Chapter 711: Traveling (I)
The news of the Wu couple's death had Tang Jie griefstricken for many days.
It was a grief that came from his fondness for the old couple and shame for his conduct, and it was also a form of reflection upon his life.
In the past, Tang Jie had worked hard to advance, never fearing any challenge.
This meant that he was always putting himself in risky situations, and always reaping huge rewards for them.
But this time, he suddenly realized that the result of going too fast was to miss out on many scenic points on his journey, and to miss out on many important people and events.
The Wu couple was the most important stop he had missed on his journey of life, and the moment he missed this stop, there was no going back.
So, then, how many more stops was he going to miss in the future?
Tang Jie didn't know, but he had realized that perhaps it was time to stop his frantic pace, to slow down and appreciate the scenery, to learn a more natural progression.
Tang Jie recalled a story he had once read about a monk sweeping the floor, and he muttered, "When cultivating martial arts, one cannot forget to study the principles of Buddha."
(TN: From what I can tell, the "monk sweeping the floor" is a reference to the "sweeper monk" from the Jin Yong novel "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils", a nameless monk who sweeps the floors of the Shaolin Monastery's library.)
Of course, Tang Jie wasn't actually referring to Buddhist precepts, but to the truth of the world.
The truth was the Great Dao of the world, and also the rules governing human relationships.
One had to both study the Heavenly Dao and understand human relations, so one could not focus on the martial and disdain the civil.
Upon understanding this, Tang Jie felt his mind broaden.
Starting from that day, Tang Jie no longer focused his cultivation on breakthroughs and progress. Other than his daily cultivation, Tang Jie would take walks in his free time, experiencing human life in all its forms. Tang Jie had done this before, but it had always been in pursuit of some greater goal. But now, Tang Jie set aside these goals and chose to experience everything in a normal state of mind.
It wasn't to gain power, only for that moment of serenity.
Even so, amidst the clamor of secular life, Tang Jie felt like it was still difficult to find the true peace he sought.
After several months of this, he finally made a decision.
"Yiyi, I'm going to leave for a while. I'll leave you to handle the affairs in the empire."
"Big Brother, did something happen?"
"It's nothing. I just want to go out and calm myself down."
He rose and walked out of the palace.
He would have never expected that he would be gone for several decades.
After leaving the imperial palace, Tang Jie began to travel all about the Verdant Cloud Domain.
As he traveled the world with the mindset of a mortal, what was once unremarkable now became interesting.
The dew on the grass in the early morning, the mottled sunlight peeking through the trees at noon, the clouds at sunset—every scene drew his interest, making him stop to admire the view and experience all the endless joy to be derived from it.
To find peace of mind, Tang Jie headed for vast places with few people.
The open plains, dense jungles, soaring mountains—Tang Jie would go to all these places to take a look.
One day, he arrived at a grassland.
Grass as tall as a man extended like a green carpet to the horizon.
Groups of deer in twos and threes wandered about the grassland, warily eying their surroundings.
A cheetah, its fur dotted with black spots, crouched within the grass, slowly approaching some deer.
Suddenly, it leaped at the deer, and the deer scattered in unison as if they had received some order.
But their speed couldn't compare to a cheetah's, and the cheetah swiftly gave chase. Just when it seemed like it was about to catch a small deer, a large snake lunged out of the grass, stirring up a gale of fiendish energy as it opened its mouth. In its panic, the deer ran straight into its mouth. The cheetah realized it was in trouble and backed away in time, escaping the snake's mouth. The snake, which was clearly a fiend, didn't give chase, lazily lying back down.
Although it was a fiend that had only just reached Mind Opening, it was already a king of this area.
It didn't even need to wait, ambush, and give chase for its food. It simply needed to unleash a fiendish gale to sweep the food into its mouth.
Fortunately, there weren't too many fiends, or else it would have been impossible for ordinary creatures to survive, and when fiends achieved Mind Opening, they would leave for the fiend cities. After all, it was only there that they could find food with more spirituality and better ways to get stronger.
Having lost its prey, the cheetah hobbled through the grassland.
When escaping, it had injured its leg.
For a cheetah, which relied on its speed to live, this was undoubtedly a fatal wound.
It returned to its den, where two little cubs ambled over on their little legs, affectionately rubbing against their mother's legs, opening their mouths for food. But they did not see the food their mother had brought back, and they worriedly circled their mother. The mother cheetah could only lick the cubs with its tongue to comfort them.
At the same time, it also licked its wounds.
It was lame and could no longer hunt.
This meant that both it and its children would starve to death.
The mother cheetah let out a mournful howl.
It decided to take a risk for its children.
A pack of grassland wolves had hunted down a bighorn goat. Just when they were dividing the spoils, the mother cheetah arrived.
It charged into the wolf pack and began to fight them.
It only wanted a piece of meat to feed its cubs, but alas, it didn't know how to communicate, only kill.
The mother cheetah failed.
The savage wolf pack callously tore it apart. Lying in a pool of blood, it looked weakly in the direction of its children, but alas, a human blocked its view.
Tang Jie had quietly watched everything, not intervening. He had come here to observe the world, not to interfere in every matter.
