18
In the days that followed, just as he’d said, Thẩm Khứ Chu didn’t lay a finger on me.
Perhaps I really did have to wait the full ten days.
During those days, he went down the mountain twice.
Once, to attend the sect leader’s funeral.
When he returned, his eyes were red. Beneath the starry sky, he talked with me all night. He told me how his master had become obsessed with magic in recent years, then gone into seclusion for ten years at a time, so that the three of them—master and disciples—had barely been reunited in the past century.
He said his master had once hoped to drink to the weddings of both his disciples.
At that, I couldn’t hold back my tears, either.
The other time, he went to meet Lục Trầm Mặc to discuss something important.
When he returned, he seemed to mention casually,
“Lục Trầm Mặc is about to marry Đồng Đồng.”
Lục Trầm Mặc and Đồng Đồng… getting married?
No, that couldn’t be right. The sect leader had just passed away. How could Lục Trầm Mặc and Đồng Đồng possibly get married?
“It was my master’s dearest wish for them to marry soon.”
On the eighth day, Thẩm Khứ Chu went down the mountain again, this time to attend the grand immortal-couple ceremony for Lục Trầm Mặc and Đồng Đồng.
He left me alone on the mountain, with nothing to see but the dense fog around the cliffs of Kỳ Lân.
Could Lục Trầm Mặc really think I’d come to steal the bride?
Would he keep his old promise and set off fireworks across the city?
I looked up. The night sky glittered with stars, and the cliffs of Kỳ Lân rose so high, it seemed I could reach out and touch the stars.
I had just raised my hand when…
Thẩm Khứ Chu returned to the cliffs of Kỳ Lân.
His expression was grim.
“Đồng Đồng fainted during the ceremony. It’s been called off.”
“There’s a problem with her spiritual consciousness, and it can’t wait. Tonight, Lục Trầm Mặc will take her to an otherworldly secret realm in Trần Ngữ Forest to search for medicine to heal it.”
I gave him a humorless smile. “Oh, and you have to tell me about this?”
“Of course I have to tell you.” Thẩm Khứ Chu ground his teeth. “I’m leaving in half an hour, too. You have one quarter of an hour to come clean about everything. Otherwise, I’ll throw you into Kỳ Lân Cave and leave you to fend for yourself.”
Leave me to fend for myself, huh.
When he saw I wasn’t worried at all, Thẩm Khứ Chu’s expression darkened. He untied me and shoved me into Kỳ Lân Cave.
A tiny formation disk appeared in my hand.
It was the formation disk Thẩm Khứ Chu had secretly slipped me.
Kỳ Lân Cave was crowded with demons and monsters, and extremely dangerous.
A small defensive formation disk might not protect me for long.
So I had no choice but to pick up the pace and run deeper into Kỳ Lân Cave.
I kept running until the formation disk in my hand was about to shatter…
Suddenly, the scene before me changed.
When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer in Kỳ Lân Cave.
Two familiar faces appeared before me.
They were old friends I’d gone to visit earlier, but hadn’t been able to meet.
Lý Dục placed the last supreme-grade spirit stone in the formation’s eye and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Ông Bình sheathed his great saber and nodded toward me. “Oh, you’re back.”
After a hundred years apart, old friends were reunited.
They weren’t like those other two, pretending not to know me.
They greeted an old friend openly and naturally.
19
This was the otherworldly secret realm of Trần Ngữ Forest.
Legend had it that this place had formed from a fragment of another world, making it a realm beyond the control of this world’s Heavenly Dao.
That was why these two could meet here in secret and discuss their plans.
Seeing that I wasn’t the least bit confused or panicked, Ông Bình scratched his head awkwardly.
“You figured out our plan?”
Lý Dục asked as well,
“Do you know what we’re planning to do?”
Of course I did.
I also knew that the so-called “grand immortal-couple ceremony” was nothing but a trap Lục Trầm Mặc had laid for Miss Đồng Đồng.
And I knew that a teleportation array in Kỳ Lân Cave led straight to the otherworldly secret realm.
I’d always known there was something suspicious about Lục Trầm Mặc “mistaking someone else for me.”
On Mount Thương, he’d asked me,
“With mountains and rivers between us, could we ever meet again?”
I pointed to the little bell.
“When it rings, that’ll be the day I return.”
The truth was, that bell would never ring again.
I’d lied to him.
I’d secretly removed the bell’s clapper back when he fought Bách Lý Hứa.
How could a bell ring without its clapper?
I wanted him to have a little hope: as long as the bell remained silent, he could keep waiting.
If he waited and waited and the bell never rang, eventually he’d forget me.
That was why I’d removed the clapper.
But I never expected someone to make use of the bell even after its clapper had been removed.
To disturb Lục Trầm Mặc’s mind and make him mistake someone else for me.
No… I should say someone had deliberately taken advantage of it.
But Lục Trầm Mặc had never mistaken anyone for me.
20
I’d been able to return within a hundred years, even after my soul had scattered.
It was obvious who had devoted so much effort to making that happen.
So when I woke again, naturally, I was overjoyed.
