A Fleeting Glance Between Us—A Fated Encounter
(End of This Volume)
The illusion vanished.
Through Jiang Xuesheng’s ingenious stratagem of “repairing the plank road in the open while secretly crossing through Chencang,” the fog shrouding Yao and Wei gradually dispersed. The city’s scenery was like a mirror wiped clean of dust, slowly returning to clarity.
The townspeople, who had been trapped by the formation and sunk into an unending sleep, woke one after another from the illusion, yawning and stretching.
Let it be a dream, then. Even after waking for so long, the feeling still lingered.
Meanwhile, at the eye of the formation, Shu Fu continued clinging tightly to Jiang Xuesheng without the slightest intention of letting go. She always had the feeling that the moment she released him, the next thing she would hear would be, “Senior Brother, Master turned into a butterfly and flew away!”
Jiang Xuesheng did not hurry to pull himself free, either. One arm rested around her shoulders and back, gently stroking her dark hair. His expression seemed to carry a hint of…
…enjoyment.
Hua Jieyou: “?????”
You broke through my illusion, and now you’re showing off your romance in front of me?
Are you even human…? Fine, you weren’t human to begin with.
“…”
For reasons unknown, his years of carefully cultivated revenge had been ruined in an instant. He should have been furious, yet somehow, he found himself unable to summon any anger.
Perhaps… when faced with someone—or rather, a dragon—even more miserable than oneself, not even a thousand-year-old ghost could bring himself to flare up.
“Dragon God, what is the meaning of this?”
Hua Jieyou’s anger turned into laughter. Unable to bear it any longer, he interrupted the tender atmosphere between the two. “You showed me all this just to compare… compare suffering with me? Because your tragedy is greater than mine, you want me to forgive you and let go? I’m telling you, those are two entirely different things. I will not—”
“You don’t need to forgive me, and you don’t need to let go.”
Jiang Xuesheng slowly released Shu Fu and turned to look at him. “I showed you those memories for one reason only.”
His manner was languid, as though he were strolling through a garden, yet every step he took was steady and resolute.
Then Jiang Xuesheng bent his knees and lowered himself until his eyes were level with the boy’s, meeting the blazing hatred in his gaze head-on.
He said only two words:
“It was me.”
Hua Jieyou: “…What?”
“It was I who caused the people of Yao and Wei to depend upon the gods. First, I failed to enlighten them in time or teach them how to rely on themselves. Second, when I left in such haste after sealing the demons all those years ago, I failed to arrange a proper path forward for them.”
“Although I left behind a trace of dragon energy, it was affected by the condition of my true body and failed to manifest in time during the great drought. As a result, you and your brother died unjustly.”
“The birth of the Flower Children was the consequence of my negligence.”
Jiang Xuesheng spoke slowly. “I failed you. If you harbor hatred, you need not take it out on anyone else.”
“You…”
Hua Jieyou had never imagined that he would say such a thing.
The lofty Lord Yinglong, the eccentric and unruly Master Tanhua, was actually telling him, “I failed you.”
And having witnessed those memories, Hua Jieyou naturally understood that Lord Yinglong had already done everything within his power. He had been answerable to Heaven and Earth, and had wronged no one.
Everything that had later befallen the brothers had been caused by the turbulence of the world and the treachery of human hearts. How could Jiang Xuesheng be blamed for any of it?
“You… What are you trying to say?”
Hua Jieyou forced his brows into a deep frown, using an expression of resentment and displeasure to conceal the turmoil in his heart. “It was the people of Yao and Wei who did those things. You have no business taking the blame for them. Why should I hate you for something that has nothing to do with you?”
“Exactly.”
Jiang Xuesheng smiled faintly. “Since that is the case, why should you hate the descendants of Yao and Wei for something that has nothing to do with them?”
“This…”
Hua Jieyou was rendered speechless.
