Chapter 44: Trouble Before the Moon
Everything in the world was splintering and distorting, spinning rapidly, with a strange and dazzling light, like a circle of fluctuating fragments. The headache caused the entire world to distort and become distorted.
Cang Ming supported himself on the ground with his hands, his eyes full of stars and a layer of cold sweat on his forehead. He thought wildly: "In the past, the cough and asthma symptoms were always caused by fear in the heart. Why did the problem move to the brain today..."
It felt like countless flaming claws were scratching and clawing at her, as if there was a dazzling circle of light ahead, and those claws were urging her to plunge into it, silently shouting, "Go, go!" Where should she go?
Old Lady Li knelt beside her and said humbly, "Don't be afraid, General. You are an immortal. You will be fine."
Cang Ming struggled to push her away, gritted his teeth and asked, "How do you know me?"
Old Lady Li said, "My nickname is Fortune Teller Li. I can see through the sky, so I naturally know the general's identity."
Cang Ming leaned against a tree and asked weakly, "Did your master ask you to take my life?"
Old Lady Li replied with a humbled look, "No, it's not true. The general seemed to have said something to you last time, asking how you could turn a servant into a puppet. You took it to heart and released me, telling me to go wherever I wanted."
"Pretending." Cang Ming covered his head and squeezed out a sentence from between his teeth.
Old Lady Li smiled and continued, "General, your splitting headache is because something major is destined to happen. The gods write without a trace, their magical hands writing destiny. The awakening of your soul today is nothing more than a stroke of destiny."
Cang Ming was in agony, having forgotten to breathe: "Awakening?"
The moon suddenly shone brilliantly, and Cang Ming felt his head lighten, as if the pain had been withdrawn, and his vision became clear. Old Lady Li said, "General Wu, you are destined to become an immortal, if not in this life, then in the next. And no matter how many times you reincarnate, your soul will remain the same."
"Hmm." Cang Ming remembered that the Demon King had also said that the Three Immortals of Xiyuan were not mortals, but were born with immortal status. Their souls would not enter the underworld in each life. "What does becoming an immortal or not have to do with how many souls one has?"
Mrs. Li smiled and replied, "Every ordinary person, even the common people, has a new soul in each life. In other words, they are a new person in each life. Otherwise, if there is only one soul throughout thousands of lives, even if they enter the underworld and reincarnate, it will be considered as a conspiracy. Imagine if the brothers and sisters in the previous life became the husband or wife of this life..."
Cang Ming felt a chill and said hastily, "A new soul is better."
Old Lady Li nodded and said, "Those who achieve immortality possess pure hearts and minds, clear and bright, focused and focused. From beginning to end, they possess only one soul and one human heart. General Wu, it has been a thousand years since your first life, and you have finally achieved immortality in this life. Although you have been reborn, you remain the same person."
Cang Ming couldn't understand it for a while.
"Folk rumor has it that mirrors are supernatural objects. For example, if someone in the family dies suddenly and there happens to be a mirror nearby, the mirror will record the event. After that, anyone who approaches the mirror will become inexplicably upset." Old Lady Li pointed to the moon and said, "But General, the moon in the sky is actually the largest mirror in the world. Everything from ancient times to the present, big and small, is reflected in this moon mirror."
As he spoke, the moon hung low in the sky, like a gigantic bronze mirror steeped in antiquity. A few shadows, vibrant in color and flickering in movement, appeared on it. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be pedestrians and hawkers hawking their wares.
Staring at the moon for a long time, it grew closer and closer, and the scene spread out further and further, becoming difficult to take in. Cang Ming felt as if he were being sucked into a painting.
Fortune teller Li whispered in her ear: "On the night of the thousand-year-old full moon, your past lives will emerge."
Cang Ming watched in amazement. The crowd before him was bustling, their attire peculiar: wide robes, wide belts, wide sleeves, and long skirts. Looking closer, the buildings lining the road also had an antique, old-fashioned feel.
After watching for a while, she suddenly realized that it was unknown what year and month this was happening in the middle of the month, and it was not the current dynasty at all.
This day seemed to be a market day in this place, and pedestrians were still walking along this long and magnificent road.
Amidst the crowd of gorgeous dark dresses, a slender, nimble figure in bright colors darted back and forth. The girl, about fifteen or sixteen, wore a long, pale azure dress, a reddish-orange sash like a sunset glow, and her hair was styled in a flowing, flying bun. A white-bearded old man chased after her, shouting, as if the girl had stolen something and refused to pay.
Later, it was discovered that the white-haired old man kept shouting, "Miss, it's time to go home. The master will be furious if he finds out."
When that figure turned around, Cang Ming's heart skipped a beat. No wonder the back of that figure looked so familiar, wasn't that her own face?
Yuezhong Cangming smiled brightly at the white-haired old man: "Uncle Pan, I want to go to the used bookstall!"
Uncle Pan's old neck stiffened like an old hen. "Miss, if you don't go back for dinner, the master will punish you by making you copy books."
Xiao Cang Ming said, "Then it's a good time to go buy some books!"
As she said this, she took the lead and ran to the second-hand bookstall, with her skirt and ribbons fluttering high behind her.
In Tongduo Mountain, Cang Ming knelt on the ground and looked up, covering her mouth with her hands. That was the dress Wei Ci had lent her during the flood!
Yue Zhongcangming, daintily donning a pair of gauze gloves, began carefreely flipping through dusty old books. Uncle Pan, the old servant, carried a collection of oddities: a cage of crickets, a mahogany sword, a few pebbles, and a few packets of crispy candies.
Xiao Cang Ming browsed around the stall for a while, then suddenly held up an old book with two fingers and asked, "What is a life-saving book?"
