Notes on Longevity

Chapter 163 Half-white lips evoke longing; a mirror reflects the future.

Dao Yisheng, carrying a basket on his back and the last bundle of clothes in his hand, looked back at the small house they had just walked out of.

His eyes were filled with confusion and an indescribable sadness.

But his doubts were quickly dispelled by the woman in green. He heard her urging him to hurry on his way. After she saw Dao Yisheng's expression, she said softly, "I took ten taels of those fifty taels, and left the rest to my mother-in-law."

Dao Yisheng turned around and followed the woman in green. He asked, "Why did you do this? All that money was earned from making clothes. How could you just give it away like that?"

The woman in green turned her head and glanced at Dao Yisheng, whose eyes were full of childish innocence. She felt sad too. He was clearly a thousand-year-old tree demon, but why did he end up with the mind of a child?

Although she had lived for hundreds of years and had met many people and experienced many things in this world, all she had ever encountered were people with ill intentions who coveted her body or her true form.

However, the people she met later taught her to be kind to others, and perhaps she met kind-hearted people like that old woman. It was because of this that she became more kind and innocent towards the world, but she was not as ignorant of the world as Dao Yisheng, who was like a newborn baby.

She looked at Dao Yisheng and gently shook her head, her heart aching as she thought about what he had gone through in the hundreds of years since he left Jiangnan, and how he had become like this. So, she had no choice but to explain, "Ruhua is a pitiful child. She lost her parents at a young age, and her grandmother worked hard for more than ten years, doing needlework and manual labor. In the hardest times, she had to beg in the drought and winter snow, and was even almost bullied. Her grandmother suffered so much, and seeing Ruhua grow up, she herself grew old and could do nothing anymore, so she found a wealthy family in Yu'an City to have her work as a maid. Although being a maid is not easy, it is much better than the days of being poor and starving for the past ten years. Although I often visit my grandmother during my time in Yu'an, I cannot redeem Ruhua, even though I have enough ransom, and even though I feel an instant connection with her and treat her like a younger sister."

"Why?" Dao Yisheng was puzzled. Since Green Robe had the money to redeem Ru Hua, why couldn't he?

The woman in green sighed softly, then said to him with a sense of relief, "Because, Grandma will also pass away one day, and I can't stay by her side forever. She has her fate, and I have mine. Perhaps Grandma is right. No one can stay by anyone's side forever, and no one will remember anyone forever. We are all just travelers in this world, and eventually we will all return to where we came from."

Dao Yisheng listened to Green Robe's words and followed behind her speechlessly. He didn't know how to answer her, but before he could think about it, he saw Green Robe suddenly stop.

She nervously clenched her delicate hands, gently biting her lips, and slowly turned around, feigning a smile as she asked, "Tell me, if I were to die one day, would you remember me?"

Although the woman in green was smiling, she couldn't hide the endless sorrow in her eyes. Dao Yisheng stared at her blurry appearance with his blurry eyes, but a youthful, bright, and radiant smile, like the warm sun in winter or the scorching sun in summer, entered his eyes. It was a smile he had never seen before.

Like the woman in green, she was biting her lip, but her lips were bloodless, just pale, and her eyes were filled with tears, full of reluctance. She parted her white lips and choked out the opposite of what the woman in green said: "Life is long, just forget me."

"What's wrong?" Green-clad asked sadly, but Dao Yisheng didn't react for a long time, just staring at her blankly. She thought she had said something she should have kept to herself, making him feel at a loss, but after pushing him around for a while without any response, she asked in a flustered manner. Green-clad's concern pulled Dao Yisheng back from the inexplicable scene. He frowned, feeling his breathing suddenly become rapid. His heart was beating fast and a little painful, as if something was raging wildly in his heart, trying to break through the cage-like barrier within it.

Seeing this, the woman in green quickly helped him up, anxiously asking, "What's wrong? Is your injury still not healed?"

Dao Yisheng shook his head, feeling a headache coming on. The bundle of clothes in his hand fell to the ground, and blood flowed from his mouth.

Seeing this, Green Robe hurriedly called out Dao Yisheng's name, but his already blurry vision became even more blurred due to his headache. Even Green Robe's shouts and the discussions of passersby gradually disappeared, leaving only a dim and lifeless look in his eyes.

"puff"

On a riverbank outside Yu'an City, Taihua sat under a tree, his enormous gourd and silver sword leaning against each other. Before him was a flowing river, a water mirror encircling him. In the mirror, Dao Yisheng knelt before a wooden house, surrounded by a sea of ​​flowers, clutching Green Robe and weeping hysterically. He too was spitting blood, his face deathly pale, his body limp, his eyes vacant as he stared at the scene reflected in the water mirror.

He was puzzled, then his expression turned to one of furrowed brows and confusion. Finally, when he saw his aged, white-haired, and helpless reflection in the water mirror, he gave a bitter laugh with difficulty: "How could this be?"

He smiled bitterly, weakly waving his sleeves, and the water mirror in front of him instantly turned back into a puddle of river water, which fell onto the river surface and flowed away to who knows where.

"How could it have turned out like this?" he asked himself.

Before descending the mountain, he used a water mirror to check the results of his journey. It was clear that he, Dao Yisheng, and Lu Yi had fought a great battle with the old Daoist Yun Gong in Yu'an City. In the end, Lu Yi was no match for Yun Gong and died. Dao Yisheng also took this opportunity to safely pass through the tribulation that arrived ahead of schedule.

But why did everything change after they entered Yu'an? He could think that the previous tribulation of lightning turning into a tribulation of love was due to the variables he brought about by his abuse of the water mirror to peek into the future. But why did he see not only Dao Yisheng and Green Robe's tribulation of love this time, but also that he himself had lost all his magic power and turned into such an old man?
He couldn't understand it. Was all of this the result of his misuse of the Water Mirror, or was it simply the capriciousness of fate?
He stopped thinking about it, struggled to his feet, went to the gourd and silver sword, and, carrying them weakly, staggered toward the green-clad wooden house.

He didn't care about anything else now; he just wanted to leave Green Robe with Dao Yisheng, hoping that this might prevent the tragedy that occurred in the Water Mirror from happening.

(End of this chapter)