Chapter 108: Peach Blossom Wine

"Come now, Haoji. You must drink more. It has been five hundred years since we last saw one another, and today we shall drink our fill."

Within a blessed realm veiled in rosy haze and suffused with immortal radiance, four or five old men with white beards sat on the ground around an octagonal table, drinking together.

One elder in a green robe was gripping Haoji's arm and urging him to drink with all his might, intent on seeing him thoroughly plied.

"Indeed, it has been five hundred years since we last met. We must drink heartily," Haoji said with a hearty laugh, refusing nothing.

The two old friends clinked their cups and emptied them in one swallow, each face flushing with warmth.

At once the atmosphere grew fervent, a cluster of ancient immortals with cranes' hair and boyish faces passing cups back and forth in utter ease.

Then, all at once, Haoji went still, sensing something.

He counted upon his fingers, and a smile spread across his face, understanding dawning.

"My friends, let us end it here for today," he said. "I must return to my grotto dwelling. If I stay away any longer, my foolish disciple will nearly have arranged my funeral on my behalf."

"You fellow, always such a spoil-sport," grumbled the elder in green. "It has been so long since the old brothers gathered. We ought to drink for ten days and ten nights at the very least."

"Did he not just take in a disciple with excellent bones and exceptional talent?" said the yellow-robed elder, hastening to smooth things over. "He is simply concerned and cannot rest easy."

Excellent bones. Exceptional talent.

Thus Haoji had described Chang Yu to the others.

"Old friends, this time it is I who spoiled your pleasure. I offer my apologies," Haoji said, shaking out his sleeves and bowing to the assembly.

"Next time we have the chance, let us drink together again until we are well and truly satisfied!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Haoji beckoned, and a five-colored cloud came flying from the horizon, lifting him high.

The cloud rose slowly. Just as it was about to leave this world behind, Haoji suddenly remembered something.

"Ah, speaking of which, my disciple has not yet tasted this thousand-year peach blossom wine. Surely I cannot be the one reveling abroad while my disciple can only stare on longingly, can I?"

With that, he spread one broad sleeve, and a fierce suction issued from the cuff, drawing a jade bottle from the table into his sleeve.

"Old companion, thank you for your hospitality. I shall thank you in my disciple's stead for the peach blossom wine!"

And so Haoji departed without once looking back.

Watching him flee farther and farther away, the green-robed elder laughed and cursed, "That old fellow not only drank his fill, he also left with something in hand. He gets all the bargains in this world."

"Enough, enough. This old man and his disciple are fated to meet. Let us simply present that peach blossom wine to the boy."

Fuling Valley...

"Master! Master!" Chang Yu wailed in tears. "How could your fate be so cruel? Such a fine man, and now he's just... gone?"

Chang Yu's mood was dreadful. He felt as though he had been left alone again.

First the headmaster grandfather, then Wang the Fat One, and now Haoji...

Fate always seemed to delight in toying with Chang Yu.

One by one, all those who truly treated him well had left his life. That sorrowful, helpless feeling made him hate it from the bottom of his heart.

He loathed this unjust destiny, and he loathed this dim, wretched life.

He swore he would find the murderer who had slain his master, and avenge the little elder who had always cared for him with such meticulous tenderness.

Just as he was about to rise and leave, he suddenly heard a familiar voice.

"Rebellious disciple! Your master is alive and well—what are you bawling for?"

Chang Yu froze on the spot. His first thought was that he had misheard it. He had actually heard the voice of Haoji, who had long since passed away.

"Could it be that I am hearing things?"

When a person is plunged into immense sorrow, hallucinations come easily. This situation now was perhaps, maybe, possibly simply Chang Yu hallucinating.

He turned in disbelief, only to find that the cheap master he had thought long dead was indeed standing behind him.

Haoji was still dressed in white robes, still carrying that immortal, scholarly bearing, as if he had never once learned to wear anything else.

Who knew how long it had been since those robes had last been washed.

Haoji's face was filled with towering anger, wholly unlike the gentle demeanor he had shown at the wine table before.

That, too, was understandable.

No master would be pleased to learn that his foolish disciple had spent his days hoping for his death while he was still very much alive.

At the wine table earlier, Haoji had not dared to flare up before his friends. After all, such a thing... would be far too humiliating to spread about.

If his old companions learned of it, they would surely mock him for hundreds of years.

He, Haoji, could not afford such disgrace.

So at the table he had forced down the fury burning in his chest.

Now that he had returned, and the old friends could no longer see, there was no need to hide it anymore, and his anger showed plainly.

"Master! So you're still alive?" Chang Yu cried with delight, his grin stretching nearly to the heavens.

From despair to joy, his mood was like a roller coaster, rising and falling in an instant.

In that brief moment, Chang Yu suddenly felt that he had grown up.

As an orphan, he had never known what fatherly love was, nor maternal love.

Haoji's appearance was like a beam of light, illuminating the dry and silent chambers of his heart.

He cared for Chang Yu with meticulous tenderness, warmed him, and filled the hollow place in his heart that had lacked family and warmth for so many years.

So for Chang Yu, Haoji was both master and father.

