Chapter 34 – White Robe, Like Me
The cosmos suddenly emptied, and time fell silent.
Zuo Yuesheng saw endless mountain ranges; Lu Jing saw a figure in a water-blue dress by a window; Ye Cang saw green wood burning in a great heavenly fire; Lou Jiang saw two figures falling… Many familiar and distant faces and events flashed through their pupils as the light shattered and refracted.
Being submerged by them was like being submerged by a fantastical dream.
“You bastard!”
Elder Tao Rong roared in fury, leaping up like a great roc and slashing his sword at Zhou Ziyan on the highest point of the Circular Altar.
“What are you doing?!”
The sword light was as fast as lightning. Zhou Ziyan was split in two, yet not a single drop of blood splattered out.
His figure evaporated and dissipated as quickly as dew in the morning sun. The azure porcelain patterns, the crimson candlelight, the misty water, and the rosy rainbow… all rapidly faded, as if the canvas had been torn. Elder Tao, along with his sword, crashed into another world behind the paper screen, a world of dim gray dust.
There was no wind, no water, and no fire.
The azure porcelain dishes stood on the cracked surface of the lake, the candles burned out, leaving only charred wicks. The Oracle Masters and Maidens under the four-pillared gate towers were nowhere to be seen, and Chou Bodeng and the others in the waterside pavilion had also vanished.
“Water Moon Mirror Flower… Not bad. A fine formation.”
Elder Tao stood where Zhou Ziyan had just been, his sleeves slowly falling.
“You’ve improved a lot over the years.”
The sky was gray, the Circular Altar was gray, the corridors, pavilions, and all the buildings further away were also gray. Only the shadows were deep black.
“Just some petty tricks. I’ve made a fool of myself in front of you, Teacher.”
Zhou Ziyan was hidden in the darkness, his figure unseen.
“The one who taught you formation arts was a master of inscrutable abilities. If this is a petty trick, then all the Ink Masters of the Mountain Sea Pavilion should just go and die,” Elder Tao said.
His right hand held the sword downwards, and the stone surface pointed at by the cold glint of the sword tip seemed unable to bear the sharpness, silently developing web-like cracks. His left hand, however, produced a pipe, and he began to smoke.
“Who told you we were coming to Ru City? What did they promise you?”
“Didn’t you hear it, Teacher?” Zhou Ziyan seemed to chuckle. The shadows of the buildings around the Circular Altar stretched, gradually covering the withered lotus-like porcelain dishes that grew from the lakebed. “They promised me the sun and the moon. They promised me the four winds.”
“Fool!”
Elder Tao berated, knocking his pipe in the air, sending out a few dark red sparks. The sparks flew, landing on the lakebed, on the twisted shadows of the waterside pavilions, and in an instant, burned them into white ash.
“Utterly foolish! Stubborn and incorrigible! You believe anything anyone says? You think that by being a dog for those people, by selling your life for them, they will actually fulfill their promise? I see your improvements have all gone to the dogs.”
“Your scolding is justified, Teacher, but isn’t the Mountain Sea Pavilion also acting as a dog for the Hundred Clans right now?” Zhou Ziyan bowed slightly, as if he were still in the classroom of old, waiting for his teacher’s enlightenment. “The Hundred Clans are marching south to attack the Witch Clan, and they’re borrowing a path through Qingzhou. Not only did the Mountain Sea Pavilion agree, but they even extended a helping hand. If that’s not vying to be the vanguard for the Hundred Clans, what is? Or perhaps—”
From the moment they met, he had been nothing but respectful, but now, the sharp blades that had been buried in his heart for so long suddenly broke through their sheaths in his voice.
“Is this also what you call ‘weighing the options’?”
The pipe hung in mid-air. The surroundings were deathly silent.
“You’ve hated me for a long time, haven’t you?” Elder Tao slowly took a drag from his pipe, the exhaled smoke blurring his eyes. “When you were arranging our accommodations, did you feel a sense of relief? After all, if I were staying in the City Divination Department, just suppressing your killing intent would take a great deal of effort, and it would be easy to reveal yourself, wouldn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Zhou Ziyan said coldly.
“I always hated this about you. Your heart is as stubborn as an ox, yet your face and mouth always agree to everything. Hate is hate, yet you insist on observing the rites of a disciple, pretending to have the spirit of youth.” Elder Tao let go of his pipe, letting it clatter onto the black stone. He planted his sword in front of him, gripping the hilt with both hands, his white hair blowing in the wind. “But, you can hate me, you can hate the Mountain Sea Pavilion, that’s all fine. But you should not have made a move against that one from Taiyi. You’re still holding his sword, aren’t you? When did you learn to be so ungrateful?”
