As the night deepened, the chill grew even heavier. The ice and snow by the well had already been frozen like solid stone.
A small hand appeared on the edge of the well. Under the illumination of the lanterns of the Imperial City, it was very white and clean, even whiter than the ice and snow in the sky, and also seemed even colder.
As the small hand exerted force, the ice and snow rustled and shattered. A girl climbed out of the well. This scene was truly very much like a horror story.
The girl stood in the snow, her breath turning into a mist of ice crystals as it met the air. It was not because her Qi was hot, but because it was too cold.
She wore a black dress, somewhat tattered and very old-fashioned. In this world of white, it was extremely striking.
After several hundred years, Zhizhi had finally left that sinister and, to her, particularly cramped underground world, arriving in the real human world.
The current human world had long ago forgotten that particularly brutal Black Frost Dragon from the legends. She was also filled with a sense of unfamiliarity towards the current human world.
Her soul had once been forcefully extracted from her dragon body by the Tianhai Divine Empress and entered the black jade ruyi to accompany Chen Changsheng on a trip to the Garden of Zhou. In that period of time, she had seen the streets of the capital, the green trees by the lake, the prosperity of Wenshui, and that valley in the twilight, but everything before her eyes was still unfamiliar to her.
At this moment, she was no longer a strand of soul, but real and complete.
Her bare feet could clearly feel the soft touch and warmth of the snow.
The tips of her hair could clearly feel the gentle and comfortable feeling brought by the winter wind.
She could use her eyes, not her mind, to see the true wind and snow. She could even see the true starry sky behind the clouds of snow. Ah, the many stars that had not been seen for several hundred years. So you are still in the same position, scattering down the same beautiful silver radiance. Will my home in the southern islands still be the same?
The sense of strangeness and reality constantly tangled and clashed in her mind, finally transforming into the truest fear.
She had no idea that in the near future, she would become a new legend in the human world. Although as a noble and powerful dragon, her existence was itself a legend to the Human race, she was only afraid of this strange world.
— — This world was a human world, a human world filled with humans, and humans were what she feared the most.
Whether noble or lowly, strong or weak, when life was at its weakest, most confused, and most afraid, it would always habitually want to find the most familiar support. That support could be a tree, a rock, a window, or even a person.
Before Zhou Tong died, his consciousness was already in a daze. All he knew was to crawl towards the alley of the Northern Military Department.
In her mind, there was only one person's name, and that was Chen Chang Sheng.
Chen Chang Sheng was the person she was most familiar with in this world and also the person she trusted the most. Due to some secret reasons, she firmly believed that he was responsible for her. Therefore, after she came back to her senses, she walked towards the Tradition Academy without hesitation. Her bare feet left a clear mark on the snow.
…
…
The Tradition Academy and the neighboring Herb Garden were all heavily guarded. The Orthodoxy cavalry and the soldiers of the Imperial Court blocked off the entire street, silently confronting each other according to their respective camps. The atmosphere was abnormally tense, and no one knew what would happen next.
The situation in the capital was constantly changing. With the Pope's return to the sea of stars, no one knew which way the hearts of the people would lean, but the people's judgment was slowly leaning towards the Imperial Court. The teachers and students of the Orthodox Academy were constantly leaving, and the number of people left was less than a third of the original number. The eighteen girls of South Stream Temple and Su Moyu naturally remained, but they were keenly aware that they were no longer able to influence what would happen next. The two people that could truly decide the outcome were currently under the great banyan tree by the lake.
Tonight, the capital was sleepless, because many people knew that this master and disciple were currently in the midst of their final negotiations.
The snowstorm of the last few days had been very heavy. Just like the rest of the capital, the Orthodox Academy was covered in a thick layer of snow. The withered grass by the lake was completely covered up, and only the tips of the withered grass could be seen in the slightly bulging areas, giving off a particularly stubborn feeling.
The leaves of the great banyan tree had fallen long ago, but its bare branches were still sturdy enough to bear the weight of quite a few people standing on them.
Chen Changsheng was not on the tree, but standing under the tree in the snow. This was because his teacher was also standing in the snow.
This was the first time this master and disciple had met since that morning in the Mausoleum of Books. On that day, they had brushed past each other on the Divine Avenue like strangers, their gazes not shifting. Today, however, they truly looked at each other. One could clearly see that the current Chen Changsheng had changed from when he was in Xining Village.
Chen Changsheng was already the Pope, but he did not wear the Divine Robe, the Divine Crown, or the Divine Staff. Instead, he wore the uniform of the Orthodox Academy. His black hair had been meticulously combed and then tied into the simplest Daoist bun. What passed through his black hair to hold the bun in place was not some precious ebony fork, but an ordinary wooden chopstick.
Shang Xingzhou's black hair, devoid of the color of frost, was similarly meticulously combed. His face was brimming with nobility and steadiness, indescribably free and at ease. However, his clothes were also very simple, just a blue Daoist robe. It was like he was not truly the number one person in the world, but just an ordinary Daoist priest.
If someone were to see this scene, they would probably feel that this master and disciple, from a certain perspective, were very similar. This similarity did not just lie in their outer appearances, but also in the extremely deep indifference between their brows and the sense of alienation concealed beneath their calm exterior.
Chen Changsheng prepared to speak, but he didn't know what to say.
It had already been several years since he and that person standing across from him had spoken. To cultivators, several years was a very short period of time, but he had always felt it to be a very long time, so long that his memories of that old temple in Xining Village had become rather blurry. At the very least, there were some memories that were already difficult to recall.
He could still clearly remember the mottled marks on the walls after the Daoist scriptures in the old temple had been moved away. He could still clearly remember that on the night before he left, his senior had cooked four plates of vegetables of different styles and tastes. One of the plates had been filled with a lot of garlic, but he had forgotten the contents of his final words to his master.
At this moment, Shang Xingzhou spoke.
"I picked you up from the stream. Although I knew beforehand that you would be in that stream, without me, you would have drowned in the stream or been eaten by that old dragon. In short, I saved your life, and it was I who raised you into a man, so your life is mine."
Tonight was the last night. Tomorrow would be a new day, a new day just like the countless days that had passed, but it would be the first day of the new continent. This conversation in the snow would determine whether the people of the capital, and even the entire continent, would be able to peacefully and joyfully welcome the rising sun of the new year like they had in the past.
No one had expected that this conversation would begin so suddenly and proceed so unyieldingly, so much so that the opening words sounded like the closing words.
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