I Regret It
Duke Long seats Hong Ting on a rock and shows him ants hauling food to their nest and clouds drifting across the sky, calling both fate. Everything in the world walks a path set by the Great Dao, and every person, Immortal Venerable or Demon Venerable, dies in the end. Hong Ting had rushed to kill Xue Tu Dao, and Duke Long says he missed the value of a man whom heaven and earth let exist for a definite reason. People can only slightly feel fate’s arrangements, since they are too weak and small while heaven and earth are too vast. Duke Long calls himself Hong Ting’s Dao Guardian, there to guide him. ch. 1677
Forcing events brings tragedy and regret, Duke Long insists, and Hong Ting’s early attempt on Xue Tu Dao failed and implicated innocent lives. Duke Long asks whether any mishap would have followed had Hong Ting obeyed fate and struck at Xue Tu Dao’s weakest moments. He reveals that Xue Tu Dao existed to activate a Gu Immortal inheritance and hand it to Hong Ting. Hong Ting, dazed, weeps and admits he was wrong. Duke Long answers that the wrong choice was fate’s arrangement as well, and that even a village’s destruction has its value. ch. 1677
Hong Ting is now at rank five, and he confesses that wisdom path seems extremely suitable to him. Duke Long worries that Hong Ting weighs feelings too heavily and tells him to take time path instead, citing a revelation from fate Gu. Hong Ting opens his mouth slightly as if to speak, then accepts time path. Under Duke Long’s protection he passes his immortal ascension tribulation and becomes a time path Gu Immortal. ch. 1677
An old city lord, a friend of Hong Ting’s father, kneels and begs him to kill a demon who threatens to slaughter the city unless he receives the lord’s daughter as a concubine. Hong Ting says he will definitely help, but the opportunity has not arrived. He waits for the correct time, then kills the demonic Gu Immortal easily. By then the city lies in ruins and corpses, and the old lord weeps that his dead daughter and people are finally avenged. ch. 1677
Duke Long next sends Hong Ting to Floating Flower River, where a flood is coming, with an order to act only after three days and three nights. Hong Ting waits among drowned corpses, and the water retreats on its own, leaving swamps. He subdues a nearby wild rank seven time path Immortal Gu, then conceals himself while two ancient desolate beasts fight. After one dies and the other is injured, he strikes and takes both corpses. Studying the battlefield, he sees fate’s arrangement: the river has widened several times over, its channel is thickened with beast blood, and it will probably not flood again. The land beside it will become extremely fertile, and the mortals living there will truly be fortunate. ch. 1677
Bull-headed Demon Brute holds Hong Ting’s parents in his hands and demands the lifespan Gu he is owed. Fate had assigned two wild lifespan Gu to him, but Hong Ting seized them for his aging parents without telling Duke Long. Having already used them on his parents, Hong Ting cannot hand them over, and the demon demands three thousand years of lifespan Gu from the Heavenly Court treasury instead. Hong Ting finally forces him to retreat, yet his parents are irrecoverably injured, beyond even immortal methods. Hong Zhu smiles and tells him not to grieve, calling a son destined to be an Immortal Venerable an honor, and Madam Hong tells him to be righteous. The old couple clasp hands and die together. ch. 1677
Years later, Hong Ting meets Liu Shu Xian on a hill at sunset, and the two fall in love at first sight. He greets her as her fated husband and says fate decided their meeting. They travel and cultivate together for hundreds of years without a single quarrel, and she accompanies him up to the rank nine venerable realm. His tribulation is unimaginable, and Hong Ting succeeds at the end. The ordeal leaves Duke Long heavily injured and several Heavenly Court Gu Immortals dead. ch. 1677
The tribulation has struck Liu Shu Xian, and her body freezes in his arms. She tells him that only her special physique, one of the ten extreme physiques, could block it, and that she has fulfilled the meaning of her life. Hong Ting begs her to live and says he would rather not be an Immortal Venerable. She asks him to live on, lead Heavenly Court and bring fortune to the world, then dies. ch. 1677
Hong Ting bends under a heavy shadow, motionless, and the heaven and earth qi left in his immortal aperture merges into a rank eight Immortal Gu fitted to his state of mind. Regret Gu is a pale white centipede whose legs are replaced by one hundred translucent feelers that stir the deepest regret. Duke Long coughs blood, rises, and tells him that Liu Shu Xian’s death had worth. He adds that Hong Ting is now an Immortal Venerable, that rank nine venerables are extremely rare, and that he will abdicate his position. Hong Ting raises his head but keeps his gaze on her icy corpse. He replies lightly that he regrets it. ch. 1677
