Chapter 4026: You Must Be Happy
Chapter 4026: You Must Be Happy
The year in the Timestop Space passed quickly, and the scenery around Lu Yin soon changed as he returned to the Sea of Karma.
For the outside world, only a second had passed.
Awe Gate had just seen Lu Yin break the stone wall and vanish when he suddenly reappeared. She stared at him for a long moment. Just as she was about to leave, Lu Yin’s voice reached her ears. “Senior, please bring Xiang Siyu here.”
Awe Gate nodded, and a gate appeared. She vanished, only for a bewildered looking Xiang Siyu to appear a moment later.
Lu Yin looked at the woman. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I need to borrow your luck again.”
Xiang Siyu smiled. “Go ahead.”
While holding her hand, Lu Yin tapped the die with a finger, spinning it. Internally, he was screaming, “Four! Four! Four!”
He had never been so desperate to roll Timestop before. He did not want to wait for ten days to pass.
Even just one day’s delay could bring about disastrous consequences.
The die stopped spinning, and he saw four pips. Elated, Lu Yin once again entered his Timestop Space, taking the stone wall with him.
This was his second year of seclusion, and thus, he did not need to calm his heart this time. He simply sat in front of the wall and stared at it, pouring his whole being into the carvings engraved upon its face. Gradually, all color faded away around him. His consciousness drifted away, seemingly traveling across space and time until it arrived on a battlefield.
Blood and fire intertwined. Cries of slaughter drowned out wails of despair.
A young boy darted through the battlefield, carrying one person after another on his back. Some, he managed to save. Others died before they were able to escape.
Blood soaked his clothes, yet the boy never tired.
He was clearly strong enough to completely dominate the battlefield, but all he knew was how to evade. He never struck back. The combatants on both sides simply ignored him, which made him quite the oddity in the midst of the carnage.
Beyond the battlefield, a young girl was tending to the wounded. She bandaged their wounds, provided them with medicine, and spoke to them. She worked alongside the boy. Combined, they created a strange pocket of hope in the middle of all the chaos.
When placed on the battlefield, the boy’s smile seemed completely out of place.
“How can you keep smiling?” the girl scolded him with a glare.
He responded with a happy grin, “We saved people.”
“But so many still died,” the girl lamented.
The boy shook his head. “Without us, all of them would’ve died. We saved lives. Shouldn’t that make us happy?”
The girl sighed. She reached out and tenderly wiped sweat and blood from the boy. “Silly boy.”
His smile grew even brighter before he dashed back onto the battlefield, his eyes shining.
No one understood the boy. How could anyone continue to smile amidst such carnage?
If he wanted to save people, why not just stop the war itself? That would certainly save far more people.
Many people asked the boy that question, but he never gave an answer. Even so, his smile remained the same.
Lu Yin had seen that smile before, inside the Willbound Spire. He had seen it in the memories that belonged to either some Immortal being or the megaverse itself. The boy was none other than Greater Sancte Green Lotus, the creator of the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm.
However, at the moment, Green Lotus was nothing more than an ordinary cultivator, and he was only capable of swaying a mortal war.
War was an endless refrain. The boy’s smile never faltered because of war, but it did fade when he saw mottled bloodstains on the girl’s pale face.
He held her in his arms, weeping as grief tore at his soul.
The girl gazed at him with pity in her eyes as she raised a hand to touch his face. “I’m sorry. I... can’t stay with you.”
Tears dripped onto her face as he sobbed helplessly. It was like seeing a small bird huddle against the dry winter earth, desperate to hide itself away.
“You must... keep smiling,” the girl whispered. Her arm fell limp.
From that moment on, the boy’s life became nothing but darkness. He lost his smile, never showing it again.
He continued to save people from the battlefield, carrying one after another away to safety, but without the girl’s healing arts, few people survived.
He no longer understood why he did anything, and he numbly wandered about various battlefields, leaving countless lonely figures behind him. He slowly became a legend.
When the land finally grew peaceful, the boy vanished.
No one knew where he had gone.
He was carrying stones to build a wall.
“Hurry up over there and haul those stones over here. Stop pretending. If you won’t carry them, then just go die.”
The boy carried stone after stone, numb and clad in rags. He carried stones for ten long years, but the wall was far from being complete.
The vision shifted for Lu Yin, and he returned to the Sea of Karma.
In front of him was Xiang Siyu, peering at him curiously.
Silently, he took her hand and rolled the die once more.
Four pips, Timestop. It was an unmatched streak of luck.
Lu Yin again sat before the wall. As time flowed by, he watched the boy again. His smile had returned, because he had seen a familiar face. A girl gave him a bowl of food, pity in her eyes, just like the girl from decades before who had shone so brightly.
From that moment on, the boy followed the girl. He never disturbed her, and he merely sought to catch her gaze.
When she walked down a road, he would become a tree beside it.
For the rivers she crossed, he became a stone.
When she dressed in front of her red mirror, he lit the lamp.
Even until the day she got married, he never revealed himself to her. He simply watched her leave, the joy in her eyes beaming at the man she loved. At that moment, the boy’s own smile shone even brighter.
