“Is this your first time at the Ziyun Grand Pavilion?”
“Yes.” Jiang Huai nodded in agreement with Luo Yueguan. Luo Yueguan suddenly thought of something, “Have you seen the Purple Rhyme Stele?”
“Purple Rhyme Stele?”
Jiang Huai was stunned, “What’s that?”
“It’s said to be left by the Pavilion Master of Ziyun Pavilion. Many of them are half-sentences. If you can complete them perfectly and gain unanimous recognition, you can have your name on the list.”
“What’s the use of having my name on the list?” Jiang Huai chuckled helplessly.
“There are gifts. Ziyun Pavilion will give some pills or women’s jewelry. Many cultivators who love poetry and verses love to ponder over the Purple Rhyme Stele. If the gifts are used to give to women, many people will be envious.”
“Do you want it?”
“Whether you can complete it is another matter.”
“I have a strange intuition…”
“What?”
“Completing it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“I like your shamelessly confident attitude.” Luo Yueguan said, then chuckled and led Jiang Huai into the Ziyun Pavilion’s mechanical stairs. In just a few breaths, they arrived at the top floor of the Ziyun Pavilion.
The top floor was open-air, and clouds and mist swirled around. However, due to the special spiritual energy mechanism, the vision was clear. When Jiang Huai and Luo Yueguan stepped out of the mechanical stairs, he quickly saw the incredibly huge Purple Rhyme Stele from afar. It was filled with half-sentences, a total of one hundred half-sentences. Beside the verses, there was a dedicated leaderboard. Many people were gathered under the stele, looking at the list.
Jiang Huai and Luo Yueguan walked under the Purple Rhyme Stele. The moment he saw the words on the stele, Jiang Huai suddenly smiled with relief.
He quietly gazed at the stele, while Luo Yueguan stood by the side. She noticed that Jiang Huai wasn’t looking at the Purple Rhyme Stele at all, but at the completed sentences by others. The ones that best captured the intended meaning and received everyone’s approval were ranked at the top.
“Aren’t you very capable? Why aren’t you completing them?”
“I’m looking at the ones they completed.”
Jiang Huai replied softly. Looking at the sentences completed by countless people from the Eastern Region, he couldn’t help but sigh that human wisdom was truly boundless. Many sentences were cleverly and neatly completed, and the artistic conception was no different. But…
He knew all one hundred half-sentences on the Purple Rhyme Stele. In the past, he was terrible at science subjects, and any formulas made him scratch his head and feel frustrated. But these rhythmic verses, he only needed to glance at them to remember them perfectly.
Jiang Huai didn’t rush to answer. Instead, he carefully read the half-sentences completed by the people of this world on the list for a long, long time, gradually getting lost in thought. Luo Yueguan didn’t disturb him. She was bored and looked all around. Women always paid extra attention to beautiful women. Luo Yueguan’s gaze fell on a girl in a white palace dress in the distance.
The girl seemed familiar. Her appearance inherited her mother’s eyebrows, and her features were gentle and exquisite, as if she were always smiling even when she wasn’t. Anyone would feel like they were basking in a spring breeze at first glance. Her figure was slender. Although she didn’t have the fullness of a married woman, she had the delicate slenderness and upright posture of a young girl, like a tender willow branch after sprouting.
The girl was also engrossed in looking at the verses on the Purple Rhyme Stele. However, as if sensing Luo Yueguan’s gaze, she turned her head and looked at Luo Yueguan. But when her eyes shifted again and she saw Jiang Huai next to Luo Yueguan, she was stunned for a moment, and then her pupils lit up, as if with a hint of surprise.
Luo Yueguan’s eyes immediately became vigilant, but the girl had already walked over step by step. Her silver earrings jingled softly. She came to Luo Yueguan’s side and respectfully looked at Luo Yueguan, “Greetings, Sect Master Luo.”
“You are… the girl from the Guanxue Sect?”
“Yes, my mother is Pei Ning. She often speaks of you, Sect Master Luo.”
