Chapter 22: Realm of Stillness
In a thatched cottage of a rural school that bore no plaque, a middle-aged Confucian scholar, Qi Jingchun, was sitting in meditation, pondering over a game record. It was not some famous historical masterpiece, nor a replay of a match between national chess champions.
He was about to place a white stone on the board, sighing, when at a spot where the stone’s placement had long been determined, the scholar suddenly began to hesitate. He withdrew his hand, but the stone remained suspended in the air, still an inch above the board.
Qi Jingchun sat upright and proper. As the contemporary Sage stationed in this region, one of the seventy-two Confucian academies, and the former head of Cliff Academy, even though he had been demoted here to atone for his faults, Qi Jingchun was still an indisputably pure Confucian scholar of the age.
To the ordinary folk of the town, grass and trees withered and flourished year after year, sixty-year cycles passing in a blink. The teachers at the rural school had changed several times, with different appearances and ages, but always carrying that same indescribable scholar’s temperament: rigid, strict, taciturn—in short, dull and boring. No one realized that those several teachers who came and went were actually the same person. Not only that, but in the vast world beyond the town, the reclusive Master Qi had once held a transcendent, lofty status, and possessed the supreme divine power of righteous aura.
The next moment, Qi Jingchun’s primordial spirit left his body and traveled afar, like an immortal in flowing white robes breaking free from the cage of his physical shell. He drifted into a lane in the town.
In an instant, Qi Jingchun arrived at the lane. He first went to look at the woman lying in a pool of blood. Cai Jinjian of Cloud Mist Mountain. Her three souls and seven spirits were flickering and dispersing, like a candle guttering in the wind.
After pausing there for a moment, Qi Jingchun finally came to stand beside two people.
The young city lord of Old Dragon City, in his high hat and wide sleeves, leaned back slightly, dumbfounded. On his handsome, jade-like face, his expression was complex, a mixture of shock, doubt, and despair.
The youth maintained that fierce stance of leaping high and striking downward. In his left hand, he gripped a shard of porcelain as sharp as a blade. Even at this critical moment of life or death, with his body suspended in midair, the youth’s eyes remained resolute, his face calm. He did not look at all like an ignorant boy born in a humble alley and raised in the wilderness. Perhaps the only thing fitting his age was the helplessness hidden deep in his eyes. To a scholar who had left his study and academy many years ago, this kind of helplessness was no stranger. It was like watching a farmer who depended on the weather, squatting on a cracked, barren ridge during a drought, looking up at the blazing sun. There would be no heart-wrenching sorrow, only deep helplessness, and confusion.
As the temporary master of this realm, Qi Jingchun naturally knew the full background of Chen Ping’an and his family. He could even trace it back a hundred or a thousand years. Even if he had never personally seen the youth’s ancestors, he could roughly deduce and extrapolate. The logic was simple: just as a county magistrate who truly wanted to know the lineage of the people under his rule only needed to go to the household registry and check the archives for a clear picture.
Over more than three thousand years of development and reproduction, the town’s branches had spread outward, roots intertwining. Because each generation produced a few exceptionally brilliant figures, even if they could not return home in glory, they could still nourish their families through secret channels. This had ultimately created the town’s current four major surnames and ten great clans.
Chen Ping’an’s family also had a long history. His ancestors had once been prosperous and influential, but after two great upheavals, in the East Bottle Gourd Continent—with its countless vassal states and myriad dynasties—they gradually declined, yielding ground to other surnames. Over a millennium, things went from bad to worse. By the generation of the youth’s father, the Chen lineage in the town had all but completely withered away across the entire East Bottle Gourd Continent, let alone within the territory of the Great Li dynasty, to which the town belonged. It was as if they had been decreed by the sovereign “never to take office for generations,” with no hope of revival for the family.
