Nightfall

“The woman was a natural beauty and she thought she deserved more than to be a concubine. So she saved money and sold all her jewelry to buy her own freedom, then she married the hotcakes seller and bought a house on the street with the money they had earned. She stayed in the house, doing needlework and chores. The life was plain and peaceful. The couple shared happiness and sorrows. Sometimes, the woman would even admire herself for all she had earned.”

Sangsang knew what was in the Big Black Horse’s mind, and she was saying it while looking at the couple at the end of the street.

She then continued, “People are always greedy and unsatisfied, they always think that they deserve more from the world. There will be a day when the woman resents her short husband and mock him. The man feels guilty, so he stays modest and tries not to talk back. Then the woman finds the man even more boring in that way. She is so impatient and unhappy until someday her clothesline pole falls onto a handsome rich playboy downstairs. The playboy sees her under-skirt flesh. He feels itchy, so does the woman. Someday when they are caught in bed, the woman will be so ashamed and fearful, she leaves all those vows and peaceful days behind, and tries by all means to kill the dwarf so that she can hook up with her lover.”

The storm settled, and snow on the eaves started melting. As the sun moved westward, it turned colder and the water dropping from the eaves froze into ice again.

She was talking while looking like the chilly ice ridges, transparent and emotionless. Her beautiful exterior had been torn, revealing the cruelty hidden inside.

The Big Black Horse stopped wagging its tail. It looked down at the melting snow on the street and felt cold. It knew she could see through all that was happening here, and those cruelties of hers must be the reality of the mortal world.

Sangsang held the rein in her hand, and with her hands behind her back, she walked towards the end of the street.

Someone called out to her when she passed by a yard. The short hotcakes seller, with a cloth-pack in his hands, looked at her and stammered for quite a while. He was too nervous to express himself clearly.

Sangsang glanced at him expressionlessly and was about to leave.

The beautiful woman squeezed out of the door, and grabbed over the cloth pack in the short man’s hand. Then she looked at Sangsang with a smile and said, “Don’t be afraid, girl. We’re not bad people. My husband saw you walk in the snow with bare feet and he felt sorry for you. He’s giving you a pair of cloth shoes made by myself. The needlework may not be that delicate, but it’s tough enough. Just take it, please.”

Saying that, the woman thrust the pack in Sangsang’s hand. Then she held the short man’s hand and went back inside the house. Sangsang could hear them flirting.

Sangsang watched the pack in her hand for a while in silence. Then she tossed it in the snow by the street, walking forward with hands behind her back. The Big Black Horse felt sorry for the shoes.

The middle-aged woman next door saw a young man walking towards her. She smiled and greeted him, saying, ” Where are you going, young man? Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?”

The young man looked handsome and glowing. His eyes seemed as if they could speak. The most fascinating part was that he was so gentle, even when he was talking to the middle-aged woman.

Sangsang walked out of the city without giving one more look at the stories playing out in the streets.

The young man chatted with the middle-aged woman for a while, and was about to go inside to have a cup of tea. As he passed by the stone stairs, the ice dam on the eaves suddenly broke and fell down to the ground. “Puff-puff”, the young man’s chest was pierced by the icicles and he died in no time. The whole street started screaming.

Out of the capital city of the Kingdom of Song, Sangsang looked toward the southwest with the rein in her hand. Her expressionless face was fair as the moon, and inside her eyes, countless rays of light shined, then vanished.

They were like countless cutlasses.

The snow and storm were cutting people’s faces like knives. Chen Pipi lowered his head, and staggered in the storm and snow with a piece of shabby cloth covering his face. From time to time, he would look back at the handcart behind to check if his father lying in it felt well, or if the quilt covering him had been blown away by the wind.

It had been days since he left Chang’an, and the fierce dark wind was nowhere to be found. He ran into the storm and snow, only to find that he could barely find any food in the village because of the war, not to mention finding a horse carriage. In the end, he could only use a creaking handcart.

The storm and snow finally settled when he passed by a forest. Chen Pipi pulled the handcart over by a big tree. He took no rest before he started to dig the ground to make a bonfire. He cooked some porridge and boiled herbs. When everything was ready, he walked to the cart and lifted the quilt on his father’s face, then started to feed him medicine.

The once invincible Abbey Dean of the Zhishou Abbey was now a heavily injured and dying old man. His eyes remained peaceful as before, and his face, expressionless.