Zhou Ziyan lowered his head.
The Taiyi Sword was in its case, its body trembling slightly, desperately trying to break free, but it was tightly bound by two copper chains.
—I have a sword.
—If you want to perform the Heaven-Worshipping Ritual, come and borrow my sword.
The red-robed youth opened his paper umbrella, parted the rain curtain, and gradually walked away, but his voice was left behind by the rain.
Zhou Ziyan closed his eyes. “He said Ru City is beautiful, but this beauty is the color of blood splattering from a heart, the final moment… With no hope in life and no fear in death, ungrateful or not, I too have weighed my options today!”
He snapped his eyes open, his gaze icy cold.
“Teacher, please enlighten me!”
The world was shrouded in darkness, shadows covering heaven and earth.
***
Gray walls, gray tiles, gray eaves.
Zuo Yuesheng stood foolishly on Pan Street, feeling for a moment as if he had walked into the shadow of Ru City.
“Damn it,” he muttered, “what the hell is going on?”
“All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew or a flash of lightning; you should contemplate them thus…” Monk Budu was beside him, looking left and right. “This is the moon in the water, a flower in the mirror.”
“What… what does that mean?” Lu Jing didn’t understand.
He not only didn’t understand, he couldn’t even figure out what was happening right now.
He only remembered that they had just been at the Heaven-Worshipping Ritual, with thousands of lights and fires, magnificent and brilliant. Then that person… oh, Zhou Ziyan, had shaken his robes, and the water that had been connecting heaven and earth had swept towards them. In the light and shadow, he had seen his mother sitting by the window again…
And then, when he woke up, he found himself standing on Pan Street.
Everything on Pan Street was exactly as it had been when they visited the night market yesterday.
The shop selling hairpins and combs was still selling them, the one selling little flower branches was still selling them, and the cage shop where Zuo Yuesheng had haggled over one copper coin was also still there… The people and things hadn’t changed, except that everything had lost its color, becoming a dull gray.
The reason he used “almost” was that the red of the scarlet gauze and vermilion silk was still there.
But without the roaming Ru fish and their flowing, iridescent light, these cloths and silks, in the midst of the grayness, looked like splashes of blood, a shocking sight.
“It means we’re trapped in a killing array!”
Lou Jiang’s face was ashen as he drew his sword, warily watching the motionless people.
“The moon in the water, a flower in the mirror, are all false and unreal. The Heaven-Worshipping Ritual we just saw was just a disguise… On the surface, it looked like a ritual! In reality, the true formation at work was an illusion array! It was aimed at us! He’s using the power of the entire city to kill us. Damn it!”
As he spoke, Lou Jiang finally realized something and couldn’t help but curse.
“Saying the teleportation array was chewed up by fish, what a load of crap! It was clearly this kid who knew we were coming and broke it in advance. He wasn’t sure Elder Tao would be willing to help him perform the ritual, he wasn’t confident he could face Elder Tao directly, so he used this method, borrowing Elder Tao’s cultivation to activate the formation…”
“What? Isn’t he Elder Tao’s student? A disciple killing his master is an unforgivable crime!” Zuo Yuesheng thought, It can’t be that bad, can it? Could it be that when the old man got angry and ran back to Ru City to nurse children, he scolded him too harshly, and Zhou Ziyan has held a grudge until now? “Besides… if he has a grudge, it’s with Elder Tao and his lot. What does it have to do with us? Right!”
Zuo Yuesheng suddenly noticed something and hurriedly looked around.
“Me, you, Lu Jing, the bald donkey, Ye Cang… Wait! Where’s Young Master Chou?!”
Lou Jiang was startled and quickly looked around as well.
He vaguely remembered that when they were pulled into the array, Elder Tao seemed to have discovered something and drew his sword on Zhou Ziyan. Seeing Elder Tao here was not surprising. But just as Zuo Yuesheng had counted, he, Zuo Yuesheng, Lu Jing, Ye Cang, and Monk Budu, all five of them, were gathered on Pan Street of Ru City’s night market.
Only Chou Bodeng was missing!
“This poor monk thinks…” Monk Budu began in a faint voice, “that this killing array seems to be aimed at Benefactor Chou.”
