Chapter 22: Through the Four Seasons to the Mausoleum
Xu Yourong didn’t understand. She thought to herself, you’re at most twenty-something, not much older than me—how can you see life so clearly? And… to be able to explain such complex truths in such simple language—how did the Snow Mountain Sect teach you? How do you usually live?
She said, “I’ve never met anyone as eloquent as you.”
Chen Changsheng was slightly stunned. He had never expected to receive such a comment. Growing up with his senior brother Yu Ren, he rarely spoke, mostly communicating with gestures. After arriving in the capital, many found him somewhat taciturn. So when had he started talking so much? Was it because he had to teach Luoluo and Xuanyuan Po at the National Academy? Or was it because Tang Thirty-Six, that headache-inducing rich kid, had been chattering in his ear every day for the past year? Or… did it have to do with the person he was talking to?
Looking at the girl’s clear, beautiful face illuminated by the firelight, he felt an inexplicable fluster, then a sense of confusion. “Just rambling nonsense.”
Xu Yourong looked at him seriously and asked, “Why do you understand these principles?”
Chen Changsheng thought to himself, it’s because you grew up on the grasslands, isolated from the world, with no one to talk to.
Xu Yourong said, “To see responsibility, pressure, and life so clearly requires daily self-reflection. You’re truly remarkable.”
Chen Changsheng replied honestly, “I didn’t really think that much about it. It’s just that pressure easily brings negative emotions, which isn’t good for your health, so I don’t like it.”
After the wind and snow stopped, the two left the shrine and continued forward.
Suddenly, they walked into a torrential rainstorm.
Before they could find shelter, the rain stopped.
The sun shone again on the grassland, and the rainwater instantly evaporated, leaving a stifling heat—it felt like summer had arrived.
Moving further on, the grass tips turned slightly yellow, covered with white frost. The White Grass Path gradually merged into the grassland, looking bleak and desolate, as if autumn had come.
This grassland within the Zhou Garden was indeed extremely mysterious. Whether due to spatial distortion or temporal flow issues, the four seasons alternated with dizzying speed, often catching them off guard. At its most extreme, within a mere dozen or so miles, they went from spring to summer, then from autumn into deep winter.
Though the environment was harsh, it was manageable. What comforted them most—and simultaneously made them more tense—was that they hadn’t encountered a single demonic beast.
Escaping the rain-cloud-covered summer, Chen Changsheng set Xu Yourong down amidst a patch of brilliant spring flowers. He then took out a large block of clean snow prepared in winter, along with utensils from the previous two shrines, and began melting snow to boil water. At the same time, he plucked and gutted an autumn wild goose he had caught at dawn, preparing to make a pot of braised goose with water chestnuts.
The aroma of food gradually spread, but the grassland beside the path remained utterly silent, without a sound.
This eerie stillness had once made them vigilant, but now they had learned to ignore it.
What worried him more was the time. According to the markings on the water clock, over twenty days had passed since they entered the Zhou Garden. Each opening of the garden lasted only a hundred days. Once it closed, the small world’s rules would undergo a reversal. The demonic beasts and fish living inside would be fine, but cultivators with a Sea of Consciousness would be directly struck dead by heavenly thunder.
He didn’t know what was happening outside the Zhou Garden. Logically, since the garden gate had closed, it would surely attract attention from those outside. Bishop Meri Sands and Moonlight Drinking Alone should have reacted, but he didn’t know if they could open the gate. Also, the several hundred human cultivators in the garden had gathered together—would they leave the grove to search for companions stranded in the wilderness?
Of course, he had little confidence in the latter.
“The deeper we go into the grassland, the slower time moves. Right now, where we are, one day here is roughly equivalent to a quarter-hour outside, so we don’t need to worry about the garden closing for now,” Xu Yourong said. During her waking hours these days, she had been using the Fate Star Disk to calculate. By comparing the subtle differences between the two water clocks and the movement speed of the sun on the grassland’s edge—which seemed about to set but never did—she had arrived at a relatively accurate result.
As she spoke, she was on Chen Changsheng’s back, holding the water clock. With only one hand to support herself on his shoulder, she naturally leaned completely against his back.
By now, the two had grown much more familiar with each other, and their interactions were more casual. Her way of holding him had become natural, unlike at the beginning when, even in her extreme weakness, she had kept both hands on his shoulders, maintaining a slight distance between her body and his back—a very strenuous effort.
