Two old acquaintances, far apart in age yet deeply entangled, were both squatting atop the city wall. In exactly the same pose, they had their arms around each other's shoulders and their hands tucked into their sleeves as they looked south toward the battlefield ruins.
Lu Chen turned to the young man beside him and smiled. "If the two of us copied Old Senior Yang now, each with a pipe in hand, puffing clouds and breathing mist, it would be even more pleasant. Climbing the city wall, seeing ten thousand miles away, facing the world in emptiness, broadening the heart to disperse sorrow."
The old man in the rear courtyard of Yang Family Pharmacy had once mocked the Three Teachings Patriarch as the largest Pixiu between Heaven and Earth, creatures that swallowed everything and never spat anything out.
What Chen Ping'an saw was sparse grass and trees, stirring Sword Qi. It was as though he saw white bones piled into hills, Sword Qi piercing the Dipper and Ox. He saw a sword cultivator on the battlefield, hair disheveled and body drenched in blood, who had once lain drunk in a corridor, reclining against a censer with a Wine Spring Cup in hand—a Sword Immortal and famous scholar alike, both elegant and unrestrained. It was as though he saw Chou Miao of the Summer Palace taking the first step ahead, leaving never to return. As though he saw Gao Kui, whose first sword in life had been learned from his Patriarch, and whose final sword had therefore been meant to question Patriarch Dragon Lord. There was the female Sword Immortal Zhou Cheng, the old sword cultivator Yin Chen who had long harbored the will to die, Tao Wen, for whom only death on the battlefield could bring release, and young sword