My Husband’s Ascension C53
Chapter 53 Lone Lifetime
Scarlet silk banners festooned the Xie Residence, which had seen no celebration for many years.
Guests arrived in an unending stream to offer their congratulations, while maids and servants bustled busily through the courtyard. The Xie couple, standing before the hall to greet visitors, glowed with pride, and all who saw them envied the eldest daughter for securing such a splendid match.
Zhao Zhao watched as Dao Lord Tianshu casually formed a hand sign. To hide himself from the eyes of these mortals, only a simple illusion was needed.
“…Has this young master a wedding invitation?”
He lowered his gaze to the matchmaker at the door. Zhao Zhao recognized her: this was the same matchmaker present when she had married Xie Lanshu.
Dao Lord Tianshu was silent for a moment before producing a single translucent pearl and offering it to her. “I passed by here and remembered my ties to the Xie family. Hearing that the Xie family’s daughter is marrying, I bring this gift in celebration.”
The matchmaker’s eyes nearly popped out of her head at the sight of the large, lustrous pearl. With a gift like this, a wedding invitation hardly mattered. She hurriedly instructed her attendants to usher this ‘God of Wealth’ inside and arrange a place for him to sit.
Low murmurs drifted through the crowd.
“I heard this Xie daughter is marrying for the second time. How can she wed a newly minted first-time jinshi*?”
(TLN: 进士 (jìn shì) is a successful candidate in the highest imperial civil service examination; palace graduate)
“The Xie Residence is rich! A few years ago they came into a great fortune, and while they were once only Yunmeng Pier’s wealthiest, a few years of management have nearly made them the richest family in all the realm!”
“So this new jinshi is marrying the Xie daughter for her money?”
“Of course. I hear he already has a mistress… but that’s just hearsay, take it with a grain of salt…”
The teacup in his hand shattered to powder. Those nearby stiffened at the sound. Silently, he hid his hands within his wide sleeves.
“Here comes the bride!”
The matchmaker’s joyful voice rang out, overtaking the whispers and gossip.
Dao Lord Tianshu turned his gaze toward the direction from which the bride was approaching.
If she had been forced into this marriage, if even a trace of grievance or sorrow showed on her face, if she were to act against her own principles and disrupt the mortal world’s Hetu-Phala, he would have taken her away from here in an instant.
And yet—
The bride, clad in a vibrant red wedding gown, passed by him. Beneath the veil lifted by the wind, her face shone with a radiant, unrestrained smile.
She was smiling.
She… was willing.
Startled by that smile, Dao Lord Tianshu wanted to reach out and grasp something, but the wedding robe, lifted and flung by the breeze, brushed past his fingers. He could seize nothing.
Zhao Zhao watched the scene in silence, her heart quietly questioning:
Could it be true?
If she had never been to Immortal Realm of Kunwu, had never seen the real Xie Lanshu, had only read the letter of separation and the words brought by Lord Yaoguang, would someone of her character truly be willing to let go of the past and marry another?
Zhao Zhao’s eyes fell upon her other self, as the Xie elders sent her off. Smiles adorned their faces, yet their eyes brimmed with tears.
Her aunt said softly, “My dearest, do not remain trapped. Go to a new place and begin anew.”
Zhao Zhao’s gaze flickered.
She believed she already understood her other self’s intention.
The bride ascended the sedan chair. The groom, close in age to her, wore a beaming expression of joy.
Along the sides, many of Zhao Zhao’s old acquaintances fanned themselves as they watched the ceremony—some envied that she would become a wife of an official household, while others pouted, claiming the groom could never compare to Xie Lanshu by a hair’s breadth.
But, alas, her husband no longer wanted her.
The bridal procession, accompanied by the shrill melody of the suona, paraded down the street. This was an experience Zhao Zhao had never witnessed before.
The figure in snow-white robes trailed behind like a wandering ghost, dazed and lost, moving without direction, even he did not know where he was going.
Back to Kunwu?
He had grown up in Kunwu. He was the very sword, forged over a thousand years, who had been sold to Kunwu; that should be where he belonged.
Yet his legs would not obey reason. He stared at the direction of the bridal sedan and thought: even if he followed, what could he do?
