Iron Snow Clouds

Chapter 2973 (Two Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy Three) Black

Li Pingrun shuddered as he thought about his future.

There was a stick of incense in the incense burner that was a little crooked. He remembered that his master had told him that when using this magic, the incense must not be crooked, not a single stick. It was just like being a human being, one must keep the body upright at all times.

He stared at the incense in the incense burner for a moment, and wanted to put the incense stick in the right position according to his master's instructions, but he was afraid to touch the incense stick with his hands, fearing that he would contaminate the incense stick when he touched it. He even imagined that the poison had already spread from his feet to his whole body, including his hands. He wondered if his hands would turn the incense stick into a black poisonous incense stick because of touching it.

Li Pingrun wanted to cry. He thought: Now that the incense is crooked, even if I reach out to touch it with the intention of straightening it, will it still be stained by the poison on my hand? I have taken the wrong path, will I stain the right path even if I want to adjust my route and take the right path? If a person is not clean, will there be no place in his life where he can be cleansed?

He thought of the sentence he mentioned in the previous "conversation" with his master: "If I die now because I stop, will I be dyed black by the poisonous road? Therefore, even if I become a corpse, it can only be a black corpse?" He continued: "Master, is it really like this? Can I only be a black corpse? That corpse is full of venom, and that venom... will that venom control me, so that as long as the sun comes out a little bit, my corpse will become invisible to others? Then, will this venom-filled corpse of mine never appear in the sun again?

Having said this, Li Pingrun gave a bitter smile. He seemed to have heard the answer given to him by his master, and that answer seemed to be full of sarcasm.

"Yeah..." Li Pingrun said, "That's right... Now that it has come to this, why do I still have so many extravagant hopes? I am a person who is full of venom, a person who is poisonous myself, why do I still have the extravagant hope that I may appear in the sun after death? To be honest, when I was alive, when I was walking on that road stained black by venom, when did my heart ever appear in the sun? Never! Never... The day I walked on the road stained black by venom, my heart was already black! So black that I couldn't even see the sun. Maybe in the sun, I have always been just a body with a human appearance controlled by a black heart..."

Li Pingrun still wanted to cry, but he smiled bitterly. He thought: In this world, people who cry should have soft hearts, right? What about my heart? It has been stained black by the poison. If it is stained black, must it have become hard? Then why should I cry? But why did I cry all those years ago? Is this as if it is telling me that I can still be saved? But... is there really a way to save me? Can I really be saved? I can't even tell what color my heart is, whether it is soft or hard... If I continue to walk along the wrong path, will I die on the road? Or have I already died, from the day I set foot on that wrong path?

However, at this moment, Li Pingrun thought about what his master had once told him, and still wanted to reach out and straighten the crooked incense stick.

(End of this chapter)