Chapter 196: Storms from All Directions, Rising from the Black Stone
What does not exist naturally cannot be changed.
Since there is no such thing as fate, there can naturally be no such thing as defying fate to change one's destiny.
Chen Changsheng stared at the final passage in the notebook for a very long time, his emotions difficult to articulate—some relief, but far more bewilderment. Wang Zhice's words struck like a thunderbolt, exploding within his sea of consciousness. Yet unfortunately, it was not a spring thunder that could bring nourishing rain to the earth; rather, it was more like the tolling of a bell, waking him from the illusions of false hope.
This passage was indeed powerful, but to him, it held no meaning—no, it couldn't be just this notebook. Relying on the formidable willpower forged through years of struggling against life and death, Chen Changsheng calmed himself in no time, confirming that this was not all there was to that night in the Lingyan Pavilion.
When the Lingyan Pavilion was first built, his master, Ji Dao Ren, was already an important figure in the capital. Those meritorious officials who lay gravely ill and dying were all treated by his master, who must have known many more secrets. Having endured countless hardships to enter the Lingyan Pavilion, it could not have been merely to read these words of Wang Zhice.
He stuffed the finished notebook into the hilt of his short sword, then turned his gaze to the lid of the box on the blue stone wall. He looked at the intricate, inexplicable copper wires and the densely packed copper pillars, and the more he looked, the more the scene resembled the vast starry sea of the night sky. He did not lose himself in that sea; instead, he reached out, took the lid, and also stuffed it into the sword hilt.
The notebook and the lid were not small, and by all logic, they could not fit into the sword hilt. Yet he forced them in, just as a great tree might be swallowed by a patch of quicksand less than a foot wide, or a massive mountain might be sucked into another world by a tiny black hole. Under the soft glow of the night pearl, the scene was somewhat eerie.
After doing these two things, he reached his hand into the blue stone wall and carefully groped inside the box. As expected, after a moment, he found a black stone inside.
This black stone was about half a finger in length, slightly slender. Just by looking at it with the naked eye, one could sense its hardness, and the touch from his fingertips confirmed this.
Chen Changsheng sat down against the wall, raised the black stone before the night pearl, and examined it closely. This black stone, hidden by Wang Zhice in the Lingyan Pavilion along with the notebook, was certainly no ordinary object.
The surface of the black stone was smooth, carrying a misty, watery sheen. There were no cracks on it; it was entirely pitch-black, looking like ink, but even more like the sea on a starless night. On the surface of the black stone, there was clearly nothing, but if one looked at it long enough, it seemed as if inky waves were undulating, giving rise to countless shades of black, some deep, some light.
Chen Changsheng's gaze fell upon the black stone, as if falling into a black ocean.
The black ocean was the night sky.
His consciousness arrived in the night sky.
In the originally pitch-black night sky, countless stars suddenly lit up.
At this moment, just like on the night he had fixed his fate star, he entered a state of selflessness, letting his consciousness float in the night sky, freely traveling among the stars. He did not know how much time passed before he saw, in a very distant part of the night sky, a small red star appear.
Chen Changsheng calmly gazed at that star, feeling very comfortable, because it was his fate star.
That star was calm and healthy, full of vitality, ceaselessly radiating bright and pure light into the night sky, showing no sign of being about to go out.
He suddenly realized something.
Even if he truly died five years later, this star would still shine on.
This fact brought him some comfort, but then it gave rise to even more melancholy and bitterness.
In the space around this red star, there were countless other stars.
He looked at those stars and realized that the stars suspended in the night sky were also calmly and coldly watching him—or rather, watching the small red star that belonged to him.
He suddenly grew uneasy, seized by a strong sense of fear. Just as in the Lingyan Pavilion, when he looked at those portraits, he always felt that the people in them were watching him.
Those people were already dead, yet they seemed still alive.
These stars were silent, yet they seemed to want to speak.
His consciousness did not know that his body, still in the Lingyan Pavilion, was leaning against the blue stone wall, utterly stiff, like a statue.
The black stone pinched between his two fingers suddenly became dazzlingly bright, radiating infinite light and heat. Those lights could not penetrate the doors and windows of the Lingyan Pavilion, and only his body could feel that heat.
Chen Changsheng, inside the Lingyan Pavilion, began to sweat profusely. Those sweat droplets instantly evaporated again, eventually forming a white mist that surrounded him.
An indescribably strange fragrance also lingered within that white mist, fortunately sealed by the edge of the mist, not a trace escaping.
An inexplicable, wondrous aura emerged from the depths of the black stone, followed his fingers, entered his body, passed through his Nether Palace, and finally settled in his sea of consciousness.
A deafening roar exploded in Chen Changsheng's mind. Unlike the feeling when he had read the last passage of Wang Zhice's notebook, this thunderclap felt more like a real one.
His sea of consciousness stirred up countless towering waves, as if about to tear open the very dome.
Leaning against the blue stone wall, his eyelids trembled incessantly, faster and faster, and his sweat flowed more and more. The white mist around him grew thicker and thicker until it obscured his face.
Deep within that white mist, his eyes were tightly shut, his eyelids still trembling at high speed. After that spring thunder resounded through his sea of consciousness, countless images appeared.