After that, he continued to search for that same gaze. Again and again, and each time he found it, he would protect it. Only when he faced hardship would he return to the unfinished wall, carrying stones through desolate lands on his own, braving bitterly cold winds until the smile finally returned to his face.
No one knew how much time passed before a spark of karma danced in the boy’s hands. It was born from his smile, and it was joyful and content.
The smile overlapped with the one that Lu Yin had previously seen in the Willbound Spire.
At that moment, the mind that the Willbound Spire’s memories belonged to had rejoiced, as though it had finally found a kindred spirit. That pure smile was something that it wished could last forever.
But ultimately, that smile had disappeared once more.
The boy was no longer able to find the same familiar gaze. While his cultivation had soared and he was able to observe countless people with but a thought, he still could not find that same gaze.
Day after day, he carried stones, building the wall. He endured the biting winds while always hoping to see that gaze again.
But it was gone. Gone forever. There were no longer any eyes filled with pity. There was no one left to keep him smiling.
His smile had been lost, and the scheming of the world of cultivators brought him nothing but more suffering. Each trial he faced added to the wall. It was an endless wall, and it stretched far out of sight.
The boy had grown into a man, but his gaze had grown dark and unfathomable.
The entity within the Willbound Spire despaired. When it saw the man unleash his Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm, it wanted to stop it and see the boy’s smile again, but it would never appear.
“Who? Who is obstructing me?”
“What a pity. What a pity.”
“Who are you? What do you mean, 'what a pity?’”
“Your path has strayed. You’ve gone astray. That is such a pity. I had hoped that, from such beauty, a companion might be born. What a pity. What a pity.”
“Who are you?” The man unleashed an attack that shook the universe. Even with his current strength, the power of the attack left Lu Yin stunned. Even so, the entity from the Willbound Spire never spoke another word.
The scenery around Lu Yin shifted once again, and he returned to the Sea of Karma.
Xiang Siyu’s curious expression had not changed at all, as only a single second had passed for her.
Lu Yin exhaled while reaching out for her hand. “I’m sorry to trouble you.”
Xiang Siyu just smiled as she took Lu Yin’s hand.
He tapped the die with a finger, but this time, he did not get four pips, but rather three: Enhance.
With a glance at the two screens of light, Lu Yin tapped the die again. This was his fifth roll.
Four pips: Timestop. Lu Yin entered his Timestop Space once more and sat in front of the stone wall. Green Lotus had created his Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm in his middle years, but for some reason, Lu Yin longed to see him as a boy and his pure smile once again, just like the entity from the Willbound Spire. There was something nostalgic and unforgettable about that smile.
He stared intensely at the wall and at the carvings of fortifications. As the years blurred by, he heard a harsh shout. “Hurry up and haul those stones over here. Stop pretending. If you won’t carry them, then just go die.”
There was a heavy stone on his back and a crushing burden in his heart. It was suffocating.
Lu Yin did not know if he was the one there. All he knew was that his heart was filled with unbearable sorrow. He saw Ming Yan dying in his arms, the pain in her eyes, and it suffocated him.
Thunder rumbled across the sky as a torrential rain poured down.
Everyone who had been working on constructing the wall had left. Only the boy continued to carry stones, walking just as he always did. Finally, he collapsed in the rain. He was not hurt, just lost.
“Are you hungry?”
The boy looked up and saw a girl. She was flawless and beautiful. He froze when he saw the same familiar gaze, as the face left Lu Yin absolutely stunned. Yan’er?
The girl took out a box of food and handed him a bowl of rice. She made a hush gesture towards him. “Don’t speak. Just eat.”
She held an umbrella over him. The downpour shrouded everything from sight.
The boy ate the rice, bite by bite. The girl smiled at him. At that moment, the rain stopped falling, and sunlight illuminated her face from above. So beautiful, so warm.
In that instant, the boy’s eyes flushed red. He felt endless sorrow that took the form of hands that cupped his face. “You must be happy.”
The girl left, carrying the lunch box away while skipping cheerfully.
The boy followed after her, silently guarding her. He was both Green Lotus and Lu Yin.
Lu Yin relived the boy’s life and shared his pain. He made the same choices and carried stones to build up the wall, day after day. He did not know how much time passed, but one day, karma joyfully danced above the boy’s hand. At that moment, the world spun, and Lu Yin was both the boy and the entity in the Willbound Spire that had been observing him.
He no longer knew who he truly was.
It was as though he was observing himself.
Someone was observing another person, and yet that other person was also the observer. What kind of sensation was this?
Lu Yin carried stones on his back with a pure smile, knowing that the entity in the Willbound Spire liked to see it.
At the same time, the entity in the Willbound Spire, who also had Lu Yin’s consciousness at this moment, saw the smile and felt satisfied.
Was he merely fooling himself?
If he could deceive himself, with one self as Greater Sancte Green Lotus and another as the consciousness within the Willbound Spire, would that not mean that the two could serve as each other’s proof?
Karma was the only bridge between them. So, he tried letting that bridge take shape.
Beneath the wall, the boy lifted his hand. Karma leapt forth, running along the ramparts. “I will protect. I will let karma raise this wall, and it will guard all who matter to me.”