Live... with no shame in your heart, die... with no shame before heaven and earth...
"Haha... hahahaha..." A desolate laugh escaped the woman's lips. Her head hung low, her shoulders shook, and tears streamed down her face.
Watching her laugh, wretched and half-mad, Su Mo slowly recalled the scene from that day.
That day, before Su Mo and the little girl entered Capital City, they had met several suffering refugees. Unable to bear their plight, Su Mo had divided his silver among them, keeping only a little for himself. Then, on his way into the Imperial City, he had encountered marauders and lost his remaining silver while fleeing.
By the time he entered the Imperial City with the little girl, he had not a penny to his name...
That day, Su Mo and the little girl had been crouching miserably in a corner of the Imperial City when a lavish carriage passed by, then stopped in front of them.
The person who stepped out was the very woman standing before him now. She had quietly given Su Mo some silver, then returned to her carriage and left without saying a word.
Strangely, she had given him a great deal of silver! Grateful for her kindness, the little girl had recorded it in her journal...
The noble lady of that day had become like this by the time they met again...
"You helped me that day. Without your help, ma'am, the little girl and I would still have been wandering the streets..." Su Mo said in a low voice.
"We met only once, and it was merely a casual act of charity. Why should you keep it in your heart?" the woman asked softly, looking into Su Mo's eyes.
"Because I've met... many people like you. They helped me too. Otherwise, I would have died long ago..." Su Mo looked at the bundle in her arms. It lay utterly still... The snows he had passed through this year had not all been cold...
"Do you know why, on this vast street, no one but you has come out?" The woman gave a bitter laugh.
Su Mo looked around. The broad street was completely deserted, and he understood... His expression turned bitter. In the end, these were not the streets of his previous life.
"They're just afraid..." Su Mo looked forlorn...
"Aren't you afraid too..." The woman recognized Su Mo's kindness and was all the more unwilling to harm him.
"We Confucian scholars..." Perhaps influenced by the scholarly spirit within this body, Su Mo sounded almost pedantic at that moment. "May look upon ink, but never turn a blind eye to darkness..."
"You insist on getting involved?" Bloody tears flowed from the woman's eyes. The cold wind and heavy rain of early spring made her tremble.
Su Mo was bewildered and at a loss. He merely wanted to help someone who had once helped him. Yet her words seemed to hold something more. Everything about this felt far too strange...
Meeting her gaze, he nodded numbly.
"Even if it means entering an immortals' game in a mortal body?"
Something flickered in the woman's eyes... something Su Mo could not understand that day.
Su Mo looked into her eyes. Her disheveled hair hid her face, leaving only those two eyes exposed.
The despair, suffering, sorrow, and grief in her gaze, together with the silent bundle in her arms, rooted Su Mo to the spot.
"I..." Su Mo fell silent, unable to speak...
"I've never met anyone like you..." the woman said, her voice low and bitter. "This is simply how the world is. Human lives are worth no more than weeds. What does my calamity have to do with you?"
"Yet you would put yourself in danger to repay a tiny act of charity? For what?"
Why?
Su Mo remained silent...
In the months since coming to this world, he had traveled all the way to Capital City and seen its cruelty everywhere...
Refugees slaughtered one another over half a bloodstained steamed bun.
Immortal cultivators killed a mortal girl while chatting and laughing, all for her beautiful eyes.
Officials, seeking to conceal their crimes, imprisoned and killed the entire family of the victim who had filed a complaint.
Wealthy gentry set their dogs on begging children, merely for amusement.
This world... had no justice!
Su Mo had traveled and watched... treating himself as nothing more than a spectator.
But he was not, in the end, a person of this world. He came from a lovely place that was prosperous, strong, and democratic.
In that place, people respected rules and held human life as high as heaven.
In that place, those who did wrong were tried and punished.
In that place, people might be rich or poor, but each could find their own happiness.
That place was not perfect, yet it kept progressing.
The people there were compassionate and sympathetic. Though they could not cultivate, they could still be immensely powerful.
