Chapter 14 The Sword is Forgotten

The swordsman was about to leave when he was stopped.

The beautiful female official named Shangguan Wan'er was already stunningly beautiful, with a cold plum blossom mark between her eyebrows. Despite this, she dressed in men's clothing, combining feminine beauty and masculine spirit in one person, truly a woman of both talent and beauty.

"It's not so easy for Hero Chen to leave."

Shangguan Wan'er clasped her hands behind her back, examining the white-haired sword immortal with curiosity.

Chen Yuan's voice was indifferent: "You can't stop me."

Shangguan Wan'er joked, "That's not certain..."

She had received guidance from experts in the palace and considered herself capable of assessing all the heroes in the world. However, before she could finish her sentence, two icy fingers had already touched her brow. The sword qi was restrained but ready to burst forth, capable of shattering her soul and everything else into dust.

Her pupils contracted slightly as she finally believed the legends circulating among the people.

She took a step back and said softly, "His Majesty said..."

"Sword Immortal, you may leave, but you must leave something behind."

"Oh?"

Shangguan Wan'er said, "His Majesty hopes you can leave behind a stele for her."

…

Finally, the stone tablet was placed before Chen Yuan.

Along with it came the short sword he had given her in their youth.

Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng were helpless.

Chen Yuan tapped the short sword with his finger and said calmly, "She defied the will of Heaven and survived my killing blow."

"And you two had to set up a great formation, using the solar eclipse to conceal my own destiny. What price did you pay?"

The two Daoists exchanged a look, surprised.

Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng nudged each other, and Li Chunfeng knew he had to speak. "Well, since it was to wash away the killing intent and death tribulation from you, it naturally had to be done with Qi… This sword strike probably damaged the Qi of her Wu Zhou dynasty."

"How much damage?"

"Not much… about ten percent."

"But originally, the Qi of Wu Zhou and Li Tang was split fifty-fifty…"

The wanderer held the short sword, his tone even. "To make such a decision for the future of the world, I certainly believe she had the courage. But how much hatred and unwillingness were in that strike, who knows? Although we broke up, I understand her better than you do after all."

"There were many ways to kill me, but she had to use the knife I gave her back then."

"Saving me was real, hating me was real too."

"Using the Wu Zhou dynasty's Qi to extend my life was true, using my blood to refine pills was also true."

"People are not so easily divided into black and white."

Yuan Tiangang stroked his beard and hesitated, "So, Chen Yuan, have you decided what to write on her stele?"

The wanderer said calmly, "I have thought it over…"

A full seven days passed.

Finally, when Shangguan Wan'er helped Wu Zhao to arrive, they pushed open the door. The room was empty. Outside the door were three thousand Xuanjia soldiers, guarded by a Third Rank Jianjiao Qianniuwei General, yet no one knew how the swordsman had left.

The Wu Zhou Empress, dressed in luxurious clothes, hurried into the inner chamber.

Shangguan Wan'er held her breath, covering her mouth, unable to speak.

A crack appeared in the sky above, and a beam of light fell faintly. Beneath the blank stone tablet was a crescent-shaped jade pendant. The light fell on the jade pendant, ethereal and distant. For some reason, it was heartbreakingly beautiful.

Wu Zhao covered her mouth, a tear sliding down her cheek.

This was what she had exchanged with the wanderer when she was three years old.

All causes and effects in this life were exhausted, and the connection was severed.

You are you, and I am I.

"Your Majesty…"

Shangguan Wan'er and the three thousand Xuanjia soldiers outside the hall knelt down, heads lowered, not daring to look.

"Wan'er, return to the palace, return to the palace…"

Wu Zhao closed her eyes, her hands trembling.

That day, she returned to the palace and fell seriously ill.

The Wu Zhou dynasty, ruled by her, lasted only one generation.

Luoyang was chosen as the capital and renamed Shendu.

The Empress lived in the Ziwei Palace in Luoyang for the rest of her life.

She never returned to Chang'an.

And when she died, she ultimately used that blank stele as her own monument.

"Erase all records of him…"

Even though some blood had briefly restored some of Wu Zhao's youth, she herself was not a peerless talent like the wanderer. The passage of time inevitably led her towards death. Sitting in the Ziwei Palace, she said softly, "If there is a great tribulation, then perhaps a name is also a danger."

She narrowed her eyes, as if recalling the sunlight of the past.

