Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 246: Letting Go

Not too long after the woman left, another person many, many miles away immediately reported, “Someone has hired a hitman for our target.”

“Oh? Things are getting interesting,” chuckled Number Nine, a man as skinny as a bamboo plant with a goatee. The waves of the laws of nature in his hands disappeared as they immediately deduced who this woman was. His expression shifted slightly before a pleasantly surprised smile spread across his face.

“The target…killed the older brother of this young lady. And she’s no ordinary woman herself. She’s a saintess ordained by the gods of the city. Don’t you think that’s interesting?” Number Nine explained to the old man next to him.

“Gods?” The old man slowly put his calligraphy brush down and stared at the painting on the table with a tinge of disdain on his face. “They’re just useless bums.”

It was clear that gods, like Buddhist cultivators, were very unpopular among cultivators. These people kept harping on morals and ethics, yet their followers were no better than robbers and prostitutes. At the end of the day, everyone was just as awful as one another.

But while it was one thing to be a hypocrite, it was another to also proclaim all the problems with cultivators. These people made themselves seem like they were invincible, but they were unable to fight against the much larger group of cultivators and were trampled upon by cultivators. They didn’t even dare to let a fart out in the presence of cultivators.

“Useless bums can be useful in some ways too. Number Seven…you’re being too harsh,” said Number Nine with a laugh. He held the same opinion about gods as the other old man, but given the current situation, these useless bums might actually be of use right now.

“Number Five has infiltrated the Dongfang family for more than a thousand years, and he’s finally been able to take the position of elder and keep it. So now, it’s time to get back the thing that belongs to our Order,” said Number Seven frostily as he drank all the wine in his cup and smacked his lips.

“The Dongfang family…has grown old.”

Gu Suijhan calmly stood in the skies, his black robe flapping in the wind. He was like the lone lotus in an empty valley – ethereal, indifferent, and struck fear in the hearts of others. In the dark night sky, he looked no different from the ordinary dark clouds above, silently disguising himself as part of nature.

Below, Li Yu was fighting Dongfang Bubai, who had managed to shake off his bodyguards. The sounds of yelling resounded continuously and echoed in this fairly small dense forest.

“You’re not bad,” Dongfang Bubai praised his opponent after he spat a mouthful of bloodied spit out, wiped the blood on his lips away, and panted heavily.

“You’re not bad yourself,” Li Yu squeezed the words out even as he rested his hands on his knees, his back bent as he panted heavily as well. His face and neck were red as he tried his best to suppress the queasiness in his body.

At this point, Li Yu suddenly didn’t want to kill this opponent since it was rare to find someone so much like himself. Could they be like long-lost brothers or something? He shook his head and threw this ridiculous concept that belonged only in some lousy television drama out of his head.

He yelled, “Again!”

Before he could even finish saying that, he had already started dashing toward his opinion like a bull that saw red.

After going through so much in life, Li Yu felt nothing but bitterness when he recounted his experience. It didn’t seem too long ago when he was still a young master himself, living a life free from worry and getting food and clothing by just stretching his arms out every day. But once it was confirmed that he had no gift for cultivation, nobody took him seriously anymore.

Now, he had finally used his hard work to reach their expectations. He could cultivate, and he had advanced in his cultivation level. But his family was gone. He had become a pitiful man with no family to go back home to.

His parents were dead. Rou’er was dead. His brothers…were also dead. They had all died. They had all died in that natural disaster.

All these things had forced him to mature rapidly in this short time. He was no longer that young man who had stormed out of the house because of his anger, and he certainly wasn’t a piece of trash who was constantly filled with displeasure anymore.

He wanted to cultivate, he wanted to make it to the next level, and the next, and the next…he wanted to stand at the top of the world. Most importantly, he wanted to revive Rou’er. He wanted to recreate a physical body for her.

In the face of all these, Dongfang Bubai was nothing. He was a good opponent, but nothing more.

The two young men had no idea that there was someone watching everything unfold from above with a completely indifferent expression on his face. He was neither unhappy nor happy, and he didn’t say a single word. He was like the dead, or like a god, looking down below, his emotions completely unaffected.

Gu Suihan could see every spell and technique that Dongfang Bubai had used, and that’s why he made that remark earlier.

To him, while the Dongfang family seemed to be the leading faction of the 39^th domain and enjoyed a very high standing, with only two other factions that could be considered their competitors, they had really grown old. The sword in their hands had grown dull and rusty. It was no longer as shiny or as sharp as before.

If that weren’t the case, then a legitimate descendant of the Dongfang family, Dongfang Bubai, wouldn’t be so weak. He wouldn’t be having trouble taking down Li Yu, a man who was born a piece of trash and had only cultivated for a few years.

