A bamboo carriage was slowly driven from behind the Great Zhou Imperial Palace's Hall of Cold Light. The heavy curtain hanging in front of the hall was gently raised as Mo Yu appeared on the stone steps. The starlight fell upon her beautiful face, shining upon her slim brows, her bright eyes, and the alluring plum blossom makeup upon her face.
She gazed at the two pure white reindeer pulling the carriage and slightly arched her brows, seeming somewhat surprised. She asked, "Where's Black Jade?"
The Black Goat had previously vanished into the pitch-black darkness, and no one knew where it was.
Nanny Ning held her hand and walked her down the stone steps, whispering, "The little devil has wandered off somewhere."
Mo Yu knew that the Black Goat had a rather solitary and eccentric personality and had never listened to the orders of anyone else in the Imperial Palace. Shaking her head, she said, "It's just a young child."
Nanny Ning glanced at the darkness behind the Hall of Cold Light and inwardly thought, he who is currently standing by that pond with nowhere else to go is truthfully also just a young child.
Mo Yu knew what she was thinking and said in a slightly mocking tone, "A child that only knows how to play house can spout off angry phrase after angry phrase, looking exactly the part, yet they don't know that in the eyes of bystanders, it's all just false bravado, only making it more laughable."
Nanny Ning replied, "This old servant feels that laughable people are also quite adorable."
The matter of Chen Changsheng joining the Orthodox Academy several months ago had been arranged by Nanny Ning. In their conversation afterwards, Mo Yu came to know that she had a high opinion of Chen Changsheng. Mo Yu did not find Nanny Ning disobedient for insisting on saying good things about Chen Changsheng, because she believed the matter to already be over.
Chen Changsheng could not walk out of that abandoned garden, could not appear in Weiyang Palace before the crowd's eyes, and so he could not sabotage the engagement between Xu Yourong and Qiushan Jun. By that point, he could have said as many foul words as he wished, but they would only be jokes in the end. All his anger could only smolder within his body, only bring him more pain.
The bamboo carriage headed in the direction of Weiyang Palace.
The education overseer of the Heavenly Dao Academy was compelled by Zhou Tong's vile reputation to commit suicide, but the Ivy Festival still required a host, especially given the fact that the Ivy Festival was receiving so many dignitaries from the southern diplomatic mission tonight. The Archbishop of the Bureau of Ecclesiastic Education and Xu Shiji were responsibility for presiding over the feast, Prince Chen Liu was representing the Divine Empress, and Mo Yu also had to personally appear as a show of respect.
Nanny Ning held the window bars of the bamboo carriage, her left hand resting on the window. She would still occasionally look in the direction of the abandoned garden, a look of pity upon her face.
"Nanny, relax. Nothing will happen to that guy."
Mo Yu's voice came from the bamboo carriage, "The restriction of the Black Dragon cannot be breached, and no one has ever been able to leave without someone opening the gate to the garden from the outside. He's only stuck in the garden to receive a few gusts of cold wind. Compared to the matters he's stirred up, what does that count for?"
Nanny Ning thought of that rumor and said with concern, "What if he runs into the taboo?"
Mo Yu replied, "Since it's taboo, how can it be so easy to run into?"
She spoke very casually, callously, but Nanny Ning could hear the exhaustion in her voice. She then recalled that back on the stone steps in front of the hall, she saw a haggard look on the lady's face that not even her plum blossom makeup could hide, and she grew somewhat perplexed at her lady's willingness to use up true essence in order to imprison Chen Changsheng with a secret technique.
"My lady, you already promised Lady Yourong that you would not raise a hand against that youth."
"Did I raise my hand tonight? I only moved my mouth."
Mo Yu thought of the letter from the south she had received several months ago and angrily said, "That stubborn girl doesn't want to marry him, but she won't let anyone touch him either. Can't injure him, can't harm him, given all these rules, or else it would never be so troublesome and require me to rack my brain for ideas."
