Chapter 444

Ice reflected Wang Ping's face. Pale, cold, like death. But the ice knew he was not dead, for the shadow within the ice was moving—not a motion visible to the eye, but an extremely subtle fluctuation of law sensed by the "ice heart."

Ice heart is the core sensing layer of mother ice, capable of sealing the faintest traces of life with extremely weak spiritual power fluctuations. It sensed that his chaotic Dao foundation was still rotating extremely slowly at its deepest point, turning one full circle—no one knows how long that takes—but it was still turning. Ice knew he would wake.

Time flowed in the quiet chamber. Not water—water has sound, touch, and can slip through fingers. Not sand—sand has weight and can fall from the upper glass bulb of an hourglass into the lower.

It was "waiting." Everyone waited in their own way. Youying waited—after feeding him the God-Seizing Pill, she grew even quieter. Each day, besides giving him water, turning him over, and massaging his limbs, she sat by the bedside, turned his palm upward, and wrote characters on his palm.

What she wrote was her name. Cangxuan waited—each morning before changing shifts, he would stand on one foot so the numbness in the other could ease a little. His sword guarded from winter to spring, from spring to summer, and the sword spirit in its sheath stayed awake beside him, silent.

Yuliuli waited—her melody was not yet finished, but she was no longer anxious. Before, she thought she could not finish the tune because she was not calm enough; later she realized it was not that, but because Jiu'er was still growing. The melody was for Jiu'er, and Jiu'er was still growing in the Jianmu, so the melody also grew in her heart of music.

Jianmu waited—its roots had penetrated the spirit world's ley lines, absorbing enough nutrients to accumulate strength for awakening. Jiu'er waited—she did not know how long had passed outside; her dream had no time scale. She simply remained in that dream—older brother no longer fought, sitting beneath the tree waiting for her to wake. During this period of waiting, waiting itself became the norm.

Waiting for Wang Ping to open his eyes—the quiet chamber's window faced the back mountain, and on the trunk of the Jianmu, Jiu'er's face changed slightly each day. Her brow ridge was a little clearer than last month, the contour of her nose tip a little more three-dimensional.

Waiting for Jiu'er to step out from the trunk—the lacquer seams of Yuliuli's zither were filled with fine pollen blown from the back mountain. Each evening, Yuliuli would help her sit up against the headboard and open the window a crack.

The wind blowing in carried the foul smell of thawing earth, the fresh, green scent of sprouting wild grass, and the distant aroma of firewood smoke from cooking rice, drifting from somewhere unknown.

Waiting for the spirit realm's sky to turn completely blue—this blue was not accumulated bit by bit each day, but one day, in the afternoon, the entire sky from east to west suddenly became utterly clear. Not a trace of gray, so blue it made one want to cry.

The rain had stopped. The spirit realm enjoyed favorable winds and rains this year—from spring to summer, rainy days when it should rain, sunny days when it should shine. The sun rose every day, shining upon the canopy of the Jianmu.

Jianmu remained dormant, but its leaves had begun to unfurl slowly—this tree was an innate spiritual root, and its dormancy was not measured by daylight hours, but by the strength accumulated within itself.

Sunlight fell on the leaves, and the extremely fine down on their surface stood upright in the light, breaking the light into extremely pale, fine seven colors. The leaves became emerald green in the light—not the tender green of newly sprouted spring, but a mature emerald green transformed after storing the entire spring and summer, emerald like jade.

Jade is stone, but its green is alive, a light shining outward from deep within the stone. Like a dream—within the dream there is a tree, and beneath it someone waits.

Like hope—hope has no color, but when people see hope, they automatically assign it a color, and the people of the spirit realm assign hope the color of emerald green.

New grass grew beneath the tree—not the old kind that yellowed and withered, withered and yellowed again, but brand-new, pushing up from deep underground. Tender green, fine, like an infant's eyelashes.

The grass blades still bore the curvature from just breaking the soil, with dew newly formed that morning clinging to their tips. Flowers also bloomed—not precious spirit flowers, but the most ordinary wildflowers on the back mountain of the Ninth Dao Institute—very small, white, five-petaled, with stamens of extremely pale yellow.

