(Happy birthday to Yu An... I was forced to...)

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In the deep spring season, all kinds of trees were stretching their waists and sprouting green leaves. Dongyi City was near the sea, and the humid sea breeze blew day and night, making the spring here come earlier and faster than elsewhere, and the period of spring's concealment was also longer.

This large green tree on the outskirts of the city did not know how many years it had been growing here. The trunk was tall and upright, without any intention of piercing the sky. Countless green leaves gathered into a large umbrella at the crown, making it exceptionally beautiful and compassionate, blocking the sun in the sky and casting a shadow, sheltering the people entering and leaving the city.

This tree was too big, and the range of the shadow was even several acres. Many pedestrians were resting under the tree. Underneath were the gnarled roots protruding from the ground, like thick dragon bodies, steady and solid. Si Gu Jian, Fan Xian, and the young Emperor were resting beside these roots. This strange combination did not attract the attention of passersby, probably because there were always many strange people and strangers in Dongyi City.

Fan Xian sat on the tree root, feeling the coolness under his buttocks. He didn't know what kind of tree it was behind him, and he didn't bother to explore it. He just looked down at the roots, searching for ants or dung beetles moving dung balls, but found nothing.

"How old was she then?"

"Five or six? Seven or eight?" Si Gu Jian sat in his wheelchair, frowning, thinking for a long time. It seemed that because of the age, his memory had become a little blurred. He spat on the ground and said, "Anyway, she was just a little girl."

"How old were you then?"

"Should have been ten years old or so?" Si Gu Jian scratched his head and said, "You know my brain has never worked very well. I can never remember such complicated questions."

"I don't think my age is a complicated question."

"Geniuses are always different from others in some ways." Si Gu Jian clearly didn't care about Fan Xian's sarcasm and sneered.

"The other side of genius is idiocy." Fan Xian glanced at him lazily and said, "Of course, everyone in the world knows you were an idiot when you were young."

Si Gu Jian said nothing, just met Fan Xian's gaze, trying to find some shadows of the past in the cracks beside the tree roots.

The young Emperor Zhan Doudou stood coldly aside, watching the old and young men acting foolishly, feeling rather disapproving. The three had traveled here and had been calm along the way. According to worldly theories, the young Emperor's status was naturally the most noble, but it was clear that neither Si Gu Jian nor Fan Xian cared much about this.

Si Gu Jian and Fan Xian seemed to have become interested in finding ants, and remained under the green tree, seemingly with no intention of leaving. The young Emperor frowned slightly, thinking that the officials outside Jianlu were probably still worried about her, and not knowing what would happen next, she was also worried that the old and young men would reveal her secrets. Feeling a little worried, she said softly, "Miss Ye is already gone. Even if you look here for three more years, you can't expect her to come back to life."

This sentence seemed to state a fact, but it also had some heartbreaking intent. The young Emperor's wisdom and reaction speed were fully demonstrated at this moment. In Jianlu, Si Gu Jian only briefly mentioned persuading Fan Xian to rebel, and she caught some vague clues and tried to point it out here.

As soon as this was said, Si Gu Jian and Fan Xian both looked up at her, making her feel a little flustered. Fan Xian shrugged and said, "I just think ants are more interesting than people."

Si Gu Jian looked at Fan Xian and praised, "When your mother accompanied me to find ants, someone asked us this, and she answered the same way."

With Si Gu Jian's somewhat pleasant narrative, Fan Xian smiled, and a scene from many years ago seemed to appear before his eyes.

An idiot with a runny nose squatted under the big green tree, watching ants move and fight. Maybe he would untie his belt and pee on the ant nest. The passersby and residents of Dongyi City all knew the identity of this big idiot. When they passed him, their eyes were filled with pity and disgust, but no one was willing to come forward and talk to him.

Then, a blind young servant led a little girl's hand and came to Dongyi City from afar, to this big green tree, and found this... idiot who was so focused that he didn't care about what was happening around him.

The cute little girl squatted curiously beside the idiot and asked him, "What are you looking at?"

The idiot glanced at her impatiently and said, "I'm looking at ants."

The little girl said "Oh," and then started watching ants with him. They watched for a long time, and then someone nearby couldn't stand it anymore and reminded the young servant that this idiot was the young master of a big family in the city, but he was just a fool. Don't let your young lady act like a fool with him.

After hearing this, the little girl didn't stand up. She smiled and said, "I just think that sometimes, ants are more interesting than people."

