sinovels Chapter 666 It's raining!
Chapter 666 It's raining!
Chen Fan stood at the entrance of his tent, without going in.
He stood with his hands behind his back in the torrential rain, letting the rain soak through his sheepskin robe and stream down his face.
Batu poked his head out from the tent next to him and called out to him to come in, but the rain was too loud and Batu's voice was drowned out by the wind and rain.
After calling out to him several times and seeing that he didn't move, Batu retreated back into his tent. He wasn't a cultivator and couldn't stand in the downpour for a long time without getting sick like Chen Fan.
Chen Fan didn't bother to explain.
The cicada lay quietly in his sleeve, its dark golden compound eyes peering through the gap in the cuff at the white curtain of rain outside.
It could sense that its owner was in a strange state of mind.
Chen Fan looked at the rain.
Raindrops fall from the sky, each one tracing an invisible path across heaven and earth. They are born from the clouds, fall through the air, and finally crash to the ground, shattering into countless tiny droplets that seep into the soil and disappear.
From birth to death, it's only a matter of a few breaths.
Every single drop of rain is like that.
Born in the clouds, dying in the earth, their lives are brief and inevitable. They struggle without resistance, they harbor no resentment, they simply follow their predetermined path to complete their lives.
This is not a tragedy.
Chen Fan suddenly understood something.
The life and death of rain is not an end, but a cycle.
Rainwater that seeps into the soil is absorbed by the grass roots, evaporated by the sun, rises back into the sky, and condenses into clouds again.
Life and death are never two opposing things, but rather two points on the same circle that connect end to end.
Chen Fan once comprehended the power of life and death in sword intent; all things can be cut down, and to cut them down is to die.
But he never truly understood the aspects of life.
Death is not the end, nor is life the beginning.
Life and death share the same origin, and the cycle continues endlessly.
In that instant of enlightenment, the three realms of intent in Chen Fan's dantian seemed to be gently touched by something, emitting a very subtle resonance.
At this moment, the insurmountable barrier between cause and effect, life and death, and destiny cracked open with a barely perceptible crease.
Chen Fan did not chase after the crack.
He just kept watching the rain.
The rainstorm came and went quickly.
About half an hour later, the rain gradually subsided, the dark clouds began to disperse, and the first rays of sunlight appeared on the horizon.
The ray of sunlight pierced through the remaining clouds, like a golden sword cutting through the darkness, and fell on the rain-washed grassland, making the entire grassland glow.
Chen Fan looked down at the ground beneath his feet.
On the grass washed by the torrential rain, fresh black soil was turned upside down.
His gaze fell on an inconspicuous corner at his feet, where a small grass had just sprouted.
The grass sprouts were only about an inch long, with stems as thin as hair, and two tender green leaves still covered with raindrops, trembling slightly in the sunlight.
It was born from this torrential rain.
Rainwater seeps into the soil, awakening the seeds that have been sleeping underground. The seeds swell, burst, take root, and sprout in the darkness, then push aside the soil above them and emerge from the ground.
This is a cause, a cause resulting from the combined effects of rain, soil, light, and seed. And the moment it breaks through the soil is the effect.
Cause and effect are never just the domineering way of tracing the cause from the effect in sword intent.
Cause and effect are the most fundamental laws of the universe; they are omnipresent and exist everywhere. A seed is the cause, a sprout is the effect. A torrential downpour is the cause, a sprout breaking through the soil is the effect.
His stay here for a month was the cause, and standing in front of this blade of grass now is the effect.
The gap between the three gates of artistic conception has cracked open a little more.
Cause and effect, life and death, the cycle of birth and death, the chain of cause and effect, begin to slowly intertwine at this moment, like two fish swimming silently in the depths of the dantian, head to tail.
The sunlight is getting brighter.
The dark clouds had dispersed, and the sky over the grassland was almost transparently blue after being washed by the torrential rain.
The air was filled with the fresh scent of earth and the slightly fishy smell of grass, a unique aroma of the grassland after the rain.
The herders from the tribe emerged from their tents.
They first checked the sheepfold and stables, and after confirming that no livestock were lost, smiles appeared on their faces.
Batu stood in the open space in the center of the tribe, looked up at the sky, then looked down at the grass at his feet, and suddenly grinned.
He shouted a few words in the local language of the grassland to the herdsmen around him, and they cheered and took out sheepskin drums and horsehead fiddles from their tents.
The children ran and played in the muddy water, not caring at all about getting splashed with mud. The men formed a circle, vigorously beating their sheepskin drums; the deep, powerful sound was like the heartbeat of the earth.
The old woman sat in the center of the crowd, closed her eyes, and began to play the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle). The melodious and desolate sound of the instrument intertwined with the sound of drums, drifting far across the grassland.
The women, hand in hand, danced an ancient dance of the grasslands to the beat of drums. Their footsteps pounded on the damp grass, splashing up tiny droplets of water, and their skirts fluttered in the wind.
Chen Fan stood in front of his tent, watching all of this.
Batu ran over, grabbed his arm, and dragged him into the crowd: "Chen Fan, don't just stand there! The rainstorm is over, the grassland gods have blessed us, let's dance, let's sing, let's shout out our joy!"
Chen Fan staggered a few steps as he was pulled, and tried to refuse, but was surrounded by a group of herdsmen who pushed him to the center of the crowd.
Several young girls laughed and took his hands, teaching him the steps of a grassland dance. He followed along clumsily, his steps stiff and his arms rigid, which made the people around him burst into laughter.
But he didn't stop.
Chen Fan stepped on the grass to the beat of the drum, and spun around to the music. His sheepskin robe fluttered in the wind, and his boots were covered with mud and grass clippings.
Sixty-eight years.
He spent 68 years in the Dayuan Palace, climbing step by step from the lowest eunuch to the position of Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial.
In those sixty-eight years, he learned to read people's expressions, to be patient and restrain himself, and to dance on the edge of a knife without shedding a drop of blood.
He learned how to serve people, how to guess what his superiors wanted, how to lay down a deadly trap in silence, and how to find a way out in a desperate situation.
Chen Fan learned everything, except how to live like an ordinary person.
I never learned to sing, never learned to dance, never learned to laugh out loud with a group of people wading through the mud after a rainstorm.
Because from the moment he was sent to the palace, his life no longer belonged to him.
He was a royal servant, a scribe of the Directorate of Ceremonial, a prisoner of the sealed land, a target of the Eight Great Families, a guest minister of the Zhao Kingdom's Palace of Worship, and a pawn of the eldest prince.
Every step he took was calculated, every battle was a life-or-death struggle, and every moment was spent living for that distant goal.
But now, on this grassland washed by torrential rain, surrounded by a group of unfamiliar herdsmen dancing clumsily to the beat of drums, Chen Fan suddenly felt that he didn't need to calculate anything anymore.
There's no need to calculate the consumption of spiritual energy, no need to calculate the enemy's weaknesses, no need to calculate the Crown Prince's thoughts, no need to calculate Wang Zhenyue's pursuit. All you need to do is step to the drumbeat, follow the crowd, and spin around and around.
The drumbeats grew more urgent, the music rose higher, and the cheers from the crowd grew louder.
Chen Fan's dance steps gradually became less stiff, his arms gradually softened, and a smile appeared on his sun-tanned face.
The smile was so faint, almost invisible, yet it made his eyes light up, as bright as the sky after a storm.