799: Chapter 799 Lu Xueqi and Biyao (178)

"You... your arm is healed?" Su Han blurted out.

The woman looked down at her left arm, gently lifting and moving it twice: "It's healed. Thank you for your concern, Senior Brother Su. If your Buddha light hadn't arrived in time that day, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to save this arm."

Su Han waved his hand: "It wasn't just my doing. You were holding the line at the front; I just gave the final push."

The woman laughed, her laughter as crisp as a stream hitting stones: "Why is Senior Brother Su being so polite? Do you have any idea what they are saying about you outside? They say you are the Reincarnation of the Buddha, that your palm strike directly collapsed the nest of the Evil Creature, and some even say you had already achieved Ascension long ago and specifically descended to the Mortal realm to save the world."

"Nonsense." Su Han frowned.

"I know it's nonsense." The woman took a step forward, stood opposite Su Han, and looked up at him: "So I specifically came to ask you—what is the real situation? I want to hear the truth."

Su Han looked down at her. From this angle, he could see a tiny red mole on her earlobe, like a speck of cinnabar against the backdrop of her plain white robes. Her eyes were dark brown, and the reflection of the paulownia leaves and a patch of sky could be seen in her pupils.

"Who are you?" Su Han asked.

"My surname is Shen, Shen Qingdai, a Loose Cultivator. I followed the North Nether Sword Sect's team to assist that day and left right after the fight. I didn't intend to join the excitement today, but my father..." She paused, "My father insisted I come. He said I should thank you in person."

"Your father is?"

"Xuanjizi." Shen Qingdai gestured toward the direction of the main hall, "The old man with the white beard who was just talking to you."

Su Han was stunned. Xuanjizi's granddaughter? How could a descendant of the North Nether Sword Sect's Sect Master be a Loose Cultivator?

Shen Qingdai seemed to see through his confusion and shrugged: "I don't like the rules of big Sects, I want to run around outside on my own. My father can't do anything about me, so he just lets me be. Besides, I don't need to inherit his mantle—my brother is staying in the Sect just fine."

Su Han said an "Oh," not knowing how to respond.

Shen Qingdai was very familiar, walking a circle around Su Han and looking him up and down: "You don't look like anything special, just an ordinary person, though your eyes are quite bright." She leaned closer, staring into Su Han's eyes, "I heard you opened your Heavenly Eye? Can you see the light on me?"

She was too close. Su Han smelled a faint scent of herbs on her, along with the clean fragrance of soapberry. He subconsciously took half a step back, his ears beginning to burn again: "I can see a little."

"What color is it?"

"...Cyan with a bit of white. Very bright."

Shen Qingdai smiled with satisfaction: "That's not bad. It means my cultivation hasn't fallen behind." She retreated two steps, stood with her hands behind her back under the paulownia tree, and tilted her head to look at him: "Senior Brother Su, I have a question I want to ask you."

"Go ahead."

"What were you thinking in your heart on the battlefield that day?"

Su Han was silent for a moment. Xuanjizi had just asked this question, and he had already answered it. But the way Shen Qingdai asked was different—Xuanjizi asked about "principles," while Shen Qingdai asked about "what was in your heart." The former was abstract, the latter concrete. He thought for a moment and pointed down the mountain.

"I saw lights in that destroyed city in the distance at the time. A very small one, still shining in the middle of the ruins. What I thought in my heart was—there's probably someone under that lamp. Someone waiting for me to save them."

Shen Qingdai followed his finger to look; the smoke from the village at the foot of the mountain was rising, dyed a pale gold in the setting sun.

"Just that simple?"

"Just that simple."

"Didn't you think of any grand principles? Like 'establishing destiny for the masses' or 'sacrificing oneself for righteousness'?"

Su Han laughed: "Those are for writing essays afterward. How could I have time to think about those things at the time?"

Shen Qingdai watched him for a while, then suddenly laughed out loud: "Okay, I get it. Just like what my father said—your heart just got a little warm. It's that simple."

When she laughed, her eyes curved into two crescent moons, and the red mole on her earlobe trembled slightly with her smile. Su Han suddenly felt the cyan-white light on her brighten for a moment, like a lamp flame flicked by the wind, suddenly shooting up a few inches.

"Then I'm going." Shen Qingdai turned and walked toward the mountain gate, then turned back after two steps, "Senior Brother Su, if I encounter a hurdle I can't get past in the future, can I come find you?"

"Yes."

"Where do you live?"

"The back mountain. There's a small courtyard with a peach tree in it."

Shen Qingdai nodded, said nothing more, and strode away. Her figure disappeared into the shadow of the paulownia tree, while Su Han stood in place, taking a long time to come back to his senses. He looked down at his wrist, where the Bodhi bead rested quietly, glowing with a warm amber luster.

"My heart just got a little warm." He repeated Shen Qingdai's words softly, smiling to himself.

That night, the main hall of the Lingxiao Immortal Sect was brightly lit, and the Sect Master held a banquet to entertain the Cultivators who had come from all over. Su Han was arranged at the main table, with Xuanjizi sitting on his left, the Red-Robed Elder of Fire Cloud Valley on his right, and the Fairy in green from Penglai Island opposite him. He felt like he was sitting on pins and needles eating the meal—not because of restraint, but because everyone was asking him the same questions: What were you thinking at the time? What did you see? How did you achieve enlightenment?

He found it increasingly difficult to answer these questions. It wasn't that he didn't want to say, but those realizations were like water; if you cup your hands to hold them, they leak through your fingers; the harder you try to grasp them, describe them, and turn them into fixed language, the more slippery they are as they escape. In the end, he could only honestly say: "I really can't explain it clearly. It's like... it's like breathing. You don't usually think about the fact that 'I am breathing,' but you are indeed breathing. Light is that kind of thing to me. It's not something I thought of; it's something that was already in my heart."

Xuanjizi held his wine cup in silence for a long time, then suddenly said: "Young Friend Su, your words remind me of someone."

"Who?"

"My Master. The last thing he said to me before he passed away was—'You have spent your whole life looking for the Dao, but the Dao is in your heart; you have spent your whole life worshipping the Buddha, but the Buddha is also in your heart. Stop looking outward, look inward.'" Xuanjizi drank the wine in his cup in one gulp, "I didn't understand at the time. Now I seem to understand a little."

The atmosphere at the table was silent for a moment. The Red-Robed Elder coughed and raised his wine cup to smooth things over: "Come, come, let's not talk about these abstruse things anymore. Young Friend Su, I offer you a cup! That palm strike of yours saved more than just the lives of us Cultivators—three towns at the foot of my Fire Cloud Valley, the homes of one hundred thousand Mortals, were all in the path of the Evil Creature. With that light of yours, those commoners were saved. I thank you on their behalf."

Su Han picked up his wine cup, but suddenly remembered something: "Elder, the commoners at the foot of Fire Cloud Valley... how are they now?" (End of chapter)