Chapter 5 — Obsession at the Banks of Reincarnation

Quy Duong stood frozen for a brief moment, then began nodding with a desperate, frantic intensity.

As long as I can see her, you can ask for whatever you want!

Hearing this, the Lord of the Underworld fixed his piercing gaze directly into Quy Duong eyes. The sheer weight of that stare forced Quy Duong to take half a step backward, yet he stiffened his neck and stubbornly refused to look away. After a silence that stretched on for an unmeasurable length of time, the sovereign of the dead spoke in a slow, measured tone.

Quy Ying Ying and Quy Mong, the two of you may only choose to meet one of them.

The moment those words fell, the expressions of the three mortals stiffened completely, freezing in absolute terror. The dread judge continued without haste.

If you choose just one, you will be forever denied the chance to meet the other for all eternity.

Whether you are reborn into the mortal realm or remain here in the nether regions, you shall never set eyes upon each other across endless lifetimes.

Make your choice. Will you abandon Quy Ying Ying, or will you still insist on seeing Quy Mong?

Quy Duong lips trembled repeatedly, his gaze flickering with deep internal turmoil. He turned his head to look at his parents standing behind him. His father remained entirely silent, while his mother wept bitterly without uttering a single word. After another prolonged moment of suffocating quiet, Quy Duong spoke in a hoarse, broken voice.

Lead the way. We choose Meng Meng.

After all, she was the one who once saved our lives.

The Lord of the Underworld let out a low laugh. The sound was not loud, yet within the vast, hollow expanse of the grand hall, it carried with surprising, chilling clarity.

Just look at yourselves, the sovereign remarked quietly. Once again, you have cast the child aside.

Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode toward the deepest recesses of the ten chambers. The hem of his dark robe swept across the ancient stone floor, stirring up a thin, pale layer of dust.

Follow me.

The three figures hurried along behind him, their heavy footsteps echoing dismally through the dim, oppressive corridors. The deeper they ventured, the more the color of the surrounding walls shifted from a sickly, ash-blue to a heavy, bruised brown-black. A thick smell of burning began to permeate the air, so acrid and sharp that it made their throats sting with raw pain. Abruptly, the underworld ruler came to a halt, speaking with an ambiguous tone whose true meaning remained entirely hidden.

Sometimes, the naked truth is not necessarily as it appears to your own eyes.

Let us simply hope that you do not come to regret the decision you have made this day.

Just as Quy Duong was about to question the meaning behind those cryptic words, a faint, miserable sound of weeping drifted over from around the corner ahead.

I was wrong... I never should have caused their deaths...

At the far end of the long corridor stood a heavy iron cell door. Quy Mong was covered entirely in gruesome wounds, her neck and wrists tightly bound by heavy, spiked iron chains. A nether guard standing before her brought a cruel whip down across her flesh, prompting an immediate shriek of agonizing apology.

I was wrong, I truly know that I was wrong!

Quy Duong instinctively moved to step forward, but the iron bars blocking his path suddenly erupted with a deep, crimson-red fire that licked hungrily along the stone floor before surging fiercely upward. As the tongues of flame grazed her, Quy Mong let out a piercing, pitiful wail. The face of the underworld master darkened, and he spoke in a flat, emotionless voice.

If you have no desire to see your very souls scattered into nothingness, do not approach any closer.

I merely consented to let you come and look upon her, I never agreed to let you take her away.

Quy Duong clenched his fists until his knuckles turned ghostly white, but staring at the terrifying barrier of fire before him, he dared not utter a single word of defiance. Driven back by the intense heat, Quy Mong cowered into the corner, her entire body trembling violently into a miserable ball, her face stained with tears. Whenever the guard threw out a question, she could only answer in a quivering, terrified stutter.

I was wrong, the people who abducted Quy Ying Ying were hired by me...

That gift I gave Mother back then was also something I stole straight from her room. I only wanted to win favor with you both, I truly knew I was wrong...

The mother slowly slid down the cold stone wall until she slumped onto the ground, her posture limp as though every bone in her body had been suddenly shattered. Dissatisfied with the pace of the confession, the guard raised his whip and lashed out once more.

Is that all?

Quy Mong, that catastrophic fire which burned your entire family alive while you were still in the mortal world was also your doing, was it not?

At that, Quy Mong shrieked with a sudden, frantic desperation.

Yes! It was I who set the fire!

But you cannot entirely blame me for that either! If they had not stubbornly insisted on searching everywhere for Quy Ying Ying, how could I have ever brought myself to act against them?

My initial plan was simply to burn them to death and inherit all of their wealth without trouble, but who could have ever foreseen...

Quy Duong stood completely motionless, turned to stone. The savior they had so blindly trusted and revered for all these years was, in brutal reality, the very perpetrator who had murdered their entire family. And just moments ago, for the sake of this exact criminal, they had willingly sacrificed their absolute final chance to catch a glimpse of Ying Ying. He stared blankly at the battered, bloodied figure huddled in the distance for a long, agonizing duration. How much time passed, he could not tell. His lips trembled violently before he finally forced out a few fragmented words.

What on earth... have I done...

Slowly, he turned around and looked back down the path they had just traversed. The long corridor stretched endlessly into the distance, shrouded in a dreary, hazy gray with no end in sight. The path behind them was now utterly empty, devoid of any small, gentle figure willing to wait patiently forever just for the chance of their turning back. He staggered forward a single step before his legs gave way and he stopped.

Ying Ying...

He cried out into the deserted, silent corridor, his voice as harsh and abrasive as sandpaper scraping against rough stone.

I was wrong, it was we ourselves who caused your death...

If only I had believed you on that day, if only I had not hung up the phone, none of those terrible things would have ever happened to you...

No one answered his desperate plea. He dropped into a squat, burying his face in his hands as his broad shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. The mother sat crumpled on the cold ground, weeping bitterly while folding herself into a tight, miserable knot. The elderly father knelt nearby, tears streaming endlessly down his aged face as he muttered the same phrase over and over again like a madman.

Father was wrong, it was all Father's fault...

If only I had never brought Quy Mong into this home back then, how could Ying Ying ever have been forced to endure such deep grievances...

Yet regardless of how bitterly they wept, that lost figure would never, ever return to them. At that exact same moment, standing quietly upon the misty banks of the River of Forgetfulness, I raised the coarse earthenware bowl to my lips and swallowed the final drop of the bitter broth. A lingering, astringent taste still coated the back of my tongue, yet the vivid fragments of memory within my mind stubbornly refused to fade away.

It feels as though... I still remember a few things after all.