My friends, this is it - the final chapter of the novel HE. Having to reread these chapters, especially the last one made me cry buckets - tears of sorrow for the lost years, relief that they found each other again and finally joy in their homecoming.
I didn't have a lot of time to refine and proofread this as much as I wanted so there are probably typos, inaccuracies and some abrupt paraphasings. I do hope that I was able to deliver the heart of the novel and share the happiness that our Tantai Jin, Li Susu and A Mi finally got. They are home.
Thank you for reading and enjoy! ??
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Ch.131 END
Before the local exam results came out, Liu Dongyan was very nervous.
Marrying Bai Ziqian was still a goal. She didn't consider Bai Ziqian's happiness. After all, the social rules of Changle Town were very rigid, and the spreading rumors will make it impossible for Bai Ziqian to gain a foothold as an official in Changle Town if she didn't want it.
What came before the result was the news of Bai Ziqian's serious injury. A close friend of hers told her that Bai Ziqian was bitten on an arm by a tiger while hunting and now he is ill in bed.
Liu Dongyan was shocked. How could such a thing happen with Bai Ziqian's hunting skill? She and Mother Liu rushed to Bai's house immediately and saw a doctor throw his hands up in the air.
Liu Dongyan stepped forward: "Doctor, how is Brother Ziqian?"
The doctor said: "The right arm is badly injured and unable to recover. It is really bad luck. He can't even pay for the consultation."
"Why doesn't he have any money?" Mother Liu heard these words. The people around were whispering.
"Bai Ziqian had all the money defrauded by the beautiful girl who lives in his house. Now he is pitiful. He hurt his right arm and can't shoot arrows or write. Now let alone being an official, it's hard to even support himself."
Liu Dongyan's face changed a little, and she did not step into his room.
Mother Liu's expression was also ugly. She always just wanted to take something from him and give nothing back.
"Mother, I want to break the marriage contract."
"Dong Yan...but our family will be gossiped."
"Isn't your daughter more important than a few nasty words?" Liu Dongyan said, "I want to break this engagement!"
*
Bai Ziqian pursed his lips while looking at the huge monster in the small courtyard of the Bai family, not knowing how to explain it to Su Su.
"It doesn't hurt people."
The monster resembles a tiger, but has blue-faced fangs and a lion tail. Since his birth, this monster will turn into a tiger and come down the mountain to visit him every year.
Bai Ziqian knew that he had a special nature, and thought nothing of it before meeting Su Su.
This creature was not a fairylike beast, it's even more terrifying than a monster. Once he even watched it swallow a dead soul.
Bai Ziqian lowered his eyes, rapid emotions flashing in them. His eyes were red and he just wanted to explain to her.
The monster rolled to the ground and turned into a catlike cub. It walked up to Su Su with a guilty conscience, lowered its head, and called hesitantly: "Meow~"
Su Su squatted down and looked at it.
"Oh~meow~" The tiger demon shivered, begging her not to kill him.
The clean breath of a god is incompatible with it. It hasn't cultivated its Qi in recent years. Just as it hesitated to leave Bai Ziqian and escape by itself, Su Su touched its head.
The tiger demon's legs softened with fear and almost fell limp to the ground.
Does the last god in the world want to kill him and his unlucky demon master?
Su Su pointed her finger at the center of its eyebrows. After a while, she let go and said in a low voice, "Thank you, Tiger Demon."
"Huh? Huh?" The tiger demon's eyes widened. Bai Ziqian was looking at it, his eyes were very clear. It stayed a bit longer before it ran away with its tail tucked between its legs.
Bai Ziqian asked Su Su while looking at her weirdly: "Aren't you afraid of it?"
Su Su looked at him with a smile, and asked instead: "If I have a problem weighing my heart, will you be afraid of me? Will you still dare to marry me?"
"It's all good if you don't regret it."
A few days later, Bai Ziqian learned that Liu Dongyan had given up on him and hurriedly married Li Yuanwai.
He heard the rumors outside, it's a bit funny: "You made them think I was mangled by a tiger?"
Su Su nodded and said frankly: "If she walked into your room with thoughts of never abandoning you, she would have known it was all made up."