With her terrifying level of cultivation coupled with her terrifying power and status in the Great Zhou Dynasty, she had tens of thousands of ways of dealing with a youth like Chen Changsheng. She could make it so painful that he didn't want to live, make him loathe the thought of living, but because of that letter, she was forced to go to all this trouble.
The more she thought about it, the less happy she became. "Her own family arranged this rotten marriage, and she wants me to waste my time and energy. She hides away in the south and plays the good person yet wants me to play the villain. You didn't hear how that youth scolded me. If not for her, I would have just killed him!"
Nanny Ning smiled, saying, "My lady and Lady Yourong are like sisters. To expend a bit more energy is only right."
Mo Yu sneered, "Everyone says that Black Jade is a little devil, but in reality, that Phoenix chick is the true little devil. The entire continent thinks her to be as clear as ice and pure as jade, intelligent as ice and snow, her appearance carved from ice or jade, but nobody knows that she's really a cheapskate. Nobody can offend her or else risk making her truly unhappy. Anything she wants me to do is certainly not done out of any sisterly friendship. I'm just worried that if things aren't in accord with her heart and she really doesn't want to marry Qiushan Jun, what can I do then?"
Nanny Ning soothed, "Thankfully, as long as tonight can pass, there's no need to worry about this anymore."
The curtain was slightly raised as Mo Yu gazed at the abandoned garden behind the Hall of Cold Light, as well as the cold pond obscured by autumn trees and old walls. She thought of Chen Changsheng's words and thought to herself, could tonight truly pass by smoothly? Why did I have to shut him up there? Just what is the Saint thinking?
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After those words filled with ridicule, Mo Yu's voice was no longer heard. Chen Changsheng quietly stood in the abandoned garden, the cold pond in front of him, the plum trees to his side. His figure no longer seemed so lonely, as if it was once more brimming with energy.
After confirming that Mo Yu had left, he walked forward. Walking past those bare and lonely plum trees, he arrived at the pond and was assailed by a chill.
This abandoned garden was clearly colder than any other place in the Imperial Palace, and the cause was most likely this cold pond in front of him. He carefully examined the surface of this pond, allowing the chill to accumulate on his face until a sheet of frost gradually formed over it.
This wasn't self-abuse. He merely wished to use the environment to assist him in cooling his head. He did not wish to waste time on anger and other negative emotions—the words he had said to Mo Yu were truly very childish words, foul phrases of no use, the complete opposite of being cool-headed, but he still had said them.
Of the Three Thousand Great Daos, he cultivated the Dao of following his heart. He acted according to his heart, lived according to his heart. If the world would not allow him to follow his heart, he had to think of a way around it. Only by following his heart could he obtain true calm, and calmness was the highest level of being cool-headed.
Of course, he also did not want those words of his to become a joke. He had to escape this abandoned garden and hurry back to Weiyang Palace—before leaving the Orthodox Academy, he had already made corresponding plans, but since those important personages were able to fool Luoluo into leaving Weiyang Palace, he could not place all his hopes upon her.
How could he leave this abandoned garden? In reality, he didn't even have an idea of how to start. However, he still had the same attitude as when he spoke to Luoluo, when he told Tang Thirty-Six and Luoluo that he wanted to participate in the Grand Examination and take first rank of the first banner.
There was clearly no reason, no possibility of success, but he could speak of it calmly and naturally, as if it was only right and inevitable. This sort of unreasonable confidence produced shock and admiration in those close to him, while outsiders would naturally think of it as wishful thinking, laughable to the extreme.
Only he himself understood that this self-confidence arose from necessity. At the start of next year, he absolutely had to participate in the Grand Examination and obtain first rank of the first banner, or else he would die. Tonight, he absolutely had to leave the abandoned garden and appear in Weiyang Palace, so he absolutely could do so.
It had to be done, so he absolutely could do it. Before this happened, he had to believe that he could do it, as only this way could his heart be clearly followed.
It was still that phrase: of the Three Thousand Great Daos, he only cultivated the Dao of following his heart.
After leaving Xining and coming to the capital, all that he had done was closely related to the three words of 'following his heart'.
