Twilight War

03

The wind blows across thousands of miles of yellow sand, and a pile of fire is burning on the yellow sand.

Zichen was sitting by the burning bonfire, and the red fire light illuminated the armor on Chuwu like molten gold.

"Where does the young master plan to go first after returning to Donghuang? Jinling? Chang'an? Or somewhere else?" Chu Wu asked.

"I haven't entered the country yet, so I don't think too much about it," Zichen said.

"It seems that the young master is the kind of person who can only make up his mind when he has to make a decision." Chu Wu said with a smile.

"I know, you mean that I'm too cowardly." Zichen laughed at himself and said, "My father also told me. People in power can be cruel, but they must not be cowardly. Because my hand The lives of all the soldiers who are loyal to me are in my hands. Any hesitation on my part will cost them their lives."

"Not really." Chu Wu frowned and said.

"kindness?"

"Have you ever thought about dying, young master?" Chu Wu suddenly asked.

"Why do you ask this suddenly?" Zichen asked.

"It's nothing. I just want to ask the young master if he wants to die?"

"Think about it, many times." Zichen looked at Chuwu and said.

"Everyone has thought about death. It's nothing, because that's our destination. We think about death as if we want to go home." Chu Wu said, "But why is the young master still alive?"

"Because I'm afraid of pain, I never died." Zichen said with a twitch of his lips.

"I also thought about death, but I am afraid of the world after death. I don't know what kind of existence there is, and I don't know what form I will live in the world after death. I am afraid that I will not be able to be the same as now Take control of yourself. So no matter when, I try my best to keep myself alive."

"I'm afraid, so I live." Chu Wu poured himself a bowl of wine.

"We should be grateful for our cowardice. Our cowardice has made us brave." Chu Wu drank a bowl of wine.

Zichen smiled and said, "But we will all die eventually, so what should we do at that moment."

"I am afraid of death, but when death inevitably comes, I will walk towards it like a warrior. What I fear will not make me shrink back." Chu Wu looked at the burning fire and said: "Maybe At that time, I will find that death is just the awakening of a nightmare, and it turns out that this is what I have always been afraid of."

Zichen smiled, and raised the bowl beside him, "Lu Shen Xinyi, pour the wine."

No sound.

Zichen sighed and said again, "Pour the wine."

Still no sound.

Zichen turned his head and looked at the nothing behind him, "Why, it's great to be a ghost. The tea is not served, the wine is not poured. Even the people are gone."

"We are now the ghosts of Patriarch Huangxuan, and we are no longer maidservants in Wutong Qili." The girl's almost cold voice came from the darkness.

The girl wearing a bamboo hat hides in the night in black, with two swords on her back, as silent as a ghost.

"Yes, yes, you ghost, it's amazing. But this wine must be poured for me. I won't pour the wine now. When I return to Donghuang, do I still plan to stop cooking? Is it because I don't have sweet-scented osmanthus cakes in the future? Eat it." The boy tilted his head and turned to look at the darkness and said.

The young man had twinkling peach eyes, but his tone was completely shameless, like a rascal at the entrance of Jinling Alley.

"Young master, we are ghosts. We will be the guardian of millions of evil spirits forever, and guard the bottom of the cold and dead Sword Tomb." Lu Shenyin said in the dark.

"But now you are not only ghosts, but also maids in my room. We will talk about things after I die." The young man smiled slightly.

"But……"

"It's nothing but, I am the young master and I have the final say."

Lu Shen looked at Zichen, and finally walked out from the darkness, picked up the wine jar, and slowly poured a glass of wine for Zichen.

"Also, I don't like this black body, so I'll change it another day. The colorful silk and satin will look better." Zichen said with a smile while looking at the girl pouring wine.

The girl disappeared into the darkness again.

Zichen drank the wine in the bowl by himself, staring into the depths of the desert.

"Go back to Chang'an."

Three thousand miles away, he is the king who has returned from this world.

02

Chang'an, rain.

It was getting late, and there were only a few servants dozing off in the Shiku of the Imperial Academy.

Recently, the court was unstable, Emperor Changgeng suddenly became seriously ill, and Huangxuan's family rebelled against Donghuang a few months ago.Officials of the Hanlin Academy, big and small, were busy standing in line, for fear of making a wrong step at this juncture.

Emperor Changgeng had nine sons, but only the 15-year-old Princess Yingluo was born.this

A dragon has nine sons, but not all nine sons become dragons.

And the nine sons seized the heir, and the waves caused would flood the entire court.

The young man was leaning against the door frame, terribly sleepy, just about to fall down, he suddenly looked up and saw the person coming, and was about to kneel down and call for someone, but when he saw the person waving his hands, he walked in.The boy knelt on the ground and did not dare to shout.

"The court has become so chaotic recently, sir is still interested in sorting out the history books." The visitor said, looking at the old man in brown clothes sitting by the stove.

There are several books spread out in front of the old man, holding a rabbit pen.A jug of wine was warming on the fire.

"Isn't Your Majesty also interested in coming to my remote place to have a look?" The old man didn't look up, he was still flipping through the book in front of him.

