Chapter 548: When Trouble Comes, What Then?
The ferry saw many strange and bizarre sights along the way. A group of female cultivators in colorful robes were swinging under a sea of clouds. Their laughter and cheerful voices drew loud shouts from many male cultivators on the ferry. Since they would cross paths only this once and never see each other again, their words carried no restraint, mixing the crude with the refined.
But then a huge flood dragon head slowly emerged from the sea of clouds, striking many cultivators on board dumbstruck with fear. That mysterious being, not a true flood dragon, gently bumped the ferry's stern with its head, causing the ferry to speed forward like an arrow.
Chen Ping'an committed this scene to memory and returned to his cabin to continue a mundane task.
After leaving Daoxuan Mountain and arriving at Tongye Continent, he parted ways with Lu Tai. Chen Ping'an mistakenly entered Lotus Flower Blessed Land, and together with Pei Qian and the scroll four, they left that Daoist temple. Since then, he had begun writing down his travels and experiences. Relying on memory, starting from leaving Daoxuan Mountain, meeting Lu Tai, arriving at Tongye Continent, walking through the Skyshout Street of the Fuqi Sect, he wrote all the way to today's cloud flood dragon pushing the ferry in Beiju Luzhou.
The papers on the table were divided into two piles. Chen Ping'an separated them into the draft copy and the transcribed copy. The draft had smudges and revisions, carefully considered and deliberated over, like a letter that had never been sent. As he wrote, the letter grew quite long. The transcribed copy, in contrast, was neat and tidy, like homework submitted to a teacher.
Sometimes, when there was truly nothing to write about, having seen no interesting landscapes or people for a long time, he would either skip writing or occasionally jot down a line: "Nothing happened today, safe and sound."
In Lotus Flower Blessed Land: the flock of birds crossing, being caught in an ambush, punching and sword-fighting against the local number one under heaven. At an inn on the border of Daquan Dynasty: meeting a gentleman who could write doggerel. Traveling far as a Yin spirit: seeing the hot-tempered River Goddess of the Buried River, visiting the Biyou Residence, and talking about the sequence with that river goddess who admired the old gentleman's scholarship. Staying at the dust shop in Old Dragon City, taking the increasingly sensible charcoal girl to Qingluan Country in southeastern Baoping Continent, and receiving the first birthday gift of his life on the fifth day of the fifth month that year...
The only period he never wrote about was his years as an accountant at Book Bamboo Lake. Finally, only when he returned to his hometown Niyu Lane, lighting a lamp and keeping vigil alone in the ancestral house, did Chen Ping'an, after much thought, write down just one sentence.
"These years were somewhat hard to endure, but now that they're past, it seems it wasn't so bad after all."
After Chen Ping'an finished one copy and then transcribed the other, the two large stacks of paper on the table were both covered in neat small regular script. He guessed that in the eyes of connoisseurs, the handwriting still showed too much craftsmanship. Content aside, over three hundred thousand words, page after page, were merely meticulous and rigid, following rules.
Chen Ping'an put away his brush and ink, then reached out both hands to gently press down on the two books that seemed not yet bound into volumes, smoothing them out and pressing lightly. With no immediate worries, he let his thoughts wander thousands of miles. When he came back to himself, Chen Ping'an put the two stacks of paper into his space-holding object and stood up to practice fist techniques, still the three stances combined into one. Nowadays, his time was roughly split equally between martial arts fist practice and cultivation of qi. In between, drawing talismans was his greatest pastime.
After Chen Ping'an bought two copies of the landscape gazette, they traveled without incident all the way to the immortal ferry of Dragon Palace Cave Heaven.
Dragon Palace Cave Heaven, like its home of Lizhu Cave Heaven, was one of the Thirty-Six Lesser Cave Heavens. It was the ancestral property of the Water Dragon Sect, first discovered and occupied by its founding patriarch. However, this territory aroused great envy. After two major upheavals involving both external threats and internal troubles, the Water Dragon Sect brought in the Da Yuan Dynasty's Chongxuan Office and the Floating Duckweed Sword Lake, thus securing a steady income that was stable rain or shine.
