Chapter 72 – The Second Two Hours
The stars illuminated the gray expanse.
Zuo Yuesheng flopped backward, spreading himself out spread-eagled without any care for his image. Not that he had much of an image left to care about. With a black eye on the left and a bruised one on the right, his face was a painter’s palette, and his entire body screamed, “Truly a great sandbag, tough-skinned and durable.” The sandbag was just muttering something under his breath, trying to calculate.
“Was this the three thousand nine hundred and thirty-first time, or the three thousand nine hundred and forty-second…”
He’d already been beaten an unknown number of times.
The one beating him was none other than his own father, the great Pavilion Master Zuo Liangshi.
After being ambushed by his own father and thrown from the Mountain Sea Grand Hall, Zuo Yuesheng had fallen for so long that he began to suspect he would be smashed into a meat paste. Then, his vision went gray. When he awoke, he was lying in a gray, hazy space with the celestial phenomena hanging overhead and a circular martial arts stage beneath him.
His father’s voice came from some unknown direction, saying that he had calculated it was about time to pass the Mountain Sea Seal to him. According to ancestral tradition, inheriting the seal required passing trials set by generations of ancestors. However, he knew his son detested all those tedious formalities and outdated rules, so he had streamlined the process. His father’s sixteen-year-old avatar was left in this illusory realm; if Zuo Yuesheng could defeat it, he would pass.
Then, without waiting for a reaction, a drum boomed, and an avatar of his sixteen-year-old father appeared on the stage, drawing his saber and charging straight at him.
He didn’t even give a damn warning.
It seemed all his father’s talk of classics and the Great Dao was just for show; a hooligan and a scoundrel was his true nature.
Zuo Yuesheng stared wistfully at the thirty-six slowly rotating stars, the ten endlessly cycling suns, and the single waxing and waning nether moon above… As the North Star returned to a familiar position, he found himself missing Young Master Chou’s impatient, violent tutoring sessions. Young Master Chou’s violent tutoring at most involved hanging the Taiyi Sword over your head. If you failed to record something, swoosh, it would drop down and give you a quick death, none of this painful beating and torture.
However, Zuo Yuesheng had ample evidence to suspect that he was being beaten so severely nine times out of ten because the old man was getting his revenge. After all, his father usually had to maintain a facade of civility and a precarious scholarly demeanor, leaving him with few opportunities to actually beat him up.
“Old man, how come I never realized you were this awesome before?”
Seeing the North Star about to return to its original position, Zuo Yuesheng muttered, grimacing as he reached out and fumbled for the hilt of his saber, gripping it in a reverse hold.
Dong.
The drum sounded once more.
The injuries on Zuo Yuesheng’s body vanished instantly, and his state returned to its peak. He leaped up like a tiger, gripping his saber with both hands, sinking into a bow stance with his shoulders lowered, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
On the other side of the martial arts stage, light and shadow distorted, and the boyish Zuo Liangshi stepped out of the void.
Normally, Zuo Liangshi was always dressed in wide robes and loose sleeves, with a longsword at his waist—in short, he acted every bit the scholar. However, as the Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, Zuo Liangshi was widely acknowledged throughout the Twelve Continents as “unremarkable.” His cultivation was average, and his swordsmanship was average. Among ordinary elders and cultivators, he could be considered upper-tier, but among the prodigies and eccentrics who led the immortal sects, he was particularly lacking.
The sixteen-year-old Zuo Liangshi appeared more feminine than handsome, and would have no trouble passing for a girl if he changed his clothes. But in his hand, he held a saber.
It was a three-meter-long, double-edged Mo Saber of black-lacquered bronze and gold!
It couldn’t get more manly than that.
Zuo Liangshi held the heavy Mo Saber with one hand, the tip pointing diagonally at the ground, looking nonchalant.
But Zuo Yuesheng, who had been shattered by him countless times, had long seen through his father’s true nature—he was a black-hearted, ruthless, and merciless old scoundrel who wouldn’t even blink when cutting someone down.
The wind from the sabers rose.
Two figures charged at each other simultaneously. Zuo Yuesheng also wielded a fierce Mo Saber with both hands. When he swung it, the blade was like white snow, its scales neatly arranged. With his sturdy frame, his swinging blade carried an imposing momentum capable of crushing both man and horse. However, the feminine-faced Zuo Liangshi was even more majestic, more awe-inspiring, more dominant.
