Faceted Jade a.k.a Carven Jade [ENG Translation]

CHAPTER 41 (II)

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He hadn't turned up for eight years, but now that he's here, how is it possible that he was here to save him?
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As Qin Yan rushed down towards the foot of the Cliff of Ten Thousand Bones, Fu Changling was wrapping up his training for the day.

He roasted a chicken for Tan Xin and filled a jar of wine with the Skullflowers he'd picked yesterday. Tan Xin accompanied him as he sealed the wine jar and buried it in the ground, then watched as he walked over to the stone wall and drew a horizontal stroke where the characters "first month" had already been drawn on a huge portion of the wall.

Tan Xin floated in mid-air with his chin propped up, looking at him with quite a bit of ruefulness and saying, "Stop drawing. You've been drawing for how long, yet the one you're waiting for never shows up? He's forgotten about you."

Fu Changling twirled a pebble from the side and threw it at him, saying disgruntledly, "Nonsense."

Tan Xin deftly dodged Fu Changling's pebble, and his childish features revealed a hint of emotion only seen in adults. "Also, don't delude yourself. You said so. This isn't the first time he's lied to you. He told you to wait for him in the previous life, but he never came back. He must've lied to you yet again."

"I say," Fu Changling was unable to decide whether to laugh or cry, "how heartrending can you be? I'm bummed enough as it is. Can you just soothe me?"

"We're both grown-ups," Tan Xin wagged his finger, "Don't keep running away from reality. If he doesn't show up, then he probably won't. Don't let yourself get unduly miserable. Just think about it. You've been doing fairly well here. You've mastered all Four Stances of the Celestial River. This is a high-level sword technique. You won't come across another experience like this in your life."

"I sincerely beg you. Please cut it out." Fu Changling made a pleading gesture. "Your words are too much for me to bear. Just eat up, then go to sleep, please."

Tan Xin pouted his lips, went to his own tiny bed, pulled his tiny quilt over himself, and said nothing more.

Fu Changling turned back to look at the horizontal strokes on the wall. He stared at them in silence for a few moments before turning away and returning to his bed.

This was his eighth year here.

At first, he waited gladly, but as time passed and he kept waiting, he couldn't tell if he was still waiting or if he had forgotten.

These eight years had given him a rough idea of what was going on at the foot of the Cliff of Ten Thousand Bones. The Cliff of Ten Thousand Bones was roughly split into two areas, one of which was the cliff's core, where a city called Baiyu was located. The Ghost City was said to be the dwelling place of all of the Cliff of Ten Thousand Bones' high-level fierce ghosts, the strongest of whom was the Ghost King, Xie Shen.

Outside of Baiyu City, there were all the lone souls. These lone souls wandered around and divided up their respective territories, each of which had its own ghost lord. These territories beyond made up less than one-fifth of Baiyu City, but there were already over a dozen different ghost lords.

Fu Changling was now one of the ghost lords.

He didn't possess a Jindan, and he had been honing the skill of swordsmanship from the person in the sword for the past eight years. This person in the sword wasn't a real person but rather merely a sliver of divine soul left behind by a certain senior in the past. She rarely appeared and almost always communicated through Tan Xin.

His day-to-day life consisted of learning swordsmanship in the morning and training with the fierce ghosts on the cliff in the afternoon. After eight years of fighting in this manner, he took one step at a time to go beyond the cliff, and somehow he managed to claim a piece of territory, and somehow he became a junior ghost lord.