Chapter Ninety-Five: The Memories of Fifteen Years Ago Were Lost

Chapter Ninety-Five

"General Yang, will your word count? Will you really let my mount leave?" Huang Xianlin asked.

"I, Yang Shengtian, never go back on my word. Since I agreed to it, I will not regret it. So long as you can make your mount leave, I will never take it back!" Seeing the situation, Yang Shengtian felt that Huang Xianlin had no way out, no matter what.

"In that case, I have two more requests. I wonder whether General Yang can grant them both?" Huang Xianlin asked after a brief thought.

"General Huang, ever since I saw you spare my two thousand soldiers last time, and saw that you gave my fallen beloved general a complete body, and agreed to help bury my dead soldiers, I knew you were a righteous man. It is a pity that we serve different masters, or I would very much like to be your friend. Speak. What is it? Anything I can do, I will absolutely not refuse!" Yang Shengtian said.

"My mount was wounded by your mystic arrow. Is there poison in that wound? Can you heal it, and then let it go?"

"My enchanted bow may wound the enemy, but the arrows are not poisoned. You can rest easy on that point. I can heal its wound, but once it is healed, you must do everything you can to make it leave. Otherwise, I will truly kill it." Yang Shengtian said.

"Thank you, General Yang! I will make it leave!" No sooner had Huang Xianlin spoken than the qilin divine beast beside him let out a howl, filled with sorrow and grief, as though pleading with Huang Xianlin not to let it go.

Huang Xianlin stroked the qilin divine beast and, looking into its tearful eyes, lowered his mouth to its ear and whispered, "If I tell you to leave, then leave. So long as you live, there is hope."

After saying that, Huang Xianlin stood up and continued, "Very well, General Yang. Can you now heal the arrow wound on my mount?"

After hearing this, Yang Shengtian raised his right hand and pointed his forefinger at one of the main arcane bows. Then he slowly directed it toward the qilin divine beast. The bow drifted along the line of his finger, and one end of it moved to the beast's wound. With wings as thin as cicada's wings, it gently fanned the arrow wound. Before long, the wound that had been touched by those wings had returned to its original state.

Huang Xianlin was somewhat stunned by this method of healing the arrow wound, and even more stunned by the bow's shape. He felt that the bow was oddly familiar, yet he could not remember where he had seen it before.

Soon, the arcane bow had completely healed the qilin divine beast's wound.

"Qilin divine beast, the wound has been healed. Thank General Yang, then leave here and return to the master," Huang Xianlin said, patting the qilin divine beast.

The qilin divine beast gave Yang Shengtian a few soft howls, as though unwilling in every possible way to leave.

Yang Shengtian's mount, Little Black, also howled at the qilin divine beast a few times.

Yang Shengtian looked at the qilin divine beast and said, "You do not need to thank me. I healed your wound and let you go only because I saw how deeply you are devoted to your master. You must understand that you are a divine beast that has cultivated; on the battlefield, you possess real fighting power. To let you go is to let one of my own enemies go, leaving behind a hidden danger for the future. If not for that, I truly would not have wanted to release you, because letting you go is no different from giving the enemy a chance. If you want to thank anyone, then thank your loyalty to your master."

"Go quickly!" Huang Xianlin said to the qilin divine beast. "Hurry back to the master and listen to him properly. If you do not see me return within these two days, then it means I have already died in battle. You need not grieve for my death. In the future, if you find a good master, then be good to that master instead." Huang Xianlin stroked the qilin divine beast as he spoke.

The qilin divine beast cried out to Huang Xianlin again, tears streaming like rain.

"Go now. If you do not leave, and General Yang changes his mind, it will be too late!" Huang Xianlin shoved the qilin divine beast away and said sharply.

The pushed-aside qilin divine beast gave Huang Xianlin a few more gentle, sorrowful cries, then sprang into the air and raced toward the ground.

Watching his mount disappear into the distance, Huang Xianlin said to Yang Shengtian, "General Yang, one last question. Can you tell me the name of this arcane bow, and where you obtained it?"

Hearing this question, Yang Shengtian looked at the hundred or so arcane bows still circling Huang Xianlin, thought for a moment, and said:

"General Huang, I truly cannot answer that completely, because I myself do not know how this arcane bow came to be on me."

"How can General Yang not even know how his own weapon came into his possession? From what I can see, you are quite skilled at using this divine bow," Huang Xianlin said.

Yang Shengtian thought for a moment and said, "As far as I know, when I was about fifteen, I fell gravely ill and remained unconscious for almost a year before waking. When I woke, I had no memory of anything that had happened during the fifteen years from my childhood onward. From that point on, my memories begin only after I turned sixteen. My illness was cured by my present master. During that year of treatment, my parents saw that I remained unconscious and believed I would never wake again. My mother worried herself to death and passed away. After my mother died, my father still could not see me recover. In the end, on a moonless, windy night, he left a letter for my master and ran away from home. To this day, there has been no news of him. As for this enchanted bow, it appeared on my back after I recovered. I remember that on the nineteenth night after I woke, one night I suddenly felt severe pain in my back, pain so intense that even my master could not control it."

Yang Shengtian fell silent for a moment, then continued, "By the next day, without any treatment, the pain in my back had stopped on its own. But I felt as though something was always pressed against my back, which made me uneasy. So I reached back with my hand and felt a raised strip of flesh on my back, shaped like a bow. My master came to look and said this was an arcane bow sent to me by some unknown divine being. When it is not needed, this divine bow will attach itself to my back. But when the moment of crisis comes, as long as I summon it with my thoughts, it will suddenly fly from my back into my hand in the blink of an eye. And if I think of where I want the arrow to fly, the arcane bow will automatically send it there. As for its ability to transform into other arcane bows, that happened whenever I met many enemies on the battlefield and let my imagination run wild. Then it would change on its own. Only then did I understand that this arcane bow can, according to my thoughts, transform into countless identical bows. For example, if I direct my thoughts and want dozens of arcane bows to deal with the enemy together, the main arcane bow will automatically transform into the number I want, and it will shoot arrows in the manner I intend. In this way, the enemy can be defeated quickly. Since then, I have known how to use this arcane bow."

"So that is how it is." After hearing Yang Shengtian explain the bow's origin and how he had come to understand its use, Huang Xianlin asked again, "Then what is this bow called?"

Yang Shengtian said, "Because this bow moves with my thoughts, I call it the Bow of Desire, meaning a bow that obeys the heart's will."

No sooner had Yang Shengtian said this than he suddenly felt a headache come on again, and once more that aged voice rang in his mind:

"Yang Shengtian, why are you still not killing your opponent? Why are you still chatting with him? Are you waiting for your enemy to catch his breath before you strike? With the way you do things, how can you ever accomplish anything great?"

Pain crossed Yang Shengtian's face as he shook his head. "General Huang, everything you wanted to know, I have already told you. Now, make your move. I hope you die in battle against me, rather than standing there and letting me kill you. That way, whether for you or for me, there will still be some dignity left."