Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 60
by Little PandaInterlude (2)
The Maker of History
The two of them talked as they walked, all the way up to Xuanjiu’s residence, where Yu Zhaoming finally stopped.
Xuanjiu was the Sword Sect’s greatest lover of comfort. Her residence was less a cave abode than a grand manor — carved beams and painted rafters, upturned eaves and dougong brackets, and rare, exotic beasts strolling the grounds.
But looking at it now, the beasts lay sprawled and the trees stood withered. Without their master’s spiritual energy to nourish them, everything seemed desolate.
The two of them stood before the manor, and for a moment neither moved to knock. Before long, Xuanjiu’s voice drifted out from within: “Come in, both of you.”
They exchanged a glance, answered in unison, and stepped inside together.
Xuanjiu looked as she always did, in a light, gauzy palace dress — except that what she held was not her usual long smoking pipe but the silver-white sword in its true form. She sat cross-legged, eyes lowered as she regarded them, and a measure of her usual flippancy was gone, replaced by something closer to authority.
A flicker of fear rose in Tang Wenchun’s heart — but then she saw the fine lines at the corners of Xuanjiu’s eyes. Shared Demise of Heaven and Earth had burned through this body’s vitality, and Xuanjiu could no longer hold the face of her most flourishing years. Age had begun to show.
Only in that moment did Tang Wenchun finally understand what Lang Xing’s unfinished sentences had meant.
“Shizun.”
The word left her mouth, and the tears came spilling down.
“I’m not dead yet. What are you crying for?” Xuanjiu said, half amused, and reached over to pull Tang Wenchun to her. The pull didn’t budge her. Xuanjiu glanced down — Tang Wenchun’s other hand was held fast in Yu Zhaoming’s grip.
Their eyes met. Yu Zhaoming let go.
Tang Wenchun noticed nothing at all. She only clutched at Xuanjiu’s sleeve. “Shizun, what’s going to happen to you? You have to live to a hundred!”
“Pah! I’ve still got two or three hundred years left in me, and all you can wish me is a hundred?”
Tang Wenchun froze. It dawned on her that cultivators and mortals keep different time — for a mortal, “may you live to a hundred” is a blessing, but for a cultivator it is nothing of the sort. She knew full well Xuanjiu had said it just to tease her, and felt her own behavior was hopelessly childish, so she hastily wiped at her eyes. “Then — then right now…”
“I’m entering death seclusion,” Xuanjiu said.
Death seclusion is the measure a cultivator takes only when facing the great pass between life and death, or when their cultivation can no longer advance an inch. Usually it is chosen by cultivators whose allotted span is nearly spent, staking their final strength on one last gamble.
A cultivator as young as Xuanjiu would never resort to it. That is precisely why it is called death seclusion: either you emerge reborn, or you die. Or rather — until she came out, she already counted as a dead woman.
“But…” Tang Wenchun couldn’t find the words.
Xuanjiu smiled and stroked her hair. “Don’t worry. That fight with Yunzhongjun wasn’t entirely without its gains. I’ve finally worked through the last crux of the Red Dust Sword, and I’ve set it down in this jade slip. When I come out is uncertain, so I’ve only run a rough deduction. Once I emerge, perhaps master and disciple can have a proper spar.”
As she spoke, she placed the jade slip in Tang Wenchun’s hand.
Tang Wenchun slowly lowered her head onto Xuanjiu’s knee. Yunzhongjun’s heart demon exposed, Shizun entering death seclusion… a hazy thought suddenly took shape in her mind.
Xuanjiu comforted her for a while, gave the two of them a great many instructions, and pressed her storage bag into Tang Wenchun’s hands. “If I gave this to Zhaoming, she’d most likely never use it. That mule-headed sword cultivator only knows how to use her own sword. Better it all goes to you — spend it freely.”
“Shizun…” Tang Wenchun couldn’t bear to let go. But what good was that? Her cultivation was still too low — she couldn’t help Xuanjiu with a single thing.
Xuanjiu smiled. “There’s still one thread of life left, isn’t there? You go do what you’re meant to do, and I will go seize my own thread of life.” She had long since seen life and death come and go, and she carried it lightly.