Obviously, the implied meaning in this sentence was much more mature than the age presented by this small body. However, the pedestrians and citizens under the tree didn't notice this. They just thought that this young lady, who didn't know whose family she was from, was so beautiful and clean, like a fairy walking out of a painting. It was really unbearable that she was squatting with the most famous idiot in the city lord's family.

Then the little girl waved her hand, and the blind young servant, who had always been as cold as ice, also squatted beside the two of them. Although he didn't want to squat, there was no difference between squatting and standing for him. Since she liked him to squat, then he would squat.

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"At that time, we happened to be three people." Si Gu Jian continued his memories, scratching his itchy cheek and said hoarsely, "We just watched ants fighting for half a day, and then I invited them to my house as guests."

"Your house?"

"My dead old man was the former city lord of Dongyi City, didn't you know?"

"Oh, I've heard of it, but that was many years ago. Your dead old man died under your sword a long time ago. I didn't remember it for a moment."

"The City Lord's Mansion is very big and luxurious." Si Gu Jian suddenly grinned and smiled, "But the place where I live is like a doghouse, because I'm an idiot, and my dead old man hates me the most, and my mother is just a servant girl. You understand what I'm saying, right?"

"Yeah, I've read many novels like this." Fan Xian nodded. No one in Dongyi City dared to discuss Si Gu Jian's past, but that didn't mean that the Overwatch Council hadn't researched this. He had a clear understanding of Si Gu Jian's background, knowing what kind of days the idiot had lived in the City Lord's Mansion, enduring humiliation and contempt. It was just that he knew today that Si Gu Jian's biological mother was a servant girl, and that servant girl was probably dead many, many years ago.

"Your mother and Wu Zhu were the first friends I made in my life." Si Gu Jian suddenly said very seriously, "Although the place where I lived was terrible, and I couldn't even pour a cup of tea, they didn't look down on me and still went with me."

"Perhaps because I was an idiot at the time, I didn't think there was anything wrong with this. But obviously, many people in the City Lord's Mansion thought there was something wrong with this. They couldn't accept two people of unknown origin living in the mansion, especially living with the idiot young master. So a few days later, Ye Zi and Wu Zhu left the City Lord's Mansion. I didn't care anyway. During the day, I had to go out to watch ants, so I would go to their rented house to play."

"I really knew for the first time that you once had such an interaction with my mother and Uncle Wu Zhu."

Si Gu Jian frowned and said coldly, "Hasn't Wu Zhu ever mentioned the events of Dongyi City back then to you?"

"No." Fan Xian sat on the tree root, took a thin twig, and unconsciously fiddled with the soil, and replied, "Uncle's memory became much worse later."

"Oh, Wu Zhu, that kid, his memory actually became worse?" Si Gu Jian suddenly laughed, "Wouldn't that be similar to my idiot appearance back then?"

Fan Xian glared at him, then smiled wryly and shook his head, and asked, "Do you know... where my mother and Uncle Wu Zhu... came from?"

This was something that had troubled him for more than ten years. Although he could vaguely guess a little, and Xiao En had also mentioned some things in the cliffs outside the capital city before he died, Xiao En's narrative before his death only explained the origin of his mother, but did not mention Uncle Wu Zhu.

In Xiao En's narrative, he and Ku He worked hard for thousands of miles to enter the periphery of the Temple, and then they saw Ye Qingmei. The two of them rescued Ye Qingmei from the Temple, but they were separated halfway. At that time, Ye Qingmei was only four years old, and there were still two years or even longer before Si Gu Jian saw her in Dongyi City.

What was Ye Qingmei doing during this time? How did Uncle Wu Zhu come to her side?

In Xiao En's memory, he once mentioned that Ye Qingmei seemed deeply worried about someone in the Temple, and was a little uneasy in her heart, so she resolutely left. Was that person... Uncle Wu Zhu?

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Hearing Fan Xian's question, Si Gu Jian suddenly became extremely quiet. After a long while, he said faintly, "At that time, I naturally couldn't know where they came from, or where they were going... But later I naturally slowly knew."

He turned his head slightly and stared at Fan Xian with those bottomless, quiet eyes, and said, "Don't you know where Wu Zhu came from?"

Fan Xian lowered his head and remained silent for a long time. Uncle Wu Zhu was a monster, Uncle Wu Zhu would not grow old, Uncle Wu Zhu did not know internal energy, Uncle Wu Zhu was very good, very powerful, so Uncle Wu Zhu... He smiled wryly and said, "Even if Uncle Wu Zhu came from the Temple, what about my mother?"