But Mother Liu and Dongyan Liu are both mercenary so they ruthlessly abandoned Bai Ziqian. They are now getting backlash because they were the first to break the marriage contract, and were blinded by rumors.
"What about you, if my right arm really gets mutilated, would you leave me?"
Su Su didn't expect Bai Ziqian to ask this way. He asked calmly, but his eyes were slightly drooping, his inner thoughts were exposed.
She looked at his dark eyes: "See it for yourself."
She took his hand, placed it between her eyebrows, and closed her eyes.
The white divine mark on the eyebrows appeared, and a scene appeared in front of Bai Ziqian.
Thousands of years ago, in a small town in the jungle, the young Tantai Jin was lying on the ground dying, his left eye was blinded, and a group of children threw stones at him.
The girl leading the horse walked by, picked him up, and helped him on the horse.
She quarreled with him, but her hand wiped the blood from his right eye little by little.
Inside the tree demon, she cut out her eyes and exchanged them for his. The kiss that fell on his lips was very light, dispelling the darkness of the whole world.
Su Su opened his eyes: "I won't leave you. There was no one else, and there won't be anyone else except you. I respect you for your strength when you sacrificed for the Six Realms, and pity you for your loneliness that no one can understand."
Bai Ziqian retracted his hand, held back the tears in his eyes, and said with a smile: "Yes."
*
The day they got married was October in the world.
Susu didn't use any spells, and quietly and seriously learned to embroider her wedding veil.
There are a lot of guests. Along the way during the wedding procession, the enthusiastic and kindly joyous sounds of the villagers were permeating the air, and she saw from the gap in her veil, that the person's eyes were always smiling.
He is clean and humble with red clothes and ink black hair.
She put down her hand. This is the moment not only Tantai Jin waited for a long time, but one she also waited for a long time.
They were married as two ordinary people. He was no longer a demon born with evil and slaughter in his bones, nor was she a goddess with a mission.
In the next life, I hope that you will be an ordinary person, have joy, know sorrow, and experience a peaceful and happy life.
What she said back then, even though he died, his remnant soul has been remembering for many years.
Bai Ziqian felt that this day is not real. He pushed aside the bride's veil and saw Su Su's smiling eyes. His heart finally settled down, and the corners of his mouth rose.
The wedding officiant said congratulations. They were told to drink the wine and the bride to tie her hair with his.
Su Su has long learned the wedding etiquette of Changle Town. She used silver scissors to cut off a small strand of hair of herself and Tantai Jin, and tied them together with a red thread, saying: "The knot of hair is of husband and wife, and there is no doubt about their love. Even time will render them inseparable."
The two bundles of hair were put together and placed in a red wooden box.
Bai Ziqian looked at the closed wooden box. He had never thought that he would see this day.
Under the light of the candlelight, the loneliness of the goddess faded away from her brows and eyes, and she was moved by the fireworks.
Su Su made gently stroked his face: "Can you tell me who my husband is at this moment?"
He said: "Bai Ziqian."
Su Su didn't refute him, holding his hand, the red string glass beads were put on his hand.
"I've been to the imperial mausoleum, and I found the beads. I have already made the wedding knot that wasn't finished. I have walked the road you walked back then."
He lowered his eyes, firmly covering up the emotions in his eyes.
Those were the softest words he has ever heard in his life.
"The Epiphany of the Devil's Palace has bloomed year after year, and Su Su and A Mi have also waited year after year. Husband, when are you willing to go home with me?"
He muttered: "When did you know?"
Knowing that he has not forgotten the memory that belongs to Tantai Jin, Su Su held up his face and looked into his eyes with a soft look: "Tantai Jin is not someone who will fall in love at first sight."
He is a lunatic obsessed to death, the craziest fool in the world. Tantai Jin could not argue, his Adam's apple rolled: "Sorry."
He had left a haven for everyone in the Six Realms, including the demon tiger who had been with him for more than five hundred years. He let the tiger swallow the ancient gluttonous true soul to help it cleanse the marrow.
He never thought that he could come back one day. He thought that she became a god and his soul was lost, which was the best ending for her.
