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outpostsofbabel · 7 months

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Demigods and Semi-devils, Chapter VII (III)

Mu Wanqing stared at him with wide eyes, hardly believing her ears. "W-what?" she asked shakily. "You're saying my husband is my brother?"

"Wan'er, do you know who your master is?" Duan Zhengchun asked. "She is your own mother. I...I'm your father."

Shocked, angry, and very pale, Mu Wanqing stamped her foot and cried: "I don't believe it! I don't! I-I don't believe it!"

There was a sudden soft sigh from outside the window. A woman's voice called: "Wan'er, let's go home!"

Mu Wanqing spun around. "Master!"

The window opened and just outside stood a middle-aged woman with a sharp face and slender eyebrows. She was very beautiful, although a mixture of stubborness and ferocity gleamed in her eyes.

Seeing his former lover suddenly make an appearance, Duan Zhenchun was shocked but delighted. "Hongmian, Hongmian, I...I've often thought of you all these years."

"Wan'er, get out of there!" Qin Hongmian said. "You shouldn't stay even a moment in the house of a fickle-hearted man like him."

Looking at their expressions, the chill in Mu Wanqing's heart grew deeper. "Master, h-he tricked me. He said you're my mother, and he said he's my...my father."

"Your mother died long ago, and your father is dead too," Qin Hongmian said.

Duan Zhengchun hurried over to the window. "Hongmian, come in," he said softly. "Let me look at you a while longer. Don't leave; stay here and let us be together forever."

Qin Hongmian's eyes brightened. "You said we can be together forever. Are you telling the truth?"

"Of course! Hongmian, not a day has passed where I did not think of you."

"And you are willing to part with Dao Baifeng?" Duan Zhengchun hesitated, looking pained. "If you truly feel pity for our daughter, then come with me. You are never to think of Dao Baifeng again, and never to come back here."

Listening to their conversation, Mu Wanqing's heart sank lower and lower. Her eyes brimmed with tears, so that the faces of Duan Zhengchun and her master were a blur. She knew that the two standing before her were her parents, as much as she refused to believe it was true. The feelings of the past few days, the dream of marrying Duan Yu... Now he had turned out to be her brother from a different mother, and her hopes of their growing old together, bonded for life like a pair of mandarin ducks, were going up in smoke.

"It's only that I am Lord Zhen'nan of Dali City," Duan Zhengchun was continuing in the same soft voice. "I am responsible for all things civil and military, and I can't leave - not even for a day."

"You said that eighteen years ago, and today, eighteen years later, you're still saying the same thing," Qin Hongmian said forcefully. "Duan Zhengchun, you fickle-hearted and base creature, I...I hate you so..."

Suddenly, the ringing sound of exchanged blows came from the eastern corner of the roof, followed shortly by the sound of blows from the western side. The voices of Gao Shengtai and Chu Wanli called in unison: "Assassins! Brothers, on guard at your positions! Make no rash moves."

"Wan'er, aren't you coming?" Qin Hongmian shouted.

"Coming!" Mu Wanqing cried, leaping out of the window and into the arms of the woman who was both mother and master to her.

"Hongmian, are you really leaving me like this?" Duan Zhengchun called miserably.

Qin Hongmian's tones suddenly became gentle. "Brother Chun, you've been a great lord for years. Surely you've had enough. Come with me, and from today I will listen to your every word. I will never scold you or hit you. Look at your adorable daughter - how can you not cherish her?"

In a rush of spirits, Duan Zhengchun called: "Yes, I'll come with you!" Qin Hongmian stretched out her hand to him in delight.

Suddenly, an icy voice called from behind her. "Sister-in-arms, you...you've been taken in by him again. He'll humour you for a few days, then come back here to be a lord again."

Duan Zhengchun's heart jolted. "Baobao, it's you! You're here too."

Mu Wanqing turned, seeing that the speaker was a woman in a green silk blouse. It was Mrs Zhong from the Valley of Ten Thousand Dangers, the Beautiful Yaksha Gan Baobao. Behind her were four other people. One was Madam Ye, another was Yunzhong He, and the third was the Crocodile God of the South Seas, who had clearly returned from wherever he had gone. The fourth, to her great surprise, was Duan Yu. One of the Crocodile God's big hands was locked around Duan Yu's neck, looking as though he could snap it any moment. "My husband, what has happened?" Mu Wanqing called.

The Crocodile God had gone into Duan Yu's room while he was still in a daze and recovering from his injury, carrying him outside. He had never been poisoned, and as the lethality of Mu Wanqing's arrows was in the poison, rather than in the arrows themselves, he was little hurt. Shocked into alertness by his abduction, he had overheard some of the conversation between his father, Mu Wanqing, and Qin Hongmian - not everything, but enough to understand the meaning. On hearing Mu Wanqing call him her husband, he felt a pang in his heart. "My sister, from now on the love between us will be as that of siblings," he said. "It will...it will be the same."

"No it won't!" Mu Wanqing said hotly. "You are the first man who has seen my face."

But she knew that since she and he shared the same father in Duan Zhengchun, they were half-siblings and could never marry. If anyone on earth had dared to throw an obstacle in the way of her marriage, she could have killed them with her arrows. But now, the obstacle in her way was nothing less than fate itself. No matter how skilled she was or how many techniques she knew, it was something that could not change. She suddenly felt as though everything around her had turned to ash. With a kick of her legs, she fled.

"Wan'er, where are you going?" Qin Hongmian cried.

Mu Wanqing was past caring about even her master now. "You've wronged me, I'm ignoring you," she called back, picking up speed.

A soldier in the palace compound tried to block her way, shouting: "Who's that?" Mu Wanqing shot her arrows at him, hitting him in the throat. Her feet never stopped moving, and before long she was swallowed up in darkness.

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