Volume Four: The Mountain Stream Chapter Forty-Three: A Glance Back to the Past

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Chen Chen’s story continues. This time, he will return to the several lifetimes he once passed through, to glimpse the truth of those years—the rights and wrongs, the merits and faults.

Chen Chen appeared on Yinghuo Star. Within the spirit realm, a story of survival was unfolding there.

He appeared on Yinghuo Star in the form of a spirit body, struggling simply to remain alive.

There, Chen Chen performed the Beidou Passage to the Netherworld. His spirit body crossed over to the Heavenly Martial Continent, another continent that also possessed a spirit realm.

There, by merging his spirit body with a physical body, Chen Chen became one with another person and turned into the Chen Chen of that era.

From within the scene, Chen Chen watched in spirit form as the events of those years unfolded before him.

He discovered that he was a spirit of the book—and nothing more than a spirit of the book.

The scene being enacted was the three-life bowing ceremony from the time when Chen Chen of that era married Mu Qingcheng.

Chen Chen was merely Chen Chen. The true self within the story was the protagonist of that particular drama.

The story continued. Chen Chen crossed mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, and arrived at Qingqiu City.

There, his identity gradually became clear.

In a daze, everything seemed no more than a dream, a bubble, an illusion.

Chen Chen left the body of the man who had formed a bond and entered into marriage with Mu Qingcheng. He once again became a spirit of the book, passing through many years of time.

When he awoke again, he was sitting idly upon that meteorite. There, too, within the spirit realm, he gradually came to understand himself.

Later, his figure descended with the meteorite into the Novice Village. Many people wanted to impersonate Chen Chen.

They wished to play at being Chen Chen, reap a few benefits, and gain a little extra attention of uncertain origin. Many actors had gathered there.

Chen Chen did not understand what was happening. He merely walked among the living world through his own story.

The Supreme One recorded all of this. He had no grand designs; he was simply using words to create his own story.

This was the way he realized his value and sustained himself. What he did most was add words day after day, increase the presence of those words, and guide the story toward a better development. He was a storyteller.

The people in the Novice Village were struggling as well, and no one knew why they had appeared there. Even the Supreme One who wrote the plot did not know how he had somehow gathered so many people there and turned them into a story.

There were still many things Chen Chen did not understand. Everyone in the Novice Village had come together, and no one knew who had plotted against whom.

Perhaps they were all trying to make a living, all working as hard as they could.

At the beginning of that meteorite’s tale, the Supreme One opened the story’s era with a single chapter. After that, most of those who entered the story were people with their own aims, scheming over one thing or another.

The same was true in the Novice Village, where countless stories were being enacted.

Chen Chen existed as a spirit of the book. Within the Realm of the Evil Dragon, he remained clear-sighted as an onlooker, accumulated virtue, practiced kindness, and did what he could to help.

At that time, Chen Chen acted in concert with all living beings, and through what he did, he came to understand that place more clearly.

The Gate of Ghosts at the Netherworld’s Underworld Palace was, at first, merely a place where a story was being created. Later, the actors who performed there also became immersed in the drama.

Chen Chen did not quite understand why they had come. The Supreme One, for his part, merely continued to write his words diligently.

More and more people joined the story. The Supreme One himself did not know how so many people had suddenly appeared.

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No one knew whose idea it had been. In any case, Chen Chen had never asked for such a thing, nor had the so-called Supreme One demanded it.

Everything was an accidental convergence of fate and circumstance. Perhaps they happened to find there what each required; perhaps they happened to discover that there were roles for them to play.

Chen Chen’s life there was, at the time, fairly lively.

The Supreme One was somewhat overwhelmed by the unexpected favor. According to the progress of the work he had created, the story was nowhere near the stage at which it could be adapted for performance or used to negotiate rights and collaboration.

Only a few tens of thousands of words had been written. Even if it were not yet suitable for acting, involving two more people to push matters forward would still have been far too early.

Yet no one had expected so many people bent on fame and profit to arrive.

After the Novice Village, Chen Chen appeared in the Ancient City of Clear Breeze. There, too, he remained a spirit of the book.

Chen Chen was a spirit of the book used by the Supreme One to create his story. He needed to produce more and more plot, and it did not have to be real. So long as he continuously created words, that was his work.

Many people and many stories appeared in the Ancient City of Clear Breeze.

Chen Chen did not know why they had come. He merely had the feeling that someone was secretly plotting and calculating something.

