UCS Chapter 116

Gao Gusheng came to in a foggy daze.

 

After waking he did not open his eyes immediately. His breathing remained steady, the same rhythm as before, as he quietly assessed the situation around him.

 

He had been abducted. He was in the back seat of a vehicle, hands and feet bound.

 

Tightly. But with no spiritual energy attached to the bindings.

 

Gao Gusheng found this suspicious.

 

Because he remembered that at the beginning, he had seen what appeared to be his dad in the school grounds waving at him and saying he was taking him out to eat. He had walked over without thinking, gotten in the car, and been knocked unconscious.

 

An illusion?

 

What was strange was that spiritual energy had clearly been used to lure him, and yet the rope now restraining him had no spiritual energy applied to it at all. This level of binding, he could say without exaggeration, he could snap through with physical strength alone.

 

The only breathing he could detect in the vehicle belonged to one person.

 

He stopped pretending to be asleep and simply wriggled upright, then caught sight in the rear-view mirror of a face wearing a mask.

 

Bai Mingyue?

 

Gao Gusheng remembered this pair of lawbreakers quite clearly. Had these two unusual individuals now graduated from collaborating in illegal activity to collaborating in actual crime?

 

Seeing Gao Gusheng awake, Bai Mingyue was mildly surprised. “You came around quickly.”

 

Gao Gusheng had something stuffed in his mouth and could only stare at him in silence, raising a middle finger behind his back.

 

Bai Mingyue murmured softly, “What a pity you did not fall for Gui Yan this time. And did not fall for me either.”

 

“Why did I wake up so late.”

 

“If only I had woken up half a year earlier…”

 

Gao Gusheng had no idea what he was talking about, but could roughly guess it had something to do with rebirth.

 

He felt along his arm with difficulty. The tracker had long since fallen off somewhere unknown.

 

“Don’t trouble yourself thinking about escape. You only just turned eighteen. You probably have not learned to drive yet. I am already doing a hundred and fifty. Jumping out of the car would leave you seriously injured.”

 

Bai Mingyue’s voice was gentle, carrying that cool quality like moonlight. “Don’t be afraid. I only need one of your kidneys and one of your eyes.”

 

Gao Gusheng thought to himself: you absolute idiot, you already know I have recognised you, there is no way you are letting me go after taking my organs.

 

Bai Mingyue gave a soft laugh, as though he had read the thought. “You see right through it.”

 

He looked at Gao Gusheng through the rear-view mirror. Gao Gusheng did not know whether he was imagining things, but in those bright dark eyes, he caught a thread of something that looked unmistakably like tenderness.

 

The scenery on both sides rushed backward at tremendous speed. The car cut through the flow of traffic like a sharp blade piercing rushing water.

 

Dangerous as the situation was, the steering wheel in Bai Mingyue’s hands seemed like an extension of his own body. He handled it with effortless ease, with most of his attention fixed on Gao Gusheng in the mirror.

 

“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything to you. The Bai family has already established itself abroad by now. Come with me. You won’t suffer.”

 

“You won’t have to worry about Gui Yan finding you anymore either. I’m afraid…”

 

Bai Mingyue gave a low laugh. Before Gao Gusheng could fully process the meaning behind those words, his eyes met Mo Hua’s.

 

Gao Gusheng: ?

 

He blinked hard and looked through Bai Mingyue toward the speedometer on the dashboard ahead.

 

One hundred and fifty kilometres per hour.

 

He turned his head to look out the car window. Mo Hua was hovering outside, hesitating over whether to knock on the glass.

 

He had Zhou Jing tucked under his arm. Zhou Jing had apparently been sick to the point of unconsciousness.

 

Gao Gusheng was absolutely dumbfounded.

 

What the hell, man, what did you go through during that one month of special training?!

 

…

 

Gui Yan had been caught.

 

He had been lying in wait at the school gate, waiting for Gao Gusheng to finish class. What he had not expected was that instead of Gao Gusheng, a group of police officers showed up.

 

He was taken away with a completely blank look on his face, making the whole process rather turbulent, and had a charge of assaulting a police officer added to his name in the process.

 

Gao Shi, meanwhile, was driving at speed toward the direction the blood-kin tracing technique had indicated.

 

Ying Bujie sat in the passenger seat beside him.

 

Gao Shi’s expression was cold and set, the speed gradually climbing.

 

“I have already dreamed through everything concerning Gui Yan and Bai Mingyue. Neither of them has any connection to the supernatural. Their threat level is only marginally higher than Qin Shi’s.”

 

“The one who made a move is that kind of thing.”

 

“Also,” Gao Shi paused, looking straight ahead, “the white shadow I saw when I was eight years old. Was that you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

After Gao Shi had come back to full consciousness, his mind seemed not quite entirely clear, with phantom images continuously flickering before his eyes.

