Bright Sword: Conquer the monk at the beginning and take down Zhou Weiguo

The fact that it's gone means that someone rummaged through the package while he and Xiaohu were away, bypassing their notice.

He slowly rose, his gaze coldly sweeping over every corner of the room, finally settling on a ceramic jar in the southwest corner. Last time, he had deliberately turned the jar so that a spot on its surface faced outwards. Now, the spot faced inwards.

His gaze sharpened, and he took a step forward, squatted down beside the jar, and gently moved it aside, revealing an envelope wrapped in paper oil underneath.

The cover had no signature, but it was a strange piece of paper that he had never seen before. It had a faint yellow ink scent and was not made by an ordinary paper mill. The edges were sewn with fine silver thread, and the seams were extremely delicate. If Qin Cang had not examined it up close, he would have hardly been able to see the silver thread.

He took the envelope under the light, carefully cut the seam, and unfolded the pages.

The handwriting on the letter was familiar. It was the kind of handwriting that had been before his eyes countless times, now somewhat hasty and sharp, as if the writer was holding a knife rather than a pen.

Qin Cang—

You are still alive.

How ironic. You should have died in that ambush in Burning Wind Valley three years ago, yet you escaped like a mad dog, clinging to life even when half-dead. Do you know that I could hear your panting that night, even from several mountains away? Like a wild beast, like a dead man, and also like… myself.

But I don't blame you for not dying. For someone like you, death is a luxury.

However, if you've seen this letter, it means you've already noticed the child's tampering. He didn't do it on purpose; I just gave him a chance. Humans are greedy. Especially those immature kids like the one around you, they're even greedier.

Don't worry, I don't intend to kill you. If you die, who will collect my body? Ha.

Do you really want to know who I am? You already know. You've always known. The scar in your heart is deeper than the one on your face; you can't escape it.

If you still recognize that nameless letter from back then, come to see me. You know where I am.

"...Don't forget, there's still an unresolved issue between us."

The letter ended without a signature, but with a very simple symbol drawn on it—a "回" shape outlined by two intersecting short lines, like some kind of ancient mark, or the starting move of an old game.

Qin Cang's fingers trembled slightly on the paper. He looked at the letter and seemed to see the cold smile on the face of the person who wrote it, even through the handwriting.

Unlike the outsiders, he showed no fear or rage; instead, he smiled. That smile was as cold as an ice blade dipped in strong liquor, a smile tinged with bloodlust and anticipation. His eyes held no surprise, no hesitation, but a deeper confirmation—confirmation that his long-held intuition had been correct.

"So it was you." He murmured to himself, his fingertips lightly tracing the symbol, as if it were not a mark on paper, but a brand of an old scar.

The man was indeed alive. The fire, the chaos, and the past that everyone claimed had "turned to ashes"—had not truly ended.

"You want me to come see you?" He chuckled softly. "How do you know I'm not waiting for you to come see me?"

He folded the letter again, but instead of putting it away, he threw it into the brazier, watching it transform into curling flames and slowly burn away. In the firelight, his face flickered, like a lonely soul emerging from a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood, not knowing the way home, nor caring about the way home.

"Brother Qin?" Xiao Hu's timid voice sounded from outside the door, "Are you...are you alright?"

Qin Cang did not respond. He stood before the brazier, motionless for a long time. The letter had awakened too many memories and reopened old wounds. But he did not wallow in them. He remained silent, like a knife buried deep in the ground, finally drawn from its sheath.

"Go pack your luggage." He suddenly turned around, his voice clear and calm. "We'll set off before dawn."

"Where?"

"Go down the mountain."

"Right...now?"

Qin Cang nodded, his gaze sharp as iron: "I know where that person is."

He didn't say "who he was going to see," because in his mind, it wasn't a meeting, it was a hunt. He wanted to personally chase after it, drag the snake hiding in the shadows out of its hole, and see it unable to laugh in its blood.

"Brother Qin, are we really not going to wait for Liu San?" Xiao Hu asked softly, his voice hesitant.

Qin Cang stood with his back to him in the north corner of the room, his fingers slowly brushing the hilt of the long sword resting against the wall, as if it were not a weapon, but a sealed memory.

He didn't answer immediately; after a long while, he spoke in a low voice.

“He won’t come,” he said, his tone lacking any firm resolve, only calmness and a hint of unease.

Xiao Hu was stunned for a moment, then swallowed hard: "You...you mean, he can't leave?"

Qin Cang turned around and looked at his face. His gaze was very deep, as if he wanted to see through all of Xiao Hu's thoughts.

“He won’t die, but he can’t walk,” he said. “That arm was badly injured. The bone was broken, the tendons were severed, and it was inflamed. Do you know what kind of herbs I applied to it?”

Xiao Hu paused for a moment, then subconsciously shook his head.

“Honeysuckle powder and tiger tendon vine.” Qin Cang lowered his gaze. “If there is any chance of recovery, that medicine can stop the pain and heal the bones within three days. But he used it for seven days, and not only did he not get better, but his skin turned slightly purple.”

His voice was extremely soft, as if afraid of disturbing someone. As he spoke, his eyes fell on the coarse cloth hanging under the eaves. It belonged to Liu San, the cloth he had bitten into to keep from crying out when he lost too much blood that day. Now, it swayed gently in the wind.

The rag was stained with dried blood, each dark red mark a testament to his willpower to hold on.

Qin Cang slowly walked to the corner of the room and pulled out a crumpled piece of blue cloth from a small package at the edge of the pile of ashes. It was a strip of cloth he had torn himself to wrap Liu San's wound. He ran his thumb over the dark brown scabs on the cloth, which had dried and hardened like a shell, as if he could feel the silence of Liu San that day when he gritted his teeth and lay his arm across his knee, letting Qin Cang clean the poison from his bones.

Liu San never spoke much, never complained, and never made a fuss. Like an old dog, he silently guarded the tail of the group, never drawing attention or whining. But the deep, unyielding strength he possessed was one of the forces Qin Cang relied on most.

It's a reassuring presence.

But now, he is disabled.

Qin Cang had seen people with severed arms before—he had killed hundreds of enemies, beheaded countless people, and even had his own flesh and tendons cut off several times. But when he actually saw Liu San's severed arm hanging down, with blood slowly dripping from his fingertips, he felt a sharp, almost suffocating pain in his heart that he had never experienced before.

It wasn't the kind of pain that comes from flesh and blood, but something called "brother" was tearing it apart.

“He wouldn’t lie down,” Qin Cang suddenly said, his voice low. “Do you know why he secretly got out of bed? That night he secretly went to get his knife, wanting to fix the broken blade himself. He said he didn’t want to be a burden to us.”