Chapter 169: Hopeful in the midst of grief

That night? How could I not remember… It was the night before we began our escape. My wounds had just healed, and Master was preparing a fragrant bath… At the moment I saw it, I felt as if I had returned to my youth, and I still remember the warmth of that night.

Why did Master mention this? I looked at Master… for a moment I didn’t quite understand what he meant. My heart was tortured by the passage of time, and my thinking ability was about to freeze.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Master turned his head and looked at me.

At that moment, I saw such an emotion in my master for the first time. This emotion often appeared in me when my master left, so I was very familiar with it. This emotion is called helplessness!

Master was helpless? Why was he helpless? He reminded me of that day and the words he had said… I asked myself if I had a good memory, but it was impossible to remember every word he had said a few months ago…

I frowned and tried to remember, and suddenly a sentence came to mind clearly… At that time, Master was helping me wash my back, and he once said to me, “People get attached to their homes as they get older! I was just making an analogy. If one day I get old and forgetful, I want to spend my old age here, and you will have to stay by my side.”

Is that what he said? Master was clearly only going to live for another year… Why would he say something like that to me? Could there still be hope? My heart suddenly warmed up. At the time, I was still wondering about that sentence, but Master used a different topic to distract me.

“Master, is that what you meant? If one day you grow old… so old that no one knows who you are, and you need to be taken care of, I will be by your side? That means you still have hope, right? You want me to live, and you are hinting at that, right? Master, you must not say it, for fear of being calculated out, right?” I suddenly felt energized, and my mood improved a lot.

Before, at the entrance to the mountain range of the Snow Mountain, Master had said that he could not say too much… I was afraid that if I said it, it would be calculated out. I naturally gave Master this reason, as long as he could live, everything would be fine.

I thought that my master’s helplessness was just his worry for me.

I never thought that in the face of my joy, Master would be able to shake his head so cruelly. His eyes were filled with a kind of sadness that made him feel guilty towards me. He said to me, “Chengyi, everything is not as you think. I think it is better to tell you some things in advance than to suddenly face them. I really don’t have much time left.”

“What do you mean?” My smile froze on my face, and my eyes suddenly became desolate again.

My master turned his head away from me, not knowing if he could bear to look at me anymore. He just sighed and said to me, “My way of living this year is a bit special, like paying back a fate that has already been decided… Didn’t I tell you before? What was the result of our suppression under the great formation? It was the soul leaving the body… and then the soul that had left was directly exposed under the great formation, and was crushed to pieces.”

At this point, the master took another puff of his pipe and continued, looking at the distant starry sky: “Your master gave you a choice, and I chose the second one… That means that when the time comes and your master’s power dissipates, I will still be able to separate my soul from my body… You know what the consequences of this are, so I don’t need to explain them to you, right?”

My face suddenly turned pale… A body that has been separated from the soul has only two results… In general, it becomes a vegetable, and the second is that if the body is strong and the owner of the body has a strong will, some fragments of the soul and willpower will remain in it… But what’s the use of that? It will become a walking corpse with no thinking ability.

This is even crueler than the soul slowly separating from the body. The symptoms are like those of an Alzheimer’s patient… Even though I have always wondered if this human illness has a root cause related to the soul, I don’t care too much.

Now, Master’s situation is even more cruel than this… That is to say, once it occurs, Master’s situation will not give me a chance to buffer!

“Ah…” The sadness, depression, and resentment that suddenly welled up in my heart were like a tide that overwhelmed me. After learning the truth, I almost suffocated. I could only scream and vent my emotions like a madman. I felt so powerless!

I knew too well in my heart that at that time, Master and the others were destined to die. Grandmaster had already been spared by the heavens, but only because his spirit was needed to deal with the aftermath of the Kunlun disaster.

Even if you use the life-prolonging technique, it won’t work! It’s like becoming Master Liu’s daughter, it won’t work… The Taoist pattern, its suppression is not that simple! This is not a matter of forcibly using the body to block Yin, nor is it a matter of borrowing someone else’s life through ‘transactions’… Forcing it to do so will only prolong Master’s physical body for a few more years… What’s the point? !

This cruel Taoist symbol directly strips the soul!

This time, my master did not stop me from venting. After I had finished yelling, he said quietly, “Your grandmother Ling Qing is someone I owe a debt to… Before we were finally suppressed that day, I used a method to directly shock out part of her soul and put it in the soul-nourishing bead where your ancestor’s remnant soul was… Then, I tempted the gods, saying that as long as Ling Qing was released… before my soul I would tell you where the other Kunlun spirits are… In fact, I wanted to save more people, but your master’s soul-nourishing pearl could only protect Ling Qing’s spirit for a short time, not much longer… Fortunately, we were all brothers and sisters, and old comrades… At that time, everyone was generous and forgave me for my selfishness. Even Wu Liyu understood… He knew that this was a matter between the two branches of our family, and that Ling Qing had only followed me.

At this time… I truly understood the ins and outs of the matter… Master has always been reluctant to express anything, and his expression of affection for Grandma Ling Qing was also very limited… But this deep affection was all revealed in this plain narration.

However, no matter how deep the affection, no matter how wonderful the past… it will disappear with the disappearance of the person, won’t it? In the story of my master, I wept long and hard… this is not just my sorrow, it is the sorrow of everyone… I thought of Xiao Chengqian’s eldest cousin… is this the end of my master and them?

I hate, but I don’t know who to hate… I can’t find a way to vent my anger, but at this moment, Master’s warm hand caresses my back… He said to me, “So, Chengyi… you have to be strong, you can’t just disappear… You know that I, Jiang Lichun, have had a turbulent life, I have never been weak… but I don’t want to be like that when I dream at midnight. I am afraid that I will become like that at that time, unable to take care of myself, unable to eat or drink… that would be a bit humiliating… the Buddhists say, “The body is a stinking one, a stinking one… when the soul has left, what does it matter what the body looks like? If I had the same mindset as a Buddhist, it would be fine… Unfortunately, I am a Taoist, and my thoughts are different. No matter what happens to my soul… my body is always a trace of my existence, and I always hope to live a dignified life…”

While the master was speaking, I was sobbing beside him. This was the first time the master had shown weakness… In fact, he had always been sloppy… But sloppy only meant that he was casual, not that he could accept living without knowing anything… He had always been very dignified, and he had never lived without bending down!

His hope lies only in me, me… his legacy, his continuation, can let him like that remain, can all leave with dignity, but how can I accept?

“Chengyi, do you understand? In the end, you will have to take care of me… just like how I took care of you when you were little. It might even be more troublesome… You are my only comfort and my only support in this fear… So, how can you not live strong and not give up easily?” Master’s hand finally fell heavily on my shoulder.

I wiped away my tears and looked into the distance, choking back my sobs. “Master… I know everything.”

“That’s good, I’m relieved.”

“Then Master, where will your soul go after you leave? Will it be scattered to the four winds?” If that were the case, I would never accept it. I would defy the heavens and try to keep Master with me.

“That won’t happen… but I don’t know where I’ll go… but no matter where I go, if there is still a road ahead, and a place to go, that is called hope.”

The night wind blew gently… hope?

And the master continued, “If there is hope… then you should be happy for me in the end.”