Threefold Self-Reflection

[In the third month of year 165 of the New Calendar, Left Chancellor Gu Zhizhong addressed the emperor: "The common people throughout the realm rest when the sun sets because they cannot work after dark. To have them devote more of their strength to their tasks, I beg Your Majesty to decree that sunset be delayed." The emperor agreed. From then on, Xihe drove the sun without urging it onward, and the golden crow hung in the sky without falling. Daylight stretched on until the eleventh hour, shortening the night.]

[In the fourth month of year 165 of the New Calendar, Right Chancellor Jiang Tai'e addressed the emperor: "The year follows twenty-four solar terms, and the day should likewise follow twenty-four hours. The common people are too dull to manage the complexities of the old hour names. I ask that we mark the hours directly with numbers, from one to twenty-four." The emperor agreed. From then on, names such as cockcrow and nightfall vanished, and only numbers were heard throughout the realm.]

Li Shun was rubbing a sheet of white paper between his fingers, an intrigued look on his face, when hurried, uneven footsteps sounded outside the window. With a flicker of thought, he made the paper vanish from his palm.

"Cripple, something terrible's happened!" A white-haired old man burst into the room with a violent bang of the door.

"Thieves have attacked again. This time it's worse than anything—the Black-Armored Army guarding the town has turned out to a man..."

The old man gulped for air and swallowed hard. After a pause, he lowered his voice. "What if we slip away in the chaos?"

Run?

Li Shun lowered his eyes. His gaze stilled in the dim room.

Twenty-six years ago, he had crossed into this world called Great Qian and become a laborer serving in Cold Mountain County.

Great Qian had ended a thousand years of dark turmoil. The emperor who had ridden down the Seven Kingdoms and established his rule over the realm possessed power beyond mortal imagining—he could dissolve all things with a word and delay the setting sun with another. Before that absolute power, all creation was subdued, and none beneath heaven dared defy him.

That suffocating age of peace had endured for more than four hundred years. Then, a century ago, Emperor Gan had suddenly secluded himself deep within the palace, abandoning court affairs and all concern for the world.

Though his left and right chancellors governed in his stead, the emperor's absence could not stop unrest from rising across the realm.

An outrageous crime like an attack on a county office would have been unimaginable ten years ago. Over the past three years, however, such attacks had grown ever more frequent.

"Old Feng, don't lose your head. Who are these thieves?" Li Shun gathered his thoughts, knitted his brows, and pressed him in a low voice.

Feng Guan seemed as skittish as a bird startled by a bowstring. Staring toward the window, he answered shakily, "They're probably... descendants of the old Xiang Kingdom..."

Before he could finish, a deafening roar erupted at the far end of the long street! It cracked like thunder, sending the ground beneath their feet into a violent shudder.

Li Shun looked toward the sound, and his expression changed.

A pillar of murky vapor streaked with crimson and ash rose from the ground. At its peak, it burst outward into a heavy canopy of dust that blotted out the sun, spreading in every direction with a crushing air of destruction.

The daylight dimmed.

A scorching gale howled down the street, rattling the already battered doors and windows.

Then a savage shriek, like silk being torn, rode the wind and echoed over Cold Mountain Town: "Destroy Qian and restore Xiang—today!"

"Destroy Qian and restore Xiang—today!"

In an instant, like a single stone stirring a thousand waves, frenzied answering cries erupted from every corner of the county town.

"Enemies on every side. We won't get away. Let's hide until this blows over." Li Shun made the decision at once, seized Feng Guan, and pulled him into the inner room.

He bent and lifted the heavy bedboard, revealing a dark passage descending beneath it.

"A tunnel? Cripple, when did you dig this?" Feng Guan stared in astonishment.

For all his surprise, he wasted no time scrambling into the dark opening.

Li Shun followed and, with practiced ease, pulled the bedboard shut behind them until it fitted perfectly.

They felt their way down the narrow, sloping earthen passage in darkness and soon reached its end. The underground chamber was about ten feet long and wide, with a ceiling roughly six feet high. It felt cramped and oppressive, but it offered more than enough room for two people to hide.

The chamber was not swallowed by darkness. More than a dozen small grasses had taken root across its rough walls, each giving off a faint, cold glow. Their pale blue light pulsed like breathing, driving the gloom from this tiny space and bringing wisps of fresh air into the sealed chamber.

"Is that... Cold Mountain Grass? Cripple, you've hidden this much of it?" Feng Guan marveled inwardly.

Li Shun merely leaned against the earthen wall, silent and still as a meditating monk. He seemed to be calculating something at speed.

The tremors overhead grew fiercer. But the Cold Mountain Grass's tangled roots seemed to bind the loose soil tight. Despite the earth-shattering convulsions outside, the little chamber stood firm as a rock. Not a grain of dirt fell.

Once Feng Guan realized how unexpectedly sturdy their refuge was, some color returned to his paper-white face. Yet his cloudy eyes kept straying back to Li Shun.

Cold Mountain Grass was a death sentence for laborers like them in Cold Mountain County. Each stalk required a full year of nourishment from their own blood and vital essence. Feng Guan had worked himself to the bone day and night, and even then could barely meet his yearly tribute.

Yet Li Shun had somehow saved this staggering surplus of Cold Mountain Grass without once falling behind on his labor...

Feng Guan turned toward Li Shun, a thoughtful glimmer stirring deep in his eyes.