"Nonsense, blind people are all messengers from the Temple, your mother is his master, of course she is a fairy from the Temple. Otherwise, how could she have caused so much trouble in this world by herself?" Si Gu Jian cursed irritably, seemingly feeling that Fan Xian's question was really superfluous.

However, Fan Xian didn't feel that it was superfluous. He thought wryly that his mother, Ye Qingmei, obviously had a soul that didn't belong to this world, just like himself. What kind of relationship could she have with the Temple?

Fan Xian and Si Gu Jian spoke with relish, reminiscing with emotion, but their voices were naturally confined to one place, and did not affect anyone under the big tree at all. However, the little Emperor of Northern Qi had been standing beside the two of them, listening quietly to all of this, listening until her face gradually turned pale and the hands in her sleeves trembled.

She didn't expect that under this big tree, she would be able to hear such shocking secrets. She also finally understood why Fan Xian, such a young man, had possessed confidence and even arrogance that were unattainable by the people of the world from the very beginning. He dared to be so dismissive of a human emperor, dared to sit on an equal footing with a Grandmaster like Si Gu Jian, dared to speak arrogantly about the world, and tried to control everything in his hands.

The young Emperor knew that Fan Xian's mother was Ye Qingmei, and vaguely knew that he had a blind Grandmaster behind him, but it was only today that she learned that the Ye family's daughter and the blind Grandmaster had an inexplicable relationship with the Temple.

What was the Temple? It was a deity floating above the nine heavens, coldly watching the suffering of the world, but without the slightest compassion. It was a will that transcended the mortal world, the guardian of the earth in legends. However, no one knew where the Temple was, or what the Temple was, except for Grandmaster Ku He, who had personally seen the Temple.

Ku He kowtowed in front of the Temple for three days, and then achieved the ability of a Grandmaster. Under the big green tree, the Ye family's daughter met Si Gu Jian by chance, and Si Gu Jian went from being a runny-nosed, older idiot to an unparalleled swordsman of a generation. And the Emperor of Qing...

The young Emperor's short eyelashes trembled uncontrollably. From the Great Wei to the present, everyone in the world wanted to see the appearance of the Temple with their own eyes, and wanted to seek the shadow of the heavenly Dao from the ethereal. Wasn't the Emperor of the Great Wei trying to achieve immortality, sending a team of thousands of people north to find the Temple?

So it turned out that Fan Xian had the shadow of the Temple behind him. The little Emperor of Northern Qi glanced at Fan Xian's profile, feeling extremely shocked and complex.

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Fan Xian took a deep breath and said, "I should know some of the later things. After living in Dongyi City for a few years, my mother started doing business, which led to the later Ye family and the current Qing Kingdom's Internal Treasury."

"The development of anything is never so simple." Si Gu Jian raised his only arm and held up a finger, "Even if Ye Qingmei is a fairy, she can't do everything back then without any help. She needs someone to help her."

Fan Xian frowned, looked at Si Gu Jian and said, "You?"

"That's me." Si Gu Jian said coldly, "Although I'm an idiot, I'm still the young master of the City Lord's Mansion. As long as I control the City Lord's Mansion, the Ye family's business can naturally run smoothly in Dongyi City."

"Understood." Fan Xian lowered his head and said, "The chance encounter under the big green tree may not be a chance encounter. In other words, she already knew the situation in the city before she entered Dongyi City, so she chose you."

"No, a chance encounter is a chance encounter." Si Gu Jian said coldly, "At least that's what I insist on believing. If she was looking for a partner, there were too many people better than me. The things in her mind were enough to attract countless wealth, and the existence of the blind man could ensure that she had no real enemies in this world."

"What were you doing in the years before you started doing business?" Fan Xian didn't argue about this issue.

"I was continuing to watch ants, then practicing swordsmanship, and then one day, that old poison Fei Jie came." Si Gu Jian yawned, seemingly a little tired from reminiscing for so long.

"Oh, my teacher said that the most glorious thing he did in his life was to cure an idiot in Dongyi City and turn him into a Grandmaster." Fan Xian laughed.

Si Gu Jian sneered, "I just tend to think things over and over in my head, I'm not a real idiot. What does becoming a monster like a Grandmaster have to do with Fei Jie?"

Fan Xian smiled with gentle eyes and said, "Then it naturally has to do with my mother."

Si Gu Jian was silent for a moment, then laughed, "Your mother can pass the Heavenly Dao technique to Ku He, of course she can pass a set of swordsmanship to me... However, I am a genius. Your mother's set of swordsmanship is useless. What's really useful is what I later comprehended myself."

