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Blind Ten Years, I Leave the Saint for Mountains and Seas
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완결
On the day of my wedding to Patrick Henson, the Golden Saint. Selene, the Demon Sovereign, worked her art in front of everyone, melting the bridal robes off my body inch by inch, leaving me bare and exposed beneath the eyes of the whole immortal order. I could not bear the shame. I threw myself against a pillar, and though my ruined body clung to life, I was left blind for good. Everyone in the immortal order knew it: Patrick grieved over what had happened to me, and hated Selene, who had done the evil, with everything in him. He seized Selene and forced her, day after day, to kneel before my bed and atone. Ten full years, without a single break.
챕터 (4)
第1章
The day I wed the Golden Saint, Patrick Henson.
In front of the whole immortal order, Demon Sovereign Selene worked her spell and melted my bridal robes away inch by inch, leaving me bare beneath the eyes of every immortal there.
I could not bear the shame. I threw myself at a pillar, and though my broken body clung to life, my sight was gone for good.
Everyone in the immortal order knew it: Patrick grieved for what had been done to me, and he loathed Selene for the evil she had wrought.
He seized her, and made her kneel at my bedside in penance day after day, for ten full years, without a single lapse.
The demon race's young lord snatched her away again and again, and each time Patrick took her back, he would chain her to the stone pillar in my chamber and whip her.
Selene sobbed and wailed, on and on.
I could not stand it. And when I begged him to spare her, my eyes saw light again.
Patrick was pinning Selene beneath him, the rims of his eyes red:
"You dragged Ruthie into this state, and still you dream of running. Truly the demon race has not a shred of a human heart."
But I read the shape of his lips, and what they truly said was:
"Sel, everywhere I have been, has he been there too?"
I was about to cry out and demand an answer when a wave of dizziness took me, and a screen of light flared in the air:
"Heavens, I can't watch. This is the very moment Ruth Pruitt walks in on the two of them, enrages Patrick, and ends up flayed and picked apart, bone from bone."
"Poor Ruthie. Her skin was made into a human-skin lantern. Patrick loved her all along, and when he couldn't have her he destroyed her with his own hands, then used Selene to make sure Ruthie could never enter the wheel of rebirth!"
1.
A chill ran through me, and my eyes fixed, beyond my will, on the two of them tangled together by the stone pillar.
Patrick heard the faint stir and was on his feet in an instant:
"Don't be afraid, Ruthie."
He walked toward me slowly, his hand reaching out as if to steady me without quite touching:
"Selene is beyond all forgiveness. She humiliated you on our wedding day, and these ten years of the whip in penance are nothing but what she brought upon herself!"
"Now the demon race stirs up trouble again and again, one more crime on her name. Will you take up the whip yourself and deal with her, to let out the hatred in your heart?"
The light screen flared up again, dense with words:
"He isn't avenging Ruthie at all! He's suspected for ages that she got her sight back!"
"Here it comes again, steering her into raising her hand. The moment she truly punishes Selene, he can turn around and tell the world the Saint has a cruel and violent nature!"
The fingers at my side clenched all at once, a bone-deep cold creeping up through me.
I kept up the lost, helpless look, let my gaze drift on purpose, and gave a timid shake of my head:
"I... I can't see. I don't dare touch the instruments. Whatever my husband decides is best."
Patrick gazed at me quietly for a long moment. Then, as if setting his suspicion aside, he lifted a hand and brushed lightly over the crown of my hair:
"Ruthie has a kind heart. Have it your way then. I won't force you to touch such filth."
I kept my eyes lowered, and inside me everything was clear.
He wasn't yielding to me. He was only testing me.
Patrick turned his head and gave an order toward the door:
"My wife has just had a fright and her strength is low. Fetch a bowl of the soothing restorative tonic."
A maidservant answered, and in a moment she returned carrying a bowl of pitch-black brew.
In the instant his back was to me, Patrick took the bowl and let a drop of blood from Selene's fingertip fall into it.
The movement was hidden past all seeing, immortal art veiling it, and no one else caught a thing.
"This is bad. Nothing curses a Saint's pure blood like demon filth! Drink this bowl down and it will force-taint the heroine's bloodline, cutting off for a time her spirit-vein bond with the Pruitt maternal house!"
