Shen Tang's words made Chu Yao pause, but he quickly resumed his usual pace. The faint bitterness on his face gave way to composure. "When you're alive, you have to believe in something to keep going. Or at least comfort yourself with the thought that 'a gentleman keeps his weapon close, waiting for the right moment to act.'"
Otherwise, living was too hard.
He had endured day after day, and each one had worn away at his heart and soul.
From the year before his coming-of-age ceremony, when his Literary Heart was replaced and he had that dream, through the years of upheaval that followed, fifteen years had passed.
Shen Tang sighed. "But that's so hard on you."
He didn't have to suffer so much. Instead of clinging to an unreliable "prophecy," he would be better off focusing on the road ahead.
Chu Yao shook his head without a word.
Had he truly never wavered in the face of reality?
Of course he had.
He was only an ordinary man. Faced with hardships that seemed to have no end, he, too, had faltered—and more than once.
But each time the first stirrings of doubt surfaced, he stamped them out himself. For one thing, his temperament wouldn't allow him to give up halfway. For another, that dream was the only time in his life he had ever used the Way of the Scholar. How could he be content without seeing how it ended, or learning his fate?
To know one's fate, to cure an intractable illness...
If the prophecy in the dream's prescription came true, it would mean his life would truly turn around and his fortunes would rise after hitting rock bottom. He wouldn't spend his whole life bearing the stigma of lowly status, scrabbling and crawling through the mud