"Yeah, you seem to be even more narcissistic than I imagined." Fan Xian shrugged, but he knew that this Grandmaster was telling the truth. Even if the Si Gu Jian Sword was one of the stolen techniques that Ye Qingmei had taken from the Temple, it was still a feat to cultivate to the realm of a Grandmaster with the posture of a mortal. It couldn't be done without great talent, great perseverance, and great luck.

"There are many kinds of genius." Si Gu Jian's eyelids were drooping, seeming like he might close them at any moment and never open them again, "Your mother once said that my genius lies in focus and indifference."

"Someone who can watch ants move their homes for ten years is not easy to find." Si Gu Jian said hoarsely, "An idiot who killed tens of thousands of ants one by one with thin wooden sticks is even harder to find. I was lucky to meet your mother and Wu Zhu, and your mother was also lucky to meet me in Dongyi City."

Fan Xian was speechless for a long time, silently savoring this sentence, thinking that decades ago, the continent was surging with wind and clouds, and I don't know how many talented and ingenious people emerged, such as Ku He, who had great perseverance, such as Si Gu Jian, who had great madness, such as His Majesty, who could endure. They all appeared at that time, and then Ye Qingmei escaped from the Temple with Uncle Wu Zhu and met these people.

Regardless of realm, regardless of luck, just in terms of talent and will, no one in this world today can compare with these powerhouses who had not yet become Grandmasters back then. Haitang can't, her master dares to eat human flesh. Fan Xian can't, his emperor father can endure the supreme pain and despair of shattered meridians. Wang Shisanlang can't either, his Sword Saint master doesn't take human lives seriously at all. The young people of the current generation have their own shortcomings and shortcomings. I don't know how many years and how many setbacks it will take to make up for these gaps, and then touch the layer of paper between heaven and man, and finally cross it, becoming a true Grandmaster.

"Everything is fate." Fan Xian sighed as he looked at Si Gu Jian.

Si Gu Jian looked at Fan Xian with a strange expression and said, "Do you want to learn? Just say it if you want to learn."

Fan Xian's heart trembled. He knew what this Sword Saint was preparing to teach him at this time. A wry smile appeared on his face, and he said softly, "I think you should already know that I already know it."

Si Gu Jian said coldly, "I'm talking about the real Si Gu Jian."

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Fan Xian's heart trembled, and he was silent for a long time. Suddenly, he opened his mouth and said, "Actually, there's no difference. The key is still in the people. The young people of our generation are still not as good as your generation. Of course, this gap may slowly narrow, but even if you move everything from the Temple in front of me, what if I can't learn it?"

He had infinite feelings in his heart. It seemed that the cultivation techniques that his mother had stolen from the Temple back then were passed on to these Grandmasters separately. Apart from Ye Liuyun's Flowing Cloud Palm, which was a bit unclear, the others had been sufficiently proven.

Outside the Temple, Ku He paid a heavy price to rescue Ye Qingmei, who was only four years old at the time, and then obtained a price from Ye Qingmei's hand, which was the supreme method of the Heavenly Dao today.

Although Si Gu Jian's swordsmanship was comprehended by himself with excellent aura and madness, it was obvious that if there hadn't been the chance encounter under the big green tree, the idiot would still be an idiot, unable to be inspired. How could he jump over layers and advance?

As for the yellow booklet that had been following Fan Xian, the upper volume was the Dao of the Hegemon, and the lower volume was the Dao of the King. After twenty years, he naturally understood that this was what his mother had left for the emperor, and then the emperor somehow left it to him through Wu Zhu's hand.

It was precisely the Hegemonic Dao technique that made Fan Xian feel frustrated in his heart. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't enter the realm of the Dao of the King. And he had also learned the true qi method of the Heavenly Dao, but there was no substantial help. Even if Si Gu Jian really passed on the so-called real Si Gu Jian to himself today, what help would it be?

Ye Qingmei's legacy scattered in this world had gradually been picked up by Fan Xian. It seemed that having one more piece wouldn't be of any use.

"Ye Qingmei grew into a towering green tree in Dongyi City, and I relied on the sword in my hand to gain a position in Dongyi City, becoming a partner who caught bugs beside her big tree." Si Gu Jian closed his eyes slightly and said softly, "If you can't learn it, you have to keep practicing. It's not that easy for a tree to grow."

Fan Xian smiled, walked under the towering green tree, and patted the tree trunk lightly, and said, "I'm not afraid of biting off more than I can chew. Since you insist on me learning it, then I'll reluctantly learn it."