Ning Que was telling the truth. He had indeed taken Sangsang to the House of Red Sleeves except he did not stay with Dewdrop, nor peek at those new girls, but went straight to the top floor and entered Mistress Jian’s room. He rolled up his sleeves, starting to enjoy the mutton giblets soup.
The soup was served in an earthen pot with delicate instruments. There were dozens of snacks matching the hot air, creating a pleasant atmosphere evoking the spirit of the Winter Solstice Festival.
Ning Que took a piece of lamb tripe and dipped it into the garlic sauce, putting it into his mouth and chewed with a sip of Nine-river double-distilled wine. He frowned immediately like he was in a great trouble.
Mistress Jian took the towel from Xiaocao, wiped the sweat and said, “So here are the words from the Empress, she wants you to do nothing today. For that, she would give you anything you want and of course, she apologized again for Xia Hou.”
Ning Que pointed at his frown and said, “But I can’t get rid of the frown. I just can’t.”
“It’s the wine. You should not drink the spirits since you are not a good drinker like Sangsang.”
The meaning of her words was profound. After a long silence, she continued with a gentle voice, “Endurance is a form of wisdom.”
Ning Que nodded and said, “I understand.”
Mistress Jian smiled and lamented, “Before you came here, I was really worried that you would make the same choice as that guy did.”
According to his brothers at the Academy, Mistress Jian should be the sister-in-law of the Youngest Uncle. That was why she might be the only person in the world who dared to call him like this.
“I don’t have his power”, he smiled and said, “If I did, I wouldn’t need to endure. Since I have entered the world, I will definitely challenge Xia Hou to show my teacher’s power as well as the Youngest Uncle’s reputation.”
Mistress Jian slightly frowned and said, “You entered the world for insight, not for killing.”
Ning Que said, “But killing can also be insightful.”
After finishing his words, Ning Que was totally drunk from the wine or from the fact that he could not break the net woven by the powerhouses in Chang’an. Maybe he wanted to escape from something deep in his mind.
As usual, once he got drunk at the House of Red Sleeves, he slept in Dewdrop’s room. Fortunately the bed did not smell like the foot of his teacher Yan Se. It was comfortable and aromatic.
Sangsang sat on the bed beside him and put a wet towel on his forehead. She knew that Ning Que was not drunk and told Dewdrop he did not need any hangover remedies.
Ning Que did not dream. He did not see the remote darkness, the three shades of the coldest black dust nor the endless light of the sky. He just immersed his mind deep in the sense of perception, reaching the bottom and feeling those pieces of consciousness.
These pieces were collected during his fight with Lotus last year at the Front Gate of the Devil’s Doctrine. Master Lotus put the consciousness in Ning Que’s sense of perception by force. Since then, Ning Que had tried to understand them, but he still hadn’t come up with anything specific.
But he knew these pieces of consciousness were very important to him at least. Because in the northern Hulan Sea, they helped him escape from Xia Hou’s fatal attack. The pieces seemed to know his enemy’s every move.
Lying on the bed, Ning Que sensed something hard on his belt. It was the Academy’s ID token among others.
These tokens seemed to give him some mental comfort, making the consciousness fragments clearer. He was unable to fully understand their in-depth meaning due to the state gap, but he knew they would help him in the fight with Xia Hou.
At the bank of Yanming Lake, Ye Hongyu once said, “Once you enter the Knowing Destiny State, you become a Grand Cultivator. You can sense the slightest changes Heaven and Earth’s Qi. Therefore, no matter what your enemy wants to do, it will always be within your experience and sense. That is the scariest thing about the Knowing Destiny State.”
Now Ning Que was at the upper state of Seethrough. The gap when confronting Knowing Destiny State cultivators in fighting consciousness was hopelessly huge.
However, Lotus had left many pieces of consciousness in his sense of perception.