She had already let go of the past. She would marry another and be happy.
Even if he appeared as Xie Lanshu, would she abandon all of this to follow him?
Even if she did, where could he take her?
His steps faltered, stopping not far from the couple before the altar.
First bow to Heaven and Earth, and all the gods.
Second bow to the lofty parents.
Third bow to the love between groom and bride.
(TLN: On the wedding day, during the formal Bai Tang (拜堂) ceremony, the couple performs three bows: First, To Heaven and Earth (一拜天地), to show respect to the gods and ancestors. Second, to the Parents (二拜高堂), to thank their parents for raising them. And Third, to Each Other (夫妻对拜), to show mutual respect as husband and wife. After these bows, the couple is officially married, and the groom leads the bride to the wedding chamber, where the bridal veil is lifted.)
The rites completed.
Dao Lord Tianshu stood there, watching with his own eyes the woman he had once abandoned, now wed to another.
…
In the bridal chamber, the red candles sputtered and crackled.
The groom lifted the veil. When he beheld the bride’s radiant, blossoming beauty, he was struck dumb.
No one understood the groom’s heart in that moment more than Dao Lord Tianshu.
Should he continue to watch?
Still unwilling to let go, he lingered in hope, waiting for even the slightest trace of reluctance on her part.
Dao Lord Tianshu watched her crimson lips part as if to speak, yet the sound that reached his ears was the shouting of Kunwu’s disciples behind him, and Lord Yaoguang’s heavy sigh.
The disciples of Kunwu had come to take him back.
The sect’s highest-ranking cultivators, dozens in number, formed a combined formation. Should Dao Lord Tianshu insist on breaking through, these disciples, whom he had personally trained and watched grow up, would instantly perish.
Even at the cost of their own lives, they were determined to bring their Dao Lord back.
Lord Yaoguang gazed at bloodshot-eyed Dao Lord, torn painfully between reason and emotion, and he let out a long sigh, “Why struggle? The red thread between you and her has been severed. In this life, you are no longer fated to be husband and wife. Let us return, Tianshu. Disturb not the joy of others on their happiest day.”
It was then that the red candles were extinguished; darkness enveloped the bridal chamber.
(TLN: This is basically when the newlyweds do the cooking.)
Dao Lord Tianshu, who had resisted until now, suddenly ceased all movement. The fierce, burning emotions in his eyes flickered and died, leaving only a searing heap of ash.
Before following him back to Kunwu, the spectating Zhao Zhao turned her gaze once more toward the bridal chamber, recalling the conversation she had just overheard.
—As we agreed, the Xie Residence will help you rise in the court; you protect them in return. Whether you maintain a secondary wife or take concubines, I shall not interfere. Tonight, stay with your concubine.
—If I were to say, at the first sight of Miss Xie, I changed my mind… and wished to be your true husband instead?
Beneath the red candlelight, twenty-eight-year-old Zhao Zhao lifted her gaze and smiled.
—You have your beloved, and I have only one husband. Sooner or later, he will come to take me away.
She did not know that that day would never come.
After leaving Yunmeng Pier, Dao Lord Tianshu’s Dao heart broke down, and the truth of his regression in cultivation was exposed. Lord Tianxuan and the other elders were furious. During a visit under the pretext of checking on him, Lord Tianxuan drugged him and summoned the veiled Wu-Shaman to implant a love gu, erasing his memories of the past.
The veiled Wu-Shaman smiled faintly as she complied. She had long admired the Dao Lord herself and had secretly wished to plant the love gu to bind him to her.
But for the sake of Mount Ling’s grand designs, what she planted in him was not a simple love gu, but a toxin a hundred times more perilous.
When Dao Lord Tianshu awoke, he sensed the gu within his body gnawing at his consciousness and fled once more from Immortal Realm of Kunwu.
This time, he again reached Yunmeng Pier, but the parasitic gu had consumed him. He had long forgotten the passing years. When he ultimately arrived at the Xie Residence, he saw no familiar face. He even went to the mansion of that new jinshi, yet could not find the groom from that day.
Only a few mourning children in coarse funeral garb looked at him and said, “Do you mean my paternal grandmother? She passed away just the other day. Are you here to pay respects to her?”
