CH 149

Chapter 149 – Up the Stream

TL: Sponsored chapter (2/2). Thank you for your support!

Purple radiance scattered about in every direction as Jing Xingchen rose from the surface of the water, standing atop the Broken Star Sword. In the blink of an eye, he appeared in front of the several people present. He glanced at Sacred Son Bai Lu and said, “Where are the other people of the Sacred Sect?”

Bai Lu used his lips to gesture at the red and gold great hall nearby, and a rare mocking expression appeared on his handsome face. “If you came any later, who knows if there’d even be anything left.”

The red and gold shroud of light had already unwittingly shrunk down, and by now it only covered a range of about 10 meters in front of the great hall. If they didn’t go in right away, the gates to the great hall would close completely and wouldn’t open back up until someone had officially obtained Vast Ocean Primordial Lord’s water element inheritance.

Yan Wuji rose up from the water on his demonic cloud. Although his appearance didn’t look that different from before, if you looked closely, it was possible to see from his face that he had actually suffered a loss.

“This Starstrand Higher Knowledge…” Yan Wuji muttered, somewhat hesitant.

Jing Xingchen simply cut him a glance out of the corner of his eye, not responding. He turned back to Jian Liangbi and the others and said, “Go on in. The trial process of this Primordial Lord inheritance will be a pretty good experience for you guys.”

“Yes, Martial Uncle Jing,” Jian Liangbi said, bringing Luo Hongying with him into the contracting red and gold shroud of light.

He Junyu, Xu Disheng, and Li Cangyun cupped their hands to Jing Xingchen before entering the range of the shroud of light.

After a while, the red and gold shroud of light completely shrunk down and the gates closed, plunging the massive Great Harmony Water Palace into silence once more.

“What, so the disciples of the Shangqing Sacred Sect meet one of their Sacred Sons and act like they didn’t even see him, huh? Isn’t that just too lacking in etiquette?” Yan Wuji said sarcastically. He had lost a bit of face earlier, so when he observed the behavior of Xu Disheng and the others who had entered the Water Palace last, he intentionally brought up this point.

“So what? There are many people with the title of Sacred Son in our Shangqing Sacred Sect. If they always had to cup their hands in greeting, then there’d be no time left for anything else in the day. Forget cultivating, they’d just be there all day, cupping their hands at everything they see,” Jing Xingchen said coldly before Bai Lu could open his mouth to respond.

After being suppressed by Jing Xingchen earlier and now taking another loss to him in a battle of words, Yan Wuji harrumphed and didn’t try to find trouble with him anymore. He simply gazed off in the direction of the Great Harmony Water Palace, his thoughts obscure to any onlooker.

“Senior Martial Brother Jing, Junior Martial Sister will be leaving now to attend to that matter,” Bian Hongyu said gently, stepping on a lotus flower Magic Treasure.

Jing Xingchen gazed deeply at her for a moment and said, “Go on then. Remember to be careful.”

“Junior Martial Sister knows,” Bian Hongyu replied. She cupped her hands to Bai Lu again and flew off into the distance on her lotus flower Magic Treasure.

Seeing her leave in the direction of the origin of the Zhaojiang river tributary where there were countless monsters gathered, Hong Zhao said in a surprised tone, “Is that Mingxin Mountain Range’s Bian Hongyu?”

“That’s right,” Jing Xingchen said, his expression complex.

“Even in a place as far as our Ancient Nuwa Sect, we’ve heard of this female genius of yours,” Hong Zhao said. He suddenly looked like he thought of something, then turned to look at Sacred Son Bai Lu. “Bai Lu, I heard that in all of these dozens of years, you never once had a cultivation partner, nor any maids. Don’t you find it boring?”

Yan Wuji also looked over at this moment. Fifty years ago when Sacred Son Bai Lu had risen to astronomical fame, he had the adoring gazes of countless women. But all this time, he never had a cultivation partner, and he never even got involved with any women whatsoever. It was considered a marvel amongst the disciples of the Shangqing Sacred Sect.

Bai Lu didn’t open his mouth to speak. He simply gazed off at the tumbling waters of the Zhaojiang, where the river flowed along with turbulent vigor. Water splashed and swirled in eddies with the ebb and flow, perpetual and never-ending.

… …

“What are you doing? I’m busy right now! Ugh, so annoying!” a youth said, brushing a girl’s hand away before returning to work on his wooden carving.

The meticulously cut slices of fruits were knocked to the ground, and the wooden tray clattered loudly, but this didn’t attract the youth’s attention at all.

The girl crouched down. Her fair, slender fingers picked up each piece of dust-covered fruit and placed them back on the tray. Once she finished picking them up, she left.

… …

“You’ve been carving for half a day already. Are you tired? How about taking a short break? The people all over the city really love your wooden carvings. At noon, there was even someone who placed a down payment of 10 gold taels!” The girl’s chin was propped up on her small, delicate hand, and her face looked pleased as if she was proud of the youth’s achievements.

“Can you not talk to me when I’m carving? If you want the gold then just take it. You know that I’m never short for money,” the youth said offhandedly, carefully blowing away the wood shavings as he examined the exquisitely carved wooden carving in his hands.

… …

“Hey, my father spoke to me today. He said that I’m already 16, and that I’m reaching the age where it’s about time to start thinking about marriage,” the girl said, her small face blushing an attractive pink.

“Hah?” the youth said, distractedly lifting his head to look at her.

“Hmph, I’m not talking to you!”

… …

“I really like this poem. How about I recite it to you?”

“Then recite it quickly!” the youth said, as impatient as always. His attention was completely focused on the carving knife in his hands.