Jiang Xuesheng continued, “In truth, you do not hate the descendants of Yao and Wei. You simply cannot accept that the regrets of your life remain unfulfilled, and your heart refuses to make peace with it. Isn’t that so?”
“I… I only…”
Hua Jieyou faltered. A thousand words passed through his mind, yet not one could make it past his lips.
Yes. In truth, I understand everything.
The people I hated have long since died, every last one of them. They have been reincarnated, while I alone remain where I was, unable to find peace.
But I missed out on an entire life that should have been happy and complete. How could I not hate? If I did not hate, where else could I go?
“Your younger brother, Hua Wangchou—he has already reincarnated, hasn’t he? In the Flower Children Temple in Wei City, we found no trace of his soul, only a fragment of it.”
Shu Fu had been listening quietly all this time. Now she suddenly spoke. “Why did he leave while you remained here?”
“My brother… he…”
Hua Jieyou’s expression grew distant as he recalled what had happened. “That man who called himself ‘Zhong Bukui’ killed all the villains who had incited the crowd and caused our deaths—there must have been several dozen of them. He then beat the others as well, forcing them to build a shrine and erect a stone monument, and to have their descendants kowtow before us and beg forgiveness for generations to come.”
“Then my brother said to me, ‘Brother, is this enough?’”
The culprit was dead. The blood debt had been repaid. Ten lives had been exchanged for one. Wasn’t that enough?
The dead could not be brought back to life. Their lives had been miserable, but now that misery had finally come to an end. It would be better to let go and begin again in another life.
At first, Hua Jieyou had agreed. He would no longer linger in the mortal world, and the brothers would reincarnate together, becoming brothers once more in their next lives…
But when Hua Jieyou murmured these words, his tone suddenly changed. His features twisted, and the calm expression on his face turned furious and vicious. The cinnabar mark between his brows was red as blood.
“But I still couldn’t accept it! Why were we allowed to live for only a dozen years, while the people who had tormented us could live out their natural lifespans, reaching a hundred years old?!”
“Yes, you’re right. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t make peace with it. Although the people who took action were already dead, there were still so many others alive! None of them were innocent. They all deserved to die. They all deserved to taste the pain my brother and I had suffered!!!”
“So you kept accumulating power and devoted yourself to revenge, but because you were weak and the people of Yao and Wei were protected by dragon energy, you were unable to act for a very long time.”
Shu Fu seemed to understand. Calmly, she picked up the thread of his words. “At long last, you became a vengeful ghost—but your enemies had already been dead for thousands of years, leaving not even ashes behind. Their descendants, having believed the lies, instead worshiped you as a god.”
“…That’s right.”
Hua Jieyou admitted it. “I know I should never have hated them. But aside from them, I have no one else in this world left to hate.”
For the past thousand years, he had burned like a fire day and night, enduring loneliness and misery all by himself. Countless times, he had wanted to seek release, yet he clung to the mortal world through sheer hatred.
Perhaps he had regretted it long ago.
But what difference did regret make?
If he did not take revenge in the end, if he did not make the people of Yao and Wei suffer the same torment and misery, then wouldn’t his thousand years of refusing reincarnation have become one enormous joke?
At last, torn again and again between regret and hatred, he had reached out his hand toward children who were as ignorant and helpless as he had once been…
From that moment on, the sea of suffering had no shore, and his sins could never be repaid.
“What use is there in saying all this now?”
Hua Jieyou lowered his head and stared at his own hands. His face was deathly pale, and a bitter smile appeared at the corners of his lips. “I’ve done everything I should not have done, and everything I should have done. I’ve become a wicked ghost like this. Even if I reincarnate, my brother… surely he wouldn’t recognize me anymore.”
“No. That may not be true.”
Shu Fu raised a hand and took a soul-summoning lantern from her storage pouch, setting it in her palm. Within it, a tiny glimmer flickered—the remnant of a soul she had guided onward at the Flower Child Temple.