Winter’s frost and wind were harsh, and snow fluttered across the world like scattered feathers.
Among the grim wooden memorial tablets, he saw Zhao Zhao’s name.
It was said that her husband had died early. She had managed the vast family estate alone. She bore no heirs, and treated the children of the concubines as her own, as were the grandchildren she raised. The children wept bitterly at the funeral.
She lived in wealth and comfort, surrounded by children and grandchildren. At eighty-nine, she passed away peacefully on a winter’s night, without a trace of suffering.
As a mortal, such a life could be called complete.
Yet at this funeral, an occasion counted as both joyous and mournful, stood a snow-clad youth unknown to anyone, his complexion paler than the surrounding snow.
From his cold, crystalline eyes streamed tears of blood, striking the frozen ground.
…
Witnessing this, Zhao Zhao felt a complex, indescribable surge of emotion.
So this was the life she would have lived without her prophetic dreams.
Now, though she could cultivate, become a Sect Master with countless disciples, she had also walked the long steps of Separation’s Regret Heaven, skirted the brink of life and death in the Blessed Land of Langhuan, and faced her current fate, still hanging between life and death.
The woman she might have been, though she never learned who Xie Lanshu truly was even unto death, had firmly believed that her husband must have had his reasons for leaving. She carried that faith through the long years, living with quiet hope, and in the end passed away peacefully, untouched by calamity.
Zhao Zhao could not say which of these two futures was better.
But whether or not that prophetic dream had ever existed, she believed she could still do her utmost to live this life well.
As for Dao Lord Tianshu…
Once he stepped out of the mourning hall and left Yunmeng Pier behind, his cultivation seemed to recover somewhat. The Single Intent Sword, which he had long been unable to draw, finally responded to his will once more.
Pursuers sent by Mount Ling arrived, intending to escort him back to Immortal Realm of Kunwu. He appeared compliant, yet once all their guard was let down, he slaughtered them to the last.
Even so, the grief and anguish in his heart did not abate.
More and more people came to stop him—those from Mount Ling, from Kunwu, and from other factions who had heard of his descent into madness. The instant they laid eyes on him, they knew he had already lost his reason.
Dao Lord Tianshu himself knew it as well.
The gu gnawed relentlessly at his brain, whispering ceaselessly within his mind—ascension, cultivation, immortality.
At times, he felt like nothing more than a walking shell. At others, amid the sticky chaos of his thoughts, he would glimpse a single image: a shy, smiling face.
—Xie Lanshu, Xie Lanshu.
—Even if we grow old together, so long as I am with you, I will fear nothing.
When clarity returned to him, the entirety of Mount Ling had already become a river of blood.
Those who lay dead were not only the Wu-Shamans whose crimes merited retribution, but also ordinary disciples and residents of Mount Ling, the people who knew nothing of its hidden schemes.
They had been deceived by Mount Ling's Wu-Shaman Xian, fighting only to protect their own people. No one had ever laid bare the true right and wrong before them as they met a tragic end beneath Dao Lord Tianshu’s hand.
He stood upon the summit of Mount Ling, yet could not find the bodies of Mount Ling's Wu-Shaman Xian or the veiled Wu‑Shaman.
Had they escaped?
Blood soaked into the earth until the soil turned black. Amid the howling mountain wind came the helpless, choking sobs of a little girl.
Zhao Zhao had seen this scene in her dreams.
Following Dao Lord Tianshu’s line of sight, she indeed saw that familiar face.
It was Yao Ling, appearing no more than ten years old.
She knelt before a group of Wu‑Shamans whose severed bodies could no longer be pieced together into whole forms. Tears poured from her eyes without end. When she lifted her head to look at Dao Lord Tianshu, her gaze was filled with the most terrifying hatred in the world.
“I will kill you!! One day, I will personally kill you and avenge my people!!!”
That slender, tall figure glanced at her.
Snow fell thick and fast. He tilted his head back to gaze at the sky; icy flakes landed beneath his lashes and melted into a droplet that slid down, like a tear.
He let out a soft laugh and said, “Very well. I’ll be waiting for that day.”
