The sacrifice of two cultivators was only enough to give living beings all over the world half a day to escape. The moment he was swallowed up by the Yellow Springs, Feng Qingyun thought that everything would return to silence. If there was no collapse of the sky, his spirit should have long returned to the underworld and entered the circle of reincarnation.
That was the Heavenly Dao, and all life depended on its command. However, the Heavenly Dao was as silent as ever.
Now, the Yellow Springs rose to the surface, and the Mistress of the Underworld was nowhere to be found. Even those who were in charge of reincarnation have long disappeared, and for those who died, there shouldn’t have been any hope for the afterlife. Feng Qingyun could only wait for his three souls and seven spirits to naturally dissipate since they had lost the means to exist[mfn]Hun and po are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and traditional religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, yang soul which leaves the body after death, and also a po corporeal, substantive, yin soul which remains with the corpse of the deceased. Some controversy exists over the number of souls in a person; for instance, one of the traditions within Daoism proposes a soul structure of san hun qi po (三魂七魄), i.e., “three hun and seven po”[/mfn].
And yet, that was not the case.
Feng Qingyun soon found that instead of dissipating, he could clearly “see” everything on earth and even feel vivid emotions. Long Yin’s sacrifice and his death right in front of his eyes were so shocking that Feng Qingyun took a long time to realize that his current state was wrong.
He was not in a soul state at all!
Every cultivator who was past the Qi Condensation stage could see souls, not to mention those with higher cultivation. However, it had been so long since Feng Qingyun left that cave and yet… No one in both heaven and earth noticed him.
So what the hell was going on?!
Feng Qingyun, with his heart filled with doubts, “floated” away from the ruined Heavenly Gate for a long time until finally arriving at a place where there were still living beings. However… As far as his eyes could see, it could only be called a sea of corpses and fire, purgatory on earth.
Feng Qingyun suddenly fell silent.
Along the way, he saw people wandering the earth in despair, cultivators who tried to escape on their swords only to be swallowed by the murky yellow waters, and the entire Xiān Gōng Sect disintegrating under the collapsed sky.
The picture of the last day was grotesque and miserable, and in the face of real disaster, all sentient beings were equal.
Feng Qingyun could no longer understand his feelings. It turned out that even if he squeezed out his last traces of spiritual power, he could only end up as a handful of ashes, his sacrifice completely useless. He was not Mu Hanyang, so he never lived his life under the pretext of helping the world, but that didn’t mean he never cared. On the contrary, he couldn’t help but blame himself. If he had known about the collapse of the sky and managed to make plans earlier, would the fate of the world have been any different?
If the disappearance of the Huangquan clan had been discovered earlier, if he and Long Yin met earlier, and even earlier than that…
But there were not that many ifs in the world. Feng Qingyun could only regret it over and over again, unable to let it go. And when he barely came back from self-blame, he unexpectedly saw Mu Hanyang standing on the side of a boat, battling the waves of the flood.
When the sky collapsed and the earth cracked, Xiān Gōng Sect, which was never Lord Mu’s priority, finally scattered and disappeared from the face of the earth. No, it was only his little sister Bai Ruolin who made it out alive, standing in front of him and howling. The girl’s crying had been earth-shaking ever since she was a child, and she was known for being able to cry for three days and three nights without stopping for a single breath.
However, since she had declared herself all grown up at the age of sixteen, she has never shed another tear.
At present, it was the first time in hundreds of years that Mu Hanyang had seen her cry like that. And all of his so-called friends… Everyone looked at him with panic and embarrassment, as if they were looking at the life-saving straw in the flood.
But the leader of the Righteous Path, the proud son of heaven who took the entire world as his responsibility, felt that every passing second drained the soul out of his body, standing there frozen, with a blank look on his face.
His followers had never seen him like that, and everyone was stunned for a moment.
Mu Hanyang opened his mouth several times but quickly found that he couldn’t even make a sound. After a long time, he finally squeezed out a couple of difficult and trembling words: “What… Did you say…?!”
“Brother Qingyun, to protect the Heavenly Gate…” Bai Ruolin cried and continued. “He’s guarding it alone… At this moment, I’m afraid it’s already…”
In the distance, the vibrant Yellow Springs and the terrible void behind the collapsed sky merged together. The breath of death covered what was left of the earth and, looking towards the Xiān Gōng Sect there was… Nothing left to see.
There couldn’t be any life left. In front of the end of the world, even if immortals could survive, it was still useless. Mu Hanyang seemed to realize a terrible truth. When he came to his senses, he spit out a mouthful of blood.
He never thought that his younger brother would…
And they even quarreled before parting for the last time.
He said that his younger brother was “lazy” and “blinded by common affairs”…
If he had known… If only he had known–
“Sect leader… Big Brother…” Bai Ruolin called him Big Brother for the first time in her life. “Brother Qingyun left a letter for you, asking me to give it to you.” She then took out an ordinary letter from her storage ring with trembling hands, delivering it to Mu Hanyang with tears in her eyes.
And just like that, the confident son of heaven suddenly came to his senses, acting as if he had grasped the saving straw of hope. There were no seals placed on the letter. Obviously, with Mu Hanyang’s divine consciousness, he could see the words inside just by scanning, but he still opened it to read, just like a mortal would.
Feng Qingyun was raised by him. From watering the seed to teaching him how to write, everything was taught by him.
And there was a time when his younger brother liked to write to him. However, he had too many friends, and too many people gathered around him. And so, from time to time, his younger brother’s letters were intercepted by others for “viewing”.
Those people would laugh and make fun of them, saying how pathetic it was for two cultivators to communicate like mortals did. In the end, Mu Hanyang was convinced that those letters only served to make him lose face in front of others.
