Chapter 41 – Sunlight on the Great Earth, Rain Falls in All Directions
Silver-gray.
It was the color of the high heavens, the snowy ridges, and the icy lake. Such a light, pale color reflected scenery and people with perfect clarity.
Chou Bodeng averted his gaze, lowering his eyelashes.
“Alright.”
As the word left his lips, Chou Bodeng was momentarily stunned. In that instant, it was as if a breeze brushed against his face. It was a wind descending from the high heavens, sweeping over primeval snowy ridges and across the frozen lake. The wind carried countless whispers, endless secrets, and a distant song.
There really was a song.
Shi Wuluo stood up straight, his sleeves fluttering in the wind. All by himself, he began to sing a shaman’s blessing song, one so ancient it seemed to trace back to a time before heaven and earth were separated.
Four characters per line, two lines per stanza, the words were abstruse and profound, the rhythm long and clear. There were no assistant priests, no worshippers. Unlike the heaven-worshipping ritual of Ru City or the blood sacrifice of Fu City, his attitude toward the primordial chaos was neither subservient nor fawning, but simply narrative. He was as ferocious as a demon when wielding his saber to kill, yet his blessing song was as pure as the first snow.
The blessing song rose from the ground, piercing the clouds.
High in the sky.
Dark clouds raced by as the millstone of day and night, pushed by the wind, turned and twisted the chains of time.
Dong—
A powerful bronze bell chimed, its sound deafening.
In the City Divination Department, Zhou Ziyan trembled and turned his head toward the city gate, from where the sound had come.
“The bell… the bell rang?”
He muttered to himself, then scrambled up and stumbled desperately toward the city gate. He thought he was running wildly, but his pace was barely faster than an old man’s. Oblivious, he shouted in a mix of ecstatic joy and disbelief.
“The bell rang!”
That was the sound of the Bell of the Four Directions.
It was the horn of heaven and earth!
The city gates boomed open, and a clear wind from the southeast howled in, filling the long-oppressed city and the sleeves of every stumbling, running person. The first person to reach the gate fell to their knees, laughing and crying, followed by a second, and a third, until a whole crowd was kneeling in an instant.
A long-absent line of red light broke through the dense miasma, stretching across the land outside Ru City, the ridges of the mountains surging within the light.
After a hundred years, they could finally see the silhouettes of the mountains again, and the sun about to burst forth.
“The sun!!!”
An old man shouted at the top of his lungs, as if to expend all his life’s strength. His gaunt chest vibrated violently with the cry, his ribs rising and falling.
“It’s the sun!”
The massive solar disk broke free from the mountain ridge and leaped high into the sky!
A wave of crimson gold swept across the land, and the miasma rapidly receded in the brilliant light, revealing the parched fields one after another. In an instant, the sunlight reached the city gates, and a myriad of brilliant rays pierced through the crowd, casting the men, women, old, and young into bronze statues as their shadows stretched long upon the streets.
The sunlight stung everyone’s eyes, making them redden and stream with tears.
Yet no one could bear to close them.
“Sunrise.”
Zhou Ziyan grabbed the door knocker and looked up at the sky, his heart pounding like a drum as he waited for a miracle.
Shadows of rooftop beasts galloped, and the long street was gilded.
The sun rose slowly behind Chou Bodeng, its light passing through the hem of his clothes and across his face, clearly etching his silhouette into the solar disk. Shi Wuluo faced the light and gazed at him, his silver-gray eyes reflecting the golden sun, the red robes, and the black hair, just as the icy lake reflected heaven and earth.
Chou Bodeng offered him his hand.
Shi Wuluo took it, intertwining their fingers and clasping them tightly.
“I meant…”
Pull me up.
Chou Bodeng stopped speaking. The moment their fingers interlocked, he suddenly noticed that the other’s hand was trembling slightly.
Never mind, he thought.
“Do you want to see the rain?” Shi Wuluo asked in a low, hoarse voice.
“Alright.”
So Shi Wuluo began to sing another ancient blessing song in a low voice. Unlike before, his voice was no longer high and clear, but light and thin, like snowflakes dancing on a lake’s surface, or the wind chasing the ends of his hair in a soft hum.
Chou Bodeng gazed toward the city gate.
