Chapter 106 Lingering Sorrow by the Flowing Water (The End) Life is full of regrets, like water flowing eastward forever. ...
Jiang Qushui stayed by the Gongshui River all day. This time he was smarter and brought his own food and water. When he was hungry, he would squat on a rock and eat some biscuits. When he was thirsty, he would take a big gulp from his canteen.
Time passed second by second, but the figure they had been waiting for still hadn't appeared.
As darkness fell, Jiang Qushui began pacing anxiously along the riverbank. He kept glancing in the direction Ji Wuchou often appeared, then peering towards his own courtyard.
A few birds chirped from the woods. He stamped his foot, left the water bottle on the bank, and planned to go back and comfort his grandfather first, then sneak out after the old man fell asleep.
To his surprise, as soon as he opened the door, colorful ribbons fluttered everywhere, and a house full of elderly men and women, laughing and joking, pushed him to the table, and without saying a word, put a crown on him and sang a birthday song.
By the time Jiang Qushui realized what was happening, a candle had already been lit in front of him. The flame was not red but a blue one that sparkled like starlight. His expression softened considerably, and he reluctantly made a birthday wish.
He clasped his hands together, never being greedy.
But this time, I made so many wishes.
May my maternal and paternal grandparents live as long as the Southern Mountain and enjoy boundless happiness.
I hope everyone he loves can be happy.
I hope for world peace and an end to war.
I hope all children in the world can watch cartoons.
I hope that girl can live a peaceful and happy life.
I hope she can follow her heart and be free, whether she leaves this place or goes to a place he can't go. In short, I hope she can see all the sights in this world and find peace of mind and eternal happiness.
The last one!
If possible, let yourself see her one more time.
The elderly people couldn't stay up late. After eating the cake base without cream and being amused by Jiang Qushui's funny antics, they leaned on their canes, pushed their wheelchairs, waved goodbye, and went home.
They crowded at the door, reminding Jiang Qushui to keep an eye on his grandfather and make sure he drinks less alcohol, and jokingly telling him to find a girlfriend soon so they could come back for a free meal next year.
He agreed to each request and then sent everyone back to the nursing home. When he returned home, his grandfather was already asleep, a smile on his lips, his face peaceful. He left a light on for him at the door.
Jiang Qushui tiptoed to the old man's bedside, tucked him in, then slowly retreated to the living room, tidied up the mess, put the unfinished cake in the refrigerator, and then turned off the light before leaving.
He ran through the forest with a flashlight in hand, his heart pounding nervously in his chest.
But when he walked to the riverbank, he was so frightened that he couldn't move. His hand trembled, and the flashlight fell to the ground and hit his foot hard.
The river under the moonlight has stopped flowing; on this scorching midsummer night in July, a great river has been frozen solid.
He had never seen such a bizarre and shocking sight. Trembling, he prepared to go back and report the news, but in a daze, he saw a figure in the middle of the river.
Her heart, which had almost stopped pounding, began to race again. Jiang Qushui comforted herself, telling herself that she must have been mistaken; she had said she wouldn't come here again. But her steps quickened.
He ran onto the river, but it was so slippery that he wobbled and fell several meters, eventually sliding right up to Ji Wuchou.
He watched in horror as the person inside the ice was frozen solid, with only his face exposed to the air, but the ice was still climbing up Ji Wuchou's skin at a visible speed.
"Xiao Chou! Xiao Chou!" He helplessly pounded on the ice, calling her name, and even tried to pry open the forming ice to prevent it from eventually swallowing Ji Wu Chou.
But the moment they touched it, the cold air made them pull their hands back.
"What to do, what to do!" For the first time, he hated himself for having extraordinary bloodline yet still being a useless piece of trash who couldn't do anything.
"Go find Grandpa and the others!" He was about to stand up and return to the clan to find help. His cousins were so capable; they would surely have a way to save Xiaochou. However, he suddenly stopped. The ice was still freezing, and she probably couldn't wait for him to find help.
Jiang Qushui knelt back beside Ji Wuchou once more.
"It's alright, it's alright, Xiao Chou, don't be afraid, I'll get you out." He gently comforted her and himself, took a deep breath, and reached his hands out onto the slowly moving ice again.