"Old Feng, stop letting your mind wander. Tell me more about those people from Xiang Kingdom." Li Shun seemed not to notice the change in Feng Guan's gaze. He opened his eyes and broke the silence.

Feng Guan hastily composed himself. Recalling what he had seen, he swallowed, still shaken. "I didn't get a clear look. The most conspicuous was their leader... eight feet tall, built like a giant, and frighteningly strong. I was watching from far away, but he seemed to sense me and looked straight at me with eyes sharp as blades! Good thing he was after the county office, or these old bones of mine might never have made it back."

In the cold, deathly stillness underground, Feng Guan went on to describe the terrifying sight he had witnessed from afar, his voice trembling.

"They say the people of Xiang Kingdom often practice shamanic arts, and that brute was no exception. He manifested an eight-armed demon god, wreathed in scarlet fire, with Killing Intent that nearly pierced the clouds."

"The Black-Armored Army may be Great Qian's elite, but against him, they couldn't withstand a single exchange!"

As Feng Guan spoke, the commotion above gradually faded.

"Have the thieves gone?" Feng Guan noticed the change and looked up in delight.

"I doubt it's that simple. Better to wait." Li Shun shook his head, his expression still grim.

A silence so deep they could have heard a pin drop settled over the underground refuge.

"Old Feng, don't you know some techniques from the School of Novelists? Send something up and see what's happening." Li Shun plucked a pitch-black ant from a crack in the earth and held it out between two fingers.

Feng Guan's gaunt cheek twitched. Hesitation flashed in his eyes, but he finally nodded.

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

Feng Guan sat cross-legged on the cold earth. As he murmured those words, his cloudy pupils vanished, leaving his eyes filled with an eerie, deathly white.

The ant between Li Shun's fingers began to stagger and convulse as though drunk on strong liquor. A moment later, it steadied itself and swiftly climbed toward the surface through the dark gaps in the soil.

The search took nearly half a day.

When pupils gathered in Feng Guan's eyes again and he came to, he looked utterly drained. "Thank... thank goodness we didn't rush up there. It's quieter because the county office has fallen completely. The Black-Armored Army stationed there was wiped out."

Feng Guan paused, greedily drawing great breaths as his chest heaved. "Those thieves are still gathered around the county office. They show no sign of leaving. It looks like... like they're turning over every inch of ground, searching for something called the Cold Mountain Venerable..."

At that, Li Shun pulled a glowing blue stalk of Cold Mountain Grass from the wall and offered it to him. "Take your time. Chew this first. It'll restore your spirit."

Feng Guan stared at the little grass surrounded by cold light and froze.

He had spent half his life raising it with his own blood and vital essence, yet he had never tasted it.

After only a moment of bitter hesitation, Feng Guan gritted his teeth, stuffed it into his mouth, and swallowed.

As he chewed, old tears streamed down his face. His voice turned desolate. "A lifetime of grueling labor... So this is what Cold Mountain Grass tastes like..."

Li Shun was about to speak.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Without warning, it was as if thunder had fallen from the highest heavens and exploded overhead. A force of overwhelming brutality tore the roof clean off the refuge buried deep underground.

Blinding sunlight poured down like a waterfall. An instant later, a towering figure at the edge of the pit blocked every ray. Backlit against the sky stood the leader of the Xiang Kingdom survivors—the man Feng Guan had said commanded the eight-armed demon god!

It was like being fixed in the gaze of a beast from the Ancient Primordial Vast Wilderness. Li Shun stiffened. Cold seeped into every limb and bone, leaving him unable to move. The terrible pressure even robbed him of the strength to part his teeth and speak.

The leader looked down on them as though they were ants. His cold gaze swept over the trembling Feng Guan and the rigid Li Shun. "Hiding your faces and skulking in the dark."

"Die!"

A clear phoenix cry rang out, piercing metal and splitting stone. Blazing flames erupted like heavenly punishment, becoming a crimson sea of fire that swallowed Li Shun and Feng Guan where they stood.

Moments later, not even ashes remained. Both had vanished from the world.

As if he had done something too trivial to mention, the leader leapt away in a streak of fire.

Long afterward, the smoke thinned and the attackers withdrew. The people of Cold Mountain County who had survived emerged one by one from their ruined hiding places, skittish as birds startled by a bowstring. Reinforcements from Great Qian's Cold Cliff Commandery finally arrived.

For a time, the wails of women and children, the harsh shouts of soldiers, and the clamor of rescuers filled the ravaged town. Amid that scene of carnage, Li Shun and Feng Guan had been no more than two utterly ordinary laborers of Cold Mountain County. Their deaths drew no one's notice.

Only when night fell and the day neared its end did the clamor in Cold Mountain County give way to silence.

At the site of the deep pit where Li Shun had fallen, however...

The soil around it had been baked by the flames into hard, black-glinting crystal. Above the silent, charred ruins, the air suddenly twisted. A blurred, translucent figure took shape without a sound.

The figure wore a towering ceremonial crown and a broad robe. Mist obscured its face, but the contours beneath it bore a striking resemblance to Li Shun, who had turned to ash that day.

Standing tall upon the scorched earth, the figure lowered its head slightly. A vast voice, neither metallic nor stony, somewhere between recitation and chant, rang from its mouth through the void:

"Each day, I reflect upon myself three times!"

At those words, a decree seemed to take hold of the world. Everything beneath heaven, forever rushing onward, was severed from its course by an invisible giant hand and fell utterly still.

And then...

Time reversed!

Inside the wooden house, upon the bed.

Li Shun's eyes flew open.