Chapter 148: I’ve been waiting for a long time

The dinner was actually very rich, and there was even a small pot of thick medicine soup that was boiled separately.

The master handed it to me and insisted that I drink it alone. He said, “This place is unknown, but it seems to have a lot of good things. I picked out some of the better things. Since you have Uncle Chen here, you don’t have to worry about the medicine affecting your body, so drink it quickly.”

I took a whiff of the soup. It wasn’t a particularly good flavor, after all, the smell of medicine was a bit overpowering, but I smelled a familiar, warm flavor.

It was as if the medicine he handed me was the same as the one I had drunk night after night in the bamboo hut.

“Why don’t you have any?” The master insisted that I drink it alone, which made me feel a little embarrassed. After all, so many elders were present, how could I drink it alone?

I knew that there were a lot of good ingredients in this pot of soup.

“Chengyi, you drink it. Your master has long since put away the good stuff, saying that you have been out of medicine for many years and preparing more for you.” Uncle Chen smiled gently, and the breeze blew his hair, which was already completely white. This is the price of war.

Facing Uncle Chen’s words, I didn’t say anything, but instead bowed my head and slowly began to drink the pot of soup. The familiar care… what I once enjoyed recklessly, and then lost, when I came back, I cherished it with a little more trepidation.

The food and clean clothes were brought by the elders from the “palace” under the platform after they woke up. When we talked about it during dinner, I learned that almost everyone in the palace of the gods had run away while I was asleep.

In fact, there were basically no people involved. During that battle, God had used up all of his fighting power, whether it was the corpse cultivators or the green-robed people. The rest were ordinary people, the gray-robed people.

They should also be the loyal supporters of the gods. Seeing that the gods have failed, their first choice is to flee in fear. Is this really the right thing to do? In this space full of danger, I am afraid that staying on the gods’ territory will probably be safer.

“Master…” I thought to myself, but then I stopped. After all, so many people’s lives were at stake, shouldn’t the master have reminded them to stay here?

Master seemed to have read my mind. He took out his pipe from the yellow cloth bag he was carrying, then carefully took out a paper bag containing tobacco leaves, carefully packed some of the few remaining tobacco leaves, lit it, took a puff, and when the thick smoke was exhaled, he said, “Chengyi, aren’t you blaming me for not stopping?”

I was a little lost in the flavor of the tobacco, after all, this was the flavor that had accompanied me throughout my childhood and adolescence. After my master left, I tried to smoke a few puffs for a while, missing the familiar flavor.

But I couldn’t find it. It was because the tobacco leaves that Master smoked were a bit special, and I couldn’t get them through normal channels. I didn’t know where to get them either.

Seeing that I was not talking, the master did not care, and just continued talking to himself: “In fact, it’s not just the gray-robed people who have escaped. There are also some young people imprisoned in the palace of God. They should be people sent in from the holy village outside. Do you know? These people can’t get out.

“Can’t get out?” I looked up at the master and suddenly thought of a question. If they can’t get out, can we?

“Yes, they can’t get out, but you should actually believe in the ability of people to reproduce and survive. Just like in ancient times, the environment was not necessarily as safe as it is here, but humans still survived! This was a difficult process, and there was no shelter for ancient humans during this process… What I actually want to say is that we should respect nature. They are hiding here, and they may face a catastrophe. It’s better to face this place early. Or, you can just think of this place as a world.” The smoke from the pipe rises, with a slightly pungent smell that makes the master squint. The smoke makes the master’s face look a little bit more serious.

Sometimes, protection is not necessarily a kind of compassion. If you cannot protect someone forever, it is better to let the person you are protecting learn to face it sooner.

This truth can be spread from one person to an entire group of people… Master was just telling me this.

I have had the same problem for many years, and whenever I get caught up in something, he always tells me about it. In fact, I can understand what he is saying, but I am curious as to why he would describe this as a world. It is hard for me to imagine.

My limited mind is not enough to understand these things, but I know that Master should know something.

So I subconsciously said, “One world?”

“It is a world. Perhaps I cannot fully explain it to you… I can only say that in the vast universe, our position is so small. When we look up at the sky and the earth, how much can we see?” Master did not explain much. I always felt that Master, who had disappeared for almost ten years, had become much more profound than before. It seemed that knowing too much was not necessarily a good thing.

So I didn’t ask too much, and I put the medicine I had drunk aside… I grabbed a piece of grilled meat that was just right, and I ate it in large mouthfuls under the jealous gaze of Master Hui, who was drinking congee. I should have been worried about something, but I ate the meat in large mouthfuls until I finished, and then I casually wiped my hands and asked Master, “Master, are we not going to be able to leave?”

The master laughed, and then I noticed that he was playing with a stone in his hand. Wasn’t that the Tianwen Stone that Lin Xiaohua had destroyed? What was he doing with it? Now that the gods had been destroyed, what use was the stone?

But Master didn’t seem to want to explain, just casually tossing the stone in his hand and smoking a pipe. He even smiled in a somewhat “treacherous” way, or maybe there was a hint of worry in his eyes. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it was my own illusion, so I wasn’t sure.

We stayed on this platform for three days. I didn’t understand why my master and the others were so determined to stay here, and then waited very peacefully, not knowing what we were waiting for.

During these three days, we seemed to have reached a tacit understanding that we would never mention what happened back then, or what had happened in the intervening years.

In fact, we didn’t have much time to talk about this, because the older generation seemed to be inexplicably nervous. During these three days, they tried every means to regain their state of mind.

I also became inexplicably nervous and hurried to recover.

In fact, I asked my master why we didn’t go to the room below the platform. My master, who had gone to fetch many quilts and mattresses, simply said to me, “It doesn’t rain or blow here, and it doesn’t matter whether there is a room or not.”

During these peaceful days, I was very comfortable. Even though I was diligently recovering, I was not as active as my masters. Often, when they were still meditating, I would already be bored and awake. Sometimes I would lie on the ground and look at the night sky above me, and sometimes I would squat in front of my master and pull on his beard to see him meditate.

I didn’t deliberately try to be ‘childlike,’ but in front of the master, I always felt like I wanted to recapture that feeling from the past.

I actually had a lot of questions in my heart, such as what did it mean for half of the masters in the inner village? Why did Grandma Ling Qing suddenly wake up when she saw him? However, when I was with them, my mind seemed to be running out of space, and I simply forgot about these questions.

This is a problem that I have had since I was a child. I don’t think about things, everything is up to the master.

Three days later, it was a normal day. The masters were still meditating in silence. I woke up early and leaned casually against the back of the master, looking at the seemingly eternal starry sky with boredom. Suddenly, I felt the master’s body move a little, and then I heard him say, “It’s about time. The people who are coming to pick us up are probably here. It’s time to go.”

What does it mean by “the people who are coming to pick us up”? I subconsciously wanted to ask Master, but after seeing Master say this, everyone stood up.

In particular, Wu Liyu looked a little strange, but he still patted his clothes and said, “Then let’s go. We’ve been waiting for a long time.”