Chapter 289: [The Top of Death and Life] Visiting the Old Half as a Ghost

The nightmares of the Xianxia realm have become more and more violent in these days. The Zhenlong game spreads like a plague through the world, and the man behind it is like a madman who does not care about the identity of his host, whether he is an old man or a young child, he takes in all of them.

No one could have guessed what he was trying to do by casting a wide net like that.

Some people pleaded with the Tianyin Pavilion for help, but the master of the Pavilion suddenly claimed to be ill and would not open the doors, even when people fled and died of hunger in front of the Pavilion. Gradually, with great reluctance, the people realised that perhaps they had been wrong from the start.

But it was too late. With the death of Master Mo, the uncertainty of Chu Wanning's fate, the collapse of the Death and Life pinnacle, and the fact that the great sects were left to fend for themselves, more and more Zhenlong pawns lost their consciousness and wandered the earth, killing and setting fires, the war spread throughout the Xianxia realm at an alarming rate, like burning grass.

Jiangdu, Yangzhou, Middle Shu Area, and Leizhou, with their carved beams and painted buildings, and their boats and snow, all let out a dull lament in the blazing flames, their walls crumbled, and many of the world's most beautiful days were solemnly lost in the flames.

On the stargazing platform of the Tianyin Pavilion, Shi Mei stands alone for a while, looking at the chaos of the mountains and the water, with the faint sound of footsteps behind him.

The woman's silken footsteps tread on the fine snow, a hand covers it, and Mu Yanli drapes him in a cold coat.

" What about the Fairy Tramper?"

"He left this morning."

"You've already sent him to do that." Mu Yanli was slightly startled, "How did you get there so quickly?"

"There is nothing to wait for, all the preparations have been made and now everything is ready but the wind. It's up to him."

Shi Mei said this, and it took a few moments before she spoke again, a tremor in her usually calm voice.

"Sister." He murmured to Mu Yanli, "After all these years, two lifetimes, I finally did"

Mu Yanli turned his face to the side and saw his peach blossom eyes glistening with moisture, seemingly extremely excited and aggrieved.

Shi Mei closed her eyes and restrained a slight shiver: "Let's go."

He said in a low voice, "The Gate of Life and Death in Time and Space is about to open. Let's take all the pieces we've made with us and send them all over there."

"All the pawns"

"All of them."

"But so many people," Mu Yanli's face was a little pale, but she saw Shi Mei's look of both pain and emotion, and she said firmly, "Yes. I know."

She turned to leave and was about to step off the edge of the observatory when Shi Mei suddenly called out to her.

"Wait."

She turned back and saw Shi Mei, sideways beneath a dusky canopy, the wind whipping his cloak, looking at Mu Yanli as if he wanted to say something, but his eyes were red but he never did.

Mu Yanli just stared at him for a moment, and then Mu Yanli said, "Don't worry, even if it's cruel, I won't betray you."

Shi Mei closed her eyes suddenly. People always seem to be so sensitive and fragile when it comes to crunch time.

His voice trembled slightly: "I have rebelled against myself in this life."

"He did not betray you." Mu Yanli said, "He betrayed the whole Butterfly Bone clan, all of us. His hands are no longer stained with the blood of monks but he has condemned us to hell ever since."

""

"I understand your helplessness." Mu Yanli said to Shi Mingjing, "Nan, no matter what the people of this world say about you. In the clan of the Butterfly Bone Beauties, you are a deserving hero."

She departed.

Shi Mei watched her back fade away before turning around, her bony hand resting on the carved railings, a cold, icy touch that spread to her heart.

"Shi Mei tilted her head and looked up at the gloomy clouds in the sky, sighing half-heartedly, "No hero can be a hero anymore, no hero carries so much debt of human life."

His eyes seemed to look despondent for a moment, and then they froze back into ice.

"I have spent two lifetimes fighting against the heavens and the earth. I don't believe that the ways of the heavens cannot be changed. Now that I have in my grasp the forbidden arts of the Gate of Life and Death in Time and Space and the Zhenlong Chess Game, I would like to see who else in this world can stop me."

The knuckles are pinched to a jade colour.

"Forget the hero. I just want to ask for a way out."

Three words that scatter into the wind.

"For us."