“The reeds and rushes are deeply green, and the white dew is turned into hoarfrost. The man of whom I think, is somewhere about the water,” the girl recited, picking up a simple and crude wooden carving from underneath the youth’s desk before continuing, “I go up the stream in quest of him, but the way is difficult and long. I go down the stream in quest of him…”

(TL: This is a poem called 蒹葭 (The Rush Leaves) from the Book of Songs, from the pre-Qin era. Here is the full version if you’re interested.)

“Huh? Why did you stop reciting?” the youth asked, putting down the wooden carving in his hand for the first time. He lifted his gaze to look at the girl, his bright eyes shimmering like starlight.

Her face flushed red and she lifted the wooden carving in her hands. “Do you still remember when you made this wooden carving?”

“It was my first carving, a few years ago. I think it was modeled after you?” the youth said, uncertain.

“Yeah,” the girl said, blushing. “The last line of that poem is, ‘I go down the stream in quest of him, and lo! he is right in the midst of the water.”

The youth lowered his head again and picked up his carving knife. “Got it.”

“Then how about the two of us make a pact?”

“Huh?”

“In private, I’ll call you Bai Lu, and you’ll call me Jianjia. How does that sound?”

(TL: Bai Lu here means ‘white dew’ and Jianjia means ‘rush leaves’ (aka reeds), which is also the name of the poem. Bai Lu’s current real name uses the characters for ‘white’ and ‘deer’.)

“….Childish.”

… …

“Say, are you going to marry me or not?” the girl summoned her courage to ask, taking the wooden carving out of the youth’s hands.

“When did I ever say I was going to marry you?”

The look in the girl’s eyes fell. She looked at him again and said, “I understand.”

… …

“I’m going to be getting married.”

“Okay.”

… …

The youth’s mind was a mess. The room seemed to be missing something. He anxiously pushed the large pile of wooden carvings in front of him out of the way and stared blankly at the desk before him.

The tray that used to always be filled with meticulously cut fruit was now covered with a layer of dust.

The inkstone that he used to practice his calligraphy in his free time had long since dried out completely.

“Are you tired? Let me help you massage your fingers.”

""

“In the past few days, quite a few people have come to my house to propose marriage. Gosh, they’re all so annoying.”

The girl’s bright laughter seemed to ring faintly in his ears.

In his daze, he seemed to see that sweet, beautiful girl smiling as her fair, white hands helped him grind the inkstone. But she was gone.

Unwittingly, he…

“Jianjia?” The youth mumbled to himself. He picked up the wooden carving on the ground and began to immerse his entire soul into it.

… …

“AGHHH!!” With trembling hands, the youth swept all of the things on top of the desk onto the floor. The wooden carvings and gold and silver all bumped and collided with each other as they tumbled to the ground with a heavy thud.

“Jianjia, where are you…?”

… …

“Jianjia…..”

The youth leaned helplessly against the wall as tears fell silently from his eyes. The feelings that lay at the deepest part of his heart churned turbulently. He muttered, “Fleeting clouds, morning dew… Time is transient and life is short. In my confusion, I was wrong. I’ll listen to you. In the future… I’ll call myself Bai Lu.”

(TL: The characters used for Bai Lu here are ‘white’ and ‘deer’. This comes from a play on words from the two idioms that Bai Lu uses here back to back. 浮云朝露 [fú yún zhāo lù] means fleeting clouds, morning dew. The morning dew part is a tribute to his previous Bai Lu name that Jianjia gave him, which meant white dew. The idiom itself means that time is fleeting and life is short—referring to the bittersweet time they spent together. The second idiom, 覆鹿寻蕉, [fù lù xún jiāo], comes from a chapter of Liezi, a text from 4th century BC, where a man encountered a deer in the forest and killed it, then happily hid it somewhere. But he wasn’t sure if this was a dream or not, and in the end couldn’t find it. This idiom refers to a situation where someone gets mixed up and becomes unsure of the line between dreams and the waking experience, and makes mistakes as a result. I’ll leave it to your own interpretation, but he’s most likely calling himself this as a way to atone for his mistake of being too absorbed with his wood carving and being too slow to realize that he had unknowingly come to care for this person. Sorry for the long TL note.)

… …

More than 100 years passed, making those memories seem like they were from lifetimes ago. Sacred Son Bai Lu retracted his gaze from the surface of the water and said, “My master already gave an order. Five years from now, I’m to marry the granddaughter of the direct descendent of Primordial Lord Hongzhen.”

Hong Zhao was somewhat baffled. He somehow felt that in this short time, Bai Lu underwent some kind of change. When he exchanged a glance with Jing Xingchen, both of them saw question marks in each others’ eyes.

Yan Wuji wasn’t as attentive as these two. He smiled simply and said, “That’s great. I heard that Primordial Lord Hongzhen is extremely rich and influential. When you get married, I’ll be sure to come with a lot of people and impose upon the festivities.”

Bai Lu patted him on the shoulder and gave him a rare grin. “Sure,” he said.

Bai Lu no longer looked at Hong Zhao and Jing Xingchen. He threw himself up onto the white chariot. The four snow white spirit beasts let out resonant cries, then the chariot shot off in a dazzling streak of silver light. Before long, he gradually disappeared into the clouds and mist on the horizon.

“Why’d that guy suddenly turn all weird?” Yan Wuji said, watching the silver light fade off into the distance. But he was only met with Hong Zhao and Jing Xingchen’s silence.

Back when they were at the Taiqing Fantasy Realm, Bai Lu, Hong Zhao, and Yan Wuji had gone through life and death together. Although they belonged to different sects and were different races, they still had an unspoken mutual understanding of one another.

After a moment of silence, Hong Zhao shook his head and said, “He’s just another broken-hearted person in this world.”