The memory scroll lit up again. It was a rainy morning, and he sat in the meditation room with Huaizui, who was holding Bodhi Beads in his hand and chanting Buddhist scriptures. Suddenly, there was a flash of light at the door. He didn’t look back, and only put down the wooden fish and sighed. “You’re awake?”

     Mo Ran looked back and saw Chu Wanning standing outside the door. His handsome figure seemed to blend into the scattered sunlight.

     “Shizun, why did you save me?”

     “No blood can be seen in Wubei Temple.”

     “...”

     “Since you’ve already cut your heart open and proven yourself, I understand what you mean. You can go down the mountain on your own. From now on, don’t come back.”

     Chu Wanning did not take any belongings. He looked at the familiar figure in the candle and said after a while, “Shizun.”

     Shizun.

     And then what? Just say goodbye? Thank you for your kindness?

     The gauze on his chest was still soaked with blood. The knife was removed, but his heart was still throbbing in pain.

     After fifteen years of trust, all he got was Huaizui’s “I want your spiritual core.” For fifteen years, he had always thought Huaizui was the most benevolent and kind person, even caring about the grass and trees, the pitiful ants. He had always thought the whole world was as peaceful and stable as Lin’an and the upper cultivation world.

     But it was all false. Huaizui lied to him.

     This was a tribulation thousands of times more painful than having one’s spiritual core shattered.

     Chu Wanning closed his eyes and finally said to him, “Farewell… Master.”

     He left his tenderness, trust, and innocence behind in this solemn temple. These were the things Huaizui had once given him, and later on, they were all taken away with the broken spiritual core and gushing blood.

     He turned and walked away.

     “I knew he would hate me. Even if I went down the mountain with him, he would never be able to get over this hurdle in his heart,” Huaizui said softly. “I let him go. From then on, I left an unjust, selfish, and heartless image of myself in his memory. He no longer recognizes me, and I no longer have the face to call myself his Shizun.”

     “At this time, his birthday had just passed, and he was fifteen years old. Fifteen years of being a drifting duckweed through spring, summer, autumn, winter, joy, anger, and sadness. From that day on, he never looked back.”

     Huaizui swept the steep steps of the courtyard as the leaves turned from green to yellow, and in the end, there was no longer a trace of life on the branches. Another year’s worth of winter snows had fallen.

     The monk was wrapped in thick robes and stood under the eaves, squinting at the snow on the ground.

     His face was still young, but his gaze still showed his age. Like all ordinary old people, he was fond of staring blankly. As long as he sat still for a while, he would unconsciously fall into a deep sleep.

     “I am already very old—two hundred years old. The memories of my youth have already slowly faded from my mind, but I still remember more and more clearly the years when Wanning was by my side. Sometimes, I wonder if this is how the elders feel about their children… But what kind of elder am I? I’m just a butcher without courage.”

     Huaizui said, “The yin energy in my body is getting thinner and thinner, and there is probably no hope of atonement in this life. I don’t want to go anywhere anymore. I just stay in seclusion in Wubei Temple and don’t come out. Only when the haitang flowers bloom do I pick the most beautiful one and bring it to the ghost realm. As usual, I ask someone to give it to Chu Xun.”

     “I’ve never been a broad-minded person, so there are only a few things I can do. If I do too much, I won’t be able to do it well, and when I encounter a choice, I won’t know if I am right or wrong. I planned to live like this for the rest of my life. Until one day—a person suddenly came to my courtyard.”

     It was late at night, and there was a hurried knock on the door.

     Huaizui got up to open the door and was stunned.

     “...It’s you?!”

     Mo Ran followed and immediately saw the man’s face clearly.

     It was Chu Wanning.

     Chu Wanning looked very anxious, and his face was pale. The strangest thing was that he was only wearing a thin summer robe in the middle of winter.

     Mo Ran’s first reaction was that Chu Wanning had given his outer cloak to a refugee who was about to freeze to death. But then he realized that was not the case. Chu Wanning was dressed neatly. He entered the bedroom with Huaizui’s permission, looking like a cornered beast. Without saying anything, he handed a spell incense burner to Huaizui.

     Huaizui’s words were stuck in his throat, and in the end, he only asked, “You… What’s wrong with you?”

