Ze Tian Ji (Way of Choices)

Translated by: Hypersheep325

Edited by: Michyrr

Zhexiu was by the window, a model of loneliness, longing for some person. Upon hearing Tang Thirty-Six's question, he fell in a daze, very naturally thinking about many things—at the Grand Examination, in that bitter battle in the Tower of Purging Dust, the anger and bashfulness revealed on his opponent's face when his hand attacked their chest. Later on, they had lived together under the same roof in the Mausoleum of Books, letting him vaguely guess at something but not dare voice his suspicions. Later still, they met once more in the Grand Examination and he carried her on his back and ran towards the setting sun.

As he thought about these things, the corners of his lips turned up and he revealed a warm smile.

Tang Thirty-Six was completely unable to expect that this wolf youth famed for being unfeeling and ruthless would show such an emotion on his face. For a moment, he was dumbstruck. Holding his forehead, he thought, just what's gone wrong with this world? Xu Yourong is actually dating Chen Changsheng while Zhexiu is yearning for love!

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"Tang Tang is very similar to a person."

"Senior Su Li."

Chen Changsheng very naturally gave out the correct answer, then exchanged glances with Xu Yourong and laughed.

At this point, they had already left the Orthodox Academy and come to the Hundred Flowers Lane outside it. Snow was falling from the sky and under the Yellow Paper Umbrella, it was very difficult for them to be seen by others.

In fact, from the moment they met at Fortune Peace Road yesterday, Chen Changsheng desperately wanted to ask why the Yellow Paper Umbrella was in her possession. After all, this umbrella was his. However, regardless of how ignorant he was of worldly affairs, given that he had just made a mistake a moment ago, he knew that he could not ask the question this way, so he could only endure it for now.

Holding up the umbrella, they walked through the wind and snow along the eastern bank of the Luo River. After crossing Eight Willows Lane, they arrived at the Bridge of Helplessness. It was only natural that they began to think about yesterday's battle.

"If at that time, I knew you were my opponent, would the result be different?"

Standing on the center of the snowy bridge, Chen Changsheng whispered as he gazed in the direction she had come from yesterday.

Xu Yourong replied, "From the very beginning, you never had any intentions of winning."

After a moment of silence, Chen Changsheng said, "Because of the matter of annulling the engagement, I always felt that I was being somewhat unfair to you."

Xu Yourong faintly smiled but said nothing.

"Your cultivation level is above mine, so it was always difficult for me to win, and also…I don't like acting according to the plans of others."

Chen Changsheng turned to gaze through the snow at the distant Li Palace.

On that spring day almost two years ago, he left, humiliated, from the Divine General of the East's state. On another, smaller bridge, he had once sighed with similar emotion.

He cultivated the Dao of following his heart. His fate was not good, so he wished even more to grasp it in his hands.

"No one likes the feeling of being part of fate's plans." Xu Yourong turned in the other direction towards the Imperial Palace. "But yesterday, I really did want to fight with you, because I wanted to know what level your sword had reached. Moreover, I wanted to win in a fair and upright fashion. I don't like the feeling of losing."

Yesterday, in the beef rib restaurant on Fortune Peace Road, she had said something similar, but today, she spoke more seriously and openly, her words unvarnished.

The two descended from the snowy bridge. As it was snowing, there weren't many people walking on the bridge. Only a stall selling tanghulu on the side was surrounded by people and seemed rather lively. The majority of this crowd were idlers with nothing to do. They were currently discussing yesterday's battle and chatting about all sorts of gossip.

Like the engagement, like showing mercy, like being in love, like being merciless, and there were even a few quite shocking jeers.

Those idlers were clueless to the fact that the two subjects of their conversation were standing by their side.

Xu Yourong's head was slightly lowered, Chen Changsheng's slightly raised. Once more, they walked across the bridge, but this time they were not enemies, so what were they?

The snow was falling faster, and although it could not be described as fierce, it was enough to gradually confuse the eyes. The pedestrians on the street grew fewer and fewer, the eaves on the roof and brims of the wells being layered thicker and thicker with snow. The streets and alleys of the capital were transformed into an expanse of white. The original colors of the building peeking out from the snow were like clean lines on a white sheet of paper, very pleasing to the eye.

The snow on the stone pillars of the Li Palace was like white hats on top of slender stone men.

The Mausoleum of Books was still verdant and lush, except that the Divine Path, burdened with snow, seemed like a frozen waterfall.

No person came to disturb the small courtyard of the Plum Garden Inn. It was very serene, the snow-covered ground like a piece of felt. They couldn't bear to step on it, so they stood under the porch, gazing at the tree in the very center of the courtyard while they chatted about the excitement he felt two years ago when he first saw the rubbings of the Heavenly Tome Monoliths as well as the bamboo dragonfly.

Chen Changsheng and Xu Yourong used the entire day to walk the entire capital, going to many places and speaking about many things.

For the majority of the time, he who was unskilled with words was speaking, introducing the places they visited: the loneliness of the Lingyan Pavilion, the Night Pearls of the Dew Platform. He very seriously carried out the role of tour guide, wishing for her tour to be all the happier.

From beginning to end, Xu Yourong listened quietly at his side, a smile on her lips.

These were all places she had played until she was bored in as a child, even the Mausoleum of Books and the Imperial Palace. She had even treated the stone pillars of the Li Palace as slides.

There was no way she required a youth who had lived his childhood in Xining Village to explain it to her.

Chen Changsheng had originally known about these things, but he forgot.

She knew that he must have forgotten, but she didn't want to remind him.