“This is the remnant of your younger brother’s soul. I think he had expected you to be reincarnated together. But at the very last moment, you changed your mind, and by then his soul had already scattered. He couldn’t be forcibly kept among the living, so… all that remained was this fragment of his soul, which attached itself to the golden statue of the Flower Child in Wei City. If not for him, we never would have found you.”
“He’s been waiting for you all this time.”
“……!!!”
No matter how shocking or unheard-of the scenes in the illusion had been, none struck Hua Jieyou like Shu Fu’s words. They rang beside his ears like a great bell, jolting him awake from a thousand-year dream.
He had been waiting for you.
Your unrest was his unrest as well.
How many times had mulberry fields turned into seas? Yet he still remembered the twin flowers of their former lives.
In his dazed state, Hua Jieyou recalled the expression on his younger brother’s face when he had insisted on remaining in the mortal world to continue his revenge—a mixture of heartache and helplessness.
“I understand your anger, Brother, so I won’t try to persuade you or stop you.”
“But if, one day, your revenge harms innocent people and brings you the burden of sin…”
“Then Hua Wangchou is willing to use the merit accumulated over countless lifetimes to atone for you.”
Where had his younger brother gone after being reincarnated?
He had said he would accumulate merit to redeem his brother’s sins. Perhaps by now he had become a compassionate elder who aided the world, or a heroic swordsman who punished evil and upheld justice.
Hua Jieyou took the soul-summoning lantern Shu Fu had handed him and stared at the faint, flickering light within. Slowly—so slowly—he sank to his knees, clutching the lantern reverently against his chest.
In a soft voice, he asked, “Can I… still see him?”
Could someone as steeped in sin as he was ever meet his brother, who had accumulated immeasurable merit?
“You may not be brothers anymore, but the cultivation world is only so big. As long as you want to see him, you’ll find him again.”
Shu Fu nodded with absolute certainty. “After you’re reincarnated, this lantern will remain at the Jiuhua Sect. You only need to remember one thing: ‘Come to the Jiuhua Sect and find me.’”
The corner of Hua Jieyou’s mouth twitched, producing a dry, powerless laugh.
Like a sulking child, he turned his face away. “You’re fooling me again. I know I’ll never see him.”
Everyone had to bear the consequences of their own karma. How could merit and sin truly cancel each other out?
Someone like him, who had taken so many lives, would either suffer in hell beneath scorching karmic flames and falling blades, or be reborn into the animal realm as a bird or beast, doomed to remain ignorant for who knew how many years.
Hua Jieyou was not afraid of suffering. He only feared that by the time he emerged from that endless delay, he would already be countless lifetimes behind his brother. In the vast sea of humanity, how could he possibly find him?
Perhaps after several reincarnations, a thousand years would pass like the fleeting shadow of a white colt, and even the two people before him would be long gone. Whom could he ask for an answer then?
But…
“It’s enough. I’ve hated for so many years. I’m truly… tired.”
Hua Jieyou lowered his head deeply and pressed his forehead against the cold lantern. His body, formed from ghostly energy, was even colder than the lantern itself.
“Dragon God, though you’re not exactly a decent person, I still have to thank you. Your memories allowed me to see the world beyond Yao Wei… I never knew the mortal realm could hold such scenery.”
All my life, I was trapped here and never saw the vastness of its mountains and rivers. Yet after death, I traveled this far with you.
It’s enough. It’s enough.
This city imprisoned me in life and in death, but at last, I’m going to leave it and see what lies beyond.
Even if I become nothing more than an insect or an ant, I’ll live freely at least once.
At that thought, his heart became a bird released from its cage, no longer weighed down by heavy chains.
His countless grudges and obsessions melted away bit by bit, like floating ice and lingering snow beneath the warmth of the spring sun.
“……”
As Hua Jieyou’s figure gradually turned transparent, Jiang Xuesheng let out an almost inaudible sigh of relief.
