Late Night Tales Of The Capital

Chapter 141 My Verdict on Life Is That It Is Temporal
They traveled southwards towards Luoyang.

After all, it was the Divine Capital as well as the capital city of the most powerful empire in the entire human world. This fact had crossed the mind of the group of young cultivators. They were certain that even if the devil were to take over the entire You Prefecture, it was impossible for it to invade Luoyang any time soon. Apart from Tang, even the entire Cultivation World would be against the idea.

Tang would be the only one who had the ability to organize all the sect in the Divine Land to gather at one place to discuss a plan to clean up the place to be free of demons and the devil, and the only place they could gather together was Luoyang.

In other words, the young disciples in Guandi Temple were left with no other choice.

As much as they want to live on, their only way out was to follow Ye Que wherever he went. At the very least, they needed to get out of Northern You. He was their last glimmer of hope.

They exchanged looks.

Chen Chenchen was the first to speak up. “We’re heading to Luoyang too, where Broken King Gorge owns a property, so we can rest there. I suppose the property hasn’t been destroyed by the devil yet.”

Guan Shuheng kept his mouth shut as he tugged at an unconscious Lei Tianyou, who remained unresponsive. He had just ingested some medication and undergone Ye Que’s Divine Energy treatment. There was no doubt that his life was out of danger, but he would not be waking up any time soon.

He shook his head at his Elder Senior Sister.

Yang Nuanyue took a deep breath and sat up straight. She looked at Ye Que with a serious expression on her face, saying, “In that case, we will follow you to Luoyang as well. I suppose we have to rely on you along the way. Please feel free to let us know if we could be of any help. We may not be up to combating the Demon Seed, but the few of us, sisters, could still be of some use if you need us to run some errands.”

As she spoke, Yang Nuanyue stood up and bowed to Ye Que respectfully.

Immediately, the other disciples of Pavilion of Wind and Thunder, including Guan Shuheng, stood up one by one to bow to Ye Que as a show of their respect.

Embarrassment washed over the faces of the few young men from Broken King Gorge when they saw what the disciples of Pavilion of Wind and Thunder were doing. They quickly got onto their feet awkwardly as they start to contemplate whether to bow to Ye Que too.

Pavilion of Wind and Thunder was considered one of the lower-grade suzerains, but now, it seemed that Broken King Gorge was not any better.

It was important to judge the effective force of a sect of Truth Cultivators base on its combined capabilities. Its experts represented the ceiling of the sect, while its disciples on the ground reflected its connotation.

At the very least, the Pavilion of Wind and Thunder was more superior in terms of its hospitality and the way it treated other people.

By now, the people had gobbled up all the game meat.

All the people in the temple ceased the time to rest. Guan Shuheng had wanted to stand watch for the night, but Ye Que insisted that he took a rest, saying, “Shuheng, you should rest. We are setting out tomorrow and you have the responsibility of taking care of your Eldest Senior Brother, which means you have to be well-rested. The journey from Northern You to Luoyang is thousands of miles and it’s a tough one.”

“I’m good, Mister. I’m not tired,” said Guan Shuheng, gritting his teeth.

“Having determination is a good thing, but more importantly, you have to be clear about your own strength, otherwise, what you do would be considered impulsive.” Ye Que patted Guan Shuheng on his shoulder and casually said, “Cultivation is for the intelligent. Don’t learn from fools.”

“I…” Guan Shuheng opened his mouth to argue.

However, Ye Que shot him a look and he swallowed the rest of his sentence. He had been rushing about for an entire day and he would be lying if he said that he was not tired. In fact, Guan Shuheng almost dozed off when he was standing guard by the entrance to the temple earlier on.

Ye Que walked into the yard slowly and added another piece of wood into the bonfire, casually gather the firewood and turned back into the temple. By the time he was back in the temple, Guan Shuheng had zonked out. Even Red Bean had fallen asleep while she was holding on to the mattress and blanket. It could be because the dragon’s girl’s cultivation consisted of eating, drinking and sleeping when cultivation happened. It appeared to Ye Que that Red Bean had not gone into meditation at all the entire time.

