Nightfall

Stepping deep into the divine hall, Ning Que saw the figure on the terrace.

He was a little shocked by the size of the figure, which was even taller than ordinary men. The woman on the terrace was too fat to be called plump.

She wore a light cyan dress decorated with flowers. The dress stayed still even though the autumn breeze was blowing from the cliff. That was because the dress clung to her body tightly, showing her exaggerated body line.

Ning Que had imaged the picture of reunion with Sangsang many times, but it never occurred to him that a thin girl could turn into such a fat woman.

He remembered the day he bought sweet potatoes in the town and saw the carriage and the tall fat girl in it. And he also remembered calling her a fat pig. It turned out that they had already met.

At that time, he didn’t know the girl in the carriage was her, but she must have known everything. Thinking of this, he felt his confidence evaporating, and the Academy’s plan seemed to be ridiculous too.

He stared at her back and went silent for a long time.

The woman looked nothing like Sangsang in his memory, but he knew for sure she was Sangsang due to positive perception rather than mystical feeling. Since the barrier between them had disappeared, he knew it was her.

Although looking white and fat, the woman on the terrace was indeed Sangsang. Ning Que suddenly felt sad as he knew that he was probably never able to see the black thin Sangsang again.

Standing on the terrace with her hands behind her back, Sangsang enjoyed the autumn night. Her sleeves were as wavery as seas and her posture was as upright as mountain peaks. However, he felt her loneliness.

“Come home with me.”

Ning Que spoke in a casual tone, looking at her back. Acting quite contrary to the previous excitement outside the divine hall, he was like a man seeing his playful little wife by the lake.

Sangsang didn’t turn around and kept silent with her hands still behind her back. The starlight fell on the terrace and her thick shoulders, bleeding like ink.

The divine hall was quiet and secluded. Blowing from the terrace and passing by the ever-bright lamp broken into pieces, the night wind lifted a piece of old cloth to reveal a golden brick and a big black umbrella.

After staring for a moment in silence, he walked to the terrace. He walked up behind her and reached out to her shoulder as if he were to brush the starlight away from her body.

Feeling the soft and gentle wind, his fingertip fell on her shoulder.

Upon touching her shoulder, a piece of his fingertip was cut off and he started to bleed. The blood coagulated into a well-shaped circle which looked like a scarlet dot, as beautiful as a cinnabar mole.

On the terrace, countless invisible lines divided the space into two worlds: Sangsang’s world and the earth.

Sangsang’s world was made up of the most basic rules, including the space rule. Hence nobody could enter her world without her permission.

Her world was far from the earth. The situation remained the same even though she was on earth. She was standing right before Ning Que, but it looked like she was far away.

The distance between Ning Que and Sangsang was so close yet so far.

…

…

Seeing the blood on his fingertip, Ning Que kept silent for a long time and then laughed sardonically. “Barrier between heaven and earth indeed.”

He looked up at her tall and chubby figure, and said, “You’ve put on a lot weight and grown much taller. You’ve changed, and I bet you don’t remember much about the past.”

Sangsang didn’t respond or turn around and just looked at the mountains under the night sky with her hands behind her back.

“But I remember all of it. That year in Hebei Province, the starving refugees fought against each other, and desperate parents even used their dead children as food. Although I survived, I was on the verge of collapsing. I don’t know what I would have turned into if I had not saved you from the piles of the dead bodies. In a sense, you saved me too. You made me into a decent man. You made my life meaningful even when I was as wicked back in Min Mountain and the Wilderness. During that time, you were my only light. You know, you were the only reason I wanted to live.”

Looking at her back and her hands behind back, Ning Que suddenly wanted to hold her hands. Just like the time when she was crying and frightened due to the wolves in Min Mountain many years ago, he held her in his arms, held her hands tightly, and told stories the whole night to comfort her. Although her hands were not as small as before, he still wanted to hold them. The craving was so strong that his voice trembled slightly.