The book was spotless, with three sinister and unruly characters written on the cover: "Book of Life-Replacing." Uncle Pan said, "To my shame, an old man like me has never heard of it."
The stall owner, who was originally lying on a rattan chair at the back, sat up upon hearing this and said mysteriously to Xiao Cang Ming, "Little girl, this is a kind of evil magic. It's better for you not to know about it."
Xiao Cangming immediately stepped into the bookstall, pulled the stall owner aside and asked, "What kind of evil magic is this?"
The stall owner smiled slightly and lowered his voice, saying, "There are many unlucky families in this world. The poor can only endure it, while the rich will find a feng shui master proficient in witchcraft and spend a lot of money to make a book."
Xiao Cang Ming asked: "Can this book change their fate?"
The stall owner said, "That's right. The protagonist of this book will definitely be described as having an extremely miserable life, having seen all the ups and downs of life. So this protagonist will suffer for the rich and powerful, living a miserable life in the book forever. Then the rich and powerful can live in peace."
Xiao Cang Ming was surprised and said, "Doesn't that mean the people in the book took the blame for the rich and powerful? Can having money even change one's fate?"
The stall owner laughed and said, "As for changing your fate, that's not the case. Wealth and honor can save you from a lot of suffering; it's all in your destiny. As the saying goes, money makes the world go round."
Uncle Pan came over and urged, "Miss, let's go quickly."
Xiao Cang Ming put down a silver ingot, took the book and left.
The image grew blurry as the moon rose, curling and shifting like smoke. Soon, the shadows became clear again, this time in a mansion. Servants bustled about, placing one exquisite dish after another on the table. Then, a commanding male voice asked, "Cang Ming, have you been out again today?"
Xiao Cang Ming picked up the luminous cup of fine wine, smiled at the gentleman-looking man opposite him, and said maturely, "Dad, I will punish myself with three cups."
The master twitched his lips and said, "This time I won't punish you by making you copy books. Instead, I'll punish you by making you practice the new sword technique fifty times."
Xiao Cang Ming clapped his hands and said, "Just right, just right."
The shadow on the moon was once again filled with wind and clouds, and the scene changed to a courtyard. Xiao Cang Mingzheng handed the peach wood sword to a young girl, holding an ordinary sword himself, and instructed: "I have just learned the sword method. You follow me slowly. I will only demonstrate it fifty times."
The girl was elegantly dressed, like a close friend of Xiao Cang Ming's. When she looked up and smiled, Cang Ming, kneeling in the mountains, nearly cried out. That was the face of the master, later known as Kitahara Yuki.
Xiao Cang Ming shouted softly: "Wei Yang, here she comes!" He swung his long sword sideways, majestically, and danced with each move.
The girl who looked exactly like the master and had the same name as him started dancing with her sword and responded with a smile, "Yes, Master!" Her sword skills were not very proficient, but fortunately she was using a peach wood sword. Although her clothes were almost torn by the sword twice, she was unharmed. Instead, it seemed like an original and risky move, which made Uncle Pan call her an expert.
Whether in swordplay or demeanor, the master on the moon was identical to the masters who came after him. Cang Ming looked up at the moon, and suddenly it felt like a dream: his long-dead master was dancing with a sword before his eyes again.
It was at this moment that she finally understood: the master of the Wangxian Sect, whose surname was Xuejie and whose name was Xuejie Weiyang, was a legendary Taoist priest with an ageless face. It turned out that he had learned swordsmanship from his previous life Cang Ming a thousand years ago, and then studied it painstakingly, carried forward the skills, founded a sect, and accepted Cang Ming in this life as his disciple to train him to become an immortal.
Grandmaster Weiyang, having cultivated to enlightenment and never aged or died, had fully experienced this millennia-long cycle of reincarnation. Naturally, she was fully aware of everything and knew that her disciple Cang Ming was a close friend from a previous life. In the years that followed, she treated Cang Ming as both a teacher and a friend, always gazing at him with boundless emotion before looking away.
After Yue Shangcangming performed the sword dance fifty times, he said goodbye to Weiyang, returned to his room, drank a gulp of tea, and casually opened the book of substitution.
As she flipped through the pages, her brow furrowed, a look of bitterness and sadness filling her face. Tears dripped onto the silvery white pages.
The substitute in the book, though born to misery, was a little too miserable. He was born into a family of scholars and had a dashing appearance, so how could he be so unlucky?
When this man was young, his father was framed for debt, and men in black came to their home day and night to beat and smash things up. To save his wife and children, his father took the blame himself and committed suicide in front of the government. Unexpectedly, the group of people were greedy and continued to demand the debt from his mother, forcing her to be taken as a concubine and tortured to death soon after.
This substitute, relying on the support of distant relatives, grew up alone until he was twenty years old. No matter what he did, he was terribly unlucky. Cooking a bowl of porridge could burn down a neighbor's house. He became a walking ghost.
Later... Xiao Cang Ming didn't even want to read the story anymore. He just picked up the pen beside him, crossed out the ending, and wrote a new one. The gist of it was that this person suffered a lot of pain in the first twenty years of his life, but after that, everything was happy and sweet. His luck suddenly became so good that even humans and gods admired him.
Satisfied with his reformation, Xiao Cangming jumped into the nearby tub, soaking in the warm steam and unknowingly dozing off. The book, however, slowly turned into a stream of silvery-white light, drifted out the window on the night breeze, and vanished. The next morning, Xiao Cangming couldn't find the book, and the matter was left unresolved.
As spring passed and autumn arrived, the scenes shifted, and Xiao Cangming's childishness faded. One day, a servant arrived to announce, "Miss, a young man is waiting outside the door. He wants to see you."
Outside the door, a handsome figure stood under a blossoming tree. The breeze blew around, ruffling his silvery-white clothes.
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