Chapter 630 You Should Try Dying!

Qing Ji had said he would tell Lu Yibei about the past, but after opening his mouth, he fell silent, as though the words had reached his lips only to lodge in his throat.

After a long while, he looked at Lu Yibei, then Huá Sāng, and asked a question that seemed completely unrelated to why he had left the fragment of the Pure Lotus Sword in the Great Pure Palace.

“Do you know that in the era when I lived, no new natural disaster was born for roughly two hundred years?”

Lu Yibei shook her head. She had indeed heard Gou Meng mention once that catastrophe-class beings had been extremely rare before the nights began to lengthen, but she knew nothing more.

“I know a little,” Huá Sāng said softly.

Qing Ji shifted his gaze from Lu Yibei to Huá Sāng, arched an eyebrow, and smiled. “Tell me.”

Huá Sāng glanced at Lu Yibei with a trace of difficulty between her brows, as if asking to be rescued.

Yet the perfect understanding they had shared while fighting moments ago seemed to have vanished. Lu Yibei completely missed her meaning and even waggled her eyebrows to urge her on.

Huá Sāng: “…”

After two seconds of silence, she cupped her hands toward Qing Ji and continued. “I once read a report from The Midnight Watchers Society. It said some scholars believe the increase in hauntings and psychics did not begin when the nights started growing longer.”

“Data shows that from the end of the Ming dynasty until roughly a century ago, the numbers of psychics and hauntings, as well as the density of ambient psychic energy, remained very low. Around a hundred years ago, however, both began to rise slowly.”

“By a little over a decade ago, the numbers of psychics and hauntings and the density of ambient psychic energy had already reached three or four times their levels from more than three centuries earlier. Then, when the nights began to lengthen, they exploded in only five years to more than seventy times their levels from a decade before.”

“Some scholars believe the entire world will fall into eternal night fifteen years from now. The scholar who wrote that report also supported this theory. He said that when eternal night descends, the numbers of psychics and hauntings and the density of ambient psychic energy will reach approximately two hundred times their levels from a little over a decade ago…”

When she finished, Huá Sāng’s eyes brightened slightly, and she silently released a long breath.

I’m actually amazing!

Even she was surprised that she had managed to say so much in one go.

It brought an inexplicable joy, like someone paralyzed for years standing up once more.

But…

The doubt that followed soon washed away her joy. She abruptly realized that Qing Ji’s question seemed to contain a deeper meaning.

“…”

When I chatted with Senior Qing Ji before, I heard him mention several times that he lived more than a century ago…

That overlaps partly with the period when hauntings and psychics began increasing…

Could his leaving the ferule inside the Great Pure Palace be connected to this? Huá Sāng wondered.

“Haha… That is more or less correct.” Qing Ji smiled at Huá Sāng.

He did not understand some of the terms she had used, but the general meaning differed little from what he knew.

“Come to think of it, I once had the chance to become the first newly born natural disaster in several centuries. Unfortunately, that opportunity came a little too late…”

In truth, psychic energy fluctuation levels for psychics and hauntings had all manner of regional names around the world, just as Class A was generally called bishop level in Europe.

The naming system from Class D through Class S was the simplest and bluntest standardization of psychic energy fluctuation levels, stripped of the various alternative names after The Midnight Watchers Society was founded.

Yet of all the ranks, only Class S retained its former designation—natural disaster—precisely because it was special.

Apart from the strength of their psychic energy fluctuations, Class D and Class A beings had almost no other fundamental difference. Upon reaching catastrophe-class, however, both psychics and hauntings changed in essence.

To a certain degree, catastrophe-class beings had already become symbols of a particular object or phenomenon, indelible parts of the world itself, like typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

Qing Ji truly had possessed the chance to become catastrophe-class—more than once, in fact.

Had he wished it, he could have reached catastrophe-class with nearly absolute certainty.

Lu Yanzhi, however, had no such opportunity…

She had not even become a high-tier psychic.

Without the possibility of reaching catastrophe-class, becoming a high-tier psychic not only failed to grant longevity, it could cause one to die even sooner as the many negative effects of a Spirit Pattern eroded the body!

When Qing Ji first had the chance to advance to catastrophe-class, Zhang Huainan hurried from the Great Pure Palace to Hua City, intending to celebrate with him.

Upon arriving, however, Zhang Huainan was astonished to learn that Qing Ji had chosen to abandon his advancement.

