The wound Xuanhua had inflicted didn’t heal until more than a week later. Injuries inflicted by holy weapons couldn’t be countered with healing talismans, as much as he wanted to.
Zhanghao’s visit had left him with more questions than answers. He’d taken the effort to sneak into the Lost Fortress to look for Gyuvin. The reasonable assumption was that he’d come here with one objective; to kill Gyuvin and avenge Hanbin’s death. But he’d said he wouldn’t, because killing Gyuvin would make him just as evil. It didn’t seem to be a spur-of-the-moment change of his mind. And Gyuvin couldn’t get those last words Zhanghao had said out of his head.
I tried to save you, Gyuvin, you know I did.
Had he really gone to all this effort, disguised himself and traveled all the way to Lunar Valley from the West, in the hopes of saving Gyuvin from his certain death? Even when he had every reason to believe Gyuvin had been the one who had killed Hanbin? Did he really have so much morality in him that he could bring himself to give Gyuvin one last chance, when he could just as easily have sat back and watched justice descend upon him instead?
Gyuvin felt a strange sense of bittersweetness rise in his throat. To know that Zhanghao, even though they’d never been the closest back at the training camp, could see past the fog, could forget that Gyuvin was the person who had shattered his dreams of the future for good that night, and make one last valiant attempt to save him from his own end.
But those efforts were futile. Xuanhua had spoken, and Zhanghao had left the Fortress thinking Gyuvin had taken the olive branch he’d offered and ground it to dust under his feet. Thinking that Gyuvin had lied in his face when he was the only person who had bothered to help him at their own expense.
As he slipped slowly back into the way he’d lived before Zhanghao came, letting the days ghost by like they meant nothing, his thoughts began to melt together, until one was indistinguishable from another. Sometimes those strange visions would replay in his head. Sometimes he’d imagine striking Hanbin with Yuexi, and watching his body fall to the ground in the dead of night, and he’d sit up in bed and remember where he was.
At some point, his mind had given up entirely. Maybe he had killed Hanbin. Maybe it was all his doing. Maybe he was evil to his very core, a despicable human being, unworthy of anything other than eternal damnation.
Maybe. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t anymore, and even if he could, he was too tired to fight them.
They came for him a week later, to take him to Seven Star Manor for his trial. He left the Fortress the same way he’d entered, blindfolded, and he was taken to the backseat of a carriage. As they left the darkness that perpetually shrouded Lunar Valley, he felt the sun warm his skin for the first time in months, but there was no joy to be found in it. He was on his way to his death. After today, everything would be over.
He wished it would come sooner. I’m tired of waiting, he thought. Please let it end now.
The carriage traveled through the night. They passed through the gates of Seven Star Manor two days after they left Lunar Valley; Gyuvin had been blindfolded all this time, but he could hear them talking. When the carriage stopped moving he was helped off the back and led through winding corridors. Only when they reached a small room was his blindfold taken off him.
“Wait here,” someone said. Gyuvin didn’t look to see who it was. “It’s starting soon. Don’t do anything stupid.”
There was one small window, too small for him to crawl through but just wide enough he could see out of it, and feel the sunlight on his face. It was a beautiful day. It must be late in the summer now, maybe even the beginning of autumn. He’d lost count of the days during his time in the Fortress; the lack of windows made it all too easy to forget where a day ended and a night began.
Someone opened the door, and threw a set of golden robes into the room. Meteor Court Sect’s uniform.
“I’m sorry, but I thought I was exiled from my sect,” Gyuvin said, looking doubtfully at the robes. “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to…”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything about an exile. Don’t wear them if you don’t want to, I can’t force you. I’m just following orders.”
The door closed behind him, and Gyuvin unfolded the set of robes. It had been a good while since he’d worn familiar colors, the colors he’d grown up surrounded by.
One last time.
They came back for him soon after. Trials at Seven Star Manor were held at a place called the Judgment Gallery. It was a large platform built overseeing the city; for the citizens who lived there, watching the enforcement of justice was almost a spectacle. People crowded into the square to watch trials every day as if they were as entertaining as traveling circuses.
Gyuvin wondered how that felt, spending their days watching other people’s lives hang in the balance.
