Chapter 27: Many Years Have Passed
At five in the morning, Chen Changsheng opened his eyes. He hadn’t woken from sleep, but from a state of meditation. Confirming that his body still showed no change, he shook his head, walked back to the small building, and began to bathe. Leaning against the edge of the wooden tub, he let the scalding water soak his weary body and spirit. A sigh passed through the soaked towel, turning into a muttered murmur: “When will I find the method?”
This wooden tub was about half a person’s height, placed under the courtyard wall behind the building, very close to the wall. The next moment, he heard a faint sigh from the other side of the wall, followed by a troubled murmur: “When will I find that person?”
Chen Changsheng recalled the sigh he had heard yesterday morning. He pulled the wet towel from his face, turned to look at the courtyard wall, and saw a patch of green ivy. The wall was tall, blocking the view of the scenery beyond, and he couldn’t tell who was speaking.
The voice sounded very young, likely a girl’s. Everyone’s sorrows are different, but sorrow itself is the same. Chen Changsheng suddenly felt some sympathy for the girl on the other side of the wall, but then he thought that his own situation hardly qualified him to sympathize with others.
The next few days passed peacefully. Every day, he read in the library, and at night, he drew starlight to cleanse his marrow. During the marrow cleansing, he kept his eyes closed in meditation, naturally unaware that all that starlight had already seeped into his body. From the outside, there truly seemed to be no change—a somewhat disappointing result—but he continued his diligent practice without any distraction.
Just like his cultivation, the restoration of the National Academy was proceeding steadily. The priest Xin from the Ecclesiastical Office hadn’t stepped forward to take charge, but the allocated funds arrived without shortage and quite promptly, so the craftsmen and laborers naturally dared not slack off.
Since the long-neglected courtyard wall couldn’t even block sound, it was also likely to let wind through.
News that the National Academy was undergoing repairs quickly spread through the capital, and the fact that it had gained a new student gradually became known. However, because of the true reason for the academy’s decline, people only dared to discuss it in private, let alone come to investigate. In the end, it merely added some fodder for conversation over meals and tea.
Chen Changsheng didn’t know that the outside world was brewing with hidden storms. In the campus deep within Hundred Flowers Lane, he silently read and cultivated, repeating the same routine, never finding the days monotonous or dull.
On the surface, he seemed to no longer care whether the marrow cleansing would succeed, but in truth, his mind was entirely focused on it. The library floor hadn’t been scrubbed in days—a rare occurrence for someone as clean as him, and that was proof enough.
That the marrow cleansing hadn’t succeeded didn’t mean his studies and life here had yielded no gains.
He had read many books in the library, most of which he had already seen in Xining Town. Some cultivation texts, however, he was seeing for the first time. Comparing the two, he was startled to discover that many of the texts he had read since childhood were related to cultivation.
When he had memorized those Daoist scriptures as a child, he hadn’t understood what those difficult words meant. Asking his senior brother or his master yielded no concrete answers, so he assumed they were metaphysical concepts and didn’t dwell on them. Only now, having come to the capital and seen introductory cultivation texts like *On Marrow Cleansing* at the National Academy, did he realize that all the cultivation methods of the world—the precious experiences left by past masters, the secret techniques of the major sects, and even some hidden lore of the demon race—were contained within the three thousand volumes of Daoist scriptures in the old temple of Xining Town!
What did this mean?
Who said he couldn’t cultivate? No, he simply hadn’t started yet—that was his previous thought. Now, he knew that statement was also wrong. Who said he hadn’t started cultivating? No, from the moment he began to speak, he had already been cultivating!
The three thousand volumes of Daoist scriptures in the old temple of Xining Town were countless fragments of knowledge related to cultivation. In his spiritual world, they had been a thick fog. Now, the cultivation methods he understood were tiny specks of dust, becoming cores within the fog, causing water vapor to crystallize and pour down like a torrential rain!
Chen Changsheng entered a wondrous state, or perhaps a journey—one could call it drawing inferences from one example, or being enlightened, or being struck by a sudden realization. But the most accurate description was still those four words: *accumulated thickness, thin release*.
From the moment Ji Daoren had picked him up by the stream, more than fourteen years had passed. For fourteen years, he had read day and night without pause. These fourteen years of reading were a process of accumulation. He had laid an extremely solid foundation, and all he needed was an opportunity to convert the knowledge he had gained over those fourteen years into his understanding of the world, and then into his own power.
It was like a keg of gunpowder ignited by a single spark.
A great explosion occurred in Chen Changsheng’s spiritual world. He greedily read every book in the library, mastering the rules of cultivation, thereby reassembling the fragments of information from the Xining Town Daoist scriptures, reviewing them, and truly mastering them. At an unimaginable speed, he came to understand the secrets of the cultivation world and grasped the details of those cultivation methods. In terms of cultivation knowledge alone, there were likely very few people in the world more knowledgeable than him now!
