warning: brief mention of self-harm
Spring and autumn came and went, and in the blink of an eye Shi Wuduan had already stayed on Jiulu Mountain for five years. His height had shot up quite a bit; his teenage frame, not yet fully grown, was slimmer than an adults’ though he had the beginnings of a tall stature. However, his expression became more apathetic by the day; so devoid of cheer was he, that he really did seem like a “little shishu” to the junior disciples.
During those five years, the Cuibing bird had molted twice, and the rabbit — well, the rabbit could forget about attaining human form, seeing how sluggish its cultivation was. It was clearly just planning to eat, sleep, and muddle along until it died. Since it had the fortune to meet Shi Wuduan and follow him to Jiulu Mountain, where it was fed all day, every day, it fattened so quickly that it ballooned to double its previous size. From afar, it now looked like a small dog.
In the first year, Shi Wuduan was still troubled by his imprisonment in Jiulu Mountain. No matter how much he suppressed it, his hostility towards Bitan still leaked through. Every time after Bitan visited he would lock himself inside, shutting the Cuibing bird and the rabbit spirit out, and stab the wall with a dagger. When it got too unbearable, he’d even stab himself with the knife because if he didn’t vent it out it’d suffocate him to death.
As time went on, his sufferance became second nature.
The good times were like water, slipping past his fingers in a moment of inattention; a hundred years could flow by in an instant, even a lifetime wouldn’t be enough. But the bad times were like knives; one cut at a time, they carved and slashed away at one’s insides and outsides. So much so, that one could be changed beyond recognition in the blink of an eye.
The books that Shi Wuduan had read, if stacked together would be taller than a man. He lived a dull life, seldom stepping out the door. If one tested him on that archaic crap he’d read, they could pick up any book, flip to any random page, point at a word, and Shi Wuduan would be able to drone out the rest of the book from memory. But if they brought up any other topic, he refused to speak. It was like the events that had occurred that night had locked his soul inside those empty, banal, yellowed pages.
After a long while, even Bitan began to think that the child truly didn’t know anything. Otherwise, how could he be so placid? Thus, he stopped worrying about him.
Slowly, speaking became a wasteful matter to Shi Wuduan. He knew that he wasn’t being raised by Xuan Sect, he was being jailed by it. He had to be absolutely cautious when he spoke to others and slowly consider every word he said. Some times, in the silence of the night, when Shi Wuduan couldn’t hold it in any longer, he’d talk to the Cuibing bird and the rabbit. But these creatures were simply too dumb. Eventually, he lost interest, and his silence became ever deeper.
There were many times when he had been frightened and scared, and daydream about how to escape. But later on, he realized that Bitan and Jiang Hua were not the same. If he was caught running away by Jiang Hua, he’d be slapped upside the head at most. But Xuan Sect wasn’t a place he could fool around in anymore.
A child, especially a coddled and spoiled child, would believe naively, in the ignorance of their youth, that “there’s nothing I can’t do.” The discovery that, in truth, they were really nothing at all, would take a long, long time.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Sometimes as he thought and thought, he’d start staring blankly at the astrolabe. At first, he didn’t notice. But one day, Shi Wuduan realized that the sands in the astrolabe were not arranged randomly.
He didn’t know what it meant; all he knew was that ever since his shifu died, the astrolabe had never moved again. It had been frozen in the instant the mountain lanterns had risen.
Shi Wuduan’s interest in divination wasn’t something that others were too concerned about. After all, whether it was Bitan or Banya …. or Master Kuruo – Shi Wuduan didn’t know whether she was dead or alive, as he hadn’t seen her since his return – despite their powerful cultivation, only had a bit of superficial knowledge about divination.
Divination was useful; it could be used to find people, to predict meteorological conditions, and legend had it that those who were most accomplished in the art could calculate the fate of anyone they wished, although that bordered on crazy talk. Destiny was inconstant, touched by thousands of threads of cause and effect, how could any mere mortal calculate it all? Only important things like massive calamities, ruinous disasters, divine miracles, the trajectories of the Emperor’s Star and the General’s Star, or the rise and fall of kingdoms could be detected by those skilled in divination.
To hyperbolize it, it was an earth-shaking, heaven-defying art; to diminish it, the average practitioner could only check whether it would rain or snow the next day.