"But not drinking gives her away as guilty, and drinking is severing her own road back. Forward or back, it's a dead end!"
I stared at the tonic, the demon aura shimmering off it, my throat tightening.
My elder brother came to visit me every five days. If I drank, there might still be some turn for the better. If I didn't, I'd give myself away on the spot.
I lifted the bowl and drank it down in one breath.
The moment the tonic reached my belly, the light screen crashed into my eyes:
"The cruelest part is still to come. In her one moment of hopeless despair, the heroine reaches out to her family, and calls for her own elder brother, Tyler Pruitt!"
"But Tyler's every thought, every glance, belongs to Selene. To protect the Demon Sovereign, he turns around and sells out his own sister's whereabouts, pushing Ruthie into the place where she dies with his own hands!"
"And that's not all. In the end the whole Pruitt family falls, a thousand years of legacy destroyed, all of it the tragedy Tyler brings about, giving ground step by step for Selene, betraying his own kin from within and without."
A shudder went through me, and something roared inside my chest.
Tyler?
The elder brother who had been gentle and courteous since childhood, who protected me in everything, whom the whole world praised?
So all that warmth had been a lie.
So the fall of the Pruitts, and my wretched death in my last life, all of it had come from the brother I trusted most.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, forcing every trace of shock and hatred back down.
On my face I kept the soft, dazed, know-nothing look, not daring to let a single thing show.
"Ah, if only the Pruitt Ancestor were still here. He'd surely punish that monster Tyler and protect Ruthie."
In a flash, the one road to life rose up in my mind.
A hundred years ago, the demon race threw the three realms into chaos, and to steady the peace of those realms, my Pruitt family gave everything.
Among us was an Ancestor whose cultivation reached the heavens and whose lifespan had no end. He overdrew that cultivation by force and sank into the forbidden rear-mountain ground, into a century of sleep.
That cold, proud, solitary Ancestor was the one in the whole Pruitt family who cherished me most, who favored me above all others.
If I could only wake the Ancestor from his hundred years of sleep, perhaps I could defy the heavens and change my fate, and break free of this destiny that had death written all through it.
第2章
The demon energy was still crawling through my meridians. My fingertips traced the rim of the cup, slow and idle, my eyes as blank as ever.
Patrick watched me for a moment, and the wariness in his gaze eased just slightly.
Then he turned and left with Selene, leaving a single maid behind to keep watch in the hall.
I lifted a hand to rub my temple and said softly,
"It's stuffy in here. I'd like to go out and get some air. Fetch me an outer robe, would you."
The maid bowed in answer, but her feet didn't move an inch.
"Careful! She has no intention of leaving. She's still watching your every move!"
"Patrick has sound-listening arrays laid all over this immortal mountain. Any unusual move you make will reach his ears at once!"
I forced down the urge to rise and stay where I was, sitting on the couch, pretending to fumble at the things around me.
Months ago, when I first sensed my brother's heart drifting, I had already planted a tracing-shadow spell on him.
Whenever he touched demon energy, purple demon marks would linger over his body, visible to no one but me.
Moments later, the light-screen erupted again.
"Sickening. Tyler's already slipped into the estate. He's already met Selene in secret."
I held my breath and let it come clean and slow, and I could just make out the broken pieces of their conversation.
Selene's voice was smooth and sweet.
"On our wedding day I humiliated your sister in front of everyone. Do you really not hate me for it, not even a little?"
Tyler's tone was flat.
"Gods and demons share one world to begin with. There's no need to draw such clean lines between old grudges."
Selene gave a soft laugh, testing him.
"And if I killed her now?"
"I know you have no choice in this."
"I can clear the path for you. I'll let you end her with your own hands, and finish this tangle once and for all."
Not long after, Tyler pushed open the door and walked straight into the inner hall.
"Don't be afraid, Ruthie. Too long shut up in that courtyard is bad for you. Let me take you out to clear your head."
His voice was gentle, exactly as it always had been. I laid my hand carefully on the wrist he held out and let him lead me, step by step, toward the rear mountain.
The whole way he was endlessly patient, steering me clear of loose stones and thorns, never letting a single thing seem out of place. But I watched the purple marks coiling around him, and I did not lower my guard for a moment.
