844 The Return of an Old Friend (2/2)

The two girls in white ignored him, and walked into the Divine Temple.

The middle-aged man was standing on the empty square at a loss. He watched the boiling water in the pot, and held the spoon in his hand, feeling so nervous standing before the solemn palace.

It hadn't been long before one of the girls in white came out of the Divine Hall of Light. She handled several things to the middle-aged man and said, ”Someone will send you back to Chang'an.”

She went back to the Divine Hall of Light after finishing that, and never came back out.

The middle-aged man was stunned for a long time. Then, he noticed the things in his hands were a perfect luminescent pearl, and a Dan Medicine pill giving out light exotic fragrance!

He might be ordinary, but he could still feel how extraordinary the two things were. He grew terrified because as much as he prided himself for his own cooking skills, he never felt they would be worth so much.

The nobles in the West-Hill Palace dragged him a thousand miles from Chang'an City to Peach Mountain, and gave him a luminous pearl for just a bowl of cheap food?

Were the hot and sour sliced noodles really that delicious?

As the black curtain was removed, the horse carriage rolled down Peach Mountain. In rising dust and smoke, it drove back into the mortal world.

Ning Que was holding a bag of rice in one hand, frowning slightly at the horse carriage. He didn't know that the carriage was from Chang'an, and just like other people in the Divine Hall, he had lots of questions about it.

He turned around and walked back to the Revelation Institute through the side door, and didn't take another glance at the palaces on the mountains. He wasn't been cautious; he didn't take a second glance because the more the looked, the harder he felt to suppress his desire.

She and the little silly horse he had been looking for were there, as well many risks. So he wouldn't step any closer to the Divine Palace before he was fully prepared. He left Chang'an, coming to this place with the courage to die, and he didn't want to die meaninglessly.

The Revalation Institute was silent. He walked back to his own room, and prepared for dinner. He stared at the rice bag but in his mind, he was thinking about noodles, a bowl of noodles with fried eggs.

He stood before the hearth for a long time, silent. Then, he started to chop green onions and took eggs stored in the rice bags; he bought those eggs in the town at the foot of the mountain. He fried the eggs and cooked a bowl of noodles.

A bowl of noodles with fried eggs in clear soup, with three peppers, and thirty more pieces of chopped onions.

He held the bowl and walked into the depths of the book hall. That was the back of Peach Mountain, with fog, clouds, and cliffs. There he thought about the City of Wei and started eating noodles.

He finished it fast, and finally drank up the soup.

He hadn't cooked for many years but he still remembered how to cook well. The noodles were delicious, but he wasn't enjoying them because she wasn't the cook.

He stood there for a long time, until the night fell and the moon rose.

The beautiful moon in the night sky had grown back to its full size. He was still worried because he wasn't sure if it would wax and wane again tomorrow night.

He was worried about other things, or to be specific, he was fearful of them.

”Aren't you omniscient and omnipotent? Why aren't you aware that I am here? Why... why can't I feel where you are? Are you no longer my natal artifact? Or have you died once, and are no longer who you used to be?”

He thought of this silently as he looked at the palace at the peak, from which no light was leaking out.

Behind the Divine Temple was the precipice, and at the downside of the precipice was the legendary You Prison. Fog and clouds grew thicker at night; an evil and cold aura was overflowing.

She put her hands at her back, standing between the stone pillars before the precipice. She looked at the moon in the night sky without any expression, and the moon cast the lonely shadow of her tall and chubby figure wrapped in black cloth on the ground.

The moon waned for ten days and waxed. She was getting paler and paler, not because of her solemnity, but because of her weakness.

Behind her there were hundreds of wine jars, and a bowl of hot and sour sliced noodles which she had taken barely one bite. Beside the bowl there was a cube, its covering cloth had been lifted up, revealing the corner of a golden brick and some crumbs.

The wine was Nine-river double-disdistilled wine; the hot and sour sliced noodles were from Chang'an. The golden brick had been hidden in the wall of the Old Pen Brush all these years. These were all her most reluctant memories, and she had to take them back.

Or, that was it.