Under that gaze, Tang Wenchun finally nodded. At Xuanjiu’s urging, she left — looking back with every third step.
Until only Xuanjiu and Yu Zhaoming remained in the room.
Yu Zhaoming stood at Xuanjiu’s side with her hands lowered, quietly waiting for her to speak. Xuanjiu looked down at the sword across her knees, and only after a long while did she slowly begin:
“Zhaoming. Change your path.”
The room was perfumed with sweet ambergris incense. Sunlight spilled in through the window and settled over them both, carrying a faint warmth. A small bamboo cage hung by the window, and the cricket inside chirped without pause — an insect-song far too lively for the season.
Everything around them was elegant and familiar, exactly as it had been twelve years ago, on that day.
The same room. The same sunlight, the same incense, the same insect-song. The cultivator who had watched Yu Zhaoming back then had seemed like a goddess, gaze lowered upon her. There had been gentleness in the way she looked at her, and sorrow too, and Yu Zhaoming remembered that gaze — as if the woman were looking through her at some phantom out of the past.
Even then, Yu Zhaoming had known: she had won that cultivator’s favor, but not because of who she was. She had looked lucky, had received many things — but the receiving was never truly hers. It had merely passed through time until, at last, that gift had no choice but to fall into her hands.
Like a belated compensation.
And now she stood in this room again. The look Xuanjiu turned on her could not be called gentle, and she was no longer that frightened girl — she raised her eyes and met Xuanjiu’s gaze head-on.
“Shizun, the Emotionless Dao is the fastest path there is for growing one’s cultivation.” That was Yu Zhaoming’s answer. Xuanjiu surely knew of her pursuit of cultivation; there was no need to explain further.
“…Zhaoming. A person’s life is very long. And you’re still so young…” Xuanjiu said softly, her eyes earnest. “You have so much time still to wait — why must you keep yourself strung this tight?”
Yu Zhaoming turned her head away. Ordinarily, she would never have voiced what she thought. She had always been like this — outwardly deferential, but in truth more intractable than anyone. Once her mind was set, nothing anyone said mattered.
But Xuanjiu was about to enter death seclusion, and what that meant, both of them understood perfectly. This might be the last time the two of them would ever speak face to face.
Yu Zhaoming’s shoulders loosened, just slightly. “A person’s life is very long,” she said quietly. “Very long. I know. Especially for cultivators. Even at my age, I’ve met people and things worth remembering…”
She closed her eyes, and Tang Wenchun’s lively image rose up — she always seemed to have funny ideas, funny words, funny ways of seeing things. At her side, it felt as if one could never be bored.
“…I’ve met things that are hard to forget…”
She thought of the flying lanterns rising over the Sword Sect that first year, of that year’s Lantern Festival, and of the year after — when Tang Wenchun sneaked down the mountain and spent an entire year’s savings to commission Treasure Gathering Pavilion to build a grand fireworks display. A thing of pure delight: mortals had no spirit stones and wouldn’t dare hire cultivators; cultivators wouldn’t trouble themselves over a moment’s pleasure. Even the fireworks artisan had been recruited from the mortal world by Treasure Gathering Pavilion on the spot.
Tang Wenchun spent three whole days discussing it with the Pavilion’s artisan, and for those three days Yu Zhaoming simply stood by and watched. She watched Tang Wenchun gesture wildly as she described the effects she wanted; whatever the mortals couldn’t manage, she dragged other Sword Sect disciples in to help.
A full month of commotion. When the fireworks finally bloomed, the entire Sword Sect watched, stunned — even the most straitlaced Disciplinary Hall Elder, Qin Chu, narrowed her eyes and gazed long at that grand display.
Yu Zhaoming still remembered how Qin Chu had laughed and scolded in the same breath: “All that fuss for so long, for one brief moment — was it worth it?”
“But beautiful things are fleeting to begin with,” Tang Wenchun had retorted, in perfect earnest. “The sunrise at dawn, the meteors at night — it’s precisely because they don’t last that they’re more beautiful, and that they stay in a person’s memory.”
