Chapter 122 – I Really Do Want to Live Another Five Hundred Years
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
After some time had pa.s.sed, Chen Changsheng estimated that it was early morning. He stood and indicated to the Black Dragon that tonight"s lesson had to stop here.
The Black Dragon was clearly not too happy, but, in its great benevolence, did not stop him from leaving.
He raised his head to the ceiling of the cavern. From the ground, the bottom of the well was just a tiny black dot, with no morning light leaking through.
How could he get up there?
He recalled how he had left this cavern the first time and his expression seemed to slightly freeze. With all due haste, he took off all his clothes and put them away. He was mentally preparing himself for what was soon to come, so he failed to notice that as he was doing this, the Black Dragon was clearly showing disgust and anxiety in its eyes.
With a flash of light, Chen Changsheng"s body vanished.
The Black Dragon raised its head to the surface. Its whisker gently waved, not in farewell, but requesting that he needed to come back soon.
In the next moment, Chen Changsheng returned to the surface.
It was still that side palace in the Imperial Palace, and still by that pool.
He walked to the sh.o.r.e of the pool, saw that no one was around, and hurriedly put on his clothes.
The morning light was slightly warm, but the late autumn was cold. A wind blew from the palace and, in a very short amount of time, it made him almost unbearably cold. Even those bones of his tempered by many years of medicinal broths and beatings could barely endure it.
Now how was he to get out of here?
His two arms wrapped around him, he recalled the path from that night, but then suddenly spotted the Black Goat on the other side of the pool.
He was slightly startled, but his hands gradually relaxed. Every time he went to do something, the Black Goat would appear. Today, he did not encounter the middle-aged woman by the pool, but he still saw the Black Goat. He was finding this stranger and stranger, beginning to think that there was some connection here that he was missing.
But he didn"t know who to ask, and he was certainly not going to obtain an answer if he asked the Black Goat.
He walked to the other side of the pool. The Black Goat gently nudged his knee, just like it had done before, then it began to show him the way. For some reason, perhaps because it was too early, there was no around the Imperial Palace this morning, not even a servant sweeping a courtyard. One human and one goat very smoothly reached the palace walls.
Ivy grew along the walls, concealing an old door. A lock was on the door.
A key was hanging across the Black Goat"s neck.
Chen Changsheng took the key and opened the door. He walked into a quiet pa.s.sage and shortly afterwards returned to the Orthodox Academy.
This was not the door used by the middle-aged woman, but the one used by Mo Yu.
Chen Changsheng tried to retie the key onto the Black Goat"s neck, but the Black Goat tilted its head in refusal.
He fell silent, then said a word of thanks before solemnly putting the key away.
The Black Goat walked back to the Imperial Palace, and the old door closed once more.
In the following days, life on the surface was very calm. The Divine Empress"s orders had been transmitted through Mo Yu to all the factions in the capital. The Orthodox Academy"s gate remained unrepaired, but no one dared to come and make trouble. Jin Yulu acted as the main gate, and when he sat down on the bamboo chair, a pot of tea in hand, it meant that the gate was closed.
Chen Changsheng acted as he had in the past, spending each day diligently studying and cultivating. However, in preparation for the Grand Examination, he had made the appropriate adjustments. For instance, he had begun studying the test from the last Grand Examination, and he had also brought Tang Thirty-Six and Xuanyuan Po to the neighboring Hundred Herb Garden to once more pilfer all sort of medicinal herbs. Xuanyuan Po"s right arm had completely recovered and Chen Changsheng had found an appropriate technique for him to cultivate in, but he didn"t know if there would be enough progress by the time of the Grand Examination.
As the pampered grandson and young master of the Wenshui Tang clan, Tang Thirty-Six"s partic.i.p.ation in the Grand Examination was naturally a matter of utmost importance for his clan. Although the Old Master had expressed his deep resentment towards Tang Thirty-Six voluntarily withdrawing from the Heavenly Dao Academy in a letter, the resources prepared for Tang Thirty-Six were not decreased in the slightest. On the contrary, the amount actually increased. It seemed that the Tang clan was well aware of recent events within the capital and knew the Orthodox Academy"s situation.
In addition to all this, the Bureau of Ecclesiastic Education had taken care of many matters so that the Orthodox Academy could partic.i.p.ate in the Grand Examination. Priest Xin had personally stepped forward and handled all the paperwork. Of course, it was still Luoluo who had the greatest contribution. She had had all the herbs Chen Changsheng had brought refined into pills and medicines according to his instructions. Along with many other things, she sent them to the Orthodox Academy.
