Chapter 687: You Live, I Live
The woman walked until she reached the shore. The rain fell around her, but didn’t touch her clothing at all. She was beautiful, and had the aura of a cultivator, which gave her an otherworldly grace.
Her face was cold, and she was frowning. A bitter look could be seen in her eyes, and she seemed to be concealing great anxiety and confusion within her heart.
She was Xu Qing.
She had been searching for Meng Hao for many years, but had found nothing…. She was thinner than before, more lean.
She had followed her heart until she found this lake, which was also her former hometown.
When Meng Hao saw her, she also caught sight of aged Meng Hao. There was something strangely familiar about him, so she changed directions and headed over toward the log cabin.
“Are you the boatman here?” she asked, looking him over. Her face was filled with an expression that could cause one’s heart to tremble. Meng Hao lowered his head and sighed inwardly.
Xu Qing’s voice was calm, and just as cold as it had always been. However, Meng Hao’s appearance had changed far too much. Even people very familiar with him would have a hard time recognizing him based on his physical appearance.
After a long moment, Meng Hao nodded.
Xu Qing’s frown deepened. “Have you seen anyone else pass through here?” she asked. She had searched for a hundred years, and had failed repeatedly, yet had never given up. If he was alive, she wanted to see him. If he was dead, she wanted to see the corpse. If she couldn’t find him… then she would just keep on searching.
Her personality was simple, but it was that very simplicity which gave her such determination.
For some reason, she had the feeling that if she couldn’t find Meng Hao, then perhaps…she wouldn’t ever be able to find her way in life again.
“I haven’t seen anyone,” replied Meng Hao levelly, shaking his head. His voice was hoarse, and sounded nothing like it had before. He was happy to be able to see Xu Qing, but he didn’t want her to realize who he was, not when he looked like this.
What was the point? It would just lead to her waiting for him outside once of the Rebirth Cave. Then, if he never came back out, she would become a woman sorrowed because of a lifetime of gloom and listlessness.
Wouldn’t it be better to forget about each other….?
Xu Qing looked around the area, and then sighed inwardly. After scanning Meng Hao with Divine Sense, all she had seen was a mortal man. And yet, she also felt something familiar that made her give him a second look over.
“Have we met before?” she asked.
“No,” he replied with the shake of a head.
She gazed at him for a very long moment, and a complex look appeared in her eyes. The intense complexity turned into sorrow, and a slight tremor ran through her body.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said. “My beloved. If you see him, please pass a message along for me. In this life… if he lives, then I live. If he dies, then I die!”
Bitterly, she turned and began to walk off into the downpour. Surrounded by the rainfall, wearing her white robes, she looked like a white lotus, beautiful, unsurpassed, and yet also poignant and sad.
Meng Hao looked at her walking away, and a gentleness appeared in his eyes. He could see her exhaustion and anxiety, and it made him sigh.
“Some people,” he thought, “chose not to let anything encumber their cultivation, and are thus able to do so with minds and hearts free of obstruction. Others have hearts filled with obsession, which enables them to achieve great Daos of Heaven and Earth.
“She… started out incorruptible. It was me showing up that changed everything…”
Finally, he spoke up, his voice soft. “Hold on.”
Xu Qing stopped in her tracks, surrounded by rain. She turned back to look at him sitting there in the shadows of the wooden eaves, ancient, old, decaying.
He continued, “Is the person you’re looking for a twenty-something scholar, wearing a long green robe…?”
Xu Qing trembled, and after a moment of silence, she nodded.
“I saw someone who looked like that many years ago,” he said, his voice hoarse. “He lived here for about a year, after which… he died and was buried. He said this place was his home.