Chen Changsheng was no longer as cautious as before. He tried to support her legs in the most comfortable position, no longer worrying about whether it was too intimate.
At the same time, her ease brought him comfort. Feeling the softness of her young body added strength to him during this long, seemingly endless journey.
The sensation from behind was truly soft. He didn’t dare imagine her body, but naturally concluded that, as the rumors said, the girls of the Xiu Ling tribe were indeed enchanting.
Thinking that she was still seriously injured while he was having such thoughts, he felt a bit ashamed. Perhaps to ease this feeling, he said, “From now on… can I call you Ruanruan?”
This was still forced small talk, and the worst, most foolish example of it. As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
Throughout their journey, he had come to know her as a cool, dignified woman who would absolutely not appreciate such teasing.
Of course, Xu Yourong didn’t like it. Normally, she would have been furious and beaten Chen Changsheng until even Luoluo couldn’t recognize him.
But for some reason, her face was full of embarrassment and annoyance, yet she said nothing and did nothing.
Through spring flowers, summer rain, autumn fruits, and winter snow, they traversed the seasons, continuing forward. Occasionally they rested, fought monsters, cooked meals, regulated their breathing, and always managed to find an old shrine. They grew increasingly familiar with each other. Even when silent, they could gaze at one another without awkwardness. Sometimes, he would make a funny face to coax a smile from her weakened state.
Of course, while resting and waiting for the meat to cook, they often talked, and usually it was Xu Yourong who asked him to speak. From a very young age, she had become the most famous person on this continent, the center of attention, always surrounded by countless powerful attendants—but she was lonely. In Xining Town, he had only his senior brother for company, and after arriving in the capital, he had grown accustomed to the quiet of the National Academy, but he had never been lonely. He could sense her loneliness, so whenever she wanted to hear something, he would start talking, rambling on about trivial matters—like which fish were tasty and non-toxic, or how when a stream was clearest, you could see the bottom of a dozen-zhang-deep pool, where there was a kind of pufferfish that was delicious once its poisonous organs were removed, or how the pine trees on the mountain really looked like demonic beasts.
Occasionally, she would speak too—about which aunt in her town loved to scold people the most, or which restaurant had the best food. He didn’t understand it all, guessing it was about the place where she grew up. But because she was growing weaker and felt that her fifteen years of life, dazzling in others’ eyes, were dull and boring compared to Chen Changsheng’s, she felt a bit inferior and didn’t want to talk much.
She was very grateful to Chen Changsheng for keeping her, such a boring person, company.
One day, wind and snow came again, and they rested in the seventh old shrine beside the White Grass Path.
By the campfire, Chen Changsheng finished reminiscing about his childhood.
She looked at him sincerely and said, “You really are a good person.”
Chen Changsheng thought to himself, that’s not a bad evaluation.
She softly blessed him, “May the holy light be with you.”
From that rainy night in the old shrine, when they had their first real conversation, to now, dozens of days had passed.
May the holy light be with you.
She repeated this blessing every day.
They were getting closer and closer to Zhou Dufu’s mausoleum, and she was growing weaker and weaker.
Thanks to the Black Dragon’s Xuan Frost chill, Chen Changsheng’s injuries were slowly healing, but her condition showed no improvement. The Peacock Plume’s poison spread relentlessly through her body, beginning to wreak havoc. Her Celestial Phoenix True Blood had been lost in too great a quantity, and there was no remedy. Chen Changsheng had risked venturing deep into the grassland, hunting several demonic beasts, but by now, their blood—whether fire-natured or cold-natured—could no longer help her at all.
Wrapped in his coat, she leaned quietly against a pile of grass, staring at the dancing flames in the firewood, no longer speaking.
The snow shrine was utterly silent; even the wind had stopped.
Looking at her pale face and her eyes, whose watery light was fading, Chen Changsheng felt a deep sadness.
It was a sadness that began prematurely.
He wanted to say something to break the oppressive stillness of the shrine, but didn’t know what to say.
Seeing him lower his head, Xu Yourong understood his mood and said calmly, “It has nothing to do with you.”
Chen Changsheng looked up at her and said, “Even though you still won’t tell me what happened that first night, I know you saved me, and you never abandoned me.”
Xu Yourong gazed at him quietly and said, “You did the same.”