     “I can’t maintain my spiritual energy for too long, and I can’t explain it to Master step by step.” Chu Wanning spoke very quickly. “This incense burner is very important. I really don’t know who to give it to. There are too many unknowns in this world, and I don’t know what ‘he’ will become in the future. I don’t know who will be able to survive and protect this secret, so I can only come and disturb you.”

     “...What are you talking about? Are you sick?”

     Huaizui didn’t react, but Mo Ran, who was standing next to him, suddenly felt his head buzz as his vision turned black! He suddenly realized what was wrong with “Chu Wanning.”

     Ear piercing!

     This Chu Wanning had a piercing in his left ear, and he wore a small scarlet earring, like a small cinnabar.

     It was a very tiny detail, but it made Mo Ran feel as if he’d been struck by lightning, rendering him unable to speak.

     This wasn’t Chu Wanning at all… or, this wasn’t this world’s Chu Wanning at all!

     He… He came from his previous life, from the time of Emperor Taxian-Jun, otherwise, he wouldn’t have this mark. Mo Ran clearly remembered that this earring was made from his own spiritual blood. It had a love curse attached to it, which made Chu Wanning more sensitive to his touch and invasion.

     He couldn’t be wrong!

     He could even vividly recall the intimacy with which he had made the needle. Then, while he had Chu Wanning absent-minded, he fiercely licked his left ear. Feeling the person beneath him tremble and release, he had taken advantage of Chu Wanning’s spasms to pierce his earlobe without any warning.

     Chu Wanning groaned. He frowned and grabbed the blanket, but he couldn’t get rid of the man lying on top of him.

     “Does it hurt?”

     He licked the thin line of blood dripping from the tip of his ear, his eyes flashing.

     “Is it painful or exciting?”

     The earring piercing through the soft flesh was like conquering this person to another degree. It was always painful when a foreign object stabbed into the flesh, no matter what it stabbed into.

     Seeing Chu Wanning whimpering and trembling in pain, Mo Ran felt more and more excited. He rubbed Chu Wanning’s chin, pulled his face over, and kissed him hot and wet while panting.

     “It’s just an earring, why are you trembling?”

     He knew what he was doing and used the force in his hand to roughly pierce the needle into the earlobe. He showed no mercy, fierce and vicious.

     “Look, it pierced you.” He stroked Chu Wanning’s new earring and said hoarsely, “It went in.”

     “...”

     “It’s in your flesh and blood. From now on, you’re mine.”

     —The Chu Wanning of his previous life had come to this world.

     This knowledge made Mo Ran’s heart jump. His scalp tingled, his vision blurred, and he felt like he couldn’t even breathe. He looked at everything in front of him numbly. What was going on?

     He tried hard to concentrate and listen to the conversation between Chu Wanning and Huaizui, but the stimulation was too great. He couldn’t recover immediately and only vaguely knew what Chu Wanning said to Huaizui. From time to time, words like “Gate of Time, Space, Life, and Death,” “Forbidden Technique of Destruction,” and “can’t be stopped” floated into his ears.

     He saw Huaizui suddenly slump down on the chair, his face sallow and his eyes narrowed.

     “How do you prove that what you say is true?”

     “...I can’t prove it.” In the end, Mo Ran heard Chu Wanning say, “I can only ask master to believe me.”

     “...This is ridiculous. You said you came from another world through the Gate of Life and Death. In that world, there is a person called Ta… Ta…”

     “Taxian-Jun.”

     “There is Taxian-Jun, who is destroying the world and almost turning the entire cultivation world upside down. You discovered his secret, so you found a way to open the Gate of Life and Death and come to this world? In order to rewrite the past?”

     “Not rewrite it, but stop it. If this continues, sooner or later they will master the Gate of Life and Death, and by then, it will be more than just our world that ends.” Chu Wanning paused, his eyes reflecting the hazy candlelight. “No one will be able to escape.”

