For the next seven days, Yan Liqiang was like a spectator in a cinema. He stood at the side and silently watched the series of events after his death.
He was there when Qian Su tried to retrieve his body at the Law Enforcement Office.
He was there when s.h.i.+ Dafeng furiously tore up the announcement posted in the martial arts academy...
He was there when his lifeless body was reduced into ashes by the fire...
He was there to see Butcher Liu putting on an air of complacency at his pork stall...
He was also there when Old Master Lu handed over the portrait he had drawn of King Cobra to Lu Peien in the Lu Residence to burn...
He even personally followed Mother Wu to the Temple of Grat.i.tude. He was only completely relieved when he saw Mother Wu living very comfortably there.
The sorrows of his friends and the people close to him, as well as the smug faces of the wretched, flashed before Yan Liqiang"s eyes.
At this very moment, a clear line was instantly drawn between comrades.h.i.+p and sn.o.bbery.
He was being reviled by countless people in Pingxi City. Even after his ashes had been buried by Qian Su and Zhou Tiezhu on Mount Hundred Zhang, there were still people asking around for his resting place in Liuhe Town — everything was as Qian Su had expected.
Ye Xiao and w.a.n.g Haofei had already become young heroes of righteousness. People sang praises everywhere in Pingxi City and Huanglong County at the mention of their names while he himself had become a heinous criminal beyond redemption.
Pingxi Prefecture"s Prefectural Governor"s reputation also reached new heights after this incident.
The Prefectural Governor had a courageous son who acted heroically in a just cause and the Prefectural Governor was faced with a very difficult choice during that crucial moment. In the end, he would rather sacrifice his son than let a criminal escape. His integrity was simply a blessing to the residents of Pingxi Prefecture.
Although Yan Liqiang had lived two lives, the emotions he felt over these few days was nothing like he had ever experienced before.
Such was life and the fickleness of human nature.
Only in movies and fairytales would good prevail over evil and survive until the end. Yet in reality, oftentimes, evil would triumph and prevail over good. While the evil happily enjoyed all the wine and beauty to their heart"s content, most of the good who had fought them with overflowing righteousness were already long dead while the weeds on their graves had already grown three feet tall.
"A man as straight as a bowstring often meets a tragic end while a man as crooked as a hook is revered instead." [1] — it seemed like human nature, as summed up by the ancestors, remained unchanged over these thousand years.
Its implication was, "People who stand as straight as bowstrings will not meet good endings; meanwhile, people who are as crooked as hooks, who like to ingratiate themselves and live without morals will instead be revered, thus able to enjoy a life of glory and splendor". The saying was used to expose and satirize the corrupt officials of feudalism and bureaucracy.
After witnessing the twisted truth, Yan Liqiang felt as if he had been baptized. It was as if he had achieved supreme enlightenment all of a sudden— that was if he could still be considered a living person in his current circ.u.mstance.
Yan Liqiang had no idea what he was right now. He couldn"t say he was alive because his body had been cremated to ashes. Yet he couldn"t say he was dead because he was still aware of everything around him and he could still experience emotions… He had a hunch that the strange state he was in right now was somehow related to the strange huge rock in his sea of consciousness.
As soon as he closed his eyes, that huge rock would automatically appear before his eyes. When he opened his eyes, everything would return to normal and the huge rock would disappear. Yan Liqiang tried countless times and the results were always the same.
He had no idea just how this huge rock had appeared in his sea of consciousness. He was guessing that it might"ve been the meteor that had hit him in his previous life because that mysterious huge rock would sometimes turn into the shape of a meteor and shuttle about in his sea of consciousness.
Yan Liqiang was aware that this huge rock was something extraordinary and it was most certainly something he wouldn"t dare to imagine. However, he didn"t know how to interact with this huge rock either.
The huge rock was ever changing yet it remained silent all the time. Even if he shouted at the top of his lungs, the huge rock didn"t give him any response at all no matter what he said to it.
A month after his "death", Qian Su left the Weaponsmiths Quarter of his own accord, claiming to have resigned to return to his own hometown. He left Pingxi Prefecture and it was not known what became of him after that.
At first, Yan Liqiang didn"t know why Qian Su left. He only knew that he had left when he flew to the Weaponsmiths Quarter one day and overheard the discussion of the people that were there.
A clever person like Qian Su already knew about the possible risks when he took the initiative to take care of the funerals for Yan Liqiang and Yan Dechang. He also discovered that this incident had involved the Prefectural Governor. Hence, Qian Su fled Pingxi Prefecture on his own accord before the Prefectural Governor could make any moves.
