Chapter 1085.2: Start to Finish (III) - Part 2

Lu Ji drank his tea and said with a smile, “As cheap as this tea was, Old Yue bought a tael of it and brought it to me as a gift back then. He even earnestly said, ‘I know Mr. Lu is a great master of the tea ceremony and a lover of tea, so I gave you tea as a way of catering to your tastes.’”

Mentioning Old Yue, the scholar also smiled. “Old Yue was always a straightforward man. He knew you loved tea, so he gave you tea. But his salary back then was not much, and he had a family to support, so naturally he could only afford tea like this. But Old Yue certainly did not think much of it. He was a martial artist who drank alcohol, so naturally he thought all the tea in the world was pretty much the same.”

“Exactly. After I accepted the tea leaves, that old bastard drank the tea I brewed for him several times afterward, and every single time he looked thoroughly displeased. Later, he even said, ‘Since I gave you the tea leaves, you should just keep them and drink them yourself. There’s no need to bring them out again.’”

Lu Ji laughed in exasperation. “But every time I brewed tea for him, I genuinely used the finest tea leaves. Even the Emperor couldn’t drink them, yet he was disgusted by them.”

“I was angry with him over that for several years. But later, I thought, forget it. Old Yue was simply that kind of person; straightforward and rigid. What other thoughts could he possibly have?”

When Lu Ji reached this point, he rubbed his brow. In all the years he had lived, he had truly had only two friends: the one before him, and the one he had just mentioned.

The latter had been dead for far too long, and even Lu Ji’s memories of him had begun to grow somewhat hazy.

Hearing this, the scholar picked up his teacup again and took another sip. After carefully savoring it, he still shook his head and smiled bitterly. “Even with the atmosphere set, and all the things that needed to be said said, this tea still tastes like this. It really isn’t good.”

Lu Ji drank his tea and sighed as well. “You think I find it good?”

The scholar smiled.

Lu Ji thought for a moment before saying, “But when you think about it, wasn’t Old Yue simply that kind of person? No matter how much you told him how good the tea was, he would only drink his wine. No matter how you told him that doing something like that was meaningless... he would still do it.”

The scholar fell silent.

Lu Ji continued on his own. “That year, I knew he was going north, so I invited him to have tea with me. But in the end, he still drank wine. I drank tea and tried to persuade him not to do it. The situation was extremely difficult, and one person could not accomplish anything... Since he had that talent and was capable of reaching the Fuyun Realm, why throw his life away in the north? That night, I drank tea while persuading him. In the end, I drank an entire vat of tea and was still thirsty, yet I still could not persuade him.”

The scholar said, “If you could have persuaded him, he would not have been Old Yue.”

Lu Ji suddenly shouted angrily, “Damn it, he wasn’t even some Great General, just a man with ten or twenty thousand troops under his command. What use was there in going to the north? Would there have been even half a person in the imperial court willing to help him back then?" "He took those ten or twenty thousand men north. Didn’t you saw what happened to him?" "But so what if he was satisfied? He really died on the battlefield. He really died at the hands of those demons. Is there even half a person nowadays who remembers him?" "Apart from the two of us old fellows, is there even half a person who knows who he was?!”

“Did what he did had any meaning?!”

Lu Ji gripped the teacup, looking at the murky tea liquor inside it, but his eyes were already clouded with tears.

The scholar could not find the words to speak. Back then, they had both been utterly disappointed in the imperial court and in the state of the world, yet they had never expected that this friend of theirs, even when faced with such a terrible world, would insist on trying to do something.

They had not understood it then, and even now, they did not quite understand.

Lu Ji frowned and said, “You didn’t see the expression on his face when he left Divine Capital. His face was full of contentment. He did not feel in the slightest that he was merely going north to his death." “Someone like him was precisely the sort who, even when what he was doing was clearly meaningless. You knew it, and he knew it, but he would never give you even the slightest chance to feel the joy of being the winner. Because even though he lost, even though he failed to accomplish what he set out to do, he would keep doing it, again and again, without ever regretting it.”

The scholar took a deep breath. “In some respects, even the two of us together cannot compare to him.”

Lu Ji murmured, “Hundreds of years lived for nothing.”

The scholar looked at Lu Ji and smiled. “Stop beating around the bush. Just say what you want to say.”

“You’ve seen that young man too. Could you really not see Old Yue’s shadow in him?”

Lu Ji sighed. “I never saw Old Yue when he was that young, but thinking about it, he probably was like this, wasn’t he?”

The scholar smiled. “Indeed. They really are alike. That drive of his is just too similar.”

“I’ve already watched Old Yue go to his death once. Now I don’t want to watch him go to his death again.”

“In the last great battle, he fought three people alone, and his situation was already extremely difficult. Yet he is only a young man. At most, he has lived thirty years, and he has to bear all the burdens on his shoulders alone. We old fellows hiding behind him truly ought to be ashamed.”

Lu Ji finished the tea in his cup and said calmly, “I could watch Old Yue go to his death, but I cannot watch this young man die before me again. If someone has to die, it should be me first.”

The scholar looked at his old friend and asked, “You’ve made up your mind?”

Lu Ji did not answer the question. Instead, he asked, “Are you going?”

The scholar smiled. “Why would I go throw my life away in the north?”

Lu Ji said nothing.

To be reasonable had never been something he was good at.

He merely put away that jar of tea leaves and turned to leave.

The scholar remained seated and said with a soft laugh, “Mr. Zhang’s four phrases were: cultivate oneself, put one’s family in order, govern the state, and bring peace to the world. In this life, I’ve done the first three, and haven’t done them particularly well. As for the fourth, if I were to do it as a scholar, there’s probably no hope.”

Lu Ji stood where he was and did not hurry to leave.

The scholar continued speaking to himself. “In my life, I’ve gained a little reputation, enough to leave my name in the historical records. I’ve lived long enough as well.”

Lu Ji frowned. “What exactly are you trying to say? Stop beating around the bush.”

The scholar smiled. “When the Primordial Saint traveled the world seeking knowledge back then, not everyone agreed with the principles he expounded. But why did no one contradict him? Because the Primordial Saint was almost 2 meters tall and possessed tremendous physical strength.

“I heard the Primordial Saint also had a catchphrase back then: ‘If you cannot understand reason, I happen to know a little about fists and feet.’”

The scholar stood up, took a deep breath, and said, “Bringing peace to the world, destroying the demon race counts as bringing peace, too.”