ATEG Chapter 143

After the inn shattered and the coffin-boat capsized, the vengeful souls that had been imprisoned within dissolved into scattered points of faint light, and the Yellow Springs returned to calm.

Within the Underworld, heart-lamps flickered point by point; beneath the Yellow Springs, soul-fires glimmered softly.

The darkness was heavy and silent, receiving the suffering vengeful souls, offering them peaceful respite. Within this wordless solace, they flowed onward toward the reincarnation of their next life.

Nu Xu looked toward the deity. She had already emerged from the state of no-self, yet her heart remained clear and serene, suffused with lucid wisdom. She saw the deity’s smile, and within that smile she saw gentle compassion and penetrating clarity — tranquility and joy as one.

And so she suddenly understood. Everything had long been within the deity’s sight.

All causes and effects had long been made manifest; all deeds that were done had always been watched over.

Grievance is suffering; wrathful resentment is also suffering. She was the Ghost King who guarded the Underworld for all sentient beings, and yet she was also a sentient being with her own suffering in need of deliverance.

All sentient beings are pitiable — and so too is she. All sentient beings deserve deliverance — and so too does she.

Though this world had fallen into chaos, the deity’s gaze had never ceased to fall upon all sentient beings.

Her feet came to rest upon the Yellow Springs, and its power received her in silent, weighty stillness. Amid the suffering of ten lifetimes of reincarnation, it was this same power that had granted her those rare moments of peaceful rest — embracing all hardship, guiding her toward her great vow.

This was a world that had a Celestial God.

The gods of Heaven and Earth hold the virtuous station of Heaven and Earth, and bear the responsibilities of Heaven and Earth.

“The god of the earth is known as Shetu, and Shetu communes with the Underworld. You must feel her heart and carry on her will.” The deity’s voice entered her heart, word by word.

Nu Xu lowered her eyes and bowed her head. She felt the profound virtue of the Underworld, felt the pulse of the Yellow Springs — that silent, watchful presence, like earnest and devoted counsel.

When she raised her head again, her brow and eyes had grown still and grave, her blade-intent suffused with compassion.

She would — purge the Underworld of its corruption!

****

“Something has changed within the Underworld.” Bie Chunian suddenly looked toward the Wudi Cave. He sensed a shift in the aura emanating from within, but could not discern what that shift signified.

“What has happened?” he asked Xi Chen’an.

Xi Chen’an’s expression took on a faint look of pained exasperation, as though suffering a toothache.

Bie Chunian smiled in sudden understanding. “You only just offended her.”

“It doesn’t matter. If I can cooperate with those Yellow Springs ferrymen, I can cooperate with her as well,” Xi Chen’an said. “Being my friend is always better than being my enemy.”

The Yellow Springs ferrymen had long been entrenched within the Underworld. Given their tenacious attachment to it, they would not be so easily purged. The power represented by the title of Master of the Wudi Cave still held some value.

“First, infiltrating Xuanqing Sect — then, obstructing the Underworld. What has been your thinking behind all of this?” Xi Chen’an asked. Unable to detect any crack in Bie Chunian’s composure, he simply asked outright.

Bie Chunian had no wish to conceal it. For the first time, a change came over his expression — stripping away the composed and gentle surface, revealing beneath it a subtle yet deep-seated pain. A pain born of bewilderment and being at an impasse.

“I had a dream,” he murmured.

“What dream?” Xi Chen’an pressed.

“I don’t remember it.” And yet that was Bie Chunian’s answer. His face wore a calm born of familiarity — the kind that comes after trying again and again to recall, only to be met each time with a vast and empty blankness.

“From the day my heart-flame blazed with clarity and I stood on the verge of completing my path ahead, I began to dream.”

Once a cultivator’s power reaches a certain level, they no longer need sleep, and naturally no longer dream — unless their spirit senses some overwhelming message in the unseen depths. From that day forward, Bie Chunian had begun to fall into dreams from time to time, but each time he woke, he could remember nothing at all. Only an immense and overwhelming terror remained in his heart.

The only thing he knew was that he had dreamed again — every dream different from the last, every dream equally terrifying.

“You found not a single clue?” Xi Chen’an asked. A cultivator’s dreams do not arise without cause; they must be connected to the karmic seeds sown in one’s past, which is what stirs the divine soul into feeling in the unseen depths. If that is so, tracing back through previous lives would surely uncover where that karmic bond lies.

