Chapter 730: Snowy Night Conversation
As the night deepened, the cold grew more intense. The ice and snow beside the abandoned well had frozen as solid as rock.
A small hand appeared on the well’s rim. Under the glow of the Imperial City’s lights, it looked very fair, even whiter than the snow covering the sky, and perhaps even colder. As that small hand exerted force, the ice and snow crumbled with a rustling sound, and a little girl climbed out of the well. The scene truly resembled something out of a terrifying tale.
The little girl stood in the snow. Her breath met the air and turned into a mist of ice crystals—not because her breath carried warmth, but because it was so cold. She wore a black garment, somewhat tattered and very worn, standing out starkly against the endless white of the snow.
After centuries, Zhi Zhi had finally emerged from the gloomy, cramped underground world into the real human realm. The human realm of this time had long forgotten the legend of that notoriously ferocious Black Frost Dragon. To her, this present world felt utterly foreign.
Her spirit had once been forcibly torn from her dragon body by the Heavenly Sea Saintess, sealed into that black jade ruyi, and taken by Chen Changsheng on a journey to the Zhou Garden. During those days, she had glimpsed the streets of the capital, the green trees by the lake, the bustling splendor of Wenshui, and that mountain valley under twilight. Yet everything before her eyes now remained unfamiliar.
At this moment, she was not a wisp of spirit but her true, complete self.
Her bare feet could clearly feel the soft, yielding texture of the snow and its warmth. The tips of her hair could distinctly sense the gentle, soothing caress of the winter wind. She could see the real wind and snow with her own eyes, not just her consciousness. She could even see the real starry sky beyond the snow clouds—stars she hadn’t seen for centuries. So you’re still in the same places, scattering the same beautiful silver light. Could the homeland of the Southern Islands still look the same as before?
The sense of strangeness and the feeling of reality tangled and clashed within her mind, eventually transforming into the most genuine fear.
She didn’t know that in the near future, she would become a new legend in the human world. Though as a noble and powerful dragon, her existence was already a legend to humans, she was simply afraid of this unfamiliar world.
This world was a world of humans, a realm filled with people, and humans were the very thing she feared most.
Whether noble or humble, strong or weak, when life is at its most fragile, lost, and afraid, it instinctively seeks the most familiar support. That support might be a tree, a rock, a window, or a person.
Before Zhou Tong died, his consciousness was already hazy; he only knew to crawl toward the Northern Cavalry Command Alley.
At this moment, her mind held only one name: Chen Changsheng.
Chen Changsheng was the being she knew best and trusted most in this world. And for certain secret reasons, she firmly believed he bore responsibility toward her. So, once she came to her senses, she didn’t hesitate to walk toward the nearby National Academy. Her bare feet left a clear trail in the snow.
…
…
The National Academy and the adjacent Hundred Herbs Garden were now under heavy guard. The cavalry of the National Church and the imperial army had sealed off the entire block, facing each other in silent, tense confrontation. No one knew what might happen next.
The situation in the capital kept shifting. With the Pope’s return to the sea of stars, public sentiment was uncertain, but people’s judgments were slowly tilting toward the imperial court. Teachers and students kept leaving the National Academy; those who remained were less than a third of the original number. The eighteen girls from Nanxi Zhai and Su Moyu naturally stayed, but they knew they could no longer influence what was to come. The two who could truly decide the outcome were now by the lake under the great banyan tree.
No one in the capital would sleep tonight, because many knew that master and disciple were holding their final negotiations.
In recent days, the wind and snow had been heavy. Like the rest of the capital, the National Academy was covered in thick snow. The withered grass by the lake was completely buried, only the tips of some blades visible where the ground rose slightly, giving a particularly stubborn impression.
The leaves of the great banyan tree had long fallen, leaving bare branches that were still sturdy enough to bear the weight of several people.
Chen Changsheng wasn’t in the tree but standing in the snow beneath it, because his teacher was also standing in the snow.
This was the first time master and disciple had met since that morning at the Mausoleum of Books. Back then, they had passed each other on the sacred path like strangers, eyes fixed ahead. Now, they truly faced each other, and it was clear how much each had changed since their days in Xining Town.
Chen Changsheng was now the Pope, but he wore no sacred robe, no papal crown, and held no papal staff. Instead, he wore the uniform of the National Academy. His black hair was combed immaculately and tied into the simplest Daoist bun, secured not by some precious ebony hairpin but by an ordinary wooden chopstick.
Shang Xingzhou’s hair was still jet-black, untouched by frost, also combed immaculately. His brows and eyes were full of nobility and composure, an indescribable ease and casualness. Yet his attire was equally simple—just a blue Daoist robe—as if he were not the foremost figure of the age but an ordinary Daoist priest.
If anyone saw this scene, they might feel that master and disciple were, in a sense, very alike. This similarity lay not only in appearance but also in the deep indifference between their brows and the detachment hidden beneath their calm exteriors.
Chen Changsheng prepared to speak but didn’t know what to say.
He hadn’t spoken to the man standing across the snowy ground in years. For a cultivator, a few years was a short time, but it always felt long to him—so long that memories of that old temple in Xining Town had grown hazy, at least certain aspects were hard to recall clearly.
He still remembered the mottled marks on the wall after moving out the Daoist scriptures from the old temple. He still remembered the night before he left, when his senior brother stir-fried four dishes, each different in style and flavor, one of them loaded with garlic. But he had forgotten what his last words to his teacher were.
At that moment, Shang Xingzhou spoke.
“I picked you up from the stream. Though I knew beforehand you would be in that stream, without me, you would have either drowned or been eaten by that old dragon. In any case, I saved your life, and I raised you to adulthood. So your life belongs to me.”
Tonight was the last night. Tomorrow would be a new day—as new as countless days before, yet the first day of a new continent. This conversation in the snow would determine whether the people of the capital, and even the entire continent, could welcome the new year’s dawn in peace and joy, as they had in years past.
No one had expected this conversation to begin so abruptly, to proceed so harshly, that the opening words sounded like a closing statement.