The thirteenth year of Great Qian was not an easy year; it was a year etched into the history books in blood.
Ever since the winter of last year, the empire’s two most agriculturally productive regions, Xianghuai and Jiangnan, had been struggling with natural disasters. One of them hadn’t had a single drop of snow or rain the whole winter. The riverbed had retreated many meters; some areas no longer received waterflow at all. Jiangnan had become barren dirt for as far as the eye could see, the red ground sporting meter long cracks. Starved corpses littered the land, and nine out of ten homes were empty. The governor, after writing a petition to the imperial court, hung himself in his home for unclear reasons.
On the other hand, Xianghuai suffered massive flooding. Over ten cities had been washed away by floodwaters. The disaster-stricken refugees were everywhere, fleeing ceaselessly. Seven or eight out of ten died on the road. The young girls of destitute families could be bought and whisked off for a cup of rice. Healthy boys could be sold for three cups of rice, and still, people were lining up to sell their children.
Although it had not rained in the imperial capital Pingyang City for several months, the sky was still overcast, as if a pot had been clapped over everyone’s heads, suffocating them until they could hardly breathe. Some old people said that if one came out during the night and looked up, they’d know it wasn’t clouds up there, but countless vengeful ghosts drifting to the capital from all directions to find the emperor to air their grievances.
As the disasters continued, up in Xiangbei, a cart driver and a farmer rose up in revolt. As the forces dispatched to suppress them were still on the road, there were already countless peasants who could no longer afford the costs of living answering the call to rebellion. This continent that had been peaceful for too long was about to plunge into a new age of endless and unceasing battle.
Of course, all of this had nothing to do with Shi Wuduan, who was trapped on a mountain somewhere in Shuzhong where birds don’t shit.
The Cuibing bird that he’d sent to deliver mail had not returned, though he wasn’t at all anxious. He figured that, as expected, the big dumb bird had an empty brain and a small head, and was only good for growing blubber. It couldn’t even fly as fast as rogue cultivator Jiang Hua.
At first, Jiang Hua was concerned that keeping the child confined in the mountain might cause him to throw a tantrum or something, but who knew that after knowing him for some time, he discovered that Shi Wuduan seemed to naturally… lack a little something.
According to legend, when this child was still in his swaddling clothes, only just having learned how to sit up, when grown ups snatched away the toys in his hands, he simply wouldn’t fuss. Any other child would’ve cried for sure, but this kid only blinked his pair of black eyes, gazing about, making a “Yaa” sound to convey that he wanted the toy back. If it was returned, he’d continue playing. If not, he would simply go with the flow good-naturedly and turn his attention to a different toy.
Apparently the sect master’s disciple Master Banya had experimented taking away all the toys around him to see if he would cry. But what happened was that the little child looked at him in utter bafflement, as if he didn’t understand what a fully-grown bearded man was doing with an armful of playthings like rattle-drums. After a while of confusion, he simply returned to his own amusement, hugging his foot and sucking on his toes — now here’s something that can’t be snatched away, eh?
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.
According to Jiang Hua’s observations, Shi Wuduan was just that kind of person — no rush, no anger, no fear.
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In any case, he was very good at finding entertainment, and very good at putting what he learned into practice.
When the weather began to warm up, Shi Wuduan’s room was quite cool; why was that you ask?
When He Tong went in for a look, he got so mad that nearly had smoke coming out of his ears. Shi Wuduan had hung a rope from his roof with a round basket attached to the end. There was a large fan tied to the basket, and as the rabbit spirits in the basket sprinted round and round, the basket would spin, causing the fan to stir up a breeze. Although he was quite refreshed, those rabbits were nearly running themselves faint.
The fat rabbits ran to Jiang Hua to complain, and when he followed He Tong to take a look, he found out that the basket was more than it appeared. There was a miniature encirclement-type array inside, and the dumb rabbits had apparently gotten lost in there, only able to run, yet unable to escape.
Jiang Hua finally completely understood that if he took his eyes off of Shi Wuduan for a second, he’d be able to cook up trouble. He didn’t know if it was a new way of provoking him into letting him go, or if he truly was innocently and naively having fun.
