My Husband’s Ascension C18 (Part 1)
TL Note: I’ve been really busy with some irl matters and haven’t be translating lately, so to avoid running out of stocked chapters, I’ll just be posting the first part of this chapter for this week. However, fear not, the length of this split chapter remains just a long as the previously uploaded chapters~ Thanks for understanding, and enjoy!
Proofread and tlced by 旭亭
Chapter 18.1 Misguided Rescue
Zhao Zhao, who had been wandering aimlessly, halted.
Perhaps because she had strayed from the path of the original memories, her maid A’Ying, who had accompanied her this far, vanished like mist.
All that remained in sight was the whirling snow, as if it sought to bury the world itself.
Zhao Zhao lowered herself beneath a lone plum tree, the dream a falsehood, yet the chill all too real. She hugged her knees, curling into a small, shivering bundle, waiting for Dao Lord Tianshu to confront his own heart’s knot and shatter this illusory world.
(TLN: 心结, or literally translated as ‘heart’s knot’, is an unresolved worry, grievance, or emotional burden that stays in someone’s mind and won’t let go.)
The moment she had met the gaze of Xie Lanshu in the snow, Zhao Zhao had known—this was not her heart’s knot.
It was Xie Lanshu’s, or Dao Lord Tianshu’s heart’s knot.
Since the unrest belonged to him, she could do nothing; the most she could do was remain far from him, as she did now.
…Perhaps the reason this place had become his knot was because she had once picked him up here, bringing him into marriage while his memory was erased, thereby derailing his Dao.
At this thought, Zhao Zhao’s heart sank even further.
…
…
Wait…
Why here?
Earlier, when she had been ensnared by the illusion, Zhao Zhao had seen herself as a child, sitting with her parents on New Year’s Eve, wrapping dumplings together. Her father and mother appeared exactly as she remembered—flour-stained cheeks, the faint fragrance of their sleeves—every detail so lifelike it could fool the senses.
This phantom dream laid bare the fragile corners of the human heart.
How harshly must one be tempered, to be able, as Shi Lanyan claimed, to decisively pierce such illusions and guard one’s Dao-heart?
Zhao Zhao wondered whether Shi Lanyan had successfully emerged from her own illusion. Despite her formidable cultivation, her temperament was hardly stable, and Zhao Zhao worried that her previous words might have carried a hint of bravado.
Thinking of Shi Lanyan, realization struck her.
…It was Shi Lanyan’s crows that had called him here. He had come to rescue Shi Lanyan.
A faint, delicate stir of feeling that had just begun to surface in Zhao Zhao’s heart was instantly doused by a cold splash of clarity.
Indeed, that made sense.
To risk himself so recklessly—if not for his childhood friend Shi Lanyan, then for whom else could it be?
It seemed his luck had faltered: failing to find Shi Lanyan, he had instead stumbled upon her, the one who so desperately wished to kill him. Perhaps now he felt a twinge of regret.
Zhao Zhao tugged at the corners of her mouth, attempting a smile, but no matter how she tried, it would not form.
…How she longed to return to Cloudculm Abode.
She wondered what Daoist Ming Jue and the others were doing at this moment. She wished to return and sleep a full, untroubled sleep; to wake to find Yao Ling and Rong Yu climbing in the courtyard, Li Feng tapping at her window, urging her to come and eat.
Perhaps Dao Lord Tianshu was right: the bloody, tempestuous world of cultivation was not a place meant for her…
Zhao Zhao’s emotions felt ensnared by something viscous and dark.
Her consciousness was drawn downward, a slow descent that brought no pain, only the sense that, if she surrendered herself, she might drift to a place of peace.
“Girl, do not be beguiled by the Soul-Binding Willows.”
A voice, born of nowhere yet echoing through her mind, wrenched Zhao Zhao’s eyes wide open.
Who?
Who’s speaking?
…
The sound of the young woman’s footsteps had long vanished into the wind and snow. Around him, only the howling gusts persisted, occasionally punctuated by the brittle snap of a snow-laden pine branch and the muffled thud of snow striking the ground.
The mortal world lay under a blanket of wind and snow.
The young man, smeared with blood, stirred his stiffened fingers.
The course of this illusion no longer mirrored reality, and his mind felt markedly clearer.
All the beguiling techniques of the cultivation world are bound by a single principle: so long as he does not empathize with the illusion or repeat its choices, he will not be trapped within it.
The spiritual energy not absorbed by the Soul-Binding Willows gradually returned. Dao Lord Tianshu forced his battered body to rise.
Yet, before he could take a step, the severity of his injuries caused him to stumble and collapse onto the snow.
Too heavy.
Limbs numb, body weighted as if filled with lead.
A question suddenly formed in Dao Lord Tianshu’s mind.
Years ago, how had such a fragile young girl managed to carry him back to the Xie Residence?
