The age-old silence of the Purplecloud Palace descended once more.
As the last wisp of hotpot aroma was swept away by the Chaos Airflow, this "hotpot diplomacy," worthy of a place in the annals of the Primordial World, came to a complete close.
Sovereign of Heaven had been delighted with the drinks. When he left, he even slung an arm around Taiyuan's shoulders and insisted on giving him a Shangqing jade token, saying that Taiyuan could come to Mount Kunlun to drink with him anytime and enter without having to announce himself.
Zhen Yuanzi and Hong Yun were also entirely satisfied. Hong Yun especially felt that he had never befriended the wrong person in his life. Taiyuan was someone worth knowing.
Only one person hadn't left.
Nuwa.
Fuxi had originally wanted to hurry his little sister back to Phoenix Perch Mountain. After all, the way she'd eaten earlier had been rather unbecoming of a mighty figure. She needed to go back and meditate in seclusion to restore her dignity.
But Nuwa had insisted on sending Fuxi to wait outside the palace gates, while she stayed behind.
At that moment,
she stood behind Taiyuan. The eyes that usually held the mysteries of creation had lost some of their transcendent holiness and gained a touch of bewilderment at the mortal world.
She still held the jade chopsticks—made of some unknown material—without realizing it, her fingertips faintly pale.
"Daoist Taiyuan..."
Her voice was cool and clear, yet trembled almost imperceptibly.
Taiyuan was tidying up the Purple-Gold Eight Trigrams Furnace, which had just earned great merit. At her words, he paused and turned around.
At that moment, Nuwa didn't look like the future Saint, lofty and untouchable. She seemed more like a little girl who'd run into a difficult problem and was asking her parents for help.
"Fellow Daoist Nuwa, are you still hungry?"
Taiyuan joked, trying to ease the somewhat heavy atmosphere. "If you are, the broth's dried up, but I've still got some dry provisions."
Nuwa shook her head, a conflicted expression appearing on her beautiful face.
She drew a deep breath as though she'd made up her mind, then stepped forward and fixed her gaze on Taiyuan.
"Please don't tease me, fellow Daoist."
"I stayed behind because I have a great question I can't resolve. I'd like to ask you... to show me the way."
Here it comes.
Taiyuan's heart stirred, but his expression remained calm. With a casual gesture, he conjured two meditation cushions and motioned for Nuwa to sit.
"I wouldn't presume to show you the way. Let's just talk."
Nuwa sat down, worry furrowing her brow, and slowly began to speak.
"Do you know that I cultivate the Dao of Creation?"
"Ever since I took human form, I've traveled the Primordial World and seen countless birds, beasts, scale-covered creatures, insects, and worms."
"I once tried shaping things from earth, hoping to create a new and perfect kind of life."
As she spoke, Nuwa sighed and extended her slender hand.
Light flowed through her palm, transforming into several little beasts fashioned from clay. They had spiritual energy, but their eyes were dull. They only acted on instinct and had no intelligence to speak of.
"But no matter how hard I tried, the things I created were always just... lifeless objects."
"They had no souls, no emotions. They were like... like walking corpses."
Nuwa looked up, a hint of hope in her eyes.
"But just now, in your dream, I saw a different kind of life."
"Though they were weak and lacked the divine powers to move mountains and overturn seas, they could cry and laugh. They cheered over delicious food and blushed with anger when fighting over a piece of meat."
"That vitality... was exactly what my creations lacked."
Taiyuan listened, already overjoyed inside.
This is like having a pillow handed to me just as I'm about to sleep.
Creating humanity.
This was the greatest source of merit in the Primordial World, and the foundation of Nuwa's path to sainthood.
In the original story, this had been Nuwa's solo act. He'd never expected that in this life, a hotpot dream of his would make her question things ahead of time—and even seek his advice.
If he didn't get involved, he wouldn't deserve to be a transmigrator.
Taiyuan restrained his excitement and put on an inscrutable expression.
Instead of answering directly, he asked, "What do you think makes a living being?"
Nuwa was taken aback. After a moment's thought, she answered, "It has intelligence, understands yin and yang, can pass things down, can cultivate, and follows the Heavenly Dao."
Taiyuan smiled and shook his head.
"Wrong."
"Completely wrong."
Nuwa looked astonished. "How so?"
Taiyuan rose to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back, gazing into the chaotic void beyond the Purplecloud Palace. His voice grew distant and ethereal.
"What makes a living being a living being isn't how powerful it is, nor whether it follows the Heavenly Dao."
"It's... the heart."
"The heart?" Nuwa murmured.
"Exactly."
Taiyuan turned sharply and met Nuwa's eyes. His gaze seemed to see straight through her soul.
"You said you wanted to create perfect beings."
"But there is no such thing as perfection in this world."
"It's precisely because things are imperfect that there's a drive to pursue perfection."
"You said the beings in my dream were full of life. That's because they knew how to be content, but also how to be greedy; how to be happy, but also how to suffer."
"They gave thanks for a full meal, and they wept bitterly when they faced a setback."
"These seven emotions and six desires, these bittersweet experiences—that's the most real flesh and blood from which a soul is formed!"
Boom!
His words struck like a thunderclap, cleaving through the chaos in Nuwa's mind.
Seven emotions and six desires.
Bittersweet experiences.
Was imperfection itself perfection?
Nuwa stood rooted to the spot, divine light blazing in her eyes. The bottleneck that had troubled her for so long had finally begun to loosen.
She had always pursued the utmost purity and holiness, but had forgotten that the Primordial World was a place where mud and sand mingled.
If every being she created were as free of desire as the innate gods and demons, wouldn't the Primordial World become a stagnant pool?
"I... understand."
After a long while,
the bewilderment in Nuwa's eyes faded, replaced by a clarity she'd never felt before.
She rose and bowed deeply to Taiyuan. This time, the gesture came from the heart.
"A single conversation with you is worth ten thousand years of cultivation."
"I see now that I'd gone down a dead end. I only wanted to give them divine power, but forgot to give them... human hearts."
Taiyuan accepted her bow with equanimity.
A bow from the future Saint was immensely valuable.
But he didn't intend to let things end there.
The favor of a few pointers wasn't enough. He needed to bind them together with tangible benefits if he was to claim the biggest share of the merit from the great undertaking of creating humanity.
"Since you've understood, I won't hold anything back."
Taiyuan's gaze sharpened. His magical power surged within him, and his face turned pale.
He raised a finger and lightly touched the center of his brow.
Hum—
A brilliant yet incomparably gentle white light slowly emerged from between his brows.
The moment it appeared, the entire side hall of the Purplecloud Palace seemed to grow warmer.
It wasn't ordinary spiritual light. It was pure "hope," the "power of wishes."
Taiyuan's origins were unique. When Pangu God opened the heavens and the earth and transformed into all things, he had been the first "Wish Light" left behind between heaven and earth.
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