Gao Gusheng’s face was frozen ice-cold, and he could not bring himself to go back inside and sit still.
Tian Mian donated her own down coat for Gao Gusheng to drape around himself. Tian Mian was a little shorter, so on her the coat reached her ankles. On Gao Gusheng it only came to mid-calf. It would not zip up either, so he wore it open. But it was at least considerably warmer.
The moment the warmth set in, Gao Gusheng was too restless to sit. He smeared his face with garish makeup and ran outside, looking east, not daring to shift his gaze for even a moment. His head was full of cluttered, formless thoughts he did not dare examine.
Though Gao Gusheng had painted his face into a mess and was dressed like someone who had just finished begging on the streets, he seemed to carry some strange, magnetic pull that made it impossible for people to look away. More than a few passersby drifted past him, glancing back again and again as they went, and only after walking a considerable distance did they suddenly come to their senses and give themselves a sharp slap on the face.
Gao Gusheng watched the golden light that had blanketed the mountain fade away. He watched the sky turn black and then bright again, and still they had not come out.
There was a great commotion nearby. Someone said a ghost had been caught. Gao Gusheng leaned over to look, and found that the tattered, incomplete soul being held was none other than the Ghost King.
If the Ghost King had been caught, then his dad and Daoist Ying should be alright too.
As though in answer to that thought, two figures cut across the sky, one black and one white. They moved at startling speed and were before Gao Gusheng in the blink of an eye. He looked closely. It was his dad and Daoist Ying.
Gao Gusheng launched himself at them.
“Dad! Are you alright, Dad!”
Gao Gusheng checked him over from head to toe. His heart had clenched suddenly just a little while ago, and after such a long wait, he was so frantic he was on the verge of tears.
Fortunately, once Ying Bujie’s soul had returned to its rightful place, his spiritual power had grown considerably stronger. He had even managed to cast a restoration spell, which was practically heaven-defying, and had repaired Gao Shi’s clothes entirely. Otherwise Gao Shi genuinely would not have known how to comfort a son on the verge of crying his eyes out.
After a thorough examination, Gao Gusheng found his father looking perfectly healthy, with no apparent injuries whatsoever, and finally let out a breath of relief.
He had not quite finished letting it out when he noticed that Gao Shi’s lips were a little red and swollen.
He was horrified. “Dad, what happened to your mouth? Why is it swollen? Daoist Ying…”
Gao Gusheng was just about to turn to Ying Bujie for help when he saw that Ying Bujie’s lips were swollen too. Even worse than Gao Shi’s, in fact, with a small split at the corner of his mouth.
Gao Gusheng paused. He looked at Ying Bujie, then looked at Gao Shi, with an expression that was simultaneously surprised and entirely unsurprised.
“You, you two…”
Gao Shi was at a loss for words. It was not that he had planned to hide it from his son, he just had not anticipated it would be exposed in quite such an awkward fashion.
He pressed a hand silently to his forehead, shot a glance at Ying Bujie, and then looked at Gao Gusheng with a serious expression. “I…”
“I am getting a second mum?!”
Thwack.
Gao Shi rapped Gao Gusheng on the head with a dark expression.
“What do you mean second mum? This is your actual mum!”
The words were out of Gao Shi’s mouth before he could stop them. He heard a low laugh, turned to look at Ying Bujie, and found Ying Bujie standing there as though nothing had happened, looking transcendent and unbothered, as if he had absolutely not been the one laughing.
“Not mum, to be precise,” Ying Bujie helpfully cleared his throat and offered. “Father.”
“Oh!”
Gao Gusheng clutched his head, brain not yet caught up, and looked back and forth between them.
At this moment, Gao Shi noticed what Gao Gusheng was wearing.
Though Gao Gusheng had Mo Hua’s down jacket tied around his waist and was wearing Tian Mian’s full-length down coat over that, Gao Shi could see at a glance that the bridal gown beneath was in a rather sorry state.
Gao Shi’s expression darkened. “Come on. Let us talk inside.”