The mother cheetah's eyes ultimately lost focus, and the light within them went out. It died, and at the very end of its life, its only regret was its children.
The wolf pack didn't notice that human in the distance, and they crazily devoured the cheetah's corpse.
Today had been a bountiful day.
After watching the cheetah's corpse disappear into the mouths of the wolves, Tang Jie turned and left.
He didn't get very far before two little cheetah cubs ran over to him.
They curiously examined Tang Jie, as if they were wondering if he was edible.
But hunger quickly made them forget about Tang Jie, and they began to search for their mother while mewling like kittens.
Without their mother, these two cheetah cubs were doomed to starve to death in these grasslands.
Tang Jie watched the two cubs and then turned to leave, but as he did, he felt a pull on his clothes.
Looking down, he saw a cheetah cub pulling on the hem of his clothes as if it was trying to tear at a piece of meat.
Tang Jie's heart was a little touched at the sight.
"You're also quite the tenacious little guy." Tang Jie smiled. "Fine, I guess I'll help you two out."
He turned back, grabbed the two cubs, and then walked back to the wolf pack.
The wolves tensed up at Tang Jie's arrival, threateningly growling.
Tang Jie didn't care, waving his hand and blowing all the wolves away.
He placed the cubs next to their mother.
The two cubs circled their mother, trying to make it get up.
As if realizing something, that cub that had pulled on Tang Jie's clothes let out a mournful howl, while the other one ran over to the bighorn goat and started to eat.
It was just too hungry.
Tang Jie smiled.
He suddenly decided to stay here and raise these two cheetahs.
Tang Jie gave them names.
The one who had bitten on his clothes was a little smarter, so he called it Spiritfang, and the other one was more simple-minded, so he called it Tigerhead.
Spiritfang and Tigerhead quickly got along with Tang Jie.
They considered Tang Jie their father and played around with him.
At certain intervals, Tang Jie would bring them food, but he didn't give them enough to sate their hunger entirely, normally leaving them half-full. In this way, he could raise them to have a desire to hunt for their own food. Tang Jie had no plans to tend to them for the rest of their lives.
Under Tang Jie's care, Spiritfang and Tigerhead quickly grew up.
They started to try hunting on their own.
Initially, they kept failing, but gradually, their hunting techniques matured, and their success rate began to rise.
Cheetahs had always had a higher hunting success rate than their peers, but they often had to deal with the threats from other beasts. Wolves, hyenas, and lions would all fight with them over food.
This meant they had to be constantly vigilant.
They even had a few lethal encounters. Fortunately, Tang Jie was around, and he plucked the threads of Fate to help the cheetahs escape calamity.
But besides these things, he essentially did not interfere in their lives.
Spiritfang and Tigerhead finally reached adulthood. At this time, the mother cheetah was supposed to drive them out so that they could live on their own.
So Tang Jie left, the two cheetahs reluctantly howling behind him as his figure disappeared into the distance.
As he wandered the grassland, he quickly came across an eaglet that had lost its mother.
As it miserably wailed in its nest, Tang Jie saved it and personally fed it.
Not long after that, Tang Jie saved three lion cubs. Their father had been defeated by an outsider lion, and a new lion would normally kill the cubs of the previous pride leader so as to dominate the lionesses. Not even the valiant defense of the lionesses could stop it. While passing by, Tang Jie saved the lion cubs, calling them Bladescar, Spotted Hide, and Sharpclaw.
Just like that, Tang Jie took up life on the grasslands, living like a savage, and a year passed.
In this time period, other than playing with the animals he had adopted, he basically didn't do anything else. Occasionally, he would speak with Yiyi using Heart Consonance, asking about the situation and sharing his own experiences with her. Yiyi would also sometimes run into problems and ask for his help.
Every year, when the Fate Standard finished recharging, Tang Jie would speak to Xu Miaoran through Little Three.
This infinitely-long-distance call became their greatest mental support.
Fortunately, cultivators didn't care much for time. Now that Xu Miaoran knew that Tang Jie wasn't dead, time was no longer a problem.
As had been said before, at the Celestial Heart Realm, a single seclusion session might last for ten years.
Several sessions might result in a hundred years flitting by.
Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran had both relied on numerous medicines to go from Spirit Ring to Heart Demon, but this wasn't the proper path. Instead, one needed to let go of one's worries and take one's time.
Thus, after they had exchanged information with each other, Tang Jie was no longer in a rush, slowly accumulating experience, quietly waiting, and sincerely feeling out everything around him.
He made friends with apes, wolves, tigers, lions, and eagles, learning how they lived.
He helped a lioness deliver cubs, fed a leopard milk, even taught a tiger that had lost its mother how to hunt.
But he spent most of his time as an objective observer.
He watched as the beasts lived their lives of chasing and struggling against each other. From the day they were born, they had been taught how to not be eliminated by the laws of natural selection.
He watched as they were injured and died in this cruel struggle.
Few animals died of old age. In this land brimming with danger, old age meant weakness, meant the loss of the ability to survive. The hunted would lose the ability to escape and eventually be hunted down, and the hunters would lose the ability to catch their food and starve to death.
Both ends were tragic.
The meaning of life here seemed to be a struggle to survive ending in a tragedy.
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