He lifted his head in the snow, gazing at the winding mountain path below.
Even in his unconscious state back then, he could imagine the difficulty she and her maid must have faced, trying to transport an injured adult, utterly drained of strength, through such a blizzard.
And now, she would no longer come to bring him home.
Even if Xie Tanzhao were to approach him now, he would stop her, for he knew that in order to break free from this illusion, she was the greatest obstacle.
Yet…
When she truly departed without a backward glance, it was as if fine, intricate threads had wound themselves around his heart. The tighter they pulled, the more they eclipsed all the physical pain in his body.
He realized this was the work of Xie Lanshu’s lingering memories.
This was the consequence of unresolved earthly attachments.
These pasts, long overdue to be swept away, if not completely purged, would gnaw at his Dao-heart like a festering wound; even something like the Soul-Binding Willows could shake his resolve.
As the master of Immortal Realm of Kunwu, a Dao Lord of the cultivation world, he should not have such vulnerabilities.
Dao Lord Tianshu rose to his feet once more.
As his resolve strengthened, the spiritual energy swirling around him grew ever more abundant. When the intent of his sword heart finally overcame the power of the Soul-Binding Willows, the snowy landscape before him shattered bit by bit—every blade of grass, every tree dissolving into dust.
Had the illusion been broken…?
Dao Lord Tianshu lowered his gaze to his right hand.
The hand that should have summoned the Single Intent Sword now held a brush instead.
Lifting his eyes, the wind and snow had vanished. In their place was a warm, serene inner chamber; incense smoke curled lazily from the brazier*, charcoal crackling softly within.
(TLN: a portable heater that uses coal to heat up the room in ancient China.)
He sat before a desk, a stack of snow-white sheets of fine writing paper laid out before him.
For some reason, he felt deep within that the key to this illusion lay in what he was meant to write.
—Dao Lord, what name beareth thou?
Once again, the voice of the Soul-Binding Willow echoed.
Dao Lord Tianshu could clearly sense his consciousness was lucid. As long as he remained unmoved, the power of the Soul-Binding Willows would gradually dissipate. Perhaps this scene was the last illusion it could maintain.
Shi Lanyan had yet to be found, and whether the Soul-Binding Willows’ fire had been extinguished remained unknown.
Outside, countless lives still awaited his rescue; he could not afford to waste any more time in this tedious illusion.
He lifted his gaze and fixed it on a point in the void.
“So this is your final gambit?”
The Soul-Binding Willow remained silent for a moment, only for the charcoal in the brazier to pop and crackle intermittently.
—My methods are few, but sufficient. Answer my question, and you may depart this place unharmed.
—Once more I ask, Dao Lord, what name beareth thou?
The Soul-Binding Willow drew upon human souls, probing the heart, and Dao Lord Tianshu did not know what insights it had gleaned—yet it devised such a strange method to ensnare him.
Still, he dipped his brush in ink and wrote upon the writing paper:
Dao Lord Tianshu
Each stroke moved with unforced grace, the ink dark and abundant.
The charcoal brazier burned quietly, and incense smoke curled languidly through the chamber.
——Dao Lord, what name beareth thou?
This time, the voice of the Soul-Binding Willow carried a faint note of delight.
Dao Lord Tianshu’s brow twitched imperceptibly.
The illusion seemed to solidify further, indicating that the Willow’s power had grown.
He lowered his eyes to the three words on the paper.
Lifting the top sheet, he hesitated for a moment before writing another name:
Zhongli Ren
It was hardly a name in the conventional sense.
His origins lay with the Zhongli Clan, though that once-proud family had withered for millennia, its remnants reduced to orphans adopted by various sects—bought home like prized beasts of pedigree, reared until grown, then measured by appearance and talent to decide if they merited training.
He, a child of that generation, upon his purchase by Kunwu he was casually given the designation “Ren,” drawn from the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.
Only later, when he rose to wield authority over the cultivation world and restored the Zhongli ancestral temple, did no more descendants bear such a designation.
Was this the name the Soul-Binding Willow wanted him to write?
A faint, eerie laughter cut through his thoughts.
The distant scenery beyond the window, once blurry, became sharper. The Willow’s strength, once suppressed by him, now subtly pressed upon him.
At this moment, he finally understood what the Soul-Binding Willow had been seeking.
Though the illusion was wrought by the Willow, its content was shaped by his deepest heart’s knot.
He knew clearly what name it sought.
This heart-knot had nothing to do with his sword, Kunwu, or Zhongli Clan.
Rather, it was that name—repugnant to his self-respect and Dao-heart, one he could neither admit nor confront.
The Soul-Binding Willow did not merely wish for him to write his given name. It demanded that he acknowledge the truth of his heart.
To face the truth of who his heart acknowledged, desired, and yearned to embody.
From his brush, a droplet of ink descended onto the paper, spreading without a sound.