They trembled lightly in the wind, not from fear—but as a greeting. Greeting the wind, greeting passing birds, greeting Cangxuan and Yuliuli who passed beneath the tree each day.

The day Wang Ping woke was a morning. Not any special day—not the winter solstice, not the beginning of spring, not the anniversary of his return.

Just an ordinary morning. Sunlight leaked through the window crack—a fixed position left by Youying each day when she opened and closed the window, for she dared not open it too wide, fearing he might catch a chill.

Nor did she dare shut it too tightly, fearing stale air inside. So she left a gap just wide enough for a finger—sunlight squeezed through this crack and fell upon his face.

His face had light. Not the golden hue of sunlight, but a faint blood color rising from beneath the skin—extremely light, extremely slight, so faint that without close inspection it would not be noticed at all.

Youying examined his face carefully each time she wiped it—what was absent yesterday had just appeared this morning.

His eyelid twitched—very slightly, very slowly, like a butterfly flicking its wing once—not a butterfly in flight, but a butterfly resting on a petal, its wing tilted by a gentle breeze, then springing back.

Youying fell asleep beside him—not intentionally, but her body could endure no more. She had kept vigil all night without sleep, and at dawn he suddenly coughed once—the first active cough since his deep slumber. Startled, she sprang up, pressed her ear to his chest, and listened for half an hour.

After confirming his heartbeat still beat, she lay on her side at the edge of the bed, closed her eyes, and drew a breath—so exhausted she fell asleep instantly. Her face rested against the back of his hand, her hand still gripping his—held for so long that the curvature of her fingers had fixed, and even asleep she did not loosen her hold.

Her face bore tear traces—not fresh ones, for fresh tear traces are wet and reflective; hers were dry. Not from yesterday—yesterday's tear traces would not collect beneath the white mark below her eye.

They were from many days—one layer dried, then another new layer covered it, over and over, piling on her cheekbone into an extremely faint white stain of salt. She did not wipe them, for wiping never ended. At first, during those first few months, she still wiped, but discovered wiping only made more tears flow, so she stopped. She learned to coexist with tears.

Wang Ping opened his eyes. The resistance of his eyelids opening was greater than he imagined—after so long without actively opening his eyes, the skin of his eyelids and the surface of his eyeballs had developed a slight adhesion.

When light first pierced his pupils, it hurt—his pupils had hardened in darkness for a long time, and upon sudden contact with sunlight, his iris sphincter muscle contracted violently, the contraction so severe it tugged the entire eye socket. He did not close his eyes.

It hurt, then he adapted. His eyes held no light—not the kind of "bright and spirited" light. His cultivation had fallen to mid-Nascent Soul, and the light of his nascent soul was no longer sufficient to penetrate the crystalline lens from his pupils and overflow.

But there remained a color still in motion—chaotic in hue, gray and misty, like the sky before dawn.

Not bright, but "the gray before it brightens"—that gray containing an extremely faint mote of light. It was shining—not to illuminate anything else, but to shine for himself. To shine for Youying—she lay beside his hand, her face against the back of his hand, her breathing slow and even, a tiny drop of undried moisture still clinging to the eyelashes at the corner of her left eye.

To shine for this world—the window was open a crack, wind slipped through, stirring a corner of the bed canopy, stirring a wisp of white hair on his forehead. To shine for himself—I am still here.

He gazed at the ceiling. White, wooden, the quiet chamber of the back mountain of the Ninth Dao Institute did not use pine—its grain too coarse, but rather extremely slow-growing old elm from the northern slope, fine-grained, and after three coats of tung oil, its surface was smooth as a mirror.

On the ceiling were wood rings, circle upon circle, dense and tight, each ring carved by time into different depths and spacings. He counted several circles but could not finish, using his newly awakened optic nerves to calibrate his sense of distance and direction, circle by circle.

Then he turned his head. Movement of the cervical vertebrae produced an extremely faint clicking sound—the joints, long inactive, had viscous synovial fluid; as they turned, the joint surfaces first lightly stuck, then released. He saw Youying.

She lay beside his hand, face turned, left cheek against the back of his hand, right cheek facing him. Asleep deeply, brows furrowed—having a nightmare. Not the kind of nightmare in the ancient mirror where the whole body trembles, but another—chasing a shadow in the dream, unable to catch up.

