Life was like mist, and love like morning dew—both vanished in a flash.
To learn the Dream Weaving Technique, one first had to perform it with one's own body, personally experience a grand dream of life and death in which a white colt became a gray dog, and only then grasp its true essence.
In the morgue, Xu Qing felt his head heavy and his feet light. The flickering candle flames before him seemed separated by a layer of mist, making everything indistinct.
He stumbled over to an empty corpse bed. Unable to suppress his drowsiness any longer, he dropped his head and fell asleep.
Recently, a new star had appeared in the Pear Garden. Whether in bearing or singing, he was top-notch.
"While my lover dwells in the depths of my heart, I languish in heartbreak; only the moon knows my wounded feelings."
"My lord, you keep peeking at me, watching me waste away from long illness. You don't know how much I hurt for you, at every turn."
"Is this Sai Yuxian? Captain Zhao's family really is wealthy. The man's already dead, yet they actually hired the Pear Garden's finest star to perform a Funeral Procession opera for him." Beneath the stage, Xu Qing listened to Sai Yuxian's mournful, lingering voice and inexplicably found it familiar. He felt he had heard it somewhere before, but could not remember where.
But none of that mattered. Today was the perfect day to hold a Funeral Procession for his sworn enemy. No other matter, however important, could surpass this one!
After listening to a performance of The Meeting at the Tower, Xu Qing went backstage and began discussing the Funeral Procession opera with the flower-like Sai Yuxian.
Two days later, after hearing the Funeral Procession opera, Zhao Zhonghe was buried. Once there was no longer a Zhao surname in Linhe Fang, Xu Qing's luck seemed to improve considerably.
Why, the Sai Yuxian he had met at the funeral had, ever since their encounter, come to the Corpse Driver's Shop every few days to sing for him and dispel his boredom. She said that from the first moment she saw him, she had become utterly infatuated, as if she had lost her soul.
At first, Xu Qing paid it no mind. He was an ageless zombie—could he really marry a mortal woman who would grow old and lose her beauty in just twenty or thirty years?
Time flew, and the winds and clouds changed.
One day, the Tianxin Cult, which had been plotting against the realm for years, suddenly raised troops in rebellion. Sai Yuxian, who had spent her days singing and dressing up, transformed into the former dynasty's Princess and the Cult's Holy Maiden!
From that day onward, Sai Yuxian, having noticed Xu Qing's "corpse-loving" inclination, began openly shipping all sorts of corpses to the Corpse Driver's Shop.
At that time, the Tianxin Cult was leading its rebel army in battle against the imperial court. As the Cult's Holy Maiden, how could she possibly fail to obtain corpses for her lover?
After all, Sai Yuxian was a woman of feeling and loyalty!
It had to be said that although the Holy Maiden's method of confessing her love was a little extreme, it was indeed simple and effective!
When the Tianxin Cult invaded Luojing and stormed into the Imperial City, cutting off Emperor Longping's head, Sai Yuxian ascended the throne as Empress. She then ordered the Ministry of Rites to follow the wedding standards used for emperors throughout the ages and summon Xu Qing to the capital to marry her.
Xu Qing refused with feigned reserve, so Sai Yuxian immediately promised him the corpses of every condemned prisoner in the imperial prisons and dungeons. During that time, she even offered Emperor Longping's body as a token of love, all to win a smile from her beloved.
Xu Qing was merely a Corpse Driver at a little corpse shop. Never in a single day had he seen so many corpses. With wealth falling from the heavens into his lap, how could he withstand such a test?
Beneath such a mighty lure, Xu Qing completely forgot his own name. He closed the Corpse Driver's Shop that very night and went to the Imperial City, where from then on he lingered day and night among power, beauty, and corpses.
Sai Yuxian was broad-minded. Fearing that her own busy affairs would leave Xu Qing neglected, she ordered all the former dynasty's rebel women consigned to the Jiaofang Division to be granted white silk and poisoned wine, so that Xu Qing could refine them into corpse consorts to attend her husband in her place.
With such a considerate wife, how could he possibly fail to achieve the great Dao of the Corpse Immortal?
The professional integrity Xu Qing had once displayed while eking out a living in a single shop, accepting unclaimed corpses, now seemed like a joke. In those days, the corpses he collected in an entire year were probably fewer than the number delivered in a single day now!
Afterward, Xu Qing, increasingly obsessed with advancing his cultivation, began radically altering the Imperial City's feng shui. He persuaded the Empress to build a Moon-Watching Terrace to draw down lunar essence and terrestrial qi, hoping it would help him become an immortal and ancestor sooner.
During this period, the new dynasty's Chancellor, formerly the Tianxin Cult's White-Clad Protector of Loyalty and Righteousness, remonstrated fearlessly. In court, he fiercely denounced Xu Qing for more than a hundred crimes, declaring that while he himself held a heart of pure loyalty, Xu Qing and his ilk harbored the intent to plunge the realm into chaos, deceived the ruler above and duped the common people below, and were truly demon chiefs who brought ruin upon the nation and deserved death without pardon!