“Senior Brother, I don’t understand! Why would you give up such a wonderful opportunity? What if, in the future…” Zhang Huainan demanded, baffled and even somewhat angry.

Qing Ji, who had a child strapped to his back and was bent over washing diapers, raised his head and said with a beaming smile, “Even if I advance now, I’ll only become the weakest kind of catastrophe-class. There’s no point. Do you think I’m the sort of person who settles?”

It was late spring. The pomegranate blossoms in the rear courtyard of Yanzhi Restaurant were in full bloom, and the slightly sultry breeze overflowed with the beauty of ordinary life.

“As for you, since you’re already here, why don’t you…” Qing Ji looked at Zhang Huainan. His eyes rolled, and his smile gradually became perverse.

At the sight of that smile, long since engraved into his DNA, Zhang Huainan’s expression changed. He tried to flee, only to discover that his awareness of his own body had grown dull. He stood frozen, as though petrified.

And then… he was brutally tormented for more than two months.

Besides enduring Qing Ji’s daily special training—which could not be clearly classified as abuse or the imparting of wisdom—he also had to serve as waiter, kitchen hand, and babysitter.

After more than two months of biding his time and being force-fed so much “dog food” that he nearly developed kidney stones, Zhang Huainan finally seized the opportunity when Qing Ji accompanied Lu Yanzhi on a spring outing and fled dejectedly back to the Great Pure Palace.

Yet it was precisely that period of torment that allowed him to faintly touch the path toward catastrophe-class.

And so, for the following twenty-odd years, all Qing Ji did was run Yanzhi Restaurant with Lu Yanzhi, putting their hearts into it as they watched each other slowly grow old.

To him, that life was truly beautiful—more beautiful than any earth-shaking power in the world.

It would have been lovelier still if they could watch their child grow up, marry, and have children, then watch their grandchild grow up, marry, and have children, and then watch their grandchild’s grandchildren…

Of course, plans were only plans. In practice, Lu Yuebo spent most of his childhood half left to his own devices, as though he had merely been an accident.

More than twenty years later…

When Qing Ji received his second chance to advance to catastrophe-class, Zhang Huainan once again gathered his courage and traveled to Hua City. There he found only Yanzhi Restaurant, long abandoned, blanketed in dust and cobwebs. Both Qing Ji and Lu Yanzhi were gone.

He asked around the area and searched for many days. At last, beside a solitary grave outside Hua City, he found Qing Ji with tangled hair, listless and so emaciated that he barely looked human.

The wind carried red leaves down onto the lonely grave. With trembling hands, Qing Ji carefully brushed them away, as though afraid that the slightest force would disturb the person sleeping within.

Sensing Zhang Huainan’s arrival, he did not turn. He merely wiped the grave with a piece of white cloth whose spotless cleanliness clashed with his own slovenly appearance and said weakly, “Brat, do you know that I need only swing my sword once now to advance to catastrophe-class?”

Zhang Huainan: “…”

He said nothing. But if Qing Ji said he could, Zhang Huainan believed him.

“But what use is that? She’s been gone for a long time…” Qing Ji continued to himself.

When he finished, he collapsed desolately beside the grave. The sunset on the horizon was dark yellow, as though once it sank below the horizon, it would never rise again.

“She’s gone!”

Qing Ji suddenly released a long howl. A flock of crows and sparrows burst from the nearby treetops and flew toward the half-lit, half-shadowed woods.

From the moment he first gained the chance to advance to catastrophe-class, he had spent more than twenty years exhausting all his learning and pouring every scrap of effort into devising a sword strike capable of severing time.

For no other reason than to sever the “time” that would take Lu Yanzhi away!

Yet when he could finally advance to catastrophe-class and unleash that strike, Lu Yanzhi had already been gone for a very long time…

This time, Zhang Huainan said nothing more to Qing Ji. He dropped to one knee, cupped his hands, and solemnly bowed to Qing Ji three times before setting out for the Great Pure Palace.

That was the last time he saw Qing Ji.

Death’s greatest power lies not in making people die, but in making those left behind no longer wish to live…

Several years later, Zhang Huainan met Lu Yuebo at the Great Pure Palace. He learned of Qing Ji’s death and received from Lu Yuebo the fragment of the Pure Lotus Sword.

“Uncle, before my father died, he asked me to leave this thing with you. He was worried…” Lu Yuebo told Zhang Huainan.

