The Story Gu Baishui Pieced Together
It had rained especially hard in Luoyang City the night before, with lightning and thunder and sheets of pouring rain.
A Green-Robed Youth, huddled inside an inn, had stayed silent all night. In the end, he still hadn't dared to step outside.
The Bronze Mirror in his hands seemed to have exhausted the Origin Spiritual Qi it had accumulated over many years. A thick layer of verdigris had enveloped it, and it lay quietly against Gu Baishui's chest like an ordinary object without a trace of spirituality.
Gu Baishui's own condition was no better. He truly hadn't expected that using the Bronze Mirror to investigate for just a few sticks of incense would put such a terrifying strain on his body and Sea of Consciousness.
His Divine Sense was parched, his breath as faint as a thread. Even when he rose from his chair, Gu Baishui swayed, dazed for quite some time.
At that moment, Gu Baishui looked just like a patient who had yet to recover from a serious illness.
His face was pale as paper, his sunken eye sockets dark, and even his legs seemed too weak to bear him with every step he took.
So Gu Baishui had no idea what had happened last night in the Old Residence west of Luoyang City.
He remembered only that, before his Divine Sense scattered, the masked youth had found a spirit tablet in the ancestral hall. The name carved on it was "Li Nianyu."
Li Nianyu was Li Shiyi.
But why was Li Shiyi's spirit tablet in the old Ye Clan's ancestral hall?
After that, the little beggar had appeared in the courtyard of the ancestral hall, and the shadow behind her was none other than the Red-Haired Monster that had escaped from the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone.
Gu Baishui sat in a chair by the window and pondered silently for a long time. Then he reached out with his right hand and took a clean sheet of rice paper, a writing brush, and an inkstone from the bookshelf beside him.
He spread the paper flat on the desk, then wrote down words like "Decaying Great Emperor," "Li Shiyi," "Red-Haired Monster," and "Transmigrator."
The supple brush tip moved across the paper, sketching and connecting the words until they formed a strange, bizarre picture.
The Green-Robed Youth stared intently at the picture in his hands for a long time. From morning until noon, he didn't eat or drink, nor did he leave the study.
In the end, he pieced together this story.
--
The story began long ago in Luoyang.
An old general who had laid down his armor and retired to the countryside moved with his family from prosperous Chang'an City to the outskirts of Luoyang City.
The old general bought a large manor outside Luoyang City. He reclaimed farmland with his own hands and bent his back to the work, rising with the sun and resting when it set.
He was content with the quiet, peaceful life in Luoyang City. Every day, like a diligent old farmer, he tended his own small plot of land with great care.
Not long afterward, the couple who had come from Chang'an had a child.
The Grand Progenitor, far away in Chang'an, bestowed a name upon the child: Li Nianyu.
But later, the people of Luoyang City grew more accustomed to calling him by another name-Li Shiyi.
Li Shiyi had been exceptionally clever from a young age, talented in everything he tried. He could play the zither, play chess, write, and paint with ease, as though nothing could ever stump him.
When he was a little older, he wanted to try cultivating.
But the old farmer in the Mansion told him that cultivation wasn't necessarily a good thing. Sometimes, getting through life peacefully and steadily was a rare blessing in itself.
Li Shiyi didn't understand, so father and son talked all night on the rooftop of the Mansion, from the earth beneath their feet to the skies beyond the stars, and from Luoyang to Chang'an.
When the sky began to brighten, Li Shiyi gave in.
He stopped fixating on cultivation and instead chose to shrink into a speck of dust, living peacefully as a rich young master.
From the zither, chess, writing, and painting to fishing and catching shrimp, his carefree days had their own pleasures.
Only sometimes, in the dead of night, Li Shiyi still couldn't help lifting his head, curious about the scenery beyond the clouds and stars.
Cultivation... Perhaps it wasn't as boring as his father said.
Life in Luoyang City was peaceful, like a still pool that rarely rippled.
Fortunately, Li Shiyi had a mischievous little sister who brought plenty of fun to his otherwise uneventful days.
His sister was named Li Xu, born in the season when willow catkins filled the air.
In front of strangers, A-Xu was a little mute. In front of Li Shiyi, she was a chatterbox of a bookworm.
The two siblings grew up together beneath the Willow Tree on the back hill, and they also lay beneath the tree together, sunbathing and lazing about.
Sometimes even Li Shiyi wondered how the younger sister their mother had given birth to had turned out to be such a salted fish.
But compared to him, A-Xu was a very pretty salted fish.
The two salted fish lay beneath the Willow Tree on the back hill of Luoyang City, slowly passing a long stretch of time.
Sometimes, the little salted fish would tell the big salted fish stories-strange and wondrous tales from another world.
Most of the time, the big salted fish only listened in silence, staring blankly at the sky above.
Later, the two salted fish followed their father to Chang'an City.
A-Xu was taken into Weiyang Palace by an old man in a long blue robe. In the blink of an eye, she became an extraordinary genius girl.
A-Xu became famous, shining like a glittering salted fish.
Li Shiyi returned to Luoyang City and carried on with his carefree, idle life.
In Luoyang City, there was a wealthy merchant family surnamed Ye.
The old master of the Ye Clan was an elderly scholar who had failed to earn an official degree. He was also the tutor of Li Shiyi and Li Xu.
The old scholar had a daughter, two years younger than Li Shiyi, who was very pretty.
The people of Luoyang City all thought the Ye Clan Young Miss and the young master of the Li family were childhood sweethearts.
They often saw Li Shiyi sneak a porcelain-doll-like little girl out through the tall walls of the Ye residence, then flee with her toward the outskirts of the city.
More often than not, an apoplectic old scholar brandishing a wooden stick would be chasing after them.
That was their story as children.
The study fell quiet for a moment. A clean finger turned the rice paper over, and the next chapter of the story began.
One spring, Li Shiyi fell ill in Luoyang City.
The imperial physician said he had merely caught a chill and that it was nothing serious.
But only the youth who had returned from the Cloud and Mist Mountain Range knew that his illness wasn't so simple.
He had encountered something-something that had come out of the Cloud and Mist Mountain Range.
It looked like a monkey, a monkey covered in red hair and steeped in ill omen.
And for some reason, Li Shiyi was the only one who could see it. Everyone else in Luoyang City paid it no heed at all, as though it were invisible air.
The monkey stayed by Li Shiyi's side through the longest spring of his life.
He was ill, and during the time he was sick, he also learned other things from the Red-Haired Monkey.
For instance, Transmigrators, and his own sister... A-Xu.
He figured out how his sister had come up with those strange and wondrous stories, and where they came from.
"What would you do if an unfamiliar soul took over the body of the person dearest to you, then wore her face and lived silently by your side for many years...?"