The biting cold almost suffocated him, but this time he didn't pull his hand back, stubbornly trying to stop the ice from forming. However, he soon discovered that it was futile; the ice wouldn't stop forming just because of any obstruction, and his strength couldn't break the ice. Instead, the sharp edges sliced through his palm like mud, sticking to the wound's flesh.
Jiang Qushui gritted his teeth, watching the scalding blood drip onto Ji Wuchou's face, and suddenly froze. He remembered that when he was at home, his father would always ask him to take out the frozen meat from the refrigerator to thaw in advance, but he always forgot to do so and could only rush to thaw it by running water on it before the adults came back.
He stared at the faint bloodstains spreading across the ice, and seemed to understand something.
"Xiao Chou, don't be afraid, you'll be out soon."
He laughed involuntarily, pulling at his palm to make the wound bigger, causing blood to gush out. Jiang Qushui closed his eyes, mobilizing the last bit of spiritual energy in his blood vessels, causing the unstoppable blood to surge out of his body like a bursting dam.
Under his mind's control, the warm liquid was like a dense net wrapped around the cut surface of the ice layer. He was delighted to find that the ice layer was no longer moving forward, but instead seemed to be receding.
He forcefully drew out more blood.
One drop, two drops, the icy snow water dripped into Ji Wuchou's eyes. She seemed to notice, but she was reluctant to give up her beautiful dream and only moved her eyelashes slightly.
Without stopping his work, Jiang Qushui gently bent down and looked at Ji Wuchou's face, which was slowly regaining its color. He remembered that he had a greedy wish, and now he had to tell her.
He leaned close to her ear.
The cold moon is silent; even in eternal freeze, spring will break.
*
When Ji Wuchou woke up, there was no one beside her. There were no curtains in her room, so she could see fallen leaves swirling outside the window at a glance.
It turns out the wind has picked up; no wonder I kept hearing rustling sounds in my dreams.
Looking at the sky, it should be afternoon. Remembering that she still had to report to the head of the family, she threw off the covers and got out of bed.
She encountered two unidentified officials in the corridor. They were talking to each other, but when Ji Wuchou came out of the room, they immediately stopped talking and their eyes roamed over her.
She ignored them as usual and walked past them.
"Ji Wuchou." A familiar-looking but unidentified official called out to her on the stairs, "The patriarch wants you to go to Sanjiu Peak once you're awake." Then he left.
She nodded, but hadn't yet uttered her thanks.
"Yes, yes, it's that curse..."
The two people behind her started whispering again as she walked by, but they didn't know that Ji Wuchou had excellent hearing, and now that the wind was blowing, the words could be heard even more clearly by her.
But not wanting to cause trouble, she continued downstairs.
"I heard that someone drowned in the river a few days ago..."
"I don't know why, but the whole river has turned red..."
"I heard it's someone from the Jiang family."
She didn't stop, and continued walking towards the gloomy Wind Chasing Path.
A fierce wind swirled around her as she threw out a Divine Strategy card that had been burned to ashes.
"Sanjiu Peak." As always, calm and indifferent.
Ji Chaoshan stood under the Jianmu tree waiting for her. As if sensing something, he turned around from a distance and watched Ji Wuchou walk up to him.
She looked her up and down, but just as she had expected, the girl was unmoved by anything, at least on the surface.
So she stopped beating around the bush.
“That boy saved you by melting ice with his blood.” She spoke directly, her voice trailing off. “For a crippled person to do something like that, the Jiang family should be very grateful.”
Her tone was mocking, as if she were talking about a trivial matter.
"Don't worry, it's just a broken body that died. The Jiang family will never cause you any trouble. The two families have been neighbors for thousands of years, and now it's better to avoid trouble." She stared intently at Ji Wuchou's expression. "However, it's a pity for the boy's family. They have nowhere to turn for help, and the elderly will have to spend their remaining years in tears after sending off their young son."
Ji Chaoshan paused for a moment, looking at the person in front of her who had never seen her cry before.
"Ji Wuchou." She suddenly called out her name, forcing her to look up and face her.
Do you know where you went wrong?
Ji Wuchou nodded slightly and mechanically replied, "The mistake was that I shouldn't have gone beyond the borders of Puyang, and the mistake was that I shouldn't have violated the clan rules."
"wrong."
Ji Chaoshan sighed and took two steps around her.
"You still don't realize where you went wrong."
