**Chapter 59: I Think He Really Came Back to Life!**
At dawn, somewhere around Loulan.
The earthen yellow yardang landforms wind across the earth, each stretch measuring at least a hundred meters long, desolate and magnificent, seemingly endless at first glance.
The soil mounds rise tens of meters, and as the morning sun brightens, each mound is stained gold and red, resembling a slumbering giant dragon from a distance.
In such a remote and dangerous place, where salt crusts cover the ground and there is hardly anywhere to step, one would expect few footprints once entering the depths, but at this moment, a silhouette runs wildly toward the rising sun, leaping across the mounds.
It is a fully grown man clad in white, with a long sword on his back, surrounded by dazzling silver light. Within the silver glow, strong and forceful ink characters occasionally flash by.
Whether it’s “With my body I have fought across three thousand miles, with one sword I have blocked a million armies,” or “Ten years sharpening one sword, a chilling spirit shines upon the mountains and rivers,” or perhaps “k*ll one person every ten paces, leaving no traces over a thousand miles”…
A white-clad swordsman, as if enhanced with special effects, dashes across the desolate Gobi, truly exuding an air of arrogance.
Uncertain how long he has been rushing across the endless Gobi, the sun has already transformed into a fierce sun, and Bai Kai finally slows his pace, the silver light dissipating as he stops in front of an extremely small oasis.
Though it is called an oasis, it is merely a pool of murky water not much larger than a bathtub, surrounded by a few scraggly tamarisk bushes and a few standing poplar trees.
Coming to a stop, Bai Kai heads straight for a cave carved into the rock wall at the edge of the oasis, deliberately avoiding the poplars nearby as he approaches.
Although many texts describe the poplar as a symbol of steadfast character, Bai Kai could not find any affection for them.
In the Gobi, there is a legend that says where poplars grow, ancient warriors’ unsettled spirits are buried beneath, which is why they grow in such twisted and struggling forms.
Bai Kai does not know if the poplars in other places are like those in the legend, but he knows that the poplars here are definitely abnormal.
As Bai Kai continues on, before he reaches the cave in the rock wall, an old man approaches him.
He is an elderly man with white hair and beard, and murky eyes, wearing a lambskin coat so dirty that the color is unrecognizable, a rusty pipe dangling from his waist, and leaning on a red willow cane, looking like a beggar from a martial arts novel.
Upon seeing the old man approaching, Bai Kai immediately steps forward, his expression respectful, saying, “Master!”
Hearing the voice, a gleam suddenly flashes in the old man’s murky eyes, and in a blink, he vanishes from where he stood, only to reappear behind Bai Kai, reaching out with his rough hand to give a firm pinch on his rear.
It is said that Water Brother’s flamboyant attitude is due to such a master; what kind of master inevitably shapes what kind of disciple—this is not surprising.
“Master, this kind of behavior can get you arrested outside; did you know that molesting men is also illegal now?” Bai Kai complained, “If you take on any more disciples in the future, you can’t do this anymore.”
“Hmph, nonsense! You know very well that I can’t go out.”
The old man said with a smile, his gaze passing over Bai Kai to look behind him, wondering, “Why are you the only one? Where’s Lu Ming?”
“He’s already…” Bai Kai hesitated, lowering his head.
The old man tilted his head, examining Bai Kai’s expression, and whispered, “Is he dead?”
“Yeah…”
“Ah—!”
The old man sighed deeply, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared out over the vast Gobi, a few crystalline tears swirling in his murky eyes, “It’s better he died, it’s better! Being alive is just torment, now he can go down and accompany her!”
After a pause, the old man turned back to Bai Kai and shifted the conversation, “Speaking of which, you came a long way to see this old man, must be for something else, right?”
“Go ahead, what do you want to do?”
“I want…” Bai Kai opened his mouth, hesitated for a moment, then continued, “I want to make a trip to Jingjue, collect something for Xiao Bei, and came by to see you on the way.”
“Oh, a good thing, a good thing.” The old man nodded thoughtfully, “Do you need my help?”
“There’s no need for your trouble.” Bai Kai glanced at the poplars behind him, “You still have to keep an eye on that thing here; you can’t leave for too long, can you?”
“That’s fine!” The old man trusted his disciple’s abilities, nodding, “Why not stay for a day? It’s been a while since we saw each other, and we can have a drink and catch up.”
Bai Kai looked at the dark cave behind the old man and smiled wryly, “It wouldn’t be good for me to stay, would it? Yaohua is probably a big girl now; three of us squeezed into one little hole isn’t very convenient, even if I watched her grow up, I still have to avoid suspicion, right?”
“Hmph—!”
Just as Bai Kai finished speaking, the old man snorted, looking at him with a face of disappointment, “You wouldn’t mention her, but now that you have, I’m getting angry!”
“This…” Bai Kai looked puzzled.