After Qi Jingchun came to preside over the grand formation, for over sixty years, he strictly adhered to the four-character teaching motto “upright, just, peaceful, harmonious.” He never altered the fate of the town’s people based on personal preference. Otherwise, in the eyes of this scholar, who had once hated evil as much as an enemy, there was too much filth in the great houses and too much poverty in the humble alleys. Yet after observing coldly, Qi Jingchun saw that the great families also had their futile struggles, and the small households also had their extreme cruelty. Over time, Qi Jingchun became like a lofty statue, neither receiving incense nor bearing favors, simply sitting with folded hands, paying no heed to worldly affairs.
Qi Jingchun was slightly surprised. He stepped forward, looked closely, and nodded gently. The poor youth, full of momentum, seemed determined to kill Fu Nanhua in his pounce. But judging by his current posture, in the end, the youth would only strike Fu Nanhua’s neck heavily with his wrist. Compared to Cai Jinjian’s fate, it was much better. Fu Nanhua would likely be knocked sideways by a heavy blow, slamming into the wall, and then be grabbed by the neck with one hand while the other pressed a porcelain shard against his abdomen.
Qi Jingchun was curious. Why hadn’t the youth delivered a fatal blow this time? Such a golden opportunity, fleeting, would lead to endless trouble. Qi Jingchun was a pure Confucian, strict in etiquette but not rigid in dogma—not the kind of pedantic scholar who only shook his head and recited books. He knew well the likes of Fu Nanhua, be it their talent, temperament, or temper. Even if the youth threatened Fu Nanhua into temporarily abandoning revenge in the alley today, this would undoubtedly be the greatest humiliation the young man had ever experienced. It could even become a demon in his Dao heart. When the time came, it wouldn’t just be Fu Nanhua himself seeking revenge, but the entire Old Dragon City, master of the Southern Sea.
The reason Qi Jingchun came to stop the youth from killing in succession was partly out of personal feeling, but more for the sake of justice. Currently, the town was like a porcelain vessel with a crack. It would eventually shatter and explode. Qi Jingchun had to delay this inevitable process, to arrange retreats for as many people as possible, and best of all, to hand it over smoothly to the “Iron Master Ruan.” If he could hold out for another sixty-year cycle, everyone might be barely satisfied. Those on the mountain would gain opportunities, those below the mountain would gain stability. For people must understand: given the general temperament of the former group, when paths collapse, the old yields to the new, opportunities surge, and immortality seems attainable, what are a few hundred or thousand ants at the foot of the mountain to them?!
The heartlessness of an imperial dynasty’s royal family was nothing compared to the “Dao without partiality” revered by many cultivators.
After pondering for a moment, Qi Jingchun quietly vanished.
The flow of heaven and earth resumed without hindrance.
The previous realm of stillness shattered silently.
The youth’s wrist “finally” struck Fu Nanhua’s neck heavily. The latter’s head wobbled, and he was flung sideways against the alley wall. The immense force left him dazed and disoriented. After landing, the youth quickly closed in, driving an elbow strike into Fu Nanhua’s abdomen.
Fu Nanhua had not yet straightened up against the wall. The elbow strike nearly made him vomit bitter bile, and his body instinctively curled forward.
The youth grabbed Fu Nanhua’s neck with one hand and pressed the porcelain shard against the dandy’s abdomen with the other.
Fu Nanhua could hardly imagine how a scrawny youth a head shorter than him could have such enormous strength in his fingers. The sharp coldness of the porcelain shard on his abdomen brought the young city lord of Old Dragon City the feeling of death drawing near once more—a single line away from life and death.
Of course, Fu Nanhua could not know the astonishing potential unleashed by a young boy who, since childhood, had to forage for herbs all over the mountains and forests, driven by an obsession stronger than his own will to survive.
When that boy had ingested a wild herb and writhed in agony in that very alley, that obsession had been so powerful that a child who should have been in a rural school thought only of crawling home, dragging the bamboo basket of life-saving herbs back to the house.