When we reached the sealed mountain gate where the Ancestor slept, and no one else was near, the gentleness dropped from Tyler's face completely.
"Ruthie, look how vast this world is. Gods and demons were always meant to live together, and the demon race is struggling now at every turn. Doesn't that shame you?"
I lifted my head and stared at him, playing lost and helpless.
"Brother, I can't see. Have you forgotten? That day, Selene—"
Before I could finish, Tyler's hand shot up and a loud slap landed hard across my face.
"You were too greedy. You had to have the Golden Saint all to yourself. The Golden Saint saves all the world, and Sel is part of that world too. What right do you have to want the bright moon hanging high above, shining down on you alone?"
The blow threw me off balance, and I stumbled and fell hard onto the rough stone ground. Warm blood welled up at once and dripped down between my fingers.
Tyler acted as if he couldn't see the wound at all. He gripped my throat, cold.
"Sel is the finest woman in this world. I want you to swear, right now, to forgive her, and never to stand against her. Break this oath and let the heavens' lightning strike you, let these mountains crush you, with no release through all your lives to come."
The blood in my palm kept seeping into the ground, and deep in the sealed sanctum something began to tremble. I bit through the pain.
"The Ancestor lies sleeping here. How dare you force me to swear an oath in this place—"
Tyler looked down at me, wretched on the ground, and a thin, cold smile curved his mouth.
"So what if the Ancestor doted on you? A century ago he burned through his own source to seal the demon race, and he's been sunk in sleep ever since. His power might as well be gone. I want you to swear it in the Ancestor's name."
The light-screen scrolled wildly.
"Whatever you do, don't give in! Once you make a Heavenly Dao oath, any attempt to strike back will be turned against you by the Heavenly Dao!"
"The tracing-shadow spell Ruthie planted before is getting brighter and brighter. The more Tyler contacts the demon race, the clearer the mark becomes!"
The grip on my throat pressed harder, and the darkness swam up before my eyes, but I still clenched my teeth and would not yield.
Seeing that I wouldn't cooperate, Tyler's expression turned crueler, and he raised his foot to grind it down on the bleeding back of my hand.
In that instant, the tremor beneath the ground suddenly surged, and the runes that had been dull and lightless drank in my blood and, bit by bit, began to glow with golden light.
Tyler didn't react at all, as if he'd noticed nothing.
The maid came running in a panic, and a flicker of unease crossed Tyler's eyes. He turned and left.
I lay on the loose stones, curling my fingers through the pain, and inside I was perfectly clear.
So what if the Ancestor never woke. I couldn't gamble on fate, but I had laid my own way out long ago.
The demon marks on Tyler, and every single thing he had done to me today, had all been sealed and recorded by the tracing-shadow spell.
When it all came to light one day, I would drag him to the execution ground and see him torn to pieces.
第3章
Two handmaids held me up as I inched back toward my chambers, and the moment I crossed into the courtyard I ran straight into Patrick, who had doubled back.
His white robes were spotless, not a trace of scheming on his face, and he only soothed me in a low voice:
"I heard just now that you were frightened in the rear mountain. The whole Pruitt family went off traveling these past days, none of them anywhere near the immortal mountain, or I'd have demanded Tyler answer for hurting you."
"No one can come see you for a while, so just rest easy here in the hall. I'll handle everything."
He said it so gently, so full of care, as if he truly feared I might feel lonely and lost.
The light-screen flooded my sight in an instant, every word cutting to the heart:
"Lies! The Pruitts aren't traveling at all. He and Tyler joined hands to lure them out of the ancestral ground, ready to wipe them out in one sweep!"
"Patrick is deliberately cutting off every hope Ruth has, leaving her isolated with no one to turn to, so she can only cling to him."
I lowered my eyes to hide the hatred surging in them and nodded meekly.
"Thank you for telling me, husband."
Brow lowered, obedient, still the crippled Saint who could not see and could only depend on him.
Patrick looked at me for a long moment, his gaze complicated, and seeing me so docile and quiet, he turned and took up a brush at my side.
Candlelight wavered. Two shadows stood shoulder to shoulder.
Certain I was blind, they bent their heads and wrote without a shred of caution, every word a killing intent.