Failing to cleanse his marrow yet suddenly reaping such a great harvest—for Chen Changsheng, this was both a surprise and a comfort. When his emotions calmed, he was also filled with confusion and unease. He walked to the library window, looked toward the direction of Xining Town, and silently thought: The Daoist scriptures in that old temple were no ordinary things, and his master was naturally no ordinary man. Since he had laid such a solid foundation for his cultivation, why hadn’t he directly taught him to cultivate, insisting instead that he come to the capital to begin? Was it simply because his illness was hard to cure, and he wanted him to see if there was any opportunity here?
Time passed, and in the blink of an eye, more than ten days went by. The people from the Eastern Divine General’s Mansion never appeared again, nor did the little girl named Shuang’er come. His peaceful life remained undisturbed, which pleased him, but Tang Thirty-Six also hadn’t shown up, which displeased him a little. He had left his address at the inn, assuming the other could find him. Well, that fellow was probably hard at work cultivating at the Heavenly Dao Academy.
The National Academy had only Chen Changsheng—it was his academy alone.
He read quietly, cultivated silently, gradually forgetting the outside world, even as he was forgotten by it. Sometimes, recalling the idle chatter he had heard at the Ecclesiastical Office and the lively welcoming events at the Heavenly Dao Academy and Star-Gathering Academy, he felt a twinge of envy, but not too much. He had long grown accustomed to this kind of monotonous life. In the old temple of Xining Town, reading with his senior brother, he had only heard his own voice.
But many days of marrow cleansing had passed, and his body still showed no change. He saw no hope of success. He wouldn’t give up, but he had grown somewhat indifferent. He decided that if it still didn’t work in a few days, he would search the books for other methods.
Indifference sometimes dulls one’s edge, but it also makes one calmer. That was Chen Changsheng’s current state of mind—not quite returning to his original self, but close to it. Now, looking at the thin layer of dust on the floor, his clean-loving nature made him frown in displeasure.
This displeasure was mostly directed at himself. He felt he had grown lazy.
He drew clear water from the well and began scrubbing the floor. As the dust cleared, a faint fragrance emanated from a spot on the floor that had been wet and cleaned. He forgot that this was from the sweat he had shed when lighting his destiny star that day, and he felt puzzled. The fragrance was truly faint, vanishing without a trace when the night wind blew.
After finishing, he sat down casually and continued drawing starlight to cleanse his marrow.
The National Academy was utterly silent. He closed his eyes in meditation, completely forgetting the distinction between self and the world, naturally not hearing the night birds in the forest outside the window, which should have been resting, suddenly chirping with clear, moving voices. The frog calls, which had been silent for days, also rang out again, brimming with joy.
A butterfly flew in from the window and landed on the floor beside him, refusing to leave.
It was the very spot he had just cleaned.
……
……
Hundred Flowers Lane was an ordinary alley in the capital, though it had once been famous because the National Academy at its depths had once been famous. At the same time, the Hundred Herbs Garden at the other end of the alley had also once been famous, having been the imperial garden of the previous dynasty.
The most famous rebellion in the history of the Great Zhou Dynasty had also occurred at the Hundred Herbs Garden. Back then, His Majesty the Taizong Emperor, still a prince, had hurriedly ridden from his princely mansion to the imperial palace, only to be ambushed there by several other princes. At the time, the Taizong Emperor was still in his nightgown.
The final outcome of that rebellion was known to everyone on the continent. His Majesty the Taizong Emperor narrowly achieved final victory. His several brothers were executed on the spot, along with hundreds of their followers, their heads severed.
Because of this bloody, or rather inglorious, history, the Hundred Herbs Garden was stripped of its status as an imperial garden and placed under the management of the National Church’s Heavenly Virtue Hall, used for growing medicinal herbs and spirit fruits. Whether because the soil had absorbed too much blood’s nutrients that day, or because too many corpses were buried underground, the herbs and spirit fruits grew exceptionally well. The court began to value it again, and its guard became extremely strict.
In truth, only a very few knew that the reason the Hundred Herbs Garden was so heavily guarded, besides the rarity of its herbs and spirit fruits, was that it often housed important figures who couldn’t show their faces. For example, when Her Holiness the Saint Empress was first expelled from the imperial palace, she had lived here in a temple, practicing as a lay nun. It was for this reason that the Heavenly Virtue Hall later reaped great benefits.
Now, another noble person was living in the Hundred Herbs Garden.
Beneath the old wall covered in green ivy stood stone tables and chairs. On the table was a tea bowl, containing an extremely rare and precious new tea called *Congyu*.
A little girl was drinking tea.
Her face held a childish innocence, her eyes were like ink-black stars, her lips like red plum blossoms, her long lashes, and her white cheeks bore two faint blushes, making her look extremely beautiful.
It was a very healthy beauty, one that brought joy to the heart and mind, without any trace of impure thoughts.
But the little girl herself was not very happy. Her expression was troubled, because she still hadn’t found that person.