The Water Dragon Sect was an ancient sect in Beiju Luzhou with a long history and many allusions. Compared to it, the Da Yuan Dynasty's Chongxuan Office and Floating Duckweed Sword Lake were only upstarts, but in terms of current prestige, the latter two far surpassed the Water Dragon Sect.
Because the Water Dragon Sect, built by the water, had set up landscape restrictions, passengers on the ferry could not see the outline of the Water Dragon Sect's immortal mansion. They could only see the vast area along the Great River, with misty fog for a hundred li. Only after the ferry passed through that large mist-array, dense with water vapor all year round, and slowly descended to dock at the ferry port, could they catch sight of the Water Dragon Sect's sprawling buildings, magnificent in scale.
Chen Ping'an noticed that this was the first time he had taken a ferry in Beiju Luzhou, and after docking, all passengers obediently walked off the ship on foot. Thinking of the overbearing behavior of the successive Lu emperors of the Da Yuan Dynasty, the stories and rumors of the Yang clan of the Xiaoyao Palace in the Chongxuan Office, and having personally witnessed Li Cai, the female sword immortal of Floating Duckweed Sword Lake, Chen Ping'an was not particularly surprised.
At the Water Dragon Sect's Wood Slave Ferry, there were over a thousand immortal orange trees, all personally planted by the founding patriarch. When this patriarch passed away through military dissolution, he left a final wish: "My life was mediocre, but I have a thousand wooden slaves, which I bequeath to my disciples."
Chen Ping'an, in a blue robe, carrying a sword immortal on his back, with a sword-nurturing gourd at his waist and a green bamboo walking staff in hand, slowly walked through this large ferry port with an erected archway. On the archway was horizontally inlaid a board written by a certain calligraphy sage from the Central Continent: "Underwater Cave Heaven."
The Great River flowed through here, its surface incredibly wide, reaching three hundred li. Dragon Palace Cave Heaven was beneath the water of the Great River, similar to the Dragon Palace mansion at Cangyun Lake. However, cultivators did not need to use water-avoidance techniques to visit, because the Water Dragon Sect had expended great manpower and resources to build an underwater long bridge, allowing tourists to enter the water and tour Dragon Palace Cave Heaven. Naturally, a toll was required: ten snowflower coins. After paying, to walk across the long bridge and enter the legendary Dragon Palace Cave Heaven, where in ancient times a thousand flood dragons had coiled and gone out to dispense clouds and rain by imperial decree, an additional fee of one small summer coin was needed.
This was clearly a rip-off. Chen Ping'an, upon thinking of the hundred-eyed taotie robe he had picked up from Yang Ningsheng of Xiaoyao Palace, felt that these immortal coins were not unacceptable.
The "Little Heavenly Lord" Yang Ningsheng of the Yang clan of Xiaoyao Palace at the Corpse Shoal Ghost Valley. At the border of the Wuling Kingdom, Sui Jingcheng, the direct disciple of Li Cai of Floating Duckweed Sword Lake. At that immortal mansion ruin, White Jade, the direct disciple of the Water Dragon Sect's ancestral hall, by the side of Young Marquis Zhan Qing. It seemed that on the path of cultivation, those connections were like a tangled mess. Every knot, big or small, was a meeting, giving the illusion that the world of heaven and earth was actually not so vast.
Wood Slave Ferry was bustling and noisy, not like an immortal ferry but more like a prosperous street in a mortal city.
Because the coming tenth day and fifteenth day of the tenth month were both important dates. Below the mountains, this was the case; above the mountains, even more so. One was one of the three major ghost festivals, the other was the Water Official's Relief Day. The Water Dragon Sect would hold two consecutive Daoist ritual grounds in the open-to-public Dragon Palace Cave Heaven. The ceremonies were ancient and highly esteemed. Depending on the year's significance, Water Dragon Sect cultivators would set up Golden Register, Jade Register, or Yellow Register ritual grounds to help all beings pray for blessings and avert disasters. Particularly the second event, the Water Official's birthday, because this ancient deity governed many water immortals, was historically the day the Water Dragon Sect valued most.