The Great Divine Priest of West-Hill, the bigwig at the Front Gate of the Buddhism Sect. The man who had reached the Knowing Destiny State; if it wasn’t for some enigmatic reasons that made him unwilling to take the step, he would have surpassed the Five States and become a legend.
How powerful could the consciousness that Master Lotus left behind be?
Ning Que had no idea. He could only know it in a fight.
After waking up, Ning Que was refreshed. His body and mentality were at the best state of his life. He then left the House of Red Sleeves with Sangsang.
The snow began to fall heavily, whitening the whole city. The two took the big black umbrella and walked in this white snow world like a drop of ink.
The citizens were celebrating the festival with delicious mutton giblets soup. The snow on the roof looked like cooked mutton chops. And nobles also had their festival, but no noise was heard from their mansions.
Ning Que knew those lords must have gathered at the gate and prepared to see the man off. They might even send General Xia Hou to the suburbs.
The umbrella was in his right hand. He held Sangsang with the other hand and walked in the wind and snow. The market, the mansions, all were quiet.
Since the fifteenth summer of the Tianqi era, the city had been peaceful for a long time. The residents and people of the Academy all thought the peace would go on, for Ning Que had given up killing Xia Hou. After all, they did not know how he could do it.
But Ning Que would never give up. It was just as he had told Sangsang that summer, he could not wait for Xia Hou to get old and kill him. Revenge itself did not matter at all. The point was that he wanted a full stop to make his life complete.
He might die because Xia Hou was so powerful. Even his Eldest Brother could not guarantee to kill Xia Hou at the Wilderness. But he did not think he would die. The Headmaster, as well as himself, knew that he was powerful as well.
Life was full of conundrums. In the past 15 years, he had solved many of them for today’s fight. He firmly believed he would win.
The flying snow covered the entire city.
Red palace walls stood out in the white world.
Outside the city, there were dozens of luxurious wagons waiting on the square. Walking thousands of feet ahead from the moat, there was the gate where many people had gathered.
Prince Li Peiyan had come. The Defender-general of the State had come and there were Grand Secretaries and ministers. All the bigwigs had come except the prime minister sick in bed. They had come to see General Xia Hou off.
Staring at the approaching tall figure from the gate, the looks on their faces were filled with complicated emotions. Some were reassuring smiles, some were filled with pity and sadness.
He was the first retired general of the Tang empire in the Tianqi era, as well as being the only one in a century who relinquished military power for no reason.
He looked at the colleagues with whom he worked for years while walking towards them. The look on his face was also troubled.
After leaving the palace and returning to his hometown, he would not be General Xia Hou but a normal farmer. Indeed he was reluctant to leave his power, soldiers and the time.
The laws of the Tang Empire and the enemy’s army could not hurt him. Even the West-Hill Divine Palace had connived with him. But he was still forced to leave the grand stage.
However, he was graced with the Emperor’s farewell banquet, sent off by the lords and ministers, and received other prizes; he was one of the few who had such honor. Rising from a betrayer of the Devil’s Doctrine to a visiting professor of a Taoism sect and the general of the Tang Empire, he had killed many people and helped expand the nation. Now he could retire safely and enjoy peace. It was a perfect life.
He was rather satisfied.
As he walked towards the gate and those smiling bigwigs, he began to feel more relaxed than ever.
Walking through the gate, he stepped onto the snow ground. Suddenly he stopped. Without greeting the prince, he frowned and looked at the direction of the palace.
The prince followed him and looked at the same direction.
The rest of the people noticed their strangeness and turned to the palace.
The old general Xu Shi suddenly began to cough. His white eyebrows were mixed with the snow, containing some anger and helplessness.
In the wind and snow, a big black umbrella gradually appeared.
There were two people under it.
The umbrella was large, with a thick surface keeping the snow at bay. The snowflakes fell on the surface of the umbrella and swiftly slid to the sides.
Looking at the umbrella slowly coming towards him, Xia Hou somehow felt thoroughly relaxed. It was at this moment when he realized that he had been expecting Ning Que.