“For real? Bald donkey, you’d better not be joking,” Zuo Yuesheng jumped up. “Damn! I thought he let Young Master Chou off the hook because he lent him his sword! Turns out he was waiting to kill him all along? Isn’t that a bit too heartless?”
As he said this, Zuo Yuesheng subconsciously glanced back at Lu Jing.
Their eyes met, and they both saw the unconcealable panic and worry in each other’s eyes.
Others might not know, but they were well aware of Chou Bodeng’s body full of karmic obstructions. Now, hearing that Zhou Ziyan had gone to such great lengths to kill Chou Bodeng, they subconsciously thought in that direction, wondering if word had gotten out somewhere, that Zhou Ziyan knew Chou Bodeng was an “evil spirit” and was determined to vanquish the demon and uphold justice.
Otherwise, Zhou Ziyan had no grudge against Chou Bodeng. Why would he have been waiting to kill him from so early on?
“What do we do now?” Lu Jing asked in a panic. “Chou Bodeng’s cultivation is so low. We have to find him quickly.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” Monk Budu shook his head. “This poor monk is untalented but knows a little about formation arts. The formation set by City Diviner Zhou is more than just a single layer of illusion. He used the three-tiered Circular Altar as the base, so the illusion array should also have three layers. In my opinion, we benefactors are in the outermost layer, Elder Tao is in the middle, and as for Benefactor Chou… he is probably in the deepest layer.”
“Look!”
Ye Cang was looking around, still hoping to find Chou Bodeng, when he suddenly caught a glimpse of something strange on both sides of the street.
“What’s that on their faces?”
Everyone looked over.
The originally static Pan Street looked as if it was frozen at a certain moment, everyone on the street looking as if they had just been fished out of a mason’s slurry, all dusty and gray. But now, a red color gradually appeared at the corners of the gray, slurry-covered people’s eyes. The red color grew rapidly, and in an instant, it turned into a small fish scale.
“Life Scale.”
Monk Budu said in a low voice.
After the Life Scales appeared, the silent, frozen street suddenly became bustling with noise again.
“Freshly picked little flower branches, lifelike flowers made from silk and wax—lifelike flowers, hey!”
“Combs and hairpins for sale! Combs and hairpins for sale!… Made by Old Granny Hu herself, with hand-threaded beads! A round, bright moon, a shining crescent hook, a golden, eye-catching hairpin, two brightly swaying tassels! A fine jade for your chignon…”
“Sharpening knives and grinding scissors! Any difficulties, folks!”
“…”
The market cries once again assailed them from all directions, but Zuo Yuesheng and the others, surrounded by the calls, no longer found the voices soft and gentle like singing! On the street, the vendors, shop assistants, old people, children, men, and women… all turned their heads in unison to stare at them, their eyes pitch-black, making one feel as if they had fallen into an ice cavern!
“I feel…” Lu Jing’s voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, “that rather than us fighting our way into the deepest layer of the illusion to save Young Master Chou, it’s more likely that Young Master Chou will fight his way out with his sword to save us.”
“What bullshit are you spouting,” Zuo Yuesheng’s lips trembled. “Did you forget, you idiot, that Young Master Chou’s sword was taken by that heartless bastard, Zhou.”
As he spoke, Zuo Yuesheng took a step back, bumping into Lou Jiang. Lou Jiang then bumped into Ye Cang, who in turn bumped into Monk Budu…
The few of them gathered into a circle, gripping their sabers and swords.
The knife grinder was the first to lunge out, and then, the entire street of people surged towards them.
Blood splattered.
***
Drip, drip.
Rain fell onto the mercury-like surface of the lake, creating circles of various sizes.
The Circular Altar was still the same altar, the lake was still the same lake, and in the lake, countless lotus-leaf-like porcelain dishes still stood gracefully, their red candles still burning, the water rippling, the flames glowing. But there were no Oracle Masters or Maidens under the gate towers, no Elder Tao or Zhou Ziyan on the altar, and no Zuo Yuesheng or the others in the waterside pavilion.
It was quiet here, with no wind and no tide.
The rain fell endlessly from the sky, shrouding the highest stone platform.
A youth in white lay on the stone platform, his fingers interlaced.
When he wore red, he was flamboyant and domineering, his eyes full of pride. But now, dressed in white and sleeping peacefully, he appeared exceptionally beautiful and serene. Fine raindrops clung to his lowered eyelashes, condensing like morning dew before dripping down, rolling over the scarlet scale and vermilion tear at the corner of his eye.
After an unknown amount of time, the youth’s eyes fluttered open in a daze.
“…Who am I?”