Aside from the towering archway, Chen Ping'an noticed that the design and layout here were somewhat similar to the immortal mansion ruin. Behind the archway were several dozen stone steles. Was it customary for all water-facing places near the Great River to have such arrangements? Chen Ping'an looked at them one by one. Many others also chose to do the same, including many Confucian scholars in robes carrying book bags, seemingly from academies. They were hunched over beside the steles copying the inscriptions. Chen Ping'an carefully read the "Record of Worthies Building a Stone Bridge" from the Great Peace Era, and the "Dragon Pavilion Water-Committing Stele" written by a local calligraphy sage of Beiju Luzhou. These two inscriptions explained in detail the construction process of the underwater stone bridge and the origin and discovery of Dragon Palace Cave Heaven.
The queue was as long as a swimming dragon. Chen Ping'an waited nearly half an hour before he saw the Water Dragon Sect cultivator responsible for collecting tolls. He paid ten snowflower coins and received a seal token carved from ancient immortal orange wood, antique and elegant, with excellent seal script. The Water Dragon Sect cultivator said that upon reaching the other end of the bridge, he should return it to the Water Dragon Sect cultivator there. This was the first time Chen Ping'an had seen a wooden seal from an immortal sect on the mountain. The seal face read "Rest and Stop," and the side inscription read "Fame and profit concern the body; life and death concern fate."
Chen Ping'an then asked if these wooden seals could be bought and sold. That female Water Dragon Sect cultivator smiled sweetly and said that the orange wood seals for crossing the bridge were sect tokens and not for sale; each seal had to be recorded. However, inside Dragon Palace Cave Heaven, there was a shop that specialized in selling various seals, not only the sect's unique immortal orange wood seals but also seals made of famous stones. Once the guest entered Dragon Palace Cave Heaven, they would certainly find something that caught their fancy.
Chen Ping'an was about to ask about the price of the wooden seals inside Dragon Palace Cave Heaven. But the people behind him started complaining and cursing, telling him to scram and stop flirting with the fairy here. Chen Ping'an could only turn around and apologize, then quickly leave the queue to make way for the people behind. He felt a bit regretful. The items in immortal shops, large or small, were expensive, and the bigger the sect, the harder it was to find bargains. On the contrary, it was smaller ferries like the Qingfu Workshop and the Baggage Hut at Fend Tail Ferry in Baoping Continent back then that still offered some opportunities.
The long bridge itself had a water-repelling effect. It was still an arch bridge, but this bridge that entered the water seemed inverted. It was said that the arc bottom at the center of the bridge was already close to the riverbed of the Great River, undoubtedly another wonder. Stepping onto the bridge was equivalent to walking into the waters of the Great River. The bridge deck was extremely wide, bustling with traffic, even more so than the imperial avenue of a mortal dynasty's capital. From this, it was evident that the Water Dragon Sect, merely by collecting tolls, was raking in a fortune every day.
Chen Ping'an looked up and saw that the water of the Great River was clear and deep in color, not as muddy as ordinary rivers. The bridge was over three hundred li long, so at both ends of the stone bridge, one could hire carriages and horses for travel back and forth.
At the other end of the Great River and the stone bridge, the Water Dragon Sect had continuous mansion buildings. Each side was guarded by a Jade Realm patriarch, thus they were customarily divided into the Southern Sect and the Northern Sect. The ancestral hall was located north of the Great River, and the predecessor of the Water Dragon Sect's ancestral hall was one of the three ancient temples of Ji River. Therefore, it was said that the Northern Sect disciples had always held themselves in high regard, and between them and their fellow sect members of the Southern Sect, there was an invisible line of distinction.
Chen Ping'an could understand this. As long as it didn't involve major issues of right and wrong, such a mindset, being common human nature, was unavoidable. In the future, once Lu Baixiang set up a branch outside Fallen Mountain, it might be the same. If Lu Baixiang's direct disciples came to Fallen Mountain's ancestral hall, they might also feel uncomfortable. How to prepare for such eventualities was the greatest test of a mountain's sect traditions.
Reading books to learn the stories of ancients, and observing people on the road to see oneself—this was probably the essence of reading ten thousand books and traveling ten thousand miles. For many things, just thinking about them by yourself, no matter how hard you try,