The sound of metal dragging reached my ears.
By the time he came to his senses, the woman had fallen.
There was blood all over the floor, and he knelt down in a pool of blood, holding a slightly rusty knife in his hand. The blood penetrated the thin fabric and was still warm when it came into contact with the skin. This was not his blood, it was that of the woman, the woman lying on the ground.
The evidence that she was a woman was that the face lying on the ground was soaked in blood. The place where it should have been was a blur of flesh and blood, and the meridians were cut in a mess. The thickness of the skin is uneven, but it is still complete.
At least for someone doing this for the first time, it's pretty good.
He didn't know why this happened. He had almost no thoughts of his own when he did this cruel thing, as if he had just been controlled by another person. After waking up, there is no fear. He just couldn't stop shuddering - shuddering with excitement. He was trembling all over, with a hint of worry... At least being caught by the government was indeed something worth worrying about.
His heart was beating wildly and his chest was heaving violently. He felt thirsty and suffocated, so he kept opening his mouth wide to swallow the bloody air. The breath of blood filled the alveoli, pushing the excitement higher.
"With that kind of knife...well, for a beginner, it's pretty good."
Another man in red appeared here at some point - in this dilapidated house. He raised a white and slender cigarette rod, and smoke curled up from his lips. He knew that the inexplicable metallic sound did not belong to him.
"She kept moving...I had to ask her to stop first."
Somehow, he answered the conversation naturally, neither surprised by the person's appearance nor wary of his identity. The man with black hair and red clothes raised the corner of his mouth and looked at the deep crack in the neck of the female corpse with some appreciation. That's where the blood is flowing.
"You are very qualified." He said slowly, "Change to a better knife, or order a special one. The more you practice, the better you can do."
He raised his eyes and looked at him, at that neutral and coquettish face.
"If you were a woman, I wouldn't mind if you were the second one...but you're not even a human being."
"Huh? What prejudice do you have against men? Can't men be beautiful?"
"It's possible... but it's not enough. You have to be a woman fundamentally, from the beginning, to have that kind of femininity, that kind of beauty that cannot be expressed in words. You don't understand, you all don't understand, even monsters... only I can understand, and only I, who understand this kind of beauty, can appreciate and possess it..."
"What an arrogant guy." The man waved his cigarette rod, "But I don't hate it. But... what if it's this face? Do you have the urge to try it?"
The cigarette rod was raised and lowered.
His pupils dilated a little in surprise.
The sound of metal came closer.
The barefoot boy stepped forward, but his feet were spotless. But there was always the sound of metal dragging around him.
Blah blah blah, blah blah.
In the dark temple, the hard floor glowed with golden light, wisps and dots, which were sparks from the friction between chains and stone slabs.
He wakes up.
In front of the Buddha statue, I clasped my hands together and knelt down devoutly. The sound behind him didn't attract his attention. And there was still a weak girl lying beside him - another girl. She was shaking slightly and couldn't move because of the pain. This scene is like a poor man praying in the temple late at night with his terminally ill lover.
If you ignore the man's expensive clothes.
If you ignore the blood on the man's palm.
If you ignore the woman's broken face.
The man wears a white mask with red patterns, like a wolf with the corners of his mouth permanently raised.
The entire ground was covered in deep red blood, and the woman's upper body and the man's clothing were soaked in blood. Everything feels familiar. The barefoot boy stepped on the edge of the blood, raised his toes slightly, and pulled up a sticky red thread.
"Hi..." The boy shook his head.
"It's not you who is chasing me." The young man's voice came from under the mask. Although he could be identified as a man in his thirties, his voice had an unnatural hoarseness, as if his throat had been injured.
"That's right! I have nothing to do with you originally, but Brother Chang Ye likes to play hard to get, or rather... he is looking forward to you doing mischief in the world! Oh, or is it just for fun? Maybe you two can get along well with each other."
"Where is Lord Xueyue?" The Laughing Wolf stood up, but did not look back, "Who are you?"
"Wow...I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself." The young man clasped his hands together and put them in front of his face, as if he was really sorry as he said, "I am Yayoi Yoshitatsu and Yingzuki-kun, here to replace Hong Xuan Nagaya. The Six Paths of Impermanence—are here to catch you.”
The Laughing Wolf turned around. Through the light mask, the hidden expression underneath cannot be seen.
"You are no less talkative than him."
"Eh, is that so? Well... maybe he has nothing to say to people he doesn't like. By the way, which girl is this? Men's jealousy is just as scary."
"Nine hundred and seventy-four."
"It's amazing, I can remember it like this!" Yingyue Jun was quite surprised, "No wonder that adult cares about you so much. Ah, Brother Changye has been assigned to do other things. After all, that adult knows that he can't Deal with you well... I could have indulged you all the time, but I'm sorry, we can't let you kill the thousandth girl, that would be very troublesome... But are you really sure you didn't make a mistake in counting?"