The elder had fallen silent for a long time, and in the end, nodded. That night, for once, she set her severity aside, folded her arms, and watched the fireworks with the Sword Sect’s disciples until dawn.
Yu Zhaoming had only ever watched quietly from Tang Wenchun’s side, like an outsider drifting at the edge of it all. But she had to admit it: the lanterns were lovely, and the fireworks were beautiful. Things that pass still leave beautiful traces behind, softening, bit by bit, a heart that insists on its own hardness.
“It’s precisely because life is so long… that memories get overwritten, and so many feelings drain away with the years. But I don’t want to forget.” Yu Zhaoming’s voice was low. “And I can’t forget. Because forgetting is betrayal.”
Xuanjiu fell silent — silent for so long that Yu Zhaoming, standing there, couldn’t help thinking that if Tang Wenchun were in this room, she’d be pacing in agitation by now. Her heart demon seemed to hate overly still air; she would circle in place, toss out some quip. And every time, the people around her would brighten, and no one would ever notice the relief that crossed Tang Wenchun’s face — strained at first, then easing into gentleness, as she gently watched the people she had made laugh.
Like she was completing a task.
“Zhaoming.”
Xuanjiu’s voice came, and Yu Zhaoming turned. She saw what looked like a smile on Xuanjiu’s face. “You’re smiling. What are you thinking of?”
Yu Zhaoming touched the corner of her own mouth. It was, indeed, curved upward. She looked at Xuanjiu. “I won’t change my mind.”
“If there were ever a person—”
“I would keep my distance from her.” Yu Zhaoming said, “I know what you’re all worried about. Shizun, you already gave her the storage bag — are you still worrying?”
Caught out in her little scheme by her own disciple, Xuanjiu didn’t feel a shred of embarrassment. She only laughed, open and unbothered, and asked: “Then why haven’t you left yet?”
“Because she can’t leave me,” Yu Zhaoming said.
Every time she heard that line, Xuanjiu wanted to press a hand to her forehead. On an ordinary day she’d have just laughed it off, but not now — she had to say it. “Zhaoming. Is it that she can’t leave you — or that you can’t leave her?” Seeing Yu Zhaoming about to answer, she waved a hand. “Don’t argue. My time is short.”
Yu Zhaoming closed her mouth. Her frame was slight, her gaze hidden beneath her hair — part that hair aside, and you would find a pair of pale, stubborn eyes.
Xuanjiu’s gaze came to rest on the band across Yu Zhaoming’s brow, the green cloth embroidered with gold thread. “This forehead band — still this new?”
Yu Zhaoming paused, then looked away. “Tang Wenchun gives me a new one every year.”
“I see…” A smile curved out on Xuanjiu’s face, and on that always-brilliant countenance appeared a tenderness rarely seen. “Zhaoming, whatever else happens — when the great choices come, your master asks only one thing: think it over. Think it over well. Don’t decide in such a hurry. All right?”
Yu Zhaoming was still a moment, then nodded without a word.
“Good,” Xuanjiu said. “From now on, it’s just the two of you, shijie and shimei. Look after each other. Your shimei… her heart runs shallower than most — you’ll need to look after her all the more. And if the two of you ever turn on each other, then when I come out, I’ll make you both sorry.”
Yu Zhaoming gave a soft laugh, looking at Xuanjiu. “Shizun… you take care of yourself.”
Xuanjiu waved her off with an easy, unburdened smile. “Enough of this farewell theater. I intend to come out, you know. If I’m sitting in death seclusion thinking of the two of you wailing and grieving like I’ll never emerge — then I really never will.”
Yu Zhaoming nodded and turned to go. She had just crossed the threshold when Xuanjiu suddenly called out: “You take care of yourself, too.”
Yu Zhaoming went still. She had always been alone, always able to handle everything herself — and precisely because she was so capable, she was so often the first person everyone overlooked. Even Xuanjiu’s parting charge had been for Yu Zhaoming to look after her shimei.
She had never expected that, at the very end, Xuanjiu would say such a thing.
As if she were never coming out again.