He reached out, his motion extremely slow, extremely gentle, fearing to startle her—his arm muscles had atrophied, lifting an arm felt heavy. His fingertips touched her hair—still carrying the faint scent of medicinal ointment from when he had just changed his dressing, and as he brushed the fine hairs at her hairline, a few strands stuck to his finger pads.

Very soft—newly regrown tissue from the edge of his diseased bones—hair follicles absorbed nutrients more efficiently than before. Very fine, so fine that under light one could see the hair marrow, like silk—cool to the touch, for her body temperature had not yet risen to the normal human range. He glided his hand lightly over her hair—once, once, once—not a caress, but a confirmation—confirming her hair was still there, confirming her hand still held his, confirming she lay here, not a hallucination of his own making.

Youying woke. Not from being touched—his hand was too light, too light to bend even her hair tips—but because she sensed a change in his wrist pulse. In coma, his pulse had been an extremely low, extremely flat line; now that line suddenly showed fluctuation—not a racing heartbeat, but the "fluctuation of waking": the brain began working, the sympathetic nervous system reactivated, heart rate shifting from sleep rhythm to wakefulness. His inner wrist pressed against her palm, her palm transmitting the pulse change directly into her blood vessels. She lifted her head and saw Wang Ping's eyes—black, white—the whites of his eyes still somewhat cloudy, due to microcirculatory obstruction in the conjunctival capillaries from prolonged coma causing slight yellowing. But his pupils' light reflex was normal—she looked at him, and his pupils looked at her: as her face drew near, his pupils contracted ever so slightly, a normal response after the lens completed focusing.

"You're awake."

Her voice was so soft that when she spoke, hardly any air flowed from her vocal cords—not mute, but clear. Her voice was clear and cold; when these three words left her mouth, they sounded neither like a question nor an exclamation, but a statement: You are here, you are awake, I see you. Yet as it traveled through the air, it seemed to lengthen in that brief moment when it reached the door and Cangxuan heard it. She still held his hand in hers, her fingertips pressing firmly—not to hurt him, but her body itself translating emotion into muscle contraction. Her hand felt a little cooler, but her own eye sockets held no tears—today's new tears had not yet had time to flow.

Cangxuan heard from outside the door—not Youying's words—the door to the quiet chamber, however thin, was closed, and her voice too soft—but he heard the reaction of the sword heart. His sword spirit in its sheath suddenly opened its eyes—not real eyes, but a sensing layer shifting from stillness mode to awakening mode, and at that exact moment it transmitted the extremely faint fluctuation leaking through the door crack into Cangxuan's spiritual platform. Someone was waking. The sword in its sheath rang once, very short—just a "ding," very bright—like a person laughing. That laugh was soundless, the sound of air when the corners of the mouth lift and the brow bone rises slightly. Cangxuan did not laugh—his mouth corners did not move, but his thumb stopped on the sword guard, no longer rubbing. He had waited over three hundred days, from guarding winter to spring, from spring to summer, just for this one sound.

Yuliuli heard beneath the Jianmu—her heart of music had already received the vibration before that sword sound arrived—not the sword sound. It was the rootlets of the Jianmu in the deep soil that suddenly collectively twitched slightly, having received a signal from the spirit world's ley lines—the chaotic true monarch connected to its root network, whose vital signs had just crossed a certain threshold at this moment. She lifted her head, her finger lightly plucking a string—the palace string, the thickest one. The palace string's sound is the lowest and deepest of all strings, and when it vibrates, the entire resonating body of the zither sinks with it. The string emitted an extremely soft, extremely fine sound, like a dewdrop sliding from a leaf and dropping into a pond—the pond's surface gave a slight depression, then rebounded, sending out a ripple. The ripple spread from beneath the Jianmu, passing through the new grass, the white flowers, and the feet of two or three disciples walking toward the mountainside.

The leaves of the Jianmu vibrated—not one or two, but the entire canopy swayed in unison from the center outward. Shasha, like a person saying—good.

