Chapter 89
Translator: T_Fan
Lee Hyun became a disciple of Lotus Court once again.
After the initiation ceremony ended, he knelt outside Elder Wang Shulin’s residence.
“I pay my respects, Master.”
Wang Shulin spoke from inside, her voice solemn.
“Come in.”
When he opened the door and stepped inside, he found Wang Shulin seated primly at a table.
For a while, she struggled to keep her expression stern, but the corners of her mouth kept creeping upward.
“Come closer.”
As Lee Hyun approached, she could no longer keep a straight face.
“Pfft!”
“…”
…
The years continued to pass.
Familiar peaks passed to new masters, and the names of people he had known for years were entered into the Scripture Pavilion’s records. New disciples simply took it for granted that Wang Shulin was an Elder.
Then one day, Master Huitan reached the end of his lifespan as a Golden Core cultivator and passed away in meditation.
He had never managed to cross the threshold into Nascent Soul, but the old monk’s face was serene.
On the day of the Buddhist cremation ceremony, Lee Hyun stood among the disciples of Lotus Court as Wang Shulin’s direct disciple.
Master Huitan had been a good man.
Several decades later, Elder Huijue followed him in death.
…
After nearly two hundred years under his new identity, Lee Hyun left Baoguang Temple once again.
Wang Shulin’s first direct disciple was said to have died after spending his final years elsewhere.
A few years later, she accepted another Foundation Establishment cultivator, one with a different face and name.
Her second direct disciple was also Lee Hyun.
…
The years continued to pass.
Wang Shulin devoted herself to her Golden Core cultivation, and Lee Hyun did not neglect his own.
But bringing every part of his body to the Great Perfection stage of Foundation Establishment would still take time. He had no intention of merely forming a golden core in his lower dantian and stopping there, so he could not rush.
Lee Hyun supported Wang Shulin’s efforts to reach Nascent Soul. Little by little, he sold the Tier 3 Bone-Rot Flowers, Purple Poison Orchids, and Yin Soul Grass grown in the tunnel’s spirit fields through the Two Heavens Society, then used the spirit stones to buy pills for Golden Core cultivation.
He could not sell much. Bringing too many Tier 3 spirit herbs to market at once would draw attention, so he could offer only a few plants every few decades.
He also occasionally used alchemy to produce Tier 2 Bone-Forging Powder, Poison-Warding Pills, Spirit-Calming Pills, Origin-Opening Pills, Profundity-Penetrating Pills, and other medicines for sale.
Whenever Lee Hyun brought home pills such as Tier 3 True Essence Pills without consulting her first, Wang Shulin felt guilty.
“These are expensive.”
“They didn’t cost much.”
***
Nearly five hundred years had passed since their wedding day.
Wang Shulin had reached the Great Perfection stage of Golden Core.
But she had little time left.
A Golden Core cultivator’s lifespan was finite, and without reaching Nascent Soul, there was no escaping that end.
She entered secluded cultivation one last time.
…
Lee Hyun waited outside the secluded cultivation chamber.
He had waited just like this when she formed her golden core long ago. She had succeeded then.
Lee Hyun thought of Senior Sister Chen Xiaoying. She, too, was a dual-root cultivator, and she had become a Nascent Soul cultivator.
‘Shulin can do it too.’
…
The restrictions on the secluded cultivation chamber trembled on the seventy-first night.
Lee Hyun immediately rose to his feet.
The energy inside the chamber swelled. Her Golden Core magical power converged at a single point, sending out violent pulses as though trying to shatter something.
Shattering the Core to Form the Nascent Soul!
It was the process of breaking the golden core and nurturing a nascent soul within it.
For a long time, the pulses swelled, ebbed, then swelled again.
And then, all at once.
Nothing.
The pulses stopped.
A short while later, the restrictions were lifted from within.
Lee Hyun threw open the door and rushed inside.
Wang Shulin sat in the lotus position.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and he could sense a deep crack in the golden core within her dantian.
She opened her eyes and looked at Lee Hyun, then smiled weakly.
“…It didn’t work.”
…
Wang Shulin had chosen to stop midway through forming her nascent soul.
Had she pressed on, her golden core would have shattered on the spot. At the last moment, she had withdrawn her magical power, barely managing to hold her fractured golden core together.
The price was that she now had little more than a year left to live.
“Don’t be too sad. This path was never open to most cultivators in the first place.”
Wang Shulin spoke as Lee Hyun brought her back to her residence and examined the damage to her golden core.
“It wasn’t easy getting this far, either. I tried my best… It just didn’t work out this time.”
“Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
“What’s the point? I only have a year anyway.”
She took his hand.
“I really have had a happy life.”
…
Wang Shulin said she wanted to spend her final days in Xianghe Kingdom.
“Our children are there.”
Their children had passed away long ago, but their bloodline had continued from one generation to the next.
When word came that their distant ancestor was returning, the royal family of Xianghe Kingdom once again threw open every gate of the palace.
This time, those prostrating themselves before her included many with the surname Li as well as Wang.
They were the descendants of Li Hua, Li Dan, and Li Mo.
Wang Shulin greeted them one by one. She asked their names, which ancestor they descended from, and how many generations removed they were. She studied each face for a long time.
“This child looks like Dan.”
“This one has Hua’s eyes.”
“Mo… somehow managed to leave behind nothing but noisy descendants.”
…
Wang Shulin visited the burial grounds where their children lay.
They were well tended.
The inscriptions on the gravestones had been recarved several times, and collapsed sections of the stone walls had been repaired. The descendant responsible for the ancestral rites carefully explained what had been repaired and when.
Wang Shulin thanked them.
After she sent the others away, she and Lee Hyun were left alone.
She ran a hand over their eldest child’s gravestone.
Then she stood before their second child’s grave, and finally their youngest’s.
“Here would be good.”
Lee Hyun looked at her.
Wang Shulin pointed to an empty spot on one side of the burial grounds.
“I want to be with the children.”
“…”
…
As winter deepened, Wang Shulin spent more and more time in bed.
Her face was still youthful.
Her appearance, preserved by the Youth-Preserving Pill, was slow to change. But even a little movement left her short of breath, and her wrist would go weak if she held a brush for too long.
Lee Hyun placed a small table beside her bed.
During those final months, she painted every day.
Even now, her vow remained unbroken.
…
One morning.
Wang Shulin called Lee Hyun to her side.
“Hold my hand.”
He sat beside the bed.
Wang Shulin’s hand felt light in his.
She lay with her eyes closed for a long while before speaking quietly.
“I’ve had a good life, haven’t I?”
“You have.”
“I have, haven’t I?”
She smiled.
“I’m glad I asked you to marry me.”
Lee Hyun opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Wang Shulin tugged gently on his hand.
“Our children were lovely, too.”
“They were.”
“And I loved our life together.”
Lee Hyun lowered his head.
She touched his cheek.
“I do wish I could stay with you a little longer, though.”
He held her hand against his face.
Wang Shulin paused to catch her breath, then continued.
“I couldn’t form a nascent soul… and there’s nothing we can do about that now. If it were so easy, why would there be so many old Golden Core cultivators in the world?”
“Shulin.”
“Yes?”
Lee Hyun did not know what to say.
He could not tell her that he would find another pill or look for some other way. He had already spent so long doing just that.
Wang Shulin gazed at him in silence.
“Don’t spend too long alone after I’m gone. Meet new people, too.”
Lee Hyun’s grip tightened.
“Read novels. Eat good food. And laugh when something’s funny.”
Lee Hyun did not answer.
She pointed a finger toward the drawing board and brush beside the bed.
“I want you to have those.”
“But they’re yours.”
“Exactly. They’re mine, so I’m giving them to you.”
Her voice grew softer and softer.
“Try painting when you’re bored.”
“….”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
“You have such a lovely smile.”
Lee Hyun tried to smile.
He could not quite manage it.
Wang Shulin stroked his cheek once more.
“I love you.”
She slowly closed her eyes.
***
She was buried in the ancestral burial grounds of the royal family of Xianghe Kingdom, in the spot she had chosen beside their children.
Lee Hyun could not let himself sob aloud.
Throughout the funeral, he remained quiet, as though he were no more than Wang Shulin’s disciple. He acknowledged the descendants’ greetings, received the mourners, and watched as earth covered her coffin.
Even after the funeral ended, he stayed in Xianghe Kingdom for a while.
He built a hut at the foot of the mountain, within sight of her grave, and lived there.
During the day, he sat endlessly beside her grave.
At night, he drank.
A cultivator’s body was not easily intoxicated by mortal wine. Lee Hyun tried drinking with his spiritual power deliberately suppressed, yet even then, he found it hard to get drunk.
…
Spring arrived.
The caretaker weeded the burial grounds.
Summer brought heavy rains. Lee Hyun widened the drainage channel behind her grave a little.
In autumn, fallen leaves piled up. He cleared them away by hand.
Then one day, Lee Hyun left the hut without a word.
