"Tonight you have been at home all the while, sleeping. You went nowhere. You have decided that tomorrow night you will keep watch over Fang Lin, to see whether anything about him seems amiss..."
Jiang Chen felt as though he were floating in warm, gentle water, its surface strewn with white petals.
A soft voice drifted as though from beyond the edge of the world. He was at ease. He wished only to sleep on forever.
In that boundless, warm world, he let go of every guard, every duty, every worry, everything that ever made him uneasy.
"I should listen to this voice," he thought.
Just as all was about to come to an end, a lotus bud thrust its head up from among the petals upon the endless water.
It grew taller and taller, until it stood level with his gaze.
The lotus bloomed, and at its very center stood a black candle.
Whoosh.
Black flame flashed to life in an instant, and in that single breath set the entire sea of petals ablaze!
Boundless waves of fire swept over everything.
"Hah!"
Jiang Chen woke up.
He found himself lying in his own home on Flying Horse Lane, and he could feel Jiang An'an's steady breathing beside him.
He understood that the sealing of memory was done, that White Lotus had delivered him home.
Yet he remembered everything. He had forgotten nothing.
No—not merely the events upon Ox-Head Mountain remained with him. Something new had also wedged itself into his mind.
A secret art. The Bone Escape Art.
Its principle was to appease the netherworld with one's own lifespan, and so gain for a while the power to cross between the yang world and the yin world.
As with the Flesh-Restoring Soul-Return Art he had acquired before, the black candle within the Celestial Palace had visibly shortened by a length.
"I am the Bone Dao Child? I am the Bone Dao Child?"
Jiang Chen stared down at his own hands, dazed.
And yet this sinister art newly gained was, without question, further proof of White Lotus's words.
"My memory was not sealed. Judging by what White Lotus said, does that mean... I am beginning to 'awaken'?"
"Fang Lin has without doubt thrown in with the Bone Path, and the Bone Path likely has designs on Maple Forest City still—perhaps to avenge Wei Lin's slaughter, perhaps for other ends. But even if I were to go before the authorities now and confess all, I doubt it would do much good. White Lotus said they would move on this very night. At best they would catch a Fang Lin. And if they learned I was the Bone Dao Child... I would be a dead man."
Jiang Chen tried to comfort himself.
"As things stand, neither the Dao Academy nor the Bureau suspects me. White Lotus believes my memory to be sealed, and so takes no further care. But I have not lost my memory. Thus my best choice ought to be to seize the eldest brother and the youngest and the rest, gather them up, and flee with An'an at once, wait until the dust settles in Maple Forest City, and then decide whether to return..."
"No—if the eldest brother knew the truth, he would never leave. The youngest, I think, would not mind. And An'an... would An'an be willing to leave her homeland? Could she bear the hardship of drifting from place to place?"
"Maple Forest City domain... Fengxi Town... Xiaolin Town..."
Jiang Chen's normally tranquil heart was thrown utterly into disorder. The more he thought, the more vexed he grew; the more he thought, the more tangled.
And so he flung himself flat, sinking into the Ethereal Realm.
...
The eighth-rank Sword Dueling Platform had been unsealed.
Dugu Wudi had not yet entered the top hundred of the Cycle realm, and so displayed no ranking.
Matching in the Cycle realm...
Match found!
...
Defeated!
Defeated!
Defeated!
Only after losing three times in a row did Jiang Chen manage to calm himself a little.
Combat was a thing that demanded wholehearted focus. In that absorption one could set aside everything else, brush off the worries for a time.
But when all of it was done, what must be faced still had to be faced.
Each activation of the eighth-rank Sword Dueling Platform now cost twenty merit, and a defeat cost another twenty to the winner.
Jiang Chen looked at the two thousand six hundred and eighty merit still left to his name, stared at it blankly for a while, and was about to leave.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
A fat paper crane came flapping over to him.
It was of course Zhen Wudi's message: Brother Dugu, I too have reached completion, and have formally stepped into the Cycle realm. My great Zhou Heaven is on the verge of completion! How about it—care for a spar?
A cultivator of such deep family backing as Zhen Wudi had not lingered in the Roaming Meridian realm for lack of accumulation. He had simply been waiting for the perfect configuration of his Zhou Heavenly circulation.
Such great families always kept masters on hand, who mapped out for their scions the ideal path of advancement, based on their accumulation, their experience, their every presentiment of progress.
So when he said his minor Zhou Heavenly circulation was barely complete but his great Zhou Heaven would soon follow, it was not mere boasting. His path had been paved in advance, and it was a broad, smooth road.
Jiang Chen had not intended to reply, and had no heart for another bout of combat.
But he thought a moment, then spent ten merit to enter the Starry River Space.
It was, as ever, a pavilion among the stars.
No sooner had Jiang Chen arrived than Zhen Wudi's plump figure appeared across from him.
"What's this? A rare sight—you coming to talk to me of your own accord, and such extravagance besides!" Zhen Wudi glanced around left and right and clicked his tongue in marvel.
The two had grown quite familiar by now, thanks chiefly to Zhen Wudi's nature as a chatterbox. At every opportunity he flew a paper crane over to converse at length with Jiang Chen.
Once Jiang Chen replied, it could never be stopped short of twenty exchanges.
He was also Jiang Chen's only acquaintance within the Ethereal Realm—or perhaps his only friend, if it could be called that.
Because it was a place like the Ethereal Realm, and because Jiang Chen had never revealed his identity in the real world, he did not have to stay so tense. In fact, he suspected that even if he told Zhen Wudi, the fat man would not know where Maple Forest City was.
Weighing his words, he asked: "Do you know of the Bone Revered God?"
"Which god?"
"That is... roughly... a deity worshipped by a teaching called the Bone Path."
"What a mess is that?" Zhen Wudi shook his head in disdain. "A heretic cult?"
"Perhaps."
"I tell you, Brother Dugu, don't go near those wretched cults. In this age, the reason the back-alley arts are back-alley arts is that they are things already cast aside. With so many orthodox schools to choose from, why study anything else?" Zhen Wudi's advice turned serious. "And if you have run into trouble and need to grow strong in a hurry, better to join the Celestial Residence Secret Realm! I have two vacancies for companions and I'm still looking for people. How about it—care to try? There is some danger, granted, but at least it is more reliable than some heretic god."
Anything Zhen Wudi lifted up in earnest could not be a small thing. The so-called vacancies of the Celestial Residence Secret Realm were certain to be precious.
That he had not explained in detail was perhaps because the Celestial Residence Secret Realm was well known in its own right; he assumed Jiang Chen knew of it.
This fat man might be a bit flashy and a bit of a chatterbox, but his character was not bad. That was why Jiang Chen had kept up the correspondence all along.
But now, of a truth, Jiang Chen had no attention to spare for other things.
"Some other time," he said.
He managed a faint smile. "I still have matters to attend to. I'll be going."
Before Zhen Wudi could urge him to stay, he withdrew from the Ethereal Realm.
Jiang Chen sometimes felt that the Ethereal Realm was like a dream.
When the dream ended, everything might all turn to nothing.
He might, like those beggars beyond Huanzhen Temple, already be buried beneath the yellow earth.
He might even now be sunk in that little river of Fengxi Town, unreached by anyone's saving hand.
What, after all, was the purpose of cultivation?
Was it to live longer, or to live... with meaning?
...
The room was very quiet. One could hear Jiang An'an's faint, even breathing.
That sound put his heart at ease.
Jiang Chen knew that he must come to a decision before the light of dawn.