But my heart ached, too.
How had he realized I hadn’t returned to my own world?
How could he have sat up alone night after night, painstakingly piecing together the fragments of my shattered soul?
It had been a hundred years. People said a hundred years passed in the blink of an eye, and to me, it had been no more than a sleep.
But it had also been a real hundred years.
A hundred years was enough time for the cries of a newborn to fade into a mound of yellow earth.
Saplings grew old, and dynasties rose and fell.
A hundred years held countless days and nights. You would meet so many people, and endure so many partings.
Lục Trầm Mặc had crossed a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers searching for my soul, and drawn fire from beneath the ice into his own body to refine it. None of that could ever be brushed off as just a few casual words.
He could have guessed that my soul had long since scattered, and still spent all that time untangling its every fragment.
How could he possibly mistake me for someone else?
That was why, when I saw Miss Đồng Đồng at Lục Trầm Mặc’s side, I was calmer than I’d ever been.
He couldn’t mistake me for someone else.
Even if he did, I could patiently explain everything to him and bring him back to his senses.
But that thought had barely crossed my mind when it was interrupted.
Because at that very moment, the bell rang.
21
The bell that was never supposed to ring again rang.
Someone was deliberately making Lục Trầm Mặc mistake me for someone else.
So I tested Lục Trầm Mặc, and told him my real name, too.
After we vanquished the demon in Lâm Dương Village, Lục Trầm Mặc had asked me not only whether I could stay by his side forever.
He had also asked me for my real name.
“Đồng Đồng, I’m sure Đồng Đồng isn’t your real name. What is your real name?”
Back then, I wouldn’t tell him. I only said:
“When everything is over, I’ll tell you.”
On the summit of Mount Thương, I hadn’t told him.
On the summit of Lục Xuất Peak, when the smoke and dust rose again, I told him.
On the summit of Lục Xuất Peak, amid the blinding snowstorm, Lục Trầm Mặc smiled brightly:
“I know.”
I had tried every means I could think of to stay on Lục Xuất Peak.
Late at night, afraid I’d get cold, Lục Trầm Mặc sneaked into my room and drew a springlike formation.
But after that strange springlike formation Lục Trầm Mặc had created vanished, the spirit stone dust that fell to the ground formed tiny characters.
Could it really be… “Heaven”?
…
When he heard this, Ông Bình clicked his tongue:
“You people really do think so differently from us ordinary folk. So you two had already ‘connected’ on the very first day you came back?”
That’s right. We connected on the very first day.
Or perhaps I should say, the moment I told my story at the Heavenly Sword Teahouse, I connected with him.
He gazed at me for a long while, then burst out laughing:
“So you’re still just a petite young woman.”
22
I told Ông Bình and Lý Dục the story.
But I almost choked trying to get it all out.
“Tell me,” I teased Ông Bình. “Do you know how I died?”
As soon as I finished speaking, Ông Bình’s eyes turned red.
I blamed myself for speaking thoughtlessly. I knew full well that my death had left a wound in their hearts.
Lý Dục spoke up:
“Didn’t you die helping Lục Trầm Mặc defeat Bách Lý Hứa?”
No.
When Lục Trầm Mặc fought Bách Lý Hứa in their decisive battle, I didn’t help much.
While he was fighting Bách Lý Hứa, I was fighting the Heavenly Dao.
Inside the jade pendant that held my soul, I fought and struggled with all my might.
…
When Lục Trầm Mặc’s cultivation reached Tribulation Transcendence, I realized the tasks the Heavenly Dao assigned me were getting stranger and stranger.
What kind of task required his cultivation to be as high as possible?
What kind of task required his spiritual sense to be as weak as possible?
Did saving all living beings and changing the fate of the continent really require a genius with hollow cultivation and a frail spiritual sense?
I questioned the Heavenly Dao.
The only answer I got was:
“Do you still want to go home?”
Of course I wanted to go home.
But I was torn, and tried to drag out the completion of the Heavenly Dao’s task.
The Heavenly Dao absolutely refused to let Lục Trầm Mặc forge his natal sword. By the time he reached Tribulation Transcendence, there would be no time left if he didn’t forge it.
Before Lục Trầm Mặc forged his natal sword, his master—the white-haired sect leader—came to see me.
He told Lục Trầm Mặc to leave first and not to eavesdrop.
The first thing he said was:
“Đồng Đồng, how far along is your mission?”
Other than Lục Trầm Mặc, I had never told anyone about this so-called “mission.”
I trusted him more than anyone. He would never reveal it.
Besides, he and I were inseparable.
How did the sect leader know?
A vague premonition welled up in me, as if I were about to discover something.
Instinctively, I tried to sever my connection to the Heavenly Dao.
But before I could act, the old man stopped me.
“It’s no use. The Heavenly Dao knows everything that happens on the Vân Châu Continent.”
Then he opened his hand, revealing a small stone:
“But this otherworldly divine stone is different.”
With an otherworldly divine stone, the Heavenly Dao is blocked off and can’t know what happens here.
And so, the sect leader told me a shocking secret.