IS Chapter 56
by VolareSince the idea is to keep an eye on the matters down the mountain, it’s best to stay in the town below.
While walking on the street, Li Yuan glanced in the direction of the inn.
There were few people in the town, and even fewer outsiders. The only inn was just a place for travelers to rest and wasn’t anything special.
If they were to stay, it would probably need some arrangement.
Then he heard Ye Zhuo say, “This way.”
He saw that the man was heading straight for the government office.
Li Yuan followed silently.
As they entered the yamen, the yamen runners and soldiers greeted the Second Palace Master Ye and Young Master Li.
Someone even came to lead them to the backyard, where there were actually one or two quiet rooms hidden away in a secluded path.
The quiet rooms were spotless, and one or two willow branches were inserted into vases on the tables, resembling a place for cultivation.
It turned out that the relationship between the Micro-Snow Palace and the local yamen was so harmonious.
Moreover, it was quite strange that this remote town with only a few hundred households had a fully functional yamen. Li Yuan recalled that the road leading out of the town seemed to be well-maintained too.
The person who led them in silently retreated. Ye Zhuo looked around the quiet room and found a place to start cultivating.
Li Yuan: “Then I’ll go out.”
Ye Zhuo: “Mm.”
After Li Yuan closed the door of the quiet room, the sound of his footsteps disappeared into the distance down the corridor. Ye Zhuo closed his eyes, and his mind gradually became clear.
His realm had just been elevated, and he needed to adjust his breathing to consolidate it.
At the same time, his divine sense shrouded the town, so he could immediately detect anything unusual.
Perhaps Dragon Li Yuan returned midway, or perhaps he didn’t.
In any case, when he woke up from his meditation, he didn’t know how many days had passed. The room was still silent, and outside the window, there was a patch of fresh green, with the chirping of birds.
He got up and walked out of the government office with his sword.
Late spring brought frequent rains, and there was a chill in the wind outside, with occasional raindrops brushing his face.
Walking out of the town, the mountain was covered in green spring grass.
On the highest hillside, Li Yuan was standing quietly under an ancient tree. Ye Zhuo saw his back.
Judging from his aura, it was like hundreds of rivers returning to the sea. While he was unaware, this dragon had quietly advanced to the mid-stage of the Tribulation Transcending Realm.
Ye Zhuo walked over and stood there, able to overlook the entire town.
Li Yuan heard the movement and looked at him: “Awake?”
“Awake,” Ye Zhuo said. “What are you doing here?”
Li Yuan said: “Waiting.”
So they waited.
Until fine raindrops scattered like a misty curtain, a procession of white-clad mourners slowly walked down the main street of the town.
The leader scattered paper money to clear the way, white banners waved, and in the middle was a thin coffin, not of a single-person design.
The group slowly walked out of the town.
“Madam Zheng is dead,” Li Yuan said, watching them. “Scholar Song also went with her, saying he wanted to live and die with her.”
Ye Zhuo didn’t speak, but just watched the coffin being carried slowly forward.
“Actually, I went to see them a few times these past few days,” Li Yuan said.
“It’s just that I didn’t see that he had a death wish,” he said slowly. “When I saw them again, they were already gone.”
Ye Zhuo said indifferently: “Since he was determined to die, he wouldn’t want you to see it.”
“Why?”
“Otherwise, you would make trouble.”
“Maybe,” Li Yuan said.
He stopped talking and watched the group gradually disappear into the rain and mist.
There was a hint of sadness in Li Yuan’s voice: “I jokingly said that the dead could live, and the living could die, but I didn’t expect it to come true in the end.”
The world was silent for a long time, but then Ye Zhuo spoke.
“It’s good,” he said.
Li Yuan: “Why do you say ‘it’s good’?”
Ye Zhuo: “I think so, so I say so.”
“People are dead, everything is gone. What’s good about it?”
“Because living may not be good,” Ye Zhuo looked at the white figures. “If one dies and the other lives, they may find someone else in a few years. But if they both die, they won’t.”
