A Week Later, Beijing.
Zhou Hui sat in the hospital room. His bare upper body looked very strong in the morning light, but his muscles were covered with various large and small scars.
Some of those wounds had almost healed, while others were still ferociously open to the air, the bright red muscles and blood vessels clearly visible under the skin. However, he didn’t seem to care at all, nor did he seem to feel any pain. He just quietly looked at his open palm.
On it was a jade egg.
The door to the hospital room was pushed open, and Yu Jingzhong walked in. He gently placed a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. “Old Zhou.”
Zhou Hui raised his eyebrows, his eyes filled with an undisguised gloom. “Is it all dealt with?”
“Yes, Wu Bei, Shenwan, and the Nine-Tailed Fox have all returned from H City. The local cleanup work has been handed over to Long Jiu for full responsibility. For now, the capital’s defense circle and the Qiankunarray are being handled by Situ Yingzhi. Yan Lanyu can help a little.”
Zhou Hui nodded without a word. Yu Jingzhong hesitated, then after a moment, said, “Old Zhou.”
“What?”
“…What are you planning to… do?”
Yu Jingzhong finally asked the question, and immediately felt a complex sense of relief. However, the next moment, he saw Zhou Hui’s haggard, fierce face, and an even heavier worry silently pressed on his heart.
“Me?” Zhou Hui said coldly. “Do you think I can go back to Group Six in this state?”
“I didn’t mean that, it’s just that you’re cooped up in this hospital room all day…”
“Is there a problem?”
Yu Jingzhong choked, almost speechless. After a moment of stunned silence, he had no choice but to take out a cigarette. But just as he took out a lighter, Zhou Hui immediately stopped him, pointing to the egg in his hand. “—The phoenix is here!”
“…” Yu Jingzhong sullenly stuffed the cigarette back into the pack. “I heard it will take many years to hatch, right?”
Zhou Hui did not answer.
“Old Zhou, are you planning to spend hundreds or thousands of years like this? Cooped up alone, finding a corner to curl up and hatch an egg? What if you die of old age before the egg hatches? What if the egg hatches and the phoenix doesn’t recognize you? You have to find something to do, you have to change your mood, find some meaning in life. Although your life is longer than a human’s…”
“Do you want a beating?” Zhou Hui interrupted.
“No, no, I’m doing this for your own good,” Yu Jingzhong said earnestly. “Precisely because your life is still very long, you must find a hope for yourself to support you in the years to come. Look, you still have two children, both of whom are your and the phoenix’s own…”
With a bang, Zhou Hui slammed his hand on the bedside table, and the table collapsed.
Yu Jingzhong immediately fell silent.
The hospital room was quiet for a moment. Finally, Zhou Hui said in a muffled voice, “I want to go for a walk.”
Yu Jingzhong had been ready to bolt out the door at any moment. Hearing this, he retracted his poised foot and asked, “Where to?”
“Hell, the Gray River, Mount Buzhou, the ten-thousand-li city wall of the Luminous Heaven, the glacier temple of Mount Sumeru, and the ruins where the Vajra Bell was shattered. There are many places to go, but there’s even more time. Maybe in the end, there will be nowhere to go, and I’ll come back to the human world.”
Zhou Hui smiled self-deprecatingly and said, “Don’t worry about losing contact. I’ll come back to see you every ten or eight years. After a few tens or eights of years, you’ll be old. If you die, I’ll fish you out of hell. I might even be able to have a drink with you down there and find a good family for you to be reborn into.”
Yu Jingzhong stared at him for a long moment. “…Thank you so much.”
“As for Team One,” Zhou Hui continued, “it can be handed over to Jia Louluo. This kid is stupid but strong and eats little. He’s born to be abused. And in terms of personality, he has some good points that are very similar to the phoenix…”
He paused and sighed.
“I don’t know when the phoenix embryo will hatch. I’ll take it one year at a time. I once lived with the phoenix in the void beyond the six paths for a thousand years. It was really a place with nothing but darkness. Our family lived very happily, and it seemed as if time flew by without us noticing. Back then, it was never like now, where the thought of the future makes the years seem so long…”
Yu Jingzhong felt very bad hearing this. He wanted to comfort him but didn’t know what to say. He only felt a bitter taste at the root of his tongue and a sourness in his nose.
However, there was no pain or despair on Zhou Hui’s face. He caressed the small egg in his hand and, after a long while, sighed silently.
The aftertaste of that sigh seemed to carry something very heavy, yet it left no trace, disappearing like a wisp of smoke in the quiet air of the hospital room.
Yu Jingzhong finally took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth but didn’t light it. He walked over and patted Zhou Hui’s shoulder.
“When you leave, let me know, brother. I’ll see you and Phoenix Four off.”
Zhou Hui smiled but didn’t speak.
Outside, the morning light was bright, and the scent of osmanthus was fragrant. However, this handsome man sitting in the hospital room was like a world apart.
In his enclosed world, there was only him and the unknowing egg, and countless unforgettable, brilliant, and bygone memories, like a tidal wave, roared and receded from the air.
