We Agreed On Experiencing Life, So Why Did You Immortals Become Real?

Chapter 514: Come With Me to Meet the Wife of the World's Last Confucian Sage

Xian Xichun led Tushan Jingci and Xiao Mo to the administrative hall, and before long the formalities for leaving the academy had all been settled.In truth, it was mainly Tushan Jingci who needed to go through the full process. A book attendant like Xiao Mo only needed to sign his name.

Once the paperwork was complete, the three of them went together to the Zhenniu Tower in Hanshan City for a small drink.

Watching the young man and young woman sitting side by side, Xian Xichun found himself thinking, the more he looked, the more well-suited they seemed to each other but when he thought of what they were likely about to face, he could not help letting out a quiet sigh.

"Jingci offers a cup to the teacher."

Tushan Jingci raised her cup and spoke with open warmth, a smile in her eyes.

"If the teacher ever has time in the future, you are welcome to come visit Tushan whenever you like. Xiao Mo and I will be sure to host you properly."

"Ha ha ha." Xian Xichun raised his cup with a smile, his eyes full of warm satisfaction. "Since Miss Tushan has said as much, I will certainly have to make a trip to Tushan one of these days."

"Then we will be waiting for the teacher's arrival." Tushan Jingci drained her cup in one go.

"Whether in Tushan or here at the Hanshan Academy, wherever you find yourselves in the future, both of you must continue to cultivate diligently."

Xian Xichun looked at the two of them, a note of feeling in his gaze, his tone gradually growing more serious.

"And you must above all hold fast to your true hearts. If a person loses their true heart, the path beneath their feet will drift further and further astray, and the faster they go, the more dangerous it becomes. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Xiao Mo and Tushan Jingci answered together, their expressions respectful. "We will keep the teacher's instruction firmly in mind."

With that, Xian Xichun drew a jade pendant from inside his robe, held it in his palm and studied it for a moment, then pressed both hands together and split it cleanly in two.

"I am afraid I have nothing particularly fine to give either of you."

He held out the two halves of the pendant to them, his manner easy and unaffected.

"This is nothing special, really, just a small trinket called ink-marrow jade. A young woman made it a long time ago. The craftsmanship is not especially fine, but the material is of good quality. Wear it while you meditate, and it will help you settle into stillness more quickly."

"This..." Tushan Jingci and Xiao Mo exchanged a glance, neither quite sure what to say.

"Come now, when I tell you to take it, just take it. What, do you think this gift from your teacher is beneath you?"

Xian Xichun pressed the half of the jade firmly into Tushan Jingci's hand without further argument, his tone carrying a note of mock displeasure.

"If you will not accept it, your teacher will be genuinely upset."

"Then we thank the teacher." Seeing there was no way to decline, Tushan Jingci accepted it, though still feeling somewhat awkward. "Only the teacher has given us a farewell gift, and we have nothing in return to offer..."

"Ha ha ha, no need, no need."

Xian Xichun drank down a cup of wine with satisfaction and waved a hand.

"That poem you wrote, Jingci, has done your teacher a great deal of credit. Walking among my colleagues, I am nearly tempted to recite it to them several more times, just so they all know it was written by my own student."

"A poem?" Xiao Mo gave a small start and looked at Tushan Jingci with puzzlement.

"What, Xiao Mo, you do not know about it?" Xian Xichun looked surprised. "This poem was written by Jingci, for you."

"I have spent all my time in the courtyard cultivating, and Jingci never mentioned it. I truly had no idea." Xiao Mo smiled faintly and shook his head.

"Is that so? Then let me recite it for you, and listen carefully."

Xian Xichun cleared his throat, eager to begin.

"The first line of this poem goes, 'Three years today...'"

"Teacher!"

Tushan Jingci interrupted hastily, lowering her head in embarrassment, stealing a glance at Xiao Mo beside her, the tips of her ears flushing pink, her tone carrying a note of pleading. "Please... do not recite it..."

"Ha ha ha, what, shy in front of the one you love?"

Xian Xichun laughed heartily.

"All right, all right, I will not recite it then. Come, eat something, drink up."

He happily poured cup after cup of wine for the two of them.

As Xian Xichun drank, he went on at length about the current state of affairs in the Demon Realm, and shared, one by one, the insights he had gathered over the course of his life.

It was, in its way, the final lesson this teacher had to offer them.

Xiao Mo sat quietly beside them, listening, but he could not shake the feeling that the wine Xian Xichun was drinking that day was not simply a farewell drink shared with the two of them.

It felt, rather, as though Teacher Xian were drinking entirely for himself.

As though not long after this drink was finished, he intended to go and do something of great consequence.