The “Six Circle living array” to that day was an unsolvable array. If the array master didn’t allow exit, who on earth was capable of calculating the rapid, myriad changes of heaven’s stellar mechanics and finding out the trajectories of all the stars? And for every time a star’s course changed, the massive bamboo forest would change its form accordingly, its appearance morphing constantly at all times. One only needed a slight understanding of astral calculations to know what a massive undertaking it was, and it was even one that increased exponentially.
Mortal lives were only a few decades long, which wasn’t even enough time to count the grains of rice doubled on a chessboard; who could finish such a calculation?
Jiang Hua, seeing that he was extremely gifted, had planned on using an ancient array to rile him up a bit. Not even in his dreams did he think that he would really be able to break the living array. He’d thought that once he’d grown up a bit and his disposition settled down, he’d take him to travel, only….
The mountains had no night or day, while a thousand years pass in the outside world. By the time he left, perhaps everything on Jiulu Mountain would already be completely different.
After nearly half a year, the Cuibing bird finally returned. It was finally cloaked in a new layer of shimmering feathers, no longer looking like a bald chicken prepped for roasting.
Although, it really hadn’t tarried overmuch. It was mainly that Jiulu Mountain was truly quite far, and although it was a “divine sparrow” in name, it hadn’t the slightest bit of magical powers. When it left, there had been a fire spurring it on. When it reached Fire Lotus cave, it had flown so much that it nearly puked blood, and was too exhausted to be scared of Bai Li. It had laid in the cave for many days, before staggering back to the world of the living. On the return trip, it flew even slower.
Perhaps it was on account of Shi Wuduan, but Bai Li was actually somewhat courteous to this fat bird that had come crashing in out of nowhere. Since he didn’t have anything better to do, he raised and fed it for a while, wrote a reply, and sent it back.
Ever since that day, Bai Ziyi no longer appeared alone in front of Bai Li. This pair of “mother and son” was already shockingly distant before, but never had they been this obviously estranged.
Whenever the little yao entered Fire Lotus cave, they did so with bated breath and lowered eyes, afraid to get caught up in their standoff.
Bai Li’s attitude became ever more unreadable, and as if playing along with Bai Ziyi, began to hole up inside and rarely leave.
Sometimes he didn’t understand, what exactly he did, that all the living things in Cangyun Valley were so frightened of him. Even his supposed birth mother would sometimes furtively look at him with an expression full of wariness. For so many years, he’d endured it, pretending he didn’t notice.
“Am I really something so wicked and evil?” Bai Li had once been perplexed for a long time by that question, however he wasn’t really maudlin by nature and was usually focused completely on cultivation. From birth up until then, though he’d experienced a few setbacks here and there, he’d never caused anything terrible, so why were they so scared of him?
Even ordinary small yao and small beasts had their own homes, had parents and siblings to depend on. Except him. From when his memories began, Bai Ziyi, this mother in name, had never hugged him. Even before he’d attained human form, he still appeared human-shaped, sporting a pair of fox ears atop his head.
She was so extreme as to be unwilling to even occasionally pat his head. Just as if he ever erred, she would also force herself to express a pleasant countenance, cautiously admonishing him.
His bad intentions, no one scolded him for; his good intentions… well no one wanted it anyway.
Bai Li felt that, these few hundred years, he’d always lived as a pariah. Everyone was on guard against him — except for Shi Wuduan.
The divine fox race experienced a small heavenly tribulation every five hundred years, and a great heavenly tribulation every thousand years. He’d already experienced a small heavenly tribulation once, but Bai Li couldn’t have imagined that his great heavenly tribulation would be so ruthless — he was merely a small kit that had never left the mountain, and had never been tainted by karma or good and evil. The heavens were fair, and the calamities were only tests, but who knew that when it came to him, the lightning bolts that came one after another seemed as if they truly intended to scatter his three souls and seven spirits.
Bai Li suddenly felt a surge of despair. When others feared him, he could comfort himself by thinking that “perhaps they had their reasons” and that would be it, but now, even heaven rejected his existence?