He had grown up in that environment, protected by its rules.
He could not understand this world's rules, could not stomach what he saw, yet dared neither speak nor intervene.
He suppressed it, suppressed it...
Until the sight of the bloodstained woman kneeling on the ground and crying out to the heavens finally made Su Mo erupt.
He was still a person of that other world, compassionate and sympathetic...
He was also someone another person had given their life to save...
Why?
Because he could not stomach it... and so his heart could find no peace!
As another ordinary person living cautiously, he simply felt her suffering as his own.
His heart could find no peace, so he wanted to resist.
With his insignificant will, he would resist the rules of heaven and earth...
This shitty world...
"To... give my heart peace!" Su Mo said.
The woman raised her head again and looked at Su Mo.
"So that's it..."
"You're different from them... different from us..." the woman murmured as she rose.
The woman turned around...
Su Mo shook all over, as though struck by lightning.
Su Mo saw... an arrow embedded in the woman's back, piercing through her chest and straight into the baby wrapped in her arms!
The baby in the swaddling had long since died.
Dark red blood seeped between the woman and the bundle in her arms. Washed by the rain, it spread across the ground and grew pale...
The woman was already a spent arrow at the end of its flight...
"You can't help me. Go back... go back..." The woman began walking, step by step... down the street.
She wanted to get farther away from Su Mo. She did not want to implicate this scholar who was different from everyone else, kind yet pedantic, inexperienced and immature. "You're still too weak, too frail to withstand the wind. The affairs of this world are nowhere near as simple as what you see..."
"When you become strong, if you still remember what happened today, if your heart still cannot find peace... go beyond the woods west of the city... and look at the solitary courtyard with red walls and white tiles..."
Holding the bundle that had long since lost all life, the woman staggered down the street, step by step. Each step left a bloody footprint that the rain quickly washed away.
Su Mo stood rigid, his expression blank. Rain struck his face and flowed into his mouth, tasting strangely salty and bitter...
Every step the woman took seemed to land upon the soul from another world dwelling within Su Mo's body.
He could not help her. He could do nothing!
It was as though he had lost the battle before even marching to war.
The flame of resistance that had just ignited was doused with a basin of cold water.
Ice pierced his bones, and pain tore through his heart.
Dragging her ruined body down the street, the woman rounded a corner and vanished...
Su Mo felt as though he were trapped in a dream...
A long time later, a group of black-robed figures appeared, carrying swords and sabers. They searched the area and eventually dragged two bodies, one large and one small, out from the street corner.
The two bodies, dead but not yet stiff, seemed to accuse this world of its utter inhumanity.
The black-robed figures dragged the bodies away, apparently unwilling to linger on this street.
From beginning to end, they never once looked at Su Mo.
It was as though they could not see Su Mo at all...
The wind and rain grew fiercer, battering Su Mo's frail, endlessly trembling body.
Inside the Riverboat Pavilion, Luo Yin stood before a window. Wind and rain swept through it, soaking her dress.
Behind her, a maid anxiously urged her to step away from the window.
Yet she only gazed in bewilderment at the thin figure standing against the wind and rain in the street.
She had seen the woman when she walked into the street holding her baby. A single glance had told her the woman could not survive. That arrow had pierced both her and the bundle in her arms.
The baby had long since lost all life, and the woman was merely a spent arrow. No one could save her.
The world's affairs were tangled and complicated. She had neither reason nor ability to intervene.
Yet Su Mo's appearance and his words had left her bewildered.
From beginning to end, Su Mo had spoken only a few sentences. While everyone else watched, he alone had stepped forward.
The woman had said she had never met anyone like him, that he was different from them...
There seemed to be something in his heart unlike what was in theirs. Within that chest, which was not especially broad, he somehow held... the common people!
They weighed gains and losses, yet he sought only peace for his heart!
That flute melody, that scroll of calligraphy and painting, this heart of his.
