesn't really know why he would give such a toy to a person he had never met, but.... Perhaps it was her smile, which pulled from him something he recalled his uncle telling him of his mother as he could not remember her well. His family would always say that, above all other traits the deceased woman possessed, that her smile could stop their father in his tracks even before they had married.

This girl, this stranger had stopped him in his tracks with that innocent smile that, for this reason alone, allowed him to part with the object to see if she would smile for him again. And smile she did, this time sweeter as their small hands touched. From this moment, an invisible red string was created that tied them together, and would bring them together again roughly eleven years later even when the two children would have forgotten the other completely.

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Kinda anti-climatic, but I promise things will pick up speed by the next chapter! What did you all think about the flashback? Cute huh? Anyway, here's a small look at Chapter 26!

Suddenly aware of their surroundings, they had come to a large estate with a faded sign that read, 'Cheng residence' is black ink; the place definitely looked like no one had lived here for a whole decade, with paint chipping slowly off the large columns and nature reclaiming parts of the walls. An incessant banging could be heard beyond the structure, sounding just like it had been described to them of the previous residence's pounding away at the solid door like they were still alive and trapped within their own home as something killed them one by one even though nothing had since been heard from the locals.

Why had the noise been triggered seemingly by their very presence?