In the Front Gate of the Devil’s Doctrine in the Wilderness, Lotus had contaminated not only her flesh and blood, but also her state of mind. Therefore, her Taoist Heart, which had been originally clear and bright, was covered with dust because of something in the past. And it seemed that it would be impossible for her to recover because her condition in the Knowing Destiny State was not stable.
Any ordinary cultivator that came across such a setback would have been reduced to despair and given it up.
But she was not an ordinary cultivator. Rather, she was the Tao Addict who was so obsessed with Taoism.
She was clearly aware that every setback was a test of Haotian. As long as her Taoist Heart was strong enough, everything could be transformed into the most beautiful scenery alongside her long path of cultivation.
In the Wilderness, she had seen the Stone Array Tactics embattled by the Light God. She had also seen Mr. Ke’s Haoran Sword that could separate heaven from earth. All of those scenes were silently waiting for her to appreciate and absorb them.
But the other people in the West-Hill Divine Palace did not know.
The Great Divine Priest of Judgement did not know.
Luo Kedi, the commander of the God Guard, who intended to force her to marry him, did not know.
As a result, the West-Hill Divine Palace nowadays treated her with indifference, sarcasm, scorn, and contempt. And what was worse, they were going to deprive her of the time that she needed most.
Ye Hongyu needed time. She needed time to see through the scenery and the paper that covered her eyes.
Therefore, she could calmly disregard their complex expressions and execrable words. She could pretend to be a coward and even ignoble. She could kneel before God, so respectfully like a hopeless waste.
However, the situation that she faced now had suddenly become difficult.
Although Luo Kedi, the commander of the God Guard, was a rare master of the Divine Hall, Ye Hongyu would never consider marrying him.
It was not because of his age, nor his appearance, nor even the fact that she did not love him, since she could have no feelings at all for the sake of her cultivation.
But simply because… he had asked her to marry him.
He had asked her to marry him— not implored, nor requested.
That was an unacceptable shame for her.
Sitting on a stone bed in silence, Ye Hongyu clenched her cyan taoist robe, making her knuckles turn white.
“Do I really have to go back to the temple?
“Chen Pipi, you damned fatty, bastard, idiot. I just scared you a little in childhood. Why did you run away? Why don’t you return to the temple now?”
“As long as you don’t return, my brother will never forgive me. Then, how can I go back?”
Possibly due to remembering Chen Pipi or her elder brother, Ye Hongyu now could no longer control her emotions, even though she had managed to remain composed before throughout these days of endless humiliation. She silently lowered her head with her eyes full of grievances, sadness, and timidity.
At the moment, she was no longer the Tao Addict nor a loser, but a very ordinary girl.
An ordinary girl would naturally be prone to anger if she were forced into marriage, so Ye Hongyu became outraged now. She coldly stared at the closed door of the stone house, thinking that she should kill Chen Bachi, Luo Kedi, and all those who dared to look at her in that way.
However, the anger in her eyes gradually turned into frustration and self-mockery because she had no time now and could not go back to the temple. It seemed that she could do nothing but sit on the edge of the stone bed, angrily and helplessly.
At this point, someone arrived outside the stone house.
“My Lady, there is a letter for you.”
The man outside the stone house did not address her as Priest, which was not deliberately respectful. But his few simple words contained enough respect that only she could sense.
Ye Hongyu raised her eyebrows slightly as her expression changed.
She had not been shown respect like that for such a long time in the Divine Hall.
When the door opened, she recognized that the man was a very ordinary deacon of the Judicial Department.
The deacon presented a letter to her with both of his hands respectfully and then turned around and walked away without a single word.
Then the door of the stone house was closed and, once again, darkness reigned.
Ye Hongyu walked back to the stone bed and sat quietly on the edge, looking at the letter in her hand and not uttering a single word for a long while.
The envelope was made of plain kraft paper and it looked like nothing special. There was not even any handwriting on the front.
As a former Grand Master of the Judicial Department, she did not manage any of the affairs of the department, but she had a pair of eyes that could notice all the details in the world and find clues within them.
The seemingly ordinary kraft paper was the most common craft of the Danzhou paper workshop.
Therefore, this letter had come from the South Jin Kingdom.
Ye Hongyu was sure that she did not know anyone in the South Jin Kingdom, so she did not know who had written this letter to her.
She opened the envelope, pulled out the letterhead, and slowly unfolded it.
The letterhead was a yellowish papyrus.
And there was a pattern drawn on it.
The painter was obviously not good at drawing. The lines were crooked and unsmooth, so unsightly and clumsy that no one could recognize what the pattern was.
Ye Hongyu stared at the long hollow pattern on the yellowish letterhead, and then her fingers, which were pinching the two top corners of the letterhead, began to slightly tremble. She remained in silence for quite a long while.
Now she understood what the pattern was.
It was a sword.
The sword of Liu Bai, the Sage of Sword.
…
…
The Kingdom of Yue, in the southern part of the South Jin Kindom and east of the river, was next to the relatively quiet South Sea. Therefore, its fishing port was more prosperous than the Kingdom of Song’s.
A young man in a shirt walked out onto a fishing boat. He stretched his back toward the rising sun and squinted, giving a hint to his subordinates to complete the ensuing matters.
The young man looked very handsome. The scar on his cheek did not make his face appear menacing, but rather gave it a sense of composure.
Squinting at the rising red sun, he felt the moist sea wind that played upon his face. Suddenly, an unprecedented satisfaction surged over him. Then he whispered, “It seems quite good to live life in this way.”
The young man’s subordinates were haggling with the fishmongers and salt businessmen. But all that had nothing to do with him. He just silently looked at the rising sun.
The people at the fishing port only knew that the young man was a big businessman from the north, dealing with kippers. However, none of them knew how successful and famous the young man used to be before.
He had been the Prince of the Yan Kingdom, and the most outstanding and powerful young man in the West-Hill Divine Palace, and the handsome son of God who had planted several peach blossoms on the threshold of the Knowing Destiny State.
Today, however, he was just a fishmonger.
He was Prince Long Qing after all— even though he had lost all his previous cultivation after being shot through the chest by Ning Que, and had competed for food with beggars in a deserted monastery.
Even with no cultivation, he had his fists. And if his fists were not strong enough to fight against all the obstacles in the world, then he still had wisdom. Most importantly, he was alive, so he wanted to live better.
Half a month witnessed him grow from being destitute to a gang leader by unifying all the beggar gangs inside and outside of the Capital Cheng of the Yan Kingdom. With a portion of the beggar gang’s fortune and some loyal subordinates following him, he went to the Kingdom of Song, where he opened a wine shop. Within a short period of time, he managed to defeat all of his peers in the street and make his own shop dominant.
After that, he sold everything from all the wine shops and teahouses to an official of the Kingdom of Song, asking for no profits. Having obtained 1,000 taels of silver, he began to engage in trade.
He had a very good business selling kippers to the South Jin Kingdom or the Yan Kingdom from the Yue Kingdom.
Sometimes Long Qing also sighed that he seemed to be good at anything that he engaged in.
It took him such a short time to grow to be a big businessman. What else did he want?
However, looking at the salted fish in the bamboo basket, he could not help wondering, “Even if I were to become the richest businessman in the world, what difference would there be between me and those fish in the basket?”