***
Tunnel No. 3.
Lee Hyun lay down on the floor of a stone chamber in one corner of the cavern.
And he did not get up.
He did not go out to the spirit fields. He did not open any of his popular novels.
He simply lay curled on his side like a child in its mother’s womb, staring at the dark wall until he drifted off to sleep.
When he was desperately thirsty, he drank water. When he could no longer bear his hunger, he swallowed a Hunger-Warding Pill. He often forgot even to do that.
The drawing board and brush she had left him were still in his storage pouch, but he could not bring himself to take them out.
…
A year passed.
The last spirit stone in Spirit Field No. 3-9’s Qi-Gathering Formation went dark. The formation stopped working, but Lee Hyun did not notice.
Two years passed.
Squeak! Squeak-squeak!
The fuzzbees flew into the stone chamber.
These were not their usual cheerful cries, but sharp, urgent squeaks. The little fellows circled above Lee Hyun’s head, then bit down on the hem of his clothes and tugged.
Lee Hyun waved them away irritably.
Squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak!
The fuzzbees would not give up. Nor was it just one or two of them. Every fuzzbee in the tunnel had gathered, swarming over his body and squeaking noisily.
Eventually, Lee Hyun sat up.
When he went out to the spirit fields, he found the reservoir nearly dry. The water pipes were empty, the soil had begun to crack, and the leaves of some of the weaker spirit herbs were starting to wilt.
Lee Hyun stared at the scene for a long time.
Then he raised a hand.
Patter-patter-patter―
Rain conjured by the Spirit Rain Art poured into the reservoir.
Lee Hyun stood there, one hand raised and his mind blank, until the reservoir was full.
Even after it filled, the rain continued for a long time.
Water kept spilling over the brim, and the drainage channels carried it away as though nothing had changed.
The fuzzbees hovered around Lee Hyun as though worried about him.
Lee Hyun returned to the stone chamber and lay down again.
After that, he dragged himself up whenever the fuzzbees came swarming in. Once he had refilled the reservoir or cleared a blocked water pipe, he went straight back and lay down.
…
Twenty years passed.
Lee Hyun’s body had wasted away.
The spiritual power of his Primordial Body remained abundant, but his flesh told a different story. Barely sustained by the occasional Hunger-Warding Pill, his body had grown so thin that his bones stood out beneath his skin.
One day, he picked a lotus seed from the pond.
He shelled it and put it in his mouth.
He could not taste a thing.
The next day, he picked a Stone Honey Peach. Again, he could taste nothing.
The day after that, he ate two lotus seeds.
Little by little, Lee Hyun began eating again.
Eventually, he went aboveground to gather nuts and fruit on the mountain. Its colors had changed with the seasons. Lee Hyun looked on without interest.
Some of his strength returned, but he still had no desire to do anything.
…
Forty years passed.
One day, Lee Hyun went to a mortal county seat for the first time in ages and stopped in front of a bookstore.
Stacks of popular novels were on display.
He recognized none of the titles. Tastes had changed over the past forty years.
Lee Hyun picked up a book and paid for it without giving it much thought. Back in the tunnel, he opened it.
It took him a month to finish. Once, he would have read that much in a single shichen (about two hours).
After that, Lee Hyun occasionally went to the county seat to buy popular novels. Most were not very good. Very occasionally, he found a decent one.
…
Sixty years passed.
The book Lee Hyun brought back that day was titled 《The Teahouse Beneath the Thousand-Year Pine》.
Its cover showed an old pine tree and a small teahouse beneath it.
The protagonist was an old rogue cultivator who had lost his Dao.
In his youth, he had been a genius who dreamed of reaching Nascent Soul. But a failed breakthrough to the next realm had brought even his hard-earned cultivation level crashing down. By the time he left the cultivation world and returned to the mundane world, his entire family had passed away.
He opened a teahouse beneath an old pine along a mountain road.
All sorts of guests came to the teahouse.
A young sword cultivator on his way to a secret realm stopped for tea. He promised to stop by again on his way back, but never returned.
An old mortal searching for his daughter came by. Several years later, he returned holding his daughter’s hand.
A demonic cultivator on the run took shelter there. The owner served him tea, too.
But fewer and fewer guests returned.
Lee Hyun read the book slowly.
Whenever a guest left, he closed the book and lay there for a long time before opening it again.
The final chapter of the final volume.
The teahouse owner was now so old that he might close his eyes for the last time at any moment. There were no guests that day, either.
He washed the teacups, fetched water, and set it to heat over the brazier.
As he waited for the water to boil, he thought.