Twirl the saber! Horizontal slash! Switch wrists! Diagonal chop!
The black-lacquered bronze and gold Mo Saber roared like a fierce tiger in his hands.
Sinking into his stance, gripping the saber with both hands, he brought it up in an upward slash, then turned his wrist to block with the hilt.
A shower of sparks burst from the point of collision between the two Mo Sabers. Zuo Yuesheng steadily received Zuo Liangshi’s tiger-like assault. They switched positions, swinging with the same move at the same instant they turned.
Had this been the Zuo Yuesheng from the beginning of the trial, he would have been cleaved in two by now. A certain someone, taking advantage of the fact that this was an illusion, showed no mercy. In over three thousand challenges, the first thousand could only be described as Zuo Yuesheng being instantly killed in a grand variety of ways. The next thousand were spent timidly surviving while holding a large saber. Only in the last thousand did he barely qualify as a “sandbag” for a proper brawl. After three thousand attempts, he was finally able to trade a few blows back and forth with his old man, though he was often soundly beaten for being too eager for revenge and leaving openings.
Zuo Yuesheng suddenly let out a fierce roar. While blocking, he switched from a two-handed grip to a one-handed one. As the saber’s momentum dipped, he flipped his wrist, swinging the blade in a full circle, bringing it down with a vicious wind towards Zuo Liangshi, whose old force was spent and new force had yet to be generated.
The saber techniques he had used against Zuo Liangshi before were all learned from the thousands of beatings he had endured. This hand-switching, saber-twirling art, however, was his own invention, which he had kept hidden until the right moment to unleash it.
Clang—
In the nick of time, Zuo Liangshi used the hilt of his saber to block the descending heavy blade. But as he blocked it, Zuo Yuesheng had already charged forward like an enraged giant elephant.
“It’s my turn to do the beating!”
Zuo Yuesheng roared, ramming his father’s avatar with his shoulder and sending it flying. Before the avatar could even land, he dragged his saber and broke into a run, leaping into the air and bringing the blade down with the force of a hurricane, like a clap of thunder.
In a way, Zuo Liangshi and Zuo Yuesheng were truly father and son, their ruthlessness cut from the same cloth!
The saber light flashed past.
Dong!
Zuo Yuesheng shot up into a sitting position.
“Damn it, old man, you’re too despicable and cunning!” Zuo Yuesheng cursed loudly. “Are you a sore loser or what?!”
After being thrashed by his own father for thousands of times, just when he was about to turn the tables and redeem himself, the other party pulled the rug out from under him, dispelling the illusory realm! A mouthful of blood was stuck in Zuo Yuesheng’s chest. For the first time, he truly understood the meaning of “the older, the wiser.” He grumbled for a while, but there was nothing he could do. He could only plan his revenge for later. For now, he had to find the Mountain Sea Seal that had caused him to die and come back to life so many times…
As soon as his anger subsided, Zuo Yuesheng heard the sound of a biting wind.
He looked around and saw nothing but skeletons.
Massive skeletons stood in a huge, curved cavern. Some were incomplete, others whole, but all were so enormous, so majestic, they seemed like the Kuafu of legend. All the skeletons had a bronze-like sheen. They were hidden deep in a place without light, bearing the weight of the nine cities of Zhunan. Their heads were held high, surrounding a bronze seal on an altar in the very center.
This was…
A tomb!
A tomb located beneath the shell of the Black Tortoise.
“This is the Zuo family’s secret.”
A familiar voice sounded beside him. Zuo Yuesheng turned his head and saw his father’s illusory form appear next to him.
Zuo Liangshi tilted his head back slightly, gazing at the skeletons that supported the cavern, his expression more solemn and dignified than ever before.
“Our ancestor, feeling compassion for the unceasing turmoil of the Raging Sea, transformed into a Black Tortoise to suppress the vast ocean with his own body. After the Obscure Wind was suppressed, the baleful and hostile auras accumulated within the Black Tortoise’s shell. For this reason, the Black Tortoise must enter a state of hibernation every three hundred years to avoid falling to evil. The souls of every generation of the Zuo family merge with the Black Tortoise after death, their bones becoming pillars to support Zhunan. Their souls are sealed within their bones to purify the hostile malevolence. They have no final resting place, no day of peace for their souls.”
