Chapter 149: Snow (Part 1)

I really wanted to stay the night… but I left with a heavy heart.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend more time with my parents, but because I was afraid that the longer I stayed, the more vulnerable I would be, and I would accidentally let my parents know something. My previous behavior had already made them a little uneasy, and it took a lot of effort for me to make it up to them. Although it was cruel to walk out that door, it was even crueler for them to know something.

“I still have two days left, I can spend more time with them,” I comforted myself, but my footsteps didn’t lead me to my temporary residence, but to the entrance of the Snow Mountain.

In fact, what I don’t want to admit is my own fragility. Faced with the sadness of life and death, I am afraid to answer the silence of that quiet space alone… So I choose to walk around.

The place where the Xueshan Mountains are located is very beautiful, like a pure land on this mysterious plateau… Although it is already night, the bright starry sky is something that cannot be seen anywhere else… It is very beautiful and reminds me of the hometown of the Taoist monk…

I walked slowly on the grassland with my hands behind my back, as if walking on a thick blanket. From time to time, animals that were not afraid of people passed by me, bringing a breeze mixed with the fragrance of grass and wild flowers, as if in a dream… In the distance, the lake under the stars reflected the starry sky, and for a time, the sky and the earth were indistinguishable.

Such a beautiful scene gradually calmed my mood. In fact, in the midst of the torrents of time, in the mountains and rivers, I am so small… just a drop of water in the long river… why should I be saddened by life and death? Because I am still in this long river, endlessly reincarnating and tempering, never stopping with the flow of the long river…

The night wind blew, blowing up the white linen robe I was wearing… On this plateau summer night, it was also very cool, but I still didn’t feel sleepy at all, even though I had just come out of the underground cave and my body was very tired.

I wanted to walk to the lake over there and see the stars in the lake…

The nearest lake is not far from the entrance to the mountain range of snow-capped mountains… It’s about a 20-minute walk… Although the night is bright here, it is still night… The distance I can see is limited. It wasn’t until I was almost at the lake that I noticed a figure standing on a large rock on the other side of the lake.

Who is it? It was also on such a night that I, like him, had no desire to sleep and came here to see the lake and mountains… My heart was slightly curious. If we were both people with a lot on our minds, we might be able to chat for a while and comfort each other.

This could be a chance encounter, but will it be the last chance encounter in my life? I smiled to myself and walked over.

The night on the plateau… so clear, no rain, but the wind was strong… I was under the big rock, my clothes fluttering… and the person on the rock, his clothes fluttering as well…

The stars in the sky were flowing, beautiful to the extreme… but my heart seemed to stop beating at that moment. Time had stopped at the moment our eyes met… the stars in the sky had also dimmed at that moment, and all I could see in my eyes was the figure on the rock, those eyes that I could not see through.

This is not the last encounter in my life… There is someone else I will meet… This person is someone I must meet at the beginning of my life, because of the fate and debt from my previous life, I am destined to have an entanglement with her from the moment I was born.

I never thought that I would meet her by chance at the lake—Xue.

At this moment, the will of the sleeping Tao Tongzi loosened a little… It seemed that it would appear all of a sudden in the next moment, but in the end it returned to silence.

I didn’t know how to start, so I just quietly looked at her, hoping that she could read the thousands of words in my eyes at that moment… At the same time, I also began to laugh at myself. I clearly had so many things to say, and I had thought about it a thousand times. After our reunion, I thought about how I would act, but at this moment, I became absolutely quiet.

“You’re here too?” I didn’t expect Ruoxue to be the first to speak. Her voice was as clear and light as always, as if we had never parted, and she was just greeting me.

“Yes, I’m here,” she said. At that moment, even though I had a lot to say, I was about to burst out, but she said “I’m here” so lightly that I couldn’t say anything else, and it became a simple “Yes, I’m here.”

It was as if we were supposed to have a conversation like this.

After this sentence, we were silent for a short while… It seems that when a certain kind of emotion reaches a certain level, people have nothing to say… they can only immerse themselves in their own emotions and cannot express themselves.

The wind blew her long hair like snow… She was no longer dressed like she was in the Miao village. Now she was wearing a white hemp robe unique to the snow mountain, and her black hair was casually draped without any decoration, looking more like an ethereal fairy.

