The rain at Qingfeng Temple’s rear hall gradually stopped, leaving only the water collected on the eaves still dripping from the tiles.
The incense ash in the bronze boshan censer had long gone cold. Stirred by the draft sweeping through the hall, it scattered in a fine dust beside the tattered meditation cushion.
From outside came the urgent splash of footsteps in puddles.
The temple hermit, not even having time to put on his rain hat, was soaked halfway down his body from the rain along the road. He strode quickly across the threshold and stopped three paces short of the writing desk.
“Temple Master,” the hermit said, his head lowered. “Someone has come to the mountain gate.”
The White-haired Daoist’s gaze remained fixed on the worn ancient book before him, his voice devoid of any fluctuation: “The sign announcing our seclusion to avoid misfortune was posted out front two days ago.”
“They cannot be stopped,” the hermit replied, lowering his head even further. “It’s a young woman. No visiting card, traveling light, with only a single sword-bearing attendant at her side.”
“When several junior brothers at the outer gate tried to reason with them, the attendant immediately drew his blade. Three disciples couldn’t even keep their footing—they were all shoved roughly into the mud.”
He swallowed hard before adding: “The woman said she must see the Temple Master in person today.”
A young woman, a sword-bearing attendant, forceful tactics, an imposing demeanor.
At last, the White-haired Daoist’s dim eyes stirred. His gaze shifted over the desk to the rain-drenched courtyard beyond the door.
He had long calculated that the destiny of the Great Qian Empire had taken a severe turn, and he knew where the source of that chaos lay.
But he never expected that the variable would present itself to him in such a direct manner.
He pulled his withered lips into a dry, husky sigh: “Invite them in.”
Little Qingyu, hiding in the corner, heard his master’s words and hastily retreated two steps back, pressing himself against the wooden cabinet where scriptures were stored. His eyes were full of unease.
Within moments, footsteps echoed in the courtyard once more.
Xu Qinghuan stepped over the threshold and entered the dim rear hall.
She was not wearing any elaborate robes, only a simple, sharp-lined hooded cloak, its edges damp with moisture. Her hair was slightly disheveled from the mountain wind.
Yet, even so, the moment she stood there, it seemed she had locked out all the raging wind and rain sweeping through the capital and the wilderness. She carried a heavy, suffocating presence that made it impossible to look directly at her.
Xu Qinghuan’s eyes swept across the near-empty room and settled on the White-haired Daoist’s face, which was marked with liver spots.
Those eyes of his had witnessed too much life and death; they were as withered as a piece of wood long rotted in the earth.
She wasted no time on false pleasantries. She walked straight to the desk, pulled over an old round stool, and sat down directly across from him.
“The incense offerings here are thin today,” Xu Qinghuan said casually, adjusting the clasp of her cloak. Her first words cut straight to the point: “I’ve come a long way today. Please, Temple Master, do a reading for me.”
The only sound in the hall was the drip of water from outside. Little Qingyu held his breath in terror, not daring to exhale.
The White-haired Daoist looked at the young woman sitting across from him, studying her calm face for a long time before slowly shaking his head.
His voice was even more parched than the icy wind drifting over the rear mountain: “My fate-disc has shattered. Forcing a glimpse into celestial omens brought down a backlash upon me. I’m long past my prime, on the verge of my last breath. Now I can no longer calculate the destiny of any living soul—let alone someone like you, a variable who can directly upset the chessboard of the realm.”
The words “variable who can upset the chessboard” caused his breath to falter. He suppressed a couple of coughs.
Xu Qinghuan was completely unruffled. She had never expected this old Daoist to divine any auspicious sign for her.
She stretched out her pale fingers, tapping them lightly on the desk’s surface.
“I’m not asking about life or death, nor about fortune or future,” Xu Qinghuan said, fixing her gaze on the Daoist’s eyes. She revealed the true purpose of her trip up the mountain.
“I just want to know one thing.”
“Why did a man from Great Qian help the Helian tribe? Acting as an accomplice to a tiger, scheming with the tiger, calculating against his own countrymen?”
Her fingers stopped. The vibration on the wooden desk faded away.
The White-haired Daoist closed his eyes, no longer meeting Xu Qinghuan’s overwhelming stare.
His deeply wrinkled face twitched slightly, as if groping through a vast expanse of memory for an answer long buried under heavy snow.
A long while later, he exhaled a breath of trapped air from his chest.
“What he wants most,” the Daoist said slowly, opening his eyes and directing his gaze past Xu Qinghuan into the gray sky beyond the door, “is redemption of his name.”
“What he fears most is never being able to live as Chen Henian in this lifetime.”
Xu Qinghuan’s eyes drooped slightly. The name Chen Henian was not unfamiliar to her.
The original text certainly covered it.
But she didn’t just want a name—she wanted the fatal weakness that could hold that steppe wolf in check.
“Make it clear,” Xu Qinghuan said, giving him no room to breathe.
The Daoist sighed again. Under this pressure, he finally haltingly revealed the blood-soaked case buried in the old archives of Great Qian.
“Fifteen years ago, Chen Henian was no counsellor of the steppes. He was the most celebrated orphan of a military family in the capital of Great Qian.”