Sealing the fragment of the Pure Lotus Sword that carried Qing Ji’s elderly memories within the Great Pure Palace had been Qing Ji’s dying wish. He feared that his obsession with Lu Yanzhi would cause his Spirit Pattern to lose control at the instant of death and transform him into a haunting.

His Spirit Pattern had always been unusual, and he possessed the foundation and capital to reach catastrophe-class. In an era when catastrophe-class beings were exceptionally rare, the consequences would have been unthinkable if his Spirit Pattern lost control and transformed him into a haunting.

“Can you guess the last thing little Yanzhi said to me?” Qing Ji looked at Lu Yibei and Huá Sāng. Without waiting for them to answer, he supplied it himself. “She said that from the first time we met, she had always been running after me, and she had kept running after me for the rest of her life.”

“But I walked too quickly in this life—so quickly that she could never catch me. In the end, when we grew old, she finally took one step ahead. On the other side, she would walk more slowly and wait for me to catch up.”

“What a fool…”

When he finished, he leaned against the Shuishu Shou and closed his eyes.

It was as though merely recounting the past had exhausted every last scrap of his strength.

Huá Sāng opened her mouth and tried several times to speak, but ultimately chose silence.

Not long ago, she had been happy that Senior Qing Ji had recovered a portion of his memories and remembered whom he had been waiting for outside that little restaurant.

But now it seemed that remembering might not have been a good thing.

Lu Yibei: “…”

It might be unkind to say so, but they really had been rather foolish.

Gou Meng had said there was no underworld or anything like it in this world. When people died, unless they became hauntings, they truly ceased to exist. Ancestor surely knew that as well.

Yet after Great-Great-Grandmother said something like that, he had not even possessed the possibility of chasing after her. His heart must have turned to ashes.

With lowered brows, Lu Yibei stared at Qing Ji and could not speak for a long time.

She no longer knew how to persuade him to unleash a slash, create an opening for her, and taint Pink Fluffy Bunny’s belief.

Whenever Qing Ji had revealed pieces of his past with Lu Yanzhi before, Lu Yibei had always thought their story resembled a fairy tale. But the most beautiful fairy tales were always sad…

Yet even when the tale was sad, some people never wanted to forget it after “hearing” it once.

No one but Qing Ji himself could untie this knot in his heart.

As Lu Yibei remained silent, the Pure Lotus Sword in her hand suddenly began to tremble violently. Then, with a hum, it tore free, shot through the air, and flew into the despondent Qing Ji’s hand, radiating silver-white light.

Then…

Qing Ji’s younger voice echoed beside his ear.

The voice carried such intense anger that it resembled a beast roaring as it prepared to tear him apart.

“Bastard! You’re agonizing over something this trivial?”

“You’ve never fucking died before, so how do you know what will happen? Giving up before you even try isn’t something I would ever do. Were you possessed by some damned thing?”

“Do you understand how long little Yanzhi might have to wait if there’s another world after death?!”

The Broken Sword and ferule had remained so close for so long that the remnant soul inhabiting the Broken Sword had long since formed a subtle connection with the one inside the ferule and learned everything.

At those words, Qing Ji’s body jerked as though struck by lightning. When his eyes flew open, their rims were already red…

“Then what should I…”

“I think you should try dying!”

Qing Ji: “…”

He gazed blankly toward the horizon for a while, tightened his grip on the Broken Sword, and rose shakily to his feet. “Yes… yes. I should go after little Yanzhi… I should chase her… She’s waited far too long…”

As he spoke, he slowly raised the Broken Sword and casually slashed forward.

The instant the blade moved, brilliant radiance erupted from it. The air shook violently and emitted a deep hum. Within that vibration came a crisp ding, as though two pieces of metal had fitted together.

…

Within the dazzling light stirred up by the sword energy, Qing Ji seemed to see again the girl in a blue kerchief and peach-red skirt.

Barefoot, she ran toward him and shouted, “Where did this lecher come from? You dare steal my shoes? If I don’t twist your head off today, my surname isn’t Lu!”

Watching the furious girl approach, Qing Ji smiled peacefully, opened his arms, and drew her into his embrace.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting…” Qing Ji murmured.

As the words fell, the white light dispersed.

The weathered Qing Ji vanished without a sound. Only a silver-white sword remained, falling to the ground with a clang.

Before the sword, a pitch-black fissure swallowed and expelled chaotic colors like a grotesque cavity. Time itself appeared to have stopped, with the fine rain and dense fog suspended in midair…