A number of tents had been set up nearby. Gao Shi walked into the Gao family tent and had Gao Gusheng take off his outer layers for a look, and immediately his temper flared to three feet high.
His son’s clothes were torn up in a way that made it look like something absolutely dreadful had been done to him.
Watching his father on the verge of pulling out his axe and going on a rampage across the mountainside, Gao Gusheng rushed to intervene. “No no no, Dad, let me explain!”
Gao Gusheng gave a quick summary of what had happened, and watched the fire in Gao Shi’s eyes die down a fraction.
“The research institute will probably very much want to get their hands on that old ghost’s soul.”
Gao Gusheng looked at Gao Shi’s cold smile and, even being himself, could not help a full-body shudder.
Ghost King, oh Ghost King. On account of your black mist treating me to fried chicken and cola, and your fruit trees feeding me spirit fruit, I will say a token prayer for you. May you dissipate peacefully into nothing at the earliest opportunity.
Gao Gusheng offered a perfunctory half-second of prayer, then shifted closer to Gao Shi. “Dad, can you tell me now about Ying, Ying, Ying-mum’s situation?”
Gao Shi glanced over at Ying Bujie. “Truthfully, I was mostly guessing. You should be the one to explain. You must have already recovered your memories.”
Gao Gusheng looked between the two of them with a slightly puzzled expression. He had the distinct feeling that Gao Shi was somehow different around Ying Bujie compared to usual. It was like… he was more relaxed.
If their dynamic before had been distant yet intimate, as though something lay between them, now they were like a long-married couple reunited after years apart. Gao Shi, who had grown steady and composed early on from bearing the weight of his son’s difficult fate from childhood, seemed in front of Ying Bujie to have set every last burden down and become animated.
Using the word animated to describe a grown man was a little strange, but that was the feeling Gao Gusheng had.
As though through this version of Gao Shi, he were glimpsing the one who should have been young and carefree and in his prime.
Though he was not sure if it was his imagination, Gao Gusheng kept having the distinct sense that his dad was a little bit angry about something.
He was not imagining it. Gao Shi was indeed a little angry.
The anger was mainly directed at himself. Just a little while ago he had lost all reason and attempted to capture the upper hand over Ying Bujie, only to walk straight into a trap. The undefeatable Teacher Gao had been routed completely and utterly, lost face and dignity both, without gaining a single moment of advantage. In the end, having been kissed into a state of desperation, he had bitten Ying Bujie on the mouth before he left.
Ying Bujie was perfectly capable of healing it with a technique, yet chose not to. The split at the corner of his mouth was displayed like a badge of honour for all to see. His face was expressionless as ever, yet Gao Shi could not shake the feeling that he was showing off.
Gao Shi may have been kissed senseless, but he was not stupid. Whether he looked at the provocation from just now or at the events in the dream, it was increasingly clear that Ying Bujie was not the pure and harmless creature he had imagined.
Hearing Gao Shi’s words, Ying Bujie glanced back at him first, then turned to Gao Gusheng. “The truth is, you are not human.”
“…Pardon?”
Gao Gusheng nearly leapt off the ground. He thought: is this Daoist actually insulting me? Does he find this extra baggage inconvenient? That is absolutely not acceptable!
Ying Bujie seemed not to notice Gao Gusheng’s agitation, and continued in an unhurried tone. “You are a flower.”
Heaven and earth carry spiritual energy. From spiritual energy, spirit flowers are born.
A spirit flower draws on the essence of heaven and earth, nourished by spiritual energy and conceived from the essence of the sun and the moon. One blooms every million years. One flowers every hundred thousand years.
Spirit flowers are born from spiritual energy, and receive the intention of the Heavenly Dao to gain consciousness. Because of this, a spirit flower holds an indescribable attraction for all things in the world, and equally, brings immense benefit to all things.
When a spirit flower blooms, its fragrance travels ten thousand li. Birds and beasts, grasses and trees, fish and insects, all who breathe it in may touch upon the Great Dao. If a person could drink a single drop of morning dew from a spirit flower’s petal, they could ascend on the spot.