Was there someone in this world… who, if you wanted the sunrise, would make the Golden Crow never fall? If you wanted rain, would make the clouds never cease their song? If you wanted the whole world, would draw his saber and conquer the four directions for you? In truth, what you wanted didn’t matter. What mattered was having such a person, always by your side.
Never leaving.
The sun hung in the sky as the rain fell.
A torrential downpour and sunlight enveloped the city simultaneously. The sunlight slanted, the rain fell vertically, cutting through each other and shattering into refracting rainbows. The silk and scarlet gauze hanging before every door were streaked into vertical lines by the rain, their lower halves submerged in the pooling water on the streets, then swept away by the rushing currents toward the sides.
The streets of Ru City were gently sloped according to a certain pattern, with hidden channels for drainage, so the rainwater was uniformly directed into man-made canals.
This was once a city of boat traffic, but after a hundred years, the city’s rivers had gradually dried to mere streams.
Now, rainwater rushed through the streets, converging, and the water level in the canals rose rapidly. The river water churned with small waves, lapping against the stone embankments, and finally, with a roaring song, it surged through the city, crashing open the water gates of the side entrance and flowing out of Ru City toward the cracked fields.
In the sky, the Ru Fish circled once, spiraled down in a long arc, and plunged into the river on the ground.
They rode the river out of the city, leaping from the water in schools, forming intermittent crimson rainbows that appeared and disappeared among the fields. The last vestiges of the Miasma Moon’s foul qi dissolved in the light of their scales, and the city’s people followed them, running wildly along the ridges of the fields.
“The Miasma Moon has passed—”
“The four wilds are open!”
An old man shouted at the top of his lungs, his aged song echoing once more after a hundred years.
Men and women wept as they sang in response.
“The Divine Ru river flows—”
“Plant the grain and wheat!”
A hundred long years make mortals old, but for the immortals, it is but the flick of a finger.
***
The rain gradually subsided, drizzling endlessly in the west, while the blazing sun hung high in the east. The Ru Fish, driving away the miasma, moved further and further away, and some of the people of Ru City slowly returned to the front of the city gate.
Elder Tao stood under the city gate with Zuo Yuesheng and the others.
The crowd stood silently outside the city. For a moment, neither side spoke. After a long while, Zhou Ziyan waved his hand, signaling the others not to move, and slowly walked forward himself.
He stood in the rain, gazing at his teacher.
“Ziyan.”
Elder Tao opened his mouth hoarsely, wanting to say something but not knowing what. Finally, he composed himself.
“Elder Chou…”
“Elder Chou is unharmed,” Zhou Ziyan said, looking into the city. “He is the one who saved Ru City.”
“That’s good, that’s good.”
Elder Tao was relieved. As long as that person was fine, everything would be alright. There would be ways to apologize for the Taiyi Sect’s wrath, and ways to cover up the sudden change in the sun and moon from Heaven Beyond Heaven… He turned, a little unsteadily, intending to enter the city to find Chou Bodeng. The moment he turned, the sound of a blade piercing flesh came from behind him.
“Zhou—”
Lou Jiang lunged forward.
Elder Tao spun around, moving toward Zhou Ziyan faster than him.
“Teacher!”
Zhou Ziyan shouted.
Elder Tao staggered, stopping a few steps before him. Zhou Ziyan clutched the broken sword embedded in his chest and slowly knelt. Behind him was a crowd of stunned and bewildered people, none of whom seemed to have realized what had just happened.
“For the murder of the Taiyi Martial Ancestor and the other Immortal Elders, Ziyan alone is responsible. The people of the city were ignorant and used by me.”
“Ziyan, I atone with my death.”
“You… you…” Elder Tao’s eyes glistened. “You fool! Since Elder Chou…”
“Tell Elder Chou,” Zhou Ziyan interrupted him, his voice extremely low and fast, “it was Heaven Beyond Heaven. It was Gu Yu.”
Then, he raised his voice again.
“Elder Chou lent the Taiyi Sword to help Ru City’s Heaven-Worshipping Ritual succeed, yet I, for my own selfish desires, tried to kill Elder Chou!”
Zhou Ziyan violently pulled out the broken sword. Blood gushed out as he swayed and fell forward into the muddy water—he had been holding the sword tightly for support, just to finish saying these last few words.