Chen Chen’s identity changed again and again. He did not know why, but neither was it the author’s intention.

It seemed that other people wished to obtain something through Chen Chen’s story, while Chen Chen himself gradually journeyed farther and farther within it.

Every plotline in the story was merely the deliberate scheming of those with ulterior motives, while the author’s purpose was simply to produce more words.

The participants in the story, or those behind the scenes, had entered and plotted for the sake of the many things they coveted.

The spirits of the book possessed by the author had been created solely from his conception of the plot.

No one knew who wanted to turn fiction into fact, nor who wished to scheme and maneuver for some hidden purpose.

Those who plotted in the unseen depths possessed a thousand different designs.

They wished to obtain many things, but those matters had nothing to do with him, nothing to do with Chen Chen, and nothing to do with the author.

The author was merely using words to construct a story that could conjure images through association. The spirit of the book was merely a character existing within a fictional tale.

Sometimes, a mere few sentences constituted his entire existence.

The play had never required anyone to participate in reality, nor had the author wished for anyone to join or take part.

Everything was simply the author using words to construct something—a story, a novel. Everything else was irrelevant.

After the Ancient City of Clear Breeze, the story came to the Ancient City of Watching the Sea, another world within the book, the world of the book’s spirits.

After partially overlapping with reality, everything was still only the opening act.

Chen Chen did not dare say which place was the Ancient City of Clear Breeze and which was the Ancient City of Watching the Sea.

He could only say that they were worlds existing within a book, fictional territories belonging to the map of that book.

They did not overlap with reality. Although, in the eyes of certain people, they had become linked to reality, that was not what the author wanted.

The author was also trying to avoid risk. Things might otherwise become entangled with obscenity or politics; he might otherwise find himself facing a lawsuit, or cause human relationships to become strained.

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After this part of the story, Chen Chen’s tale advanced once more into reincarnation. This time, it returned its focus to the human world.

Everything was merely a story, and had to remain merely a story. Even if similarities existed, even if someone deliberately tried to turn an actor into the protagonist, the author was doing his utmost to avoid such confusion.

Chen Chen’s story continued, but it was important to understand clearly that it was only a story.

As the story progressed, it gradually became a plot held within the author’s hands.

Chen Chen, the Lord of the Body, and the Supreme One were all merely titles within the story, names belonging to a certain moment and a certain scene—drawn from life, yet rising above life.

They were all simply characters in the author’s hands, figures who existed only as part of a story of the past.

Nothing involved murder charges or lawsuits, nothing involved obscenity or politics. Everything was merely a fictional story, and nothing more.

Many others were also watching the progression of this story, each with their own designs and calculations.

Chen Chen was merely the protagonist of the book. At times, even he himself was fictional.

So were the characters he encountered. So was the setting of the story. So was the development of the plot.

It was only that some people found them familiar and believed they were reality itself—the genuine maps and regions of the world.

The truth was that this was the world background of a novel.

It was merely fiction, a work that did not require anyone to search reality for a true map to make it fit.

At this point, the novel was once again gradually approaching the end of one stage.

Chen Chen’s story was not about becoming fabulously rich or achieving immense wealth.

Those who were fated to encounter it had to understand what was real and what was false.

The years of cultivation were immeasurably long. Even a garlic sprout had to endure the passage of time, growing from a garlic sprout that might exist only in imagination into one that truly existed.

There were still many people in this human world, busying themselves with and pursuing countless matters.

They held fast to their original hearts. They did not deceive, swindle, or cheat; they did not indulge in grandiosity or self-importance; they did not seek quick success or immediate gain; they did not scheme from the shadows.

They simply managed the presence and absence of things in their businesses. Wealth was often only incidental.

One might know a person’s face without knowing that person’s heart. One must constantly make good use of one’s own strengths and win the recognition of powerful figures who shared one’s aspirations.

Money was often merely money. Whether there was more or less, life went on all the same.

So long as the direction of one’s life was not mistaken, one held fast to kindness.

To continue persevering—that was the finest state in which to live.

As for all those days and nights: how much calculation was spent scheming against others, how many words were spoken by others, how many grudges and enmities were plotted, how many acts of evil sent disaster flowing elsewhere—

those were nothing more than other people’s schemes: other people planning with their devices, other people’s labor, other people taking advantage of the darkness of night to carry out conspiracies and secret attacks, joining forces in all manner of unlawful deeds.