A black figure sweeps across the snowy landscape of Kunlun.

The wind and snow scraped his cheeks like knives, but he squinted his dark, purple pupils, seemingly unable to feel the biting cold.

He soars like an eagle on a cliff. He leapt onto the tiled roof, light on his feet and swift in his movements. The Kunlun Snow Walk Palace was patrolled by so many masters that no one noticed his arrival. There was not even the slightest trace of the snow surface he walked on.

The man soon swept up to the top of Snow Walk Palace, where he could see Tianchi Lake in the haze of snow and mist.

The black lightning-like figure came to a halt.

The man stands at the top of Kunlun, straight as a bayonet, his dark eyes staring out over Tianchi Lake. The wind picks up, sharply, blowing off his cloak and revealing a handsome, pale, bloodless face.

It is the Fairy Tramper emperor.

Having undergone Shi Mei's second refinement, he possesses the spiritual core of the Ink Master and has regained his former strength. He no longer disobeys his "master's" orders.

He has finally become a murderous blade that satisfies Shi Mingjing, as well as a source of spiritual power.

But ever since he woke up in the Tianyin Pavilion, Fairy Tramper's mind has been filled with scattered fragments of what he thought he hated about Chu Wanning and what he loved about Shi Mingjing, both of whom he loved and hated.

But then he had a vague feeling that something was wrong.

From time to time recently he would hear a faint sound and see some faint sight.

He saw Chu Wanning in Mengpo Court, wrapping his hands and heard himself saying to Chu Wanning, "Master, let's start all over again, shall we?

He saw the moon on the sea cliff, shining only on the hearts of two people, and he was holding Chu Wanning's hand, who kept his head bowed, his eyes seemingly wet and red at the end. He heard Chu Wanning say to himself, "I'm not good. I've never been liked."

He saw him and Chu Wanning tangled up on the bed in the inn, and the storm outside had nothing to do with them.

He saw the red lotus, Chu Wanning, lifting his eyelashes and looking towards him.

Sudden heart palpitations.

Fairy Tramper's eyes snapped open.

What is all this

He saw Chu Wanning looking at him with such tenderness, the kind of look that he had been tortured and abused with love pills but could not get back.

Fairy Tramper felt his head ache and he raised his hand, the glow of daylight shining on the eerie spikes on his gauntlet, he rubbed the corner of his forehead and cursed in a low voice, "What a mess"

He stood on the roof for a while, dazed. The snow was so heavy in Kunlun that in a few moments his shoulders were covered in frost. He was vaguely surprised that, deep down, he felt that this was good, like a good dream, and that he was at peace with the gentle eyes of Chu Wanning in his dream.

"This seat is really crazy."

He blinked, shaking these ridiculous thoughts to the back of his mind, and continued on his way.

His master's orders were for him to go to Kunlun, where the spiritual energy was at its peak, to open the door of life and death in time and space to his previous life once and for all. So he was supposed to go north. But when he saw Tianchi Lake, he couldn't help but make a detour.

That is where he lost Chu Wanning forever.

Fairy Tramper restrained himself from standing still for a moment, but eventually he couldn't resist making his way over there, but just as he swept through the palace corridors of Snow Walk Palace, he suddenly heard a familiar voice.

"Daddy Mother"

The voice sounded familiar, and he suddenly stopped in his tracks, hiding in the shadows, revealing a pair of dark eyes that looked down.

And then he looked away and he couldn't help but snort, "I thought who was it, but it was you."

In that courtyard, Xue Meng was alone. Xue Meng is holding a jug of wine, lying on the table, already drunk.

"I didn't kill your parents this time." Fairy Tramper admired Xue Meng's drunkenness with interest for a moment and rubbed his chin, "But when you're sad, I'm happy. I haven't forgotten who put a hole in my chest before."

"How's that for heartache?"

The courtyard was silent and there was no one else there.

Fairy Tramper stared down at the head for a while longer, and then, with a sudden start, he was in front of Xue Meng in a dark shadow.

The drunken Phoenix didn't notice his arrival and continued to fondle the jug, trying to pour more of the jelly into her mouth.

But suddenly a cold hand reached out and squeezed the red clay pot, stopping him in his tracks.

"You who?"

"Guess what."