It took Li Yuan a while to understand what this man was saying.
“What if they both lived?”
“Even if they both live with true affection, how do you know that the next few decades will be like that? That’s why I said ‘it’s good’,” Ye Zhuo said. “Once they die, it’s settled.”
The rain seemed to be getting heavier.
Li Yuan held up a bamboo umbrella, and they stood on either side under the umbrella.
Drizzling raindrops fell on the umbrella’s surface.
“How can you think like this?” Li Yuan looked at the distant mountains in the misty rain, paused, and then said, “Why do you think like this?”
“For no reason,” Ye Zhuo said. “It’s just that people’s hearts are like that.”
As the funeral procession disappeared completely from sight, a mother and child, soaked to the bone and holding an umbrella, passed by from the hillside below.
“Told you not to run outside! Still going to see the lake! Still catching fish?” The mother pushed the child’s back and led him towards the town, scolding harshly, “The ice on the lake is getting thinner and thinner, it’s going to collapse, people are going to die, do you know that! Wasn’t that Madam Zheng’s accident that happened there?”
“Lucky I remembered this and went to find you, otherwise? I wouldn’t even know if you died in the river!”
The mother was focused on scolding the child and didn’t even notice them watching from above, passing them by.
The child was scolded by his mother and obediently kept his mouth shut, not saying a word.
Li Yuan thought that the spring ice was clear and thin, and easily broken. If one walked on it, mortals would inevitably be in danger of drowning.
Suddenly, he heard Ye Zhuo speak.
“The matter of Madam Zheng’s soul returning after death was deliberately brought about,” he said. “Have you ever thought that she was in danger in the mountains and on the verge of death, it was also someone’s plot?”
“Those four yin-yang talismans have already introduced yin energy. The person behind the scenes doesn’t need to do anything else. When there is birth, old age, sickness, and death in the town, ghosts will naturally haunt it,” Li Yuan said. “Why bother to do more and harm people’s lives?”
Even though he said this, he couldn’t help but think about the possibility in Ye Zhuo’s words.
“The resentment and obsession can be deep or shallow, and ghost matters can be big or small. If that person really wants to bring the Micro-Snow Palace into the game within ten days, how can burying the talismans guarantee that something will definitely happen and be noticed by the Micro-Snow Palace? It’s better to create an incident,” Ye Zhuo said.
Looking at the mortal mother and child, his tone was indifferent: “Madam Zheng makes a living by fishing and is familiar with the mountains and lakes. How could she easily have an accident? Even if an accident happens occasionally, how can it happen within these ten days? Accidents happen, but why is it this loving couple, not others, among the thousand people in the town?”
Li Yuan: “But Brother Wei Sheng is sitting in the Green Mountains. If the lifespan of the living is interfered with and cut short midway, he will notice.”
“What if he used a method that even he couldn’t detect? What if this calamity was already in her fate?”
Li Yuan frowned.
Some things seem ordinary if they are not mentioned.
But if you think about it carefully, you feel that this immortal path is like the water in a deep ravine, seemingly clear, but in reality, it is full of rapids and hidden stones, which are bottomless.
Thinking back to the series of schemes behind the poisoning of the Dao Sect’s first disciple, it seemed possible.
“There is no real evidence for this matter. How much do you think is possible?”
Ye Zhuo: “Ten out of ten.”
Li Yuan didn’t know what to say.
After a long time, he said: “Are you really cultivating the path of ruthlessness?”
Ye Zhuo: “What makes you say that?”
“Why do I always feel that the way you look at people and things is not the same as the ruthlessness, but you see the bottom of the sea, and always think from the most dangerous place?” Li Yuan said.
Moreover, it seemed that all of this was taken for granted.
What was even more incredible was that the listener would feel that what he said was right.
For example, now, he actually felt that Madam Zheng and Scholar Song died together, fulfilling a lifetime of unchanging love, which was a good ending with a beginning and an end.
He also felt that Madam Zheng’s death was indeed likely to be a deliberate attempt by someone who regarded human life as a chess piece and secretly set up a dangerous situation, which needed to be taken to heart.
