Faraway Wanderers Novel (English Translation)

Extra 4: Baiyi, Jianghu

Rumor had it that when celestials reached the end of their calculated lifespans, they would undergo Five Decays. Once accustomed to staying within the boundaries of bliss, they would be reluctant to part with it, taking in the poison of aversion. According to the ‘six harmonies mental cultivation’, once a ‘celestial’ ate and drank of the human world’s smoke and fire, they would present a waning appearance, their hairs turning white, qi gradually weakening, and body gradually declining. No longer would they prosper, nearing their own coffin.

Ye Baiyi was feeling as much right about now. His hair was getting whiter by the day, as if someone had a brush and was painting it somewhere unseen, bit by bit. When casually gathered up, it would come out in large chunks, too. Sometimes, he would suffer delirium, and forget where he had just been and where he was going. His energy was lacking; sometimes, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night, and sometimes he would sleep, then find it hard to open his eyes when the sun was already high in the sky the next day.

Even so, he felt delighted, free, and without a smidgen of ‘aversion’. What the six harmonies had claimed was absolute nonsense.

The root cause of this was probably the fact that he had never taken himself as a celestial, but felt himself to be the living dead.

In his view, once he was off Changming, he was the living dead that had now opened his eyes to come alive, even if it was only for a few brief years, even if he would once again walk the path of mortality where one was born, grew old, got sick, and died.

He ate a lot of food on the daily. At times, he would traverse very long distances just to try out a purportedly-delectable snack from some area. The ancients told that wanting food and sex was human nature; he was too old to be in the mood for sex, so he threw his entire being into food. He was not a picky eater, eating everything and enjoying everything, where even a bowl of tofu, randomly grabbed by the proprietress of a roadside pub, could be finely savored by him for a good long while.

To someone who had eaten cold food and snow water for a century, the sourness, sweetness, bitterness, and spiciness of the world were all precious things.

He had paid visits to people that knew of what had happened thirty years ago. After going down every possible route, he had finally found the unremarkable graves of Rong Xuan and Yue Feng’r, took back the dust-covered Ancient Blade of the Dragon’s Back, then put their bones together, cremated them, placed them in a jar, and entrusted another with delivering them to Changming.

He had been wanting to obstruct those that were fighting over opening up the arsenal, but after seeing a farce first-hand, he felt fatigued again… what did their lives and deaths have to do with him?

Thinking himself to be just an old man on the brink of death, he had nothing to be concerned about while he lived, and nothing to do the day long. Thus, he assumed his duty to be traveling all North and South of of the great river and eating all the food of the realm. Perhaps he would go until the day he could no longer move, and where he ended up would simply be the place he would die.

By the by, he missed Rong Changqing every once in a while.

Rong Changqing, his sole friend of this world, had already been dead for thirty years.

In spite of that, Ye Baiyi could still recall, without a single detail lost, how the other used to look, how he looked when young and proud, how he looked when teenaged and whimsical, and even how he looked when a babbling toddler.

Proud and wild during his life, Ye Baiyi refused to remember people of insignificance. The lone vivid recollection he’d had since his birth pertained to that man.