IS Chapter 113

Chapter 113

Following the stone path upwards, they reached the highest point of the back mountain.

A great river came from the horizon, rushing past the foot of the mountain. Li Yuan heard the vast, unceasing sound of the water.

On the opposite bank, he saw the towering phantoms of three Buddha statues, representing the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. Between the three Buddha statues, there were countless other densely packed, overlapping Buddhas and deities filling the sky.

Ye Zhuo stopped at the mountain peak, quietly looking at their phantoms.

Li Yuan suddenly understood that perhaps for the past twenty years, Ye Zhuo had been standing here, on this side of the river, watching everything that happened twenty years ago.

The overwhelming karmic fire never ceased to burn, and Ye Zhuo was on the opposite bank, consciously facing it.

He was here, separated from the demon in his heart by the river, cultivating his own sword of the heart and passing through tribulations. One day, he would cross the river and reach the other side.

How long would that day be? Li Yuan had a feeling it wouldn’t be too long.

No wonder Ye Zhuo had said that his heart had two sides.

No wonder the heart beast became so greedy and crazy after seeing Ye Zhuo, unable to see anyone else. No wonder Ye Zhuo had no fear of the heart demon’s illusion, certain that he could walk out safely. Past obsessions burned like karmic fire, but he had already entered a state of No Self.

But how could such a state be achieved? What kind of heart did the not-yet-six-year-old Ye Zhuo use to make this decision? For twenty years, he had not once looked back to be swallowed by the shadows. How did he manage to walk forward step by step?

—In the midst of pain that even bystanders could feel, tearing apart the mind, heart, and lungs.

This mountain was too high, and the wind blowing was too cold. Li Yuan stood on the mountain. “Are you cold?” he asked.

Ye Zhuo was silent.

He hadn’t felt anything in the heart demon’s illusion, but Dragon Li Yuan was already wilting. This dragon insisted on coming in.

“Look there,” Ye Zhuo said.

Li Yuan looked towards one of the Buddha statue phantoms.

He met the Buddha statue’s eyes, and suddenly a mist arose in the eyes of the deity. In the mist, he saw a familiar scene—Yun Xiangxi slaughtering the people of Illusory Sword Manor in the snow, while Yun Xiangzhuo quietly watched all of this, his expression calm and unmoved.

Perhaps this was also a possible scenario, if Yun Xiangzhuo was truly the same person as Yun Xiangxi.

Li Yuan shifted his gaze to another Buddha statue. This time, he saw Yun Xiangxi’s sword still piercing Ling Ye’s chest, while the small Yun Xiangzhuo lay in front of his mother. Ling Ye spoke to him, and he grasped his mother’s hand, looking at her mournfully, tears falling on Ling Ye’s bloodstained clothes.

This also seemed like something that could have happened, if Yun Xiangzhuo was a little more like Ling Ye, with a little more emotion to express.

He looked elsewhere. In another snowy field, Yun Xiangzhuo walked forward, holding the Embracing Sleeves Sword, hatred blazing red in his eyes.

Thousands of Buddha statues carried thousands of scenes. Joy, anger, sorrow, hate, love, aversion, desire—if their weight in people’s hearts was even slightly different, a person would have completely different feelings about the same past events, make completely different choices, and then walk down a completely different path.

“All forms are illusory,” Ye Zhuo said. “The heart demon’s illusion has thousands of layers. It’s been twenty years since the past events, and I can’t even remember what they were like. I can’t even tell which one was the real me back then. What you saw may not be my true self.”

What a unique way to comfort someone.

Li Yuan: “Then why am I not seeing them, but you?”

“Perhaps that’s just what you want to see.”

“No,” Li Yuan said softly. “Since all is illusory, there is no true self. Without a true self, then all of it is your true self. They add up to become the you that I see.”

“Besides, how do you know what I saw?” he said. “Maybe you were there too, and you just didn’t tell me.”

Ye Zhuo: “Do I look like that kind of person?”

“Yes,” Li Yuan said.

Person Ye Zhuo didn’t speak, so he was right.

Li Yuan took another half-step, walking to Ye Zhuo’s side: “Besides, even if all dharmas are empty, cause and effect are not empty. I know what you are like now, so I know which you in the past was real, and which one would become you as you are now.”

“Cause and effect are not empty?” Ye Zhuo glanced at him. “Stealing Buddhist teachings.”

“The scriptures are on your desk. I read them, so how is that stealing?” Li Yuan said. “Being quick to learn is my strength.”

The world had really changed. Even Dragon Li Yuan could call himself studious.

Ye Zhuo’s questioning gaze was seen by Li Yuan. Didn’t believe him? This person Ye Zhuo really didn’t know people. He was the most studious dragon in the entire dragon race.