It was a magnificent cathedral, filled with light everywhere. Countless priests knelt on the ground. The hundreds of statues on either side of the cathedral seemed to become humble in the light.
In the depths of the surging light, an old man in a divine robe and wearing a divine crown tightly gripped a divine staff, loudly reciting a prayer to the stars filling the sky above the cathedral. In front of the divine throne knelt a slightly stout middle-aged man. As the sacrificial ritual proceeded, the projection of starlight fell upon him, and at the same time, an extraordinarily vast aura returned from his body to the starry sky.
In the deepest part of the starry sky, changes occurred. Those changes were so subtle—some stars dimmed slightly, like a moth spreading its wings to block the sun; some stars shifted slightly from their positions, like the Luo River rising by the width of a single hair. Even the most ancient observatories in the human world would find it difficult to observe these changes, and even the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion could not.
In that night sky, the stars shifted minutely, some dimming, some brightening. Countless subtle changes combined, and the invisible structural forces within were also transforming. At the very center, a faint purple star gradually deepened, growing so intense it became vivid, purple to the extreme, and then suddenly burst forth with immense radiance.
The Purple Star of the Emperor appeared. In the human world, the troops of Tianliang Commandery marched east through Qishan, conquering seventeen cities in succession, lifting the siege of Luoyang, and seizing the capital's mausoleum. The founding emperor officially ascended the throne.
Years later, the sound of fierce slaughter rang out in the Hundred Herbs Garden of the capital. The silent night was shattered, the night sky torn apart. Those stars that had once changed positions and brightness gradually dimmed. Blood flowed like rivers; brothers turned against each other. Of the founding emperor's many outstanding and excellent sons, only one survived.
A few years later, after a card game ended and some dalliances with several beautiful maidservants, the founding emperor came to a pavilion covered in vines. Looking at the stars in the night sky, a bitter smile appeared on his face.
The Purple Star in the night sky was still dazzling and brilliant, but it no longer belonged to him. It now belonged to his son, the Prince of Qi, known for his benevolence and filial piety—the current Emperor Taizong.
The river of stars continued to change. The twenty-four constellations occupying the central lands shone one after another, as if releasing all the energy they had accumulated over millennia in just these few decades.
The light of the twenty-four constellations was so dazzling that no one noticed that the Purple Star of the Emperor, surrounded by these constellations at the very center, had quietly shifted its posture. From the ground, it appeared to have moved only a little, but in reality, it had already shifted northward, directly encroaching upon that dark expanse of the night sky.
The demon army suffered a crushing defeat and retreated north. The human world was at peace. A Lingyan Pavilion was built in the capital. A gaunt painter lay on the ground, painting incessantly, a somewhat manic expression on his face.
The Empress, whom Emperor Taizong loved and respected most, died of illness. The Empress's elder brother, the Duke of Zhao, who ranked first among the meritorious officials' portraits in the Lingyan Pavilion, was ordered to commit suicide. But in the history books, his cause of death was the same as his sister's—the most common illness of Luoxi River. Then, the Duke of Zheng, the only one in the world who dared to argue with Emperor Taizong, died of illness. Qin Zhong and Yu Gong, the most loyal to Emperor Taizong, died for unknown reasons, but they died peacefully, even happily, without any resentment.
The Great Zhou was in its prime, but those famous ministers and divine generals were gradually withering away.
One deep autumn, Wang Zhice attended the funeral of a colleague. Silently, he walked into the imperial palace, entered the Lingyan Pavilion, and looked at the portraits on the walls. Finally, he came before his own portrait. He stood quietly, gazing at the image of himself, as if attending his own funeral in advance. He even smiled and said four words: "Your voice and face are still here."
He placed a box into the blue stone wall beside the portrait, then turned and left.
In the portrait, Wang Zhice watched the Wang Zhice walking out of the Lingyan Pavilion, smiling without a word.
Chen Changsheng opened his eyes and woke up. At that very moment, the thick mist that had been surrounding him suddenly converged, collapsing inward at a speed invisible to the naked eye, falling upon his body, passing through his academy robes, entering his body through the pores on his skin.
That mist was originally his own sweat. Now, returning to his body, it became something like water, turning into countless small streams, beginning to nourish the river valleys that had dried up during the Grand Examination, then plunging into the abyss at the end of the broken mountain range, with no echo returning.
Above the snowfield that had burned away in the battle with Gou Hanshi, snow began to fall again, swirling and drifting. Flakes like goose feathers, seemingly slow but incredibly swift, turned the entire barren wasteland white once more.
Then came storms from all directions, from every side—some horizontal, some vertical, some rising from the clear sky, some from the ground, rustling and pattering, sweeping toward the lake in the sky. The scene was magnificent beyond words.
(A chapter update will come very late tonight, because I have a long drive during the day. Also, today I saw some people accusing me of only plagiarizing Tang Dynasty history. I have nothing to say to that... You only realize now that I'm writing about the Tang? Shrug. Smile. I imagine this answer might lead those people to ask me why I don't just write about the Tang Dynasty directly. I suggest they ask the relevant authorities who forbid altering history or making light of it. I'm writing a fantasy novel, okay? Tch.)