Chapter 138 – Riding a Crane to the Southern Sh.o.r.e
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
(TN: Way of Choices will be on break from December 25th, 2017 – January 7, 2018)
A green river was divided into two sh.o.r.es. All the examinees stood on the southern sh.o.r.e, while only Chen Changsheng stood on the opposite sh.o.r.e, looking rather forlorn. The declaration that had spread throughout the entire continent made this sight seem even more moving and tragic, or perhaps sorrowful. Sympathetically, or disdainfully, or indifferently, the crowd watched him, waiting for him to conclude his Grand Examination. No expected that what they heard first would be the bright call of a crane.
A line had suddenly charged out of the white clouds drifting over the capital. On the very front of this line was a white crane.
Countless eyes followed the movements of the White Crane, watched as it flew through the sky into the Garden of the Morning Sun. When it landed on the opposite sh.o.r.e in front of Chen Changsheng, the crowd began to react.
Is it possible? Gou Hanshi thought in surprise.
Guan Feibai walked a few steps toward the sh.o.r.e and stared at the White Crane opposite, his voice shaken. "Is it possible?"
Qi Jian"s mouth was slightly agape. With great difficulty, he swallowed the words "Is it possible" back down his throat.
Upon seeing this sight, many examinees standing on the sh.o.r.e could not help but exclaim, "Is it possible?"
Xuanyuan Po lowered his head, feeling his face to be rather hot. He found the entire thing rather embarra.s.sing.
Tang Thirty-Six seemed normal, but he was also deeply embarra.s.sed. He thought to himself, is this really necessary? It"s just crossing a river; is it really necessary to use this sort of method?
Zhuang Huanyu coldly laughed but said nothing else.
Su Moyu"s way of thinking was the simplest. He asked in astonishment, "This way is also okay?"
The crowd"s reaction to the White Crane"s descent was mostly astonishment and disbelief. Only Luoluo"s reaction was different.
She looked at the opposite sh.o.r.e, her two hands clasped together in front of her, her face one of utter adoration. "Teacher"s intellect truly surpa.s.ses others"."
This sentence attracted everyone"s attention.
If she were not Baidi Luoluo, if she were not the Princess of the Demi-humans that no one could offend, she would definitely have received everyone"s disdain and perhaps even a few blows.
Not even Xuanyuan Po or Tang Thirty-Six would have helped her.
Was this called intellect?
Was it not shamelessness?
How could the White Crane travel across a vast distance from the south and arrive right during the Grand Examination?
The Orthodox Academy must have known about the questions for today"s Grand Examination!
Of course, without any proof, no accusations could be made.
The crowd looked at the opposite sh.o.r.e and thought, does Chen Changsheng really have the nerve to do this?
For the sake of taking first rank of the first banner in the Grand Examination, Chen Changsheng was willing to do anything.
He walked up to the White Crane and warmly rubbed it on the neck. He said a few words to it, and then, under the flabbergasted stares of the crowd on both sides of the Qu River, he mounted the White Crane.
The White Crane lightly flapped its wings and took flight.
A wind blew across the river, sending bits of gra.s.s flying and ripples spreading across the green waters.
After a moment, Chen Changsheng had flown the crane into the air, further and further away from the ground. The Qu River looked just like a belt of jade.
The wind upon his face was rather chilly and moist.
An inexperienced person mounting the White Crane to such a high elevation would inevitably feel some panic or fear, but he would not. He had experience. His only experience flying the White Crane to high elevations was that when he was small, he had once ridden the White Crane to that peak shrouded in clouds behind Xining Village.
The White Crane of that time was the White Crane he was sitting on right now.
Before his tenth birthday, each time the White Crane would come to deliver letters and gifts to Xining Village, he would go off to the mountains with the White Crane to play and search for herbs.
But after he turned eleven, the White Crane no longer returned to Xining Village. It was only a few months ago that they were finally reunited in the capital.
The chilly wind blew against his face, and he squinted his eyes. He was not looking at the green river or garden beneath him, but at an even further place.
He greatly enjoyed the feeling of flying on a crane, and it had been such a long time since he had felt it.