“I deserve ten thousand deaths!”
“Ziyan!” Elder Tao knelt on one knee, tears streaming down his face. “Why did you have to do this!”
He was the only person present who understood the true meaning behind Zhou Ziyan’s words.
Zhou Ziyan wasn’t just absolving the people of Ru City of their crimes.
He was also repaying a kindness!
The sun’s orbit and the moon’s track could only ever be altered by the Hundred Clans. In the illusion array, Elder Tao had blurted out in desperation that Elder Chou could save Ru City. With Zhou Ziyan’s intelligence, he must have guessed something when the sun rose and the rain fell… He was attributing the anomaly in Ru City to the Taiyi Sword and the Heaven-Worshipping Ritual, deceiving the other people of Ru City and pulling a veil over the truth.
From now on, even if Heaven Beyond Heaven investigated, Taiyi would have a way to respond.
“Teacher, I entrust Ru City to you,” Zhou Ziyan’s voice faded. “Ungrateful and disloyal, Ziyan has no face…”
“Ziyan! Ziyan!”
The little priestess rushed out from the crowd and threw herself onto Zhou Ziyan, hugging him.
“Don’t scare me, get up!”
The rain washed over the young City Diviner’s eyes as he stared at the sky, his pupils empty. Lou Jiang stood in the rain, staring blankly at him, and realized something:
Zhou Ziyan was dead.
He died with the sixteen-year-old youth he never outgrew, with his desperate gamble, and with his guilt.
Atoning with his death.
What sin was he atoning for? The sin of drawing his sword against the Taiyu Clan and bringing a century of disaster? The sin of having no path forward despite begging and pleading? The sin of struggling alone for a hundred years until he could no longer hold on? The sin of walking a desperate path and sacrificing the innocent?
“The one who should be atoning isn’t you!”
In the crowd, an old woman collapsed to the ground, slapping her own face and tearing at her hair as if she had gone mad.
“We… we never really thought it was all your fault.”
Those resentful words behind his back were just slips of the tongue born from suffering.
They didn’t mean it!
She was filled with regret, but it was too late. Amidst her cries, an old man knelt down numbly.
“You Immortal Elders have repaid our grievances with kindness, saving our Ru City. This humble one dares not make excuses for Ziyan,” the old man said, kowtowing as he moved forward. “I only ask that you Immortal Elders, and the Mountain Sea Pavilion… grant us permission to collect his body and bury him with the rites of a City Diviner.”
“Please allow him to be buried with the rites of a City Diviner.”
One by one, the people knelt, kowtowing heavily.
The world was vast and desolate.
Elder Tao reached out to close Zhou Ziyan’s eyes, but the little priestess looked up fiercely, her red-rimmed eyes glaring at him. Elder Tao’s hand froze in mid-air, and his shoulders slumped.
Someone walked past them toward the crowd.
It was Zuo Yuesheng.
The old man looked up at him, and everyone else looked up at him too.
Lu Jing watched him nervously from behind, afraid he would say something he shouldn’t and provoke the people of Ru City, who were already suppressing their emotions… Although they only kept repeating “Please allow him to be buried with the rites of a City Diviner,” every one of them had so much hatred in their eyes—hatred for the Mountain Sea Pavilion.
“My name is Zuo Yuesheng,” Zuo Yuesheng said, taking a deep breath. “I am the son of Zuo Liangshi, and also the Young Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion.”
Lu Jing’s vision went dark. He turned his head, not daring to see the expressions on the faces of the kneeling people.
Thud.
A dull sound.
Lu Jing whipped his head back around.
Zuo Yuesheng was on his knees, having knelt heavily in the muddy water before all the people who were gritting their teeth.
The facial muscles of the Ru City people contorted. Some of the young men clenched their fists so tightly it seemed they were about to erupt and charge forward at any moment.
“Ru City is a city of Qing Province, a city of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, bound to us by a pact,” he said, each word unprecedentedly loud and clear. “Ru City pays tribute, and the Mountain Sea Pavilion helps Ru City through its calamities and upholds justice. This is what my Mountain Sea Pavilion is supposed to do. Failing to do so is our fault.”
Thud, thud, thud.
His forehead struck the ground with dull thuds.