Enraged upon hearing this, Sai Yuxian immediately shouted, "You claim to possess a heart of pure loyalty? Very well, then tear open your chest and cut out a piece for Us to see. Let Us determine whether it is truly as red as blood!"
The Chancellor heard this and spoke with adamant righteousness: "When the sovereign is troubled, his ministers are disgraced. We serve with all our hearts to repay the nation. How could we allow a demon to punish the righteous and flaunt its might? If surrendering my life can clear the Emperor's heart, then what harm is there in dying a hundred times?"
Having said this, he took out his loyal heart before Sai Yuxian and presented it in front of the throne. Every minister who witnessed the scene was overcome with grief and indignation.
Thereafter, officials from every branch and every office, the ministers of the Three Judicial Offices and the Six Ministries, jointly submitted memorials impeaching Xu Qing. Even the bewildered common people believed that the chaos engulfing the realm was connected to a certain Xu-surnamed favorite in the Empress's inner palace.
For a time, public anger surged. The hats of "demon husband," "bringing ruin to the nation," and "poisoning all the people" were firmly planted on Xu Qing's head.
The taller the tree rose above the forest, the more fiercely the wind would destroy it.
Xu Qing, who boldly followed his own path without the slightest concealment, became the target of everyone's arrows.
Unable to withstand the fury of the masses, the Empress reluctantly sent Xu Qing to the cold palace, though his food, clothing, and daily necessities were not reduced in the slightest.
Xu Qing had thought the matter would end there. He only had to wait until the day he attained the Dao and became a true immortal; by then, no one would be able to restrain him.
But human calculations could never outmatch Heaven's.
One day, several streaks of rainbow light suddenly descended outside the Imperial Palace, accompanied by resounding, radiant voices.
One person claimed to be Ge Hongwen, a Rogue Cultivator from Songyun Temple on Mount Henglu.
Another claimed to be Zhuang Tongsheng, a cultivator from Jade Pool Mountain in Lotus County.
Several more voices answered afterward. Without exception, these people had come in response to a summons of fate, intending to enter the Imperial Palace and slay the imperial favorite who had brought ruin upon the nation and its people.
Xu Qing's Dao cultivation was incomplete. Facing their encirclement and attack, he ultimately could not withstand them, and his magnificent Dao Path was severed within the Imperial Palace of the divine capital.
At death's door, he suddenly awakened. How had he forgotten that this world still held many hidden true cultivators of the Dao? Was Zhuang Tongsheng not the immortal master he had seen when he had once performed rites for Master Liu?
And Ge Hongwen of Mount Henglu—the name was exceedingly familiar as well. Was he not Fourth Master Li's bargain father, and the mentor of the old physician Yang Chunfu?
Xu Qing's head spun with pain. On one hand, he regretted forgetting his original aspirations and becoming greedy for progress in collecting corpses, thereby bringing disaster upon himself. On the other, he felt that this life had passed in a haze like a dream, as if he had drunk himself into a blackout. So many events were disjointed and flawed, bizarre to the extreme.
Sai Yuxian had clearly been a lovestruck actress. How had she become the former dynasty's Princess, the Tianxin Cult's Holy Maiden, and the current Empress?
And Zhao Zhonghe had plainly been alive and well. How had he suddenly become a corpse?
In the silent morgue, the person lying on the plank bed abruptly opened his eyes. A crisp smack followed.
After heavily slapping himself across the face, Xu Qing finally came fully awake.
When he saw his surroundings, as well as Sai Yuxian's corpse lying sprawled across the table, he fell silent again.
He had never imagined that the Dream Weaving Technique could actually create an entire world of desire within his dream.
Looking again at the lamp and candles on the table, they still flickered and danced, as if the entire lifetime he had just experienced in the dream had lasted no more than an instant.
Xu Qing pondered and gained an epiphany. He understood that the Dream Weaving Technique was a form of illusion. The people, events, and scenery in the dream all had counterparts in reality; they had not truly appeared from nothing.
The ancient text Records from Within a Pillow spoke of a Daoist named Elder Lü who had once used an immortal technique to let a young man named Lu Sheng experience a grand dream.
In the dream, Lu Sheng lived through an entire lifetime. By the time he awoke, the yellow millet cooking before him had not yet finished.
Xu Qing had no yellow millet to use as a reference and did not know how much time had passed, but he had another way to verify it.
At that moment, Wang Lingyuan, having just relieved himself, was returning from outside the morgue.
Seeing this, Xu Qing understood everything. So that life of white clouds turning into gray dogs, of morning silk becoming evening snow, had merely been a dream born from unbinding his belt.
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