At present, Chen Changsheng"s body contained a vast amount of true essence. Although he could not use it, he still felt like a rich man, a rich young master with ten thousand strings of cash strapped around his waist and a bag that he could not open. The place he wanted to go was the Qu River"s southern sh.o.r.e. It truly gave the feeling of having ten thousand strings of cash around the waist and riding a crane down to Jiangnan.1
Somewhat unfortunately, the Qu River was not the River of Oblivion or the Red River; even the widest of rivers had a limit, and this was only several dozen zhang. Moreover, he was still taking part in the Grand Examination, and so it did not take long, even with the White Crane flying as slowly as possible, for him to descend onto the meadow of the southern sh.o.r.e.
Chen Changsheng dismounted from the White Crane like an elder, then clasped his hands in thanks.
Luoluo came up to welcome him, very delighted. She was also rather curious about the White Crane.
Her royal father had once said that white cranes had an immortal aura. Moreover, they were also "white", so White Emperor City had never used white cranes as mounts. She had met all sorts of monsters as a child, but she had rarely interacted with white cranes. When she had last seen this one during the Ivy Festival, she had wanted to get close to it. Now, she turned to Chen Changsheng and asked with her eyes if she could touch it.
She knew that this White Crane was not her teacher"s, but she believed that the White Crane would become her teacher"s in the end. As his student, she did not think this request too excessive.
In the end, though, she was a demi-human princess, and so the White Crane was somewhat discomfited by her body"s Qi, or perhaps fearful. Without waiting for Chen Changsheng to say anything, it let out a bright cry and took off into the sky with a flap of its wings.
Chen Changsheng waved goodbye.
Luoluo felt thoroughly regretful, but she was thankful to the White Crane for helping her teacher cross the river today, so she also very seriously waved goodbye to express her grat.i.tude.
The crane"s cries eventually faded into the distance.
The meadow of the Qu River was silent.
What did this mean?
Was this Grand Examination a game? In order to cross the several dozen zhang of the river, the examinees from the various schools and sects had used all sorts of techniques, exhausting all possibilities, and in the end, Chen Changsheng…had actually mounted a crane to cross it!
Crucially, he had ridden that White Crane!
Yes, this was a very famous white crane. Many people recognized it, especially the youths from the south.
This was Xu Yourong"s White Crane.
Many people noticed that when the White Crane left, it was flying south.
Holy Maiden Peak was in the south.
The crowd turned to Chen Changsheng, their expressions running the gamut of emotions.
The disciples from Holy Maiden Peak and the Longevity Sect had especially nasty faces.
n.o.body knew that the White Crane had come to the capital a few days ago and then been asked to stay by Chen Changsheng.
People would inevitably speculate. Perhaps Xu Yourong had let the White Crane travel the vast distance from the south to the capital specifically for the purpose of lending her fiancé a helping hand in the Grand Examination?
Luoluo grasped Chen Changsheng"s sleeve, her face br.i.m.m.i.n.g with joy as she incessantly praised his wisdom.
She praised with deep sincerity, so much so that even Chen Changsheng began to feel embarra.s.sed.
Tang Thirty-Six patted him on the shoulder and said nothing.
Xuanyuan Po shook his head at him, wanting to say that it was no good to do things this way, but when he thought about how Chen Changsheng was his grandteacher, he could only settle into a depressed silence.
Su Moyu walked over and asked his question again. "Is this way also okay?"
He asked very earnestly, with no intent to jeer or ridicule. He truly wished to ask Chen Changsheng if this method went against the rules or not.
This was a question that many other examinees also had.
One of the scholars of Scholartree Manor found a proctor and solemnly spoke to him.
The examinees watched, waiting for the final result.
After some time, the proctor walked to the Orthodox Academy"s group and sighed at Chen Changsheng, "This way is not allowed."
Of the proctors and Li Palace priests overseeing today"s examination, more than half were from the Bureau of Ecclesiastic Education, so they were naturally looking after the Orthodox Academy and Chen Changsheng. However, their care was in the details, like in tea, or brushes, or one"s seating area. Right now, many people had seen Chen Changsheng cross the river by riding a crane, so they had no means of looking after him.
Chen Changsheng was naturally certain about the outcome before making this sort of plan.
"There is no such rule forbidding this method of crossing the river."
He then pointed at another examinee and said, "Earlier, he asked the examiner across the river if bringing his elder"s mount and using it to fly across the river would also count as pa.s.sing, and the examiner did not reject the idea."
