Chapter 33. Yun Weisi, did you really forget everything?

Cong Rong was a naive and innocent girl.

In her opinion, nothing was worth mourning over for more than half a shichen, and the feeling of exhaustion from their long journey was soon replaced by her curiosity towards the two of them, Changming and Yu Hai. All the way long she was inquiring about some cultivation-related matters non-stop, asking which immortals and what kinds of elixirs of life are the heavenly steed soaring across the skies nowadays—she came up with an endless stream of original ideas. Yun Hai ignored her, so she stuck to Changming.

Half a shichen: one hour.

The heavenly steed soaring across the skies: powerful and ambitious.

What was strange was, Changming was unprecedentedly patient with her.

“Changming-gege, on which peak do you cultivate?”

-gege: elder brother.

“Lingbo Peak,” Changming answered randomly.

At this time, the Jianxue Clan hadn’t been established yet, naturally, no one had ever heard of Lingbo Peak.

“This name sounds nice, so there must be many immortals living on this peak. Changming-gege, can you fly on your sword with me? I met a cultivator who could control his sword to fly, His Majesty the crown prince’s attendant, but I’ve never tried it myself.”

Sounds nice: Lingbo is lit. ‘rushing waves’ and fig. ‘walking gracefully, like a fairy treading waves’.

“I was injured, so it would be inconvenient. Why don’t you ask daoyou Yun Hai,”  Changming, pushing a half to zero point five, directly diverted these calamitous waters to the East.

Pushing a half to zero point five: fig. ‘evade all responsibility’, a combination of two idioms that originate from the division rules in abacus reckoning.

Diverting these calamitous waters to the East: to pass the buck. This is not a traditional Chinese idiom; it originated from Anglo-French appeasement policy of diverting Hitler, the calamitous waters, to the East.

Cong Rong looked at Yun Hai.

Yun Hai was walking ahead of them by several steps, and the tassel of his Chunzhao Sword was swaying rhythmically as he made steps.

“My arms are paralyzed.”

Yun Hai didn’t even turn his head.

Cong Rong: …

She winked at Changming, and changed the subject forcibly, asking other questions.

“Changming-gege, do you know which sects of which factions accept disciples of my age?”

“Isn’t it fine to live joyfully like an ordinary person, get married and have a son?” Changming asked in reply, “Why, with your family’s financial situation, did you run a thousand li distance to chase a purely imaginary dream?”

If she didn’t come to Yuru Town, her eyes wouldn’t have been damaged. All the misfortunes that came one following another in the second half of Cong Rong’s life started with this one journey.

Of course, at this moment Cong Rong was totally ignorant of these matters, but Changming was absolutely sure.

If Cong Rong never met Yun Chang’an, she wouldn’t have had Yun Weisi.

And if that accident with the Yun and Cong Families never happened, Yun Weisi wouldn’t have necessarily entered the Yuhuang Temple.

Every bite and every sip, everything is preordained.

If he prevented this massacre, would the devoted-to-Dao and accomplished Yun Weisi even exist?

“I am twenty years old now, and have never left my family. Every time we left the capital, I wanted to go up a mountain to become a disciple, but my family members always told me that I’m not allowed to do this and that, as if I won’t be able to achieve anything if I leave them. I was wasting years after years, because I didn’t want to cause troubles for my elders, but I was more and more unsatisfied. That’s how it was before this arranged marriage.”

Cong Rong was venting her grievances endlessly, depicting the worries of a girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

If she was born in a poverty-stricken family, where one would worry about having two meals a day, she wouldn’t have time to think of becoming immortal through cultivation.

This is how the world works: people aspire after Sichuan having captured Gansu, and their greed has no limits.

Aspire after Sichuan having captured Gansu: to have insatiable desires. From “History of the Later Han Dynasty”.

“With which family was this marriage arranged?”

“You don’t know them anyway. It’s the Yun Family.”

Very soon, they reached the foot of the mountain. Cong Rong was already exhausted, couldn’t continue walking farther at all, and demanded to stop for a rest. They found a flat ground to start a fire and take a break.