In Bitan’s eyes, these kinds of opaque, arcane learnings were only useful as theoretical exercises for sharpening one’s mind, and had no relevance to the great Dao. So he let Shi Wuduan practice it however he pleased. The people who went to the mountaintop every day to deliver food would occasionally glimpse their reclusive “little shishu” squatting by the astrolabe. Sometimes he’d be arduously racking his brains, sometimes he’d use a small stick to scrawl out lengthy, lengthy calculations that no one could make heads or tails of. During those times, his whole aura would light up and his eyes would shine as if he was utterly enthralled.
But as soon as he noticed someone’s presence, that stiff, wooden expression would return.
That year when Shi Wuduan was sixteen, Bitan sent someone to deliver an invitation to him, informing him that Xuan Sect’s once every thirty years “great martial conference” was coming up soon, and that he was specially invited to join in the festivities with his fellow sect members.
The so-called “great martial conference” was actually just a test to see how far the cultivation of Xuan Sect’s disciples had advanced in the last thirty years. Firstly, it allowed disciples to show off their skill to the sect leader. Secondly, even though cultivators lived many times longer than ordinary people, a lot could happen in thirty years, positions in the sect would open up, and those who performed well in the conference had a chance of rising to higher stations. And finally, the most tempting benefit was that every time the conference was held, the imperial court would send an emissary. Those who caught their honored guests’ eye would have a bright future waiting for them.
Dao cultivators, unlike immortal cultivators who lived outside societal conventions, weren’t above such worldly desires.
Shi Wuduan politely accepted the invitation as he began to plot. What was the point of dragging him out to this event? To be a mascot? A decoration? For whose eyes? Was this Bitan or Banya’s idea?
He glanced at the person who delivered the message, a smiling young man who looked rather amiable. He asked, “How…. are you called?”
“To answer your question, little shishu, I am called Liang Xiao. The sect leader’s eldest disciple is my shifu.”
Shi Wuduan’s heart skipped a beat at the words “sect leader,” but nothing showed on his face. He so rarely had the opportunity to speak that he’d, somehow, gotten into the habit of speaking one word at a time. He talked like an old man with one foot in the grave who had to pause for breath three times a sentence. He made a sound of understanding and after nearly half a minute, finally continued, “You’re Zhao-shixiong’s disciple.”
After waiting nearly half a minute, Liang Xiao’s smile had already stiffened on his face. He’d thought he was going to say something deep and profound; who could’ve thought that that was the rubbish he’d been waiting to hear. He hurriedly responded, “Yes, I’m your shizi.”
Shi Wuduan looked at him, nodded, and said, “Okay.”
Okay what? Liang Xiao’s mouth twitched at the corners. He raised his head and examined Shi Wuduan, thinking: how is this person so lacking in etiquette? Then another long while passed before he carefully folded the invitation into thirds and tucked it in his sleeve. Only then did he salute and slowly say, “It’s my fortune to have chanced upon the thirty-year great martial conference. If you would convey my words to the sect leader, ‘Wuduan is of meagre talent, and will only be cheering from the sidelines.’”
Liang Xiao hurriedly replied “of course, of course,” then realized that this gentleman wasn’t without manners, he just needed a lot of time to use those manners. He was just about to turn away and leave when he saw Shi Wuduan open his mouth again. The overly “mature for his age” teenager continued, “Liang-shizhi is young and talented and surely has ample preparation for the conference. I’ll just congratulate you in advance for your boundless achievements.”
Those words seemed bizarrely creepy to Liang Xiao, as if the person before him wasn’t a youth but a white-haired, seventy or eighty year old geezer. He returned a few pleasantries and left like he was fleeing.
Shi Wuduan smiled at his retreating form as he leaned against the door, but his eyes were icy cold. He turned and entered his courtyard, retrieving the pile of drafts under the table. Those were the results of five years of unmentored, unguided study and research into the last celestial image that his shifu had left.
Shi Wuduan lightly flicked his fingers, conjuring a small flame in his palm. In a moment, the papers had all burned to ash. He silently let out a breath and knew that the opportunity to leave Xuan Sect had come.
The day of the conference, Shi Wuduan finally appeared once more before everyone’s eyes.
