Ze Tian Ji (Way of Choices)
chapter-456

Chapter 456 – Two Perspectives

In the Great Zhou, if Mo Yu wanted something from someone, even if it were one’s entire family property, much less a sword, there would be innumerable people that would be delighted to offer it up to her with both hands and would even think of it as the greatest honor.

Although Chen Changsheng’s current status was also extraordinary, if he were able to use his slip of the tongue to take this secret relationship of theirs and parlay it into a friendship, it would assuredly be a good thing.

This was like pushing a boat with the current, exceptionally easy and also very natural. No one would reject it.

Chen Changsheng did not reject it, but he also did not immediately agree. He diligently pondered this question, then he gazed into Mo Yu’s eyes and asked, “Why?”

Mo Yu was stunned. It was beyond her imagination that she, who very seldom asked things of others, would actually receive this sort of answer.

She would naturally not reply to Chen Changsheng’s question. With a sneer, she turned and headed out the window, disappearing into the forest.

Chen Changsheng gazed at her faintly discernible figure in the dark forest, rather confused about why her mood had so abruptly changed.

He had previously confirmed that the Yue Maiden Sword truly wasn’t on the list, but…it was his. If you ask me for it, is it not okay for me to ask for a reason? To be more straightforward, is it not okay if I don’t want to give you something of mine? The villagers of Xining Village were so simple, Senior Yu Ren was so simple; why were these people of the capital so inexplicable?

He decided to no longer waste any more time thinking about these things which were many times more complex than the Daoist Canon. He closed his eyes and resumed his attempts to meditate.

Perhaps it was because Mo Yu had left too quickly, not having any time to leave too much of her perfume behind, but he was able to very quickly stabilize his mind. He quickly perceived his Fated Star and began to absorb starlight for Purification. Simultaneously, he took an extremely fine strand of his spiritual sense from his sea of consciousness and had it enter the sheath. With some difficulty, he once more traversed the now-familiar path through the ocean of harsh sword intent. He once again arrived at the other shore and saw the illusion of the black monolith. After his arduous attempts over the past few days, his spiritual sense was already at the point where it would not instantly explode upon touching the black monolith, and it could even penetrate a little deeper. Especially tonight, this strand of spiritual sense completely entered into the illusory black monolith and it could even faintly make out a cliff!

That cliff was on the verge of crumbling away, but with effort, one could tell that the peak of this cliff should have been formed from smooth ashen stone, only it was now scored with innumerable cracks. The trees had all been destroyed, leaving behind only a few crooked pines whose roots had extended deep into the cliff face, allowing them to stubbornly persist. Moreover, distant from that cliff, he could see countless small lakes like mirrors, which seemed even more familiar to his eyes.

Was this Sunset Valley? And weren’t those small lakes the wetlands of the Plains of the Unsetting Sun, the place where he had emerged from after going through the bottom of the lake on the other side of that mountain? Then this was really the present-day Garden of Zhou? She…was she still inside? His spiritual sense had already dived too deep into the illusory black monolith and was bearing too great of a crushing force. Let alone diving deeper to search the Garden of Zhou, he couldn’t even hold on for another second. Just by gazing from afar, just by thinking, his spiritual sense turned into a wisp of smoke and then vanished without a trace.

Chen Changsheng opened his eyes and awoke.

It was still deep in the night and the sky outside his window was awash with stars. Under the starlight, the forest of the Orthodox Academy seemed very much like a lush and verdant field of grass.

Just like those weeds of the Plains of the Unsetting Sun that were taller than a man.

Chen Changsheng very naturally began to think of those days when he journeyed together with her through those plains, of how they entrusted their lives to each other in that snowy temple, of how the blood had mixed with water in the Mausoleum of Zhou, of that conversation at the end of the divine path. If Nanke had not used the Soul Pivot to control the newborn Golden-winged Great Peng, to compel the monster tide to surround the Mausoleum of Zhou, perhaps he and she would already have begun…

To confide their deepest feelings to each other? Was this a phrase? He wasn’t too sure. It was very much a strange and alien emotion that he had never touched on before. That was a very sweet sort of emotion, and yet it also made one afraid, uneasy, but this made one yearn for it. Most importantly, the sorrow and joy elicited by this emotion was so intense that it at times seemed more important than all else.

He had been learning the Daoist Canon ever since he was a child, and upon learning at the age of ten that he did not have much longer in this world, he began to even more severely control his emotions, preventing both happiness and sadness. And yet when they journeyed through the plains with her on his back, when they sat in front of the stone door at the end of the divine path with their shoulders touching, or when he was thinking about her now, he found himself unable, and also unwilling, to control this sort of emotion. Because he was fond of the beauty of those moments and confirmed now that he still longed for them…

Then, just where are you?

Xu Yourong walked along a cliff.

Her appearance was like a painting: a tinge of childishness, a moving prettiness, a solemn holiness.

Yes, this was a rhyme, because her beauty was absolutely sublime. Besides with an ethereal rhyme, it was very difficult to use real things to describe it. The night wind brushed her sleeve and her white garments drifted on the breeze. As she slowly walked, her footsteps seemed to possess their own imposing air. Yet upon careful examination, it would perhaps be possible to see in her limpid eyes a faint sorrow.

A young lady not yet sixteen should be enjoying her youth; just why was she in such sorrow?

Because news had come once more to Holy Maiden Peak that no one knew who that Snow Mountain Sect disciple was. Even the distant Snow Mountain Sect in the northwest was unwilling to admit that it had a disciple called Xu Sheng. Perhaps you snuck into the Garden of Zhou, perhaps you were a secret sect disciple, perhaps you had some secrets, but none of that is important. Only, were you really called Xu Sheng? Did you really just die like this?

Upon departing from the Garden of Zhou, because her wounds were so serious, she had secluded herself in the back mountain of Holy Maiden Peak to recuperate. She no longer went out every day to appreciate the snow, to listen to the rain, or to pluck herbs—only rested, read, and thought.

She thought of her experiences in the Garden of Zhou, the life and death in the plains, and that man.

She had originally resolved herself to consecrate her life to the Great Dao within the books, but she had never anticipated that she would really encounter an incident in her life that would make her heart throb for the first time. But that throbbing of the heart had also swiftly passed away with the wind. This was a dull grief nigh-impossible to describe with words, a deeply ingrained memory that she had no one to tell. She was keenly aware that perhaps this memory would forever accompany her in the future endless years of cultivation. And only she knew that this would ultimately become a corner of her spiritual world that no one else would be able to access.

That was a world which she temporarily did not want to take leave of, so she naturally cared little for the affairs outside this world. Su Li, Liang Wangsun, Painted Armor Xiao Zhang, Wang Po, Zhu Luo, Guan Xingke…that storm in Xunyang City had shaken the entire continent, but it was unable to make her raise her slightly lowered eyelids. Only her teacher the Holy Maiden and Chen Changsheng, these two names, could cause her to be attentive for a few moments.

But there were people that she had to care about and which she truly did care about.

The internal strife of Mount Li, the revolt planned by Xiao Songgong and the other two elders, Qiushan Jun being heavily injured on the verge of death—these pieces of news had long since been spread to the entire south.

When her injuries had gradually recovered and she emerged from the back mountains of Holy Maiden Peak, she heard this news and knew that she had to pay a visit.

Yes, she was walking along a cliff.

She was walking upon Mount Li.