These days, the great lands of China were united, but the world was not peaceful. Although cultivators killed people to obtain treasures, usually they disdained to attack common people; on the contrary, bandits from mountains, these social vermins, frequently haunted people. But such matters were not enough to do them harm. Even if there was no Changming and Yun Hai, Cong Rong alone was enough to deal with them. The reason why she dared to venture out into the world by herself was because her skills in martial arts were not bad.

“There is half a shichen left, or maybe even less,” Yun Hai said all of a sudden, to no point.

Surprisingly, his expression was a bit tired. Changming had never seen him like this.

“Yun Weisi?” Changming’s heart tingled.

Yun Hai hummed, the corners of his mouth curling into a teasing arch.

“You want to see him more?”

After all, that was Yun Weisi, the real Yun Weisi.

And he was only Yun Hai who appeared at a random moment and could disappear any time.

But Yun Hai still remembered that fire near the seashore, and Changming sitting next to it.

That was the first time they met, not under the rain in front of the Yuhuang Temple. He wasn’t that Yun Weisi who was devoted to killing Jiufang Changming with all his heart.

He didn’t wait for Changming’s answer. His vision went black.

The first ray of light ignited in the horizon, and Changming saw Yun Hai tilt his head, as if falling asleep.

In a moment, he opened his eyes again, but his expression was different now.

As soon as he saw Changming, he wanted to draw his sword subconsciously, but realized he had no spiritual powers in himself.

Changming was listlessly relaxing with his eyes closed, still leaning on a tree. He didn’t care about the sword that pressed up to his neck at all.

Yun Weisi frowned, looking around.

He saw Cong Rong and the environment that was different from yesterday.

Obviously, it wasn’t Heavenly City anymore.

And it wasn’t any other location of the Nine Layers of the Abyss either.

Realization dawned on Yun Weisi, and he frowned even deeper.

“The Void Shore?”

Changming: “Correct.”

Yun Weisi asked again: “Where are we?”

Changming: “On the way to Yuru Town. You should have guessed who she is already.”

Yun Weisi stared at Cong Rong who had been sleeping silently for some time. She was hit on her sleeping acupoints by Changming earlier, and was now deeply asleep, and knew nothing about what was going on.

Sleeping acupoints: there are four sleeping acupoints altogether: Neiguan and Shenmen (soothing effect on one’s mind), Hegu (regulating qi and blood), and Xinbao (tonifying heart and kidneys). They are said to help cure insomnia in modern conventional medicine.

“Cong Rong.”

Changming nodded: “I have a question that has remained a mystery for me even after much pondering, good thing I can ask you now. I talked to Yun Hai earlier. This place will let anyone recall their distant memories, but I came to Yuru Town the next day after the massacre, and I have never gone through anything with your mother. How did we come here?”

Yun Weisi said: “These are not memories.”

Changming inquired: “Then what is it?”

Yun Weisi pursed his lips and frowned. His expression was a bit lost as he was painstakingly rummaging through his memories.

“It is a formation. Time turns back and blends with memories, the same goes for people.”

Through all the long years and short months he had spent in the Nine Layers of the Abyss, throwing away the memories he deemed nuisances on the Void Shore, these memories were breaking into pieces.

What was left was only a number of broken fragments that slipped through his mind from time to time, just like needles sinking in an ocean.

Yun Weisi lowered his head and pressed his hand against his forehead, enduring a headache to catch these memories.

“All the memories are connected to experiences… The Sacred Mountain Wan’s terrain is special, and spiritual qi from ancient times lingered here; cultivators practised in this place afterwards, then demonic qi and the Liuhe Zhutian Formation’s power were added. On the night when the Five Stars were aligned in the sky, when time, geographical, and social conditions were favorable, Yin and Yang reversed, Qian and Kun turned upside down—that was when the Nine Layers of the Abyss was finally formed… The Nine Layers of the Abyss is actually a continuation of the Liuhe Zhutian Formation of those years.”

The night when the Five Stars appeared in the sky simultaneously: Mercury (water star), Venus (gold star), Mars (fire star), Jupiter (wood star), Saturn (soil star). An auspicious omen.

Qian and Kun turned upside down: the world was turned upside down. Qian and Kun are two opposing positions in the Eight Trigrams.

He was speaking disjointly, but Changming understood him.

“You mean that the memories of many people and their experiences are mixed here, and if, say, we make a different choice here, we can change the actual outcome as well?”