At dusk, they finally returned to Hundred Flowers Lane. At the back wall of the Orthodox Academy, Chen Changsheng wanted to return the Yellow Paper Umbrella to her, but she shook her head.

"Martial Uncle Su wanted me to give this umbrella to you."

Chen Changsheng was very happy, thinking, I and Senior Su Li argued about this matter for tens of thousands of li, but now it seems that Senior has finally recognized his error.

He sent his spiritual sense into the handle of the umbrella and suddenly noticed a problem. In shock, he asked, "What about the sword in the umbrella?"

The foundation of the Yellow Paper Umbrella was that sword of Mount Li's Sect Master that was the only sword in the past thousand years to break out of the Sword Pool on its own, the Heaven Shrouding Sword that had once shaken the entire continent.

Back on the snowy plains of the demon realm, when Su Li had pulled it out of the umbrella, such was its might that one stroke had been enough to slay a Demon General, and one more was enough to slash open a path to survival.

But now this Heaven Shrouding Sword was clearly no longer within the umbrella.

"Martial Uncle said, the umbrella could be given to you, but the sword came from Mount Li and couldn't be given to you. He gave the Heaven Shrouding Sword…"

Xu Yourong paused, then continued, "To Senior Brother."

She didn't state that it had been given to that senior brother of the Mount Li Sword Sect, but Chen Changsheng knew that she was definitely speaking of Qiushan Jun.

This was the first time either of them had touched upon the name of Qiushan Jun.

Chen Changsheng felt somewhat uncomfortable, perhaps because of how naturally she had said the words 'senior brother', perhaps because it was his name that had been paired with hers in the past several years, or perhaps it was because he had grown up and cultivated the Dao with her and was truthfully much more familiar with her then Chen Changsheng was.

"What's wrong?" Xu Yourong asked, inclining her head.

Chen Changsheng's head was lowered as he gazed at the umbrella in his hands, as if he was studying something. He casually responded, "It's nothing."

The two seemed somewhat ignorant, but in reality, they understood everything.

"Martial Uncle Su also wanted me to bring you two letters."

Xu Yourong took from her bosom two letters and held them out in front of him.

For some reason, as her fingers gripped the letters, her brow was slightly creased.

The instant Chen Changsheng took the letters, he felt like his fingertips had become pincushions, pain piercing through his body. At once, he moved his spiritual sense to forcefully suppress the impulse to throw these letters away.

These two letters contained a monstrous sword intent!

He glanced in astonishment at Xu Yourong.

Xu Yourong nodded. Pointing at the two letters in his hand, she said, "Martial Uncle Su said that you could open the yellow envelope at any time. The black envelope, on the other hand, you should keep safe. In the future, if you encounter any situation you find impossible to resolve, open it then."

In the Garden of Zhou, the Heaven Shrouding Sword's sword intent and sword body had reunited. Outside the Garden of Zhou, Su Li and this sword had reunited. That grandmaster of the path of the sword, because of this lucky chance, once more experienced an increase in power, cultivating to unknown heights of strength on the path of the sword.

He now no longer needed the Heaven Shrouding Sword. He wanted to go traveling with the Holy Maiden, so he left the Heaven Shrouding Sword to Qiushan Jun and the Yellow Paper Umbrella to Chen Changsheng.

This seemed very fair, but it wasn't really. Although the Yellow Paper Umbrella was an incredibly potent defensive magical artifact, how could it be discussed on par with the famed Heaven Shrouding Sword?

However, Chen Changsheng had no complaints. In the end, the Heaven Shrouding Sword was the sword of Mount Li's Sect Master. It was only right and proper that it be left at Mount Li.

He carefully put the two letters away. Thinking of that senior who had already gone far away, he suddenly felt rather emotional, felt like he missed him.

On the tens of thousands of li from the snowy plains to the south, he and Su Li had experienced much together. Although, in terms of cultivation and generation, the two were incomparably distant, they could be considered to be friends in spite of the vast difference in age.

"Just where did he and the Holy Maiden go?"

"A very distant place."

"The Great Western Continent?"

"Even farther than the Great Western Continent."

This answer was somewhat surprising, yet it was also within reason.

To the ordinary people of the continent, the lonely Great Western Continent in the ocean was already the most distant place, but Su Li had traveled the world for several centuries and had presumably already visited long ago.

Now, for the sake of humanity's future, in an extremely free and easy manner, he had placed down all his grudges and hostility and taken the Holy Maiden to drift far away. Of course, they had to go to an even farther place.

But was there a place even farther than the Great Western Continent?

Chen Changsheng recalled some extremely obscure records within the Daoist Canon and asked Xu Yourong in shock, "Could there really be other continents?"

The records within the Daoist Canon concerning other continents were not at all like the personal experiences of travelers. The writings were exceptionally ambiguous, seeming more like conjectures.

To be well-read in the Daoist Canon did not mean that one knew all things about the world, because there were many things that were not, or could not be, recorded in words.

Xu Yourong was the current Holy Maiden. As a child, she had grown up and studied in places like the Li Palace, the Imperial Palace, and South Stream Temple, so she naturally knew a bit more.

"It should be the Sacred Light Continent." She explained to Chen Changsheng, "I heard Teacher say that on the other side of the sea of stars, on the incomparably distant other shore, is another continent. That world is bathed in light and inhabited by beings very similar to us. But the sea of stars is vast and impassable. If one does not pass through the sea of stars, there still exists an extremely firm spatial barrier between the two continents. Only experts that have stepped into the Divine Domain have the opportunity to break through this barrier and enter the world on the other side."

Amazed, Chen Changsheng asked, "You're sure?"

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