Chapter 643: Ten Thousand Miles Away, Within a Few Breaths
What did this mean? Could it be that all those severed and blocked meridians had already been repaired?
Chen Changsheng stared at the scene before him, speechless with shock.
Countless great rivers flowed freely across the wilderness, irrigating the rice paddies on both banks.
In the wilderness, one could also see many lakes, large and small, scattered like stars in the sky.
Clear and beautiful landscapes, lovely scenery, a myriad of phenomena—all were now inside his body.
So this was what normal meridians were like.
So this was what perfect qi apertures were like.
So this was how true qi was supposed to flow smoothly through the meridians, not the sluggish, difficult movement he had always felt before.
Chen Changsheng gazed blankly, and before he could feel joy, sorrow crept in.
Yes, he was still alive, and it seemed he would live better than before.
His illness… seemed to have truly been cured.
No more curses.
Fate had been overturned.
Though he was still in meditation, observing himself, he felt as if his body had become much lighter, as if countless burdens had been shed.
The shadow at the edge of the sky before him, which had followed him for seven years, was gone. All that remained were great rivers and mountains, infinite light!
He opened his eyes.
And saw her figure.
She stood with her hands behind her back at the edge of the Divine Path, gazing at the night sky, her robes slightly damp.
In the distant rainy night, the last bolt of lightning, exceptionally thick, illuminated the entire Mausoleum of Books, casting her shadow towering and immense.
He didn’t know what to say.
Except, thank you.
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress’s reply was very unceremonious, as if she had merely done a trivial thing.
But why was this?
“I saved you, not because you are my son, nor because of those three squirrels, because I dislike that version of you.”
“Then why did you save me?”
“I am Will. You are my son, so you are the continuation of my Will.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress offered no specific explanation. She never needed to explain her actions, even to him.
“I heard you once said that your illness could not be cured—that it was fate.”
Chen Changsheng was silent. He had indeed said those words, to Xu Yourong, to the Little Black Dragon, to himself, many times.
“Even if this truly is your fate, I won’t let you die, so you cannot die,” the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress said.
Back then, on Cold Mountain, Xu Yourong had said she wouldn’t let him die.
At the bottom of North New Bridge, the Little Black Dragon had also said she wouldn’t let him die.
The feeling when the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress said these words was naturally very different.
Because when she said it, she could make it happen.
Even if her opponent was called fate.
“I believe in things like fate, but I have never respected it,” the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress said, looking at the starry sky with an expressionless face. “Since we want to defy heaven and change fate, of course we cannot respect it; we can only use it.”
Chen Changsheng recalled the first sentence Wang Zhice had written in his notes.
They were both truly extraordinary people. Their attitudes toward fate might differ slightly, but in essence, they were the same.
At this moment, the wind ceased and the rain stopped. The night clouds gradually scattered, revealing the true faces of the stars. The fate hidden behind them, however, remained unknown in form.
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress looked at the starry sky and said, “Heaven’s Way wants you dead, so I want you alive. Heaven’s Way says if you don’t die, then I must die. So I will fight it and see who is stronger.”
Then she withdrew her gaze, looked at the world beyond the Mausoleum of Books, and said, “As for these people, they are ultimately nothing but clowns jumping around.”
As her words fell, wind swirled around the Mausoleum of Books, lifting a corner of her robe.
Her body still stood at the peak of the Mausoleum of Books, but Chen Changsheng had the feeling that she had already gone a thousand miles away.
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Ten thousand miles away, in Xining Town, the night was deep and quiet, and a small stream babbled.
Fish rested silently in the crevices of rocks. Petals drifted down from upstream, circling around a pair of bare feet as white as jade, refusing to leave.
That monk lowered his head, looking at the flowers and fish in the clear stream, lost in thought.
A footstep sounded by the stream bank, calm and unhurried, yet it seemed to contain countless thunderclaps.
The fish in the stream fled in terror, burrowing deeper into the rock crevices, but they couldn’t find a way and kept crashing into the sharp edges of the rocks, drawing blood.
Fish blood spread through the stream water, staining the petals a vivid red. Those petals left his bare feet and met in the small whirlpools on the water’s surface.
That monk pondered for a moment, then raised his head to look across the stream, his expression very grave.
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress stood with her hands behind her back on the stream bank, looking at him expressionlessly.
Ten thousand miles of road—for her divine soul, it was but a single thought.
That monk lifted his left foot from the stream water, bent it against his body, and joined his left thumb and ring finger, almost touching but not quite, forming a lotus mudra.
In his right hand, he held a string of dark brown prayer beads that slowly turned on their own. As the beads moved, fragments of time’s true meaning lingered.
He looked at the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress, parted his lips slightly, and began to chant sutras.
The sutras he chanted were somewhat special—not common Daoist scriptures, but a kind of obscure text with a strange tone, rising and falling with its own rhythm.
These were Buddhist gathas.