"Tyler thinks he's fit to covet you? He told me himself, wait until the Pruitts are traveling, lay a spirit-binding array to close in, slaughter the whole Pruitt line in one sweep, root out any future threat. Truly foolish."
A few short lines crushed the last sliver of hope I'd kept for my brother.
So that was it. Tyler's so-called letting go of old grudges was only a filthy bargain struck with Patrick.
He was trading the lives of the entire family just to buy Selene's safety.
"So cruel. They don't just want to kill them, they want to wipe out the Pruitt spirit-veins for good!"
"If the heroine doesn't get word out, the Pruitts really are going to die to the last one today!"
I dug my fingertips hard into the old wound in my palm, the sharp pain keeping me clear.
I could endure my own humiliation. I could endure being schemed against.
But I could not stand by and watch my whole family perish, buried in a death trap over these two people's affair.
Even if the road ahead was a trap, even if one move meant ruin beyond return, I had to get word out.
I pressed every feeling down and slipped out of the outer hall as if nothing were wrong.
When the night was deep and still, I stole silently out of my chambers and crushed the message-jade token.
The token had barely lit up when a cold voice sounded behind me, without a shred of warmth:
"Ruth, where do you think you're going?"
My whole body went rigid, and I turned slowly.
Patrick stood beneath the moonlight, his white robes like frost, nothing left in his eyes but pure cold and mockery.
He came toward me step by step, his gaze locked on my clear, seeing eyes:
"Your eyes healed a long time ago, didn't they?"
"As long as you let me cripple your eyes and cut out your tongue, you're still my only wife."
He didn't need my answer. The faint light of the token faded, and the message failed.
In the next breath, spirit-light blazed on every side.
Elders and disciples of every immortal-order house came at the sound, ringing me in layer after layer, trapping me at the center.
Under all those eyes, Selene walked slowly out, her face pale:
"Elders, judge for yourselves. For ten years the Pruitt Saint has nursed her grudge, resenting that the immortal order failed to kill me back then and avenge her. Now she consorts with the demon race and sends secret messages, meaning to draw the demons into our lands and destroy the entire immortal order!"
The whole ground erupted, voices roaring.
Some shook their heads in shock, refusing to believe the ever-gentle Saint would betray the order and side with demons, but the doubting voices were few.
Patrick raised a hand to press down the clamor, his eyes dark, then lifted it again in one sharp motion, sending it into my meridians.
The next second his face went cold, full of grief:
"There truly is demon energy inside you! Selene is locked away by me, so you must have made contact with other demons!"
"The immortal order's law stands above all, and good and evil cannot share the same sky. Even if you are my wife, I cannot bend the rule for you."
His voice choked, as if he had made his decision:
"From this day, you are cast into Penitence Cliff, imprisoned for life, never to step one foot beyond the forbidden ground."
In the dead silence, I suddenly lifted my eyes:
"Cannot bend the rule? Patrick! Before you fix a charge on me, go ask your own flesh and blood whether it agrees!"
The whole ground fell dead still at once. My gaze went straight to Selene, whose face had drained white in an instant:
"Selene is with child, and what she carries in her belly is your own flesh and blood!"
Every face changed, an uproar shaking the sky.
Patrick's pupils shrank, all the calm in his eyes shattering at once, his spirit power raging so wildly it nearly tore the air around him apart.
He wrenched out his sword, the blade pointed straight at my heart:
"Utter nonsense! Today I'll cut down you, this demon-consorting creature!"
Just as the blade was about to run through my throat, a beam of immortal light plunged straight down from the sky and forced the long sword from his hand.
"Such grand authority, Golden Saint Henson. Since when is my Pruitt Saint yours to cut down?"
第4章
Patrick Henson's sword hand shook violently, the murderous intent boiling off him crushed flat by that vast surge of immortal power.
The uproar cut off all at once, and every elder and disciple turned toward the source.
High in the clouds stood a figure, austere and unmistakable in bearing. It was the Pruitt enforcement elder.
Victor Cobb's cold gaze swept the gathering.
"Quite the display of authority, Golden Saint. My Pruitt family has quelled demons for generations. Since when does it fall to you to pass judgment on your own and publicly cut down our Saint?"
Patrick Henson swept the fury from his eyes in an instant, and not a trace of the panic of a man exposed showed on his face.
