Chapter 831
Chen 94: Today I enter the realm of terrestrial immortals!
Outside Huangzhou Prefecture, the sky was clear and the white clouds floated in the air. Outside the city gate, Chen Jie, dressed in ordinary coarse cloth clothes, was bidding a reluctant farewell to the three ladies who had come to see him off. This journey north to Dadu was Chen Jie's last battle, and also the most dangerous one yet.
His opponent will be the invincible Living Buddha Phagpa, a powerful figure of the terrestrial immortal level, who has been invincible for sixty years.
This man has held a top position for many years, and Chen Jie will face considerable pressure if he wants to deal with him.
So he decided to make good use of this opportunity to go north.
Only by measuring the earth step by step and witnessing the state of humanity can one directly unleash their terrestrial immortal realm, at which point they will be an invincible being.
Chen Jie looked at his three wives, and the assembled officials who had come to see him off.
Su Yunjin looked worried. Zhao Ya looked dashing in her military uniform. Huang Wan'er was silently shedding tears.
Chen Jie looked at them and said, "Don't worry, this is the last time. Once I come back, we can live a peaceful life."
Su Yunjin wiped away her tears and said, "Husband, you should go now. I will take care of everything at home and won't make things difficult for you."
Hearing this, Chen Jie looked at Su Yunjin and said, "You've really worked hard, my wife."
Su Yunjin smiled and said, "It's not hard work. This is what I should do. If we're talking about hard work, it's the princess who has worked harder."
Su Yunjin looked at Zhao Ya, who was dressed in military uniform, and said, "Husband, don't worry. We'll handle things in the army. There won't be any problems. You can relax."
Upon hearing this, Chen Jie said, "I trust Ya Ya to do things."
After saying this, Chen Jie looked at Huang Wan'er, who said to him, "Husband, you must come back soon. And be careful in everything you do. I heard that the bald monk Phagpa is very powerful. When you fight him, you must be careful."
"If all else fails, let's admit defeat first. I've heard that Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang Mountain is incredibly powerful. Why don't you send him some gold and silver and ask him to help you out?"
Upon hearing this, Chen Jie looked at Huang Wan'er and said, "Forget about paying Zhang Sanfeng. If that old Taoist was willing to help, he probably would have done so already. Asking him won't do any good."
After finishing his explanation, Chen glanced at the crowd again, clasped his hands in a fist salute, and said, "I entrust all matters of the manor to you."
After saying that, Chen Jie turned around. He was dressed in plain clothes and carried a bamboo staff, looking just like an ordinary traveler on the road.
At this moment, he felt relaxed. With a bamboo staff and straw sandals, he was lighter than a horse; he could live his life as he pleased, draped in a straw raincoat amidst the misty rain.
Chen Jie walked slowly along the main road. Watching Chen Jie's departing figure, Su Yunjin and the others were filled with worry. This time was even more dangerous than the time with Zhu Chongba. Zhu Chongba was below the realm of a terrestrial immortal, while the Living Buddha Phagpa was a genuine expert above the realm of a terrestrial immortal.
Thinking this, everyone found it hard to calm down. At this moment, Chen Jie had already walked far away. Chen Jie's steps were not big, but each step was powerful and resounding. When his foot landed, he seemed to hear the rhythm of the earth. It was a real, rhythmic vibration, like a huge heart beating.
That is the legendary earth vein, the earth's veins, the sound of the underground river flowing beneath the earth, the sound of tree roots stretching in the soil, the sound of countless lives being born, dying, and reincarnating underground.
Chen Jie is carefully experiencing and understanding this world.
On the first day, he walked sixty li before stopping.
It wasn't because he was tired—his body was remarkably adapted to long walks, as if his legs were born to measure the earth—but because he had "seen" too much.
On the outskirts of Echeng, he saw an old farmer crying on the edge of a field.
The wheat seedlings turned yellow this year. The old man's son died two years ago while serving corvée labor on the canal construction site. His daughter-in-law remarried, leaving behind a three-year-old grandson and two acres of meager land. Chen Jiu Si squatted down, picked up a handful of soil with his fingers, and tasted it on his tongue.
Salty. Not the saltiness of salt and alkali, but the saltiness of tears soaking into the skin.
Chen Jiu Si placed his palms on the ground and closed his eyes for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, he said, "Thirty steps to the east, five feet underground, there is a hidden spring. It's not very fertile, but enough to irrigate these two acres of land."
He led the old farmer to a seemingly ordinary spot on the ground and drew a circle with a twig. Just as he was about to leave, the old man grabbed him: "Sir... how did you know?"
Chen Jiu Si pointed to his ear: "The earth told me."
That night, he rested in the dilapidated temple.
Moonlight streamed through the dilapidated roof, illuminating his outstretched palm.
The lines on my palm seemed to flow in the moonlight—no, they really did flow.
He stared at the patterns and suddenly saw countless images flashing through his mind: farmers working in the fields, merchants rushing about, crying babies, dying old people... all aspects of human life were imprinted in this small space.