An hour later, Xian Xichun was thoroughly drunk, collapsed across the table, mumbling something unintelligible.

Tushan Jingci had no choice but to settle the bill and have Xiao Mo carry the teacher back to the Hanshan Academy.

"We scholars! Must without fail bring order to family, state, and the world!"

"We sword cultivators! The blade in our hand must be swift! Must be sharp! What a pity, what a pity, my blade was not sharp enough, not swift enough..."

"If only my blade had been swift enough, sharp enough back then... she would not have..."

"Aah, never mind, never mind..."

"Xiao Mo, remember this, the Confucian sage I admire above all others once said, in the pursuit of learning, knowledge and action must be one! It is not enough to merely think, one must act!"

"Acting without thinking first, that will not do. But thinking without acting, is that not all for nothing?"

"That teacher's learning was truly profound!"

"What a pity those wretched fools in the Ten Thousand Laws Realm call themselves scholars when they are not even as worthy as I, a beast dressed in human clothing! Bah!"

Carried over Xiao Mo's shoulder, Xian Xichun did not quiet down for a single moment as they made their way out of the city, cursing loudly enough that the whole street could hear.

A few children pointed at Xian Xichun and giggled, "Mother, look, someone is acting drunk and silly!"

Xiao Mo felt his face flush under the gaze of everyone in the city, unable to either keep walking or stop, genuinely embarrassed.

Walking behind them, Tushan Jingci saw Xiao Mo's awkward expression and could not help covering her mouth, laughing quietly to herself.

Once back at the Hanshan Academy, Xiao Mo decided simply to settle Teacher Xian in his own bamboo courtyard for the time being.

After all, if any of his colleagues caught him in this state, he would never hear the end of it, and would likely be a laughingstock for some time.

Xiao Mo laid Xian Xichun down on his own bed, and Xian Xichun rolled onto his side and was soon snoring away in deep sleep.

Once the teacher was settled, Xiao Mo walked Tushan Jingci back.

"That is the first time I have ever seen Teacher Xian drink so much." Walking beside Xiao Mo, recalling the teacher's drunken antics, Tushan Jingci shook her head with a helpless air.

"The teacher's manner with drink today was indeed not at its best." Xiao Mo gave a nod, slowed his pace slightly, turned his head, and looked at the young girl beside him with a smile. "Though..."

His gaze was warm, carrying a soft, gentle amusement.

"The Young Miss's poem was genuinely very well written."

"What?" At Xiao Mo's words, Tushan Jingci gave a small start, blinking at him, a flush quietly spreading across her cheeks. "Xiao Mo, what are you... talking about..."

Xiao Mo smiled and recited slowly, "Three years today within this very courtyard, a face and peach blossoms mirror each other's red. The face is gone, who knows where, yet the peach blossoms still smile at the spring wind."

When he finished the last line, he looked at the young girl beside him with an amused warmth in his eyes. "Did the Young Miss not write this poem?"

"You..."

Hearing her own poem recited aloud to her face, Tushan Jingci felt her cheeks burning intensely. She bit lightly at her lip, the flush quietly spreading to the tips of her ears.

"How... how did you know?"

"Teacher Xian told me through a private transmission while we were drinking." Xiao Mo looked at the young girl's profile, a note of admiration in his eyes. "It truly is a fine poem."

"Stop, stop, this is mortifying!"

Tushan Jingci twisted her fingers together tightly, her fingertips fidgeting without purpose, and her long legs beneath her skirt quickened their pace, as though desperate to leave Xiao Mo behind.

For her, the poem had come from genuine feeling at the time, every word and line a reflection of how much she missed Xiao Mo, how she had longed every day for him to come out of seclusion sooner but who could have imagined the poem would spread so quickly.

And now Xiao Mo knew about it too.

It was utterly mortifying.

The feeling was, if anything, even more embarrassing than confessing her feelings to him the day before.

"What is there to be embarrassed about?" Xiao Mo caught up to her, his tone carrying a deliberate note of puzzlement. "Is this poem not simply about peach blossoms in spring? Could there possibly be some other meaning to it?"

"You... hmph, I am not speaking to you." Tushan Jingci curled her small fist and gave Xiao Mo's shoulder a light tap, turning her head away and walking even faster.

Seeing her genuinely flustered, Xiao Mo stopped teasing her and simply walked quietly beside her, letting the slanting evening sun stretch their two shadows together into one long shape behind them.

"It is not fair."

After walking for some time, the young girl, who had kept her head lowered the whole way, suddenly murmured under her breath.

"What is not fair?" Xiao Mo asked.

The young girl raised her head and looked directly at him with those moist, glistening eyes, her tone carrying a note of sweet complaint. "Only you get to laugh at me. That is not fair!"