Xue Meng could barely lift one eye, which was swollen from crying, and looked sleepily upwards along that hand. The handsome but sneering face of the Fairy Tramper Emperor.

Fairy Tramper had never seen such a dishevelled Xue Meng, and although he was convinced that in his previous life Xue Meng had secretly broken down many times behind people's backs, this was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes, and he licked his lips, feeling excited and excited.

He leans down and stares at Xue Meng like he's waiting for his prey: "Interesting, so Chu Wanning's proudest pupil can also get drunk on alcohol and become a mess."

With that, he leaned over the edge of the stone table before reaching out and picking up Xue Meng's chin.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you as a young man." Fairy Tramper lamented somewhat, "Having spent so much time in that red dust, I had forgotten what a bossy face you had as a teenager."

Fingertips rubbed up a little.

It swept across the cheek, the bridge of the nose, the brow, and then poked not-so-gently at the forehead.

" Xue Meng, do you know there is one thing that I actually regret." He looked into Xue Meng's dazed eyes and gradually revealed a chilling smile, "In my last life, I had a moment of kindness and let you live, but you turned around and tried to kill me. Sometimes I wonder if I should have killed you in the first place."

"People, those who live may not be comfortable, but those who die may not suffer." Fairy Tramper's voice was low and sombre, " Xue Meng, do you want to go and be with your parents"

As he spoke, he leaned down.

His cold nose brushed against Xue Meng's cheek and two cold fingers touched the artery on the side of Xue Meng's neck.

He looked at his own reflection in those hazel teary eyes as if he were a ghost who had descended into the human world.

"The truth is that everyone in this earthly world dies in the end." Fairy Tramper's white teeth were morose, "You and I have been brothers for at least half a lifetime. Since we have met you here, why don't I give you a ride first and help you to free yourself."

The end of the finger is firing and is about to strike.

"Brother."

Suddenly, a murmur, like a spring bud breaking through the earth, breaks through the stone.

Fairy Tramper was stunned.

Xue Meng looked at him, and in his drunkenness he seemed to finally recognise the man in front of him, and stumbled up, choking on his tears, and took Fairy Tramper's cold arm as if it were a driftwood in the sea.

"Brother."

He called to him.

He could not tell the subtle difference between Mo Ran's two lives, he only knew that the person in front of him was Mo Ran, only that he was his brother, his family, his most carefree years finally returned.

Fairy Tramper heard him this time, and was sure he had heard him correctly. So he was a little stunned that he didn't know what to make of his face.

The cranium is again in turmoil.

In a blur, Fairy Tramper's eyes flashed back to a vision of himself and Xue Meng sitting in the red lotus, making tea and wine and clinking glasses under the moon.

It's the same thing the Ink Master did again

"Brother." Xue Meng's drunken eyes were hazy as he buried himself in Fairy Tramper's arms, sobbing at first, but eventually, the sobbing and sobbing became a mournful howl, "Don't go, don't leave me."

After a while, as if he had remembered something else, he suddenly trembled, his lips were blue and white: "Don't kill my father, don't make them kill me, don't hurt my father and mother, come at me", tears rolled down his face, wetting Fairy Tramper's chest. "Don't don't cut my brother's heart out."

In the midst of this choking back and forth, Fairy Tramper's hand, which had been about to kill, finally eases, and he freezes for a moment, trying to push Xue Meng away. But Xue Meng held him so tightly that his hands and feet were thick with blood.

Gradually, the area closest to the heart was finally soaked with tears.

The Fairy Tramper finally fled up to the roof beams and crouched low on the porch, looking at Xue Meng who was huddled in the snow, crying in her knees.

The Xue Meng he remembers has always been fierce, arrogant, aggressive and bitter. But now, left in the snow, was a child who could no longer find his brother.

He watched Xue Meng cry for a long, long time in the same place, then Xue Meng got up, not knowing whether he was sober or tired of crying, and just stood there for a while in the courtyard in a daze, finally holding the wine jar and walking deeper into the plum blossom of the courtyard. The young man walked aimlessly, in a trance, slowly moving away

Fairy Tramper looks at the snow, two lines of twisted tracks that never look back, spreading deeper into the wind and snow until Xue Meng's back is lost.