Gradually, he stopped writing back, only sending a “received”. And even later than that, he simply stopped replying at all…
…And after a long time, Feng Qingyun’s letters finally ceased arriving entirely.
Mu Hanyang remembered that there was a time when he kept those letters and even treasured them. However, after being made fun of by his friends one too many times, he drank too much fairy wine and impulsively burned them to ashes.
But he still remembered the content to this day:
“Qingyun greets Brother. The wine buried on the day Master ascended is now 200 years old. If you’re free, you can come back to open the seal.”
“Brother, little sister has grown taller again, and she misses her brother every day.”
…
“Brother, I listened to a mortal poem today which moved me greatly. I especially copied it for you to see.”
As for that specific poem, it was rudely read out loud during a banquet. For a while, Mu Hanyang traveled with cultivators from the Yanyue Gang, men who were used to being unrestrained, so they mocked Mu Hanyang while reading.
In fact, nobody had a malicious heart, and there was even envy for the two of them. And yet, Mu Hanyang’s face still turned embarrassed and flustered. He and his younger brother were over a thousand years old together and… Although they were Dao companions, he was not at all interested in men. Those words that Feng Qingyun copied simply made him unable to face his friends.
And he was not stupid. Of course, he knew… It wasn’t just his little sister who missed him.
“Lord Mu, you wouldn’t really be infatuated with your brother, would you?” A cultivator with a rugged scar on his face smiled while pouring him wine. “All that talk about that lady of yours… Is that just a cover to fool us?”
When others heard him speak, they all laughed and said: “It makes sense! That’s how it is for sure!”
Maybe it was drunkenness or something else, but Mu Hanyang felt a sudden touch in his heart. He was in a trance for just a little moment, before hearing a young man in white say: “How could that be possible? Brother Hanyang is not interested in men.”
And just like that, Mu Hanyang suddenly came to his senses, calmed down, and waved his hand while saying: “Brother Liu Xian is right. It’s my brother who insists on pleasing me… As a senior brother, how can I embarrass him?”
“Then he’s too… He has no knowledge of either heaven or earth and yet still dares to chase after you,” the cultivator with a scar on his face said. He then took the letter and read it out loud, commenting: “It’s stickier than the words spoken by a little mortal lady!”
Amongst everyone’s laughter, Mu Hanyang only felt embarrassment. Taking sip after sip of wine, he finally snatched the letter back and drew spiritual fire to burn it. However, his friends were just teasing him, and their faces changed one after another: “Hey, Lord Mu–!” That’s what your little brother gave you…”
But before they finished, the letter was already gone. As if that wasn’t enough, Mu Hanyang felt the need to act decisively and show his devotion to that lost lover of his. Ignoring the dull pain in his heart, he took out all the remaining letters from his storage ring and burned them in front of countless shocked faces.
After that, the whole banquet fell into an unprecedented silence. From that day on, people all over the world knew that the marriage between Lord Mu and the Second Palace Master of the Xiān Gōng Sect was forced, and that Mu Hanyang still longed for a strange woman who left no traces in the world.
To that day, Mu Hanyang still remembered the subtle tingling in his heart under the paralysis of drunkenness when he watched the flames swallow those letters. And right now, that sting had finally blossomed into a terrible pain, swallowing his reason and shattering his soul.
His younger brother never set foot in the mortal world, pure as jade and untainted by a single speckle of dust.
He once promised to take his younger siblings down the mountain together. However, Feng Qingyun waited from bud to Qi Condensation and from Qi Condensation to the Foundation Building stage. And yet, more than five hundred years later, that promise was still unfulfilled.
In the end, his younger brother finally couldn’t stand Bai Ruolin’s bitter pleas, so he took her down the mountain and traveled the world together. The red dust fascinated the little girl’s eyes, and she lingered so much that she almost forgot herself.
However, Feng Qingyun traveled for less than half a day, and what he missed was still his forced Dao companion. He obviously just heard the most ordinary poem in the world, one which even mortals found boring, but he still wanted to share it with his Senior Brother. Therefore, he couldn’t even wait to return to the sect, painstakingly copying it word for word and delivering it to Mu Hanyang:
“Only when mountains flatten, and riverbeds run dry,
And the earth moves to become one with the sky,
Only when winter has thunder and summer has snow,
Only then would I be willing to let you go.” [mfn]English translation of By Heaven! (上邪), also known as Shang Ye!, Oh Heaven!, and Oh God!, a Yuefu poem, a kind of folk poetry, from the Han Dynasty. Yuefu poems are written to accompany music. Even though this poem was collected in the Han Dynasty, it was probably created in an older period. Its author is unknown.[/mfn]
That letter alone exchanged countless people’s hands, enduring both jokes and Mu Hanyang’s shame and anger, until it finally ushered in the fire that burned everything to ashes. Now, the fire dissipated, and the road was no more, as if the entire world had become that single blob of ink left on a letter, proving that those prophetic words came true. The earth became one with the sky, mountains flattened and rivers indeed ran dry.
And on the bloody letter in Mu Hanyang’s hand, there were no more gentle and subtle feelings of the past, but only a light sentence left:
“From this departure with no return, I wish to sever all ties with you.” [mfn]What he said is: 此去无期，愿与君绝. After googling it in various shapes and forms, I came to the understanding that it’s a very poetic and metaphorical way to, well, break up with someone :)) The first part, 此去无期 could be translated as “this departure might last forever”, and 愿与君绝 comes from the same Shang Ye! poem as above, precisely the last verse, meaning that “now that the mountains became flat and the heaven and earth mixed together, I’m willing to be separated from you”. I’m very sad to not be able to understand Chinese, I think everything is really poetic and romantic and unfortunately, I’m probably not doing this novel justice :(([/mfn]
The author has something to say:
Happy break-up!
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