Because only by following his heart could he defy the heavens and change fate.
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...
Looking around the abandoned garden, he saw old walls and autumn trees. The remaining lotuses on the surface of the cold pond had long since withered away. The petals under the plum trees from last year had gathered in a pile, but had still not been swept away by the wind.
He did not know this scenery well, yet it seemed like he had seen it before.
He had never walked a ten-thousand-li journey, so he had not seen many sights.
But he had read all sort of books, and in these books, he had walked ten-thousand-li journeys and seen many sights.
Noting the scenery of the abandoned garden deep within his mind, he sat cross-legged on the shore of the pond and calmed his mind, beginning to recall the books he had seen before.
There were Daoist scriptures, travel notes, the essays of previous generations of great scholars, and also fictional stories about strange happenings and supernatural beings.
They were all books that he had read in Xining Village's old temple, and also books that he had read in the library of the Orthodox Academy.
He sat by the pond with his two eyes tightly shut, yet countless books were flitting past his eyes.
It was like the cold was learning to read, constantly flipping pages and then stopping at the page that he wanted to read.
Those pages had pictures and also annotations.
'The Record of the Southern Bough'.
(TN: An actual play written by Tang Xianzu during the Ming Dynasty about a man who dreams about entering an ant hole and living out a life in the kingdom of ants.)
'A Treatise on the Origin of All Palace Halls'.
'A Catalog of Arrays'.
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Chen Changsheng opened his eyes, stood up, and gazed once more at the abandoned garden.
The abandoned garden was still the abandoned garden, the cold pond was still the cold pond, but in his eyes, they were now completely different.
Those ten-odd plum trees scattered about the shore of the pond seemed to have nothing to do with each other, no deeper meaning. However, as the scenery was the same throughout the four seasons, ever unchanging, the only thing left that could change were the trees (木).
The craggy shore of the cold pond was unbroken, but the old walls of the abandoned garden further out were broken on the south side. That place seemed to be an exit into the darkness, but he knew that this was no exit, only a stroke that had not been completely written.
Those ten-odd plum trees seemed to vaguely be standing in some sort of arrangement.
This was the word '同' (Tong).
There was a story written in the Record of the Southern Bough, a picture drawn in the Catalog of Arrays, and in the Treatise on the Origin of All Palace Halls, there was a description of a palace hall from the previous dynasty that had been burned to the ground.
This palace hall was called the Tong (桐) Palace.
(TN: 桐 is a combination of 木, tree, and the word '同'. Similarly, the trees of the garden form the word '同'. 桐 is also a general term for the paulownia, tung tree, and phoenix tree.)
The Tong Palace in which a monarch had been imprisoned until his death.
And also an array that had been created by a previous Pope using the sum of his cultivation over his entire life.
Chen Changsheng had recognized this abandoned garden, this cold pond, so what could he do?
Only when one reached the legendary Saint Realm could one forcibly break out of this Tong Palace.
Of course, every palace hall had a door, and every array had to leave a hope for survival.
But since antiquity, no one had ever dared to leave through the Tong Palace's gate of life.
(TN: 'Gate of life', 生门, seems to be a term related to the 'Eight Gates', which are mentioned in a divination manual called 奇门遁甲. The eight gates are the gate of opening, the gate of rest, the gate of life, the gate of wounding, the gate of restriction, the gate of scenery, the gate of death, and the gate of shock.)
Because standing guard outside the gate of this Tong Palace that had been burned to ash many years ago was the god of death. By remaining in the palace, one could still struggle on death's door, but to leave was to guarantee one's death.
Because of this codependency of fortune and disaster, the so-called thread of life was often a land of death.
Chen Changsheng knew where the Tong Palace's gate of life was.
The wind stirred, the water rose.
When the wind stirred but did not fade, where the water retreated and did not rise.
He gazed at the cold pond before him in silence.
The graceful and solemn music of rituals could be heard, coming from far beyond the abandoned garden, from Weiyang Palace.
The southern diplomatic mission was already seated, the guest of both sides already present.
He thought no more, walking straight into the cold pond.