I Examine Myself Thrice Daily

[In March of the 165th year of the New Calendar, Left Chancellor Gu Zhizhong submitted to the throne: "The common people across the realm rest when the sun sets, because they cannot work once the sky grows dark. To make the common folk labor to their fullest, I beg Your Majesty to decree a later hour for sunset." The Emperor granted it. Thus, Xihe drove the sun without whipping it; the Golden Crow hung in the sky without falling. Daylight was thereby greatly prolonged, not setting until the hour of Hai, and the night was consequently shortened.]

[In April of the 165th year of the New Calendar, Right Chancellor Jiang Tai'e submitted to the throne: "The year's cycle has twenty-four solar terms, and a day should correspondingly have twenty-four hours. The common people are dull-witted and cannot bear the complexity of Zi and Chou; I ask that they simply be counted from one to twenty-four." The Emperor granted it. Thus, the ancient names of Cockcrow and Settled Men vanished, and throughout the realm, only numbers were heard.]

Li Shun was absently rubbing the sheet of white paper in his hand when a jumble of hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside the window. With a thought, the white paper vanished from his palm.

"Cripple, something huge has happened!" With a violent bang, a white-haired old man burst anxiously into the room.

"Bandits have attacked again. This time, the commotion is terrifyingly huge—even the garrisoned Black-Armored Army has mobilized in full..."

The old man panted heavily, swallowed hard, paused, then suddenly lowered his voice. "How about we take advantage of the chaos and run?"

Run?

Li Shun lowered his eyes, his gaze freezing slightly in the dim room.

Twenty-six years ago, he had transmigrated into this world known as Great Qian and become a corvée laborer serving in Cold Mountain County.

Great Qian had ended the thousand-year dark and chaotic age. The emperor who had trampled seven kingdoms beneath his horse's hooves and established dominion over the realm possessed might beyond mortal imagination—one word from him could explain all things; one utterance could delay the setting sun. Before such absolute power, all creation was suppressed, and none under heaven dared refuse to submit.

That suffocating golden age had endured for more than four hundred years, until a century ago, when the Qian Emperor suddenly secluded himself deep within the palace, ignoring both court affairs and worldly matters.

Though the left and right chancellors governed in his stead, with the Qian Emperor absent, they ultimately could not stop the growing storms across the realm.

Take the attack on the county yamen, for instance. Such a heinous act would have been unimaginable ten years ago. Yet over the last three years, it had only become more frequent.

"Old Feng, don't lose your footing. Who exactly are these bandits?" Li Shun gathered his thoughts, his brows tightly furrowed as he demanded in a low voice.

Feng Guan seemed extremely nervous. Like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring, he stared fixedly at the activity outside the window and answered in a trembling voice, "They should be... remnants of Xiang Kingdom..."

Before he could finish, an earth-shattering roar suddenly erupted from the far end of the long street! It was like heavenly thunder exploding, making even the ground beneath their feet tremble violently.

Looking toward the direction from which the shockwave swept over, Li Shun's expression changed slightly.

In midair, a pillar of turbid air mixed with crimson and ash rose from the ground, then burst outward at its peak, becoming a heavy canopy of dust that blotted out the sky and sun. Carrying the crushing pressure of destruction, it spread madly in every direction.

The daylight gradually dimmed.

A scorching gale howled as it rushed backward into the long street, making the already dilapidated doors and windows creak and groan.

Then, a savage shriek like tearing silk rode the gale and echoed endlessly above Cold Mountain Town. "Destroy Qian and restore Xiang—this day is the day!"

"Destroy Qian and restore Xiang—this day is the day!"

In an instant, like a single stone stirring a thousand layers of waves, hysterical responses erupted one after another from every corner of the county town.

"Enemies on all sides. We can't escape. Hide first and wait out the storm." Li Shun made his decision at once. He grabbed Feng Guan and retreated into the inner room in a few strides.

Bending down, he lifted the heavy bedboard, revealing a dark passage leading downward.

"A tunnel? Cripple, when did you dig this?" Feng Guan was dumbfounded.

Though shock filled his words, his feet did not slow in the slightest. He immediately slipped into the dark opening.