"It's just a few children playing around, it doesn't make me worry too much." Emperor Chang Geng said.

His voice was very slow and low, as if he was sick.

"These two books are unofficial history. Unreliable history can't be trusted." Emperor Chang Geng sat beside the old man in gray fur.

The fire between the two of them was crackling, and Emperor Chang Geng stretched out his somewhat stiff hand to the side of the fire.

"But the official history is not credible. It's better to look at the unofficial history, it's much more interesting than the official history." The old man said.

"Then tell me what future generations will say about me." Emperor Chang Geng turned his hands over.

The old man shook his head.

"You don't know either?" Emperor Chang Geng said rather proudly: "There are things you, the ghost Confucian king, know everything about."

"I mean, probably not many people will talk about you." The old man took down the warm wine from the stove and said.

Emperor Chang Geng didn't speak.

The old man poured a glass of wine for Emperor Chang Geng, "What future generations can remember is only the founding king, the subjugated people, and a few ZTE emperors. You are not the founder of the country. There is still some hope for being a subjugated country.”

"You mean to let me try to subjugate the country." Emperor Chang Geng said with a smile, holding a wine bowl in his hand.

"You're not too far behind." Wang Zhiwu picked up the jug and poured himself a bowl.

"Then who will be the next founder of the country? Huangxuan Jin?" Emperor Chang Geng said looking at the lees sinking in the wine bowl.

Wang Zhi said nothing.

"You've heard of Lu Tuzi's prophecy, right?" Emperor Changgeng asked.

"It's just a prophecy. I don't know if it's useful." The old man said while drinking wine.

"You are his mentor. You were the one who taught him before he was 12 years old. If you didn't know, how could Huang Xuanzhou invite you? I invited you here to teach my sons , you would rather hide here and compile history books than teach my sons."

"I taught that child just to have a leisure time. You know, he spends half of the year in the temple. I am just a poor scholar, unable to bear shoulders and hands. I opened two acres of land in Nanshan and planted it. I can’t even support myself. There are good students from the Jinling Huangxuan family supporting me, and I only need to teach for half of the time every year, so of course I will go to such a good thing.”

"In the past few years, what have you taught him?" Emperor Chang Geng asked while covering the wine bowl with his hand.

"Why do you ask this?" Wang Zhiwu asked.

"You said so."

"Before I met the child for the first time, I had lived in Huangxuan's house for more than three months, and the child didn't come back until early spring. I didn't think about teaching the child for three months, and I couldn't teach him all day long. Let him fight crickets."

"So I asked that child, the world is not benevolent, and treats everything as a straw dog; the sage is not benevolent, and treats the people as a straw dog, what does he think of this sentence."

"At that time, I thought, if he said this sentence is wrong, saying that the sages of heaven and earth should be merciful and kind to all things and common people, then I would teach him how to be a minister; if he said that the sages of heaven and earth should abandon kindness and let all things live and die on their own. Then I will teach him how to be a king." Wang Zhiwu said while drinking.

"Then what did he say in the end." Emperor Changgeng lowered his head and took a sip of his wine, but his eyes were still looking at Wang Zhiwu.

"That day, that child leaned against the window and thought about it for a long time. Finally, I couldn't wait any longer, so I walked up to him and asked him what he thought, but the child lowered his head and said——If the world regards me as a dog , then I will be safe."

"If the world regards me as a humble dog, then I will take it safely." Emperor Changgeng read again what the young man said with his head down, and after reading, the already aging emperor actually laughed while holding the wine, pale Warm wine was stained on his beard, "...is it safe?"

Wang Zhiwu poured the remaining wine from the jug into a bowl, bowed his head and continued to drink.

The fire in the stove was crackling.

It was still raining outside.

"What about you? Did you teach him the way of being a king or the way of being a minister in the end?" Emperor Changgeng asked.

"What I taught him was the way of being a man."

said the old man.

03

In Chang'an [-] Square, the flags and banners on Zhuque Street in Baili are wrong.

There was a smell of woody decay in the air, but it was easily covered by the smell of makeup and wine on the street.

At the beginning of the five drums, there are fires all over the house, and the generals are going to the court, and the buildings are like a city.

There are six street drums in Chang'an City, one drum for each shift.But before the five drums sounded, the officials would take advantage of the night, hold a fire, and walk on the long embankment in Chang'an to go to court.

In the capital of the Chen Dynasty in 800, hundreds of emperors were born and died.

Zichen sat safely in the carriage.

He has been to Chang'an once.

And that time he came here, he only felt that the sky in Chang'an was very low, as if it was about to be pressed down.The clouds are also very dark, so dark that they seem to cover all the light.

The sky in Chang'an should not be like this.

800 years ago, Chang'an, where Huangxuan Qiechen rode his horse, should not have such a low sky.

"Young Master Jin, Chang'an has arrived."

Lu Shen Xinyi smiled and opened the curtain of the carriage.

In the eternal Chang'an, the nine sons captured the dragon, and the phoenix returned.

The young master in white set foot on the thousand-year-old ancient capital.