“What’s the date today?” he asked, as he was conducted through the corridors towards the Judgment Gallery.
He half-expected them not to answer, but someone did. “It’s the eighth day of the eighth month.”
Gyuvin smiled.
“It’s my birthday,” he whispered, so softly no one else could hear but himself. He straightened his shoulders and continued walking.
He could hear the sheer number of people from the sound of their hushed chatter, as they brought him out onto the platform. There was a large wooden pole near the edge and he was brought over to it, his hands tied by a Spirit-Binding Cord so he was bound to the pole. He didn’t fight back, or protest.
He was done. It would all be over soon.
The Coalition’s senior panel sat behind him, in a semicircle with two levels, three representatives from each of the five great sects. Sect Leader Baek was there, he knew without having to look. Minwoo probably was too.
He wished he could tell Minwoo that he was sorry. He wished he could give his letter to him now, so he could die without Minwoo thinking he was a traitor, but he’d left it on the floor of his cell back at the Fortress. Anyway, there was no way he would have been able to give it to him.
“Today we have before us Kim Gyuvin.”
The crowds fell silent. Gyuvin kept his eyes trained on the ground in front of him, tracing the patterns in the tile. He didn’t recognize the voice that spoke; whoever it was hadn’t been a senior at the Peak.
“Never before in this generation has such unabashed evil reared its head. Kim Gyuvin murdered six commoners at Raintree Town under a disguise and betrayed his own fellow cultivators by throwing them into a deadly trap. He set up a meticulous spiritual energy suppression array, using a forbidden technique now known as the Willows of Resentment, broke the wards protecting Sky-Ascending Peak, and unleashed an infernal rift. Many died in the process of sealing it.”
The volume of the crowd’s chatter rose; he could hear their indignation, their brimming injustice, their quick anger. Gyuvin looked down, and said nothing.
“More importantly, Kim Gyuvin used his holy weapon, a weapon bestowed upon us by the heavens to rid the world of evil, and murdered his fellow sectmate.”
He was tired of telling them they were wrong. Maybe all this time he’d been wrong. Maybe they were right.
“For committing and facilitating the commission of the murder of eighteen innocents, misuse of cultivation techniques, conspiring with demons and blatant disregard of a cultivator’s honor and values,” the announcer continued. “Kim Gyuvin’s punishment is the removal of his spiritual core, followed by execution without trial. The punishments will commence immediately.”
There was an uproar from the crowd. It had been years, maybe even a decade since the Judgment Gallery had last seen an execution without trial. It was the punishment the cultivation world reserved for the worst of criminals ever to walk the earth. But he already knew, when he came here, that he was going to die. The way he died didn’t matter.
He could hear the executioner’s footsteps behind him. His heart beat so loud he could feel it in his ears; as much as he tried not to, there was something primal in him that feared death like any other living thing.
It’s okay, he said slowly, the words echoing in his head like he was standing alone in an empty room. Let go, and be brave.
The first slash would be to his chest, where his spiritual core was. The executioner reached into his chest cavity with a practiced hand, and Gyuvin felt the spiritual core, the energy that had run through his veins like blood since he was a child, peeling from his ribcage, splintering pain spreading out from his chest like a supernova. He didn’t cry.
With one slice of his blade, the executioner shattered his core into pieces that fell like tinkling stars onto the ground around them. The dying shards of spiritual energy still glowed faint gold in the afternoon sun.
The second slash would be to kill.
Gyuvin saw something in the distance, shining so bright for a moment it was all he could see. Something white cut through the blue sky, rocketing towards the Judgment Gallery faster than he could comprehend. As it passed over him, its wings unfolded in midair, pure, dazzling white glinting in the sun.
A white…phoenix?
The blade pierced through his heart in one blow.
And so, as the sun peaked in the sky on the day Kim Gyuvin turned seventeen, the executioner’s sword brought promised justice to the most heinous criminal of the rising generation. The cheers that arose from the crowds echoed through the city as blood spilled onto the golden robes.
The only thing Gyuvin could hear was the sound of his own death rattle breathing as the last of his consciousness poured from his chest, and then all was quiet.Â
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