 

He saw himself at eight years old, saw that flash of white shadow from his memory.

 

In his recollection, it had been nothing more than a white shape that passed in an instant. But the vision now replayed itself over and over, growing slower and slower, until at last the face within the white shadow became clear.

 

It was Ying Bujie’s face.

 

He appeared quite young, no more than eight or nine, though his gaze held a steadiness that no child’s eyes should carry.

 

He was wearing a white robe that did not fit him properly. With a sweep of his wide sleeve, a beam of golden light threaded with wisps of silver-white shot into his mind.

 

Then, above the cloud layer overhead, thunder and lightning cracked across the sky. Silver-purple bolts tore through the heavens and struck Ying Bujie directly.

 

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, and was gone.

 

Ying Bujie’s voice was steady as he explained, “At that time I had just arrived in this world. I found you and returned to you a strand of your… breath.”

 

“At that time, I was being… watched. I dispersed the remaining half of my soul’s vitality, letting it enter your spirit.”

 

Gao Shi turned his head sharply and looked at him. “In our past life, when we parted, did you also leave half your soul’s vitality with me?”

 

“…Yes.”

 

“The one watching you was the plot?”

 

“Yes.”

 

In their past life, fearing he might miss Gao Shi, he had simply divided half his soul’s vitality and left it with him, using the soul as a guide to cross through the ten thousand worlds and find him.

 

When he first arrived here, in order to enter this world he had suppressed his power, reduced his form, and dispersed his spirit’s essence before he could pass through.

 

What he had not anticipated was that the plot would set its sights on him, attempting to drive him out.

 

With no other option, he had no choice but to disperse the remaining half of his soul’s vitality, and only through this had he evaded the plot’s pursuit.

 

“Your past self was of the utmost yang, capable of breaking through all illusions.”

 

Illusions…?

 

Something flashed through Gao Shi’s mind and he seized on it. “The things I have been dreaming, they were not premonitions at all but rehearsals?”

 

Ying Bujie looked at him steadily, the corners of his lips curving faintly upward. “Correct.”

 

At that very moment, Gao Shi felt a humming sound rise in the depths of his mind, growing louder and louder, like a long-sealed door being quietly pushed open, or a coffin long buried in the earth slowly rising to the surface.

 

Golden light flickered and pulsed in his mind.

 

If the dreams were not premonitions but rehearsals he had seen through, then who had the power to use heaven and earth as a chessboard, to swallow his Lele?

 

The words left him before he had thought them:

 

“It is not the plot. It is the Heavenly Dao?”

 

The moment the words Heavenly Dao left his mouth, he felt as though he had broken free of some shackle.

 

Ying Bujie let out a quiet breath. “Yes.”

 

“It is the Heavenly Dao of this world.”

 

What was called the plot was, in truth, the rehearsal the Heavenly Dao ran before consuming the spirit flower.

 

Gao Shi saw the black car ahead and gradually accelerated.

 

“Was it not through the Heavenly Dao’s bestowal of spiritual awareness that the spirit flower came to life in the first place? Why would the Heavenly Dao want to consume Lele?”

 

Ying Bujie shook his head. “I do not know.”

 

“The Heavenly Dao of this place is strange. It is almost as though it has developed its own consciousness.”

 

Gao Shi was briefly taken aback. His mind was flooded with fragmented information. Without thinking he asked, “The doctrine that the Heavenly Dao is without feeling? Or that it is with feeling?”

 

Ying Bujie shook his head. “Neither… Whether the Heavenly Dao is with feeling or without, in truth it is only that those who cultivate the Dao glimpse themselves through it. One with feeling sees the Heavenly Dao as having feeling. One without sees it as without.”

 

“For the Heavenly Dao to develop its own consciousness means it has acquired its own preferences, its own love and hate. Once there are emotions there is bias. Once there is private desire, it can no longer treat all living beings equally.”

 

“Could it be that the collapse of the underworld in this world…”

 

Gao Shi spoke, then suddenly stopped. “It was not just this world’s underworld that collapsed. It was the entire underworld?”

 

His mind flashed with images from the dreams, those scenes like the end of all things, the black voids and rifts in space and time spreading in every direction.

 

“Yes.”

 

Then who was Ying Bujie?

 

Residing in the underworld, holding dominion over reincarnation. The answer seemed to be right on the verge of forming itself, and yet something was obstructing the return of his memories.

 

He turned and asked instead, “So when I dream ordinarily, it is because my power is recovering, and this sudden collapse was the Heavenly Dao interfering?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“The Heavenly Dao cannot directly interfere with the development of the mortal world. You were reincarnated here, which makes you a person of this world. The Heavenly Dao cannot move against you directly. It could only force you into an illusion, but even that stimulated your soul, and memories of your past life began to awaken.”