The disciple from the Longevity Sect"s Purple Qi Cliff froze. He thought to himself, could it be that my question actually helped you? But as it had many witnesses, he could not simply deny the existence of such a conversation.
The proctor was somewhat startled at his words. Then he laughed and shook his head, saying no more.
This naturally resulted in many examinees" raising a fierce protest, but Gou Hanshi and his fellow disciples, Tianhai Shengxue, and Zhuang Huanyu said nothing.
Su Moyu commented, "Although…this method is truly rather opportunistic, since it does not break the rules, I have no objection."
As he represented the Li Palace Academy, his words carried some weight amongst the students of the capital"s academies. Adding on the fact that Zhuang Huanyu and the two students from Star Seizer Academy also said nothing, the voices of protest gradually faded. Only a few young cultivators of the south were still unrelenting in wanting the examiner to strip Chen Changsheng of his credentials.
"Eh? Where did those people go?"
Someone suddenly realized that Chen Changsheng"s group had vanished from the riverside.
The crowd all turned to look and saw that the Orthodox Academy"s group had already left and were just about to enter the spa.r.s.e forest neighboring the meadow.
One of the scholars of the Scholartree Manor glared at them and icily said, "Truly shameless to the extreme."
Chen Changsheng did not feel that crossing the river by riding the crane was anything shameless. Of course, he also did not think it was anything to be proud of. Just like the petty shrewdness often spoken of by the common people, it was very difficult to give an accurate a.s.sessment uncolored by emotion. But the Grand Examination was too important to him and his opponents were too powerful. He needed to utilize all his advantages.
As long as he could reach his goal without harming anyone else, the opinions of others would have no effect on him. He wanted to take first rank of the first banner in the Grand Examination and his greatest advantage at the moment was that no one knew just how strong he really was, not even Luoluo. At the same time, with the a.s.sistance of the Bureau of Ecclesiastic Education, he had a very deep understanding of the strengths of all the other examinees.
So when he saw that youth under the pavilion, he became very uneasy.
This youth was too mysterious, almost unfathomable.
In the chilly spring wind, this youth was thinly dressed, with his sleeves rolled up to reveal his arms. He seemed fearless of the cold.
According to the information provided by the Bureau of Ecclesiastic Education, this youth was an examinee from Star Seizer Academy called Zhang Tingtao.
Chen Changsheng was confident that this was not his real name.
This youth simply didn"t take part in the literary test, was the fastest to cross the sea of trees, and the earliest to cross the Qu River. After entering the forest and walking under the pavilion, he never moved.
Whether it was Gou Hanshi or Tianhai Shengxue crossing the river, Luoluo crossing the river, or even Chen Changsheng crossing the river by riding a crane, no matter how excited the meadow on the sh.o.r.e got, he never walked out of the pavilion.
The youth had not even shot a glance at the river.
He stood alone in the pavilion, thus causing the pavilion and this mountain to also become lonely.
It was impossible for such a solitary person to be called Tingtao.
"Listening to the waves on the sh.o.r.e" seemed like a lonely and refined image, but such a person was actually still yearning for noise and clamour.
"If I"m not mistaken, his real name should be Zhexiu."
Tang Thirty-Six looked at the youth in the pavilion, his expression grave. "…This is a wolf from the north."
___________________
1. Jiangnan is a city in China, and it also translates to "south of the river". The entire saying, "descending onto Jiangnan riding a crane with ten thousand strings of cash around the waist" is actually an old Chinese folktale, though the city mentioned in this case is Yangzhou. One day, four young scholars entering the capital to take the imperial exams rescue an old man, who just so happened to be an immortal. This immortal found these four scholars to have some potential, so he agreed to fulfill a desire for each of them. The first was perhaps rather poor and asked, "I want to be rich and have ten thousand strings of cash wrapped around my waist." The second asked, "I want to be Governor of Yangzhou and be adored by the ma.s.ses." The third asked, "I want to be an immortal." The fourth scholar thought for a long time and finally said, "I want to have ten thousand strings of cash wrapped around my waist and descend to Yangzhou riding a crane", as riding a crane is a.s.sociated with immortality. To make a long story short, the first spent himself into poverty, the second abused his power and was exiled, the third went mad from power and jumped into an abyss, and the fourth diligently became an official, made a lot of money, gave it all up to cultivate, and eventually descended to Yangzhou on a crane.↩