"I remember every face of every person I killed."
"That's it. That's good. I can't count it over again. Only he knows." Yingyue Jun spread his hands helplessly, "You also know it, right? You are able to live vigorously until now, and you are the last one. Impermanence is releasing water."
"You don't need to tell me."
"You are really proud of your mistakes!"
"That's really not nice to say."
"Hahahaha, just kidding. Can you please stop? That way my job will be much easier."
The Laughing Wolf said nothing. He leaned down again and pulled out a sharp dagger from the woman's face. The blood was almost gone, and this action was useless and caused even more ugly consequences.
"Oh, do you still want to fight me? It's not like I can't do it. Although I'm not as strong as Brother Changye, it doesn't look like it's going to be very difficult to deal with you."
When he said this, Yingyue Jun's expression was always as relaxed as his mood. Indeed, his outstanding onmyoji and unparalleled talent during his lifetime gave him extraordinary spiritual power, or...demon power. What's more, with the demon-binding rope on his body, the advantage of using this immortal body against a mortal body is obvious.
"Hmph..." The Laughing Wolf sneered. "I owe my injury to your senior. So what if he lets me go a hundred times, a thousand times?"
"But isn't there a saying that says, 'It's important for people to know themselves'? You can clearly realize that you are not strong enough, at least not enough to be an enemy of the Six Paths. I don't think you are cowardly."
"You too. It's just such a pity that he died at such a young age."
"Wow, thank you for speaking for me. I'm a little happy. You didn't look down on me just like everyone else just because I was a child - this kind of caution is good, please continue to maintain it." Yingyue Jun looked even happier. "I don't want to die so early. But there is no way, now that it's like this... at least I have to help Brother Changye fulfill his little wish. Do you want to listen to it?"
"I'm not interested. But what a surprise. As the dead, do you still have any pursuits?"
"Of course!" Mr. Yingyue's eyes widened, and the two crescent moons stood out in the darkness. "Some people want to get rid of endless work, some want to realize their lifetime wishes, and some just want to die... People in this world are just each other. They are envious and disgusted with each other."
"That's the thing. You look very small, but you are quite alive."
"I'll be embarrassed if you praise me like that - but even if you say so, I can't let you go. An order is an order, and I don't want to. Although that adult knows that Lord Kuchuki will not do things well... Don’t you see that I don’t want to either? I don’t want to do…anything.”
After all, he is a child, and it is easy for his emotions to be written on his face and his thoughts to be expressed in his actions. Yingyue Jun clenched her small fists, her eyes filled with undisguised hatred.
Hatred of everything in the world.
"I know you won't let me go. However, the number of people who can attract the attention of Yama Demon is actually a thousand."
"No, no, no, you're wrong. In fact, it varies from person to person. But I don't know the specifics. It's whatever the adults say...but in fact, the fewer people you kill, the more people notice it. That’s the most dangerous thing.”
"I should thank you for your noble hand."
The woman's body gradually stiffened. The Laughing Wolf wiped the knife on her clothes and put it away. It's a little curved, it's slightly zigzag itself, it's been cared for like new.
He passed by Mr. Yingyue.
"You're welcome! I'm very happy today so I'll let you go."
"I also thank you for being willing to talk to me so much. It's been a long time since anyone has had a good chat with me."
"Because dead people can't talk!"
The Laughing Wolf did not look back, his figure dissolved into the wider darkness on the other side.
He put his hand on his mask, as if he wanted to take it off - but he only moved his fingers slightly. The blood on his fingertips had already solidified, leaving a few faint red powders on the white part of the mask.
Under the mask is the "price" given by someone, and it is also the price of "exchange".
——This is the second "practice".
All the beauty in the world is something worth taking away.
If we don’t do this, beauty will lose its value of existence.
Beauty needs ugliness to set off.
Ugliness is bound to exist.
It must also exist.
The rewards of good and evil follow each other like a shadow, and the cycle of cause and effect in the three lives is not lost.
But he is not afraid of retribution.
But to this day, he still doesn't know, when Lord Xueyue came to the door, whether he... had received the order to capture him? Yama Demon has insight into the past and present, and he doesn’t know when he really noticed himself.
For that impermanence, although he was also the object of pleasure, he dared to make him peel off a layer of skin without changing his expression.
Even though it was long after that, on the day when Hongxuan Changye turned his back and refused to recognize anyone else, he had used the karmic fire of punishment to take back the price from himself. "The Burning Sin of the Sea of Karma" caused his handsome face to become chapped and broken into the ravines and holes it is today. And the hundreds of beautiful faces he collected were burned to the ground by angry people.
——But "her" face is not included.