He searched his soul, and knew he’d never committed any offences against heaven or any atrocities. Unless, the cycle of karma and cause and effect was all a lie? Since he, Bai Li, had already been born into the world, what right did karma have to tell him to drop dead for no reason? As that thought surfaced, the heavenly tribulation struck away over half his cultivation. In his heart, malevolent intent arose. As it stood, a thousand years of cultivation was about to be put to the torch, when suddenly, a voice rang out in the near distance, “Ai, why’s there suddenly lightning on such a nice day like this. Old cow, we’d better find a place to take shelter, it looks like it might rain soon.”
A human!
Heavenly calamities avoided humans, but usually when yao endured calamities, they were unwilling to seek human protection, otherwise they’d owe a rather large debt of karma that could stymie their cultivation if it wasn’t repaid.
But this time, Bai Li had no choice but to run over to the human, otherwise, forget karma, if his three souls and seven spirits were scattered by the calamity, he wouldn’t even be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation.
At that time, Shi Wuduan had just woken up from the dew of the Zephyr Cup, and was sneakily taking the Qingcu out for a stroll in Cangyun Valley. That was the first time he’d met Bai Li. Bai Li’s cultivation had taken significant damage, his fox ears had been exposed, and his appearance had naturally returned to that of a young child’s, as if he had been struck back to his original form. His hair was disheveled and he’d cut quite a sorry figure. When Shi Wuduan saw him, he startled, and the first thing he said was, “Aiya, where’d this little beauty come from?”
And then, he saw the ears that Bai Li was hiding on his head, looked again at the flashing thunder outside and slapped the fretful cow that had begun to grow hostile, saying, “Don’t fuss, even if you achieve the Dao and cultivate to human form, you’ll still look like a thick brute. She’s one of the fox race, even if you’re jealous it’s no use — little sister, don’t be afraid, why don’t you come over? My family’s cow here is thick-skinned and sturdy, and can shield you for a while.”
Bai Li would remember for a lifetime, that sickly-looking Shi Wuduan taking a handkerchief from his robe, “Here, wipe the rain off your hair.” That manner, that was without trace of shadow, that smile, that lit up his whole face.
Bai Li was stunned for quite a while before he received the handkerchief, hesitantly mumbling, “I’ll pay you back for this.”
“Okay, you can just be my wife then.”
It was only then, that for the first time in his life, he had someone who wasn’t afraid of him, someone who was willing to talk to him.
Shi Wuduan looked at the Cuibing bird, who was loftily sticking out its leg, and giddily retrieved the package that Bai Li had sent him. Inside, there was a simple letter in reply, and a metal rod of about a palm’s length. It looked pitch-black, as if it was some junk left over after building a house.
However, Shi Wuduan cheerily stored the small rod into the folds of his robes, before patting the Cuibing bird’s head and saying, “We’ll be able to go home soon.”
That same night, he brought the Cuibing bird to stand before the Six Circle Array once again. This time, the bird knew to settle down, shamelessly hiding in his arms, refusing to look at the dizzying stellar array.
Shi Wuduan took out his astrolabe, pressed the ordinary looking black rod on it, and recited a hard to pronounce incantation. The place where the astrolabe and metal rod made contact glowed slightly, before the astrolabe expanded several times in size, and enveloped Shi Wuduan underneath it like an umbrella. It rose into the air and hung there. The threads of star silk were like vines, tangling around Shi Wuduan’s hand and the metal rod.
Shi Wuduan looked back at Jiang Hua’s courtyard, chuckled, and said quietly, “Senior, we’ll meet again someday!”
“Alpha Ursae Majoris enters the sixth palace, forward for three breaths, absent-minded seat.”
The astrolabe hanging in the air rose even higher, until it hovered over the tops of the bamboo and rocks. The stars began to spin, moving according to his incantation, but differently from the movements of the actual heavenly bodies.
Will you really escaped little Shi?~
Thanks for the chapter<3
Yaaaaaaaas thanks fo translating! This helped me understand what I didn’t before.
💙💙💙
Thank you for translating!!!!