Xu Qing of the Guanxue Sect said softly, then shifted her gaze to Jiang Huai, who was engrossed nearby. Luo Yueguan quietly observed her eyebrows and eyes, feeling that her gaze towards Jiang Huai seemed somewhat unusual.
Hearing the commotion, Jiang Huai came back to his senses and looked at the girl with porcelain-white cheeks in front of him. He was slightly stunned, “Xu Qing?”
“Jiang Huai.” Xu Qing suddenly smiled and softly called his name.
“Why are you here too?” Jiang Huai was slightly surprised but subconsciously took half a step back. If he remembered correctly, the System had once hinted that Xu Qing had a slight affection for him. But after not seeing each other for so long… Perhaps her infatuation had cooled down, and the thread of love should be cut?
Jiang Huai still remembered telling her before that he didn’t have many years left to live and that Xu Qing didn’t need to worry about him.
Please, please don’t worry about me, girl.
“I came to the Ziyun Pavilion with Sect Master Luo to buy some things. When she mentioned the Purple Rhyme Stele, I wanted to come and see. What about you?”
“I came to attend an auction at the Ziyun Pavilion tonight, and I happened to come to see the Purple Rhyme Stele. I usually enjoy these poems and verses very much.” Xu Qing answered softly, but her eyes looking at him were inexplicably evasive.
Luo Yueguan felt increasingly strange. She always felt that Xu Qing’s gaze… was like that of a maiden in love.
“Oh, oh, oh, okay.” Jiang Huai nodded, his tone extremely polite and perfunctory.
Xu Qing first glanced at Jiang Huai, then at Luo Yueguan. She couldn’t help but start to have some strange speculations in her heart. She clearly remembered that the information about the Eastern Region that she had someone collect for her at the Guanxue Sect indicated that Jiang Huai had already broken off his engagement with Luo Qingyu, Luo Yueguan’s biological daughter. But why was he standing with Luo Yueguan now?
“How is your body?” Xu Qing asked softly.
“Ah, I’ve received many life-extending spiritual medicines, but my body cannot absorb them. Even refined pills won’t let me live for many more years. Oh, right.” Jiang Huai just remembered that among the spiritual medicines he received, the most valuable was the thousand-year-old Orange Blood Flower sent by the Guanxue Sect. He took out the Orange Blood Flower, “I don’t really need it. Here, I’ll return it to you.”
Xu Qing was stunned for a moment, then bit her lip and hastily shook her head, “No, no, this is what I should do… Back in the Secret Realm, if it weren’t for you, perhaps we would all be dead. This is just a small token of my appreciation, please keep it.”
“I can’t absorb it. This thousand-year-old Orange Blood Flower makes no difference to me compared to one or two more years. It would be a waste for me to keep it, so take it back.” Jiang Huai used a tone with a hint of command, his tone leaving no room for doubt. He forcefully stuffed the box containing the thousand-year-old Orange Blood Flower back into Xu Qing’s arms. When Xu Qing tried to return it to him, Jiang Huai had already taken a step forward, “You can browse slowly, I’m going to fill in the poems first.”
Xu Qing stood there hugging the box, her footsteps heavy. Jiang Huai walked away quickly. She wasn’t foolish enough not to understand the atmosphere, so for a moment, her footsteps grew heavy, and she dared not chase after him. Suddenly, she felt a sting in her nostrils, and her eye sockets became slightly moist.
Luo Yueguan followed Jiang Huai calmly, lowering her voice. It was only then that she remembered that Jiang Huai should have met Xu Qing in the Daoji Ancestral Land. She said playfully, “The Saintess of Guanxue Mountain, why do I feel her gaze towards you is strange?”
“Perhaps she is grateful to her savior, which is reasonable.”
“Then why are you so indifferent?”
“Can you guess if Qingyu and Wanwan wouldn’t want to skin me alive if I talk to other women too much and accidentally get entangled in some ambiguous relationship?”
