Chapter 236: Thus Should One View It (Part 1)
Standing before the broken stele, Chen Changsheng was not thinking about the broken stele itself, nor was he trying to find the story from many years ago within it. Instead, he was pondering his own problems.
He knew that not everyone who viewed the steles could see the broken stele before them.
So he very much wanted to know what it meant for him to see this broken stele.
Just as some people in the capital had already realized, and just as the Holy Empress had said to Mo Yu at the Sweet Dew, there was indeed a problem with him viewing all the steles of the Front Mausoleum in a single day. He had seen those inscriptions and understood them, but he had not tried to extract more information from them, and thus naturally had not comprehended any true meaning beyond the inscriptions.
He had easily read the Heavenly Book steles, yet it seemed he had gained no benefit from them.
But that was not the problem—at least not the problem he was thinking about or worrying about now.
The reason he did not use the three most common and orthodox schools of stele interpretation—taking form, taking meaning, and taking momentum—aside from some deeper reasons, was the most direct one: his meridians were flawed. His true essence could not flow back and forth through the broken meridians, so no matter how abundant it was, it was meaningless. Thus, he had to find a new method.
On the surface, he had achieved great success, becoming the second person after Zhou Dufu to view all the steles of the Front Mausoleum in a single day. But he always felt something was off.
It was like the regret and helplessness he had felt in his heart before deciding to begin interpreting the steles.
The method he used to interpret the steles was clever, but it was still a variation of the "taking meaning" school of interpretation.
He had thought that after consecutively interpreting seventeen Heavenly Book steles, he would no longer care about this matter. But now, looking at this broken stele, he understood: incompleteness was incompleteness. You could deceive heaven and earth, deceive the sovereign and the sages, deceive your father and mother, deceive your teacher and friends, but you could never deceive yourself.
The Front Mausoleum of the Heavenly Book Mausoleum was originally supposed to have eighteen steles. Now one was missing.
So even though he had interpreted seventeen steles, there was still a deficiency.
This feeling of deficiency, when it fell upon the heart, was extremely uncomfortable.
It was like the method he used to interpret the steles—it was indeed powerful, but in the end, it was a compromise.
To enter the Zhou Garden, he had wanted to interpret these steles as quickly as possible, so he had given up the arduous pursuit of the previous twenty-plus days.
Viewing all the steles of the Front Mausoleum in a single day was truly glorious, but for him, was it not also a kind of failure?
Because he cultivated the Way of Following the Heart's Desires, and in the end, his heart was still unsettled.
He stood before the broken stele for a long time, but in the end, he could not figure anything out. Chen Changsheng walked down the mountain.
Along the way, the stele huts were very quiet in the night, with not a single person.
Accompanied by starlight, it did not take him long to pass by the seventeen stele huts and return to the Zhaoging Stele.
Outside the Zhaoging Stele's hut, there were people everywhere, a dense, dark mass.
It turned out that all the stele viewers who usually stayed before the huts at night had come here tonight.
They were waiting for Chen Changsheng.
When they saw his figure appear outside the stele hut, the crowd stirred restlessly.
Tang Thirty-Six stepped forward, staring into his eyes, and asked, "Seventeen?"
Chen Changsheng nodded.
Tang Thirty-Six laughed heartily, slapped him hard on the shoulder, and repeated loudly to the crowd, "Seventeen!"
The murmurs abruptly stopped, and silence fell around the stele hut.
People looked at Chen Changsheng, speechless with shock.
Ye Xiaolian stared at Chen Changsheng with wide eyes, feeling a strange emotion. Could there really be someone in this world who could compare with Senior Brother Qiu? Seventeen Heavenly Book steles—even Senior Brother Qiu would probably find it difficult to achieve this, right? Thinking back to the humiliation she had inflicted on Chen Changsheng by the Divine Path of the Li Palace that day, she felt extremely embarrassed and lowered her head.
Chen Changsheng said nothing and walked down the mountain with Tang Thirty-Six.
Countless eyes fell upon him, filled with envy and even awe.
Anyone under such gazes would feel a bit dazed and intoxicated.
If he had left at that moment, the gazes and starlight falling upon him would have been glory.
But the next moment, he stopped.
Tang Thirty-Six looked at him with some surprise.
Chen Changsheng stood there for a while, then suddenly turned and walked back toward the stele hut.
"What's wrong? Did you leave something inside?" Tang Thirty-Six asked him, puzzled.
Chen Changsheng did not speak. He walked directly to the edge of the woods outside the stele hut, lifted the front of his robe, and sat down.
Just like the previous twenty-plus days, he began to view the stele again, sitting in his original spot. The green stone was very clean and had become smooth.
"What are you doing?" Tang Thirty-Six walked up to him and asked in astonishment.
Zhe Xiu and Gou Hanshi also came over.
Chen Changsheng was silent for a moment, then said, "I feel that the method I used to interpret the steles was wrong. I plan to reinterpret them from the beginning."
As soon as these words were spoken, an uproar erupted around the stele hut.
People were astonished, shocked, confused, and bewildered.
What exactly was Chen Changsheng trying to do?
Su Moyu asked, "Why?"
Chen Changsheng did not answer.
Guan Feibai's expression turned cold as he asked, "Why, exactly?"
Still, he did not answer.
Gou Hanshi did not ask; he seemed to vaguely understand.
Zhuang Huanyu sneered from a distance, "Pretentious."
Zhong Hui said nothing, but a young scholar from the Huai Academy beside him sneered, "Who are you trying to impress? Even if you're impressive, why do you have to sit here and humiliate everyone?"
Chen Changsheng ignored these comments and said to Tang Thirty-Six and the others, "It looks like you'll have to make dinner yourselves tonight."
Just as the Holy Empress had said, viewing all the steles of the Front Mausoleum in a single day—only Zhou Dufu had truly understood those steles. Apart from talent and insight, the most important thing was temperament. Zhou Dufu was arrogant and domineering; if he wanted to get to the bottom of something, even if it meant tearing open the heavens, what of it? How could Chen Changsheng have such audacity?
But she did not know that although Chen Changsheng's temperament was steady, he cared deeply about following his heart's desires. His longing to get to the bottom of things might appear calm on the surface, but in reality, it was equally intense, like a wildfire.
When news reached the capital that he had sat down again before the Zhaoging Stele, everyone was dumbfounded.
The Holy Empress was silent for a long time.
Some wanted to see what trick Chen Changsheng was up to, but Nian Guang drove them away, not allowing them to disturb him.
Tang Thirty-Six carried a food box and brought him dinner.
Chen Changsheng continued to view the stele.
He watched the starlight fall, making the stone stele look as if it were covered in snow.
He recalled a line from Xun Mei's notes, and then a sentence Gou Hanshi had spoken when he first entered the Heavenly Book Mausoleum.
The Heavenly Book steles were fragments of some world.
Since these steles had once been a single whole, was it wrong to interpret each stele separately?
Should he instead connect these seventeen steles and understand them together?
He quietly looked at the Zhaoging Stele beneath the hut, yet it was as if he were also looking at the Zhegui Stele, the Yinjiang Stele...
Seventeen steles appeared before his eyes all at once.
(Don’t worry, it won’t take many days to interpret the steles again. My Changsheng understood in an instant yesterday, and tomorrow he will explode in an instant. Today’s chapter title is a bit crude. Also, regarding yesterday’s chapter, there was an error in that line about Zhou—sometimes when I get carried away writing, I do slip up. Also, regarding the Ze Tian Ji OL game, some friends said they couldn’t log in... Well, it’s currently in closed beta, with only a few servers open. It won’t officially launch until the 7th. Don’t get angry, don’t rush.)