In the wind, a song suddenly comes from the Middle Shu Area, a short song that Xue Zhengyong used to sing in his lifetime, which now flows from Xue Meng's throat and echoes in the Kunlun Snow Walk Palace.

"I worshipped my old friend, half a ghost, but now we can drink together in a drunken stupor." A voice rises, the tone is still young, but the tune is already mellow, "Under the cinnamon sticks, the horns are hidden, the face is decaying and the temples are already spotted."

Heavy snow stains the young man's auburn hair.

The hoarse voice was interspersed with the sound of the wind and snow, and all was sullen.

"The dream of the light of heaven is shattered, and all the people are far away" is getting farther and farther away, almost lost. Or perhaps it is not that Xue Meng has gone far away, but that the young man has finally sobbed and choked on his words, "abandoning my old body to my tears."

Abandon my old body.

He was only twenty-two years old, but only in his drunken dreams could he see his old friends laughing and reunited again. He was only in his prime, but only when he drank a jar of Dukang could he see the love of his high church and two or three old friends.

Xue Meng tilted his head as if to hold back the tears in the corners of his eyes, but he wasn't sure if he had, the wind and snow had already confused his eyes.

He closes his eyes, almost like a long whistle, resounding with the clouds, as if he is kowtowing to the sky and chanting with the earth.

"May I add to my life with the Duke of Zhou, and let you hold your wine and go and return"

Clouds of Qi converge as he smashes down the wine jar in his hand.

With his hands open, Xue Meng collapsed upright in the snow, not wanting to go any further, where there was no more familiarity, no more home, no more ice and snow.

Even if the dream of Mo Ran that I had just dreamt of was not real, it was all a mirage, a fleeting moment.

Xue Meng lies in the snow and, after a moment, raises his hand and covers his eyelids.

Scarlet, pale lips opened and closed slightly as hot tears slid down their faces.

"Why did you all go away and leave me alone."

Xue Meng suddenly chokes and loses his voice.

"Why? Why should I be left alone?"

In fact, for two lifetimes, in the end, it was all about him.

Fairy Tramper listened to the aftermath of the whistling wind that swallowed him up and looked away from Xue Meng, who stood motionless on the roof, his cloak fluttering in the gale. He raised his hand and touched his chest, not knowing what it felt like.

I worship my deceased friend half as a ghost.

This is true for Xue Meng, but it is no less true for Fairy Tramper.

In his previous life, Wushan Palace was empty and he was left alone, no one else. He doesn't know where the incense burner used to be in his house, he can't wear the half-used clothes of his youth, and sometimes he blurts out a joke from his school days, but he is surrounded by respectful, tight-faced faces.

No one knows what he is talking about, no one understands him.

Those who understand him are either at the spring or at the end of the earth.

Fairy Tramper slowly arrives at the edge of Tianchi Lake on a bad day, with freezing fog in the distance and snow seeds rushing over the pool. He stood there motionless, like a heartless wooden statue, unaware of the cold.

Let the frost and snow cover him.

" Chu Wanning" sighs softly, "If only back then"

How about if it was back in the day

He said no more, his eyelashes folded and his eyes closed.

There was never any such thing as if he had been the Emperor of Fairy Tramper, the unrivalled emperor of Xianxia. He did not know what it was to regret, what it was to turn back.

What happens happens.

He does not say he regrets, nor does he say he is defeated.

Even if blood and flesh were to be spilled and relatives were to be separated, this was the path he had chosen for himself, and even if it was thorny, he would go on with his head held high.

But here in the vast sky, between the snowy skies, in a place where no one will ever see or know. Fairy Tramper stood for a long time with his arms folded, and then, in the end, he did something unexpected and fell to his knees.

At the spot where Chu Wanning died in battle, long worship falls.

One worship.

Second worship.

Until three worships.

Fairy Tramper lifted his face, his eyelashes frosty and solemn under his hood, and no one knew what he was thinking. Then he rose, as if to fulfil a long-held wish, and, without a word, brushed off his cloak and black robe and swept away towards the most fertile part of the Kunlun Mountains.

When the emperor comes out, no one can stop him. Shi Mingjing has not chosen wrongly, he has the most powerful spiritual power on earth and a majestic cultivation that is unmatched by anyone else.

The gates of life and death in time and space will open.