Chapter 64: And So We Part

Seeing that Ren Youyang had already said as much, Ding Songyan stopped concealing it. He gave a light nod.

"Yes, I did."

He held off on saying what it was for the moment. He was not yet sure what his master had told the True Spirit Sect, or whether the Chaos remains had come up, and he did not want to undercut his elders.

Ren Youyang’s canine ears gave a twitch. He did not press further. He flicked his right hand.

"No desire for drinks and company, but eating and drinking, that I still want. Let’s go find a restaurant."

Ding Songyan rubbed his stomach. The image of cutting open Yan Changqing surfaced in his mind in a baffling manner, and his appetite promptly vanished.

Back then, he had been wound taut with tension, his spirit racing, so he had not felt nauseated at all. Now, he could barely stand it by merely recalling it.

But Brother Youyang wanted to eat and drink. He would have to endure it even at the cost of his life!

The two found a restaurant nearby in the east of the city and ordered four hot dishes—spicy pork and mutton trotters, braised pork offal, steamed goose and duck cuts, and three crisp broth—alongside three cold dishes of dressed lettuce, spiced braised beef, and shredded chicken skin with hemp paste, two sweets of carved candied fruit and red bean rice balls, and two jugs of lychee liquor.

Once all the dishes had arrived, Ding Songyan raised a bowl of lychee liquor and said to Ren Youyang, "To find even one true friend in life is already a fortune. And yet I was able to meet both you and Miss Xiao Qing in one go. That calls for three bowls."

"Only three bowls?" Ren Youyang gave an amused tut.

"Am I not just worried you can’t handle it, Brother Youyang?" Ding Songyan refused to yield the point.

Ren Youyang gave a short chortle.

"I’m a ghost-deity, a corpse-deity now. Mortal wine just lifts the mood a little. What could possibly get me drunk?"

Ding Songyan was quiet for a moment, then said, "My true qi can dispel the effects of wine. I’m not afraid of getting drunk either."

Ren Youyang fell quiet as well.

After a few breaths, he raised his bowl.

"Bottoms up!"

"Yam seng!" Ding Songyan recalled the toast he had picked up back when he went to Guangzhou for investors, and returned it with a grin.

He gulped down the bowl of lychee liquor and refilled it. Then, with a casual glance around the room, he quietly raised one foot as if pressing against something in front of him, while planting the other firmly on the restaurant floor.

At the same time, the four extra legs hidden in the void each extended upward, backward, left, and right.

Without a sound, currents of qi converged. An invisible barrier seemed to settle over Ding Songyan and Ren Youyang, imperceptible to the naked eye.

To the other diners in the restaurant, their table had simply gone very quiet—two men eating and drinking in silence, nothing more reaching the outside.

"Brother Youyang, there is something I’d like to ask your opinion on." Ding Songyan ate a piece of spicy pork trotter to open his appetite and said, with a sincere expression.

Ren Youyang picked up a piece of large intestine with his chopsticks and smiled.

"What matter requires guarding against ears through the wall?"

He too had noticed what Ding Songyan had done to the surroundings.

"Brother Youyang, if someone consumed a divine creature and leaped straight to the heavens, would eating their remains produce something similar?" Though both of them understood perfectly well the context, Ding Songyan still did not say it in plain terms.

Ren Youyang let out a laugh.

"It was possible in ancient times. After the heaven and earth severance it became rarer and rarer, and in the last two or three thousand years it no longer happens."

"Why?" Ding Songyan inwardly let out a breath of relief and pressed out of curiosity.

Ren Youyang held up a chopstick and made a gesture.

"A matter of realm. Let me give you an example. Say in ancient times you consumed a magical beast at the Mystic Realm. You might have leaped straight to the Dharma Realm, or even the Heaven-Man Realm. And if you then managed to break through to the Mystic Realm yourself, your remains would be equivalent to the flesh of that magical beast.

"If what you consumed was a divine creature, you would still need to make further breakthroughs, and it’s not just one realm.

"And since the heaven and earth severance, no one has ever been able to step from the Spirit Platform Realm into the Mystic Realm. Naturally, what you’re describing can no longer occur."

Ding Songyan nodded in thoughtful silence.