     “That’s ridiculous.” Huaizui murmured, “How is that possible…? This is simply… nonsense…”

     From time to time, Chu Wanning would look at the water hourglass in front of Huaizui’s door. He was tracking the time, and his eyes gradually filled with anxiety. “Even if Master doesn’t believe it now, he will understand in the future. Before that, please seal this incense burner in the cave of Longxue Mountain. I have set the most crucial spell in the incense burner to allow it to evolve slowly inside. Master doesn’t need to worry about it. The only thing to do is…”

     Huaizui raised his head. He looked at Chu Wanning with a dream-like expression, almost as if he was looking at a madman.

     “The only thing to do is not let anyone approach the Longxue Mountain cave until Master believes what I say. Then think of a way to bring the ‘me’ of this world and a person named Mo Ran to Longxue Mountain together. The spell in the incense burner has already been set up, so there’s no need to worry about the rest.”

     Huaizui moved his lips weakly, as if he wanted to say something. But suddenly, there was a shrill whistle outside the window.

     This whistle was exactly the same as the sound heard before Taxian-Jun’s disappearance.

     When Chu Wanning heard this sound, his face turned even paler. He stared into Huaizui’s eyes, almost distressed. “Please, other than you, no one else in this world can help me. There’s no one else I can entrust this to.”

     Hearing the word “entrust,” Huaizui suddenly froze.

     His pupils suddenly seemed to have the turbidity and vicissitudes of an old man.

     Finally, he took the incense burner and nodded slightly.

     The whistle became even sharper. Chu Wanning turned his head to look at the night sky outside the window, then said to Huaizui, “Master, please be sure to guard the Longxue Mountain cave well. Also, if Taxian-Jun appears in this world, or… as I said, a great Heavenly Rift to the ghost world appears, then the situation will definitely change. At that time, Master should be convinced that what I have said today is absolutely not false.”

     The whistle was so shrill, almost tearing the eardrums.

     Chu Wanning turned and ran into the night. In the end, he only had time to take one last deep look at Huaizui. He originally wanted to perform master-disciple rites, but his hand stopped raising halfway. He closed his eyes, bowed deeply, and bid him farewell.

     At that moment, Huaizui suddenly stood with inexplicable courage and shouted at Chu Wanning, “You… Do you know what I did? Didn’t I do the same thing to you in the other world? …You won’t trust me anymore!”

     Chu Wanning only shook his head, his face blurred in the night.

     “Master…” His figure was getting farther and farther away. “I don’t have time… Please think of a way…”

     “No matter what method you use, this matter is too important. Please persuade me to listen to you and come with him to Longxue Mountain.”

     He finally disappeared.

     The curtain of the night was dark, and the stars were shining through the water.

     Huaizui chased him out of the courtyard, only to see a flash of light far in the distance. Chu Wanning had disappeared without a trace. Only the incense burner in his hand was still there, full of spiritual power. He held it tightly in his palm, proving that all of this wasn’t a dream.

     The scene before Mo Ran’s eyes began to shake violently. All the scenes he had seen before fell like an avalanche, scattering like broken bricks and tiles.

     “He said to use any method, but what can I do?” Huaizui sighed. “He no longer trusts me and avoids me. What’s more, I still had some reservations in my heart. I didn’t dare to believe all of this. Perhaps it was a scheme.”

     “It wasn’t until the Heavenly Rift in Butterfly Town where Wanning died that I made up my mind. After resurrecting him, I finally decided to write him a letter.”

     “I deliberated over that letter several times. Because I didn’t know how powerful the person behind the scenes was, I didn’t dare to state the truth in the letter. I also really didn’t have any other excuse to find him. Moreover, his cultivation is strong, and he also holds the important position of Yuheng Elder at Sisheng Peak. I couldn’t force him to leave. In the end, I said I thought it would be inconvenient for him that his spiritual core still hadn’t been completely repaired over the years. So I used this as an excuse to invite him to Longxue Mountain.”

      “But I lied to him for fourteen years, so no matter how sincere my words were, he was still unwilling to believe me in the end…”

     There was a long, deep sigh, his voice almost frustrated.

     “I’ve always been waiting. Just like nearly twenty years ago, when I imprisoned him on the mountain, I would come to find him every day, hoping he would change. Later, I also went to Longxue Mountain to look for him every day, hoping he would come back.”

     “If only he could give me another chance, that would be great.”

