Nightfall

Experiences change one’s temperament, and the state determines one’s stature. The cultivators were quite different from ordinary people. Ever since the beginning of time, the Grand Cultivators who had crossed the threshold of the five states were able to summon wind and call for rain, so naturally their spiritual world gradually drifted away from the human world and headed to the area of non-human.

It was a readily comprehensible truth. The Headmaster of Academy had not been able to avoid the process of drifting away from the human world, and he talked about the matter with Ning Que afterwards. And he regained his conscience in a quite incredible way.

The Eldest Brother walked the fastest in the human world, but his name was Li Manman for he tended to do things slowly. And his adolescence and confusion period after becoming the Grand Cultivator was longer than others. But he still had to face the same problem that encountered by every Grand Cultivator. He had thought about the problem and figured out his own way of tackling it or made his own choice. At this point, he said that the Drunkard was not a human being, which was not a compliment but a subtle accusation.

A gentleman like him would actually blame a person, indicating that he could be extremely angry even if he were to look very calm.

He was angry at the fact that the Drunkard killed a virtuous man beyond reasoning and that he might kill more people. The Eldest Brother could neither understand nor accept what the Drunkard did.

Hengmu said with sarcasm, “Hypocrite indeed.”

Cultivation essentially meant drifting away from ordinary people, no matter what intention the cultivator had originally, whether it be becoming immortal or reaching Nirvana. Previously, Hengmu said that the Academy was full of hypocrites, and at this point he couldn’t help but taunt again after hearing the Eldest Brother said that every human being had compassion and put himself among ordinary people.

The Eldest Brother recalled several conversations he had back in the Back Hill of the Academy and said, “The Second Brother and Youngest Brother both had criticized me in the past. The Youngest Brother warned me subtly, but Jun Mo was more direct. Although the Third Sister didn’t say anything, I know that she has always looked down on my way of doing things over the years. I am indeed a hypocrite. Since I can kill people, then I should. If I don’t, I am shirking my responsibility. Besides, there are always some people who deserve to die.”

He gradually calmed down and said while staring at the Drunkard, “One can wash clothes and his feet in the water no matter if the water is clear or muddy. Sishui River is tainted with blood. I can’t always keep my shoes dry while walking along the river.”

There was some kind of determination hidden below the clam words. For Taoism, it indicated a great danger. Hearing this, Long Qing squinted his eyes slightly and became more serious.

“It doesn’t matter if you start killing now.” The Drunkard said indifferently, “Haotian loves the world, but I am not Haotian. You love the world, but I am not you. You will suffer if I kill people, but I won’t feel anything if you start killing.”

The Eldest Brother asked, “Is there no one in the world that you care about?”

“I have lived for countless years, and all my relatives and friends are gone. I am old, ill, and lonely, and I loved no one in the world. No matter how many people you kill, I won’t feel anything.” The Drunkard said so indifferently, but there was endless disappointment hidden in his words. The other three were all silent.

At this moment, a light rain began to fall, washing away the dust on the ground, softening the willow leaves by the river and wetting the hair of the four presented. The human world was hit by the cold spirit of autumn.

In the autumn rain, the Eldest Brother looked at the Drunkard and asked, “So I will lose?”

The Drunkard answered, “Love leads to fear. You will inevitably lose.”

Long Qing and Hengmu left the imperial city in the rain and marched toward the direction of the Great Swamp and the Song Kingdom with two thousand Papal Cavalrymen of the Divine Hall of West-Hill. Tens of millions of people would die in the misty rain.

The autumn rain was getting heavier and heavier. The Eldest Brother stood in front of the sedan and the body of Liu Yiqing with his head lowered, and his hair was all wet and attached to his forehead, looking miserable.

…

…

The world was flat, but the rain could not be completely uniform. Otherwise, there would be no floods. But this autumn rain was very strangely covering most mountains, rivers and towns. Fortunately, the rain was not as heavy and frightening as of that year when the Headmaster of Academy went to heaven.

It was raining in Chuzhou, wetting the pavilion at the East Hill and people’s clothes. Two old servants knelt down in front of the body of the governor and kept crying, and all the government officials and gentry who came from the city in the early morning looked pale and in shock. No one noticed a man who looked like an advisor did something on the pillar of the pavilion.

Although the scenery of East Hill was great, the terrain was too steep to attract tourists. People had been wondering why the governor with a reputation of honest and upright insisted on building such a pavilion on the summit of the hill in such a grim moment of the country since it would tire the people and drain the treasury. But no one knew the pavilion was actually a Transmission Array which could send important information to Chang’an.

Transmission Array like this was costly. Even the Great Tang with its abundant resources could only afford to build three, one in Helan City, one in Tuyang City and one in Chuzhou. Chuzhou enjoyed a strategic importance for it directly faced the Yan Kingdom and the Song Kingdom, which was the reason why the imperial court ordered the governor to build the pavilion and the governor agreed to do so even though it derogated from his reputation.

In the eyes of the officials and people of Chuzhou, the man who walked into the Pavilion of East Hill was the advisor of the governor. But actually he was a secret guard of the imperial palace and what he secretly did on the pillar was to start the pavilion.

