Tree Fellers and Forest Guardians
Even though the radiant figure and the ringing sound of recitation had long since vanished, the cry of "Welcome, Sage" continued to echo throughout the Layered Cloud Kingdom.
Today's events had left everyone unable to put them out of mind.
On the far side of the sea of clouds, a white-bearded old man who had been dozing suddenly opened his eyes wide. He heard the words "The Master said" explode in his mind like a thunderclap.
"Teacher, I wasn't dozing!" He instinctively covered his head and shouted.
Only after a long while did he come to his senses with a start. What teacher? His teacher had been gone for a long time.
Calming himself, he unfurled his long brows and hurriedly sent out a strand of divine sense, transmitting a message through his soul:
"A thousand years of Confucianism, and at last a new Sage has appeared. Find him!"
Chapter 21: Tree Fellers and Forest Guardians
The handsome youth with a cinnabar mark between his brows stood rooted to the spot at the city gate, muttering, "It's all in chaos, all in chaos. This time, Black Stone City's Great Curtain is in complete chaos. I'm afraid it'll become a battleground for the hundred schools. A Sage has actually been born. I'm afraid those people won't be able to sit still."
He looked up into the distance, at the now empty sky above Black Stone City, and couldn't help thinking, This new Sage's Vast Righteous Qi is probably comparable to that of the three Great Sages. Is the balance that has held them in check for thousands of years about to be broken?
After a long while, he turned away dejectedly and vanished. He had originally come here in a playful mood, but now he felt pressure weighing on him like a mountain, and his ever-straight back bent a little.
Even after a world-shaking event like the appearance of a Sage, Black Stone City did not fall into chaos. Everything continued in an orderly fashion.
Compared with the other places that had already been thrown into an uproar, Black Stone City was like a paradise beyond the world, untouched by the disturbance. It was as if the people here didn't even know a Sage had appeared.
A youth with snow-white hair and brows looked down from an upper floor. Seeing an utterly ordinary scene of daily life, he couldn't help remarking, "Looks like the Forest Guardians have made their move. Otherwise, things wouldn't be this peaceful."
"The Forest Guardians didn't seem to appear during Black Stone City's last Great Curtain, did they?" asked the tall woman beside him. Standing next to her, the youth looked like a little bird nestling against its protector.
"Yes. The effects last time weren't enough to require the Forest Guardians, but this time... Black Stone City's Great Curtain hasn't even arrived yet, and a new Sage has appeared. I'm afraid those Forest Guardians will have their hands full." The youth's voice was childish, but his tone was that of a seasoned elder.
"With a new Sage appearing, I'm afraid those great Confucian scholars won't be able to sit still either. Sigh, I wonder how much karmic fortune we'll get in the end after all this commotion," the woman said with a sigh.
"When a new Sage appears, a great amount of karmic fortune is bound to descend. However little we get, it will still be more than before. For now, we only need to wait patiently for the Great Curtain to open," the youth said mildly, closing his eyes.
The woman nodded in agreement.
The city lord's mansion.
In the main hall, a young man in black knelt on one knee. "My lord, we have largely suppressed the signs of unrest in the city. Apart from the Tree Fellers, no one noticed the strange phenomenon."
A thin figure was faintly visible behind a screen.
A deep, drawn-out voice came from behind it:
"The changes to the Great Curtain this time have all fallen outside our Forest Guardians' scope of supervision. First there was the strange phenomenon at the Cloth Robe Workshop, and now a Sage has appeared. The Great Curtain will not open for another six days. We must not let anything go wrong and give the Tree Fellers from all over reason to say we Forest Guardians are unreliable. Remember, under no circumstances are uninvolved ordinary people to be drawn into this."
"Understood!"
The young man in black slowly faded away.
Three Flavors Study.
Ye Fu looked thoroughly embarrassed.
He had never imagined that merely saying "The Master said," without mentioning a single word of what followed, would cause such a commotion. Fortunately, he had reacted quickly and grabbed the radiant figure apart with one hand. Otherwise, if he had let it wander around, wouldn't word have soon spread across the world?
Yet things had turned out just as he had imagined: word really had spread across almost the entire world.
In The Long Immortal Road, Ye Fu had indeed trained everything that could be used for immortal cultivation to the maximum level-that is, he had become an Immortal. But that had only been a game. Now that he had come to this other world and possessed so much power, controlling it was quite troublesome. That was one of the reasons he wanted to live an ordinary life.
If he could control it as he pleased, neither the incident at the Cloth Robe Workshop nor the radiant figure would have appeared.
Fortunately, he was cautious enough. To prevent certain extraordinary people from investigating, he had long ago concealed the heavenly secrets of his Three Flavors Study. He had also noticed what was happening in Black Stone City: someone was able to take control of the situation and guide ordinary people into forgetting about the radiant Sage just now.
Ye Fu had even met this person before. He was the "city lord's son" Innkeeper Hu Zhifu had mentioned. So what sort of secrets lay behind Black Stone City? Ye Fu didn't know, and he had no interest in finding out. He felt that his life was troublesome enough already, and he didn't want to add to his troubles.
Having learned his lesson, Ye Fu quickly mastered how to freely release and withdraw all his Vast Righteous Qi, so that merely saying "Master" would no longer stir up strange phenomena between heaven and earth. Now he could read and teach characters like an ordinary schoolteacher.
The pear tree was still in the Realm of Emptiness and Clarity, and it looked like it would remain there for quite a while longer.
Ye Fu was writing a teaching syllabus when the door suddenly flew open, and Qin Sanyue ran in, her face full of fright.
As soon as she entered, she squatted on the floor, gasping for breath as if she had run several li.
"What's wrong?" Ye Fu asked.
Qin Sanyue took quite a while to catch her breath before raising her head, fear still in her eyes. "Teacher Ye, just now I saw-I saw a radiant figure in the sky who looked exactly like you!"
The expression on Ye Fu's face slowly froze.
He blinked and said, "No way. You must have seen wrong. How come I didn't see it?"
"It's true, I'm not lying to you!" Seeing that Ye Fu didn't believe her, Qin Sanyue hurriedly added, "After the figure who looked like you appeared, there was a really loud sound of recitation. It was so loud my ears hurt! Then, just as I was about to hide and watch in secret, I heard something like, 'Clearing light descends upon the heavens, a Sage appears in the world.' After that, I saw everyone on the street standing there and shouting, 'Welcome, Sage.'"