Weisheng Zhen had never understood why people always liked to drink in places like rooftops when they gathered. Didn’t they feel cold?
Until today.
On the terrace, the starry sky was reflected in his eyes. Ink-black clouds rolled and churned, and faintly visible within them was the golden radiance cast down from the divine realm.
Weisheng Zhen leaned back in the reclining chair, his cheeks slightly warm. He pressed the back of his cold hand against his face to stimulate himself, and felt his mind clear a little.
“It seems nearly fifty years have passed since we last drank together. After that, you’ve been diligently cultivating and this time, we haven’t seen each other for ten years. We’ve known each other for a very long time, but the number of times we’ve talked like this can be counted on one hand.”
“I don’t know if we’ll ever have such a chance again savoring fine wine and admiring beautiful scenery.”
There seemed to be a glimmer of brightness at the corners of his eyes, but it might have been an illusion. Weisheng Zhen sighed. “I really wish my parents could see these sights too.”
“I really want to go home…”
Weisheng Zhen didn’t quite know what he was saying; he simply spoke aloud everything that came to mind.
Cultivators weren’t easy to get drunk, but the wine Li Changshuang had brought this time seemed to have spiritual power infused in it. After just a few cups, he was already feeling light and floaty, and the evaporating spiritual energy only deepened his drowsiness.
But before they drank, Li Changshuang had said the effect of this wine came quickly and faded just as fast, so Weisheng Zhen let himself keep drinking. As long as it wouldn’t affect the competition in a few days, it was fine.
He still needed to obtain that piece of the Bibo Cauldron fragment and give it to Li Changshuang to help with his cultivation.
“I’ve been immersed in cultivation all this time. If you like, you can invite me anytime.”
“If you miss home… I can accompany you back.” Li Changshuang softened his tone, watching as Weisheng Zhen’s eyes were nearly closed, clearly already quite drunk.
But even in his drowsiness, hearing those words, Weisheng Zhen couldn’t help but say, “I can’t go back.”
“Changshuang, from the moment I arrived in this place, I knew that I could never go back there.”
He seemed to want to say something more, but the laws of heaven and earth constrained him. In the end, he gave up and closed his eyes.
Only then did Li Changshuang gently reach out, encircling Weisheng Zhen’s left fingertips, and lean in close to him.
“Very sleepy? Shall I take you back to rest, or would you like to keep enjoying the view a while longer?”
Weisheng Zhen had never been good with alcohol.
Pathetic at drinking yet loving it that was him.
At this moment, his mind seemed shrouded in a haze of mist. He forced his bleary eyes open to look at Li Changshuang, carefully identifying the person beside him before suddenly smiling softly.
He was clearly quite drunk.
He suddenly reached out, hooked his arm around Li Changshuang’s neck, and pulled him down. Strangely, Li Changshuang didn’t resist, but followed his pull, stopping only when he was extremely close to him.
Their breaths seemed to merge together.
“How many years are left?” Li Changshuang asked in a low voice.
Weisheng Zhen seemed confused, but soon Li Changshuang continued, “…Now, how many years are left until the time of your fated death?”
**
Weisheng Zhen pursed his lips in slight irritation.
Heaven knows how much he’d drunk yesterday. As a cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, not only had he slept all the way until shen hour the next day, but even after waking up, he still had a headache.
After forcing the energy to circulate through his body for several full cycles, the headache finally dissipated completely. Weisheng Zhen then tried to recall what had happened last night.
What happened? He had completely blacked out.
His memory still stopped at the terrace he seemed to have been talking with Li Changshuang? Not exactly; mostly it was him monologuing one-sidedly.
Then he remembered nothing after that.
The room must have been where Li Changshuang brought him back, but his clothes had been changed. It couldn’t possibly be that Li Changshuang did that too, right?
Since when did he have a cleanliness obsession?
He took out his jade slip, opened the conversation with Li Changshuang, and tapped on it for a while. In the end, Weisheng Zhen irritably deleted everything he wanted to say.
What was there to ask anyway? They were both men after all even if Li Changshuang really did change his clothes…
Weisheng Zhen buried his head into the blanket.
Save… me!
Even if they were both men, at their age, having someone change his clothes was way too embarrassing!!
Weisheng Zhen tried to cool himself down in the room but failed. He racked his brain but couldn’t figure out how to step out of the room and face Li Changshuang, so he simply played the ostrich and cultivated directly in the room until the third round of competition began.
Fortunately, Li Changshuang didn’t come looking for him these past few days, and Weisheng Zhen felt he had given himself enough cooling-off time.
As for the ostrich Weisheng Zhen, it wasn’t until just before the competition started that he suddenly realized that as cultivators, they only needed to cast a simple incantation to change clothes.
It was still modern thinking that had constrained him.
The third round was the final round of the Rising Talents Competition. This time, the challenge was the Heaven-grade treasure, the Nine-Turn Buddha Pagoda.
Kindly provided by the abbot of Golden Lotus Temple.
The Nine-Turn Buddha Pagoda was never used in the past, but because of Weisheng Zhen’s participation this time, the previous competition format couldn’t be used, so the pagoda was temporarily borrowed from Golden Lotus Temple.