"It truly was not laughing at you." Xiao Mo explained quickly. "I genuinely thought it was well written."

"I do not care. You were laughing at me just now." Tushan Jingci pushed out her lips, her cheeks puffing out slightly.

"All right then, shall I apologize to the Young Miss?" Xiao Mo said with a smile.

"I do not want your apology." Tushan Jingci lifted her chin, a flash of playful willfulness in her shifting gaze. "You... you have to write a poem too!"

"Me?" Xiao Mo gave a small start.

"That is right! You must write a poem too, so that I can properly laugh at you in turn!" Tushan Jingci turned and stood in front of Xiao Mo, both hands on her slender waist, cheeks puffed out, looking thoroughly determined not to back down until she got her way.

"And it has to be... it has to be..."

As she spoke, the young girl's cheeks grew redder and redder, her voice gradually softening, as soft as a summer breeze drifting through the mountain woods, leaving behind only a faint rustling sound.

"It has to be a poem... written for me."

…

A month later.

In the Demon Realm, Hanshan City.

A month before, two women in Daoist robes had arrived in Hanshan City, drawing the eyes of every resident, who found themselves unable to look away for a long while.

And today, a month later, Hanshan City welcomed two more unfamiliar faces.

One was dressed in white, the other in pale blue green.

The woman in the pale blue green dress already possessed a beauty that could topple kingdoms, every feature carrying a moving and captivating grace but the woman in white beside her was beautiful to a degree that defied description entirely, beautiful beyond anything words could capture.

It was as though the woman in white had only to stand quietly in place, and the whole world would lose its color around her, all of heaven and earth dimming, leaving only the pure white of her presence and in every movement she made, there was a natural, regal authority, as though all things in the world ought to bow before the hem of her skirt, leaving people only daring to look from a distance, never daring to draw close.

The woman in white walked at an unhurried pace through the streets and alleys of Hanshan City, eventually arriving before the mountain wrapped in the dense Confucian literary fortune.

Standing at the foot of the mountain, she raised her head and saw, written above the mountain gate in upright, formal script, the four characters reading "Hanshan Academy," the brushwork strong and forceful, the artistic spirit deep and lasting.

"I never expected the Demon Realm could hold such rich literary fortune." The woman in pale blue green looked around her, a note of surprise and feeling in her expression.

"It truly has not been easy."

The woman in white parted her lips slightly, her voice like the sound of celestial music from the heavens, ethereal and cool, carrying a chill that held everyone at a careful distance.

As though the heart beneath her chest had been nearly sealed shut entirely.

As though the woman in white maintained the last faint warmth in her heart through nothing more than a single, sustained thought.

"Let us go." Her gaze passed through the mountain gate, settling on what lay deeper within the academy. "Let us see what this academy in the Demon Realm is like, and see how its scholars differ from those of the Ten Thousand Laws Realm."

The woman in white moved her long legs forward beneath her skirt, walking step by step up the mountain, her pace unhurried, her bearing cool and composed, every step carrying a natural, effortless majesty.

And the moment she set foot within the Hanshan Academy, the literary fortune of the entire academy seemed to be stirred by something.

Gusts of wind carrying the quality of pages turning swept suddenly through the mountains, sweeping howling across every peak, through every bamboo grove.

That literary fortune, dense and almost solid, gathered ceaselessly in the air, layer upon layer, gradually condensing into a heavy bank of ink-dark cloud that pressed down low over the academy.

Everyone within the Hanshan Academy raised their heads and looked at this strange phenomenon in the sky above, their hearts filled with an inexplicable alarm.

"Dean, what... what is happening here?"

A teacher at the academy named Chao Xi flew hastily to Cun Caiguang's courtyard, a note of panic in his voice.

"Could it be that some great Confucian sage from the Ten Thousand Laws Realm has quietly come to our academy?"

To produce a phenomenon of literary fortune on such a grand scale meant that whoever had arrived was deeply favored by the great Confucian path.

And such a person would have to be, at the very least, a quasi-sage of the Confucian tradition but how could a Confucian quasi-sage possibly have come here?

"A quasi-sage?"

Cun Caiguang stroked his beard and shook his head with a smile.

"She is no quasi-sage. The reason she can produce a phenomenon of this scale, the reason the Confucian literary fortune favors her so deeply, is because of her husband. And her husband is no mere quasi-sage either."

"Her husband? Not a mere quasi-sage? Could this person be..." Chao Xi's eyes filled with astonished disbelief, a guess already forming in his mind.

"Let us go."

Cun Caiguang smoothed his robes, his manner composed, his steps steady.

"Come with me to meet the wife of the world's last Confucian sage."