He had thought he was spending his life waiting for those who had left.
The guests who never returned, the family who had gone before him.
He had believed he was keeping the teahouse open for their sake.
But he had been wrong.
He had not been waiting only for those who would never return.
He had also been boiling water for someone new who might arrive that day.
And he enjoyed those moments spent brewing tea with that water and drinking it.
Hssss―
The water over the brazier began to boil.
The old man added the tea leaves.
The book ended there.
Lee Hyun lay with the book open on his chest.
…
Seventy years passed.
Lee Hyun took the drawing board and brush out of his storage pouch.
Even after taking them out, he left them untouched for a whole month.
Then one day, he painted his first picture.
It was a fuzzbee.
It was a mess. The wings were crooked, and the body looked more like a potato than a ball of fluff. If Wang Shulin had seen it, she would have doubled over laughing.
Squeak?
The fuzzbee that had been his model looked at the painting and tilted its head.
“…Doesn’t it look like you?”
Squeak!
The fuzzbee fired a pellet of dung at the painting, punching a hole through it.
“You’re an honest one, aren’t you?”
The next day, he painted a lotus seed. The day after that, a Stone Honey Peach. The next day, Bonefuzz’s bones.
Each day, he painted one thing he had never painted before.
At first, there was plenty to paint. Everything in the tunnel was a new subject.
After about a month, he seemed to have painted most of the obvious, easy subjects. Lee Hyun began searching every corner of the tunnel. The grain of the rock walls, droplets of water clinging to the reservoir, a single strand of fur shed by a fuzzbee.
Then he opened the stone door to Spirit Field No. 3-9.
And stopped in his tracks.
The Heaven-Origin Divine Tree stood before him.
When he first planted it, it had been a sapling less than two chi (about 66 cm) tall. Over the centuries he had lived with Wang Shulin, it had flourished, and by the time she passed away, it was already tall enough to touch the cavern ceiling.
That tree had stood alone for seventy years.
The Qi-Gathering Formation had stopped working long ago. Throughout the years of Lee Hyun’s neglect, the tree must have had nowhere near enough spiritual qi.
Yet the tree had not died.
Its leaves had grown thicker, and its branches had spread sideways along the rocky ceiling. Its roots had thickened too, gripping the soil of the spirit field firmly.
It was growing slowly, very slowly, but growing all the same.
Lee Hyun stood before the tree for a long time.
Then he took spirit stones from his storage pouch and fitted them into the Qi-Gathering Formation.
As the formation plate lit up again, spiritual qi slowly resumed its flow toward the tree.
That day, he painted the Heaven-Origin Divine Tree.
…
Eighty years passed.
For the first time in many years, Lee Hyun appeared at one of the Two Heavens Society’s contact points.
The members there nearly jumped out of their skins when the figure in the badger mask appeared. Some had thought he was dead.
“Society Head, where have you been all this time…?”
“I took a little break.”
…
Ninety years passed.
More than seven thousand sheets of paper lay stacked beneath the drawing board.
By painting one thing each day, just as she had, Lee Hyun had come to understand something.
There were still so many things in the world he had never painted.
The moss on the reservoir today was different from yesterday’s. A fuzzbee had brought back a spirit insect in its mouth today, a little guy he had never seen before.
…
It was the hundredth year since Lee Hyun had shut himself away in the tunnel like a broken man.
That morning, he poured water into a pot and lit a fire beneath it.
Hssss―
The water began to boil.
Lee Hyun squatted in front of the pot.
He could find a little enjoyment even in watching the bubbles rise.
Lee Hyun took a handful of noodles from his storage pouch. They were ordinary wheat noodles from the mundane world, which he had bought in the county seat a couple of days earlier.
He added the noodles to the boiling water.
…
The noodles tasted good.
The flavor was nothing special.
A little salt, a little spice, a few dried mountain greens.
Even so, they tasted good.
That alone made it a pretty good day.
After eating the noodles, he felt oddly full and drowsy, despite being a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Lee Hyun rolled onto his left side.
And he soon fell asleep, just like a mortal in the mundane world.
…
He seemed to have had a warm, nostalgic dream.
He thought someone might have been laughing beside him.
He opened his eyes.
Lee Hyun took stock of his feelings.
He no longer felt despondent.
He slowly rose to his feet and stretched.
Then he tried to smile.
The smile came naturally now.
And so Lee Hyun let go of his grief and found his strength again.
***
***
TL Note: Since there were two releases today due to unavoidable plot-related reasons, there won’t be a release tomorrow.
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