Chen Changsheng said, “Now I suddenly understand what you said that night. If my strength were great enough—as strong as you were before you were injured—then facing those demonic cultivators that day, I could have taken you away instead of being forced to flee into this grassland and onto this dead-end path.”
Xu Yourong said, “On the contrary, I think what you said that night made sense. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, maybe I wouldn’t have been injured at all.”
This was her true feeling now. If, upon discovering the demonic traces in the Zhou Garden, she hadn’t, out of pride, taken that mountain path alone but had chosen to join forces with other human cultivators—like the familiar youths from the Li Mountain Sword Sect, or that fellow named Chen Changsheng—none of this might have happened.
The snow shrine fell silent again, a silence that was unsettling.
Chen Changsheng didn’t like this quiet. Remembering her blessing from earlier, he asked, “Is this a custom of your people?”
Xu Yourong thought to herself that the Snow Mountain Sect was indeed too remote. He was so well-versed in the Daoist Canon, yet didn’t even know this.
“Yes, it means ‘may you have a safe life.’”
“Thank you.”
“And thank you too.”
Xu Yourong grew weaker day by day, but she never forgot to say those words.
They were her sincere blessing and hope.
She knew she would probably never leave this grassland. So if there was any chance of survival, she wanted to give it all to this kind disciple of the Snow Mountain Sect.
Just as her fifteen-year life seemed about to reach its end, the White Grass Path came to an end ahead of time.
Just as her eyes were about to close, she finally saw that mausoleum.
She was on Chen Changsheng’s back, a bit higher than him, so she saw it a moment before he did.
From afar, the mausoleum looked more like a mountain. There were no cliffs on its slopes, and few green trees, so the several straight lines from its peak to its base were clearly visible.
Chen Changsheng found it familiar. Drawing closer, he realized it looked a lot like the Heavenly Book Mausoleum.
After traveling through the grassland for dozens of days, finally finding the legendary Zhou Mausoleum—how could they not be excited? But they were both too exhausted to show joy or tension.
Following the White Grass Path forward, the dozen or so miles still took a long time before they finally stood before the green mausoleum.
From this, one could infer just how tall and vast this mausoleum was.
Up close, the details of the mausoleum became clearer, and its grandeur felt more tangible—like the divine path stretching thousands of zhang straight to the center of the mausoleum wall, or the massive square stones composing its body. Compared to the first distant glimpse, its momentum was magnified countless times, and a sense of pressure and solemnity washed over them.
Chen Changsheng noticed that around the mausoleum stood ten stone pillars. Each was several zhang tall, their surfaces carved with patterns long eroded by centuries of wind and rain into indistinct marks, looking very worn. Compared to the magnificent mausoleum itself, these pillars seemed odd—not for any other reason, but because they were too short, looking incongruous.
“You might not know this, but there are many stone pillars outside the Li Palace. When I first saw them, I thought they were strange. I didn’t expect to find them here too.”
He said, “I don’t know why, but this mausoleum feels strange to me too. It looks like the Heavenly Book Mausoleum, but something feels different.”
Xu Yourong smiled weakly, thinking to herself that when she was three years old, she used to climb those pillars outside the Li Palace every day.
Resting on his shoulder, she lifted her head with difficulty to glance at the mausoleum, a hint of confusion in her expression. “The layout of the mausoleum hall resembles the Golden Hall of the Longevity Sect.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Chen Changsheng said. “This mausoleum looks like many famous buildings outside the Zhou Garden, but when they’re all combined, it feels a bit…”
Xu Yourong finished with him simultaneously, “…neither fish nor fowl.”
After saying these four words, they looked at each other and smiled.
Toward Zhou Dufu, the most legendary of the ultimate powerhouses, anyone would feel reverence. Standing before his mausoleum, one would presumably not even dare to speak loudly, let alone make such comments.
If it were other cultivators, arriving at Zhou Dufu’s mausoleum—even if they weren’t overwhelmed with emotion, tears streaming down their faces—they would surely be speechless with awe, or even shout to vent their excitement.
But Chen Changsheng and Xu Yourong did not. They appeared very calm, even somewhat indifferent.
In the moment they spoke those four words, which seemed somewhat disrespectful, the exhaustion and hardship of their long escape seemed to vanish without a trace.
(I really want to see your recommendation tickets.)