"You misunderstand, Elder. Ruth Pruitt is tainted with demon energy and consorts with the demon race. The law of the immortal order is clear. I merely handled it fairly. As for what she said just now about a child, that is her demon nature run wild, slandering at random."
Before anyone could raise a question, he spoke again, bent on scrubbing himself and Selene clean.
"Selene carries a secret art of the demon race within her body, no doubt planted to sow discord inside the immortal order. It is no matter of flesh and blood. Immortals and demons cannot coexist. How could I ever break the very law I uphold?"
The light-screen flared with rage.
"Unbelievable. In one second he's turned a private affair scandal into demon-race sorcery. He's probably still got no idea Selene really got pregnant on the sly to claw her way up."
Sure enough, the faces of the immortal order softened all around, and the eyes turning to Patrick Henson filled again with respect and sympathy.
I stood quietly inside the ring of them, and by now there was nothing left worth pretending.
Slowly I raised my eyes, clear and untroubled, and looked straight at him.
"Handled it fairly? Patrick Henson, do you dare say aloud, in front of everyone, where the demon blood in my body came from?"
"You mixed Selene's demon blood into my tonic with your own hands and forced me to drink it. You deliberately severed the spirit-veins between me and the Pruitt maternal house, cutting off every outside ally I had."
"You knew I was innocent, and still you laid your trap step by step. You wrote that letter of slaughter on purpose, left the flaw on purpose to bait me into trying to save my family, then seized me in front of everyone and named my crime."
The faces around us changed, and the murmuring rose again.
Patrick Henson's eyes went cold in a flash. Never once had he imagined I saw through every hidden calculation of his so completely.
Just as he moved to speak in his own defense, a familiar figure came hurrying in.
Tyler Pruitt strode into the circle and bowed to the assembled elders.
"Elders, see clearly. My sister has been blind for ten years, her heart knotted with grief until her mind has long since broken. Now that she is touched by demon thought, her delusions have only multiplied. Nothing she says can be taken as truth."
He turned to me, and there was not the smallest warmth of a brother in his eyes.
"Ruthie, admit your fault and know your wrong. Stop these mad accusations against the Golden Saint. Do not drag the Pruitt family down with you."
The familiar brother, the familiar gentleness, and beneath it all rotted through to the bone.
I looked at him, and a soft laugh slipped out of me.
I raised my hand and pointed straight at Tyler Pruitt's heart.
"I'm delusional?"
"Then the demon marks that won't wash off my brother's body—are those my delusion too?"
As the words landed, everyone followed my gaze to Tyler Pruitt.
Only I could see them: the purple demon marks coiling thick and glaring around him, layer upon layer.
Victor Cobb's eyes flashed, and he raised his hand at once to cast the verifying art.
In a breath the marks on Tyler Pruitt were laid bare before them all, plain in everyone's sight.
The whole gathering erupted.
"Tyler Pruitt has been consorting with the demon race?"
"All those times he came up the mountain—it turns out he wasn't visiting his sister at all, but meeting the Demon Sovereign in secret."
"No wonder the Pruitt family has been struck by so many strange things lately. There was a traitor inside all along."
Tyler Pruitt's face went bloodless, his footing stumbling, his eyes wild with panic and disgrace.
Patrick Henson stood where he was, watching me stand cold and resolute, and his heart of the Dao shook violently.
He had thought me a plaything in his palm, never dreaming I had long since seen through every selfish scheme and every drop of his venom.
There was not a shred of guilt in him, only a churning dread run deep and the fury of a man shamed.
I held every secret of his that could never see daylight. As long as I lived, the name he had built with such care would hang forever over the edge of a cliff.
Victor Cobb looked at the wretched figure of Tyler Pruitt, his face grave, and gave his order in a low, hard voice.
"Tyler Pruitt has colluded with the demon race and betrayed his own. The proof is beyond doubt. Take this man into custody and question him without mercy."
Immortal-order disciples surged forward at once, and the chains wound around Tyler Pruitt's wrists.
Tyler Pruitt shook all over, struggling in blind, frantic terror.
At that very moment a Pruitt cultivator burst through the barrier, soaked in blood, his voice torn with despair.
"Elder, something terrible has happened."