Li Shun followed close behind, then skillfully swung his hand back and sealed the bedboard tightly into place.

The two felt their way down the narrow, slanted earthen passage in darkness. Before long, they reached its end. It was an underground dirt chamber half a zhang long and wide, and around six chi high. Though somewhat cramped and oppressive, it had more than enough room to hide two people.

The earthen chamber was not pitch-black and lifeless. More than a dozen tiny grasses emitting a faint, cold glow had taken root in an orderly scatter along the rough walls. Their chilly blue radiance flickered like breathing, not only dispelling all darkness from this tiny space but also bringing threads of fresh air into the sealed underground chamber.

"This is... Cold Mountain Grass? Cripple, you actually hid so much of it!" Feng Guan clicked his tongue in astonishment.

Li Shun, however, leaned against the earthen wall like an old monk in meditation, saying nothing as if he were calculating something at great speed.

The tremors from above grew ever more violent. Yet perhaps because the roots of the Cold Mountain Grass had twisted and spread throughout the earth, the originally loose soil had been bound tightly together. No matter how the outside world shook as though heaven and earth were collapsing, this small dirt chamber remained as steady as a rock. Not even a speck of dust fell.

Realizing how unexpectedly sturdy this shelter was, Feng Guan's paper-pale face gradually eased. Yet his cloudy eyes could not help glancing back and forth over Li Shun from time to time.

Cold Mountain Grass was the death warrant hanging over corvée laborers like them in Cold Mountain County. It had to be watered day and night with one's own essence blood, and after a full year, one could barely produce a single stalk. Feng Guan had ground down his bones and squeezed dry his marrow every day and night, risking his old life just to barely complete the annual tribute.

Yet Li Shun had somehow secretly accumulated such a terrifying surplus of Cold Mountain Grass without ever delaying his term of labor...

Feng Guan looked toward Li Shun, and a thoughtful gleam quietly surfaced in the depths of his eyes.

"Old Feng, stop letting your mind run wild. Tell me more carefully about those Xiang Kingdom remnants." Li Shun seemed not to notice the change in Feng Guan's gaze at all. He suddenly opened his eyes and broke the silence.

Feng Guan hastily returned his expression to normal. Recalling what he had seen, he swallowed with lingering fear. "Actually, I didn't see very clearly. The most conspicuous one was the leader of those remnants... eight chi tall, exceptionally burly, and no ordinary fighter. I only spied on him from an extremely great distance, yet he seemed to sense it and directly cast that blade-sharp gaze toward me! Luckily, his target was the county yamen. Otherwise, these old bones of mine probably wouldn't have made it back."

In the cold, dead silence underground, Feng Guan continued in a trembling voice, describing the horrifying scene he had witnessed from afar.

"They say the people of Xiang Kingdom mostly practice shamanic arts. That burly man was one of them. He manifested an eight-armed demon god, crimson flames winding around his body, his Killing Intent nearly piercing the clouds."

"Though the Black-Armored Army is Great Qian's elite, before him, they were not even a match for a single exchange!"

As Feng Guan spoke, the commotion from above gradually weakened.

"The bandits have left?" Feng Guan keenly noticed the change outside and raised his head in delighted surprise.

"I'm afraid it won't be that soon. To be safe, wait a little longer." Li Shun shook his head, his expression still stern.

For a time, the underground shelter once again fell into a silence so deep that a pin dropping could be heard.

"Right, Old Feng. Don't you know some techniques of the School of Novelists? Send something up to take a look. What exactly is happening now?" Suddenly, Li Shun pinched a completely black ant from some crack in the dirt and held it out before Feng Guan.

Feng Guan's shriveled cheek twitched sharply. A flicker of struggling hesitation passed through his eyes, but in the end, he nodded.

"Listening to the Wind, Skimming Shadows..."

Feng Guan sat cross-legged on the cold dirt floor. With that faint murmur, the pupils in his cloudy eyes instantly dissolved, leaving his eye sockets filled with an eerie, deathly white.

Meanwhile, the ant at Li Shun's fingertips began to sway and convulse as if it had drunk strong liquor. A moment later, it returned to normal and climbed swiftly toward the surface through dark crevices in the soil.

That investigation took nearly half a day.