“Let’s go,” Ye Zhuo said.

As he said this, he turned to look at Li Yuan. Li Yuan understood and took his wrist. Ye Zhuo took him one step forward, and the scene in front of them suddenly spun.

Breaking through the heart demon and leaving the illusion was indeed only in this person’s thought. The heart beast wanted to see his heart, so he came in. He re-experienced everything, and then he walked out, like crossing an ordinary river.

He had not overcome the heart demon today; he had already crossed this threshold twenty years ago.

When he opened his eyes again, he was met with a deep, fluorescent blue. The water of the heart lake swept them onto the pebbles on the lakeshore. Li Yuan pulled Ye Zhuo up, and the blue light of the heart lake flowed down their bodies like dust, flowing back into the lake.

With nowhere to go, they walked to a few piled-up bluestones on the lakeshore and looked around.

The surroundings were still deep red. They were still inside the heart beast, and the heart beast had not opened the path to the outside world.

The water of the heart lake was not calm. Waves arose from the depths of the lake, lapping against the shore one after another.

“Why can’t we get out?” Ye Zhuo said.

“Because you’re awake, but the heart beast isn’t,” Li Yuan said. “It’s still in your heart demon.”

The heart beast eats hearts, tasting the intense seven emotions and six desires in people’s heart demon illusions. If it encounters an excessively powerful heart demon, it is like tasting fine wine and delicacies, sinking into it.

“What happens if it can’t get out?”

Li Yuan was speechless for a moment.

Ancient books contained many records of heart beasts creating illusions, causing people to sink and collapse in their heart demons, but there was no record of whether the heart beast would instead be trapped by people’s heart demons, unable to escape.

Now Ye Zhuo had calmly walked out of the past, but the heart beast had not. The heart beast’s eyes in the sky were tightly closed, and the waves of the heart lake were surging, symbolizing the heart beast’s intense emotional fluctuations.

Useless thing, Ye Zhuo thought.

“Let’s wait for it,” Li Yuan said. “We can always get out. It doesn’t matter if the human and ghost realms are separated. I’ll take you back to the dragon realm first, and then back to the human world.”

That seemed to be the only way. The heart beast was a living thing. If it really couldn’t wake up, they could stab it with a sword, which would probably startle it awake.

Ye Zhuo stopped speaking. Li Yuan pulled him to sit down on the bluestone and looked at the boundless heart lake. The ghostly blue tides ebbed and flowed, and the joys and sorrows of the human world rose and fell like this. Everything calmed down.

“Do you hate them?” Li Yuan suddenly asked.

Ye Zhuo’s eyes quietly watched the rising and falling tide.

After a long time, he slowly shook his head.

“Don’t hate them, or don’t know?” Li Yuan said. “Or, don’t want to say.”

“Don’t know,” Ye Zhuo said.

All the emotions of the human world seemed too far away.

Besides obsession, he didn’t know what else he had. He couldn’t hate. He didn’t even know what hatred felt like anymore.

“I don’t even know who to hate.”

“Yun Xiangxi.”

Ye Zhuo said: “He’s not worthy.”

“If you don’t hate him, then do you hate fate?” Li Yuan said. “Yin Ye seemed to really ask the heavens something, and the heavens’ answer to him was in Illusory Sword Manor, or perhaps, it’s you.”

Ye Zhuo thought about it, and finally said, “I don’t hate it.”

Did heaven really have intentions? But it was Yun Xiangxi who had done everything.

“If someone wants to get something from me, in the end, I will take more from them,” Ye Zhuo said.

“So, if fate also wants to take something from me,” he said, “then in the end, I will definitely get more from it.”

What was fate? Some people thought they could get answers from it, some people thought it was nothing more than that, while others stood out from the crowd and confronted it.

Li Yuan groped and took Ye Zhuo’s hand, intertwining all five fingers with his own. He hadn’t spoken for a long time. The fingers were a little cold, and he wanted to use his body temperature to change it.

“Have you ever thought about what you would be doing if none of this had happened?”

The past was set, so what was there to think about? “Practicing the sword,” Ye Zhuo said.

This was Person Ye Zhuo.

“When I was little, I was in the dragon realm,” Li Yuan said. “After a fight, I would float on the water and choose a direction to swim in. There are many corals in the southernmost part of the dragon realm, and the sand is snow-white. The sky is beautiful. To the north is the ice sea, and at the end of the sea, there is an ice wall that reaches the sky, very spectacular and beautiful.”

“…So?”

“I once said that some parts of your path are wrong. But today, I know that maybe I was wrong. You can only do it that way,” Li Yuan said.

“But if one day, after you’ve done what you want to do, I want to take you for a walk in the dragon realm,” he said. “If you like, you can also try walking from the north to the south, from the sky to the sea. Maybe you want to try cultivating other paths, anything is possible.”