Since then, chopping firewood, burning charcoal, firing porcelain, molding clay, tasting soil—none of these tasks were accomplished without testing the boy’s physical strength and endurance.
Outside the town, Fu Nanhua could casually use a bit of immortal magic to crush a hundred or a thousand such youths. But choosing to fight him to the death within the town was indeed the end of his good luck—his foot had kicked an iron plate.
Bitter pain and humiliation overwhelmed Fu Nanhua, making him reckless. His face twisted in fury, he snarled, “If you kill me, you’re dead! If you don’t kill me, you’re still dead! Little bastard, you’re finished no matter what!”
Chen Ping’an tilted his head back slightly, staring at the man’s frenzied face, and said, “You know, I don’t want to kill you. I have no grievance with you. You tried to harm me, so I’m just defending myself.”
Fu Nanhua sneered, “A little bastard like you thinks you can reason with me, Fu Nanhua?!”
He stressed, “Are you worthy?!”
Chen Ping’an was silent for a moment, then asked, “Are you determined to kill me?”
When Fu Nanhua saw the dark-skinned youth’s eyes, he suddenly calmed down.
With his neck grabbed, Fu Nanhua’s face was crimson, then turned blue, then purple. The youth’s fingers hadn’t actually tightened, but it was enough to choke a strong man to death.
Fu Nanhua said with difficulty, “If I say I won’t kill you, would you believe me?”
He struggled violently.
But the youth almost simultaneously increased the pressure, causing one of Fu Nanhua’s arms, whose fingers had moved slightly, to droop weakly.
Chen Ping’an shook his head.
Fu Nanhua grew even more dizzy. Though inside he desperately wanted to shatter this bastard’s head with one slap, outwardly he forced a cordial tone and added, “What if I swear an oath to heaven? People like us can’t just swear casually.”
Fu Nanhua was being cunning. Making a great vow in Buddhism or swearing an oath in the heart as a cultivator did have considerable power. But clearly, Fu Nanhua was only telling half the truth. Even if he swore an oath, it would only be words spoken insincerely, not a “heart oath” that, though unwritten, was equivalent to carving words into the heart’s chamber. So whether he kept it afterward depended on his mood. Moreover, a cultivator’s heart oath was not unbreakable; it just came at a cost. Generally, the cost was proportional to the cultivator’s realm and the gravity of the vow.
Unexpectedly, the straw-sandaled youth shook his head again.
Fu Nanhua, increasingly unable to breathe, had lost the energy to bargain. For no reason, he felt somewhat dazed.
Was he going to die?
Just like that poor wretch Cai Jinjian, at the hands of a little bastard?
When the tragic news reached Old Dragon City, would it become a joke throughout the entire city?
He didn’t even have a chance to trigger the hidden mechanism in his jade belt. The white jade belt around his waist was actually the remnant essence of a earth-dragon creature.
“That’s enough.”
A voice sounded in both their ears. To Fu Nanhua, it was like heavenly music, but he happened to faint, unsure if it was a hallucination.
Chen Ping’an turned his head in surprise.
He saw a radiant, ethereal Master Qi.
The latter smiled without speaking.
Chen Ping’an’s gaze returned to firm resolve. His right fingers never loosened.
Qi Jingchun was not annoyed that his kindness was taken for granted, nor did he show the gratification of seeing a promising young talent. He simply waved his sleeve lightly at the straw-sandaled youth, as if “scooping” some object into his hand.
The Confucian Sage opened his palm and let out a silent laugh.
A mass of filth like an ink stain.
So the intention that someone had planted in the youth was dim and lusterless, clearly long since extinguished.
He looked up again at the youth Chen Ping’an. Slightly regretful, Qi Jingchun remarked with emotion, “No wonder the Master said that among those who achieve great things in the world, exceptional talent is of secondary importance; an indomitable will is the foremost. Chen Ping’an, you have taught me another lesson on behalf of the Master. It’s just a pity that I, Qi Jingchun, no longer have the opportunity to take on a final disciple.”