Chapter 37 – Youth Wields a Sword Against Injustice
“I don’t understand,” Zuo Yuesheng said, looking blankly at Zhou Ziyan and Doudou disappearing into the Lost Ferry. “Didn’t this city once cut down a Taiyu with a sword?”
He still remembered the rush of blood in the tavern that day.
Chou Bodeng, Lu Jing, and he were there. They had gathered around a candle, listening to an unreliable monk tell the old stories of Ru City. He spoke of how the young clan head of the Taiyu Clan had shrieked and roared, saying he was the future Heaven-Herder, that Kongsang’s power was as vast as the sea for thousands of years. He also spoke of Ru City’s million mortals and million soldiers, of how the entire city was armed with blades and armor.
He spoke of how the people of this city, mortals as lowly as ants compared to cultivators, had thrown themselves into the fray without a second thought at that moment.
They used kitchen knives, scissors, their teeth—all sorts of absurd and laughable weapons.
The most powerful cultivator, the City Diviner of Ru City, was already dead. There was no one left who could stand against the Taiyu young clan head. He had cut a swath through them, breaking through the encirclement with the Ru fish, until he reached the city gate, where he was met by a flash of sword light flying out from the shadows.
Corpses piled up like mountains, blood flowed like a sea, and in the end, a single sword illuminated the Twelve Continents.
Such was its sorrow, such was its valor.
How could such a valiant city, a city where a million people could rise up together, be trapped in the cold rain, worn down day after day, until husbands and wives argued with regret, until men in their prime committed suicide by swallowing gold to feed the fish?
Where had that sword from back then gone?
“When exactly did Ru City cut down the Taiyu?”
Lou Jiang suddenly grabbed Monk Budu, roaring in a near-hysterical state.
“Tell me! Tell me!”
“The thirty-second year of Guiding, the second day of the Clear Moon.”
The thirty-second year of Guiding, the second day of the Clear Moon. Thirty-two years…
Lou Jiang let go of Monk Budu and staggered back a step, a chill running through him. He remembered this date. He remembered it! He had read through another person’s history countless times, imagining through simple words that person’s moment of glory, feeling both jealous and full of admiration… He had read it so many times that the numbers were etched into his memory.
The disciple records of the Mountain Sea Pavilion stated: In the thirty-second year of Guiding, on the second day of the Clear Moon, Zhou Ziyan returned to his hometown to visit his family.
It was about a hundred years ago.
The passage of time takes a long time to show its marks on a cultivator. Once one embarks on the path of immortality and achieves some level of cultivation, aging slows down considerably. The concepts of “youth” and “old age” for a cultivator are completely different from those for a mortal. In the thirty-second year of Guiding, Zhou Ziyan had reached the Dao Enlightenment Stage. Lou Jiang didn’t know if, when he returned to Ru City, he had also been filled with the high spirits of returning home in glory.
That year, he was sixteen.
A hundred years later, when Lou Jiang saw Zhou Ziyan again, he still had a youthful face. He would even cover his face and try to leave, his expression shy and awkward when scolded by Elder Tao. Lou Jiang had read so much about his youthful brilliance that he had subconsciously thought of him as the same sixteen-year-old who had returned home in glory, not realizing that a hundred years had already passed.
One hundred years.
What had happened in those hundred years?
What had turned a genius and a city as fierce as a blazing fire into what they were today?
Lou Jiang pushed past the others and rushed towards Zhou Ziyan, who was about to disappear at the end of the corridor.
“Lou Jiang! Lou Jiang!”
Zuo Yuesheng and the others were shouting behind him, but Lou Jiang didn’t hear them at all.
Just before Zhou Ziyan’s phantom was about to disappear, he grabbed the young City Diviner by the collar and roared hysterically:
“What the hell happened?!”
How did you become like this?
The person he was most jealous of, and also the person he admired the most.
His fingers brushed past the collar, and Lou Jiang was swept up by a force, crashing into a chaotic void. When he came to again, he was kneeling in a slightly dim purification room, a familiar old voice coming from above his head: “Ziyan, you were too impulsive! Didn’t I give you a Listening Talisman? Why didn’t you tell me first? At the very least, you should have brought him back to the Mountain Sea Pavilion and let the Pavilion handle it!”
“But would he have died?”
Lou Jiang heard Zhou Ziyan’s voice, suppressed and low.
“If it were left to the Mountain Sea Pavilion to resolve, would he have died?”
He looked up and saw Elder Tao’s angry face, familiar yet strange.