Yun Weisi: “It should be so.”

Changming’s expression changed slightly: “Such an enormous formation can’t be a creation of one person. Who worked together with you those years?”

Yun Weisi muttered: “From the Wanxiang Palace…”

Changming: “Chi Bijiang.”

“She, but not only her, there were three more.”

“Who?”

“I can’t recall.”

Yun Weisi restored his ‘worldly affairs don’t concern me’ expression, giving Changming a warning.

“Every single matter on earth has its fate. If you change something here, it won’t necessarily turn out the way you wanted. On the contrary, changing the trajectories of the Destiny Stars may lead to a complete chaos, and eventually you will disappear here as well. All of those who came here before thought that they would be able to reverse tragedies, but not a single one escaped the fate of vanishing like ashes and smoke, suffering in agony.”

Every single matter on earth: “every phenomenon on earth” is precisely the “wanxiang” from the Wanxiang Palace.

Many people were unable to notice this in advance, so they persisted till the end; but, even if they saw through this mystery, they stubbornly insisted, believing that they would be able to change the past if they stayed aloof from the world.

But only if one let everything go and cultivated the Heartless Dao, would they be able to free themselves of worldly worries.

Changming was unable to help laughing: “You never forget for a moment that you want to kill me, isn’t that being persistent?”

Yun Weisi coldly said: “You are the only obstruction in my heart. If I kill you, my Dao will be perfect.”

He casted a glance at sleeping Cong Rong.

What happened to her couldn’t be changed.

Since it was the past, he could simply discard it.

Changming said: “Since you don’t want to change the past, you can’t kill me here; otherwise, if I’m gone, you won’t become who you are now. Let’s put all the old scores aside until we have left this place, and then talk again.”

Yun Weisi didn’t agree, but neither did he reject it.

This could be counted as the first time they had shaken hands and made up, reaching a tacit agreement, since this master and his disciple met again.

But Changming knew that if he encountered a threat to his life, Yun Weisi would certainly choose to watch from the side with folded arms.

The sky was getting brighter.

The effect of pressed sleeping acupoints wore out, and Cong Rong got up, rubbing her eyes.

She apologized to them for unwittingly falling asleep for so long.

Changming answered that it was fine, and the three of them resumed their journey, ready to cross the mountain to get to Yuru Town.

“What happened to gentleman Yun?”

Cong Rong moved closer to Changming, pulled at his sleeve and asked in a low voice.

Changming raised his eyebrows, puzzled.

Cong Rong: “He seems to be very different from last night.”

Of course he was different, even his expression changed. It wasn’t strange for Cong Rong to notice the difference.

Changming: “He recalled a lady he used to love but couldn’t be together with. His heart hurts.”

He was just lying thoughtlessly, but unexpectedly Cong Rong took it for truth.

“Is the lady he loves also a cultivator?”

Changming hummed: “Even a demonic one.”

Cong Rong: “What is a demonic cultivator, is she a demon?”

Changming: “Demonic cultivators are not demons, they just cultivate in other ways, which is called cultivating in unorthodox ways.”

Cong Rong sympathised with him at once: “If they love each other sincerely, and she doesn’t hurt the innocent, what is so bad about her being a demonic cultivator?”

Yun Weisi who was walking a few steps behind but could hear them clearly nevertheless: …

He didn’t feel like rectifying Changming’s sheer nonsense, and just allowed him to talk without uttering a word.

But Jiufang Changming went beyond reasonable limits.

“He loves that lady, but her family doesn’t like him. The faster he chases, the farther they flee. He swore that he won’t take anyone but her as his wife in this life, so even now his body and his shadow are comforting each other.”

His body and his shadow are comforting each other: extremely lonely.

Cong Rong gasped: “So only you care about him?”

Changming joked: “Exactly!”

Cong Rong lamented: “If I find a close friend like you are to him this time, I will have no regrets!”

Cong Rong saw a colorful butterfly, and bounced after it.

Changming slowed down a bit to walk abreast of Yun Weisi.

“Don’t you feel moved when you look at her?”

Yun Weisi didn’t answer, but his expression clearly told Changming that Yun Weisi wouldn’t be shaken by any kind of words.

