Estranged - CH 129

Hua-Shan was still faintly breathing and had not yet lost consciousness. Unfortunately, she could only rejoice for a moment, and her countenance changed as soon as she saw who had come to her rescue.

The young master walked past her slowly.

At this moment, the fox spirits were but worthless, discarded pawns. It made more sense to forget about them rather than deal with them.

Hua-Shan was even afraid to breathe—she was afraid that the young master would focus his thoughts on her. Just one movement of his hand would send her directly to the Yellow Springs.

She could not regret her decisions more. She regretted that her greed made her return. She thought she would benefit from their conflict, but ended up as a laughable mantis—she had thought that she had caught the cicada in her palm, but it turned out that there was a siskin waiting behind her back.

Fortunately, the young master did not spare her a glance.

All his concentration was on that person in front of him.

Jiufang Changming.

This strange person with a strange name had appeared completely out of the blue in Hongluo.

At first, the young master attached no importance to this person and his companion. Hongluo was like a wide road going through the country, and every day many people came and went, including cultivators and other strange people. These two were just a small episode in this story, and were not even worth mentioning.

However, a snowstorm had whipped up here all of a sudden, and many people were stuck in Hongluo. For no apparent reason, many inexplicable accidents had then happened, and all of them were connected to these two. They had ventured right into the eye of the storm, becoming chess pieces that caused him trouble.

Since they were causing trouble, he should get rid of them. He had appeared and attacked Jiufang Changming sneakily to test him. There was little doubt that Changming had already been heavily wounded during their previous encounter, but the young master could not tell how dire Changming’s condition was.

The young master was always a careful man. No matter what he did, he made sure that nothing could go wrong. The young master, obviously, could not afford to suffer a setback here because of this man.

“Jiufang Changming, right? I don’t know what sect you hail from, and I’m not going to ask. After all, we simply met by chance. We’re matched in strength, so we should do as all wise people do, and offer each other respect while sitting together and having a pleasant talk over some wine. Yet you appeared here, meddled in the business of others and turned into my enemy for the sake of these pathetic animals. A pity indeed,” said the young master, who seemed to be expressing his honest feelings and was not in a rush to attack.

He was waiting—waiting for Changming to show a weakness. He needed to understand Changming’s strength and end his life once and for all.

When Hua-Shan heard him say “animals”, she flinched. She suddenly realized that this whole affair could never end well for her. She had been indulging in a wild fantasy if she thought she could put forward her conditions to the young master. In his eyes, she was no different from A-Rong—the both of them were  expendable, just some playthings that could be thrown away. She fancied the idea that she could take advantage of Jiufang Changming’s state, but in truth, the young master was just using her to find out how grave his wounds were.

When she understood this, she lost all hope for any favorable outcome. Now, she was only waiting for a chance to run as far away as she could to save her life.

Blood was streaming down Jiufang Changming’s chin, and dripping onto the snow.

He leaned forward slightly, but he was not completely bent over and was still standing firmly with his sword clutched in his hands. The sword’s blade was glowing faintly, growing brighter and then darker again.

While it seemed like he had been weakened, he still maintained a perfectly steady defensive posture, and was tightly surrounded with his spiritual power.

That was why the young master had not moved yet. He wanted to kill this man, but did not want to be the one to be murdered instead.

“May I ask why you did what you did in Hongluo?”

The young master remained silent, and Changming chuckled.

“If you were a demonic cultivator, killing people would help you progress, or you could turn them into cultivation furnaces, so human lives would certainly be useful to you. You do not have a trace of demonic qi on yourself, yet you ordered foxes and demons to kill people in the open. Those who were murdered were all common people, and there was not a single cultivator among them. I don’t see how it can benefit you. Unless—you want to fabricate a charge against someone?”

He sensed his opponent release a bit of his qi, and a gust of wind, as sharp as a sword, suddenly broke forth and swiftly surged at Changming, as mighty as  a mountain and as unstoppable as the sea itself!

Changming had to create a seal to stop it, but was also forced to take three steps back.

Only three, and not a step more.

If it had been more than that, he would have revealed his weakness to his enemy.

A violent hawk would always tear its prey into pieces as soon as it sensed it could.

But the young master’s reaction proved Changming right.

“To put blame on whom? There’s someone you want to kill in Hongluo, yet you can’t move against them directly, and can’t order the foxes and demons to do it. That’s because they can’t do anything against that person, right?”

The young master said indifferently: “Daoyou, you’re moving towards your doom by prying too much into this. You’re an outsider, so why do you insist on getting involved in this mess? I also wonder, how does this benefit you in any way?”

Changming sighed: “That’s an old story. I think that it’s too long for you to listen to, and you wouldn’t want to listen to it until the end.”

The young master: “How can you know whether I would want to listen to it if you haven’t started telling it?”

Changming: “If I say it’s connected to the Wanjian Immortal Clan, would you still feel like listening to it?”

The young master: “You can start, we’ll see.”

While saying this, the young master slightly clenched his fists, ready to strike. As soon as Changming made a mistake, he would not hesitate to attack.

Jiufang Changming seemed unperturbed by this.

He could feel the fox poison spreading rapidly all over his body from the back of his hand, reaching even his hands and feet, filling his meridians and burning him like fire burnt dry grass. If even the slightest thing went wrong, the poison would leave no place uneffected, and the scorching pain would cut deeper and deeper through his flesh, splitting open his bones and letting his blood gush out in streams. In the end, it would cut all the way to his heart, tearing it into pieces but refusing to let him die until he had suffered enough.