“The Chen family had guarded the border for generations, all its members loyal and martyred. His grandfather and father buried most of the Chen clan’s men in the northern snows for the sake of the Great Qian empire.”
“But what they received in return was a fabricated charge from those civil officials at court—a label of treason and collusion with the enemy.”
The White-haired Daoist’s voice grew deeper and deeper, laced with an indescribable bleakness.
As his account unfolded, those old, long-festering grievances resurfaced in the cold temple.
“That winter, the snow fell heavily. The prison cells of the Censorate reeked of blood. All seventy-four members of the Chen family, from top to bottom, were beheaded at the marketplace.”
“That boy, barely a teenager, was rescued against all odds by a loyal servant. He smuggled out of the capital hidden in a swill barrel.”
“He was drenched in the sour stench of kitchen waste. Helpless, he watched his father’s head hung from the city gate tower, swaying in the wind.”
“On my travels, I passed by the Falling Star Mountain and found him in a run-down temple. At that time, there was no light of life left in that child’s eyes—only ghostfires ignited by vengeance.”
“Seeing the fierce wolf-star aura in his fate, I pointed him toward a path northward, to the Helian court in the Yin Mountains.”
The White-haired Daoist paused here for a long time.
“My original thought was that the Helian tribe was a place of survival of the fittest.”
“If he went there, borrowing the strength of the foreign clan, through trials of life and death, perhaps one day he could fight his way back to the capital to clear his family’s name of its undeserved infamy.”
“To let his family’s loyalty and sacrifice come to light, and let him once again be the proud young commander named Chen Henian, with his true identity untarnished.”
“But I was wrong.” The Daoist’s eyes grew red-rimmed. “Over these dozen years, he helped Ashina Hongfang annex smaller tribes, schemed against human lives, and created slaughter on the steppes.”
“That wolf of greed was fed too well on the wildness of the Helian tribe.”
"He had long forgotten that he was supposed to return as Chen Henian of the Great Qian Dynasty. Now his mind was filled with nothing but how to lead the Helian army south, how to trample the lands of Great Qian, and how to make the entire realm serve as a burial ground for his Chen family."
"He strayed too far, lost his original heart, and there was no turning back."
Having finished recounting this bloody tale of the past, the Daoist seemed to have aged another ten years. His once upright posture hunched over, and his clouded eyes gazed at Xu Qinghuan. His dry, shriveled throat bobbed a few times before he suddenly posed two questions.
"Benefactor Xu, I've laid bare even the secrets he himself refuses to touch," the Daoist paused. "Now that I've told you, can I live?"
Xu Qinghuan sat there, not even batting an eyelash, offering no response.
The Daoist was not surprised and pressed on with a second question, his voice tinged with an ineffable melancholy.
"If I die... can he live?"
Xu Qinghuan still said nothing.
In the deadlock of victory and defeat, life and death were never decided by a mere word of assurance.
She had come up this mountain not to discuss karma with an old, dying Daoist.
She needed a blade.
And now, she had obtained that blade.
She understood Chen Changfeng's life story well enough, yet she felt no pity—only a killing intent far more relentless than his own.
Xu Qinghuan stood up, smoothing the collar of her cloak. Without answering the Daoist's two rhetorical questions, she simply cast a glance at the tattered, worn-out book on the table.
"Thank you for the insight, Temple Master," she said, turning and striding toward the temple gate, her gaze fixed on the forest of Shuzhou after the rain had just cleared. "Chen Changfeng schemes up north against Great Qian's fortune, against the troops of Iron Orchid Mountain, and even against you, his half-dead master. But for all his scheming, he can never outmaneuver the demon within his own heart."
She paused at the threshold, her back to the desk, her voice frozen to ice: "As for the divine punishment for forcibly calculating the heavenly secrets, Temple Master, you shall endure it slowly within these hallowed halls."
Watching that plain-colored figure about to step into the courtyard, the White-haired Daoist held onto the edge of the table to straighten his hunched back. A flicker of extraordinary light burst from his murky eyes.
"Benefactor, wait," the Daoist said, his voice carrying the stubbornness of one nearing death.
Xu Qinghuan stopped but did not turn around.
"Every move in your northern layout reeks of ruthless annihilation," the Daoist said, staring at the dark crimson patterns on her cloak, his tone laden with warning. "Your thirst for bloodshed weighs heavy. Every step you take is built on the bones of others. Karma will come knocking at your door, and you will die a wretched death."
"I have said all I can."
"Put down the blade in your hand. Spare yourself—spare the people under heaven. You can still turn back."
Within the rear hall, the atmosphere grew suffocating. A young acolyte in the corner curled up in fear, his hands clamped tightly over his mouth.
Xu Qinghuan stood still for a moment. The mountain wind caught the hem of her cloak, causing it to ripple and snap.
She let out a faint, cold laugh that echoed far beneath the empty eaves.
She did not bother to argue the greater good of all under heaven, nor did she refute the fatalism of karmic retribution.
She merely tilted her head slightly and spoke in a tone that was exceedingly calm—and yet so arrogantly lawless, so contemptuous of all cosmic rules, that she uttered those words:
"I need not become a buddha; I am the buddha myself. I need not follow the way; I am the way itself."