The very first information the Pavilion of East Hill sent to Chang’an was neither the invasion of the Yan and Song Kingdoms nor the collapse of the river embankment. It was a death announcement. The man who built the pavilion had just died.

…

…

It was also raining in Chang’an. The rain fell down along the bright yellow eaves, and the chrysanthemums in the imperial garden were more beautiful in the rain.

In the Imperial Study, Li Yu looked at the death announcement which had just been delivered and went silent. Then he turned to look at the chrysanthemums outside the widow and continued to remain silent for a long time.

Looking at her pale face, Zeng Jing suppressed the shock and anger in his heart and said in a hoarse voice, “The imperial court must do something, or the whole country will be in chaos.”

It took great courage, spirit, or historical legacy to maintain an empire, an imperial court, and a territory. But what mattered the most was actually the administrative organization. In other words, the government officials at all levels were crucial for a country, for even the perfect system would also need to be carried out by people.

If officials could die at any time and some officials were to realize that they might die at any time, then the management system of an empire would be on the verge of collapse and might fall apart irreversibly.

The governor of Chuzhou died. The imperial court had to do something, such as finding and killing the murderer, hiding the truth, or stopping the enemy. Since it was impossible to hide the truth, the imperial court only had two options left.

There were only two or three people in the human world who could hide their tracks from the Tianshu Institute and the Academy and killed the governor of Chuzhou secretly. The imperial court of the Great Tang was incapable of dealing with such a powerful person even though it was the most powerful kingdom in the human world, for the people capable of killing the governor had gone beyond the human world.

Li Yu knew this very well. She looked at the chrysanthemums which were wet from the rain outside the window and said, “Let the Academy handle it. Kill the man who did this, or find a way to stop him. But, Ning Que, I hope you can kill the murderer, or how could Mr. Ouyang rest in peace?”

…

…

Ning Que was eating noodles on the city wall when he learned the death of the governor. He had been living on the city wall for dozens of days for he had to wait for a chance on a high place.

He didn’t know the governor of Chuzhou but heard that he was a virtuous man. He felt sad and was silent. When he aimed the iron bow at Linkang City and waited for the Drunkard last night, he knew that the Drunkard would strike back if the plan he and the Elder Brother came up with didn’t work. But he never expected that the counterattack would come so fast.

The Drunkard and the Butcher were special existences in the history of cultivation. Their states were unpredictable and already beyond the human world. If possible, the Academy never wanted to be hostile to them. But they had become enemies that the Academy wanted to kill the most now that they had surrendered to Haotian.

The Academy had planned to cope with the Drunkard and the Butcher for a long time, but never came up with any feasible methods. And all of the arrangements made in advance seemed to be hopeless. Ning Que kept complaining in his heart that it was irresponsible of the Headmaster to leave the human world before killing the Drunkard and the Butcher, but he never gave up finding the opportunity to shoot the two from afar.

Unfortunately, he missed the opportunity, so it was very likely that he might die. If Ning Que knew that Long Qing was the reason why he missed the opportunity, he might attribute the whole matter to cause and effect.

“I want to go down,” Ning Que said.

Hearing this, dozens of soldiers of the Great Tang who were responsible for taking care of him on the wall were surprised, for he had not left the wall recently.

But he had to go. Ning Que stepped down the city wall and walked on the bluestone ground which was wet from the autumn rain.

When autumn came, the leaves on both sides of the Vermilion Bird Avenue were quickly dyed in red and yellow. After the morning rain, countless leaves left the tree and piled up on the street.

The Drunkard would not give them another opportunity any time soon. And all of the powerful people of the Divine Halls would be very cautious and did not dare to step foot in Chang’an. So it was pointless for him to stay on the wall any longer.

At this moment, the problem he had to solve was how to stop the Drunkard from killing people. If the Drunkard were to continue his savage act, then the Great Tang would be overturned before the army of the Divine Halls and the Golden Tribe Royal Court could struck.

The Drunkard did not do this before, for he feared the Academy, for the remaining influence of the Headmaster of Academy still existed, and for he didn’t want to destroy the human world although he had yearned for the Divine Kingdom.

Now that he began to lash out, how was the Academy going to react?

If the Headmaster and the Youngest Uncle were still alive, they could just simply kill the Drunkard and the Butcher. Unfortunately, they were both gone.

The Eldest Brother was not the right person to stop the Drunkard, and neither was the Second Brother. These two would definitely risk their lives to fight against the Drunkard, just like what they did back in the Xuankong Temple.

Ning Que had looked down on the approach of risking one’s life, for he always thought that his life and all his elder brothers and sisters’ lives were far more valuable than those of others, including the Drunkard, the Butcher, Chief Monk and the Abbey Dean. So he strongly disagreed with the arrangement that Chao Xiaoshu made and did not consider the approach his Eldest Brother and Second Brother would adopt.

If the Third Sister was in Chang’an, what will she do? If Lian Sheng was still alive, what will he do? Walking on the yellow and red leaves, Ning Que breathed in the fresh air and cleared his mind. He knew exactly what he should do.

…