Just now, when Hua-Shan tried to attack him, thus forcing him into a corner, Changming had had a breakthrough. He remembered bits of his past, and even the memories of how he had wandered through the Yellow Springs had been restored in the sea of his consciousness. His cultivation had mostly returned to him. As he used to be in his past, he should have been as strong as this person in front of him, but his old wounds and the fox poison were akin handcuffs to Changming, so his options were quite limited.

The fox poison was not a common poison. By nature, fox spirits were demons that could evoke the deepest desires of a human heart, magnifying feelings that were usually not as strong and making people act against reason. And Changming’s weakness was—

Changming forced his erratic breathing to calm down. If he revealed a hint of his condition, his opponent would immediately notice it.

This one was a unique life-long enemy of Jiufang Changming, way more terrifying and unpredictable than people like Shengjue and Chunchi of the Wanlian Buddhist Temple, or the master of demons, princess Linglong. Even though Changming was in the past, this man’s cultivation was only greater now, since at this moment, he was still himself, instead of a soul that had occupied his disciple’s body and borrowed his strength.

“Once, there lived a man who had an esteemable title and extraordinary cultivation. He looked at the world from high above and was a gem amongst cultivators, one of the best talents there. If anyone in this world could ascend, no doubt, that would have been him.”

Changming regulated his breathing and slowly told his tale, thus hiding his pain.

The young master squinted. It was hard to tell whether he had noticed yet.

“Many people considered him to be the hope of all Daoist sects, and he thought this way too. However, when he first entered a meditation after breaking above the realm of a grandmaster, he stumbled upon an unprecedented barrier: he couldn’t find the last piece that could lead to ascension. At first, he thought that that was his mistake, so he continued to look for a way to overcome this. He traveled around the world, visited every talented person and hermit, refined pills and created medicine, and used the tools of immortals and other treasures. Unfortunately, he had not gained anything despite that. Thus, he vaguely started to realize that the problem didn’t lie with him, but rather with the world. The human world was at fault.”

“Your tale, daoyou, is very strange and new. And here I thought you’d tell some old love story of a fortunate reunion between lovers,” the young master laughed, and his murderous gaze moved away from Changming. He snapped his fingers, pointing at the Changming Sword.

Clang!

Their spiritual powers clashed in the air, and the blade hummed clearly, canceling both spiritual powers.

This round ended in a draw as well.

The young master still could not tell how severe his opponent’s wounds were.

“It’s obvious that daoyou is very knowledgeable and has a lot of experience. How would I dare tell this story if it wasn’t a novel one.”

Changming wiped blood off from the corner of his mouth with a light movement of his fingers. He stood up straight, and his eyes seemed brighter now.

Could it be that there was indeed a skill that allowed a person to recover from their wounds in such a short period of time? Seeing this, the young master could not help but start being filled with doubt.

“Go on.”

“Finally, he realized that the world itself had set certain limitations. No matter how high-levelled his cultivation was, he wouldn’t ascend. By reaching the peak of cultivation, he wouldn’t break away from these shackles—instead, he would die, leaving this world forever with his soul scattering away and ceasing to exist. That thing that they called ascension was entirely a scam, or, it would be better described as just a wishful fantasy that cultivators had come up with eons ago. He couldn’t accept this truth and had no intention of becoming one of these losers. He wanted to take a new road—one that was drastically different from what others chose. Not only did he want to ascend, he also wanted to achieve true immortality, to have more power than anyone else.”

While saying this, Changming was staring at him.

The young master was dressed in black. His face was hidden under his hood, just like Sir An’s. But movements always would never lie, and if one’s heart was full of fear, some details would definitely betray them. The young master clenched his fists suddenly. Obviously, Changming’s words had unsettled him.

“Who. Are. You?”

His eerie voice did not seem to come from nearby or faraway, but in a moment, it had reached Changming. The young master could not bear to wait any longer and attacked!

And since he decided to move, he decided to take Changming’s life right now!

Changming was ready. As soon as he thought of this, the Changming Sword floated in front of him to interrupt the strike.

In a flash, the ground cracked, and the mountains shook. Black clouds were seething at the horizon with flashes of thunder glimmering in them. The wind was howling.

One hundred years in the future, Changming had not managed to stop the destruction of their world, so he had chosen to sacrifice his life to die together with Luomei.

Now, in the past, where two strong people arrived from the future, breaking through time and space, Luomei was even stronger, while Changming was wounded.

While one thing was in decline, the other rose. The sky fell and the earth quaked.

A-Rong was looking at the hurricane, stupefied. The gusts of spiritual powers almost knocked her down, so she had to grab onto a pillar nearby.

It was not any better for the rest of them. Hua-Shan, who had been wounded, and the other fox spirits were thrown away with the wave just like boats that were out of control. They were thrown up high and then fell down heavily, some of them vomiting blood and dying right here. Hua-Shan was a bit smarter, so she did her best to crawl to a fence nearby before the two started fighting. She tried to shrink herself into a corner that no one paid any attention to.

The spiritual power of Changming’s opponent was drawing closer. Changming had created a barrier, but had to keep slowly retreating.

A fierce pain shot through his chest and he could not help but gasp. Now, blood was oozing not just from his mouth, but also from the corners of his mouth.

Perhaps, this time, he did make a mistake.

The past version of Luomei was too strong, and the wounded Changming could not match him in strength. He knew it for sure.

He had never been afraid of dying early and only had one regret—

Yun Weisi.

Yun Weisi.

Yun Weisi…

He opened his mouth slightly, silently saying this name.

You and I, we’re like shen and shang—even in death we can’t see each other.

Shen and shang: “shenshang”, the title of the novel: two people who can never meet. Literally translates as two constellations, Orion and Antares, that never appear in the sky at the same time