Volume 4, Chapter 189 – Changlun (II)

“Changlun!”

“What is wrong with you!”

“Don’t you know the shaman elder is waiting for money to buy medicine?”

“Useless!”

“Get out! Our tribe has no need for a clumsy hunter like you!”

Hidden in the shadows, listening to the furious sounds of the search outside and the jumble of abuse, the little fox narrowed its eyes slightly.

Clearly, it had already awakened a measure of spiritual intelligence and could understand these people’s words.

Deep into the night, it padded through the dim shadows toward an open clearing.

A campfire burned there. The mud was covered with countless footprints amid dead branches and exposed roots, while the boy from the daytime sat alone before the fire, expressionless as he poked at the flames.

The little fox approached him warily, crouched to one side, and watched him with its ears pricked up.

“Curious why I let you go?”

It was as though the boy had known in advance that it would come back. A warm smile appeared on his face.

“Naturally because, in a certain sense, we’re the same kind.”

He brushed aside his black hair, revealing two little protrusions on his head.

They looked like a pair of antlers still in the middle of growing.

Which meant that he, too, was of mixed blood.

Everything that followed happened naturally. Through the little fox’s point of view, Bai Xiang watched it meet Changlun and come to know him. One human and one fox thus began living together in the primeval forests of the Shengshu Sea, relying on each other for survival.

At sunset one day, Changlun roasted the game he had caught over the fire while telling the little fox a few things about his past.

“My tribe despises everyone of impure blood… They pride themselves on following the human path, and they think anyone tainted with demon blood is a bastard who cannot be trusted.”

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“They had long planned to push me out. It did not have much to do with you.”

“But I do not blame them, because I really have seen how those demonfolk act.”

“Demons have instincts.”

“Those instincts are ruled by demonic power and by bloodline. It is not something you can control just because you do not want to do it.”

“At first, I was actually numb to it all.”

He turned the meat over, a trace of melancholy on his face.

“I was raised by humans, yet I carry demon blood.”

“The person who took me in cast me aside after finding that out, but that does not erase the kindness of raising me. I have always been grateful to them.”

“I just never knew what identity I was supposed to use to face everything.”

Life in the forest was brief and bewildering. Precisely because of that bewilderment, the briefness of it also seemed endlessly long.

Until one day, Changlun decided to leave the forest.

He told the little fox that he wanted to search for the meaning of being alive.

“For people who carry demon blood, and demons who carry human blood, how are we supposed to face this world? Maybe the big cities will have an answer.”

“Well? Do you want to come with me?”

Without the slightest hesitation, the little fox jumped onto Changlun’s shoulder, giving its answer through action.

“Good.” Changlun rubbed its head. “Then let’s go find that answer together.”

One human and one fox began to wander, and scene after scene flipped past like a revolving lantern, until Changlun entered a Dao sect called the Lingming Sect.

In that small world, the Lingming Sect counted as a major Dao sect, and mixed bloodlines were a normal thing there. For the first time, Changlun finally experienced what it felt like not to be treated differently, and he believed this had to be the answer he had been searching for.

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But very soon, war broke out.

The cause may have been a dispute over a mineral vein. The Lingming Sect went to war with a rival Dao sect, and the conflict rapidly spread into a “Fragment War,” drawing the entire fragment belt and more than ten small worlds of the Illusory Realms into the fighting, until all was thrown into utter chaos.

The Lingming Sect had not even been the absolute overlord of its original small world. To be dragged into a war on that scale was no different from seeking its own destruction. Its living strength was rapidly ground away in the brutal struggle, until only a handful managed to escape.

“Changlun!”

“You are the last hope of our Dao!”

At the point of death, his master pressed a hand to the young man’s shoulder and looked at him with earnest eyes.

“Remember, you must rebuild the sect!”

“And remember this! You must avenge us against those demons!”

“Master…” Changlun was deeply moved and could only watch helplessly as his master breathed his last before his eyes.

At the crude funeral rite, the remaining disciples asked Changlun what he planned to do next, because his seniority was now the highest among them. Everyone above him was already dead.

Changlun hesitated for a moment, then said, “I plan to take you to the Shengshu Sea first and hide there for a while.”

“To that kind of primeval forest?”

“To the place where wild tribes live? How are we supposed to plan our great revenge there?”

The disciples began talking all at once, clearly full of complaints.

“Why must we take revenge?” Changlun did not understand.

If it were simply avenging the dead, he would carry it through.

But the reason the war had suddenly expanded, turning in a single stroke from a regional conflict into a Fragment War, was that both sides believed they had seized the greater cause.

One side upheld the human path and saw the other as demons.

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The other spoke of the sacred path and saw their opponents as remnants.

Reasons like that alone could not make Changlun understand everything that had happened up to this point.

Because in his eyes, the identities of the two sides were not really that different.

Were they not all mixed-blood?

The only difference was whether they had more human blood or more demon blood.

What difference did that really make?

Did things truly have to be divided so clearly?

Changlun voiced his confusion, only to trigger an uproar among the disciples.

They branded him a heretic and a traitor, and after a bout of fighting, they drove him out.

“You are not fit to represent the Lingming Sect at all!”

Those people left behind one last harsh declaration.

“Master truly misjudged you!”

Covered in wounds, Changlun was forced to wander once again. The little fox stayed by his side the entire time.

Tempered by time and years, it gradually grew larger. Its fur became smoother, its brows and eyes seemed to carry a woman’s charm, and its body had long since grown several times bigger than before. Following behind Changlun, it looked like a tamed white wolf.

They returned once more to the Shengshu Sea, to that untamed life.

And this time, Changlun had more doubts than ever before.

More and more “doubt” replaced “bewilderment.” He began to feel rejection and dissatisfaction toward everything, believing that the principles of the world should not have developed in this way.

“I’m not being foolishly kind.”

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He often spoke his thoughts aloud to the little fox before going to sleep.

“It’s not that I think hatred can simply be set aside, or calmed so easily.”

“It’s just that I feel there is something manipulating everything.”

“Sigh…” He shook his head and sighed.

“If only the Heavenly Court from the myths, and the immortals and Buddhas, truly existed, and truly could uphold justice for this world.”

The little fox licked his hand in response.

“You’ve grown up too.”

Changlun looked at it under the moonlight and smiled.

“The clan that raised me bore the name Zhuxian. It means, ‘Let all go forth first, and may the many prosper forever.’”

“By that logic, I ought to be called Zhu Changlun.”

“So from now on, how about you be called Zhu Qingluo?”

He stroked the little fox’s fur, looking at the brownish-green strands mixed into the white, then looked at his companion with an expression full of anticipation.

The little fox went back to licking Changlun’s hand.

In truth, at this time, it still did not understand what exactly had happened.

The concentration of demon blood within it was far too high, and the speed at which its spiritual intelligence awakened was far too slow. Even after all these years, its mind had not improved all that much compared with before. It still needed long years and long events to soak into it and temper it.

It remembered only one thing.

From this moment on, it had a name.