Unexpectedly, he was cold-blooded and merciless when he lost his love thread. He didn't have time to let the tiger demon leave and it swallowed everything. After the tiger demon was involved in the Same Path of Compassion, it ignorantly swallowed Tantai Jin's soul that had dissipated there. After a thousand years, his demon soul reformed and plunged back into the world.
He originally planned to live an ordinary life in this life, not look for her, not to inquire about her. Until that day, he saw A Mi and couldn't ignore them anymore. He thought he can use all the goodness of this life to take A Mi home for a while.
He missed her so much.
Everything now is a picture he never dared to think of. He even pretended that he was Bai Ziqian, not daring to expose himself.
Tantai Jin could barely speak: "Did I let you down?"
Su Su never knew that one day she could feel so sorry for someone like this.
Years later, he did not dare to return to the Demon Realm, so he settled in a corner of the world, and after verifying his identity, what he feared most was still disappointing her.
He once thought that he would disappoint her if he was alive.
She shook her head and gently wrapped him around him, tears also filled her eyes: "You don't know how grateful I am that you can come back to me again."
"Tantai Jin, I have a lot of things I want to confess with you. A Mi is your daughter."
"I know." He whispered. A Mi is like her, but more like him. God knows how happy he was at that time.
"Ye Xi Wu, the third young lady in General Ye's mansion has liked the young emperor Tantai Jin who embroidered her veil. Li Susu in the dreamland has liked Cang Jiumin who replenishes her soul." She paused, and her voice was very light and very soft. Tantai Jin heard the voice of the goddess as gentle as the spring breeze in March: "Just like me now, I love you who forgot to go home."
The candlelight reflected his silhouette, and his eyes suddenly became wet with tears.
In order to hear this sentence, he stayed alone in the Nether River, enduring the pain of his body being corroded by the river and healed by her immortal essence repeatedly for hundreds of years. He walked across the spooky land, behind the lonely moon. He has been in the same path of sorrow for thousands of years, holding back the wind, and slowly condensing his soul.
Even the Dao sighed for him.
Why is it so bitter to love someone?
He thought that no matter how long he waited for this life, he was still trapped in the nightmare dream, the boy who devoured the glazed shards and could not wait for the goddess to descend to the earth.
But at some point, his goddess looked back and finally saw his shadow in her eyes.
*
When the blue and purple night flowers of the Demon Realm bloomed all over the hillside, all the demons in the Demon Realm knew that their Demon Lord was coming back!
That day, Si Ying solemnly prepared her garments, and all the big monsters stood in front of the monster world monument to greet each other.
Tantai Jin had thought about many scenes that might happen in the monster world today. But he never thought that when he stepped into the world of demons, all demons would welcome him respectfully and joyously, and tears even appeared in the eyes of Si Ying and Jing Mi who stood in front.
Those new and childish faces in the demon world hide behind their parents and look at him quietly - with the respect for the monarch.
In his whole life, he was completely treated coldly and bullied when he was young. When he was an emperor, he was used to seeing the eyes of others look at him with fear and disgust, and later became a demon god, who stepped through the contemptuous eyes of the six realms alone.
He thought that in this life, he would end in a snowy winter day in the world forever.
At that time, Tantai Jin didn't know that the years and the ways of heaven were generous and gentle, and his sacrifices and the hardships he had walked through alone in this year will be given to him back in another way.
His little A Mi, raised her head, proud that he was her father.
Jing Mi was shocked and hugged A Mi, almost crying: "It's great that Di Ji is fine, otherwise, how can I explain to Lord Demon Lord!"
A Mi was very guilty, and her soft voice comforted him: "I'm sorry I terrified and worried you, uncle."
Su Su took Tantai Jin's hand and led him through the densely blooming world of demons.
The faint blue flowers are in full bloom, fireflies are flying, and mushrooms grow under the trees.
Tantai Jin's black pupils reflected the foreground, the magic pulse surged, and the mountains and rivers were magnificent.
He used to have no home, drifted away for half his life, and had nowhere to lean on.
But Tantai Jin knew that at this moment, he was going home.
—【END】
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