Cangxuan entered. He pushed open the door of the quiet chamber—the door hinge lacked oil, emitting a dull, grating sound. He did not walk straight to the bedside, but took two steps forward, just clearing the doorframe's shadow, standing about three steps from the foot of the bed—that was his habitual stance on the battlefield, neither pressuring the wounded nor obscuring the full view. He stood at the bedside, gazing at Wang Ping. His face showed no expression, but the fine lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper than a year ago. His mouth corners did not move, but the outer corners of his eyes drew inward—the eye-tail lines of a sword cultivator are not from weeping, but from habitually squinting in the blazing sun while watching sword light. He looked at Wang Ping's opened eyes, at Wang Ping's chest rising and falling with his own breath—not the passive rise and fall from the spiritual energy fed by Youying, but his own active control. He had waited over three hundred days, from the bone-chilling winter of last year to today's midsummer morning, just to see this. He could go now—not from weariness—his shift still needed rotation, and later there would be times requiring constant attendance during Wang Ping's recovery. This was "the matter is concluded." He had waited a full year for this moment of turning the page.

He turned, walked to the door, stopped. Without looking back: "Being alive is enough." No more—do not demand he restore his cultivation, do not demand he shoulder the spirit realm, do not demand he fulfill any promises. He had come back to life; everything else could wait. He departed, his footsteps from the quiet chamber door down the hall to outside, each step steady, even steadier than when he came.

Yuliuli entered, cradling her zither. Her zither had just been lifted from beneath the Jianmu, its body still bearing a few leaves that had fallen onto it at some unknown time. She stood by the bedside empty space, holding the zither, gazing at Wang Ping for a long time. Just now, when he turned his head, the white hair on his forehead slid down, revealing the old wound on his left brow bone—a wound she had seen many times, but this time it felt like she was confirming something about the relationship between scar and memory. Then she sat on the small stool Youying used at night to rest her feet, placed the zither on her knees. The zither face was warm—having basked in the sun beneath the Jianmu for half a morning, the paulownia wood had absorbed the sun's heat, and now pressing a palm to it one could feel a very slight, very gentle warmth.

She plucked a string gently—not the palace string, but the feather string, the finest one. That sound, in the attributes of her zither's tone, is the highest and clearest, and when it resonates in the quiet chamber, it does not sound like sound waves sent from the ground, but like a fine vibration from an extremely light insect wing on a beam. Very light, very fine, like wind, like water, like time. She played a melody—no name, no lyrics, no fixed mode. After finishing the first section, her fingers simply moved downward on their own—not she playing the zither, but the zither playing her. She played this year's waiting—waiting without knowing what for, only knowing one could not cease waiting.

She played Cangxuan's silence—silence not as not speaking, but standing twelve hours a day without uttering a word, feet shifting weight, the sword in its sheath silent. She played Youying's tears—tears not as crying, but layer upon layer flowing, drying, piling into a thin frost of salt on the cheekbones. She played her own unease—unease not as fear he would not wake, but fear that if he did wake, he would find one fewer person he cared for. She filtered all these from this year through her fingertips, pressing them onto the strings, the strings vibrating, the zither breathing, and after finishing the final phrase she paused a moment without immediately withdrawing her hand. Then she rose and walked away.

Youying helped Wang Ping sit up, letting him lean against the headboard. The motion was very slow—first turning over the back of his right hand, drawing her fingers from his palm. Then she used her left hand to support his right shoulder, her right hand passing behind his neck, slowly lifting his upper body. He was too light—this year he had grown far too thin, his bone weight unchanged but muscle and subcutaneous fat severely depleted, and as she supported him she could feel the edge of his scapula clearly pressing against her palm. She pulled out the pillow, fluffed it, placed it behind him, then gradually released her hold, letting him settle. His body was so light, light as paper, as feather, as if nonexistent. Leaning against the headboard, his waist muscles lacked the strength to straighten himself, and he slid downward a little; she lifted him again.

His cultivation was very low—his chaotic consciousness had shrunk to sensing only the size of this quiet chamber, his dantian spirit sea an extremely shallow shoal, and the once vast and turbulent chaotic spirit liquid of his God-Seizing stage now reduced to a thin film. So low that even a beginner Nascent Soul cultivator could defeat him—no need for sword cultivators, no need for the Fallen Immortal clan's zither masters, merely a newly condensed infant cultivator could use spiritual pressure to pin him down. But he lived—breathing continued, heartbeat continued, and the deepest layer of his chaotic Dao foundation still turned extremely slowly.

