Chapter 16: I Would Rather Have a Knife Behind Me Than a Betrayal
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“Lu?”
Lu Ge was completely bewildered.
“Wait. Hold on.”
“Don’t make a fuss yet.”
“Let me think in peace.”
Lu Ge raised a hand slightly.
Yin Wenzi immediately turned around and called softly, “Silence.”
In an instant, the entire Ancestral Hall fell quiet.
As the foremost figure of the Daoist school, Yin Wenzi’s cultivation went without saying. He stood at the very summit of the age.
Yet the leaders of the other schools present were hardly any weaker.
Under ordinary circumstances, if Yin Wenzi had used Daoist magic to silence the Hundred Schools of Thought, they certainly would not have accepted it. They would have done whatever they could to undermine him.
But now, they did not dare.
After all, they had personally witnessed this Daoist ancestor step out of a painting.
Whether he was genuine or not, they had yet to determine.
If he was fake, then letting Yin Wenzi put on this performance would do no harm. Later, they could laugh to their hearts’ content at the Daoists for mistaking someone else for their ancestor.
But if he was real, and they disrupted things now, who could say whether someone might strike them down from behind before the matter was over?
Lu Ge closed his eyes and looked inward into his sea of consciousness, inspecting the ancient mirror.
The writing upon it had already changed.
[Current Instance: The First Emperor’s Calamity.]
[Difficulty: F to SSS.]
[Mission: Find Ying Zheng, the First Emperor, and aid him in unifying the realm.]
[Reward: Indecipherable.]
“Come on, man. Why is the reward still unreadable?”
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to milk the First Emperor when the time comes?”
Lu Ge could not help grumbling as he stared at the reward.
He was beginning to suspect that this ancient mirror was simply a freeloading parasite.
Still, this mission...
It seemed that even without him, the mission could be completed.
And why had the difficulty not changed at all?
F to SSS again?
Lu Ge pondered it carefully. Then, his imagination suddenly ran wild, and he thought of a possibility.
“Could it be that unifying the Six Kingdoms is something the First Emperor was already capable of achieving, which is why the difficulty is only F?”
“After all, even if I just stand by and do nothing, the mission can still be completed.”
“But the mission says to aid him in unifying the realm. That phrase could mean something else.”
“What if it means unifying the entire planet?”
“The difficulty would increase accordingly. In that case, I probably couldn’t simply remain idle.”
“And if the scope expanded further—to unifying the solar system, the galaxy, or even the entire universe...”
“Tsk. The difficulty would instantly be maxed out.”
“Helping the First Emperor unify the universe would be no different from facing the ultimate form of my teacher, the Grand Celestial Worthy of Supreme Virtue, in the previous mission.”
“After all, the final outcome would be the same in every case: certain death.”
Lu Ge clicked his tongue. This was going to be troublesome.
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“Forget it. I’ll see what happens when the time comes.”
“If the mission can be done, I’ll do it. If not, then so be it.”
“At worst, I’ll simply remain idle and scrape by with an F-grade completion.”
“I’m not exactly expecting this lousy mirror to give me any worthwhile reward.”
“The reward from the previous instance was merely the Classic of the Way and Virtue that my teacher gave me out of generosity.”
After studying the Dao under Lao Dan for sixteen years, Lu Ge’s state of mind had become centered on effortless action.
If something was difficult, he would do it.
If it could not be done, he would simply lie flat and let it go.
Lu Ge opened his eyes again and looked at the people before him.
“Their reactions just now... They all seem to know me.”
“It looks like both of these transmigrations took place in the same world, only at different points in time.”
“The previous one should have been around five hundred years before the Common Era.”
“And judging from the mission information, this time should be around two hundred and fifty years before the Common Era.”
“By that reckoning, nearly two hundred and fifty years have passed in this world.”
“I wonder whether my teacher is still here.”
Lu Ge pondered silently.
Dead?
Lao Dan certainly would not die.
Anyone else might die, but not him.
At most, he had merely left this world.
“Right.”
