Mó Wúqióng remained motionless, eyelids closed, as the icy wind seemed to whisper words from another world. He didn't need to open his eyes to feel that the world had changed around him. Or perhaps it was he who had changed, imperceptibly, like a mountain slowly eroding in silence.
He saw again the face of the old monk, marked by the years, weathered by wind and silence. This monk who lived alone, at the top of a misty mountain in Guizhou, between sky and earth, between the visible and the invisible. He had handed him that staff — a simple gnarled branch, soaked in incense and centuries — and said, without insistence, as if revealing a forgotten secret:
"First, learn to endure. The rest will come."
Those words, seemingly simple, had remained in him like a slow-growing seed, rooted deep in his flesh.
He remembered the days spent in that half-ruined monastery, sweeping dust, reciting godless prayers, listening to silence — that silence louder than a thousand screams. He had killed himself surviving, learning to want nothing. To simply breathe. Not to kill.
He also remembered the cold, the hunger, his body trembling with exhaustion but held upright by sheer will. He remembered the pain, constant, indifferent, which eventually became a faithful friend. The monk had taught him to face it. To stop pushing it away. To say: "You are here. Then be here." And to go on, despite everything.
"Fear comes from resistance," he had said one evening, as they shared a bowl of cold rice.
And Mó Wúqióng had understood. He had understood that the world doesn't break you. It reveals you. That it isn't chains that make a prisoner, but the refusal to accept them.
He had accepted. The grief. The pain. The blood. And above all, he had accepted the five years that followed.
Five years of missions. Of silent killings. Of men drowned in their own blood, of women with eyes full of secrets, of children sometimes awakened by the dry snap of a broken neck. There had been no hatred in his actions. No joy, no remorse. Just the act. Pure. Clean. Necessary.
He didn't kill for revenge. He didn't kill for pleasure.
He killed because it was what his karma demanded of him. A strange form of redemption. Each life taken, he took it with eyes wide open. Without looking away. Each death was a prayer — a silent offering to something greater than himself. He had never fled his actions. He had absorbed them.
Some think an assassin withers away from killing. He, on the contrary, had awakened. With every life he took, he became more aware of who he was. Not a monster. But a man. A man in all the complexity of the word: capable of love, of hate, of betrayal, of forgiveness — and of bearing, without faltering, the weight of his choices.
He had seen misery, corruption, cruelty. He had killed tyrants, traitors, innocents too sometimes, by mistake or by order. He had never justified himself. He had accepted.
Because that, ultimately, was the heart of his path: acceptance.
He no longer fled from anything. And it was that strength that had allowed him to return. Here. Before this grave. Before this past.
With a clear heart, he finally understood. He wasn't as empty as he had believed. It wasn't just the need to be free or purified that had guided him all these years. He had told himself that story to keep moving forward, to give form to shapeless rage, to bear the unbearable.
But in the silence of the cemetery, in the cold wind brushing the mute graves, the truth struck him like a painful revelation: blood had never been an end. Only a path. A rough trail, paved with shadows, abandoned bodies, and muffled silences.
Killing had been a flight. A way not to think. A way not to feel.
He had killed coldly, efficiently, without flinching, believing he was freeing himself from his chains. But now, he understood that every blade he had plunged into a man's flesh had been a muffled cry. Not against others, but against himself. He had fought not to restore order, nor to deliver justice, but to push away a world he could no longer bear to face. He didn't want to see the wound. He didn't want to feel the child in him still screaming, back there, in the flames of his home, in his mother's lifeless arms.
"It wasn't hatred for others. It was mine."
He had never regretted the dead. Not a single one. And yet, tonight, he saw them all again. The greedy merchant, the cruel officer, the treacherous courtesan, the fallen monk. He remembered each of their faces, the fear in their eyes, the last breath torn from them. He felt no pity. But he understood. At last.
He understood that killing hadn't healed the wound. And still, he regretted nothing. Because those years of darkness had led him here. They had given him a name, a strength, a discipline. They had forged his silence, sharpened his will. And through them, he had learned acceptance.
He was not a monster. He was not a hero. He was a man. A man standing tall.
From now on, he no longer needed to flee his pain by slicing through that of others. He would no longer kill to appease a ghost. He would kill because the world was made that way. Because some men are walls, chains, obstacles. And he no longer had time to go around them.
He would eliminate them. Without passion. Without hatred. Just out of necessity.
And along the way, he would love. Perhaps for the first time.
He would love those who offered him their hand. Those who wouldn't run upon discovering his scars. Those who wouldn't try to save him, but to understand him. He would walk beside them without fear, without a mask.
Because now, he was freeing himself. He was choosing himself. He was no longer trying to atone. He was moving forward. And that was enough.
He opened his eyes. The sky had filled with pale, timid stars, as if even the heavens hesitated to shine upon a place so heavy with memory. He stood up, slowly, like a man returning from a long sleep. Every muscle tense, every bone cracking, but his soul lighter.
Around him, the cemetery stretched out like a sea of mute shadows. Worn headstones, leaning crosses, wild grasses. Everything breathed of endings, of oblivion. And yet, it was here that he was reborn.
He walked slowly among the graves, as if relearning how to inhabit his own body. He stopped before each stone, reading the faded names, the broken dates. There were no tears. Just a strange peace, cold, but real.
The rain had stopped, but the damp still clung to his skin. He felt, deep within, something breaking away. An old resentment. A fossilized fragment of hatred. An inner voice that still whispered: "You must make them pay."
But he owed nothing to anyone anymore. He had paid. In pain, in solitude, in blood. He no longer needed revenge.
Because that had never been the reason he killed. He had killed to cleanse his karma. To free the invisible chains that bound him since the night of the tragedy. To no longer be a victim. To become once again the author of his own life.
He regretted nothing. He had accepted every one of his actions, every death, every silence after the blade. What he had been… he still was. But differently.
The past was no longer a weapon pointed at his temple. It had become ground. Hard, rough ground, but stable.
He turned one last time toward his parents' grave. He knelt, touched the cold stone, and whispered: "I carried your death like a flame. It did not consume me. It lit my way."
Then he placed his hand on the wet earth. He dug his fingers into it. As if to root his promise there. He would never run again. He no longer needed to.
He closed his eyes. Breathed. And in that breath, he placed his past beneath his feet. Not as an enemy. Not as a burden. But as a faithful shadow. Always present. Never threatening. His past no longer guided him. It followed.
He knew more deaths would come. He knew more battles awaited. He sought neither peace nor war. He sought clarity. Righteousness. The exact act at the right moment.
And in his shadow, where his pains slept, a murmur followed him, calm and constant: "I remember. But I am no longer that."
He stood. Took a step. Then another.
And without looking back, Mó Wúqióng left the cemetery.
His footsteps echoed in the night like the heartbeat of a man brought back to life. He didn't know where he was going. But he was going, free.