The Elder Tao Lou Jiang knew was a somewhat neglectful old man who wandered around the pavilion all day without any airs. However, the Elder Tao in Zhou Ziyan’s memory was younger, colder, and more serious. He didn’t smoke and had no appreciation for elegance, more like the legendary pillar of the Mountain Sea Pavilion who had guarded the Undying City for hundreds of years.
“Teacher,” Zhou Ziyan asked softly, “would the Mountain Sea Pavilion have killed him? Would he have died?”
Elder Tao was silent, not answering for a long time.
“He wouldn’t have died!”
“You wouldn’t have killed him!”
Lou Jiang could feel Zhou Ziyan’s hands trembling inside his sleeves. He was trying his best to restrain himself, to maintain the respect he owed his teacher.
“He is the young master of the Taiyu Clan, the future head of the Heaven-Herders. You wouldn’t have killed him!”
“But what did he say? A few divine artifacts, a few tens of thousands of gold, was enough to compensate for one of my Ru City’s fish. He said a coffin costs twenty taels, so even if he killed everyone in the city, two million taels of gold was something his Taiyu Clan could afford to pay! He said it was just a fish!”
“Even if it’s just a fish, it’s a fish that has protected my Ru City for thousands of years!”
He knelt ramrod straight, but his chest was boiling with endless resentment. Ru City, compared to the Hundred Clans, was like a firefly to the sun and moon, so small, so insignificant. But even a firefly dared to burn, just like the million people in the city who had thrown themselves into the fray, just like the sixteen-year-old youth who had held his sword, gathering the strength for a dragon-like strike.
“…Why did you have to kill him in Ru City?” Elder Tao said. “You could have clearly killed him outside the city.”
“Teacher, Ru City lives on by this one breath of spirit,” Zhou Ziyan said softly.
The spirit that decreed whoever killed a Ru in the city must die in the city.
There were hundreds of millions of Ru fish, but each one was weak on its own. Only by gathering together could they illuminate the mountains and rivers. To protect all the fish, they had to maintain this spirit.
“If the Hundred Clans don’t die in the city today, tomorrow there will be a thousand clans! Ten thousand clans! And Ru City… will be gone!”
A cold wind blew through the hall. Elder Tao sighed heavily and left with his hands behind his back.
“Like this, you won’t be able to protect it.”
Can’t protect it?
Why can’t I protect it?
The candle flame flared, the scene changed, and Lou Jiang felt that he, or rather Zhou Ziyan, was once again kneeling on the ground, kowtowing heavily. He used so much force that Lou Jiang, attached to his memory, could feel the unforgettable pain.
“This disciple suspects that the Hundred Clans have secretly altered the orbits of the sun and moon.”
“This disciple implores the Mountain Sea Pavilion to question Kongsang.”
One word, one kowtow. The hall was silent.
“Ziyan… begs the Pavilion Master and the Grand Elders to question Kongsang and thoroughly investigate the celestial orbits.”
He raised his head, his voice hoarse as he spoke word by word.
Lou Jiang saw the Pavilion Master, the white-haired Grand Elders, and many other elders, some stern, some kind. Zhou Ziyan looked at them one by one. They either turned their heads away, or their brows were tightly furrowed, or they shook their heads and sighed… Never had there been such a cold wind blowing through the hall, a wind that chilled one’s blood and soul, bit by bit.
“Ziyan,” the Pavilion Master finally spoke, his voice very slow. “The Taiyu Clan originally wanted Ru City to hand you over. Did you know that?”
“This disciple knows.”
Zhou Ziyan’s head drooped, bit by bit.
“This disciple knows that it was the Mountain Sea Pavilion that protected me.”
“Although the Heaven-Supervising Alliance Pact stipulated that if an Immortal Sect had doubts about the orbits of the sun and moon, they could question Kongsang. To date, the Immortal Sects have questioned Kongsang three times, and each time resulted in bloody wars across several continents, with countless lives lost.” The Pavilion Master’s voice was heavy. “Do you know that?”
“Ziyan… knows.”
“Then do you understand?”
Lou Jiang understood.
He understood why even Zuo Yuesheng, the Young Pavilion Master, didn’t know that Ru City had once cut down a member of the Taiyu Clan. He understood why there had been no news of Zhou Ziyan after the age of sixteen, and why the sect had not mentioned this person for a hundred years.
Because it was not something to be proud of.
The Immortal Sects ruled the Twelve Continents, and each continent had millions of cities. The cities and the Immortal Sects had pacts, which was why the City Blessing Seal of each city was uniformly cast by the Immortal Sects of each continent. The cities paid tribute to the Immortal Sects, and in times of great disaster, the Immortal Sects would step in to protect the cities. In addition, when the cities of the various continents encountered injustices that they could not fight on their own, they would also seek help from the Immortal Sects and ask them to uphold justice.