Everything was prepared and it seemed like all that was needed was to wait for the day of the Grand Examination. However, in this period, a small interlude took place.
One morning in the early winter, Chen Changsheng concluded his usual session of drawing in starlight for Purification and walked out of the library to return to the house, upon which he once more saw Mo Yu. Lady Mo Yu"s black hair was like a waterfall draped over her shoulders, yet she was not sound asleep. Instead, she was holding her waist and standing by the bed, her face seething with anger, looking for all the world like a dissatisfied housewife itching to argue.
Chen Changsheng had recently seen this sort of expression many times. Every time he went to rouse Tang Thirty-Six from his bed, he would see it. He knew that this was called "waking up on the wrong side of the bed". In other words, she had not slept well.
"What"s wrong?"
Although the Orthodox Academy and Mo Yu were enemies, he was still very curious about why she would have such an appearance. He remembered very clearly that the pillow had been newly stuffed with medicinal herbs that should have greatly a.s.sisted in calming the mind.
Mo Yu flipped open his bedsheets and pointed at the crystals scattered about his bed, angrily saying, "If you don"t want me to come here and sleep, just say it. Is it necessary to put these rocks here to annoy me?"
The rocks were not meant as an annoyance, but in her view, Chen Changsheng had placed them precisely to annoy her.
(TN: The words "rocks" and "annoy" here are 硌 and 硌应. The latter term might be directly translated as "responding with rocks" and is a slang term that means making someone feel uncomfortable.)
Chen Changsheng was very confused. These crystals had been sent to the Orthodox Academy by the Wenshui Tangs and Luoluo, and contained all sorts of fine properties. If one were to hold them while meditating, the speed at which one drew in starlight would greatly increase, so he had put a few of them under his bedding.
For the Grand Examination, he would not miss a single detail.
"I"ve already put down two layers of bedding. I"ve personally tried and couldn"t feel them at all," he explained to Mo Yu.
Mo Yu couldn"t help but be speechless, thinking to herself, if he knew that Ping would not be able to sleep even if there were ten layers of bedding between her and a pea, he definitely would find it impossible to comprehend.
Snowflakes suddenly began to fall outside the window, the first snow of the year.
Inside the room, it suddenly turned quiet. The two silently gazed at each other, the atmosphere becoming rather awkward.
At this moment, Mo Yu understood that her resentment was quite unreasonable, and Chen Changsheng also understood that he didn"t need to give her any sort of explanation at all.
This was his room and his bed, and there was no friendship between him and her. On the contrary, they were enemies.
Mo Yu left, and up to the Grand Examination, she never returned to the Orthodox Academy. It was as if she had finally realized how ridiculous her actions were.
However, on the next day, Chen Changsheng discovered that his pillow and bedding had vanished.
Was this also okay? He raised his sleeve and took a sniff, but he couldn"t smell anything.
But why did Luoluo and the Black Goat like to smell him? And now, even a person like Lady Mo Yu…
Chen Changsheng could not find a single thing to be proud about. As a person slightly obsessed with cleanliness, he found it quite difficult to accept the thought of Mo Yu hugging his blankets as she slept every night.
Time pa.s.sed, and the joy brought about by the first snow quickly disappeared. Snow fell over the capital every day, making everyone sick of it. The autumn departed and winter set in, and the day of the Grand Examination grew closer and closer.
Chen Changsheng knew that he could no longer keep hesitating, so he stopped hesitating.
When the Grand Examination was just a few days off, he departed the Orthodox Academy under the cover of the early morning snow, letting no one else know, and went to New North Bridge. The golden fallen leaves had been covered by snow, and those who wished to see this famous sight of the capital could only wait for next year. There was no trace of any tourists, and there was no one else besides the distant Imperial Guard and the barely visible traces left behind in the sky by the flying carriages.
No, it was not completely deserted. In the distance, a palace maid dressed in fur was walking two Snow Mastiffs.
Snow Mastiffs were not dogs, but powerful monsters that dared to fight with human cultivation experts in close combat. Born in Mount Blackstone outside Xuelao City, they loved the cold and detested the heat, and it was a mystery as to how they had managed to survive in the capital. Of course, someone able to raise Snow Mastiffs was a.s.suredly no ordinary person. The Snow Mastiffs were not both white, as one of them was a very faint shade of yellow. The snow was falling fiercely, so the yellow Snow Mastiff was gradually turning white while the white one was gradually getting larger.