Ye Zhuo looked at Li Yuan. In the dark night, Li Yuan saw Ye Zhuo’s eyes. He didn’t know if this was a promise or not.

He only knew that Ye Zhuo kept looking at him for a long time, long enough that he wanted to reach out and caress his cheek.

“I will kill him,” Ye Zhuo said.

A calm, certain tone.

“Okay,” Li Yuan said. “You will kill Yun Xiangxi.”

Ye Zhuo still looked at him, and gently nodded. Li Yuan finally saw his eyes clearly. That obsession was like fire, but in the end, it turned into a lifeless ice, like the two ends of emptiness and obsession. This was Ye Zhuo.

Looking at such eyes, his heart was filled with continuous, hidden pain. A knife pierced in, then cut open, the hidden pain stretched into intense pain, and in that moment, he forgot all things in the world.

He lowered his head and kissed Ye Zhuo’s lips.

In that instant, the scent of frost, snow, and red lotus washed over him, and he touched all of this person’s lips completely for the first time. Li Yuan remembered its shape, crimson, thin, and beautiful. He quietly and gently pressed against it. Ye Zhuo’s breath was close at hand, and the tips of his eyelashes lightly brushed his skin, also brushing his heart, but it didn’t seem enough.

As if self-taught, Li Yuan kissed deeper, his fingers cupping Ye Zhuo’s cheeks. Ye Zhuo didn’t push him away, so he went deeper, gently. He had never touched lotus petals like this before. The touch was lighter and softer than he had imagined.

His fingers gently slipped into Ye Zhuo’s hair, gently touching him at first, as if wanting to maintain this touch for a longer time. He wanted to keep sipping the cool dew on the lotus leaves, but Ye Zhuo would impatiently push him away. Later, his movements were not so gentle. He wrapped his arms around Ye Zhuo’s waist, holding him even tighter, until Ye Zhuo’s entire body was in his arms. He could feel the gentle trembling of that body beneath the gorgeous embroidery, like a slender, beautiful fish, its tail fin scattering into a psychedelic picture in the water.

Ye Zhuo tilted his head back, his breathing a little rapid and intermittent, as if he couldn’t breathe, but Li Yuan still held him tightly, kissing him, only deeper and more tender. He wanted to isolate all the wind and rain outside of them.

Li Yuan thought he shouldn’t have been fighting back then, shouldn’t have been wandering around in the dragon realm’s sea area, and shouldn’t have only come to the East Sea ten years ago. He should have come earlier, should have come to his side before everything happened.

But ten years had passed, and twenty years had passed. Today, tomorrow, and perhaps many days after that, he could always be by Ye Zhuo’s side, but what about before? How could the past be changed?

The long kiss ended with a touch of coolness on his cheek. Li Yuan let go of Ye Zhuo and saw a crystalline streak of water slowly falling from this person’s drooping eyelashes.

“Ye Zhuo,” he said, “you’re crying.”

“…?”

Ye Zhuo raised his eyes, hesitantly touching the tear with his finger. The cold water droplet had spread on his fingertip.

A very unfamiliar feeling. It was like he didn’t know what he was thinking in his heart at this moment.

Li Yuan quietly looked at those eyes. He reached out and caressed the wet mark. He saw that tear—a tear that should have fallen twenty years ago, but Ye Zhuo at that time hadn’t allowed himself to shed a single tear.

So, you still feel pain after all. You just don’t know it. You say you’ve forgotten.

But you still feel pain. You still remember the heart-wrenching pain, you’ve just gotten used to it. Look, you can still cry.

“Ye Zhuo,” Li Yuan’s fingers touched Ye Zhuo’s fingertips. He felt the touch of that water droplet with him. “Ye Zhuo, cry it out.”

Ye Zhuo just looked up at him. After a long time, he shook his head.

Li Yuan saw the corners of his lips slightly curl up, a shallow, almost imperceptible smile.

“Not bad,” Ye Zhuo said.

So Li Yuan uncontrollably, almost forcibly, hugged him. He quickly lowered his head and pried open his lips and teeth again.

This time, Ye Zhuo quickly wanted to push him away, but Li Yuan grabbed this person’s wrist. He pressed him against the back of another bluestone and continued this kiss, which was a hundred times more intense than before. Ye Zhuo wanted to break free, but in the end, even his waist was firmly held in Li Yuan’s hands. The brightly shining hem of his robe scattered like embers that could not be burned out. It was no use even if Person Ye Zhuo regretted it. He himself had said it was not bad.

There was a moment when Li Yuan felt as if he had gathered this lotus in his arms, and then he would not let go.

He wouldn’t.