One Night of Cold Rain Buries the Famous Flower, Part 4

“Why…”

A voice came from an endless distance.

The chilling sensation of blood loss, like heavy, dark water, surged over his body.
He sank into a bottomless, pitch-black abyss sea.
Seawater flooded his form, piercing cold pouring through the cavity in his chest.
Mu Hanyuan, eyes closed, felt that long-forgotten, familiar state of near-death—brushing past countless times—engulf him once more.
It had been many years since he felt this.
Since the Heaven’s Break Abyss three hundred years ago, since that April snow, since meeting her.

“Why—”

The resentful, venomous voice echoed more clearly in his ears.

Mu Hanyuan recognized it as the voice from the dragon palace that sent both him and his Master into the illusion.
This time, it had sealed his soul’s memories upon entering, making him believe he was truly “Dragon Lord Yuyan.”
Only when his Master called “Hanyuan” in the stone garden did his soul’s memories slowly return.

The dragon statue seemed to want them to reenact a tragedy, perishing together.
That way, they would die within the illusion.

“You knew—I told you—the wounds to soul projections in the illusion transfer fully to your true body!
Why! Why didn’t you kill that woman!? She tried to kill you first!”

The unwilling roar shook his consciousness, accompanied by dragon cries, as if to tear his soul apart.

Though what remained in this secret realm wasn’t the true dragon’s soul but a wisp of resentment condensed over millennia, it still held unfathomable power.
Moreover, Mu Hanyuan’s chest bore a bleeding wound, his aura weakening.
His soul was like thin paper, easily torn by the dragon phantom.

Yet Mu Hanyuan seemed unperturbed.

In this endless dark abyss, he calmly kept his eyes closed, his voice serene.
“I am not you. Your vengeance is not mine.”

“But she tried to kill you! Aren’t you afraid of being trapped here forever?”

Mu Hanyuan, eyes closed, gave a faint chuckle.
“I was born for her—why fear dying for her?”

“You—!!”

The dragon phantom trembled with rage.

Its illusory scales lost, its resentment rootless, it wouldn’t last long before dissipating with the illusion.
For this youth who let the woman kill him and take the illusory scale, it wished to drag him to mutual destruction.
But it couldn’t.

Recalling the terrifying youth who expelled it from its own illusion, fear flashed in the dragon phantom’s eyes, human-like.

But soon, sensing the fading aura, its fear turned to venom.
“I won’t kill you. I’ll watch you until the day you regret it forever—
You think hiding your true self, slaying demons, and upholding righteousness will make them accept you?
You’re dreaming! Humans and demons are apart, immortals and demons opposed!
A demon is a demon. When your identity is revealed to the world, the immortal sects you protect will all seek to destroy you!!”

“…”

Mu Hanyuan gazed at the dragon phantom, unmoved.

His life, fraught with hardship and wandering, never sought worldly acceptance.
Pity the dragon’s resentment didn’t understand.

Calming from its frenzied malice, its voice dripped with unsettling, defiant laughter.
“No need to guard against me. Your enemy is far stronger than I—
He can even see through my true body. As a condition for not harming it, I won’t harm you.”

A ripple stirred in Mu Hanyuan’s icy, snow-like eyes.
“My enemy?”

“Haven’t you met him? Oh, he asked me to pass a message to you…”

The dragon phantom faded, its laughter echoing in the bottomless abyss sea—

“Don’t dream of escaping your fate. One day, it will catch up.
And when it does, he will personally take back what matters most to you both.”

“—”

For the first time, cold malice surfaced in Mu Hanyuan’s expression, chilling his divine, compassionate visage for a moment.
Staring into the now-empty darkness, he gazed coldly for a long while before slowly closing his eyes.

In endless darkness.
A scale phantom, glowing gold-red, fell into Yun Yao’s palm, then vanished.

A tremendous pull erupted from her hand—
Yun Yao felt her soul lighten, her vision plunging into oblivion, senses fading, consciousness swept from this world by an endless torrent.

Yet her heart and soul trembled uncontrollably.

No… why was it Mu Hanyuan?
The dragon scale dagger was given by him—how could he become the utterly unfamiliar Dragon Lord Yuyan?

Suddenly, she recalled two eerie sentences “Mu Hanyuan” had said earlier.

[Events from millennia ago, and the dragon statue that casts souls into the illusion is its master. If it wills, mere influence is the least…]
[It could even seal memories, letting the soul follow the body’s instincts, believing itself the body’s true owner.]

Like clouds parting to reveal clarity.

She was deceived.

From entering the illusion, the true Dragon Lord Yuyan’s body wasn’t him, and the demon youth by her side—perhaps he was the illusion’s master, deceiving her with Mu Hanyuan’s form?

But she and Mu Hanyuan shared a master-disciple bond; deception shouldn’t be possible.
How could someone mimic his soul aura so flawlessly?

