Chapter 597: I’ll Make You Proud, Sir
“With the Soul Divergence Incantation, you can cultivate an undying soul. Unfortunately, the difficulty level is too high for you…. However, this coffin can help you to cultivate the art. With it, even should great calamity arise, you… can continue to live!”
He only spoke a few sentences, but even that left Ke Yunhai gasping for breath. His face was pale, and the white nodes of light flying around him grew more dense. They circulated around his body, making it look almost like a glowing halo surrounded him.
He looked kindly at Meng Hao, his gaze filled with doting kindness and the reluctance to part. And love…. He feared the child he left behind might be bullied, might be lonely or taciturn.
Meng Hao bit his lip as he kneeled wordlessly in front of Ke Yunhai, tears flowing.
“There’s no need to cry,” said Ke Yunhai. “If men cry too much in our day and age, then their Dao becomes unstable. Come here, kid….” He raised a shaky hand, and Meng Hao, tears dripping, walked forward to stand in front of him.
Ke Yunhai’s hand, covered with so many wrinkles, gently patted Meng Hao’s head.
“You’ve grown up….”
“Dad….” Meng Hao looked at the pervasive death aura, and withered Ke Yunhai, and his heart felt as if it were tearing into pieces. His body trembled as his heart suddenly filled with the intense sensation that his father was about to leave him.
He… had long since taken Ke Yunhai to be his own father.
“Everyone dies eventually, that is something we can’t change. Lord Li returned the mandate to the masses. I am a Paragon of the First Heaven, I must respect that decision….”
“Why?” murmured Meng Hao, the tears pouring down. “Why do you have to respect it!? We Cultivators practice cultivation to gain eternal life, don’t we? What’s the point in abandoning eternal life?!”
Ke Yunhai was silent for a moment before raising his head. His gaze seemed to penetrate out of the Immortal’s cave to some distant place in the future. The death knell outside had reached the sixty-ninth toll. The sound of it echoed out endlessly.
“We Cultivators don’t just practice cultivation to gain eternal life. No, we pursue the Dao…. For those who strive after the Dao, life is a morning and death is an evening. For those who seek the Dao, when evening comes, of what use is longing…?” Ke Yunhai lowered his head to look at Meng Hao.
“Death and life are not important to me. Without Lord Li, your father would have long since died countless times over…. I do not fear death. The only thing I am uneasy about… is you….” Ke Yunhai tousled Meng Hao’s hair. He was already running very low on energy, but his eyes were filled with kindness, and an increasingly strong doting indulgence.
“I should have perished many years ago,” he continued. “But I was worried about you, so I put things off until today. If it were possible, I would accompany you a bit further, just like in the Demon Immortal Pagoda, me in the lead, you following… off into the distance.” He smiled, but his face was pale. More and more white nodes floated around him, making his smile seem somewhat distant.
“Dad….” said Meng Hao, pulling at Ke Yunhai’s hand.
“All of your brothers and sisters have already gone. Now that I’m leaving, you won’t have any relatives left in the world…. I hope that in the future… you will learn to be a bit more sensible.” As Ke Yunhai gazed at Meng Hao, the kindness in his eyes grew stronger, as did the reluctance to part. It was exactly as he said; what he was concerned most about in his life, was the child who kneeled in front of him now.
If there were even a little bit of hope to buy more time, he would seize it, and watch Ke Jiusi truly grow up.
Meng Hao wasn’t able to give voice to what he was feeling deep in his heart. He felt stabs of pain, as if his world were falling apart. It was as if there were a vortex inside of him, sucking in all of his thoughts.
He could only clasp Ke Yunhai’s hand tightly with his own. He could only cry. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, not even one.
“Don’t be sad. Your brothers and sisters are waiting for me. I’m their father too. I need to spend some time with them, also…. Jiusi, daddy hopes that one day, when I’m in the underworld, you’ll make me proud….”
Outside, the bells had tolled eighty-nine times. Ke Yunhai’s body was now completely surrounded by spinning white nodes of light. The hand that Meng Hao held began to grow faint. The only thing that was clear now, was Ke Yunhai’s kind smile.
His eyes had begun to fade. During the last ten tolls of the death knell, they would lose all of their brightness. They would transform into countless dots of light that would then vanish into the air.