Zuo Yuesheng finally understood why his grandfather’s miscellaneous notes said the Black Tortoise’s “lifespan is eternal, yet fleeting; it is without death, yet without life.” Their lives were continued by the people of the Zuo family. The Zuo family’s flesh and blood was their flesh and blood, their bones were their bones, and their souls were their souls.
There was no contract at all.
The Zuo family was the Black Tortoise, and the Black Tortoise was the Zuo family.
That was why the Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion could only be a member of the Zuo family.
“No wonder the Zuo family never performs ancestral worship…”
Zuo Yuesheng muttered.
He had wondered about this for a long time.
For as long as Zuo Yuesheng could remember, he had never swept the grave of any grandfather, great-grandfather, grandmother, or great-grandmother. Zuo Liangshi, who claimed to have read all the classics, never showed any intention of taking him to commemorate their ancestors. He had even asked a few times why other families had ancestral halls while the Zuo family had nothing. Zuo Liangshi had fobbed him off by saying the Zuo family advocated cremation, even saying that if he really wanted to pay respects to his ancestors, he could just kowtow anywhere in Zhunan and pour a few cups of wine. As a result, Zuo Yuesheng had always thought that being an “unfilial descendant” was a Zuo family tradition.
He never expected that, in a way, Zuo Liangshi hadn’t been fooling him back then.
If he really wanted to pay respects to his ancestors, he could do it anywhere in Zhunan. Because for millennia, the skeletons of countless ancestors were buried deep beneath Zhunan. Under every street lay an ever-restless soul, day and night enduring the scouring of baleful and obscure winds, year after year supporting the thousands of towers and pavilions of Zhunan’s nine cities.
Undying and indestructible, they naturally needed no ancestral worship.
The Zuo Liangshi here was just an illusion formed from a sliver of spiritual sense. He didn’t answer, but continued on his own.
“The celestial orbit is out of control, and the obscure wind has reached its peak in ten thousand years, so the Black Tortoise has entered hibernation early. After you take the Mountain Sea Seal and awaken your bloodline, you can try to purify some of the excess baleful qi. Perhaps you can bring the Black Tortoise out of its hibernation…” Zuo Liangshi paused, his gaze fixed on a point in the void. “You need to think carefully. The baleful qi is not so easy to bear. However, since you were able to emerge from the illusory realm, you should have at least a little bit of willpower.”
“Hey, old man, you’re looking down on me, aren’t you? Over three thousand times! I was beaten by you a full three thousand times! You think anyone else could take that?” Zuo Yuesheng grumbled as he ran towards the altar. “And another thing, you’re only telling me about something as important as restoring the Black Tortoise at the very end?! Can’t you get your priorities straight?”
“I hesitated before, about whether to give you the Mountain Sea Seal.”
Zuo Liangshi’s voice was somewhat indistinct in the wind.
“In the end, I thought, it’s just your bad luck to be surnamed Zuo. This is the Zuo family’s fate.”
Zuo Yuesheng didn’t look back as he leaped onto the altar.
“Old man, are you getting old? What do you mean, fate? This is clearly an honor!”
The Mountain Sea Seal descended, transforming into a clear radiance that entered his body.
Zuo Yuesheng’s face twisted instantly. He felt as if what flowed through his veins was no longer blood, but fire and magma! White steam instantly rose from his body as sweat poured out like a waterfall, only to be evaporated in an instant. Countless bronze-colored skeletons surrounded him, like innumerable brilliant shadows hidden in the dust of history.
A strong wind blew through their ribs, making a sound like muffled thunder, like the roars of souls that had not yet dispersed.
The hour of Xu had passed.
***
The skeletons of the Dragon Fish slowly spiraled in the wind, their silver light shimmering.
Lu Jing and the others had not been able to descend through the sea spring. If they had, they would have been utterly astonished, for the so-called “Obscure Wind Cavern” was incredibly magnificent, completely different from the dark and filthy place they had imagined. It was more like a slowly rotating, splendid vortex of crimson, azure, frost-white, cinnabar-red, and fluorescent blue… The colors shifted from deep to light, and from light to deep, the water clear and tranquil, like a dream. But a closer look would reveal that this was in fact a deadly beauty. The light in the water came from all sorts of creatures. They moved in the wind cavern like swimming fish or flying birds, their life forms suspended between death and life, the only thing they could do was to circle, endlessly circling. And if this vortex were to expand outward, beyond the range of the Black Tortoise’s suppression, it would immediately stir up a world-shaking tidal wave from the seabed.
The so-called tranquility was merely a deceptive calm before the storm.