That was why, upon believing Haoji had passed on, he had wept so bitterly.

"I see you were truly hoping I would die, so you could inherit my vast valley and those few houses of mine?" Haoji said, genuinely exasperated.

Why was it that disciples from other people's households were always so obedient and sensible, while his own disciple seemed to have a less-than-stellar brain?

Had Chang Yu known what Haoji was thinking at this moment, he would surely have felt an eerie, inexplicable resonance.

Truthfully, Chang Yu had always felt the children in other people's families were obedient and well-behaved, while his own little Yangyang was... so troublesome it made one want to suffer a heart attack.

It seemed that in this regard, the hearts of parents everywhere were the same: they all hoped their own children would become dragons and phoenixes.

Very soon, Haoji could no longer stay angry, because Chang Yu was already trembling all over as he rushed toward him.

"Master!" Chang Yu knelt excitedly before Haoji and clutched his leg with all his strength.

From his mouth came a heart-rending cry: "You surely cannot know how wronged I feel, Master."

"I thought... I truly thought Master had met an enemy and rode a crane westward!"

"Every time I think of your patient teachings and your kind face, my heart feels like... it has been stabbed to death."

"At the time, I kept thinking: if there were no Master to guide your disciple like a beacon, wouldn't my future be utterly without direction?"

Chang Yu poured out the fear in his heart with streaming tears and a runny nose, like a child who had suffered enormous grievance.

So now you're the wronged one, Haoji thought helplessly.

The one who was wronged was clearly me! Me, all right?

I was alive and well, and with your one wail, it was as if I had truly died.

If anything, I am the one who feels most stifled.

And yet... the reason this child cried so sadly was also because of me...

Thinking of this, Haoji's face took on a complex expression, half joy and half worry, and for a moment he did not know whether he ought to scold Chang Yu or praise him.

Perhaps... for the sake of his filial devotion, he should forgive him?

After all, he was still just a child.

Even if he had done something outrageous... it was still understandable.

With invisible motions, Haoji smoothed the snot and tears Chang Yu had smeared over his robe hem, then sighed.

"Get up. The ground is cold."

"As you can see, I am very well. Those nonsense thoughts in your head never happened to me at all."

"I merely went drinking with old friends earlier. We grew spirited, and the time ran a little long, that's all."

"And besides... throughout this world, I am also a renowned great power. Ordinary enemies could not possibly do anything to your master."

"You are my master, so whatever you say must be right." Chang Yu clearly did not believe Haoji's words. He felt the old man was bluffing.

But fearing he would wound Haoji's pride, he could only cooperate desperately in this little performance.

Among the great powers in the old myths, which one did not have countless attendants and disciples at hand, dwelling in towers and palaces rising ten thousand fathoms high?

This little old man was already ancient, yet at his side there was not even a single soul to look after him.

He spent all day hiding in this desolate valley, living in that shabby thatched hut. He was probably nothing more than an unremarkable nobody.

If Chang Yu had not fallen from the sky out of nowhere, it was even questionable whether the old man could have found a disciple to inherit his teachings.

Hm... this really was cheap for the little old man.

He, Chang Yu, was one in ten thousand, with outstanding bones and peerless talent—a heaven-blessed prodigy among prodigies.

For such a transcendent genius to accept a disciple like him was surely a blessing earned by the old man over eight lifetimes.

"Oh, right. This wine banquet was not for nothing. Your master even brought you back a gift," Haoji said, taking a small jade bottle from his sleeve and giving it a shake.

The bottle was clear and lustrous, its mellow sheen proof at a glance that it had been carved from the finest jade, priceless in value.

"It still contains half a bottle of peach blossom wine, which your master shamelessly procured for you."

Haoji said this with a proud tone, his face practically shouting, Come on, praise me.

"Um, Master... I don't really care for drinking. You should keep the peach blossom wine for yourself," Chang Yu said, believing that the most important thing in life was never to snatch what another loved. If someone treasured something, he would absolutely not touch it.

"You know nothing!" Haoji glared, his beard bristling. "This is no ordinary wine. This is thousand-year peach blossom wine!"

"Drink it, and you will gain benefits beyond your imagination. If you were not your master's only disciple, I would never bear to let you drink it."

"Do you know? This thing is a treasure. Ordinary cultivators cannot even hope to lay eyes on it, much less drink it!"

"As long as you drink it, you can obtain benefits beyond even my imagination?"

Chang Yu looked strange, half believing and half doubting.

Why did that sound so much like the script of someone selling fake medicine?

"Why all the nonsense? Would your master ever harm you?" Haoji thought Chang Yu was good in every way, except that he was a little suspicious.

Nicely put, that would be a critical mind. Put less kindly, it was paranoia.

He produced a delicate little wine cup, filled it to the brim, and handed it to Chang Yu.

"This thousand-year peach blossom wine is brewed from blossoms of a thousand-year peach tree and thousand-year spring water, fermented over a span of a thousand years. Its medicinal power is the gentlest of all."

"Even a small fry like you, who has only just stepped across the threshold of cultivation, can drink an entire cup without fearing the medicine will be too fierce and burst you apart from within."

"Tell me yourself then: is this wine... good or not?"