No.

He had never once seen her sleeping. From the look of it, the cultivation method Red Bean employed was different from that of regular people. Nevertheless, the Formless Realm she had attained was truly Formless. In fact, what she had attained was an even more condensed form of the Formless Realm.

Ye Que went back to the temple entrance and sat down cross-legged.

As he sat, he took out a wine bottle from his fragrant pouch.

He threw his head backward to take a sip from the bottle. The wine burned. He had gotten this bottle of wine from the liquor shop at the borders of Mount Mei the other day. The wine originated from Tushu in Northern You and it was a hard liquor that set any throat burning with just a small amount.

While he drank, he lifted his gaze to the snow flacks falling from the sky and he frowned.

He was the expert among these young cultivators, therefore, he was their pillar of support. Naturally, he was expected never to show any sign of being at a loss of what to do. However, given that all the people had fallen asleep, he allowed his melancholy to overtake his rationality at this moment.

The course of history had been utterly changed.

Devil Qi had invaded Northern You.

How would he come to terms with this change?

At the very least, he had to go on living. In fact, it would not be a problem for him to continue living given his ability and the Divine Tool he possessed. Nonetheless, it was necessary for him to ponder carefully on how he wanted to live, which was more critical.

In other words, the critical thing was his path.

What exactly was his “path” this time when he returned to his youth?

Was it to become the number one in the entire world? That seemed like Red Bean’s “path”.

Was it for every common to gain access to cultivation? That was Qian Shuxiao’s “path”.

To keep moving forward, to break through the shackles in his heart and to be totally cut off from his past? That would be Qian Shuhua’s “path”.

How about his own “path”?

Ye Que had in fact been pondering about this for a while. What exactly was his “path” in this life? What was the motto of his life that could help him overcome life’s difficulties? He used to think that it was his parents’ expectations of him. Later, he thought that it was Ye Zhengru’s death. Yet other times, he thought his “path” was just to continue cultivating himself, to break through Fromless, attain Apocalypse, cross the immortal steps, surpass the emptiness and prove the “path” to be immortal. Basically, it was for him to become the legendary supremacy.

However, all of these were too illusory. They were so unreal and impractical that it was hard for him to fathom.

In his previous life, he spent a hundred years just to achieve the periphery of immortality. In his pursuit, he had given up almost everything, which included that fact that he failed even to find an intimate female path companion.

What was the significance of his existence then?

There was a voice in Ye Que’s head that kept reminding him that there was no purpose in such an existence. He should not become the slave to his cultivation, such that he became a cultivation machine.

He had once experienced the beauty of the Celestial World, and he had also seen most of the beautiful sceneries in the Three Realms. However, in the terms of the paths that he had literally trodden on, Ye Que had not covered every inch in the Human World.

For one, Ye Que had not been to the end of Luo River. Neither had he been to the Imperial Mausoleum of the ley lines of sovereignty. He did not even visit Northern You in his previous life. Prosperous Tang, where he stood at this moment, was his hometown. This was the place which nurtured him as he grew. He remembered how when he was discussing the “path” with one of his companions in the past, he realized that apart from his knowledge on Qingqiu Sword Sect, he only possessed some basic knowledge about the Human World.

He was mostly clueless!

The Human World?

The Human World in between the heavens and the earth?

Why was it that his path could not edify the Human World?

At this juncture, Ye Que reached his hand down to the ground below his feet to find that it felt a little cold. However, there was warmth below the snow. The warmth was coming from the ground. When he lifted his hand and some snow fell out of his palm, it felt cold initially. However, once the snow melted, it became water and water was the source of life.

All of a sudden, he could taste the after taste of the wine below his tongue.

