Li Hao remembered!

Li family did have a sword… one sword.

He wasn’t sure if what he remembered could be called a sword because it didn’t look like one.

But Li Hao knew that was it! He felt surer than he had ever been in his life that this was the truth.

When he was young, Li Hao’s father had placed a sword-shaped jade pendant around his neck.

“This is the Starry Sky Sword,” his father had sternly said. “It has been passed down from generations in the Li family. Pass it to your child in the future. Don’t forget that this is a sword and not mere jade.”

His father had appeared very serious when talking about it.

Li Hao had looked very confused. His father had assured him. “That was what my grandfather told me, and what I must tell you now. These words were passed down from our ancestors. Just call it a sword, alright?”

Li Hao had grown up thinking of it as a sword. It was the sword-shaped pendant which Li Hao still wore around his neck.

If this jade pendant was the sword that the song mentioned… did the Zhang family really have a saber? Li Hao was confused.

Li Hao didn’t know much about the others who had died, but he knew Zhang Yuan very well. Zhang Yuan’s parents had died when he was very young. Li Hao had been his best friend from when they were children.

‘The Zhang family’s saber …,’ pondered Li Hao. Did the Zhang family own a saber?

His face changed slightly. The Zhang family might have had it. It was different from his jade pendant. Zhang Yuan had sneaked it in his room when Li Hao had gone to his place to play. They had been very young then. Zhang Yuan’s father had caught them. Zhang Yuan had received a good beating from his father that day.

That thing … was sort of a knife-shaped stone.

Li Hao’s memory was fuzzy but he thought he remembered Zhang Yuan’s father telling his son that this was something precious left behind by their ancestors. Even if it was only a broken stone, Zhang Yuan’s father had emphasized that it was something precious that needed to be respected.

Li Hao had later seen Zhang Yuan’s father toss the pendant aside so casually a little later. Li Hao had assumed that his friend’s father had only wanted an excuse to beat up Zhang Yuan that day. But now…

‘Could it have been the Zhang clan’s saber mentioned in the song?’ wondered Li Hao.

Li Hao had never seen that rock after that day. Both him and his friend had forgotten about it as they grew up. Li Hao became more certain that the song was real.

His hand unwittingly went to his chest. The jade pendant was cool and inert. There was nothing unusual.

This coolness of the pendant brought Li Hao back to reality. He looked at Chen Na. “Can I meet your grandmother?”

He wanted to know more about the song and what it meant. He wanted to know what more clues the song held.

Most importantly, he wanted to know how a folk song could be related to these cases of self-immolation. What was the red shadow? Why did it want to kill people sharing surnames from the eight families of the folk song?

“What?” asked Chen Na.

Li Hao didn’t seem to hear her. He quickly opened the file. ‘Hong Jiao’s parents were already dead. She wasn’t very old when she died. There was no one else in the Hong family after her,’ Li Hao thought to himself.

‘Zhou Qing’s wife is still alive, but they had no children.’

‘Zhang Yuan didn’t have anyone either.’ The Zhang family had an only child, Zhang Yuan.

‘Wang Haoming wasn’t married when he died. However, he wasn’t the only son. He had a younger brother …’

‘Liu Yunsheng was an old man. He wasn’t married, either.’

‘Zhao Shihao had a daughter. After his death, she left the Silver City with her mother. Their whereabouts are unknown.’

Li Hao looked through the files again. Some of them were married, some had children, others were alone.

Li Hao thought of himself. ‘My parents passed away three years ago in an accident. The car flipped over. But was it really an accident?’

Li Hao was doubtful. His parents had nothing to do with these cases but what if all this was related somehow?

The Zhang, Hong, Zhou, and Liu families’ bloodline had ended with these dead people. There were no more direct descendants.

Wang Haoming had a younger brother and Zhao Shihao had a daughter. If he was right and the Li family in the song was his then the Li family would end with his death.

‘This isn’t just about a few people’s death. The goal was to annihilate the entire clan!’ Li Hao was frightened and angry.

He felt that his parent’s accident wasn’t a coincidence, either. He wasn’t completely sure. Some people were still alive from the Wang and Zhao families, after all.

“Li Hao!” Chen Na called, bringing him back to the present. “Are you alright?”

He hadn’t responded for a while. She was worried about what was going on in his mind.