The thought flashed through Yu Zhaoming’s heart, and she whirled around — but the great door was already swinging shut. Xuanjiu was smiling at her, without a single falter.
“Shizun…”
The door let out a heavy, muffled boom, and finally closed. Something shifted in Xuanjiu’s face. She clutched at her chest and suddenly vomited a great mouthful of blood.
“I told you your body was already a spent force, yet you insisted on playing the picture of health.”
A figure appeared at Xuanjiu’s side. The newcomer was a woman, but with a stern face and a tall, burly frame — Qin Chu, who oversaw the Sword Sect’s punishments. Yet the hand that steadied Xuanjiu was gentle, laying her softly on the bed and transferring a thread of spiritual qi into her.
“I couldn’t… I couldn’t let my disciple see me like that. That would be — that really would be too humiliating.”
Xuanjiu pressed a hand to her chest, her gaze fixed on the beams overhead, and spoke in a low voice. Then she turned her head, and her eyes settled on the knot between Qin Chu’s brows. “Shijie. My two children — from here on, they’re in your hands.”
Qin Chu snorted. “I don’t raise other people’s children. I only punish them. If you want them raised right, come out and teach them yourself.”
Xuanjiu laughed a little at that, and slowly closed her eyes.
Qin Chu watched her in silence. Xuanjiu’s face was pale, and she lay so still she seemed not even to breathe. Qin Chu reached out and held her fingers beneath Xuanjiu’s nose — and only when she felt that faint, slender thread of breath did she realize what a foolish thing she was doing. She snatched her hand back, looked around the room, and finally let out a heavy sigh. Then she pinched out a spell seal.
In an instant, countless talismans unfurled, weaving into a talisman array that locked this space down, tight and absolute.
Yu Zhaoming lifted her eyes and saw the array drawn out into a Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Diagram1, which settled heavily down and wrapped the entire residence. From this moment on, no one would ever walk in again.
Unless Xuanjiu herself wished to come out.
“Yu Zhaoming.”
A sleeve tugged gently at hers. Yu Zhaoming turned her head and found Tang Wenchun’s worried eyes.
“…I’m fine,” Yu Zhaoming said. In truth, she wanted to say something. What she had received had always been little, and yet there had always been something — only that something never lasted. The hours of losing far outnumbered the hours of having. Such tiny possessions, such tiny sweetness, hung in her life like a carrot dangled just ahead of her, tugging her ever forward.
And what she could still, for now, call hers… her gaze came to rest on Tang Wenchun.
Tang Wenchun’s brows drooped, tears brimming in her eyes. “Yu Zhaoming, Shizun will be all right, won’t she? I — I keep feeling like…” Her heart was in complete turmoil. Standing out there alone, waiting for Yu Zhaoming, she had thought about a great many things.
Yunzhongjun hunted across the realm by apprehension order; Shizun sealed in seclusion, never to come out — one by one, they matched the novel’s account. But when she looked closely at the threads connecting them, she found that she had assumed herself to be standing inside the novel’s history as a mere bystander, a mere observer — when in fact…
Tang Wenchun clenched her hands, panic rising. “If it weren’t for me… Shizun might never have gone to Xunyang out of worry for my safety. Then she’d never have taken us to that ceremony for a change of air, and never — never crossed blades with Yunzhongjun, never entered death seclusion… I…”
She was no mere bystander. She was the maker of history. It was precisely because of her arrival that history had taken the shape of the novel. And if that was true, then one day, between her and Yu Zhaoming…
“This has nothing to do with you.” Yu Zhaoming caught Tang Wenchun’s hand and slowly uncurled her clenched fingers. “Tang Wenchun.”
Tang Wenchun raised her head. She watched Yu Zhaoming’s lips part and move: “Do you want to be my Dao companion?”
Wait, what?! What does that mean? Is she seriously going to slay her spouse to prove the Dao?!
The author has something to say:
Does anyone still remember how Tang Wenchun transmigrated in the first place?
The author said one thing: “If you’re so good, you do it.”
Anyway, that’s how it went. I have some matters to see to today, so this is an early update — I’m setting off. I don’t know how many of you are still reading, but either way: thank you, everyone.
0 Comments