     The old monk’s voice was like a paper kite with a broken string, floating far away. “My time is really running out, and I know I can’t wait for too long. So in the end, I made this scroll. In it, I have tried every possible way, changed it several times, and added bits and pieces of memories that I didn’t want to put in. But I am a coward after all. I actually didn’t want him to see this scroll while I was still alive… I can’t stand the sad look in his eyes. When he was fourteen, I had seen enough of that look.”

     “So, Wanning…” He sighed softly, as if a heavy burden had fallen off of him. “By the time you see this, I… should have passed away.”

     “I am still a very selfish person. In order not to see you hate me, I only dared to hand over the whole truth before I left, to the child called Mo Ran that you spoke of. I’m sorry for that year. It was Shifu who was wrong. You are a living person, always have been.”

     Huaizui paused for a long time. Suddenly, his voice became hoarse, and he uttered the last words he had left behind in the world.

     “Chu-gongzi, can you forgive me?”

     It was unknown whether the name “Chu-gongzi” was meant for Chu Wanning a hundred years later, or Chu Xun a hundred years before.

     After the voice faded away, the wind suddenly blew. Countless memory fragments drifted like white snow, brushing past one another. Two hundred years of sin and punishment, the fourteen years of joy and sorrow, all intersected at this moment—

     The little child was laughing. “You are against one, I am against one, what blooms in the water? Lotus blooms in the water.”

     The youth argued. “If you don’t know how to save others, how can you save yourself? This immortality, it’s better if I don’t cultivate it.”

     In the end, his phoenix eyes closed. “Farewell… Master.”

     All of this happened one after another, like a twisting lantern passing by. When the light was at its brightest, Huaizui’s hunched back appeared in front of Mo Ran’s eyes again. He leaned in front of the table and carved the last stroke in the Divine Wood.

     The evening bell tolled.

     “I’ll just call you Chu Wanning.”

     When the voice finished, the waves surged, and Mo Ran floated in the torrential stream of memories. Then he was suddenly pushed out of the memory scroll and fell to the ground in front of Longxue Mountain’s cave.

     Time passed differently inside and outside the scroll. At this moment, it was dusk in the world, and the sky was filled with a majestic red glow as the sun set peacefully. As he lay there, Mo Ran felt as if he had returned to that night many years ago when Huaizui dripped his blood on the wood. From then on, there was a child called Chu Wanning in the world.

     He lay on the ground, his eyes unfocused.

     “Shizun… Wanning…”

     He finally understood why such a strong person like Chu Wanning had cried in his arms so bitterly. He finally knew.

     It was just that the price of knowing was too high, like being cut to pieces with a thousand blades.

     Was it all his fault?

     It was Taxian-Jun’s fault in his previous lifetime, and Chu Wanning had spent two lifetimes trying to stop him from causing chaos in the world.

     Chu Wanning’s spiritual core had been dug out.

     The savior-gege who had saved his life in front of Wubei Temple.

     Not human… but the spirit of Divine Wood.

     Every blow was like a falling brick. Just one truth alone was enough to shatter a person’s bones and make them a bloody mess, not to mention so many piled together.

     For a moment, Mo Ran felt that as he lay on the ground, all the bones in his body seemed to be shattered, and he was unable to do anything.

     It was all a mess.

     He looked around and saw Chu Wanning sitting silently on the side with his eyes closed. Suddenly, regret gathered in his bones, love and compassion gathered in his flesh, and the pain turned to blood. The desire to protect this person made him struggle free from the extreme feelings of helplessness and blankness and escape from the quagmire.

     He slowly stood up and walked to Chu Wanning.

     Chu Wanning opened his eyes and looked at him.

     Neither of the two spoke first.

     In the end, Mo Ran bent down and embraced him. “Shizun, whether you’re divine wood or human, as long as you’re still willing to have me…” He endured it but still choked up. “I’ll always…”

     Always what?

     Stand by his side?

     He didn’t deserve it.

     So, he finally said humbly and painfully, “I’ll always stand in front of you.”

     I can’t accompany you, I’m not worthy of you. I’m so lowly and dirty, ruining the world, but you’re pure.

     I can’t stand by your side, Wanning.

     Let me stand in front of you and protect you from the blood and sharp knives.

     Until the day of death.