The very bottom center of the vortex was exceptionally still. The water was like a clear spring, with white sand below, reflecting the rosy clouds. Someone was sleeping in the glow of the clouds.
Chou Bodeng lay on the white sand, his red robes spread out like petals, his skin whiter than the fine sand, with a texture like frost and snow. The light from the water’s ripples cast patterns on his face, reminiscent of ice-crackled porcelain, a beauty that could shatter at any moment. And he was, in fact, a fragmented soul, forcibly held together by the Kui Dragon Bracelet.
Shi Wuluo walked around him, using his saber as a brush to carve complex and strange formation patterns into the white sand. Each stroke was as if the thick earth had been cut open, and crimson magma flowed out. The karmic obstruction flowing endlessly from Chou Bodeng’s body was drawn into the formation, and the patterns gradually turned ink-black.
When the final stroke was complete, all the creatures in the wind cavern abruptly stopped moving, as if time had suddenly frozen.
The formation patterns formed a flowing vortex, a Yin-Yang Dual Fish Diagram of black and cinnabar. Chou Bodeng lay in the black half, the Taiyi Sword stuck in the sand beside him. Shi Wuluo stepped into the cinnabar half, took out the White Jade Lamp, and carefully retrieved the faint, bright flame.
…Do you think you can save him? Too late! …His divine soul has slept in the netherworld for ten thousand years, no one can save him! He doesn’t even want to live himself! …So foolish, he was so foolish even in death, foolish enough to leave a remnant of his fire in the Great Wilderness with his own divine soul… Did he think someone would continue his path?!
The Scripture Woman’s face had borne a gleeful, venomous sneer as the scarlet saber pierced her heart.
Hysterical and yet empty.
The moment the bright flame left the White Jade Lamp, it transformed into thousands of specks of light, like stars, and entered Chou Bodeng’s body. He suddenly began to tremble violently, as if some intense reaction was occurring within him. The Kui Dragon Bracelet emitted a low hum, on the verge of breaking. Shi Wuluo cut his own wrist, and blood flowed into the formation patterns.
Shi Wuluo plunged his scarlet saber into the ground, reached out, and interlocked his fingers with his.
The Kui Dragons slithered over their wrists, intertwining.
The formation erupted with an intense light that overpowered all the colors in the wind cavern. Faint, distant, and overlapping shouts seemed to come through the formation patterns, as if from countless thousands of kilometers away, innumerable people were praying over and over again. The voices, overlapping for millennia, converged into a tsunami-like call.
Southern Borderlands, the Witch Clan.
On a deep black altar in the ancient forest, ten Great Shamans formed a circle. A raging fire burned in the center of the altar, its crimson flames licking the sky. All the bronze bell flowers around the altar chimed together, and below the altar, all the members of the Witch Clan, clad in silver robes, sang as they circled the fire. The altar rotated, fulfilling the purpose of its thousand-year existence.
Black and cinnabar spun.
Steal yin and yang, reverse life and death, exchange fate!
***
A kaleidoscopic amusement park.
The roller coaster tracks had warm yellow light strips, the circus tent glowed with red and blue lights, and the carousel changed colors with the rhythm of the music. Children pulled on their parents’ hands, either demanding petulantly or asking sweetly to go on some overly thrilling ride. The parents either refused outright or persuaded them with gentle words.
How many years had it been? Why would he still come to an amusement park?
Such a childish place had ceased to be one of Young Master Chou’s haunts since he was seven.
He looked around, a faint sense of familiarity washing over him.
After a moment’s thought, when a haunted house appeared in his line of sight, he suddenly remembered where the familiarity came from.
This was once the most famous amusement park in the capital. The owner had repeatedly claimed he wanted to build a world-class amusement park, a place where adults and children could create beautiful memories together, so that three generations could one day reminisce about the past. Unfortunately, not even one generation had fond memories of it… Less than half a year after it opened, Young Master Chou had spent a fortune to buy it and turn it into a world-class haunted house, which in turn became a terrifying nightmare for countless people.
It was worth noting that Young Master Chou was only seven years old that year.
It was clear that being a profligate and a spendthrift were innate talents.
A fine drizzle began to fall.
Chou Bodeng casually pulled an umbrella from a nearby cart selling miscellaneous goods. The umbrella was translucent, with a frame of silver-gray iron. When opened, looking at the amusement park’s sky through it, the sky seemed to be divided into pieces by the iron bars of a cage, each piece illuminated by the lights into an unreal, magnificent color.