"So the weakest divine creatures and magical beasts are at the Mystic Realm? And after the Spirit Platform Realm comes the Mystic Realm?"

"That’s right." Ren Youyang scooped a bowl of three crisp broth—made from three varieties of wild herb—and bent over it, blowing on the steam, while saying offhandedly, "Taken from ’mystical and more mystical, the gateway to all wonders,’ so after the Mystic Realm comes the Myriad Wonders Realm. A pity we can only read about these realms in ancient texts now."

Ding Songyan was satisfied and let the topic go. He picked up a slice of braised beef and remarked, making conversation, "They sell beef quite openly in this restaurant."

Aren’t oxen too valuable to slaughter?

Ren Youyang ate a spoonful of three crisp broth and looked up with a grin.

"You still haven’t recovered your memories? With the Grand Joy Sect around, would Great Zhao ever go short of cattle? With the bumper harvests these past years, having oxen everywhere is part of the reason."

"The Grand Joy Sect?" Ding Songyan knew it was one of Great Zhao’s Six Sects and Four Schools, traditionally spoken of in the same breath as the True Spirit Sect, but he could not see what connection it had to whether oxen were scarce.

Ren Youyang touched his own canine ear.

"The Grand Joy Sect’s lineage traces back to the Corpse of Prince Ziye. Prince Ziye was the mortal god of animal husbandry, and so even though the Grand Joy Sect is based in the south, their livestock business is the best in the world.

"When I was young, the Grand Joy Sect was the sect I admired most."

The Corpse of Prince Ziye? Ding Songyan racked his memory for the relevant passage in the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas.

After a moment, it came to him:

"The Corpse of Prince Ziye: both hands, both thighs, the chest, the head, the teeth—all severed and scattered in different places. The result of consuming it? Tames the hundred beasts, aids their propagation, kindles ardent desire, and the corpse sunders into divinity."

Sunders into divinity? No wonder he’s so often mentioned alongside the True Spirit Sect. It’s the same idea as becoming divine after death, just differently expressed... "Kindles ardent desire"—what on earth is that? A negative characteristic? Ding Songyan pondered, then, in the spirit of intellectual inquiry, responded to what Ren Youyang had said, "Why was the Grand Joy Sect the one you admired most?"

Ren Youyang’s expression came suddenly alive, his eyebrows nearly jumping off his face.

"Besides the Precious Scroll of the Hundred Beasts, they also have a secret text. It’s called the Ode to the Grand Joy of Heaven and Earth’s Yin-Yang Union. That is actually where the Grand Joy Sect’s name comes from. Ha—every lecher under heaven has dreamed of entering the Grand Joy Sect. A pity I’m already a ghost-deity now..."

By the end of this, Ren Youyang’s face was full of regret, his canine ears drooping slightly.

That is a martial art built on the "kindles ardent desire" trait? It must also incorporate "aids their propagation" and "sunders into divinity"... Ding Songyan raised his bowl to console his friend.

"Brother Youyang, one of your past days was worth more than an ordinary man’s year. Bottoms up!"

Ren Youyang had made his peace with things. He raised his bowl and clinked it against Ding Songyan’s.

With wine warming their faces and talk flowing freely, Ren Youyang suddenly said, "That nominal elder brother of yours, Li Zhi. His body is at the Linjiang County yamen. Would you like to go see it?"

So Bull is dead... His real name was Li Zhi? Ding Songyan was briefly dazed, then said, "Seeing him again would only be worse than not seeing him."

Ren Youyang gave a slow nod.

"Li Zhi was a notorious bandit of New Yu, violent by nature. After death he will certainly become a malevolent ghost, lingering in this world and causing harm. Our True Spirit Sect has arts for commanding ghosts. It is one of our fundamental disciplines. If we could obtain this malevolent ghost, it would benefit quite a few of our disciples.

"What are your thoughts on this?"

Ding Songyan was quiet for a moment, then gave a wry smile.

"The dead should be released from their debts. Let Bull return to the netherworld."

"All right." Ren Youyang accepted without hesitation. "I’ll go tonight and commit him; earth to earth, dust to dust."