Men and women, old and young, all stared in stunned disbelief at Zuo Yuesheng kneeling in the muddy water.
Zuo Yuesheng wiped the mud from his face, which was smeared from his kowtows.
“To make you suffer for a hundred years, the Mountain Sea Pavilion has wronged Ru City!”
He paused.
“A son must pay his father’s debts. For what my father did wrong, I, as his son, have nothing to say.” Zuo Yuesheng raised his hand, three fingers together, his chubby face showing a solemnity bordering on gravity for the first time. “I swear that for the rest of my life, I will question Kongsang and thoroughly investigate the Taiyu Clan.”
He practically roared his oath.
“Otherwise, may I be struck by lightning, my soul burned by raging fire, my heart pierced by ten thousand arrows, and may I die without a burial place!”
In the pouring rain, his vicious oath echoed across the wilderness.
The old man stared at him for a long time. Zuo Yuesheng met his gaze directly. Gradually, a crack appeared in the old man’s numb expression. Finally, he kowtowed heavily to the ground and let out a great wail.
“Immortal Elder! Ru City… Ru City has suffered so much—”
“It’s been a hundred years!!”
A hundred years.
Behind Ziyan’s back, how many times had they petitioned the Mountain Sea Pavilion? Petitions written in blood and tears, one after another, all sinking like stones in the sea.
They hated.
They hated the Hundred Clans, and they hated the Mountain Sea Pavilion.
A city and an immortal sect are bound by a pact, a pact of mutual existence.
A hundred years ago, the million mortals of Ru City dared to take up arms against the Taiyu Clan because they were a city of Qing Province, a city under the Mountain Sea Pavilion. It didn’t matter if the entire city perished; they always believed the immortal sects would get justice for them. The immortal sects were the sun and moon for the common people! They were the winds of the four seasons for the million cities!
But even the immortal sects had forgotten them, even the immortal sects could not give them justice. As they endured day after day, didn’t they become a joke?
Were the common people truly like ants, deserving to die in silence simply because they were small?
Where were the immortals who signed the pact, who said they would protect the common people?
You promised us the sun and moon, but they did not come. What could we do!
You promised us the four winds, but they did not come. What could we do!
“Immortal Elders—”
“Ru City has suffered so much!”
The old man wailed like a child.
“It’s been a hundred years,” Zuo Yuesheng said, slowly standing up. “My father won’t investigate…”
“So I will!”
The moment he stood up, Lu Jing felt he had changed.
The one who knelt was Zuo Yuesheng.
But the one who stood up was already the Young Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion.
His fat, almost comical back suddenly seemed as imposing as a wrathful guardian deity, standing tall between heaven and earth. Like a true young master, he single-handedly faced all the hesitant, doubtful, and disbelieving gazes.
Without retreating a single step.
“I am Lu Jing!” Lu Jing rushed out in a single stride to stand beside him. “I don’t have many skills, and I’m not some Young Valley Master, but I am his friend.”
Only after rushing out did Lu Jing realize how much courage it took to stand before all those scrutinizing, hesitant, hopeful, and lost eyes. But since they were friends who would die for each other, how could he let his friend face the questions alone!
He took a deep breath and roared:
“I’ll investigate with him!”
Lou Jiang, holding his sword, walked up without a word.
“And me!”
Ye Cang strode forward heavily.
The rain gradually lightened, rustling like a dirge.
Footsteps echoed from the city gate behind them, and a young man in red robes, carrying the Taiyi Sword, emerged from the curtain of rain. He walked to the little priestess’s side. The little priestess looked up at this young man she had seen before, her eyes turning red as tears fell. “Immortal Elder, Ziyan is dead.”
“He said he let you down.”
“Mm.”
Chou Bodeng responded softly.
The Ru Fish, like scattered stars, lingered around him and Zhou Ziyan.
Chou Bodeng crouched down, reached out, and brushed his hand across Zhou Ziyan’s face, closing his vacant eyes. Zuo Yuesheng, Lu Jing, and the others turned to look at him. Chou Bodeng stood up and walked forward expressionlessly to stand with them.
“I don’t mean anything by this,” he said coldly. “I just want to see who wants to kill me but doesn’t dare to do it themselves.”
“The Taiyi Sect…”
“Will investigate the celestial orbit!”