“To be honest, this really was a close call,” he said. “With Xie Fangnian outside, Master Qiu inside, and me replacing the formation eye with my own memories… If any one of those things had been missing, we couldn’t have broken the illusion, and our words would never have reached him. The longer it went on, the more likely it was that ordinary people would be harmed.”
“Master Qiu?”
Shu Fu looked puzzled. “Where is Master Qiu?”
“Here.”
Jiang Xuesheng flipped his hand and revealed an ancient mirror.
“I had him leave a trace of his spiritual consciousness here to help me break the formation. Master Qiu, can you hear me?”
Shu Fu: “……”
What are you, some heartless capitalist? Are you really going to squeeze the last drop of blood out of Master Qiu?
“I’m here, I’m here.”
In response to Jiang Xuesheng’s call, Master Qiu’s voice rang out. It still carried the youthful innocence of a boy.
“However, Tan Hua summoned me earlier, and I’ve been entirely focused on searching for the formation eye. I had no idea what happened here. Tan Hua, don’t you think you owe me an explanation…?”
At that moment, Shu Fu suddenly noticed a light flare up at the edge of her vision. She instinctively turned her head toward it—and was instantly stunned, her mind going completely blank.
The soul-summoning lantern.
The soul-summoning lantern was glowing.
The lantern had originally held only the tiniest, weakest remnant of a soul. Yet now, just as it had on the day Master Huaigu and Demon Lord Ninglu recognized each other, it suddenly burst into dazzling radiance.
The entire room shone with light, heralding the reunion of two souls.
Jiang Xuesheng, Shu Fu, and Hua Jieyou all froze.
Only Master Qiu remained utterly bewildered. He continued his exhausted workplace interrogation:
“What’s going on? Tan Hua, why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Well, Master Qiu…”
An outrageous possibility surged into Shu Fu’s mind. She steadied herself, sorted through her chaotic thoughts, and asked with difficulty:
“May I ask why you’ve always kept the appearance of a boy, with cinnabar between your brows and a cloak over your shoulders? And why did you have your disciples plant the entire Tianshu Peak with flowers?”
“Hmm?”
Master Qiu was taken aback by the question. “I don’t know either. I’ve always felt, as if by instinct, that I was meant to be this way. I was an orphan, and even the name ‘Qiu Xin’ was chosen through some kind of inborn intuition.”
“Shu Fu, why are you suddenly asking me this?”
Qiu Xin. Qiu Xin.
Qiu Xin meant “sorrow.”
Hua Wangchou.
After countless turns of the wheel, he had not forgotten his sorrow for even a moment.
So it turned out that he really had remembered the promise they had made a thousand years ago, and had built up an incomparable store of merit.
“Don’t say anything!”
Shu Fu was about to speak again, but Hua Jieyou, now reduced to a single translucent shadow, suddenly cried out:
“Don’t tell him! I—I can’t face him like this. I have to reincarnate right away. I can’t let him be ashamed because of me…”
Though he said this, his hand reached forward of its own accord. His translucent fingertips passed through the surface of the mirror, grasping nothing.
For the first time in a thousand years, Hua Jieyou wept like a lost child, utterly at a loss.
“I’ll come. I’ll come to the Jiuhua Sect. I’ll come soon… So could you tell him not to— not to ascend and become an immortal too quickly…?”
“Tell him… to wait for me…”
Then his voice faded into silence.
The final thread of his faint sobbing disappeared together with his soul, returning to the world without leaving behind the slightest trace.
Whether he had been the Flower Child who protected an entire region, or the vengeful ghost burdened by injustice and hatred, from that moment on, he would exist only in stories people told.
As for the protagonists of that story…
“They’ll meet again, won’t they?”
After pulling the wool over the sect leader's eyes, Shu Fu picked up the Soul-Inducing Lamp from the ground, turned to Jiang Xuesheng and said, "In the end, he left a mark on this lamp with his soul. Even if he doesn't come looking for us, we can still track him down."