In the astonishing fight in Chang’an, he failed to counter Ning Que’s character and had been sliced ten thousand times. What was worse, those slices polluted his wounds with the filth of the mortal world like nasty ink. He couldn’t wash it away, neither could he purify it with the West-Hill Divine Skills. Chen Pipi had him swallow the last Heavenly Power Pill to extend his life temporarily, but he wouldn’t get any better.

Their travel went on in awkward silence. They kept silent even when taking the medicine because Chen Mou was too injured to talk, or because their father-and-son relationship was weird due to the years’ separation.

Chen Pipi tucked the quilt after he was done feeding the medicine. Then he seated himself instantly in the snow by the handcart, gobbling a bowl of warm porridge in his hand.

Snowflakes stopped falling, but the cold wind was still howling. Snow on the trees was blown off by the wind, falling on the handcart or into the bowl. Chen Pipi watched the drifting snow and suddenly he wanted to talk.

“Why did you insist on this? You knew the Headmaster was right.”

Finally Chen Mou heard him talking, he smiled and said, “What did I insist on?”

Chen Pipi knocked the bowl with his chopsticks and said, “You’re a man of great wisdom. You know that mortals will be against Haotian someday. Mortals will have to face the Apocalypse, in the way of an Everlasting Night or another plight. Then why did you insist to choose Haotian’s side? I won’t take faith as the explanation.”

No more than eight cultivators had reached the same realm Chen Mou had in history. It was hard for Chen Pipi to figure out the answer because he believed that for cultivators in that realm, faith barely mattered.

Chen Mou continued, “That was not a choice about faith, it was about being reasonable. In the Headmaster’s and Ke Haoran’s opinion, humans and Haotian go against each other. However, Haotian Taoism believed the two reinforce each other.”

Chen Pipi asked, “Wouldn’t it be boring if the world is enclosed?”

Chen Mou said, “Haotian Taoism believes that solemnity and balance are the eternal beauty. The Buddhism Sect calls the cycle and transmigration ‘karma’. Everything starts with an end, and that is the full process. The Headmaster wanted to break the process, so he was getting further and further away from eternity.”

Chen Pipi said, “Is there the kind of eternity that has no self-consciousness?”

Chen Mou said, “Quietus is eternity. We will end where we started, and in that world, we’re our own Haotian. The world was created without us in the first place, so it has to end up the same way.”

“That was my reason, and my faith. It’s not about being right or wrong. The Headmaster might be right, but he was wrong in my opinion, and that was why we chose different ways.”

Slow hoofbeats came out of the forest.

Chen Pipi looked back holding the porridge bowl, only to see the withered woods behind. The storm and snow had ceased but it was not yet sunny. A young woman was going out of the woods and leaves with a Big Black Horse following.

He knew the Big Black Horse, but not the woman. He looked at the Big Black Horse, but it avoided making eye contact and lowered its head, with his hoof kicking slightly.

He looked at the woman. The woman might look ordinary, but she was radiating an indescribable aura. Her face reminded him of somebody else.

He was shocked. Looking at her chubby shape, he asked, “Why are you so fat?”

Sangsang did not answer.

Then he remembered that Sangsang was no longer who she used to be. So he jeered, “I’m in no position to judge you, because no matter who you’ve become, I’ll always be the fattest one.”

He used to be one of the most devout believers of Haotian. However, after years’ study in the back of the Academy’s mountain with the Headmaster, and with all the Haotian Taoism outsiders like Ning Que and Tang Xiaotang coming into his life, his faith, or his attitude towards Haotian had changed a lot.

He would kneel before her if it had been five years ago, but now he stood before her casually, with the porridge in his hand.

Haotian weighed less than a bowl of porridge to him now.

With sadness, he said, “Now I know what a huge mistake Second Brother and I made.”

Back in the old days at the back of the Academy’s mountain, Eldest Brother had kept a distance from Sangsang, but Jun Mo and Chen Pipi had become her most firm supporters after seeing how she held the ashes outside Chang’an.

Then the Headmaster left the mortal world by the side of Sishui river because of her presence.

So it was natural for him and Jun Mo to feel regretful.

“Mistakes are always too late to be corrected, or too huge to be remedied, but one should at least try so that he could live without regrets.”

Chen Pipi looked at her and said, with a touching smile on his round face.

He put the chopsticks on the porridge bowl, and pointed out with his fingers.

He was running the Natural Stream Magical Finger with the no-boundary spirit. The trees shook off leaves, and snow piled up a snow line. The line came out of nowhere and rushed off, right into Sangsang’s face.