Zhou Tiezhu opened a new blacksmith store in Liuhe Town. With a few of his own apprentices, he managed to establish his brand, Zhou Blades, and carried on forging weapons. Although the Zhou Blades brand wasn"t as well-established as the Yan Clan"s blacksmith store, the quality of the blades that Zhou Tiezhu forged were reliable and there were still some customers who would stop by to purchase his blades, especially the kukri knife Yan Liqiang had left behind. Sales gradually grew and Zhou Blades" business slowly became established as it flourished; thus gaining some reputation.
The group of disciples from the Lu Residence and Lu Beixin were no longer suspended and once again returned to the martial arts academy...
s.h.i.+ Dafeng had also left Pingxi Prefecture. His father found a master who ran a dojo in Canggu Prefecture of Gan Province with the help of someone so he could resume his martial arts studies.
...
Everyone carried on with their lives and were back on track. Yan Liqiang was the only who couldn"t return.
Half a month after Qian Su left Pingxi Prefecture, Yan Liqiang also did the same.
The flames in his heart still burned intensely. He wasn"t content with drifting around Pingxi Prefecture like a lonely, homeless ghost. He had to avenge Yan Dechang and himself. He needed a human body.
He believed that his current state could definitely be changed and that this wasn"t his end. If he couldn"t change the current state he was in right now, then it couldn"t have been possible for him to have lived through two lives. Otherwise, he should have been drifting on Earth ever since he was struck by a meteor in his previous world. Hence, he was convinced that there was definitely a way for him to change this — he just hadn"t found the key yet.
The first thing that popped into Yan Liqiang"s mind was reincarnation.
He was guessing that the rock in his sea of consciousness was probably protecting his consciousness, allowing him to reincarnate again to live another time. It just didn"t tell him that. Yan Liqiang didn"t know how to reincarnate either. The only way was through trial and error.
If he was going to reincarnate, Pingxi Prefecture was naturally out of the question. That was because the Prefectural Governor held the highest power in Pingxi Prefecture. If he was going to be reborn again, he would naturally lose if he had to live under Ye Tiancheng"s reign. Therefore, if he was going to be reborn, it"d be better for him to select a clan outside of Pingxi Prefecture. It"d be best if it were a powerful and influential clan. That way, at least when he was born, he would have a head start over others.
Holding onto this mindset, Yan Liqiang started his endless attempts. However, these endless attempts over a very long period of time totally turned Yan Liqiang into a "home-invading peeping tom"...
After leaving Pingxi Prefecture, his figure flashed like lightning as he roamed across a thousand miles and visited those particularly huge cities, searching for clans that appeared to be well-off and influential. At night, he would invade the bedrooms of those lavish manors by pa.s.sing through the walls. Then he watched couples carry out the rituals of making a baby, in hopes that he could somehow trigger the requirements for reincarnation.
The number of s.e.xual activities Yan Liqiang witnessed in just these two months far exceeded the amount of p.o.r.n he had watched on Earth in his previous life. It was to the extent where even Yan Liqiang was worried he might grow a stye in his eye the moment he was successfully reborn.
In the end, Yan Liqiang realized that no matter how he watched or studied everything, nothing ever came out of it.
Since this approach didn"t work, Yan Liqiang tried to purposely stay close to pregnant women only to discover that it didn"t work either.
In the end, Yan Liqiang even tried to follow some midwives around, trying his luck every day around the places where babies were born. He spent the next few months doing this until even he felt like he could become a qualified midwife himself and it still didn"t work out for him.
Could it be that he could only reincarnate if he died?
With that thought in mind, Yan Liqiang started trying to commit suicide with various methods — getting struck by lightning, leaping into fire, jumping off the cliff, drowning in the river… He tried everything he could think of, but still, none of it worked. That was because all matter in the world was pretty much non-existent to him. When he chased the lightning during a heavy rain, the lightning pa.s.sed through his body like air. In an attempt to burn himself, he found a blacksmith workshop and stood inside the furnace for one whole day. When he tried to jump off the cliff, his body floated in the air. Similarly, when he tried to drown himself in the river, he found himself floating on the water"s surface. He couldn"t even injure himself...
He struggled for seven or eight months and had lost count of the places he had been to. He made countless attempts but none of them worked. At this point, Yan Liqiang almost felt like he was going insane…