In front of the palace walls was a boundless world of white, all features blurring into one, all except a black hole in the ground.
It was the mouth of the well.
Chen Changsheng walked up to the well, glanced at the palace maid and her two Snow Mastiffs, confirmed that they were not paying attention to him, and then jumped down.
On the surface, a snowstorm had persisted for several days, but underground, the snowstorm would never end, as it came from each breath the Black Dragon took.
In these past few days, Chen Changsheng had come to see the Black Dragon several times. It was no longer as awkward as it was in the beginning, where he didn"t even know how to stand or where to put his hands.
The Black Dragon was very satisfied at his comprehension of the Dragon language, but was greatly displeased at the frequency with which he came to study. However, even though it was a dragon, it knew the significance of the Grand Examination towards humans, so it did not feel right to demand too much.
The dragon"s whisker lightly danced, sweeping clean of ice the ground in front of Chen Changsheng.
In a practiced fashion, Chen Changsheng took out several packages of oil paper and several novels often sold in the capital"s markets, and placed them on the floor.
The oil papers were untied to reveal roast lamb, roast chicken, roast deer tail, braised ox tongue, and a steamed double-headed fish.
"Leave the ox tongue for me," he said.
Knowing that the Black Dragon had been imprisoned underground for several hundred years, lonely and pitiful and not having eaten anything for a long time, Chen Changsheng would bring some food with him each time he came to visit.
This food naturally couldn"t make the Black Dragon full, only take the edge off its hunger.
At the very beginning, the Black Dragon had turned its nose up at this food, giving off a demeanor that said, This one used to eat human flesh in the Imperial Palace and didn"t blink an eye."" However, when it actually ate, it showed no courtesy whatsoever.
"I"ve decided."
Chen Changsheng had used his most dauntless patience to wait for the Black Dragon to finish savoring these foods at its most slothful pace before beginning to speak.
The Black Dragon stared at him like he was an idiot.
In the past few meetings, it had come to know what Chen Changsheng wanted to do.
The lowly humans had only their fragile bodies. Without a successful Purification, attempting Meditative Introspection was seeking death.
Although it had not paid particular attention when it was learning from its royal father, it could still understand this simple reasoning.
In truth, Chen Changsheng also knew that there was basically no chance of success, as no previous case of success had ever been recorded in the three thousand scriptures of the Daoist Canon.
But he had to do this, because the Grand Examination was imminent.
He had to take first rank of the first banner in the Grand Examination, because only this way could he get the right to meditate for one night in the Lingyan Pavilion.
Only this way could he have a chance of defying the heavens and changing his fate.
Only this way could he possibly live past the age of twenty.
If he could not do this, there was no difference between twenty and fifteen.
Yes, in that dry and monotonous life of cultivation and studying, he had reached the age of fifteen.
Twenty minus fifteen left five years.
But five hundred minus twenty was still about five hundred years.
He wanted to gamble five years for five hundred.
He truly did want to live another five hundred years.
Seeing Chen Changsheng"s face, the Black Dragon knew that he was serious.
The Black Dragon"s eyes gradually turned solemn, intending to put a stop to this matter.
If you die, who will come to speak with me, to handle that matter for me?
Chen Changsheng said nothing, only calmly stared at it. Thus, it knew that it could not stop him.
The Black Dragon"s eyes became somewhat irritated.
Chen Changsheng took the dagger from his waist and said to it, "If I die…"
When the Black Dragon saw the dagger, its eyes turned grave.
Chen Changsheng thought it over, then said, "Forget it. If I die, I die; there"s no meaning in leaving any words behind."
The Black Dragon"s eyes gradually shifted from solemnity to calm, ultimately leaving behind only admiration.
Any being that could calmly confront death, challenge death, was a being worthy of admiring.
Whether it was a dragon, demon, demi-human, human or even a sparrow.
It remembered that its royal father had once said something like this.
Out of admiration, it did not attempt to stop Chen Changsheng. Its whisker gently drifted over, lightly prodded him on the brow, then withdrew.
Chen Changsheng sat down and took up the ox tongue that he had requested the Black Dragon leave behind.
At the age of ten, upon learning that he would not live past twenty, he had ceased eating food like ox tongue which was unhealthy yet delicious.
He seriously ate it, savored it. His expression was quite satisfied.
After eating the ox tongue and drinking some water, he took up some snow to wash his hands and rub his face, ensuring that he was alert and aware.
After making all possible preparations, he closed his eyes and began Meditative Introspection.