He clearly wouldn’t have had these thoughts before.
“I see it this way because the world and people’s hearts have always been like this,” Ye Zhuo said.
This man.
Li Yuan didn’t say anything anymore. It wasn’t until the figures of the mother and child safely entered the town that he said, “When you were a child, did you ever go out to play like this and get scolded by your parents?”
Why did he suddenly ask this? Dragon Li Yuan’s thoughts were really untraceable.
Ye Zhuo: “No.”
“Then what were you doing when you were a child?” Li Yuan looked at Ye Zhuo while saying this, and saw the slightly frowning expression on his face.
Those things were too far away, like looking back at a vast white mist.
After a while, Ye Zhuo said, “Naturally, I was practicing the sword.”
It was really not unexpected.
“Then your mother, like that woman just now, was she so fierce?”
This time, Ye Zhuo seemed to have recalled a longer time before finding the answer in his distant memory.
“Not like that,” he said.
Not wanting to continue this topic, Ye Zhuo asked, “What about you?”
“I don’t know,” Li Yuan said. “According to your human way of saying it, I’m probably considered to be born without parents.”
Ye Zhuo: “Why?”
Although it was said that he was born from heaven and earth, the little black dragon was naturally born from the big black dragon, so how could he have no parents.
“The birth of a dragon clan begins with a dragon egg,” Li Yuan said.
Ye Zhuo listened.
Such secrets of the dragon clan are unknown to outsiders and have not been recorded in human books.
“But dragon eggs cannot hatch immediately, and they must absorb endless spiritual energy from heaven and earth to transform. The higher the bloodline, the more is needed,” Li Yuan said. “For example, our clan, after the dragon egg is born, it must be placed in the dragon’s nest in the deep sea where ten thousand spiritual veins converge, allowing it to slowly grow. It will take hundreds or thousands of years for a small dragon to hatch, and sometimes it will take even longer, up to thousands of years.”
“So when I was born, my parents were already gone.”
Ye Zhuo: “Your clan’s lifespan seems to be more than thousands of years.”
Li Yuan: “Indeed. But they didn’t go by accident, they died on their own.”
Ye Zhuo: “What about the Mo Long senior who gave you the dragon bone sword?”
“He was my father’s brother, so my uncle,” Li Yuan said. “He was also gone when I was born.”
After pondering for a long time, Ye Zhuo could only say, “Then take care.”
Li Yuan: “.”
What Ye Zhuo said really made people not know how to evaluate it.
“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go, I’ll take you to eat rabbit meat.”
Ye Zhuo looked at his eyes indifferently: “Are you alright again?”
“What do you mean?” Li Yuan said. “Have I ever been not alright?”
Ye Zhuo: “It seemed like it.”
Li Yuan: “No.”
Whatever. Ye Zhuo turned around and left.
“Ye Zhuo.” The dragon called his name again.
Ye Zhuo looked back and saw Li Yuan walking towards him in the misty rain of the green mountains, and then shielding him with the bamboo umbrella.
The surface of the umbrella covered the hazy sky light for a moment.
“I don’t know what the world is really like, and I haven’t made a conclusion on what people’s hearts are really like,” Li Yuan said. “I just want my heart to be bright.”
Ye Zhuo looked at him.
“This human world is not a good place,” he said. “When things don’t go your way, and people’s hearts are not what you want, will your heart still be bright?”
“Still,” Li Yuan said. “I am not a child. It is good to walk safely on the spring ice, and it is right to be trapped and drowned. Spring ice is fragile, so it is easy to hurt people, but I think this is not what it wants in its heart, it is just that winter goes and spring comes, and it can’t help itself.”
Ye Zhuo: “You have really made great progress since you came to the human world.”
“Where is the progress? Tell me.”
“Your skill of insinuation and hiding a knife in your smile is becoming more and more exquisite.”
Li Yuan’s eyebrows curved slightly: “You flatter me. I’m just doing as the Romans do.”