The Buddhist sect had long been severed from this continent, but the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress knew something of it. The strands of hair at her temples moved without wind, as if she were pondering something.
As the Buddhist gathas sounded, the petals in the whirlpools of the stream surface joined together more tightly, gradually merging into lotus flowers.
A pure, crystalline holy light began to seep out from those overlapping petals.
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress stood by the stream, yet it seemed as if she stood in the lofty night sky.
What came to Xining Town was not her physical body, but a projection of her divine soul in space, moving with her thoughts, immensely towering.
An indescribable pressure radiated from her. Her eyes became exceptionally bright, like true stars.
The lotus flowers in the stream gradually left the whirlpools and drifted in all directions. A few drifted toward her, but more drifted toward the opposite bank.
That monk’s expression grew even more solemn. The prayer beads in his hand turned even more slowly, as if mountains were shifting in his palm.
The stream became absolutely still, with no sign of flow. The trees by the bank seemed to want to freeze as well, but were violently shaken by the suddenly raging night wind.
The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress looked at that monk and said, “Since you dare to return, don’t think about leaving again.”
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Thousands of households were still asleep, but the Daoist was always awake.
He looked in the direction of the Mausoleum of Books, a grave expression appearing between his brows, then turned and left.
The night rain had thinned. He stepped into the darkness, disappearing to an unknown place.
A moment later, his figure appeared at the side of the Bridge of Helplessness over the Luo River.
He took a very delicate hourglass from his sleeve and placed it on the railing.
The passage of time moved silently, often easily overlooked, until various measuring tools appeared.
The hourglass was undoubtedly the most primitive tool for measuring time, but precisely because it was primitive, it was reliable.
The Daoist calmly watched the hourglass, knowing that in another twenty-seven breaths, the other party would be able to determine his true location.
The fine stream of sand poured from the upper half of the hourglass. Just as it was about to run out completely, the Daoist vanished again.
The moment he disappeared, a cold aura appeared on the Bridge of Helplessness. The Luo River sensed it and stirred, then quickly calmed, even forming some ice shards on the surface.
A black shadow appeared where the Daoist had stood—it was the ruyi scepter from the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress’s waist.
That ruyi seemed to contain an extremely powerful soul, no longer a dead object, searching for the Daoist’s whereabouts.
In the cold cave at the bottom of North New Bridge, a girl in black clothes was in a deep sleep. The wound like a cinnabar dot between her brows seemed unusually vivid for some reason.
The Daoist had now arrived outside a mutton bun shop northwest of the capital.
He glanced at the hourglass in his hand, knowing that this time he could only stay for twenty-three breaths.
The time the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress needed to determine his true location was getting shorter and shorter, which also meant she was getting closer and closer to discovering it.
If she could determine the Daoist’s position, she would surely strike with full force to kill him.
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The Heavenly Sea Holy Empress stood atop the Mausoleum of Books, calmly looking in the direction of the Detached Palace.
Much of the night had already passed, and dawn was not far off.
Yet the Detached Palace remained very quiet. The old man who lived there, the one she had to treat with caution, had still not made his voice heard.
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Zhu Luo, the Star-Gazing Guest, Unique Beauty, and Boundless Green—these great figures who had arrived with wind and rain—all heard the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress’s voice.
The fifteen princes of the Chen family, who had slipped into the capital under cover of night, and those opponents who were already stirring restlessly, also heard her voice.
That voice was calm, yet so overwhelmingly domineering.
Earlier, the Daoist had said she dared not eat Chen Changsheng because she was timid, afraid to gamble, and feared the existence of Heaven’s Way.
Yet she was utterly disdainful of using Chen Changsheng as a fruit to gamble on the direction of Heaven’s Way. Instead, she wanted to gamble with Heaven’s Way itself on victory or defeat!
Except for a very few powerful individuals, no one knew that the Holy Empress’s divine soul had already gone ten thousand miles away, and her strongest portable artifact was also searching the capital’s streets for traces of the enemy. People looked at her standing silently atop the Mausoleum of Books with her hands behind her back, and an uncontrollable tremor arose deep in their hearts.
That was the highest point of the capital, and also the highest point of the world, because she had stood there for over two hundred years.
In the distance, the ground suddenly trembled. The accumulated rainwater splashed up, turning into countless droplets scattering everywhere.
Thunder rumbled across the wilderness, occasionally lit by lightning, revealing countless faint figures of cavalry.
The thunder was real, and so were the hoofbeats.
Except for northern fortresses like Yongxue Pass that required heavy defenses, tens of thousands of the most elite Zhou Dynasty cavalry were advancing toward the capital under the leadership of eleven divine generals!
They were the most loyal subordinates of the Heavenly Sea Holy Empress’s rule over this world, and also her most powerful military force.
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(On October 7th, there will be a simplified Chinese book signing for Ze Tian Ji at the Shanghai Book City. If you have time, come and play. There’s an online registration place on Qidian’s homepage.)