When pupils finally gathered again in Feng Guan's eyes and he awoke, he seemed to have expended an enormous amount of strength, as if he had been drained dry. "For... fortunately, we didn't rashly go up. The reason the noise outside lessened was because the county yamen had already been completely breached, and the garrisoned Black-Armored Army had been wiped out to the last man."

Feng Guan paused, greedily gulping down great breaths of air as his chest heaved violently. "Those bandits are still gathered around the county yamen, with no intention of leaving at all. They seem to be... to be digging three feet into the ground in search of some Cold Mountain Venerable..."

Hearing that, Li Shun casually pulled a stalk of blue-glowing Cold Mountain Grass from the wall and handed it over. "Don't rush. Speak slowly. Chew some of this first. It'll restore your spirit."

Feng Guan stared at the coldly luminous grass held out to him and froze.

He had cultivated this thing with his essence blood for half his life, yet he had never once tasted it.

After struggling with its extreme bitterness for only a moment, Feng Guan gritted his teeth and decisively stuffed it into his mouth, swallowing it whole.

As he chewed, old tears unexpectedly streamed down his face, and his voice was bleak. "I've done hard labor all my life... So this is what Cold Mountain Grass tastes like..."

Li Shun was just about to speak.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Without warning, it was as though thunder from the ninth heaven had exploded overhead. This hidden cave several zhang underground was violently torn open from above by an utterly tyrannical force.

Blinding sunlight poured down like a waterfall. Yet in the next instant, every ray was blocked by a powerful figure standing at the edge of the pit like a mountain range. Against the light stood the Xiang Kingdom remnant leader Feng Guan had spoken of—the man who controlled the eight-armed demon god!

As though he had been fixed in the gaze of some primeval beast, Li Shun felt his body stiffen in an instant. Every limb and bone seemed to plunge into an ice cave, leaving him utterly unable to move. Even the strength to part his teeth and speak was completely stripped away by that terrifying pressure.

Looking down on them as if they were ants, the leader swept his cold gaze over the trembling Feng Guan and rigid Li Shun. "Hiding your heads and showing your tails. Sneaking, skulking vermin."

"Die!"

A clear phoenix cry that split metal and stone suddenly rang out from his body. Scorching flames erupted like heavenly punishment, becoming a crimson sea of fire that instantly and mercilessly swallowed the frozen Li Shun and Feng Guan.

Within moments, not even ash remained of them. They vanished completely from this world.

As though he had merely done something insignificant in passing, the leader leaped away and transformed into a streak of fire.

Much later, the thick smoke gradually dispersed, and the bandits withdrew. Only then did the people of Cold Mountain County who had luckily survived emerge one after another from their ruined hiding places like birds startled by the twang of a bowstring. Reinforcements from Cold Cliff Commandery of Great Qian arrived belatedly as well.

For a time, the piercing wails of women and children, the harsh shouts of government troops, and the clamor of rescuing the wounded spread throughout the devastated city. Amid this chaos like a battlefield of asura, Li Shun and Feng Guan were no more than two utterly ordinary corvée laborers of Cold Mountain County. Their deaths did not even draw anyone's notice.

Only when night fell and the day neared its end did noisy Cold Mountain County become quiet once more.

And within the deep-pit ruins where Li Shun had fallen.

The surrounding soil, having endured the searing flames, had long since turned into hard crystals gleaming black. Above these black, silent ruins, the air suddenly twisted violently without warning, and a blurry, translucent phantom silently condensed into being.

The phantom wore a towering high crown and broad robes. Though its face was obscured by hazy mist and could not be clearly seen, the outline of its features bore a faint seven- or eight-tenths resemblance to Li Shun, who had turned to ash during the day.

The phantom stood proudly upon the scorched earth, lowering its head slightly. A vast, resounding voice, neither metal nor stone, half chanting and half reciting, suddenly surged from its mouth and rang through the void:

"Each day, I examine myself thrice!"

The moment those words fell, they became a heavenly decree where words became law. The endless flow of all things in the world seemed to be violently cut off by an invisible giant hand, plunging into absolute stillness.

And then...

Time reversed!

Inside the wooden house, upon the bed.

Li Shun suddenly opened his eyes.