Just what sort of person are you... The bewilderment lingered in Luo Yin's eyes.
At the summit of Moon-Gazing Mountain, on the Moon-Viewing Terrace.
The headmaster stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at Capital City. His expression was calm, his thoughts unreadable.
A scroll lay quietly on the stone table behind him.
Wind and rain swept into the Moon-Viewing Terrace, buffeting the headmaster's white robe, yet not a drop clung to it.
"Headmaster, what are you looking at?" Gu Yu, dressed in red, asked somewhat helplessly, unable to make sense of it.
After retrieving the calligraphy and painting, the headmaster had said nothing. He had merely gazed quietly at the vast Capital City. Moon-Gazing Mountain was tall, tall enough to overlook the entire city.
But Gu Yu could not see what the headmaster saw.
After a long while, the headmaster lifted his head toward the heavens, as though his gaze could pierce the clouds and rain and reach straight through the cosmos.
"Did something happen? Are you divining heaven's secrets?" The headmaster's action startled Gu Yu. It had been a long time since the headmaster last divined heaven's secrets.
"Heaven's secrets have fallen into disorder. I can no longer see far ahead." The headmaster sighed, turned back, and glanced at the calligraphy and painting lying quietly on the stone table.
"Huh?" Gu Yu did not understand... That old sly fox, always talking in riddles.
"How would you like me to find you a new junior brother?" Instead of answering directly, the headmaster suddenly asked a question.
Gu Yu's eyes lit up, then immediately dimmed. The headmaster had always had poor taste in disciples. Every one he found was a freak.
"Could you find someone normal to be our junior brother?" Gu Yu asked doubtfully.
The headmaster turned back toward Capital City below the mountain. "You'll like this junior brother."
"When?" Gu Yu was delighted.
For some reason, he suddenly thought of Su Mo... It would be wonderful if Little Su became our junior brother. I could have him play the flute and paint for me every day... Too bad he's an ordinary person.
"Go to the woods beyond West City at midnight tomorrow and bring him back. Remember! We stand outside the game. Intervene, and you enter the other side's chessboard! So apart from bringing him back, do not meddle in anything else!"
The headmaster finished speaking and turned around, only to see Gu Yu hurrying down the mountain through the rain, his red robes fluttering.
Helplessly, the headmaster waved a hand. An invisible force pulled the impulsive Gu Yu back.
"I said midnight tomorrow!"
"Oh!" Dejected, Gu Yu turned toward an Academy pavilion nearby to find his fellow disciples.
The headmaster turned back toward the scroll lying quietly on the stone table and murmured.
"Everything in this world is a game, what just happened and what is yet to come... Once you intervene, you enter the game! You do not know... that you have already entered its sight!"
The merciless wind and rain battered Su Mo. The wind was bitter, the cold rain piercing his bones.
In the wind and rain, Su Mo remained silent... something brewed within him... a raging fire ignited in his heart.
This shitty world...
At some point, the little girl had come to Su Mo's side.
In the rain... the little girl took Su Mo's endlessly trembling hand and stayed quietly beside him.
The two figures, one large and one small, looked weak and helpless amid the furious storm.
They simply stood there... for a long, long time...
"Little girl..." Su Mo called softly, his voice choked.
"Hmm?" The little girl looked up at Su Mo, somewhat at a loss. She had never seen him like this.
"I don't want to study anymore!" Su Mo said, lifting his head.
"Mm!" The little girl always followed Su Mo's lead.
"After the Spring Examination, let's leave!"
"All right!"
"Before that..." Su Mo looked toward West City. "There's still something I need to do..."
I want to go to West City and take a look, just a look... His benefactor's life had slipped away right before Su Mo's eyes.
Su Mo wanted to know... just how different this world of immortal cultivation was from the novels of his previous life!
The woman had cried out to the heavens in sorrow and despair... yet told Su Mo not to meddle!
Wait until I become strong?
But I don't like waiting...
A man from the flower-growing nation can be strong... even without cultivation!
Before you continue