"You think you are the one writing the book, but you, too, are a book that has been turned through."
The rings of years were ages stretching beyond sight. The ravines of history were no more than wrinkles in the bark.
Before the enormous tree stump, silent for ten thousand years and vast as a cast-iron plateau, Master Zi sat with his hands tucked in his sleeves, clad in an old-fashioned Confucian robe and holding a white chess piece in his palm.
That sentence rang in his ears again.
He made no unnecessary movement.
Ever since Shi Baizhou's death, those words had echoed in his ears time and again. They had already become a habit.
Come to think of it, Zuo Qiu Wu, who had "written books," had ultimately become a book turned through in Diligent Academy. That, too, could be called an answer spanning time.
That line—"Though there may be no Spring and Autumn, one yet holds the dark and the dawn"—seemed written especially for him—
Shi Baizhou had shown him the Spring and Autumn of the cicada, while Zuo Qiu Wu had made him see the dark and dawn of the morning fungus.
By now, Master Zi had resolved the "demonic intent invading fortune" and passively accepted Diligent Academy's outcome, yet he was still considering Wu Zhaixue's matter.
To scheme for Transcendence was not the work of a day or a night. One could only exert ten parts effort and seek that one chance in ten thousand. He had long been prepared for his actions to come to nothing, and he was certain that no one could have done better than Zuo Qiu Wu. It was only that this current "better" was better for Diligent Academy.
Its impact upon the entire Confucian School, however, was not necessarily so.