Lu Ge turned around and looked at the ancestral painting behind him.
The figure who had been riding the ox was no longer inside it.
“You said I came out of the painting.”
“This one?”
Lu Ge pointed at the painting of Laozi riding an ox.
Yin Wenzi nodded repeatedly. “That is the one.”
Lu Ge stroked his chin as he studied the image.
“This looks like the moment I first met Yin Xi before Hangu Pass.”
He murmured to himself.
Yin Wenzi’s incarnation nodded like a mechanical toy. “Exactly.”
Lu Ge asked again, “Just now, while I was in the painting, it seemed as though someone shoved me, and I fell out.”
“Did any of you see who pushed me?”
Yin Wenzi blinked. “Er... It seemed that the Azure Ox butted you.”
Lu Ge’s eyes widened.
So it was not his teacher who had pushed him.
In that case, he would not let this go.
“You insolent cow-nose!”
Lu Ge pointed at the ancestral painting and began to rage.
“I take you out every day to eat the finest food and drink the strongest liquor.”
“And now that we finally meet, you not only fail to greet me, you even dare to butt me?”
“I would sooner believe a knife had been driven into my back!”
“Just you wait. Next time I’ll take you out to eat castor beans and let you experience the full agony of being torn apart.”
Not a single person in the Ancestral Hall dared make a sound.
Even though it was merely the Azure Ox who served beneath the ancestor, they would never have dared curse it so boldly.
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Just as Lu Ge was enjoying himself, the ancestral painting suddenly moved again.
The Azure Ox slowly turned its head, as though gazing at him through the passage of time and space.
Its four legs bent slightly, as if gathering strength and preparing to launch a wild charge at any moment.
Lu Ge hurriedly retreated three steps.
“Hey, Brother Ox, calm down. Let’s stay calm.”
“I was just so happy to see you again that I used a little verbal artistry to express how much I missed you.”
“Let’s not do this.”
When the time came to admit defeat, one had to admit defeat.
At present, aside from longevity, Lu Ge possessed only one technique: the Big Dipper Death-Inscribing Sword Aura.
He could not possibly withstand a charge from the Azure Ox.
Only after seeing Lu Ge back down did the Azure Ox return to its original form.
Lu Ge gave a dry cough and turned around.
Seeing the dumbfounded faces before him, he offered an awkward smile and hurriedly changed the subject.
“Anyway, may I ask what this place is?”
Yin Wenzi replied, “This is the Jixia Academy.”
“The Jixia Academy?”
Lu Ge thought for a moment, then asked, “In the Kingdom of Qi?”
“Which ruler is on the throne? What year is it?”
Yin Wenzi nodded again. “Indeed, this is the Kingdom of Qi.”
“It is now the sixth year of King Jing’s reign.”
King Jing of Qi?
These days, Lu Ge had been attending classes, frantically making up for his knowledge of history, while also reading a great many novels.
He had some impression of King Jing of Qi.
The final ruler of Qi.
The one who would eventually be starved to death by the First Emperor.
Tsk. Qi was doomed.
Ah, right—not only Qi. The other kingdoms would fall even faster.
Lu Ge silently calculated.
The sixth year of King Jing’s reign was 259 before the Common Era.
In other words...
That eternal emperor who would begin his life as a hostage in an enemy state and end it by unifying the entire realm was to be born this year.
“Ancestor, is there anything you require of us?”
Yin Wenzi asked softly.
He was desperate to keep Lu Ge at the Jixia Academy.
Although he was currently the foremost figure of the Daoist school, there were others at the Jixia Academy who surpassed him.
The greatest among them was Xunzi of the Confucian school.
As the academy’s Grand Libationer, Xunzi’s cultivation firmly outstripped his own.
And before Xunzi, there had been Mencius.
Those two had taken turns suppressing an entire era.
In their hands, Confucianism had flourished and grown mighty.
The Daoists, meanwhile, had been having a miserable time.
Their younger disciples were hopeless. They could only beg their ancestor to uphold the school’s dignity.
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