“You have some self-awareness.” Luo Yueguan suppressed a smile and accompanied Jiang Huai to the Purple Rhyme Stele. The Purple Rhyme Stele had a specially carved formation, and one could fill in poems with spiritual energy. The filled-in poems could be seen by others.
But Jiang Huai had no spiritual energy. He suddenly asked curiously, “If I fill in a good poem, can I get a reward?”
“Every month, Ziyun Pavilion will compile all the filled-in poems into a booklet and invite many cultivators who also enjoy poetry to appreciate them, and then vote to rank them. If your poem from that month is considered the best by everyone, Ziyun Pavilion will give you a gift. You can choose between pills, or five hundred spirit stones, or some specially customized jewelry that can be used to give to women.”
“Then what do you want? I’ll get it for you.”
“Whether you can get first place is still uncertain.” Luo Yueguan’s fingers unconsciously tightened a bit. Hearing Jiang Huai ask this, she didn’t know why, but her heart suddenly started beating faster. She seemed to feel her cheeks burning.
She bit her tongue lightly to regain her clarity.
“I have no spiritual energy, I’ll recite them, and you can help me fill them in.”
“Okay.”
Jiang Huai looked at the hundred poems on the Purple Rhyme Stele. Fortunately, he hadn’t copied many poems since coming to this world, only occasionally one or two lines. Coincidentally, these were not among the hundred lines. Otherwise, if he recited them confidently and people discovered that these poems already existed thousands of years ago, he would be utterly humiliated.
Luo Yueguan softly recited the first half-sentence, “Let’s enjoy a cup of wine while we live?”
“Why should we seek fame for a thousand years after death.”
“I’m drunk and want to sleep, you go?”
“If you have the intention tomorrow, come with your zither.”
“Don’t worry about having no confidants on the road ahead?”
“Who in the world doesn’t know you.”
“If life is satisfactory, we must enjoy it to the fullest?”
“Don’t let the golden goblet be empty before the moon.”
“If life were only like the first meeting?”
“Why does the autumn wind lament the painted fan.”
“Old friendships turned into something else?”
“Yet it is said that old friendships easily change.”
“Mountains and rivers fold, doubting there is no way?”
“Willows darken, flowers brighten, another village.”
………………………………
Luo Yueguan used her spiritual energy to write down the poems on the Purple Rhyme Stele. She looked at Jiang Huai in astonishment. Jiang Huai was looking into her eyes innocently.
She recited the next half-sentence, but Jiang Huai could always provide the second half without hesitation, as if he had thought of it beforehand, without any delay. Luo Yueguan’s spiritual energy left imprints on the Purple Rhyme Stele, and all the people on the rooftop of the Ziyun Pavilion were now focused on the sentences left by Luo Yueguan, gradually becoming engrossed.
Luo Yueguan continued to recite, and Jiang Huai answered quickly. The originally noisy crowd, who were arguing about which word was better in which sentence, had all fallen silent. Everyone closed their mouths and pricked up their ears, listening as Luo Yueguan recited one line and Jiang Huai answered one. A hundred poems, spoken neither too fast nor too slow, took the time of one incense stick. Luo Yueguan had already filled in the blanks of all the previous poems.
The last sentence.
“If heaven had feelings, heaven would also grow old?”
Jiang Huai had two answers for this line. He pondered for a moment and softly said, “If the moon had no regrets, the moon would be round forever.”
Jiang Huai looked around. When he realized that everyone was looking at him, he felt a little guilty. After all, he was just reciting from memory, and it wasn’t difficult. If he were really asked to compose a line himself, he wouldn’t be able to.
“Getting a small piece of jewelry… shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Jiang Huai looked at Luo Yueguan in front of him and said cautiously.
PS: Tomorrow is my 21st birthday.
Tomorrow at 1 PM, search for “合雪丶” on Bilibili live broadcast room. I will draw ten winners for 100 RMB. Usually, there aren’t many people in the live broadcast room, so the chances of winning are quite high. Feel free to join the lottery if you have time.
If there are many people, I will draw five more winners for 100 RMB.