It is said that an earth immortal who once consumed a single petal ascended all the way to become a golden immortal.
A spirit flower is a treasure of heaven and earth that even immortals covet.
Yet for spiritual energy to be concentrated enough for a spirit flower to be born is already extraordinarily rare, let alone for it to receive the intention of the Heavenly Dao and gain consciousness. For both conditions to be met at once, the intervals between such occurrences span no less than millions of years.
After a spirit flower gains consciousness, another hundred thousand years must pass before it can bloom. Only then is a spirit flower considered complete.
Once bloomed, a spirit flower may take on a form. Because a spirit flower is born from the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and is called a spirit flower only because its shape resembles a flower, it is in truth spiritual energy of the purest possible grade. As such, a spirit flower can take on the form of any living creature in this world without revealing itself.
In recorded history, there have been three occasions when a spirit flower came into being.
The first time, a spirit flower was born deep in the mountains, innocent and unknowing of the world. Seeing the tall trees around it, it took the form of a tree. It grew in the depths of that forest for a thousand years, and in that thousand years, the plants and animals around it became yao, spirits, and immortals beyond counting. The deep mountain became an untouchable forbidden ground, and the spirit flower was revered as a sacred object, until a plant that had turned demonic in its cultivation harboured delusions of dominating the world, swallowed the spirit flower whole, and perished in the explosion.
The second time, the spirit flower had barely developed consciousness when cultivators who had been lying in wait swarmed it and divided it among themselves until nothing remained.
The third time, a spirit flower was born in the demonic realm of a cultivation world, right in the midst of a succession war between demon lords, with rivers of blood flowing. Drawing on its own constitution, the spirit flower became a charm cultivator coveted by everyone in the demonic realm yet dared upon by no one, then climbed to power over the body of the new demon lord, becoming the next demon lord itself. It even stirred up conflict between the mortal realm and the human realm, and the reverberations reached even the immortal realm. In the end, that spirit flower was torn apart by several great powers it had simultaneously become entangled with.
A spirit flower’s pull is too immense. Every spirit flower met a terrible end. Then the world gave birth to a fourth.
On that day, the day in Gao Shi’s dream when he had dragged Ying Bujie off for a duel, they had found a new small world, and there they had fought to their hearts’ content. Neither of them held back. Blood flew. And by chance, two drops landed on the spirit flower: one of Gao Shi’s, one of Ying Bujie’s.
The spirit flower’s nascent form absorbed the bloodlines of both Gao Shi and Ying Bujie. Ying Bujie brought it back, and the two of them tended to it with care, year after year.
…
Gao Gusheng stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed. He pointed at himself. “I, I am not human? I am a flower? I am not eighteen years old, I am at least a hundred thousand years old??”
Gao Gusheng felt his entire understanding of the world beginning to teeter. There was so much he wanted to ask, yet he did not know where to begin. In the end all he could do was look at his dad, but Gao Shi was also sitting with his head bowed in quiet thought and had no answers to give him.
Finally, Gao Gusheng could only ask: “So I am older than my own dad?”
Ying Bujie said, “No. As a general rule, plants and animals begin counting their age from the moment they take human form. So you are genuinely eighteen.”
Ying Bujie looked toward Gao Shi. “After your reincarnation, age is counted from the reincarnated life.”
Gao Shi raised his head. “So we knew each other in a past life.”
“Yes.” Ying Bujie answered softly, his gaze still. Only when their eyes met could one begin to perceive how turbulent the emotions concealed beneath those dark eyes truly were, like a deep current moving beneath a still surface.
Gao Shi said, “You once told me that the underworld of this world has collapsed and reincarnation no longer exists. How then did I reincarnate?”
Ying Bujie looked through the gap in the tent toward the grey sky outside.
“Because you are not originally of this world.”
Three thousand worlds, born and extinguished in a single thought.
Ying Bujie looked back at Gao Shi. “I cannot tell you too much about the past life. You need to remember it yourself.”
“There is something watching us.”
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152