Chapter 44

Every moment of sudden understanding came together in one final sentence: "I think, therefore I am."

When she became aware of her own existence again, she was standing beneath the pear tree once more, holding a copy of Clear Breeze and a pear branch. It was exactly where she had disappeared that day.

In just a moment, she realized that the seal on her body had been undone and her cultivation had returned to its peak. A crack had even opened in the Purple Mansion of her soul, and she could step into the Spirit Severing stage at any time.

But what surprised her even more than all that was the tiny golden lotus she found blooming atop the Golden Core in her Dantian. In the hands of her Nascent Soul slept a bird wreathed in golden flames.

She knew what the golden bird was. It had originally been hidden in her heart, where it had dwelled since she was born, a secret she had never told anyone. Hearts in Resonance. Now it had left her heart and was sleeping in her Dantian. She did not know what that meant, but she felt it could not be a bad thing.

As the mortal-world emissary of Camel Bell Mountain, one of the three great holy lands of the Eastern Lands, she knew very well what it meant for a lotus to bloom upon a Golden Core: it meant she had the aptitude of a sage. In the past, she would surely have shown her delight, but after the baptism of five days in the wooden house, the way she saw things had changed greatly. She had come infinitely close to feeling neither joy at gains nor sorrow over her own lot.

What surprised her even more was that she had gained the aptitude of a sage after doing nothing more than reading for five days. And all of it had begun with the teacher who always wore a smile.

She gazed at the pear tree for a long time, but there was no sign of the teacher.

So she waited.

After a while, a door opened.

Qu Hongxiao turned to look.

Ye Fu stood in the doorway, his hair dripping wet. He smiled and said, "You're back."

Qu Hongxiao nodded.

They met again after five days, and it was all perfectly ordinary: just a simple "You're back." It was unexpected, yet entirely natural.

Ye Fu rubbed his head with the towel in his hand and walked over. "I was taking a bath just now. Sorry for the wait."

"A student should wait for her teacher," Qu Hongxiao replied softly. She was about to tell Ye Fu what she had accomplished.

Ye Fu waved a hand, cutting her off. "There's nothing to say. It's enough that you're back."

Qu Hongxiao did not know what to say. She let out a breath and said softly, "Thank you for your guidance, Teacher."

"In the end, I was only a guide. Whether you could do it was entirely up to you."

"Teacher, there's so much I don't understand." Qu Hongxiao spoke a little hurriedly, looking earnestly at Ye Fu.

Ye Fu sat down on a stone stool and said with a smile, "Go ahead and ask."

Qu Hongxiao looked at Ye Fu and wanted to speak, but she did not know where to begin. Only when she thought about it carefully did she realize just how much she did not understand about him.

At the same time, she asked herself whether it was really necessary to understand these things.

After a long while, she answered herself in the negative.

But she had already spoken; she could hardly ask nothing at all. Qu Hongxiao found herself at an impasse. She did not want the teacher to think she was making a fuss, yet she did not know what to ask. After struggling for a long time, she finally uttered a few words in a faint voice: "I want to know why you always keep your hair short, Teacher."

The moment she said it, even Qu Hongxiao was stunned.

Ye Fu looked even more taken aback. He had already prepared himself to clear up Qu Hongxiao's confusion, only for her to ask a question like that.

He raised his head toward the sky and absentmindedly touched his still-damp hair. "Probably because it's easy to wash."

Stars scattered across the night sky twinkled, their lights shining together.

In the sky above Black Stone City, several stars that were rarely visible shone particularly brightly tonight.

Atop the city gate.

A youth with snow-white hair and beard sat on the city wall, his legs swinging over the edge as he gazed at the stars. A tall woman stood behind him.

"The celestial signs have appeared. Tomorrow, the curtain will rise."

"Is there anything different this time?" the woman asked.

"Five days ago, I observed the stars and saw an exceptionally bright fate star suddenly dim. A slightly less brilliant fate star accompanying it vanished outright."

"Two tree cutters must have met. One died, and the other was gravely injured," the woman replied.

The youth nodded. "That's what I thought too, but just now I saw that the dimmed fate star had vanished outright."

"Perhaps he couldn't survive his injuries."

The youth hesitated and did not answer immediately. After a while, he said, "By rights, that should be the case. But whenever I think of that fate star, I always feel a sense of loss."

The woman thought for a moment. "Perhaps it's because you're both tree cutters. The feeling comes from what your fates have in common."

"I hope that's all it is," he said, adding another sentence in his heart: And not a sense of loss because my fortune has been fought over.

That night.

Black Stone City stirred restlessly.

Presences lying dormant in every corner began to spread out bit by bit, probing and touching one another.

At the end of the alley beyond the winding path to the Three Flavors Study, a withered parasol tree, no one knew how many years old, put forth a few new green shoots beneath the starlight.

In a dilapidated old temple occupied by beggars in the east of the city, a deity's statue slowly opened its eyes.

A grasshopper crouched among the bedding a woman had hung out to dry, its gaze sharp and vicious.

A faint light shone in the middle of the small pond Squire Li had dug a few days ago, where several ornamental goldfish swam about.

At the entrance to Hu Zhifu's Yuelai Inn, two stone lions rose from their reclining positions, their presence majestic.

The jade Pixiu displayed in the center of Magistrate Xu's main hall slowly turned red.

The pearwood beside the storyteller's pillow gave off a soft white glow.

In the Cloth Robe Workshop, a length of bluish-gray cloth piled in a corner to keep off dust shook itself, shedding all the dust that covered it.

Young Master Zhou, Zhou Ruosheng, curled up under his quilt, the jade pendant on his chest flashing with light.

Many things in the city were changing without a sound.