Chapter 1586 — The Maiden Who Protected You Back Then
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
At the source of the Yong River grew a peach tree of unimaginable age.
This peach tree was peculiar. Though unimaginably ancient, it lived on, as though time could leave no trace upon it.
Stranger still, when your gaze fell upon it, it existed, standing there in place.
When your gaze did not fall upon it, it vanished, as though it did not exist at all.
It dwelt at once in existence and in nonexistence; the only thing that could determine whether it existed was whether you observed it.
It was Ling Tianzun's hairpin.
Ling Tianzun's peach-wood hairpin had been planted here, had taken root and sprouted, and forty thousand years had since passed. Winter went and spring came; the peach tree revived, put out branches and leaves, blossomed, and by summer bore peaches; at summer's end the peaches ripened and gave off their fragrance. A woman in blue would come beneath the tree and pick peaches to taste.
Long ago, Kaihuang had dredged the channel of the Yong River here, and come beneath the peach tree to pick a few peaches to quench his thirst.
He had lingered here several times, as though seeking someone; whether he found that person or not was not for outsiders to know. Ling Tianzun, like her hairpin, dwelt between existence and nonexistence. Her case was more complicated than the hairpin's.
She existed at once within the Unchanging Matter into which the Unchanging Divine Art had transformed a cross-section of the Heavenly River, and at once within reality.
Within the Unchanging Matter she was in a state of life or death, waiting for Shen Mu to arrive forty thousand years later, touch the Unchanging Divine Art, and rescue her.
And once she was rescued, she would return to forty thousand years ago, to the time when the Shanghuang era was ending and the Kaihuang era had not yet begun, and would live through the War of the Dao-Achievers.
At that time she would send Shen Mu, Kaihuang, Xiao Tianzun, Hao Tianzun, the Taisu Goddess and the others to forty thousand years in the future, and then alone endure forty thousand years of time, waiting for the future. At the same time, she also existed within the Unchanging Matter, thus producing the strange phenomenon of two of her.
At this moment, the her of the outside world was alive — but the precondition of being alive was that someone must observe her; unobserved, she was in the unknown of life or death. Only when Shen Mu came and broke the Unchanging Divine Art would she be released from this wondrous state.
These years, Ling Tianzun had been studying the two Qiankun Mirrors Shen Mu had given her, studying the Miluo Palace dao patterns within them. She was a tranquil woman, able to calm her heart and devote herself to study, ignoring the changes and shifts of the outside world.
Yet occasionally she would still come out to walk about; but the range of her walking was not wide, only around the source of the Yong River.
Short as the distance was, the time she traversed was very long. At the source of the Yong River she had more than once used the Unchanging Divine Art to travel back into the past.
She had seen Kaihuang Shen Ye as a youth, and, turning into mist, had carried the young Kaihuang back to the early years of Longhan.
There Kaihuang met Shen Mu and Niu Sanduo, and there too he became Shen Tianzun.
Afterwards Kaihuang had several more wondrous experiences of returning to the past, but he never mentioned them to anyone; even when his best friend, the woodcutter Wen Tiange, asked about these experiences, Kaihuang never told what he had actually encountered.
Ling Tianzun settled at the source of the Yong River.
She was still waiting for one person; the coming of this person would dissolve her state of life or death, dissolve her state of existing only when observed.
This person had given her the Hongmeng runes and the Miluo Palace dao patterns, and was waiting for her to go and settle the world in one stroke, needing her rescue. She waited and waited.