Chapter 80
Chapter 80
A Showdown (2)
“Cultivators have millions of tricks up their sleeves; if you don’t want people to find out about something, the best way is to just not do it in the first place.”
Cui Wang straightened. “But I couldn’t make head or tail out of these three sheets of paper all this while. It’s clear now what this second one means—to lure the crown prince into a meeting in Yanchun Gardens. In the first one, there’s ‘plum’, ‘wine’, and ‘Liang’3—after thinking about it, it refers to you wanting to get one surnamed Liang in trouble in the Plum Gardens the other time. It was that second son of the Duke of Liang, right? Ply him with wine? I can make the connection… And this third one, Wan’niang, can you explain it to me?”
Zheng Wan was biting her lips so hard they were almost at the point of bleeding. When she opened her mouth, she was about to reflexively arrange her lips into a smile, but he stopped her.
“Don’t smile. This kind of forced smile is rather unpleasant to look at.
“This third one, is it about letting Liu Yi marry far away to Guixi?”
Zheng Wan’s heart started thumping wildly. There was only one thought in her mind right now: He knows. His heart had been clear as a mirror long ago, but he just watched on as she bumbled about desperately.
How truly spine-chilling.
If so……
“You——”
Zheng Wan’s voice was thin and hoarse. Before she had a handle on how much the other party knew, she dared not say a word, for fear that if she said too much, she might reveal even more—though if she said too little, she would also be exposed.
It was truly a situation in which it was difficult for her to advance, but also hard to retreat.
“There are many mysterious things and people in the upper realms where I am. There is a kind of person who is born enlightened; when about to meet with great calamity, a reaction would be induced in their hearts, and they can foresee the future in advance. Wan’niang——are you like that?”
It’s over, he knew everything.
Zheng Wan suppressed her panic and automatically tried to grab the corner of his robe, but this time, he wouldn’t let her.
Just how much should she reveal?
“So, from the time you met me, to the illusory realm, and even right now, every step was part of your calculations, is that right? How much do you know?”
Zheng Wan shook her head. “No, it’s not.”
She said, “Not everything was calculated.”
Zheng Wan reckoned that Cui Wang had only guessed that she knew part of it, but in no way did he know that she had seen almost his entire life.
She shook her head.
“One day, my father was suddenly punished to kneel at Anju Gate. That was when we met for the first time, Cui Wang, do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“Back then, I had fainted, and was sent back to the residence with an imperial physician. If you’ve inquired carefully, you should know that I suffer from heart palpitations. Every time these palpitations happen, my Zheng family would encounter something major. Similarly, this time, after listening to a night of wind and rain, I vaguely saw some things upon waking.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw the toppling of my Zheng family. I, I would suffer from exile, be forced to wander 3,000 miles and finally die a miserable death. My father and mother would also die.” Zheng Wan closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, there was a smile. “The heavens are merciful, and had given me a warning.”
Cui Wang closed his eyes, only to feel that the pear blossom wine he had poured into his belly had faded cleanly from his mind, pushing aside the dense fog, allowing him to see the green mountains.
“So, you sought to please me by every means possible?” He asked in a deep voice.
“Then, what should I do?” Zheng Wan smiled miserably; her jade white face was all aquiver at the moment, like flowers under the assault of frost. “I don’t want to just sit passively and await my doom. Is it so wrong for me to seek a slim chance of survival?”
“……I knew that you would appear in the Plum Garden, but didn’t know where. I just heard that the people who had bullied me would also be there, and so, wanted to make a fool of them.”
“How do you explain the bloodstone zan then?”
“Naturally, I came to learn about it through my inquiries. Although six or seven years have already passed since the incident back then, but if one really wanted to know, one could still find out. That concubine-born daughter from the Liu family had saved someone, and gained a zan. The zan had ‘Cui’ on it; it’s not difficult to put two and two together.”
“You knew all along that an illusory realm would appear on the marble boat?”
Cui Wang gazed at her with a deep expression, suppressing the magma that was about to burn his heart in two.
“How would I know about that?”
Zheng Wan’s eyes widened, full of curiosity, “Can the enlightened person at your end know about the destiny of others? How amazing.”
Cui Wang asked the old ancestor:
“In addition to foreseeing one’s own destiny, can these enlightened people also see the trajectory of others’ lives?”
“Do you think it’s like reading a book, and they can read whatever they want? Such people have been blessed by the heavens, and gained a lifeline, but they can only see things that are relevant to themselves. At the most, they can also see some of their blood relations’, but those would usually be scrappy fragments.”
Cui Wang remained silent.
He only felt like his body was about to be burned through.
Half of the magma within the volcano had turned into roaring flames, the other half, stagnant water. His heart was being burned on one end, and frozen on the other, stirring him up such that——
“So, it seems that the so-called ‘sincerity’ you have for me was all calculated,” he said slowly.
In the onslaught of such pain, Cui Wang was actually numb.
He knew that all of this was false. Only when he went to the Heavenly Realms, and broke free from the love gu, would all of these dissipate into the air.
Footnotes:
3 See footnote 1 from the previous chapter. Here, Cui Wang disregards the second character and only focuses on the first word, 梁 liang.