“Young Lady, are you alright?”
A decrepit, elderly man straggled to his feet and hobbled towards An Fei. Concern was plastered across the wizened and cracked countenance as he gazed towards the absentminded young girl, and the rags draped over his skin danced with the hallowed breeze. When she failed to respond, the elderly man turned his gaze to follow An Fei’s direction, and broke his aching lips into a sigh.
“Young Lady, perhaps it is your first time seeing this?”
The young girl blinked as her mind gently returned to the earth, and she raised her head to glance into a pair of tender and compassionate eyes. An Fei dragged her attention from the scenes of destruction, and slowly parted her lips.
“What happened here?”
“Winter has entered its final rage,” the elderly man quipped in a cryptic manner, and waved towards the ruined houses and buildings with a weary arm.
“The Blistered Stone sheds its tears, and the wind heralds the wrath of the Heavens. Those that are not protected by immortal talismans are doomed to withstand constant destruction and misery until the winter passes. Don’t worry too much about what you see here, Young Lady – this happens every year, and you get accustomed rather quickly.”
The city was razed to the ground every year? This was a… a common sight?
An Fei’s thoughts ground to a halt as she finished processing the words of the elderly man. She stared at the back of the decrepit elder as he hunched his shoulders and crouched to survey the ground for a wooden stick, and found herself speechless in disbelief. The young girl’s breathing hastened as she compared the scene before her with that of her memory.
The level of destruction imposed onto the city made no logical sense.
Bei Tang – no, the Shattered Star Continent – was rather lackluster in its technological development, but it more than made up for the deficit with spiritually enhanced artifacts and the presence of cultivators. Advanced, cutting edge alloys could be replaced with the rudimentary steel and organic alloys enhanced with spiritual essence, and in some qualities, exceed the former in performance.
Her underclothes were woven from an unknown variation of cotton that was naturally water repellant, which was a property not found in the cotton of the modern world. Moreover, her nightly talks with Xu Lingxin revealed that even the common people of the world possessed two or three miraculous objects.
But now… the primitive but miracle-worthy objects had been rendered to scraps, splinters, or decaying shards of their original form by the winter rain.
Proud buildings that once displayed their extravagance and prosperous wealth had been reduced into ruins and fossils of their former, illustrious past. Their owners who wore glamourous robes of silk and strutted with great confidence and pomp now squatted on the ground with their backs against the remains of their legacy and sackcloth thrown over their bodies. From ruins to rags in an instant…
“How… how do you cope with this? If this… this happens every winter, then –”
An Fei abruptly ventured with her heart brimming with a mixture of wonder and confusion. The young girl blinked and attempted to rephrase her words, but was interrupted by a wizened and blistered palm.
“Perhaps… you are not of Bei Tang’s origin? You may have experienced a different life in Great Yan than we have in Bei Tang,” the elderly man revealed a smile filled with warmth.
“Wealth is permanent in Great Yan, henceforth it receives great affection and greed. But here? The gold coins we adorn our purse, the establishments we build, the glamour we adopt – all are washed clean every year by the winter rain. Why then, should we cling so desperately to something that is meant to disappear?”
“Then how do you sustain yourselves?” An Fei reflexively frowned.
“Buildings are lost and corroded, leaving no place of adequate shelter. How is food and water preserved?”
The elderly man blinked, but soon displayed an expression of understanding. He turned to stroll through the rubble clattered across the streets with both hands behind his back, and gestured for the young girl to follow. Each ruins they passed, he raised his cracked and sore arms towards the people huddled underneath, and his eyes gleamed with a sharp brilliance.
“We are mere mortals of the world, nothing more. Naturally, our methods of storage are completely useless before the winter rain’s destruction.”
The ragged finger pointed towards a shattered barrel of rice hidden under the wreckage of a demolished warehouse. The grains had spilled and scattered across the decayed floor, and were stained pitch black with the sharp tinge of corrosion.
“Food will rot, and water will fester with horrible disease and toxin. Should we eat anything that has been touched by the accursed rain, we shall suffer an unspeakable torment, but be unable to perish until the winter ceases.”
Besides the small mountains of spoiled rice, tofu, kimchi, and other preserved foods, numerous clusters of rodents and small animals lay on the ground with their bodies curled in pain. The flesh had similarly decayed, revealing stained bones and crystallized blood.
“We mortals can only accept our fate of misery. However, the cultivators of Bei Tang will save us,” the elderly man gazed towards the murky skies.
“We are powerless, fragile, and disposable beings under the all-seeing gaze of the Heavens. We can topple under a single breeze combined with the winter rain, just like what you see here. But in exchange, we can seek protection from the immortal cultivators.”
The cultivators of Bei Tang will actively work to save the mortal citizens?
“Fate is not something to be tampered with, nor should it ever be challenged.”
The elderly man quickly guessed the thoughts of the young girl, and raised the stick clenched in his hand. With a light wave and a short toss, the thin piece of wood was dropped into the center of a small pool of water. The young girl watched in silence as innumerable black threads emerged from the once still water to thrash at the floating stick, devouring it piece by piece.
“Cultivators seek to tamper fate, thus they draw fate’s wrath. If it weren’t for the cultivators’ brazenness, would Bei Tang even be enshrined in such baleful rain?”
“You mean that this matter will come full circle?” the young girl hugged her sides with a questionable gaze.
“Since this matter is triggered by the cultivators, they will settle the consequences?”
The stick was finally digested by the small pool of water, and only thin wisps of black, trailing smoke remained of its existence. The elderly man squatted to brush at the flailing trails with his hands, and crinkled his eyes.
“Cultivators strive to fight against fate, thus they know best the terror the wrath of misguided fate can incur. While we do suffer from powerlessness against our fate, perhaps our ends are more merciful than that of the most glorified cultivator in Bei Tang.”
“Even if you must rebuild everything from the ashes with each passing year?”
An Fei prodded at a nearby stone with the tip of her shoe. She watched without much emotion as the jagged stone immediately crumbled into a torrential sea of dust, tiding over the cracked and disintegrated stone path. The elderly man’s ears prickled at the soft sound of a delicate foot crushing a weakened stone, but his heart remained calm and his countenance silent.
“Who doesn’t have a brush with misguided fate? Who doesn’t have an experience when the entire world seemed averse to their existence? Does that mean that mortals are meant to suffer?” the eyes gleamed with an omniscient, indifferent gaze, and stabbed deep into An Fei’s unhurried visage.
“Everyone will encounter moments when they are powerless, when they have no choice but to submit to the miseries of their fate. But so what? The triumphant are only so because they dared to muster the courage to rebuild, to fixate themselves on the future and its comforts. The weak are those who can only wallow deep in their past, embracing the miseries and pain whilst screaming for rescue, rescue from someone who will never save them.”
An Fei’s body froze, and unease flooded her heart. Her gaze was fixated onto the pair of illustrious yet aged eyes, unable to look away as they pierced deep into her soul. The frost trembled and crawled through her body until the elderly man turned to face the broken rubble, leaving the young girl breathless and drenched with cold sweat.
“Those who live a king’s life shall forever enjoy its splendors and triumphs. Those who only know to suffer and survive will excel at accomplishing nothing more.”
The voice was placid and devoid of much emotion save for a deep appreciation of the unknown. It was wistful, but held the confidence to never glance back on the journey it had upheld.
“Come, Young Lady from Great Yong,” the elderly man gently spread his arms towards the turbid skies.
“The cultivators will arrive after a week. We are mere mortals who only know of rebuilding after great suffering. Come, see and hear for yourself, how we powerless mortals shall triumph over the fetters of the past.”
