Chapter 6: Sudden Fury
“Who are you?” Unlike Song Qingshu, Zhou Zhiruo was still, at best, an first-rate expert at this point. She immediately sat up and fixed her gaze on the other man’s back, her hand already forming the opening stance of the Nine Yin White Bone Claw as she gathered power to strike.
“Zhiruo, it’s me.” The masked man turned around and pulled down his face covering. It was none other than Zhang Wuji, the leader of the Ming Cult.
“I wonder what the great Zhang Cult Leader intends by breaking into my husband and my bedroom in the middle of the night!”
Although Zhou Zhiruo’s tone was cold, the force in her body slowly dispersed. Against Zhang Wuji, she truly had no need to remain on guard.
“Zhiruo, no one else may know about you and your husband, but how could I not understand?” Zhang Wuji looked at the two of them sleeping in separate beds and said softly.
Seeing that he knew she and Song Qingshu were not really husband and wife, Zhou Zhiruo could not tell whether she felt pleased or angry. In the end, she could only say coldly, “Our business as husband and wife is no concern of Zhang Cult Leader’s.”
Zhang Wuji walked over slowly and said with a bitter smile, “Zhiruo, I haven’t come to see you for so many days because I knew you must be angry with me, but after the fight with the Three Duans, I suffered a qi deviation. These past few days I’ve been sorting out the scattered true qi in my body...”
“Oh? How are you now?” Zhou Zhiruo raised her delicate brows and, without waiting for him to answer, urgently reached out to take his wrist and feel his pulse.
“I’ve barely managed to suppress it. The Sacred Flame Tokens and the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth really are strange martial arts from the Western Regions; if one is careless, it’s easy to suffer qi deviation.”
In front of Zhou Zhiruo, Zhang Wuji had not the slightest trace of the caution most martial artists would show. He let her hold his pulse point without resistance.
“No wonder your breathing feels weaker now.” Zhou Zhiruo felt that Zhang Wuji seemed somewhat different from before, but she assumed it was a side effect of the qi deviation and did not think much of it.
“Zhiruo, you still worry about me just as you did when you were a child.” Moved, Zhang Wuji took her hands in his with deep feeling.
Thinking of their first meeting on the Han River, Zhou Zhiruo also seemed to drift into a dream. She looked up and saw Zhang Wuji gazing at her with the same deep emotion.
They never would have imagined that Song Qingshu, who should have been unconscious in bed, was watching all this coldly. After he was sealed in acupoints, the strands of internal energy left in him by Wuming reacted, rousing him from his stupor. But after all, those were only residual strands of qi Wuming had left behind to nourish his meridians, while Zhang Wuji was one of the greatest masters in the world. The rest of his acupoints could not be broken through at all. At present, Song Qingshu’s mind was clear, but his body could not move in the slightest.
Looking deeply into Zhou Zhiruo’s eyes, Zhang Wuji could no longer restrain himself and lowered his head to kiss her.
Watching Zhang Wuji’s face draw closer and closer, Zhou Zhiruo felt her heart begin to race wildly again. At that moment, she knew that the love she had once felt for Zhang Wuji was so deep and so painful that she probably would never be able to forget it in this lifetime.
Then she suddenly remembered that she was already someone else’s wife, and a sharp pain shot through her heart. She turned her head away, pushed against Zhang Wuji’s chest, and used the chance to retreat three feet. Tears glimmered in her eyes as she looked at him with a hint of anger. “You already have your princess, and I’m already married to another man. What exactly are you trying to do?”
“I don’t know,” Zhang Wuji said bitterly, shaking his head. “I really love you. I can’t bear for us to be separated by heaven and earth from now on, to become strangers to each other.”
Hearing Zhang Wuji say he loved her, Zhou Zhiruo’s heart gave a jolt. Biting her lip, she said, “Then what about Zhao Min?”
“I love her too!” Song Qingshu had not even expected that Zhang Wuji, who had always been indecisive in matters of the heart, would be so straightforward this time. Zhou Zhiruo, exasperated, gave a cold laugh. “Then why did you come looking for me?”