According to seniority, Shi Wuduan had to sit in the same area as the likes of the da-shixiong, Zhao Chengye, and the twelve masters, so he chose the furthest seat and didn’t socialize with anyone. He was unlike those diligent disciples who sprinted along the path of martial cultivation. His “raised-by-a-stepmother” appearance marked him as an outsider.
Xuan Sect’s martial cultivation was known for being harsh and difficult. Disciples had to practice diligently every day through snow, rain, and sun. They had to brawl in the dirt, master the eighteen weapons, and compete against each other from time to time. Since the martial conference was an intra-sect tournament, most of the disciples dressed casually. But cultivators, especially martial cultivators, all had an inner splendor that made them look dignified and distinguished. Standing on the same field together, they looked especially brilliant.
No one knew if it was intentional, but Shi Wuduan, bundled up in brocades, though he didn’t quite look malnourished and sickly, with his eyes lowered down, did look like a praying monk. Though, he’d been born with pretty and delicate features, so only those uninformed people, when they went up to him to chat, would notice this little shishu’s….. unordinary qualities.
Even when he was just blindly agreeing with someone, he was half an incense stick slower than everyone else. When he spoke, his words were confused, incoherent, and utterly boring. It was like his head was filled with paste. And every once in a while, he’d boorishly drop a bag of books, and the grossest thing was that that bag seemed to be dropping from a mile-high precipice, taking years to hit the ground. “Putridly verbose” could not even begin to describe his awe-inspiring puissance.
In short order, there were no more oblivious people who dared to hang around this “legendary” little shishu. Everyone thought that Shi Wuduan had been brought out to show everyone what the saying “gilded on the outside, rotten on the inside” really meant.
Shi Wuduan smiled secretively to himself, calmly shrinking back into his corner. He swept his gaze across the area before pausing – he’d caught sight of Master Kuruo —
But the guards standing next to Master Kuruo weren’t the beautiful-as-jade shijie he’d expected to see, rather, they were armed male disciples of Xuan Sect. The rest of the female disciples were all sitting several meters away from their shifu. The younger ones looked angry and indignant.
Those people next to Kuruo obviously weren’t guarding her. Anyone with eyes could tell that she was being coerced.
Kuruo seemed to have sensed something, she suddenly raised her head and met Shi Wuduan’s eyes. She startled as her face twisted with worry and anxiousness. She opened her mouth as if to speak. Shi Wuduan sighed to himself, knowing that this shishu had a fiery, unrestrainable temper. He raised his cup in toast, pasting on a smile as a signal.
He downed the cup in one go as the drums began to sound. Bitan stepped onto the platform and honored heaven and earth — the martial conference had begun. Shi Wuduan shifted his gaze from Master Kuruo to the Grand Mentor representing the emperor — this was the middle-aged man he’d seen five years ago outside of Xuan Sect’s gates, traveling alongside the emperor’s carriage. Thus, he had an inkling of what was going on. It seemed that Kuruo had been in similar straits these past few years, on house arrest. Now, Bitan wanted to make the situation look less awkward by using the martial conference as an opportunity to let Kuruo make an appearance. But since Bitan was afraid that she’d make a scene, he’d made him show up to appease her.
As Shi Wuduan held his wine cup, with a gentle, deferential expression on his face, he thought: Bitan this old bastard of a whore, he’s useless at everything else, but he sure knows how to put up memorial arches for himself.
Is this really my spoiled son? My son has grown so much!!!
Thanks for the chapter<3
(o;TωT)o when I saw the tag personality change, I thought it would be the ML but then read the previous chapters and it seems like it was referring to MC.
Our boi grew up in the most painful and hard way (*꒦ິㅿ꒦ີ)
Indeed, he’s so pitiful. I hope Bai Li comes back and comforts him ╥﹏╥
Can’t wait for him to escape🔗
Why do I feel like our boy is so slow just because he’s calculaiting future and etc. constantly in his mind?
indeed, he is 🥲
Bring back our ball of sunshine 😭 He became cunning now, which is good because no one will see through his plans but at the same time, he lost his bright kiddo self…. lemme lay and cry here 🛌
Thank u for the Food Translations!!!
I can attest that the best way to get people to stop talking to you is to be incredibly boring. Works every time.