“I see,” he murmured. “Everyone is a history book.”
This was the third day of his journey, and he began to understand why he was walking—riding a horse was too fast, and traveling by carriage was too inconvenient.
Only by stepping firmly on the ground, leaving an imprint with each step, can one taste the earth and allow its memories to seep into one's body through the soles of one's feet.
The Emperor wanted to imprint every inch of land on his body.
Seven days later, Chen Jiusi arrived at the Huai River.
It was the peak of the peach blossom season, and the river was turbid and surging. The ferry crossing was crowded with waiting people, but there were only two or three ferry boats available.
One boatman raised the price fivefold.
A woman holding a baby knelt before the boatman: "Brother, please have mercy, this is all the money I have..."
The boatman kicked away the few copper coins she had thrown on the ground: "Get out of here! What are you doing, you drowned ghost causing trouble!"
Chen Jiu Si stood at the back of the crowd, watching quietly.
He saw the despair in the woman's eyes, the greed on the boatman's face, the numbness of the onlookers, and also the depths of the river—where countless white bones lay buried.
The Huai River has been plagued by wars and famines throughout history, and its riverbed has been a graveyard for countless sufferers.
He walked to the riverbank, squatted down, and put his hand into the murky water.
In an instant, countless voices surged forth:
"Mom, I'm hungry..."
"I don't want to die..."
"Why? Why?!"
"Child, live on..."
Cries, wails, questions, final words of advice...
Three hundred years of suffering have settled and fermented in this river. Chen Jiu Si's hands began to tremble, and his eyes welled up with tears.
He wasn't "listening," he was "enduring"—the pain of the deceased was flowing into his body through the river.
"That's enough," he said in a low voice.
The voice was very soft, but the boatman suddenly shivered. Everyone felt a strange unease, as if some enormous being had just opened its eyes.
Chen Jiu Si stood up and walked to the boatman.
He didn't get angry, but calmly looked at the other person: "Your grandfather was a fisherman who drowned in the Huai River, right?"
The boatman's expression changed drastically: "You...how did you know?"
"His greatest regret before he died was that he had refused to ferry a filial son who was in a hurry to cross the river to see a doctor for three coins." Chen Jiu Si's voice was very soft, but it struck the boatman like a thunderbolt. "He stayed in the water for three days before he died, and every moment he regretted it."
The boatman collapsed to the ground, his face ashen.
Chen Jiu Si stopped looking at him and turned to face the people waiting to cross the river: "Line up and get on the boat one by one. Pay the official price." No one directed them, but the line formed automatically.
The boatman mechanically collected the money and ferried passengers across, not daring to say another word.
The Huaihe River ferry crossing was orderly throughout the day.
Even more strangely, the originally turbulent river would inexplicably calm down when the ferry was going back and forth.
That night, Chen Jiu Si meditated by the river.
At midnight, he opened his eyes and saw countless shimmering white lights rising from the river's surface—the souls of those who had drowned in the river over the past three hundred years.
They surrounded him, neither approaching nor moving away, simply hanging quietly in the moonlight.
Chen Jiu Si clasped his hands together and bowed deeply.
“I saw it,” he said. “I saw everything.”
The points of light began to rotate, gradually converging into a river of light that slowly flowed into his brow.
There was no chill, only a heavy, icy sadness. When the last glimmer of light disappeared, three more white hairs appeared at Chen Jiu Si's temples.
He realized the second thing: the first law of humanity—bearing responsibility.
The earth bears all things, rivers carry the dead, and the character for "human" (人) is composed of two strokes, one left and one right, which are inherently mutually supportive. What he aspires to be is an existence capable of bearing all human suffering.
This is also the way of the Human Emperor!
On the fifteenth day, Chen Jiu Si entered Shandong. Last year, there was a severe drought, and the land was barren for thousands of miles. The bark of the trees along the roadside had been stripped off, and occasionally, a few white bones could be seen in the soil.
In a deserted village, he saw a mother feeding the last handful of bran to her three-year-old daughter while she drank the water from her bowl.
The clear water reflected her swollen face—a sign of extreme hunger.
Chen Jiu Si silently put down a bag of dry rations. His mother looked up at him, her eyes empty and lifeless: "It's no use, sir. You can save us today, but you can't save us tomorrow."
"It will rain tomorrow," Chen Jiusi said.
The mother laughed, a laugh more painful than a cry: "It hasn't rained for half a year, even the Dragon King must have starved to death."
Chen Jiu Si walked to the dry well at the village entrance and sat down cross-legged. He placed his hands on the cracked well platform and closed his eyes.
This time, he wasn't "listening," but "asking."
His consciousness sank into the earth, through the hard, dry soil, through the cracks in the rocks, down and down. One hundred feet underground, two hundred feet... Finally, he "touched" the water vein—as thin as a spider's thread, barely alive, like a dragon about to die.