Zhang Wuji tore open his own outer robe, revealing the scar on his chest left by the Heaven-Reliant Sword. “Zhiruo, your shadow is like that Heaven-Reliant Sword; it has been carved into my heart forever. My feelings for you have never changed. When I heard that you and Song... Senior Brother Song were getting married, I wanted to die.”
Seeing the faint scar on his chest, Zhou Zhiruo recalled the heartbreak of that young girl when she thrust out that sword atop Bright Peak, and her heart was filled with mixed feelings. She let out a soft, desolate sigh. “Then why didn’t you come and steal the bride back then? Do you know that I once made a bet with Qingshu using marriage as the stakes, betting on whether you would come steal the bride? I lost.”
When she finished, she gave a bitter smile.
“I was too foolish back then. I thought Senior Brother Song loved you so much that once you married him, you would surely be very happy.”
Zhang Wuji reached out as if to pull Zhou Zhiruo into his arms, but she instinctively stepped back. With a pained expression, he said, “It was only after you married that I felt my heart being cut apart every day. Only then did I understand that in the face of love, one cannot yield.”
He had never poured out his feelings to her so directly before. Zhou Zhiruo’s heart was suddenly thrown into utter confusion. Though she felt a flicker of joy, she also thought of her present identity and could not help but say bitterly, “What’s the use of saying this now? I’m already Mrs. Song.”
“You two are nothing but husband and wife in name only!”
Zhang Wuji said angrily, “In my heart, you will always be that pure and kind girl by the Han River.”
He lifted his thumb to brush away the tears on her cheek, but Zhou Zhiruo once again stepped back.
Zhang Wuji continued pressing forward. Zhou Zhiruo’s gaze went dazed for an instant. She bit her pearly teeth and resolutely stepped back again, her thoughts in complete disarray. She failed to notice what was beneath her feet, tripped on something, and lost her balance, falling backward onto the bed behind her.
“Careful!” Zhang Wuji cried out, hurrying forward to catch her, but Zhou Zhiruo subconsciously blocked him. The two of them lost their balance together and toppled onto the bed.
Because the table in the room stood in the way, Song Qingshu did not know what had just happened. He only saw Zhou Zhiruo seem to throw herself onto the bed as if offering herself there, with Zhang Wuji following and pressing down on her. In sudden fury, a mouthful of blood surged up his throat. Since he had only just recovered from serious injury, he immediately fainted.
The two of them had fallen onto the bed and looked at each other, and an unspoken feeling of ambiguity slowly spread between them.
Watching Zhang Wuji’s hand inch toward the ribbon at her waist, Zhou Zhiruo suddenly came to her senses. She raised a hand to block him and sat up at once, hesitatingly saying, “Don’t. Qingshu, he...” She wanted to look at her husband lying across from them, but Zhang Wuji was blocking her view, and she could not see him at all.
“Don’t worry. I sealed every major acupoint in his body. He won’t know.”
Zhang Wuji was very confident in his own skill and had no intention of turning back at all, completely unaware that everything the two of them had just done had already fallen into Song Qingshu’s eyes.
Hearing Zhang Wuji’s words, a trace of blank confusion flashed through Zhou Zhiruo’s mind.
Seeing this, Zhang Wuji brushed her hand aside and grabbed the butterfly knot of her sash, just about to give it a light pull when Zhou Zhiruo suddenly came fully to herself. In a blur of movement, she leapt off the bed.
Seizing the teacup from the table, she splashed the water straight into Zhang Wuji’s face. Then she looked back at her husband, unconscious on the bed, gritted her silver teeth, and said, “Zhang Wuji, I hope you can show some self-respect.”
Zhang Wuji froze. Tea water ran down his face and dripped one drop after another onto the bedding as he looked awkwardly at Zhou Zhiruo.
“Why didn’t you dodge?” Seeing how wretched he looked when she turned back, Zhou Zhiruo felt a little sorry for him and asked softly.
“It was I who deserved to die for offending you. What is one cup of tea worth?” Zhang Wuji wiped the tea leaves from his face and said with a bitter smile.