Inside this pagoda were countless small spaces. Each person who stepped in would enter a different space. Although they would be on the same floor of the pagoda, they could only pass through relying on their own abilities, which ensured there would be no possibility of sects or acquaintances grouping up to secure higher rankings.
Each floor of the Nine-Turn Buddha Pagoda presented different challenges based on the cultivation level of the cultivator entering. From the first to the ninth floor, the difficulty increased severalfold with each level. Because it was a treasure of Golden Lotus Temple, Xing Tan had previously entered to cultivate and ultimately stopped at the ninth floor without breaking through.
Although it was a pity that Xing Tan hadn’t made history, entering the Nine-Turn Buddha Pagoda greatly benefited a cultivator’s cultivation. After Xing Tan came out, his cultivation from the Nascent Soul stage to the Void Refinement stage went smoothly. Now, at the age of one hundred and thirty-three, he had reached the late Void Refinement stage, making him one of the highest-cultivation members among their group of six.
Weisheng Zhen had long coveted this Heaven-grade treasure, but he knew it belonged to Golden Lotus Temple, so he only thought about it silently and never mentioned it to anyone. He never expected to encounter it at the Rising Talents Competition.
The adjudication panel had just finished explaining the competition rules and distributed two hundred communication talismans to the competing cultivators when Weisheng Zhen was already eager to enter.
Yet unexpectedly, someone beat him to it.
Yue Bai, without any pause, was the first to vanish into the Nine-Turn Buddhist Pagoda, but Weisheng Zhen noticed that before entering, he seemed to glance in his direction.
It wasn’t an illusion his gaze clearly carried something he wanted to say to Weisheng Zhen.
Yet the two of them had never known each other before.
Weisheng Zhen decided not to overthink it and quickly entered the Nine-Turn Buddhist Pagoda as well.
Before going in, Weisheng Zhen noticed that Li Changshuang, who hadn’t been seen these past few days, had also arrived at the competition site, and if Yue Bai’s gaze had extended further back, it would have landed exactly where Li Changshuang was standing.
The first level of the pagoda tested one’s abilities. The moment Weisheng Zhen stepped inside, he felt all his spiritual power sealed, and before him appeared a familiar figure.
Himself.
Though it looked like Weisheng Zhen, it was actually the heritage of the Golden Lotus Temple at work. When Weisheng Zhen saw his counterpart strike out with Golden Lotus Temple techniques, he nearly couldn’t hold back a laugh.
The smooth start on the first level set a good tone. Weisheng Zhen pressed forward without pause, breaking through with unstoppable momentum, and only at the sixth level did he spend a bit more time.
Soon, Weisheng Zhen reached the seventh level.
The higher he climbed, the more pronounced the Buddhist chants of the cultivators became, and the heavier the pressure bearing down on him grew. Weisheng Zhen charged all the way to the seventh level in just two hours, which was already remarkably fast, but the spectators noticed that besides Weisheng Zhen, there were over a dozen others moving at incredible speed, leaving those behind them far in the dust, reaching the fourth level.
Among them, aside from the disciples of the six major sects who already had some renown in the cultivation world, they also spotted a name none of them had ever seen before.
Yue Bai.
No one knew where he had come from.
The cultivators from various continents and great families watching the competition outside had begun to whisper among themselves, preparing to investigate just who this Yue Bai was, that he could match the speed of Weisheng Zhen’s junior disciple, Wen Yujun.
But none of this could affect the cultivators inside the pagoda.
The higher the level, the longer each person needed.
And Weisheng Zhen felt that after breaking through the seventh level, his time on the eighth level was far too long.
Yet he thought, let me stay a little longer.
He glanced around at the computer before him, the document still open, the cursor blinking steadily, as if hinting at something.
The moment he entered the eighth level, Weisheng Zhen’s hands began to tremble uncontrollably.
In this pagoda, he had actually seen his former home.
His home in the modern world.
He had once had a happy family, and his parents had never minded that he didn’t work after graduating after all, back then, both of them believed that living a peaceful, safe life was a blessing.
Weisheng Zhen had never liked dealing with people. After hitting dead ends in several job searches, he retreated into his own world and eventually started writing novels online. “Sword Shattering the Heavens” was the first and only novel he ever wrote.
Using Li Changshuang’s experiences as the main perspective, he created a person of sword-bone and sword-heart who bore the world’s burdens in his heart. The character leveled up and fought monsters along the way, befriending many companions, and ultimately saved all living beings to ascend to godhood.
But the novel’s plot had barely unfolded halfway when his family was consumed by a great fire. Weisheng Zhen’s parents perished in those flames, and though he was rescued and pulled back from the brink, he drifted aimlessly for only a few months before succumbing to a sudden infection.
When he regained consciousness, he had already spent three years in this cultivation world.
Nearly a century had passed, and Weisheng Zhen thought he had long since faded the memories of his past life.
Yet, unexpectedly, within this Buddhist pagoda, he touched upon scenes from that former existence. Trapped by them, he refused to leave.
A soft knocking sound rang out, and Weisheng Zhen’s heart skipped a beat. He took a deep breath before turning around.
“Yan Yan, take a break. Come out and eat soon.” The door was knocked upon, and a familiar face, weathered by the passage of time and distance, met Weisheng Zhen’s gaze.