"Thank you, Brother Youyang." Ding Songyan raised his bowl, moved beyond words.

The matter brought Yan Changqing to mind. That Supreme Master had surely died full of deep resentment and willful attachment. Had he not been obliterated by the nether lightning, he would in all likelihood have become a malevolent ghost in time.

Then Ding Songyan’s thoughts turned to Chaos’s quality of "Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil," and he suspected that Yan Changqing, having consumed the stuff, might well have been incapable of becoming a malevolent ghost at all.

The meal stretched on until the moon rose above the willow tips and lanterns of vivid red and gold hung throughout the city.

Ren Youyang paid again, saying it was to celebrate Ding Songyan.

The True Spirit Sect disciple descended the stairs with a slight flush of wine, and said to Ding Songyan as he went, "You may have leaped straight to the heavens, but the martial arts of the Brightnight Sect are not something you can do without.

"Before the heaven and earth severance, you would have been mighty and boundless, with no need for these ordinary methods. But in today’s world, whether it is Celestial Thearch secret texts or Mystic Realm creature lineages, they all top out at the Spirit Platform Realm—nothing to choose between them. Setting aside counter-elemental clashes, the refined techniques and secret methods born from all manner of special traits are what prove most useful in battle and in daily life. Do not neglect them."

"I intend to take it step by step." Ding Songyan’s own thinking ran the same way.

They stepped out of the restaurant onto the street. Feeling the warm river breeze, Ren Youyang turned to face Ding Songyan.

"Tomorrow when I leave for Dan Province, you don’t need to see me off."

"Why?" Ding Songyan had been planning on making quite a spectacle of it.

Ren Youyang sighed.

"Two of my guards were lost in the Zhen estate affair. One of them practiced ghost-commanding arts, and his malevolent ghost has to be brought back to the sect. If you come to see me off, the ghost has nowhere to run—it would likely dissipate entirely.

"Besides, among my other guards, some cultivate The Way Follows Nature, and they’re keenly attuned to changes in their surroundings. They might pick up on what is different about you. And you seem to want to keep that from wider knowledge."

The True Spirit Sect disciple’s gaze passed over Ding Songyan’s face but asked nothing about what method he was using to conceal his physical changes.

"For now, yes." Ding Songyan answered honestly, then smiled. "I can see you off from the city wall, just as I did today."

Ren Youyang’s face went dark.

"There’s absolutely no need for that."

Only after saying it did he notice that Ding Songyan’s face was full of teasing amusement. It was clearly a joke, with him having no intention of following through.

"Heh." Ren Youyang said nothing more, only raised a hand in farewell. "Since you’ve already leaped straight to the heavens, I look forward to meeting you again in the jianghu. For now, we part here."

Without the slightest reluctance, he turned and walked off into the bright, bustling lanes, and, owing to his unusual appearance and the phantom snakes at his ears, passersby naturally parted to make way for him.

Ding Songyan shook his head with a smile and set off toward Chengyu Lane.

Along the way, he took in the night scenery for the first time with a truly relaxed body and mind. His gaze drifted over lanterns vivid and bright, over the street stalls displaying theatrical masks, performance props, and swords, over the young women, each lovely in her own season like spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums.

Amid all of this, the laughter and talk of passersby filled his ears, a soft evening wind brushed his face, and for a moment everything felt dreamlike.

Back at Chengyu Lane, Ding Songyan noticed that the neighbors chatting by the well were somewhat evasive toward him. Only some of them returned his greeting.

News of what happened at the Zhen estate must have spread? Ding Songyan did not give it much thought and went inside, intending to look through the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas and determine what the Sage-Severing Way’s lineage actually traced back to.

With the clues of numerological arts, deceiving both self and others, and sensing heaven and earth to work from, he felt it would not be hard to narrow down the answer.

The fact that he had been overlooking this all along was obviously the result of external interference.

He had barely opened the wooden chest when his gaze came to a halt.

Inside lay an extra thread-bound booklet.

Ding Songyan picked it up in puzzlement and leafed through it. What met his eyes was a familiar hand—beautiful and delicate—and the text was a transcription of the detailed Legend of the White Snake that he had narrated outside Dangkang Temple and on several evenings before bed.

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