"In my life, I will pretend I never met that wanderer."

With a decree, countless craftsmen and civil officials worked together to erase the name that had once shone brightly in an era. As a result, Xuanzang went to the Western Regions alone, and no Westerner named Shi Pantuo was brought to Chang'an. Even the sharp and ambitious Wang Xuance remained unknown, and even his birth and death years were not left in the world.

Only the achievement of destroying a country alone left some traces.

And Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng completed the *Tui Bei Tu*.

"This life is over, haha!"

The two of them searched for their burial places before their deaths, agreeing to leave Chang'an together, riding south. Eventually, Yuan Tiangang arrived at the Tiangong Academy in Langzhong. After examining the feng shui, he made his choice and marked it with a copper coin. Li Chunfeng continued to search for a place with good feng shui, using a golden needle as his marker.

In the end, they saw each other in the same place.

Rarely, the two argued endlessly. Finally, they dug up the earth and found that the golden needle and copper coin were both there. The strength of their divination techniques was so precise that the golden needle had passed perfectly through the coin's square hole.

Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng were stunned, then laughed loudly several times, each retreating five *li*.

In the middle was the Tiangong Academy, and on the left and right were the tombs of the two great Daoists.

Neighbors to each other, friends to each other.

Lonely?

Not lonely!

…

Later, no one ever really saw the swordsman again.

However, legends continued to spread. Some said that he traveled everywhere, once cutting off mountains with a single sword strike, and that he had walked across raging rivers, easily subduing terrifying demons. And finally, it was said, only said, that he lived in seclusion at the foot of a mountain. No one knew why, or why he chose that mountain.

During his travels, he took in two disciples.

One was a member of the Pei family of Hedong, considered a noble family.

The other was a beautiful girl with the compound surname Gongsun.

Later, even his disciples could shoot and kill giant spider demons in the mountains. It was said that this disciple's swordsmanship was magnificent and vast, like lightning under the light, and the girl's swordsmanship was also fierce. However, one leaned more towards battlefield swordsmanship, and the other was like the wandering swordsmanship of a knight errant. The young man was brave like a general, while the girl's swordsmanship was more gorgeous, coming like thunder and stopping like the clear light of a vast sea.

But their teacher never took action again.

He just lived quietly in seclusion at the foot of that mountain. It was said that there were celestial maidens on the mountain, and the old swordsman was just waiting for these celestial maidens to awaken, but no one had ever seen them, and everyone just laughed. The rumors spread wider and wider. When the young man traveled the world and made a name for himself as the Sword Saint, his teacher's reputation naturally became even greater.

Some even said that they had seen demons appear, but they were forced back by the old swordsman with a single glance.

Huge beasts like mountains fled in a sorry state.

When he was sleeping, a sword shadow could be faintly seen on the shadow stone wall facing his bedroom. The stars of the Dipper constellation flowed in the sky, and the falling light was like sword light. The people in the town at the foot of the mountain respected him immensely.

One day, the elderly wanderer was invited to the home of an acquaintance in the town as a guest.

As he went out, he saw a device hanging at the door of the acquaintance's house. He vaguely felt that it looked familiar, but he couldn't remember what it was. The old man thought for a long time, and finally turned to ask the others who were going to the banquet what this thing was and what it was used for.

The boisterous town merchant thought he was joking and laughed as he spoke to the others.

But he saw the white-haired old man's gaze was calm and steady, and he asked again.

Now the other guests hesitated, but they still couldn't figure out the reason and couldn't answer.

When the old man asked for the third time, noticing the peace in his eyes, these guests realized that the old man was not joking. They all stood up suddenly, shocked and exclaimed in confusion:

"Ah, ah… Master, the strongest swordsman in the world, the Sword Saint's teacher."

"The Master whose sword light chills fourteen provinces."

"You… you've even forgotten the sword?"

ps: The Tang Dynasty, the first chapter, ends. 2800 words, the chapter is a third longer than I thought. Sigh.

To be honest, the last chapter was more difficult to handle. This chapter is short and has no tricks, just a straightforward write-up.

As for the Tang Dynasty chapter, although the journey to the Western Regions in the middle was a bit lengthy, the overall logic, the changes in the characters, and the burying and retrieval of the undercurrents are all things I am quite satisfied with. It can be said that in terms of structure, I feel that the performance is okay.

Thanks to reader 1218502374262484992 for the 10,000 starting coins, thank you~