The sunlight was dappled.
"Slave Dynasty, Seaside Ghost Country, Bronze Country." Zhu Zhengwei sat in the old house, his expression as calm as ever, turning page after page of the diary and reading patiently.
"It's hard to imagine these were Third Brother's words."
"There's no literary style to them. Even his worst student wrote far better."
"It was as though that refined schoolteacher had completely returned to the wilderness, becoming a rough savage who did whatever he pleased. He would sweep his brush across the page, leaving crooked, haphazard handwriting, writing whatever came to mind."
In a daze, Zhu Zhengwei seemed to see a long-lived man wandering alone through history, witnessing the destruction of history, the birth of new civilizations, and the growth of humanity. Everything in the Mortal World intertwined into a sacred epic.
This was an ode to the passage of time.
It was also the sediment of civilization.
"Perhaps I should get used to this. I created the map of this dream world, and it has completely ceased to be a dream. It has become a world where countless souls give birth to mysteries."
"They're truly alive now."
He suddenly smiled with complicated emotions and continued reading.
[Summer of 0128: I went from being a soldier to becoming the Ghost Country's deputy war officer. Fever and sorcery constantly consumed the lives of these soldiers. I bet the commander that this long war, which had lasted for years, would soon come to an end. Sure enough, I won within half a month. The two allied armies still couldn't conquer that tyrant's City of a Hundred Stones. We were finally returning home, but I had to leave. If I stayed in one place for too long, my unaging appearance would cause serious problems.]
[Winter of 0138: The Bronze city held a banquet for the Sage's birthday. Hot-air balloons rose into the sky, with women scattering flowers from above. It was to celebrate Sage Zhang Zhi's two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, and the princess was taking the opportunity to find a husband as well. She was a descendant of Eldest Brother's daughter. This was also why I rarely visited the Bronze Country. While they were holding their sacred ceremony, I was playing chess and gambling money with an old man who didn't even know who Zhang Zhi was, outside a tavern in Black Cloud Port. I actually lost everything.]
[0140: Stone Light Great Emperor of the Slave Kingdom was assassinated. No one had been able to defeat that powerful man, who was said to be the closest to a god, head-on during that long war. Yet, absurdly, he was stabbed to death by a group of mortals at night. Our brains can unleash terrifying power, but our bodies remain incomparably frail. The might of gods and the physique of mortals—how tragic is that? In the end, I only obtained half of the power my elder brother passed on to me. I still haven't deciphered the Divine Blood Factor, the method that would allow humans to become truly complete cultivators and circulate qi throughout their bodies. Qi could never descend below the neck; it was always jammed there. And the tyranny of the Slave Dynasty would always be overthrown in this way.]
[Winter of 0141: The new king ascended the throne. It was the slave laborer hero who had led the people in assassinating the tyrant. He became the next Stone Light Emperor—a more brutal man who was drunk on his own success. I found myself missing Stone Light Emperor. At least he had been a man of great talent and vision. But after the third transfer, the seeds that allowed their kingdom to sense qi had been diluted, and their power was far weaker than before.]
[0146: I purchased the sixth treasured volume of New Interpretation of Sage's Enlightenment Theory at Bronze Jingshan Temple. The wisdom of the world is always magnificent. This temple gathered the nation's strongest monk-scholars, who had expounded theories I could never have imagined back then. I couldn't put it down.]
[0152: I returned to the City of a Hundred Stones once more. The Slave Dynasty was again nearing its end. I came back as a wealthy merchant famous far and wide. After walking around, I found there was nothing worth seeing. The nobles and aristocratic clans still reeked of corruption, amusing themselves at the Arena. They weren't fools. They already knew their downfall was inevitable, yet they continued their final revelry. Sitting on a boulder, I unexpectedly remembered that night from long ago, when I had counted the stars with Slave Laborer A Da. He had told me, "So those boulders were soaked in elephant blood and human tears. No wonder they're cold to the touch."]
[0154: I discussed the reasons behind the Slave Dynasty's decline and impending destruction with a professor from the Bronze Country named Li Su. We argued until our faces flushed in the winter snow. Privately, I felt that his arguments were sound and well-founded. I really have grown more stubborn with age.]
[0156: I decided to return to my homeland for a look. But when was the happiest time of my childhood? Was it when Journey to the West played on television? I thought carefully, but I could no longer remember the plot. The impressions of the old civilization era had already become completely blurred. I had nearly forgotten even my family's faces. I only remembered that Eldest Brother was disabled, and that my elder brother was a man with the tear mole.]
In the end, he left a note:
"These years, my elder brother has been wandering the world and has yet to return. I fear the two of us may have passed each other while wandering. What do you think?"
"These years, I have been searching for a method of cultivation that can make one perfect, but I have struggled to find the way in."
"And what truth does the history of this world contain, after all?"
Zhu Zhengwei closed the diary that had been left behind.
I haven't been here lately, nor have I been wandering the world. How could I find myself?
Besides, most of the students used to sleep roughly eight hours a night. After the twenty-four-hour cycle began, one day now represented more than three times the passage of nine years.
Over a hundred years had passed inside, while in reality Zhu Zhengwei had spent these dozen or so days busy taking exams outside.
This was the unavoidable daily routine of being a student. Fortunately, he hadn't failed any courses. With the remaining time, he squeezed in opportunities to search for various animals everywhere.
He had never expected the Dream World before him to develop into this state.
Zhu Zhengwei thought for a moment, then wrote an ambiguous sentence to this long-lived man on the back of the note.
"The blizzard has begun again."
"Just as it did three thousand years ago, the predators are quietly crawling out of this ancient land. The night cannot conceal the cold gleam on the claws and fangs of the Ancient Species."
Hmm.
He was very satisfied.
No matter how he looked at it, it made sense. No matter how he explained it, he could make it work.
Zhu Zhengwei carefully placed the reply in the secret compartment, then left again.
This disappearance would last another hundred years or more. He planned to search for some special creatures and enrich the world a little.
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