He didn’t remember why he had come here, nor why it had retained the appearance of an amusement park. He held the umbrella and followed the crowd, walking aimlessly.
A piercing scream.
It was followed by a gunshot, not the sound from a shooting gallery in the park, but the genuine sound of a bullet leaving a chamber. The crowd in front scattered, children screamed in terror, adults pulled out their phones and frantically called the police, and a few inconspicuous men tried desperately to flee.
Chou Bodeng glanced over nonchalantly.
Through the gaps in the crowd, he saw a middle-aged butler in a well-tailored black suit struggling in a pool of blood, which gushed from his neck like a fountain. Only a severed artery could produce so much blood, like life blooming in an instant into a flower that withers just as quickly.
Rubbernecking was probably human nature. The bigger the incident, the more onlookers there were, but very few actually stepped forward to help. Most just whispered among themselves.
“…They were trying to kidnap the rich young master, weren’t they?”
“I didn’t expect him to bite down and not let go. They couldn’t even take him away quietly…”
“Too stubborn. A kidnapping is just for money, but now look…”
“It was a little scary… you didn’t see it, two or three grown men couldn’t kick him off. He was really like a… like a monster.”
“…”
The sirens wailed.
A cordon was quickly set up, and the crowd was dispersed.
Leaning against a pillar with an amusement park slogan, he saw the face of the dead young master, a face he knew all too well—it belonged to his seven-year-old self.
“Do you remember now?”
A voice whispered from behind him.
“You’re a monster.”
That’s right.
He remembered now.
He was indeed a monster.
In his “memory,” at the age of seven, he had just had a high fever for no reason. But in reality, there was no high fever, only a death that was absolutely impossible to survive. He should have died, died in the world’s number one amusement park, died before the eyes of countless witnesses.
But he was alive.
“And many more times, earlier, later… an exploding plane, a collapsing underwater corridor, a snapped suspension bridge…”
The rain suddenly intensified, becoming a violent downpour.
The circus tent collapsed, the carousel fell, the roller coaster twisted, and the colorful lights fell into the torrential rainwater, their glow distorting. The ground suddenly cracked open, and all those deliberately forgotten, deliberately ignored memories tore away the thin veil covering them… He was surrounded by crowds, commanding the wind and rain like a happy emperor surrounded by countless puppets.
All the daggers from behind, all the perfectly embellished lies.
The rainwater flowed past his feet, carrying an advertisement with the amusement park’s slogan: “Create the most beautiful memories, forge the happiest fairytale—June limited performance, ‘Wonderland Phantasia'”… The whole world was a fake stage, repeatedly rehearsing a play called “Living an Aimless, Dissipated Life.”
There was only one spectator.
“Why pretend to be crazy? Is it any use?”
He turned around.
The amusement park crumbled and disintegrated, the visitors disappeared, the world turned dark and gloomy, and only a cold bronze door stood behind him. The bronze door had no lock; it opened with a push. A chilling black qi poured out from behind the door, echoing the fierce wind and rain, as if a demon was letting out a cold laugh.
…Every step you’ve taken has been carefully arranged for you. They let you see beauty and sorrow, let you save plants and trees, let you watch the fireworks of the mortal world. They presented prosperity to you, then tore it to shreds, and then told you that killing you, harming you, saving you, all had profound reasons.
…Don’t you find it laughable? To go to such lengths to cover it up, to take such pains to guide you onto the path of saving the world?
…What are they covering up, what are they embellishing?
Playing dumb, is it any use?
All the pain would not disappear just because it was forgotten, all the truth would always be buried deep in his heart, and all the sorrow would forever radiate a chilling cold.
Chou Bodeng’s clothes flickered between snow-white and fiery red.
The heavy rain washed over the world, and in the sound of the rain, a woman’s hoarse, sharp laughter echoed: “You’ll regret it… Do you really think you can play dumb forever? Sooner or later, you’ll become one of us! Sooner or later!”
“Yes.”
A cold reply cut off her hysterical mockery.
Lightning illuminated Chou Bodeng’s face, which was devoid of any expression.
“I can forever remember nothing, I can forever know nothing.”
The bronze door crumbled.
A clear, unreal blue climbed up the sky, and clean, dustless roads stretched out in all directions. Towers of steel and iron rose from the ground, becoming the cage he had built for himself.