Changming: “People who have the best cultivation may forget every feeling, but they are not heartless. And you are simply keeping silent, as if you haven’t forgotten.”

Yun Weisi said coldly: “Back then, you wanted to have everything, but you couldn’t master everything, and met such an end. If you master one Dao, you make an oath to never return. There is nothing controversial: if you take a step back on your Dao, you waste all your previous efforts, just like you did.”

Changming: “Yun Weisi, did you really forget everything?”

Yun Weisi didn’t answer.

“Changming-gege, come here and take a look!”

Cong Rong yelled.

Changming walked forward unhurriedly, neither fast nor slow, showing his completely defenceless back to Yun Weisi.

Yun Weisi only needed to move one finger to draw his sword from its sheath.

Even if he couldn’t use spiritual powers, one sword was enough to make the other cease to breathe.

—Yun Weisi, did you really forget everything?

These words were still ringing in his ears. Yun Weisi waved his sleeves, and the sword tassel on his back silently fell to the ground.

…

Yuru Peak wasn’t steep or hard to climb, and they reached Yuru Town before afternoon.

This was the last town a traveller would pass before crossing the borders, and the largest one in several hundreds of lis. Merchants came and went away one after another, many cultivators mingled with them. Shopkeepers were loudly shouting out the prices, enticing customers; many people were too lazy to proceed to the market, and set up their stalls not far from the town gates, so very soon this area became crowded by people.

It was hard to imagine this town with several thousands of residents turning into a sea of blood spilled by demons overnight.

“Let’s find a place to eat first. I’m hungry, so it’s my treat. And also, after we are finished eating, I want to find a tailor’s shop to buy clothes that are convenient for travelling. Changming-gege, will you accompany me? Oh, right, the Qianlin Assembly is still far from here, won’t we be late if we set out tomorrow?”

Cong Rong said so much in a single breath, full of enthusiasm. When she reached the long-awaited bustling town, all her tiredness from the long journey was swept clean, and everything looked novel to her.

“Don’t worry, the Qianlin Assembly will be held in the Heifeng Desert not far from here in three days. But the climate there is changeable, and merchants usually make a detour on purpose.”

Changming pointed towards the highest four-storey guest house in the town.

“Let’s stay there tonight.”

Not only would they occupy advantageous high grounds, but would also be able to hear any movements at night.

Cong Rong had no objections, and Yun Weisi had none all the more.

Coincidentally, four out of the six expensive rooms of the fourth floor had already been reserved, and only two rooms were left.

In other words, Changming and Yun Weisi had to share a room.

And, coincidentally, these two rooms were the eastern and the western ones, the farthest-from-each-other rooms of this floor.

A worker of the guest house told them that the second-to-last room on the east was reserved by a young gentleman, but he left this place as soon as the room was reserved. A miaohui was held in the town today, so, probably, he went there to watch the fun, and still hadn’t returned. And the guests of the second to last room from the west were two young women, so, if Changming and the others wanted to exchange rooms, the worker suggested they negotiate with the ladies and come to an agreement with them first.

Miaohui: lit. ‘temple gathering’, were held by temples to worship Chinese deities around the time of the Chinese New Year.

In the end, they parted, and Cong Rong went to the eastern side, while Changming with Yun Weisi went to the western.

When she heard about the miaohui, Cong Rong expressed her will to go and take a look right away, and find some food in passing. Changming and Yun Weisi agreed.

Yuru Town had no Confucian temples, only a temple dedicated to the city’s god; naturally, the miaohui was held near this city god’s temple. When they arrived, the boiling cauldron of voices was at its peak, and masked men on stilts were performing a fireshow; the flames, soaring into the air, turned into copper coins that fell to the ground, making the public cheer excitedly and quickly bend down to gather the coins.

Boiling cauldron of voices: hubbub.

In Yun Weisi’s eyes, this noisy show was perfectly tranquil, raising no waves. His mind, as settled as still water, seemed to influence people around him, so everyone tried to avoid him subconsciously, and only Changming was still standing nearby.

But Changming wasn’t looking at the bustling scene either: his eyes landed on a person in the crowd.

He saw a person who shouldn’t have appeared here in the streams of people busily coming and going.

Chen Ting.