Chapter 27: The day before...
***Flashback***
( Continuation from ch 24 )
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Zhao Yung’s eyes shimmered, not with pity, but with something colder, as ancient sages used to describe it as; Clarity forged in betrayal.
"I was once like you, Elder Wang. Dutiful, blind, loyal to names carved in jade tablets and stone steles... I believed if I bled righteously, the heavens would watch... How foolish of me, they only watched me fall. Buddha has no eyes, no ears... The world is far rotten than one could imagine and someone has to cleanse it,"
He turned his palm skyward, letting snow gather in the crease of his hand only for it to vanish before touching skin, consumed by the strange qi that coiled around him like a withered flame.
"I, too, once begged my family to act. But they only smiled, called it internal family affairs... In front of power, everything bends,"
Elder Wang remained silent, but his breath grew rough.
His fingers tightened around the talisman. The veins in his neck pulsed, as though his body could no longer contain the poison of memory.
"Your sect won’t help you... The sect is merely a distract, have you ever thought of betraying it?" Zhao Yung continued, voice a low whisper that slipped into the ear like incense smoke in a sealed room. "l
"They fear the Zhao name more than they respect you. What are your decades of service to them? An old dog’s bark, tolerated but ignored... You may not want to hear it but it’s the truth,"