Ru City was one such city.
Like the other cities in Qingzhou, it had signed a City Pact with an Immortal Sect.
The Taiyu Clan had used their power and status among the Hundred Clans to alter the paths of the sun and moon, causing Ru City to have less and less sun and rain. The paths of the sun and moon were already complex and unpredictable. A tiny, subtle deviation high in the heavens was enough to cause life-and-death changes on the ground. The Taiyu Clan had calculated that this change was too subtle, and that with the overall celestial orbits showing no anomalies, the Mountain Sea Pavilion would absolutely be unwilling to question Kongsang.
Altering the celestial orbits was the act of one clan, but investigating them meant investigating all the Hundred Clans of Kongsang.
On one side was a mortal city, on the other was the Hundred Clans of Kongsang.
Which was heavier, which was lighter? What was the right choice to make?
And so, the City Pact could only be met with a sigh. The justice of this world was mostly just empty words on paper.
Only the young would take it seriously.
“…Ziyan understands.”
“Ziyan holds no resentment. I request to resign from the Mountain Sea Pavilion.”
Resign from the Mountain Sea Pavilion, and return to Ru City.
***
“Ziyan, you’re mad!” Elder Tao gripped the broken sword tightly, the blade cutting into his flesh, fresh blood dripping onto the ground. “What have you done! Who taught you this evil art!”
In the illusion array, thousands of rainbows and streams of fire flew. The ink-wash streets and houses were torn apart, burned, erased, and then reborn. The young man standing in the center of the flowing light had his black hair turned to frost. He was thin and pale, as if all the blood in his body was rapidly flowing away, turning into countless scarlet fish shadows coiling around him.
The fish shadows swam out from his chest, from his heart.
He stood there, arms spread, having become a nest of flesh and blood for the fish.
As the school of fish swam out, his aura rapidly surged at a terrifying speed, rising, becoming unprecedentedly dangerous. Elder Tao, completely oblivious to the danger, had his iron-sealed expression shatter, revealing unconcealable anxiety and fear. “What have you done!”
A City Diviner could borrow the power of a City God through the City Blessing Seal, that was true, but Zhou Ziyan’s current transformation had already surpassed the scope of borrowing divine power through the seal!
“Teacher, everyone in Ru City has had their Life Scale dotted,” Zhou Ziyan said softly. “Do you know what a Life Scale is?”
“A Ru fish bestows its life soul upon us. A person who has had their Life Scale dotted becomes a roaming fish, so that after death, they can follow the guidance of the scale’s fire and return to the school.”
“But conversely, a person can also lend their life to a fish if they are willing.”
That was why the people of the city committed suicide by swallowing gold, feeding themselves to the fish.
They called it “Returning Life.”
The Ru fish protects me, grants me a red scale, and I return it with my life.
And he was a cultivator. He could cultivate. For a hundred years, he had cultivated day and night, nourishing the entire city’s fish with his own spiritual sense and cultivation.
“Teacher, I can’t hold on for much longer. But if I die, what will happen to this city?” Zhou Ziyan’s eyes were hollow. “What will happen to the Ru fish?”
“You bastard!” Elder Tao Rong charged against the crimson current, the fish scales cutting his flesh, his white hair seeming to burn. “You can kill me, you can kill the others, but you can’t kill Elder Chou! Everything you’re doing is still in vain, you fool! I’ll talk to Taiyi, I’ll question the Hundred Clans! If you really want to save this city, then release Elder Chou!”
“I know,” Zhou Ziyan said softly. “That person said I can’t kill him.”
“So, he came himself.”
The Ru fish returned his power to him, and he became unprecedentedly strong, but he was rapidly aging, an aging that came from the exhaustion and despair in his soul. Elder Tao finally realized what lay between him and his student.
It was a hundred years.
A hundred years was the blink of an eye for an immortal, but for a mortal, it was enough.
Enough for one generation to bid farewell to another in death, enough for the indignation of ancestors to become a thing of the past, enough for bitterness and melancholy to cool hot blood, enough for a person to do anything in despair.
“Teacher,” Zhou Ziyan smiled palely. “Ungrateful, weighing the options… I think I understand now.”
He drew a second sword from the void and, covered in blood and fire, charged towards Elder Tao. The light distorted, the world turned upside down. He seemed to be laughing, yet also crying, as he sang out in sorrow.
“I hoped for the sun and moon, but they did not come, what could I do!”
“I hoped for the four winds, but they did not come, what could I do!”
In youth, he wielded a sword to right injustice; now, he bows his head and begs to weigh the options.
What can I do!