Jiang Xuesheng nodded slightly, raised his arm to wrap around Shu Fu's shoulders, and leaned down close to the top of her hair: "We will. Just like how we got to meet each other again. As long as our hearts are connected and our fate isn't exhausted, there will definitely come a day when we find one another again across the vast crowds."
Then he lowered his head and kissed her on the temple.
Shu Fu jumped back abruptly: "Whoa, what the hell!"
"Wait, us? Meet again?"
She pressed one hand to her temple, her face flushing alternating shades of red and pale, not knowing which of his words to pick a fight over first. "What are you talking about? The first time we met was at that teahouse in Qingcheng, right? We just clicked, like two dumb turtles that happened to take a liking to each other."
"I don't really know. I just feel like I've seen you before," Jiang Xuesheng gave her a light, airy smile. "Maybe it was in a dream. For three thousand years of toiling day and night, stuck in utter boredom, even the Dragon God gets to have dreams once in a while."
"Huh???"
Shu Fu grew even more confused, fully convinced he was making stuff up. "C'mon man, you don't have to go that far. I'm not gonna run off with someone else, even if you don't make up these stories to show off..."
"I'm not showing off. It's the truth."
"Sure, I believe you, you old rascal. You're so good at tricking silly girls all day long."
"I'm not old. You saw it yourself, back on the day of the Demon Sealing, I looked plenty young. Among the Dragon Clan now, I'm still just a youngster."
"Well then I'm even younger! That's not fair, I'm at a total loss. What are you gonna do to make it up to me?"
"...Spend the rest of my life with you?"
"Whoa, my goodness. Stop talking, I'm getting the creeps. Kids shouldn't have to hear such sappy lines."
...
...
...
A certain unknown moment, three thousand years ago --
The Dragon God had a dream.
In the endless, boundless darkness, he dreamed of a shooting star streaking across the long night.
"Wait, what the hell? Didn't I die? Did I just get isekai'd?"
"Why's it so dark all around here? And there's a dragon with what look like grilled wings on the floor. Is this some xianxia power fantasy where I start off riding a dragon and conquer the whole world?"
"Hey, you grilled-wing dragon, wake up. C'mon, wake up and talk to me. My name's Shu Fu. What's yours? Do you even have a name?"
"Fu, as in Shu Fu! Have you ever memorized Tang poems? You know, the line 'Cancong and Yu Fu' from that ancient poem, and 'wild geese and ducks dotting the curved pond'? That's the Fu in my name, got it?"
"Oh right, so there's this town of magic, this seal... I don't get all of it, it sounds a little cheesy actually, but you're stuck here suffering to save the whole world, right? That's so cool, you're a dragon after all, of course you'd be that awesome."
"I don't have anything on me, nothing I can give you. Guess I can give you a round of applause. Or how about I scratch your scales for you? Or sing you a song? What, you think it sounds terrible?"
"Wait a second, you're a lot like me. I ended up here 'cause I saved someone too... Sure, I only saved one person, but I even lost my life for it, that counts as 'dying for a just cause' right? If I'm really gonna get reborn in this new world, I hope I get a good life."
"Hey, by the way, are you gonna be my summoning beast?"
"What? This whole place is your dream, and I'll forget everything once I leave, only remembering my life before I came here? And you'll forget all this too when you wake up? Ugh, that means I wasted all that time chatting with you for nothing. What a bummer."
[It is not a waste.]
[We are fated to each other. When you go to the living world, we will meet again someday, that much is certain.]
"Oh right, that makes sense. The place I'm heading to next is the world you worked so hard to save, right? Got it. In that case, I'll help look after the world a little, and I'll definitely come back to get you out of here."
"You're such a beautiful dragon, you were born to soar high in the sky, after all."
A heart strung to the qin, a soul forged in the sword.