“I don’t know if you’ve thought about the meaning of life. You are an eternal objective existence, and human are just passers-by. Our lives are short and will end one day, hence we are prone to nihility. In the end, the only things that help us get through the day are spiritually strong things, like emotions. After careful consideration, you will discover that all of this is based on memories. The more memories you possess, the stronger your emotions will be and the longer they will last. I don’t want to recall the past at this point, but you know very well that the memories we share are incomparable. So we can’t leave each other. As I’ve said before, you are my natal item and you are my destiny. I come here today to take you home.”

Then he reached out to her shoulder again, trying to brush the lonely starlight away and pull her back from her lonely world to the earth and back to him.

Countless clear crunches echoed around on the terrace. His sleeves were instantly split into pieces, and the pure Haoran Qi covering his arms lasted for only a short amount of time before being cut into pieces by the invisible lines in the air. Innumerable fine blood lines appeared on his arms, which were about to be chopped off.

All of a sudden, the space rule that divided the world into two parts disappeared, and the horrible blood lines on his arms did not go deeper. Because…Sangsang opened her world to him.

Sangsang turned back slowly and looked at him in silence, with nothing but calmness in her eyes.

Ning Que was in shock from her opening her world at this time. Seeing her eyes, he was even more shocked since she had never looked at him like this before.

Sangsang reached out to hold his frozen hand.

He felt that her soft and warm hand, like waters of a lake. No, it was not hand, but a gentle universe, making him feel enchanted.

She was his natal item, so she could sense what he was thinking. And when their hands were held together, he also sensed her consciousness and what she was thinking.

The consciousness of Haotian was as vast as an ocean of stars, which was too much for human beings to bear. Even though Sangsang controlled her consciousness, it still whipped up huge waves in the ocean of consciousness of Ning Que.

The corner of his eyes began to ooze blood, but his eyes were still bright as he saw a lot of her memories in the tempestuous waves. He saw the mulberry trees with their barks stripped off in Hebei Province, the starving lambs in Min Mountain, the roast chicken and liquor in City of Wei, Old Brush Pen Shop in Chang’an, cosmetics of Chenjinji Cosmetics Store, the summer rain, the bank notes under the bed and the night by the Snow Sea.

It turned out that she had never forgotten anything. She remembered these things even more clearly than he did.

Abruptly, Ning Que’s eyes went dim, and then he was angry as he understood a cold fact that she was Haotian. The scenes in her memory were arranged by herself in the first place, and they were merely derivatives of her plan to make the Headmaster of Academy go up to heaven!

The Headmaster of Academy and she were neck to neck in their fight for over a thousand years. She set up God’s Plan to come to earth, eventually forcing the Headmaster of Academy to go up to heaven by the Sishui River.

The memories she shared with Ning Que were a part of God’s Plan, and they were neither the cause nor the purpose, but only the means.

Staring at her eyes, Ning Que looked at the eternal calmness that was absolutely not human and slowly clenched his left fist. The blood lines on his right arm opened again because he tightened his body too much.

He had always understood that all the memories he cherished were part of her calculations. Clearly, the two most important points for his master to leave were: he became the master’s protege and he eloped with Sangsang all over the world after she was exposed as the daughter of Invariant Yama. All of this was just God’s Plan.

But he was unwilling to think about these things. Although all the things were exposed at this moment while they were holding hands and sharing their consciousnesses, he wanted to believe that she was still Sangsang. He was in severe pain.

All of this was just God’s Plan. The memories were also fake.

Thinking silently, Ning Que then understood everything in his mind. Those memories could be real before Sangsang was woken up. She was still his Sangsang back then.

Only when Sangsang woke up did those memories become mere means.

“I didn’t calculate correctly because you were not from my world. I stayed on earth, but I had never been able to cut off the bond with you,” said Sangsang.

“So you must surrender to me.”

Ning Que had never kept anything from her, including his biggest secret. He didn’t even hide the conversation with his master from her while they were wandering on the sea last year. She knew he was not a part of the world of Haotian, so she decided to show him mercy.

Staring at her eyes, Ning Que asked, “I’m not one your people, why should I surrender to you?”

Sangsang said, “I will grant you eternity.”

“What’s eternity good for? Food? Or making the bed for me?” Ning Que asked.

…

…