 

Ying Bujie spoke, then looked ahead and suddenly fell silent.

 

In that same moment, Gao Shi forgot what he had been about to say.

 

Because they both watched Gao Gusheng tear through his bindings with brute force, fling open the car door, and throw himself out, shouting “You jump, I jump!” as he went.

 

Mo Hua, running alongside the car, reached out and caught Gao Gusheng cleanly and steadily.

 

Bai Mingyue, who was driving, was stunned. He wrenched the steering wheel, intending to swerve into them, but at that moment Gao Shi pressed a switch on the dashboard. A large horn extended out of the car window and blared a siren blast.

 

Ying Bujie looked silently at Gao Shi as the horn nearly grazed his prominent nose.

 

Gao Shi gave a light cough. “When I designed it, I did not anticipate that someone would be sitting in the passenger seat.”

 

The earpiece lit up. Gao Shi connected it. “Target individual has exited danger. You are currently driving in an urban area. Please avoid the use of spiritual energy and supernatural force where possible.”

 

“Received.”

 

Matters of the living world required living world methods. Matters of the spirit world required spirit world methods. They had originally intended to use the five ghost relocation technique to extract Lele first, but the little creatures had sensed something was wrong and latched onto Bai Mingyue’s car, getting there ahead of them.

 

Since Lele was now safe, he no longer needed to hold back.

 

Gao Shi one-handedly unwrapped a lollipop and placed it in his mouth. “Daoist Ying, hold on. I have not driven fast in quite some time.”

 

As he said it, the engine let out a deeply satisfied hum.

 

…

 

This stretch of road was a natural racing circuit. Bai Mingyue and Gui Yan had competed here countless times. The smooth straightaways, the treacherous bends, even the undulating mountain road like enormous waves, had spiked his adrenaline more times than he could count.

 

This time, cold sweat ran down Bai Mingyue’s forehead. He had not expected that there would be someone he simply could not shake.

 

The speed had already climbed to three hundred and fifty kilometres per hour, and yet the car behind was still locked onto him without any sign of giving ground. This lunatic had put the shell of a Santana around a supercar engine.

 

When had someone like this appeared on this circuit? Why did he have absolutely no memory of him?

 

The road ahead curved to a sharp thirty-degree angle. Bai Mingyue’s eyes flashed with a cold gleam. People coming here for the first time often failed to brake in time and went straight off the cliff.

 

He did not slow down. He accelerated instead, drawing the black car behind him to accelerate with him. His speed had already reached three hundred and ninety kilometres per hour, and yet the black car behind was still steadily closing the gap.

 

Jaw clenched, adrenaline surging, the wound at Bai Mingyue’s side began to ache faintly, and yet his heart was hammering with frantic exhilaration, celebrating the approach of death.

 

Clear every obstacle on the road, and then lock his rose tightly in his arms forever.

 

Brake!

 

He slammed the brakes. The distance between him and the black car behind contracted at a terrifying rate. At this point it would be too late for the black car to brake in time.

 

Bai Mingyue’s heart thundered. Into the bend!

 

A beautiful tail-slide, the tyres practically kissing the edge as the car swept into the next section.

 

And yet the thunderous crash of the black car ploughing through the barrier behind him never came.

 

A wave of dread rose in Bai Mingyue’s chest. His heart lurched. In the reflection, he saw a black shadow moving like a phantom.

 

Bai Mingyue’s pupils contracted sharply.

 

Madman. Absolute madman!

 

The black car had tilted half onto its side. The wheels on the cliff side lifted clear of the ground, and were running along the top of the barrier at full speed, rounding the bend faster than he had.

 

Bai Mingyue had been behind the wheel since the age of twelve, had taken home more trophies than he could count, and for the first time in his life he felt something close to panic.

 

He gritted his teeth and pushed the accelerator down.

 

…

 

Gao Shi was also accelerating.

 

His expression was calm, even faintly amused, as though someone who did not know better might think he was settled in a quiet afternoon with an inspirational book.

 

Yet the scenery on both sides had blurred to afterimages. Gao Shi shifted gears, watching the sports car ahead drawing ever closer, and gave a low laugh.

 

He floored it.

 

Faster.

 

Faster!

 

Faster!!

 

Every cell in his body was crying out in pure joy, demanding he go faster still.

 

Everyone thought that although Gao Shi had a fierce temper, his conduct was always measured and composed. Even out in empty wilderness, he never drove over the speed limit.

 

But no one knew: the reason he did not touch extreme sports was because during his youth, he had once been so fanatically obsessed with them that it had bordered on madness.

 

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