Bie Chunian smiled slightly. “I used my heart-flame to illuminate my past lives, tracing back until there was nowhere left to go — and still found nothing.” With nothing left to pursue and nothing left to unravel, his heart-flame had gradually gone out.

Xi Chen’an could not help but furrow his brow. The heart-flame of Mingdeng Sect burns with penetrating clarity — it can illuminate the cycles of reincarnation and perceive the finest dust. Given the cultivation Bie Chunian had once attained, the depth and breadth of past lives he could trace back to would surely be immense and formidable. And yet even so, he had found not a single clue. Just what had he dreamed of? And why had this dream driven him to pursue so far?

“You joined Xuanqing Sect because of this dream?” Xi Chen’an asked.

Bie Chunian nodded, his manner slow and unhurried. “It is just as well that Xuanqing Sect has been destroyed. I stirred things up within it for a long while without result — this is a fine opportunity to extricate myself.”

“You came seeking my help also because of this dream?” Xi Chen’an asked again.

Bie Chunian continued to nod. “Although I cannot remember the dream’s contents, I sense, in some unseen way, certain feelings toward particular people or things. In any case, you and those Yellow Springs ferrymen were nothing more than a transaction.”

Xi Chen’an gave a short grunt. “Friendship is friendship; a deal is a deal.”

Bie Chunian smiled and drew a wooden mask from his sleeve, tossing it to him. “Consider this a payment for your help.”

Xi Chen’an caught it. The grain of the wood on the mask was eerie — like contorted, struggling figures in agony — and within the mask was trapped a fractured soul, holding a perfect balance with the mask’s sinister spiritual nature. He raised an eyebrow with considerable interest. This thing was rather intriguing.

After turning it over in his hands for a moment, Xi Chen’an suddenly fell silent. A moment later, he asked, “Are these dreams truly so important?”

Bie Chunian gave a single nod.

“More important than your Dao?” Xi Chen’an asked again.

Bie Chunian nodded once more. His expression was calm yet resolute, the subtle pain etched into every fine new line upon his face.

Xi Chen’an fell into silence.

Bie Chunian had cultivated Mingdeng Sect’s lamp-lighting method, and his practice had long since reached a lofty height. And yet he had extinguished his heart-flame and abandoned his Dao. Even now, afflicted by the Five Declines of Heaven and Man, he was unmoved. All for the sake of chasing an elusive and insubstantial dream.

It sounded almost incomprehensibly foolish.

Yet Bie Chunian was utterly in earnest.

Bie Chunian was not a madman, nor was his state of mind one that could be easily shattered. And yet he had done this. The implications behind it gave Xi Chen’an a deeply unsettling feeling. Perhaps he should not press further — this was not his trouble to bear.

In this tumultuous great calamity where the Dao itself had come to be incomplete, they were already treading an exceedingly difficult path in searching for the way ahead.

But before Bie Chunian departed, Xi Chen’an could not help asking:

“Why?”

“I have a feeling.” Bie Chunian paused in his steps but did not turn back. “If I cannot come to know that dream, then nothing has any meaning.”

His life and death had no meaning; his Dao had no meaning. Mingdeng Sect had no meaning; Xuanqing Sect had no meaning. Yang Cang had no meaning; Xi Chen’an had no meaning. Everything — none of it mattered.

He left Wudi Gorge.

Xi Chen’an looked for a long while in the direction of his departure. He had understood the meaning within Bie Chunian’s words. And that meaning was terrifying.

If all is without meaning, then for the sake of this dream, he can abandon all.

****

At the very summit of Daqing Mountain, Changyang cast his gaze downward upon the world, his eyes filled with the vast expanse of cause and effect.

Since he had come to sit here, this place had risen one zhang higher every day. The solid earth bore up the summit of the rising sun in silent wordlessness.

Shetu had dreamed a dream. She had dreamed of annihilation.

She knew that Changyang was aware of certain important matters connected to this — matters that might perhaps allow her to avert the calamity she had witnessed in her dream.

But she could see that Changyang did not wish to speak of them.

At the summit of Daqing Mountain, Changyang tilted the wine gourd he had just called up from halfway down the mountain, raised his hand, and filled two stone cups to the brim.

One hundred and twenty thousand years ago, Shetu had asked nothing at all.

Because…

“I trust you.”