Of course, part of Li Yu’s growth was because Gu Suihan pulled a few dirty tricks, but as someone from a major faction, Dongfang Bubai ought to have better and more advanced techniques on hand. But what Gu Suihan saw made him greatly disappointed.

“The problem with all these big families is that they cultivate the body but not the heart. They refine the soul but not the spirit. What a tragedy.”

Gu Suihan’s final review was harsh, mocking, and disdainful. He held great contempt for such people.

“All of you are really bold! You’ve stretched your hand out so obviously – aren’t you afraid that it might get chopped off?”

Gu Suihan’s expression suddenly turned nasty. The saber on his belt hummed loudly, and a huge wave of murderous intent rushed into the sky. He looked up as though he were looking into the boundless void beyond. The murderous look in his eyes intensified as though they contained a sea of blood with floating corpses or dried bones strewn in a field.

His eyes were like a bolt of lightning, or a knife, as it sliced through the void and cut right through the tentacles that the other party had used to spy on him. A deep and muffled noise resounded from afar and the shockwaves from the attack rippled through the void slowly, swirling with fiendish qi.

“Just as I expected, you guys are here. I…look forward to this.”

In that instant, Gu Suihan started bleeding from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. The bright red blood slowly flowed down like tiny snakes, dyeing his handsome yet feminine features and making him look as terrifying as a vengeful ghost.

Actually, after Gu Suihan had gone on his rampage in Fengyang and killed all those Nascent Change cultivators, he had gained a huge amount of resources. But it wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near enough to help him return to his peak.

If we could use building a house as a metaphor for cultivators, then Gu Suihan was someone who had just finished laying the foundation but had gone ahead to buy all the furniture already. The body was like the house itself and resources were like the bricks needed to build it. He didn’t have enough bricks to build the house of his dreams.

“The night sky remains the same, the stars continue to shine brightly. The moon is still the same color, but my heart is now unsettled.”

Gu Suihan looked up at the silvery crescent in the sky and lost interest in watching the two ants below fight, so he turned and left.

The fight in the void between two spaces that were so far from one another and the huge impact it left actually didn’t attract any attention at all. It was like the rain in the night that dried up by the next morning. There were no residual waves left behind. Both parties had carefully controlled their own presence in this fight.

It was late at night, so the streets were no longer as lively and noisy as in the day. Only a few small eateries were still open and formed the only tiny, dim lights in the darkness.

Gu Suihan sat at one of them and didn’t care that his long robe was touching the ground. His expression was calm as he drank his fragrant bowl of pig brain soup. A cold wind blew, picking up some dried leaves from time to time. It seemed like he was the only person existing on this street that looked long and endless.

“Get out!” an angry shout resounded, followed by the groans of pain. A scholar with messy clothes and long messy hair was thrown out by a few large and muscular men.

“Is there fairness in this world at all? Everyone knows about the four joys, but they don’t remember the four griefs. Ten years of my life have been nothing more than a mirage…like flowers in a mirror, like the moon in the water…”

The scholar’s eyes were unfocused as he drunkenly got up from the ground and picked up his bottle of wine that already broke when he was thrown out just now. His expression was of great sadness as he raised his head and wailed loudly. He was filled with misery and much despair.

“The four joys – rain after a long drought; meeting an old acquaintance in a different town; the first night after the wedding; the announcement of your name on the scholars’ ranking.”

The owner of the eatery, an old man with a bent back, scooped out some pig brain soup into a bowl, added a little oil and salt, then sprinkled a little spring onion on top. It was such a wonderful smelling delight. He put it in front of the scholar, who was wailing loudly as he leaned against a wall nearby and patted the younger man’s shoulders gently.

“The rain after a long drought…turned out to contain poison. An old acquaintance in a different town…turned out to be an enemy. The first night after the wedding…went to someone else. The scholars’ ranking was announced…but your name isn’t on it.”

Gu Suihan took a sip of his soup. His clear voice was like the ringing of the bell in the morning, and spoke at a leisurely pace. His voice wasn’t loud, but it resounded clearly all around. He cut a slim figure, yet he stood out as he sat at this little eatery that was like a lighthouse on this dark night.

“I’ve been through all of that in just a few short months.”

The scholar’s face was covered in dirt, so his tears drew two clear lines down his filthy cheeks. He picked up the bowl of soup that the old man had given him and gulped it down before uttering this statement in a choked voice.

“Buddha said, “3,000 years of glory is just one moment, the snap of the fingers. A century later, it is nothing more than a handful of sand.”

Gu Suihan could see that the scholar was merely an ordinary man who was hoping to make a name for himself. He paused for a moment, then quoted from Buddhist scriptures, “The answer to everything is…letting go.”