“That’s a thousand miles of frozen land… Only one person in Puyang’s history has ever used it…” She gently tilted her head back, her gaze wistfully fixed on the distance, as if imagining that distant era in her mind.
"Ji Wuchou, your mistake lies in not being strong enough, in being too young and unable to control your enviable and coveted abilities, in being unable to bear everything, and in being able to watch helplessly as all the precious things slip away from you."
Ji Wuchou stood there, but felt increasingly unable to feel her own existence. The figure of the patriarch swayed before her eyes, and she could only pinch her own flesh tightly to keep herself from falling over.
"Do you know what you should do now?" Ji Chaoshan asked in a deep voice.
"I know," she managed to squeeze out, afraid that saying even one more word would give her away.
Ji Chaoshan looked at her palms, which were already bleeding, and sighed almost imperceptibly.
"Alright, go back now. You don't need to worry about anything else; the family will handle everything."
"Yes." She bent the back of her neck, turned and left.
In the years that followed, no one lingered by the Gongshui River anymore. Ji Wuchou devoted herself to training and became the most powerful and best-performing unknown officer in the clan. However, because of the legendary curse, people gradually became unwilling to associate with her.
There aren't enough people to enter the dream, but fortunately the Nine Heavens Conference is coming soon, and she plans to look for suitable teams in the team application section and give it a try.
Because no one was there to team up with, her life became idle. During those idle hours, the loneliness was almost unbearable, so she would occasionally go for a walk outside the clan's school.
Hearing her child babbling the text fills the void in her heart to some extent.
One day, she leaned against a classroom window, hugging her knees, just like she used to sit by the river.
The sky was high and the clouds were light, a gentle breeze was blowing, and the children in the classroom were learning ancient poems. The sound of their poems was soothing and lulling her to sleep. She gently rested her chin on her knees and unconsciously squinted her eyes, listening to the lines "Cold rain in the morning and wind in the evening" coming from inside.
"Tears of rouge, leaving one intoxicated, when will we meet again?"
"Life is full of regrets, like water flowing eastward forever."
She suddenly opened her eyes, staring at a strangely shaped cloud on the horizon, and a tear slid down her cheek.
She remembered; after all these years, she finally remembered.
What exactly did Jiang Qushui whisper in her ear that day?
That's right.
"Little sorrow, don't be sad."
He said, "So, are we friends now?"
"If so, would you like to come to my house and have a look?"
"I'm talking about the home outside the mountains."
"The one with the osmanthus tree in the yard."
Ji Wuchou only cried this once, until her clothes were completely soaked, until she couldn't breathe, and until she couldn't shed another tear for the next ten or twenty years.
Just this once, she thought.
Life is full of regrets, like water flowing eastward forever.
Only the long river flows on, carrying away the sorrow left behind.
-----------------------
Author's note: I also wanted to write a short skit about Ji Duzhi, but I didn't want to put it in the main text, so I'll just put it here.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
Ji Wuchou left Jianmu and circled around to Zhuifeng Road, intending to return to Qiongyin from there.
A strong mountain wind blew, and the clouds and mist drifted about.
Unexpectedly, someone was already waiting for her there.
"Ji Wuchou." He pronounced her name in a delicate, rhythmic way.
Ji Duzhi emerged from the clouds and approached Ji Wuchou with a smile on his face.
"So, what did the patriarch say to you?"
"Ah, they must have told you that the man surnamed Jiang drowned in the Gong River, but his clansmen just wanted to keep quiet about it, right?"
He was so close that his breath swirled around her ear. Ji Wuchou looked ahead, but she could hear the barely suppressed excitement and a certain frenzied emotion in his tone.
"Did she tell you that I was the one who exposed your meeting by the water?"
"Not only that, I also told you that you sneaked out during your punishment period."
Ji Wuchou didn't want to get entangled any longer. She wanted to leave him again, but as if sensing her movement, Ji Duzhi suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm.
This was the only time he mustered the courage to discover, to his astonishment, that the body beneath his palm was also warm.
So it wasn't made of ice after all.
He dragged her back to a face-to-face position, gripping her tightly with both hands until his fingers went numb; she must have felt pain too.
"How is it, Ji Wuchou?"
He stared into her eyes, engrossed in his own reflection, trying to glean something else from them.
Unfortunately, no.
"Ji Wuchou, do you hate me?" His voice trembled.
Ji Wuchou, you hate me, don't you?
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