“Wake up,” he said in his mind, “your people are dying of thirst.”
The water veins showed no reaction. They were too weak.
The Dragon King can't control this place, but the Human Emperor can. The Human Emperor can control the wind and thunder of heaven and earth. Chen Jiu Si stretched out his hand and pointed to the sky, and in an instant, lightning flashed and thunder roared.
The raindrops fell slowly, pattering softly.
This is the first rain in the deserted village in three months.
The rain wasn't heavy, but it drizzled on and on all night. The sound of water gurgling came from the dry well. The villagers rushed to the well like madmen, and when they drew up the first bucket of murky but sweet well water, the whole village knelt in the rain and wept bitterly.
Chen Jiu Si quietly left at dawn. Half of his hair was white, and his back was somewhat hunched, but his eyes shone with an alarming light. He had realized the third thing: the second law of humanity—sacrifice.
The timely rain was not a gift from heaven, but rather something that was exchanged for one's life.
In this world where people depend on the heavens for their livelihood, if there is no Dragon King, only an emperor can bring about change; if I were an emperor, I would open up canals to save the people.
On the twenty-eighth day, the outline of Dadu was already on the horizon. Chen Jiu Si looked like an old man—his hair was completely white, his skin was covered with wrinkles, only his eyes remained as clear as a baby's.
In those twenty-eight days, he walked two thousand nine hundred li. With each step, he left a faint, glowing footprint on the ground—his emanating vitality, his way of giving back to this land that had borne so much suffering with his own life.
For the last few hundred miles, he walked extremely slowly. It wasn't that he couldn't walk, but that with each step he was "digesting" the sights, feelings, hardships, and joys and sorrows of the nearly three thousand miles he had traveled.
He stopped on a hillside a hundred miles from the city gate of Dadu. It was dusk, and the setting sun was blood-red.
Chen Jiu Si sat down cross-legged, facing west—that was the way he came, Huangzhou, the Huai River, Qilu, and the mountains, rivers, and human world of three thousand miles.
He closed his eyes and began to recall.
I recall the morning mist over Huangzhou, the souls lost on the Huai River, the mother in the desolate village, and every face I passed on the road—smiling, crying, numb, and yearning.
I recall the pulse of the earth, the murmur of the river, the growth of the grass and trees, and the rotation of the sun and moon.
All the images, sounds, smells, and sensations began to converge, swirl, and merge within him.
They are no longer chaotic, but woven into a huge net—a net of laws that covers heaven and earth and spans the past and present.
He saw it.
Seeing farmers tilling the fields is a sign of the natural cycle of "spring planting and autumn harvest" at work.
Seeing merchants trading is a manifestation of the balancing principle of "existence and non-existence giving rise to each other."
Seeing a baby cry is a manifestation of the life cycle of "birth, aging, sickness, and death."
Seeing the river flowing eastward is driven by the natural law of "high and low tending downwards".
And what runs through all of this is two words—cause and effect.
Sow a seed and reap a harvest; retribution is inevitable. But this is not a cold and indifferent way of Heaven; rather, it is a warm cycle—every act of kindness will be returned, every tear will be remembered, and every sacrifice will not be in vain.
Heaven and earth are a giant furnace, and the human world is the forging ground. The "Tao" is the fire in the furnace, the hammer that forges the furnace, and the "principle" that ultimately shapes us into something great.
At that very moment, Chen Jiu Si stopped breathing.
No, it didn't stop; it merged into a greater breath—the breath of the earth. The wind stilled, the clouds solidified, and the setting sun hung in the sky, as if the entire world had held its breath.
His body began to glow. At first, it was a faint light, then it grew brighter and brighter, until finally he transformed into a small sun. In the light, his pale hair turned black, the wrinkles on his face smoothed out, and his hunched back straightened—he was rejuvenating, but not returning to the age of twenty-three, but returning to a state of "initial".
That is not the beginning of age, but the beginning of life, the beginning of "humanity", the perfect state of "Tao" manifesting in the human body.
The light gradually receded, eventually returning entirely to his body. Chen Jiu Si opened his eyes.
In those eyes, there were swirling stars, changing seasons, the joys and sorrows of all living beings, and the birth and death of all things. He looked at his hands, then gently clenched his fists.
“I see,” he said softly, his voice tinged with a knowing smile. “Land deities…the representatives of this world, who control the cycle of heaven and earth.”
To become the most perfect "human" who can bear all suffering, is willing to sacrifice for all beings, understands all causes and effects, and practices the ultimate principles of heaven and earth.
Standing on this inconspicuous earthen slope, he suddenly pointed one finger to the sky and the other to the ground, saying, "Above and below the heavens, I alone am supreme."
Today, I, Chen Jiusi, have entered the realm of terrestrial immortals.
With a deafening roar, the heavens and earth trembled, and the sun and moon seemed to turn upside down. At that moment, the entire world seemed to hear Chen Jiu Si's voice.
He succeeded! (End of Chapter)