FW (Eng)

Extra 3: Last Life, This Life

Some who had died would look back on their own lives and feel no worries. Their three hun and seven po souls would then vanish by over half, and they would follow Soulhook Envoys in a fog down Yellow Spring Road, forgetting as they walked it, not knowing what night it even was by the time they arrived at the Bridge of Helplessness. After that, they would pick up that bowl of forgetting brew, and their previous lives would be completely gone.

Those who had done good would have their virtuous merits discussed. Those who had done evil would go to the underworld. If they deserved rebirth or transmigration, they would re-enter the reincarnation cycle. After death, everything was settled, and the consciousness would be as clean as white snow, starting over anew.

Therefore, whenever someone shut their eyes, the people that still lived would always do all they could to satisfy whatever desires they left unfinished, to save them the extra hardship as they traveled Yellow Spring Road.

Some would still have unresolved obsessions from prior to death, and their souls would follow them in their walk, unwilling, all for the sake of material gains from the mortal plane. They would then be made to bathe in the Yellow Springs, and after getting over themselves, a ferryman would pull up to see them off to rebirth.

The living's events were not for the dead to worry about.

Yellow Spring Road was very long — the length it would take one to forget was exactly how long it would be.

The only thing that couldn't be forgotten was love. After walking four-thousand, four-hundred and forty-four zhang, they could still look back and line up in a row beneath the Bridge of Helplessness. Those waiting for someone else would sometimes wait a day or two, sometimes a decade or two, or sometimes an entire mortal lifespan.

Some would wait for another to come, but that someone would be so out of it, they couldn't remember them any longer. Occasionally, there would be some that could, but they would be one aged person with one young one, and even though they shouldn't recognize each other, they would end up clasping each other's hands with tears in their eyes, all while a Ghost Messenger would prompt them from nearby: "You two, the time has come. Get going..."

In love of the mortal world, there was always a fondness for saying some oaths of eternal love, but those were only terms that would last no more than a few decades, no more than one life-and-death cycle of rebirth, and then it would be, 'You are you, and I am me.' How was that not laughable?

These words were what Cao Weining was hearing the Ghost Messenger say to Meng Po as he crouched beside the Bridge of Helplessness.

The Messenger had stated that his name in life had been the surname Hu, given Jia, and he was a passionate person. Cao Weining listened to him bother Meng Po with his non-stop chatter while she ignored him, ladling soup at her own pace. The Bridge never stopped metamorphosing; legend stated that how much forgetting brew was drunk down corresponded to how wide the Bridge would be. One cup forgot an age, dust returning to dust, earth to earth.

Messenger Hu Jia babbled for half the day but never saw Meng Po raise her head, so he got in close to converse with Cao Weining. "Kid, why aren't you drinking the soup? Waiting for someone?"

Mortals were insipid in love and luck, and all of them were middling. It was rare to have one that was so clear-headed, where even an immortal ghost of the netherworld would be willing to talk more to him.

"Ah..." This was the first time Cao Weining was speaking with the Messenger, and he was more or less startled from the favor. "Haha, yes. You are—"

Hu Jia had absolutely no intention of having an exchange with him; he was probably just getting bored from having nothing to do, and wanted to find someone to dump words onto. "There was another that waited here before," he straight-up cut him off, "and once he started, he was waiting for three hundred years."