Suddenly, a warm current rose from Ye Que’s Spiritual Sea and the Golden Python of Divine Energy together with the Divine Tool of the River Soldier emerged from the depth of the Spiritual Sea. The warm current whipped up waves on the Spiritual Sea to wherein an enormous tree of Spiritual Force that was three hundred meters tall emerged. At the top of the tree was a page of the Divine Book.

The Divine Book was glowing with a faint green light at the moment.

As Ye Que’s state of mind was drawn to the Divine Book and in a flash, the green light shot out silky yarn that went around Ye Que’s mind and slowly dragged him into the Divine Book.

At this moment, the River Soldier of the Divine Tool was no longer in the Divine Book. What was left was the mystical word that filled the entire sky and every mystical word was glowing with the same green light.

Ye Que reached out to touch the mystical words in the air and he could clearly feel them with his fingers.

A mystical sensation was transmitted to Ye Que’s brains. It felt like the sensation was both guiding him and testing him.

“Formation!”

In an instant, Ye Que seemed to have grasped the answer to the mysterious sensation he was feeling. The mystical words which he touched were an ancient formation. By condensing the power of life using the power of water, the pain and misery were effectively healed. This mystery had been lost in all the records, but now it has reemerged in the Divine Book!

Ye Que was in no hurry to study into it at the moment. With knitted brows, he merely started to ponder over it. In his previous life, he had ever laid hold of the Divine Book. In fact, he had even obtained a three-page Divine Book. Unfortunately, he only managed to go through half of the cultivation methods. They were mainly the spells for refining Qi.

At this moment, however, he had a glimpse of the mystical words in the Divine Book as well as discovered the ancient formation in the mystical words. This was bizarre.

Was it because in the past, he did not truly cultivate technique in the Divine Book, which was why he was unable to break open the treasure house of the book. Now that he had returned to his youth, he had not cultivated any other Qi-refining methods but had purely cultivated the Divine Book. This enabled the Divine Book to sense him and call out when he was in the Imperial Mausoleum at the ley lines of Sovereignty.

All that happened seemed to be part of his destiny.

He lifted his hands to feel the mystical words once again and formation remained the answer he was seeking. The only difference was that the formation he sensed this time was different from that a moment ago. It was no longer the healing formation of the force of water.

He managed to touch a dozen mystical words in succession and every mystical word contained a formation.

“Could this be the one-page Divine Book? Apart from recording a section on Qi-refining methods, are the rest just formations?”

“How about the Divine Book with a different number of pages? Could there be any differences?”

“Or could this one-page Divine Book be unique?”

“Or could it be dependent on his own ability to grasp the Divine Book? Would the Divine Book change from one form to the other depending on his understanding of “path”?”

In an instant, countless permutations and probabilities rose in Ye Que’s mind and in the end, he was not able to arrive at one conclusion. Regardless, these mystical words were no doubt formations, and these formations were the most precious and treasured ancient formations which had been lost in the course of passing down from the generations long ago.

“There is no limit to learning.”

“Being studious is the only way to obtain knowledge.”

Since the Divine Book had given him an opportunity, he was not going to let the chance slip.

While he sat cross-legged at the temple entrance, half of Ye Que’s body was within the temple, while the other half was outside. Which was to say that he felt warm in half of his body, while the other half was subject to the falling snowflakes, and not far from him was a crackling bonfire.

In this manner, Ye Que entered into cultivation with his eyes opened. Occasionally, there would be flashes of a weird, mystical word in his dark eyes. After dwelling in the eye for a period of time, the mystical word would float away. Then after some time, another mystical word would appear again.

The mystical words flashed across his eyes one after another until a spiritual smoke emerged from the top of Ye Que’s head. The smoke gathered instead of dispersed and subsequently, it became a strange-looking green waterlily with a white stamen and green petals.

The spiritual smoke floated into the air occasionally dispersed and come together, while the flower petals bloomed and withered one after another.

This night, the snow at Mount Cicada continued until daybreak and a total of 74 flowers had bloomed above Ye Que’s head.