Before Yun Yao could unravel this, light flooded her vision—

She stood in a dark cave.
The only light source was a smooth stone wall several paces away, displaying the Dragon Emperor Hall and Dragon-Serving City’s phantom.

The projection showed the Dragon Lord’s bedchamber, but unlike when she left, it was adorned in vibrant red, candles casting a rosy glow.
Yet more striking than the red silk was the surging blood overflowing from Dragon Lord Yuyan’s chest on the couch.

Facing the stone wall’s projection, a woman in a bridal gown gripped a delicate dagger tightly.

—The dragon scale dagger.

Yun Yao held her breath in the darkness.
Faint voices, as if crossing endless time, echoed through the surrounding dark.

“Why?”
Yuyan clutched the dagger in his chest, staring in disbelief at the woman who drove it into him.

“Blame yourself for being the demon clan’s leader, the world’s ruler,” the blood-red-clad woman said lazily, her dagger sinking deeper, more ruthlessly into his heart.
“The Sky and Earth Demon Clans are irreconcilable, yet you force peace between them.
If you don’t die, they won’t fight, and the demon clans’ stability leaves no room for humanity’s rise.”

“For—just—that?”
Yuyan’s words bled, deep hatred and resentment pooling in his eyes, mixed with blood tears, twisting his face like his torn heart.

“Yes, I’ve always said I came for humanity’s greater good.
But your arrogant demon clans never saw humans as more than ants.”
Changyong spoke, twisting the dagger in her palm.
In his anguished lake-blue eyes, she used the dragon scale dagger he once gave her to carve open his heart.

The projection shifted, pulling to the endless sky.

Yun Yao stood before it, as if above the Dragon Emperor Hall, witnessing the tragedy of millennia ago as it sped forward—

At Yuyan’s death, Dragon City collapsed, dust rising.
In his closing eyes, the last image was the human woman’s back, never turning once.

As the true dragon’s soul began to scatter, countless citizens he sheltered sacrificed themselves, their collective faith forcibly凝聚 his soul.
Three days later, a blood sacrifice in Dragon City birthed a dragon soul cocoon.

The Dragon-Serving Guards perished first, including the two sea dragon cubs who loved clinging to Yuyan’s legs for hide-and-seek.

[We’re Dragon-Serving Guards! We’ll protect His Majesty for generations!]
[Brother’s right!]
[If anything happens to His Majesty, we’ll stand before him!]

Their voices lingered, and on the blood sacrifice day, they fulfilled their vow, becoming the smallest skeletal remains beside the dragon palace.
For millennia, like the city’s white bones behind them.

The city crumbled, wild grasses grew, later forgotten by the world.
Through eons of shifting landscapes, Dragon-Serving City became a valley, dense with jungles and teeming with beasts.

Yun Yao recognized it.
Hidden Dragon Mountain, Buried Dragon Valley.

Now, she understood the secret realm and illusion’s truth.

The last ancient true dragon clan leader, Dragon Lord Yuyan, loved his people and sheltered all beings.
He made one mistake, costing his entire clan.
Buried Dragon Valley was a lie; all its people died millennia ago, except the dragon they claimed dead, who survived.
Beneath his dragon throne lay countless white bones, his people sacrificing themselves to reform his soul cocoon.
All for their sole Dragon Lord’s return.

When the dragon soul awoke in Buried Dragon Valley, facing his clan’s loss, his towering resentment formed a city, creating that eerie bone city.

Yun Yao didn’t know what became of Yuyan and the human princess.

But the dragon soul cocoon had shattered.
The Dragon Lord, who lost all kin and was pushed into the abyss by his beloved, harbored endless resentment and malice toward humanity and Qianyuan, likely returning from true hell.

In Hidden Dragon Mountain, gathering cultivators for a living sacrifice to fuel the bone city’s resentment was but a stroke of his hand, the first chime of his vengeance.
Now, with the Dragon Heart Scale removed, the resentment-forged bone city would collapse, erasing his clan’s last trace.

Yet none knew this Dragon Lord’s current existence or identity.

The future held endless peril.

“…”

Oblivion faded, senses returned.

The darkness before Yun Yao’s eyes was pierced by jungle branches and scattered stars, chaotic, unfamiliar voices weaving around her.
Many seemed to shout urgently.

Yun Yao focused, seeing the stone wall before her—

“Buried Dragon Valley,” three blood-red characters wept.

The next moment, wind filled her ears.
She finally heard the chaotic, desperate cries:

“Lord Hanyuan!!”

“!”

Yun Yao turned in shock, her blood-red robes fluttering.
Amid shadowy figures, she saw Mu Hanyuan in white robes, lying in a pool of blood, a crimson bloom at his chest.
A silver dagger phantom pierced his heart.