The wind also blew my short hair… but it seemed to blow up the fragments of memories from that time, all flying in front of my eyes… the coldness of the first encounter, the struggle and torment of being moved, carrying my life in the underground secret passage, the confusion when I combed my long hair behind the window of the setting sun, and the gentle song of the flowing light dancing in my ears… the promise to watch a movie together every winter… the intimate lingering in the dense forest of snow… and finally, when we parted, the lonely but unyielding back that never turned around…

I was a little crazy. Countless her and the present her overlapped together. She was still the most important and unforgettable woman in my life, the woman who had been entangled with me for two lives – Ruoxue.

“Do you want to come up? The view is even better from here.” In this silence, Ru Xue spoke again.

“Yes.” I also came back to my senses from the fragments of my memories… Then I jumped up and jumped onto the large rock… Then I walked calmly towards Ru Xue, standing side by side with her.

At this moment, I was so calm, but only I knew how my heart was pounding with each step. I was afraid that this was a dream, and when I walked in, Ru Xue disappeared again in front of my eyes.

Six months of lingering, a lifetime of longing… At that time, I thought I could bear the consequences, but in fact… until now, I have realized that there are no consequences, and there is no need to bear them. From the moment I fell in love, my fate was sealed, and my fate is my everyday life, which I simply live.

And in the end, as long as I can say that I have no regrets, that will be enough.

Xue didn’t disappear. This time, she was real and right by my side… When I walked closer and closer, I really wanted to be able to walk closer and closer to hug her. How wonderful would that be? But in the end, I just stood side by side with her.

I don’t want to say that I’m satisfied with this… but when her scent is still so familiar to my nose, I really feel that I’m satisfied.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Ruoxue suddenly asked.

“Yes.” Standing on the rock, the entire lake can be seen in its entirety, and the starry sky can be seen in the distance. Where is it not beautiful?

“For many years, I’ve noticed that you’ve become much more silent than you were back then,” Ruoxue said again.

“People change, and they can also be said to grow… but some things never change.” I said softly, and I think Ru Xue understood what I meant.

But Ru Xue didn’t pick up on my comment, instead looking at the starry sky in the distance and saying, “Yes, people do change… I didn’t expect to see you again, and you’re already the owner of this magical and mysterious place. Chengyi, what should be celebrated is that you are even more able to shoulder your responsibilities than you were back then.

“Whether passively or actively, I always have to take responsibility. I am a disciple of the old Li school, and this is our destiny. If I were to be willful… at this moment, you and I shouldn’t be like this, right?” I suddenly said a “what if.”

The implication of this is that others don’t understand, but Ruoxue must be able to understand… In fact, if I or she had a little bit of willfulness, maybe I would already be her husband, and she would be my wife… Whatever we are doing at this moment, it definitely won’t be like this, facing a life-and-death battle.

I don’t understand why Ruoxue is here. Maybe she came through the broken space… But the reason for her appearance must be related to this battle… If it’s because of her, she shouldn’t be here. There’s only one reason—she’s not willful enough.

I am the same… and the more bitter thing is, I am not as willful and as dashing… If I were dashing, I should have let go, just like my master, right?

This topic between us is a bit sharp. Ru Xue was silent for a while… The night wind was stronger, just like back then, the ends of her long hair would often brush against my cheeks, but back then was back then, and what it represented was that it could never return.

I didn’t want the awkward silence to continue… I was only three days old, and I wanted to spend more time with Ru Xue, so I said softly, “Didn’t you just say that I should be congratulated for being able to carry more?”

“Huh?” Ru Xue obviously didn’t understand my sudden change of topic or what I was getting at.

“As an old friend, will you congratulate me?” I suddenly turned to look at Ru Xue… It seemed that the passing of time had not left much of a mark on her face. Looking at this face that I had longed for, my heart inexplicably began to ache.

Ruxue looked at me silently, waiting for my next words. The emotions in her eyes were hidden very deeply, so deep that I couldn’t see anything.

“The light dances…” I said, seemingly calmly, but my memories were brought back to that last afternoon by the lake, which was filled with maple leaves.