Chapter 23: Chapter 14: That is a Dragon
Translator: 549690339
Lao Lazi departed peacefully and with much fanfare.
At his burial, everyone in Taoyuan Village came to see him off; Clan leader Wang Erniu and a few other village elders carried his coffin.
Shu Guan wore mourning clothes and carried a Soul Summoning Banner at the front of the procession.
All along the way, villagers cried incessantly.
Many of them were genuinely weeping.
In his lifetime, Lao Lazi had led an unremarkable existence; his greatest achievements were two unprovable rain-bringing ceremonies.
All of Lao Lazi's accomplishments were confined to a small mountain village, earning him praise for his skill in farming, house building, and embroidery.
Lao Lazi had never left the valley in his life.
So Taoyuan Village was his entire world.
When he died, everyone in his world mourned his loss, which was truly impressive.
Lao Lazi was an impressive man.
Shu Guan was the only one who didn't shed tears; perhaps he had already cried them all that sunny afternoon.
Lao Lazi was buried at the foot of a hill covered in peach blossoms. Shu Guan watched numbly as the coffin was lowered into the earthen pit, then knelt down and scooped up a handful of soil to sprinkle on the coffin lid.
Wang Dahu and the others nearby began shoveling dirt into the pit with their spades.
The coffin, containing Lao Lazi's body, was gradually buried in the earth.
Shu Guan knelt motionless, watching the coffin disappear from his sight until it became a slightly raised mound on the ground.
Lao Lazi had left this world forever.
In a sense, he had finally escaped the valley that had confined him for a lifetime.
Next, it seemed that many people came up to him and spoke to him, some patting him on the shoulder or arm.
But Shu Guan couldn't quite hear what they were saying; he remained dazed, as if he had lost his soul since Lao Lazi's death.
The crowd gradually dispersed, and Wang Dahu and the others left Shu Guan to return home. The last to leave was Zhang Yadan, the most beautiful girl in Taoyuan Village, who gently hugged Shu Guan before she left.
If it had been any other time, Zhang Yadan's gesture would have made Shu Guan happy, as it was something he had longed for since he was a teenager.
But at that moment, Shu Guan felt nothing; he didn't even realize that Zhang Yadan had hugged him, although just a few days earlier, he and Lao Lazi had discussed proposing marriage to her family.
In the end, only Shu Guan was left by the new grave, beneath Taohua Slope, and beside the creek.
When the sun was about to set behind the cliff, Shu Guan finally regained some clarity. He then chopped down some tree trunks in the peach grove and built a simple tree house beside Lao Lazi's grave.
In both his previous life on Earth in Huaxia, and this world, the custom of keeping vigil for deceased family members for seven days was practiced.
The spirit was said to return on the seventh night following the death, as the soul would come back on this night to take one last look at the family. So the deceased was only buried after the seventh day had passed.
Then there were the second seven and the third seven... until the twenty-first day, when the deceased's soul would scatter and go to the underworld.
Although the following two seven-day periods were generally observed at home, Shu Guan wanted to keep vigil by Lao Lazi's grave, for a full twenty-one days, as a final farewell to his grandfather.
Although he was well aware that the so-called vigils on Earth were just superstitious tales, who could say for sure in this different world?
After completing the tree house and eating a little, there was still daylight left, but Shu Guan, though exhausted, didn't want to sleep. Instead, he sat on a rock outside the tree house, took out a smoking pipe, and lit it for himself.
It was naturally Lao Lazi's pipe he was using.
Just a few days earlier, Lao Lazi had promised to make Shu Guan his very own pipe, but not long after making the promise, he broke it in a way Shu Guan couldn't blame him for.
Thus, Shu Guan buried his own cellphone alongside the old lame man, but kept the old man's smoking pipe.
There was a need to keep something as a memento.
In a more artistic way of saying it, they let the objects that had accompanied them for many years accompany the other instead.
Smoking from the old lame man's pipe and sitting next to his grave, Shu Guan stared blankly at the stream they had both waded through together, not far away under the night sky.
Seven days had passed since the old lame man's death, but Shu Guan's sorrow was still as deep as the night.
This was his first time in both his previous and present life that he had truly felt the pain of losing a loved one.
At this moment, he did not think about how he would continue to live alone in Taoyuan Village after losing the old lame man he had depended on for so many years, or what kind of life he should create for himself.
As time and the stream flowed silently, Shu Guan was lost in thought until late into the night when he finally stumbled off the rock and walked into the wooden house.
These days, he had been too exhausted. Wrapped up in immense grief, he still had to handle the old lame man's funeral affairs. In fact, Shu Guan hadn't slept well for seven days, and today, he finally finished dealing with the old man's matters.
So when he entered the wooden house, Shu Guan practically went to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
…Not knowing how long he had slept, Shu Guan drowsily opened his eyes and glanced outside the window. The sky was still dark.
Had he slept for a few hours?
Or had he slept straight through to the next night?
A strange feeling suddenly sprang up in Shu Guan's heart, and then, involuntarily, he got up from bed, and walked out of the house, head bowed.
The moment he looked up, he saw the old lame man.
The old man was standing on a peach tree on the slope in the peach forest.
It was the middle of February, and spring was just beginning to permeate the valley. The peach blossoms had not yet bloomed in full, with only a few tiny flower buds sporadically emerging from the branches and hiding among the verdant leaves.
At this moment, the old lame man was standing on his lame leg, with peach leaves swaying beneath him in the night breeze.
Shu Guan looked at the old lame man.
The old lame man was also staring at Shu Guan, his gaze cold and detached, as frosty as the moon suspended above the sheer cliff.
Shu Guan had never seen the old lame man like this.
It was not that the old lame man's appearance had changed— the old man standing on the peach tree leaves was still lame-legged, blind, and had a deep indentation on his left chest, the same as before his death seven days ago.
But, to Shu Guan's eyes, the old lame man seemed to have turned into someone completely different.
It was a difference in feeling. Shu Guan had lived with the old lame man for eighteen years, and he knew his senses could not be wrong.
Especially the way the old lame man looked at him from the peach tree, with such cold and heartless eyes, the glow in the normal eye seemed even more eerie than the white, sightless one.
Shu Guan opened his mouth to call out but found that he could not make a sound, and he also discovered that his body seemed to be unable to move.
An inexplicable panic welled up from the depths of Shu Guan's heart.
At this moment, he actually felt some fear towards the elderly man who had raised him since he was a child.
The pair, though not related by blood but as close as grandparents and their child, stared silently at each other across the peach forest for a few seconds.
Then the old lame man suddenly waved his hand behind him.
The next moment, Shu Guan saw a strange object fly out from a distant cliff.
He quickly made out what it was.
It was a dragon!
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone