Once he left the Clan Hall, Yu Sai immediately went back to his house.
Although the elders had tried to keep word from spreading, things eventually began to leak out, especially when, later that afternoon, they canceled most of their patrols and ordered many of their Gu Masters who had been sent out to turn back to the village.
Rumors of the other clans attacking were the first to arise; after all, that was the natural conclusion many of them would draw. However, it soon became evident that the other clans were not attacking and so the discussion went to other places. A fifth Myriad Beast King wolf? Some other kind of calamity that was near the village?
Or, as some of them considered, a demonic Gu Master.
But those were all rumors for now. Where were they going to get answers from?
Yu Sai, for his part, stayed in his house, trying to forget everything that happened. They certainly weren't going to get anything from him.
It had indeed been more brutal than anything he had seen during the wolf tide.
At least during the wolf tide, they had been able to fight back.
But before an enemy like that, not just him, they had all been powerless. 'Rank 4, huh?' he thought to himself. He had always known that he was worthless in the grand scheme of things, but it had been one thing to know it and another thing to have felt it like that.
He lay there on the floor, occasionally shivering like a puppy and at other times as still as a statue. He had not eaten anything since the morning, nor did he have any appetite to spur him to do so.
He didn't even notice when Li Mei walked in. "Yu Sai," she said, noticing his state with shock. "Your clothes, they're covered in blood!"
Yu Sai looked down at his clothes. Right. They were.
The blood of his comrades. He had only known those people for barely a day, and yet... he could not forget their faces.
He had been so entranced by the shock of all that had happened that he had neglected to wash himself. "Right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get the floor dirty," he said, apologizing before he got up.
"Forget the floor!" Li Mei said. "What on earth happened to you?" Her eyes were filled with worry, though that only seemed to paradoxically aggravate Yu Sai further.
"It's all fine," Yu Sai said, uninterested while pushing her away.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Li Mei asked.
Maybe it was the near-death experience that did it, but Yu Sai no longer felt that he could keep his feelings in check. So what if Li Mei laughed at him or told him that the two of them couldn't be together?
He had nearly died.
There was no guarantee that the next day would come in this world. He might as well go out with it.
"What I mean to say is, we're just friends, right?" he asked.
"Yes, we are," Li Mei said, confused. "Doesn't that mean we can share things with each other?"
"But the thing is," Yu Sai said, "I want to be more than friends with you, Li Mei."
"Yu Sai..." Li Mei stiffened.
"Yes, I know that you love Fang Yuan," Ye Zan said. "And I know that I can't hold a candle to him. However, I also... I think I'd feel even more like a worthless loser than I actually am if I never got my feelings across. I've loved you, even if I know that you don't return those feelings to me."
Li Mei clasped her hands over her mouth. These were the words that she had been longing to hear for some time. But where was all of this reluctance coming from?
"Yu Sai, Yu Sai!" Li Mei felt the same way about him. "I also love you... but the thing is, I never said anything because you always told me that love was a waste of time, that you would never want to get married because it was too much of a drag. So, I kept quiet."
Yu Sai looked at her oddly. "Wait, what do you mean? I thought you loved Fang Yuan?"
"I used to have a crush on Fang Yuan," Li Mei replied. "But that was a long time ago, back during our school days. I've seen what he's done and... I know that he isn't the right person for me, no matter how heroic he is." She tapped her chest. "I've fallen for another man. There's another person here in my heart. I've truly fallen for another one by the name of Yu Sai."
The two of them embraced, Li Mei not caring for the bloodstains on Yu Sai's robes.
"Now, tell me what happened," Li Mei asked. Yu Sai began narrating things. He tried to keep his voice straight and to keep a poker face like he had before the village elders.
However, he found that his facade soon broke under Li Mei's warm embrace, and he was bawling like a small child. Li Mei, however, did not rebuke him or shove him away. Instead, she only embraced him more tightly and wiped away his tears.
"Don't worry. Don't worry," she said. "What's important is that you returned home safe to me. And whatever happens in the future, we'll go ahead and try to tackle it together."
***
"We've gotten a response!" the House Spirit announced to Bai Ning Bing and Fang Yuan. The Hunter and Tracker puppets had returned, drawing a map on a piece of parchment where they had spotted the traces of the demonic Gu Masters.
It had taken them four hours to find the demonic Gu Masters. They were resting near an area by a pond, some distance away from Gu Yue village's normal routes.
"How many of them are there?" Fang Yuan asked.
"Three. One Rank 4 and two Rank 3 Gu Masters."
Yu Sai had said as such, but Fang Yuan wanted to be sure before going out into battle.
Bai Ning Bing was pacing back and forth near a hallway. She was restless, itching for a good fight. "Do you intend to take the gu house with you?"
"Hmm..." Fang Yuan considered things. Unless there was an Immortal backing these three, there was a low likelihood that they could deceive their methods. And taking the Gu House out was somewhat of a risk that he would like to avoid. "No. I'm confident we can deal with them on our own."
"Then let's head out!"
Zuo Chen was lounging near a pond. It was one of the few areas atop this mountain that still had some greenery- possibly because the local topography (a hill was near this pond) had shielded it from the frost.
'What kind of attack could do this kind of damage?' he wondered to himself. They said that it was a demonic Gu Master who had caused so much of the mountain to be frozen over, but he had never seen an attack like this before. If anything, the actual blow must've been far greater than what he was seeing, merely because a good portion of the ice had melted.
Zuo Lin and Zuo Ming were out scouting the area, but were still close by if they needed to group together to attack.
"Hmph... what's this?"