Living, he could cultivate again. After the main trunk of the pine on Xiao Han Mountain was shattered by lightning, the new shoots sprouting from the lateral branches were tougher than the original trunk. After Jianmu was felled in antiquity, the shoots sprouting from its seeds knew better how to avoid harm than the original mother tree. His Dao foundation had cracked, but his Dao had not extinguished. Dao not extinguished, cultivation could resume.

Youying poured him a cup of water. The water was warm—not boiled hot water, but mountain spring water left in a copper kettle on the sunlit windowsill to bask for most of an hour. She handed him the cup; he gazed at it for a moment—not at the water, but at the cup itself. Previously he had never noticed this cup—it was the most ordinary earthenware cup from the Ninth Dao Institute's storehouse, unglazed, with an extremely fine crack on the wall, which after water seeped in became a half-transparent dark gray fine line. He took it, his hand trembling—not from emotional agitation, but from muscle atrophy reducing control, the extensor muscles of his forearm and fingers still unable to coordinate precisely. Some water spilled, wetting a small patch of the blanket, which quickly cooled. He took a sip—the water felt cool to him, for to him lukewarm and cool were blurred due to his low body temperature. Cool enough to make his throat ache, he swallowed, his stomach warmed—the stomach walls absorbed water, water seeped into blood vessels, blood volume increased slightly, and the heart's pumping burden eased.

He set down the cup and looked out the window. From this angle at the head of the bed he could just see part of the Jianmu's canopy and the grass beneath it. The sunlight outside was bright, bright enough to make him squint—not because the sunlight was truly intense, but because his pupil sphincter had not yet recovered the ability to discern strong light, having shifted from the dim indoor light of recent awakening to the direct afternoon natural light, and his lens needed several days to re-calibrate the iris's contraction elasticity.

Under the Jianmu tree, someone was practicing swordsmanship. Not Cangxuan—Cangxuan never practiced swordsmanship beneath the Jianmu tree; his sword aura was too cold and would disturb the sleeping tree. It was a disciple of the Ninth Dao Institute, a newly taken-in junior disciple after the war, with cultivation only at the Foundation Establishment stage, holding a wooden sword, practicing the most basic chopping sword technique on the open ground beside the Jianmu tree. The sword light flickered in the sunlight—the wooden sword had no blade, but the sun had warmed and brightened it. Like a silver fish swimming in the air. The child practiced very seriously, adjusting his footwork with each chop, seemingly still counting some footwork mnemonic in his mouth; if he miscounted, he would stop and start counting again.

He watched for a long time. Long enough that the child finished a set of sword techniques, put away his wooden sword, and left; long enough that the shadow on the grass moved from the left to the right; long enough that the light spots filtering down from the Jianmu tree canopy shifted three positions on his blanket. Then he withdrew his gaze and looked at the dark shadow.

"Where is Jiu'er?"

Youying pointed toward the window outside. Wang Ping turned his head, facing the window—not facing the door, but facing the window outside, because the direction Youying pointed was exactly toward the Jianmu tree. She didn't need to point more specifically—where Jiu'er was, he knew just by looking at the Jianmu tree. Inside the trunk of the Jianmu tree, there was a face.

Not carved into it, not painted on it, but an outline emerging from beneath the bark. Very small—limited by the trunk's thickness, Jiu'er's face could only be set into that small patch of inner juvenile periderm not yet fully lignified.

Very white—her skin inside the trunk had never been directly exposed to sunlight, so white it approached colorlessness. Eyes closed, the curvature of her eyelashes extremely slight, a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

Not that kind of happy smile, but one of ease—the corner of her mouth lifted just a little, maintaining this arc for a long time. She was dreaming, dreaming that he was looking at her.

This was the first time he had personally seen her face embedded in the Jianmu tree trunk. Before this, he had only sensed her pulse during the battle to reclaim the shadow; today, he truly saw her appearance again with his own eyes.

He smiled. Facing that face, the muscles at the corner of his mouth were still somewhat stiff, but that arc was a smile. His smile was very faint, faint to the point of being almost invisible. But her face on the trunk also had a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. She smiled first. Then he smiled. The order had always been like that.