Noticing, the old man rolled his eyes and said sourly, “You can’t keep a daughter when she grows up; ever since she learned of Luxianbei’s existence, she has been eager to meet him.”
“I told her that Luxianbei might become an ordinary person for life, and that childhood bet would be void. I told her not to disturb him.”
“But she said ordinary people should be protected. Just the other day, she ran off by herself! Leaving me, her grandpa, all alone—who knows when I might d*e here without anyone to take my body!”
“Calculating the days…” The old man pondered for a moment, “If there are no delays on the road, she might have already reached Huacheng.”
“Strange, I thought she would go find her uncle. I assumed you two had met already!”
“Never met.” Bai Kai shook his head, silently grateful that she hadn’t sought him out!
When he was learning from his master, he had deeply experienced the terror of Nanling Yaohua, nearly giving him a fear of women.
Fortunately, the outside world is beautiful, and the girls out there are even better, giving him a chance to become the Night King of Huacheng, rivaling the best and slickest of them all.
Thinking back to when Nanling Yaohua forced a viper into his bed when he was only four or five years old, now over a decade later she had grown into a big girl with all her skills; just thinking about it was terrifying.
*Ding Ding—!*
As Bai Kai was lost in thought, the old man tapped his red willow cane, the crisp sound interrupting his musings.
The old man raised his eyebrows at him, feigning a pitiful look, “So, can you stay with this old man now? It really gets lonely being alone!”
Bai Kai twitched his mouth, “Master, please behave yourself. Even though your spirit patterns are related to flying, it can’t help but be… ahem, but if you keep this up, I’m going to have to take you back for examination!”
“Hmph! I’m perfectly normal! Just one question, are you going to keep me company or not!?”
“Of course, I’ll keep you company!” Bai Kai reluctantly said.
Hearing this, the old man’s face brightened, “Hehe, then I’ll go get a goat from the Yellow Earth Gully village.”
“And I’ll go get some wine!”
“When you come back, you can stoke the fire a bit!” the old man added.
“Lastly…”
“We’ll sleep on the same bed at night!” The master and disciple said in unison, sharing a smile, and the cave entrance was filled with a strange atmosphere.
……
At Huacheng University, in an office.
Professor Ma sat at his desk, rubbing his aching temples, his face full of worry as he mumbled something to himself.
“He came back to life? How could a dead person suddenly be alive? He wouldn’t be trying to trick me, would he?”
Earlier, a guest had come to Professor Ma’s office, the young man who had delivered the bamboo slips a few days ago.
Unlike the suave demeanor he had last time, he appeared pale, dark circles under his eyes, as if he had encountered something terrible.
The first thing he said upon seeing Professor Ma was, “Uncle Ma, my father is alive.”
Professor Ma was taken aback for a moment, then laughed, thinking the young man was joking, and comforted him, “Nephew, I think you’re just missing your father too much; that cannot go on! The deceased is deceased, the living…”
“No! I think he really came back to life!”
The young man interrupted Professor Ma firmly, then glanced around anxiously, lowering his voice, “You must have heard of the tradition in our hometown, where the deceased return to their ancestral tomb for a few days before burial, until after the seventh day.”
“These things were all handled by my elder brother, while I was busy fulfilling my father’s last wishes. I returned home only the afternoon before the seventh day, and by then I was so exhausted that I collapsed on the bed in the ancestral house and fell asleep.”
“And then… and then…”
As the young man spoke, he began to tremble, as if he was cold; his teeth chattered for a long time before he managed to gather himself and continue.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, and gurgling! I saw my father squatting in the shadow of the corner of the room, still in his funeral clothes, smiling at me. Although it was dark at the time, I could clearly see his pale face.”
“He came over and touched my forehead, just like when I was a child. I was really scared, but I couldn’t move at all; I felt his hand had warmth—he wasn’t a ghost; he was alive!”
“He whispered in my ear, telling me to find you, to take the bamboo slips back, and then I fainted, only to wake up the next morning. I went to the ancestral hall and, ignoring my brother and their objections, I opened the coffin…”
At this point, the young man fell silent, the words left unspoken, but Professor Ma had already guessed the general idea; the coffin was probably empty, otherwise, he wouldn’t be so frightened.
After a long time, with a choked voice, he pleaded, “Uncle Ma, please return that thing to my dad! Otherwise, I…”
Faced with such a situation, Professor Ma felt there was something amiss, but out of consideration for his relationship with the old man, he ultimately agreed to return the bamboo slips to the young man.
However, before that, he needed two days to fully replicate the text on the bamboo slips for subsequent research.
……
“How could it suddenly…”
Recalling the young man leaving the office, looking lost and dejected like a walking corpse, Professor Ma found himself speechless.
Regardless of whether the young man’s story was true or not, even if it was made up, Professor Ma thought, seeing the child like that, for the sake of his father, he should return the bamboo slips to him.
“Ah—!”
After a long time, he sighed deeply, pulling his thoughts back as he walked toward the research lab, his expression somewhat dazed.