·
In the first few days of Zhou Hui’s hospitalization, no one dared to disturb him. After Yu Jingzhong broke the ice, Yan Lanyu, Wu Bei, Situ Yingzhi, and Shenwan Tiansi all went to see him one after another.
The first few were fine. When it came to Shenwan Tiansi, Zhou Hui might have remembered the old days when he was just a baby and was picked up and raised by the phoenix for a few days. He touched his head and said nothing for a long while, then finally said, “In the future, if you have any problems over there, ask Jia Louluo for help, you know?”
Shenwan nodded exceptionally obediently, his gaze occasionally drifting to the phoenix egg that Zhou Hui never left his hand. “Then… will you still come back often?”
“We’ll see.”
“…” Shenwan blinked. “Oh.”
He seemed very uncomfortable, but he must have been warned by Wu Bei and Situ Yingzhi beforehand, so he tried his best to hide it. That emotion was actually completely transparent to Zhou Hui. The two were silent for a moment, then Zhou Hui patted his head, seeming a bit emotional. “You’re such a big kid now, in the blink of an eye…”
·
Although everyone had told Zhou Hui to say goodbye before he left, on the day he left the human world, he didn’t tell anyone.
He left the hospital late one night, passed through the capital’s sky, which was illuminated by neon lights, and the quiet and cold suburbs. He slowly walked into the void, towards the inconspicuous human world boundary marker standing on the distant horizon.
“Hey,” a voice said from behind.
Zhou Hui’s footsteps paused.
“Leaving without saying goodbye isn’t your style. Don’t cosplay a wandering hipster if you don’t have the vibe. Why don’t you go back and stay in the hospital for a few more days?”
“Hu Qing,” Zhou Hui turned his head and said. “I’ve always had a question. For the sake of us maybe not seeing each other for ten or eight years, can you give me a straight answer…”
Behind him, Li Hu stood under the vast starry river in her almost iconic tight red dress, her long hair alluring, her demeanor enchanting. Her slender white fingers brushed her lips with incomparable charm.
“We never slept together,” she said with a smile.
Zhou Hui said, “Not that.”
“I’ve already handed over all the nude photos of the phoenix. I don’t have any private collection.”
“Not that either.”
“…I was willing to come to the human world to work with you guys not to seduce Yu Jingzhong, although I did try to seduce him in the early years. I was almost beaten up as a female ghost, and later I felt a bit embarrassed so I didn’t say…”
“I know,” Zhou Hui said. “Old Yu told me.”
Li Hu tilted her head, a little confused. “What do you want to know? I’m someone who’s even willing to report my post-hookup summaries to the phoenix. I shouldn’t have any secrets, right?”
Zhou Hui looked her up and down for a long while, his gaze pausing for a moment on the cleavage on her chest that seemed to want to compete in depth with the Mariana Trench. He finally asked, “You’re a male fox yourself and more comfortable in a male body. Have you been wearing women’s clothes for the past two years because Zhang Shun is easier to get close to women?”
Li Hu stared at Zhou Hui, speechless for a long time. After a long while, her figure suddenly changed, turning into a young man in pink, with short, messy hair and nine snow-white tails.
“I’ve changed my mind. You’d better get lost,” he said expressionlessly. “Zaijian, qin. Why would the phoenix rather be with you than sleep with me?”
Zhou Hui laughed, turned around, and waved at him. The phoenix egg, clutched tightly in his palm, drew a magnificent, soft arc of light in the night wind.
He walked towards the distant human world boundary marker and, under the complex gaze of the nine-tailed fox, disappeared at the end of the night.
·
After Sakyamuni, as the fake Buddha, disappeared, and the true Buddha returned to his position, the Formless Heaven rose and sent a decree to Mount Sumeru to cease war and recuperate. The Four Evil Paths finally took a breath after thousands of years of ceaseless campaigns by the Heavenly Dao.
The Asura clan, however, suffered a heavy blow and was no longer the sole ruler of the Four Evil Paths.
In hell, which was rich in species and mineral resources, the Asura’s control continued to weaken. The demonic creatures in many places broke away from their control and, after regaining their freedom, immediately returned to the Mount Buzhou and Sea of Blood regions, so that the once withered and dilapidated scene quickly burst with vigorous life.
The Luminous Heaven, the lowest of the Thirty-Three Heavens and the closest to hell, had once been barren due to thousands of years of wars between gods and demons. Now, it had finally regained the peace and tranquility characteristic of the Heavenly Dao. The sky was azure, the city walls were high. Zhou Hui walked up the winding, seemingly endless white jade steps, pointed to the faint outline of a city tower in the distance, and said with a smile, “This is where I proposed for the first time, Phoenix. You almost shot me with an arrow back then. How dangerous was that?”
The white jade egg lay quietly in his warm palm, radiating layers of rippling soft light.
Zhou Hui stood for a while, then continued to walk up.
Under his feet, the battlefield of tens of thousands of years was desolate and silent. The wind blew gently, making a long, mournful sound, as if from a distant, charging army.
Zhou Hui walked through the Thirty-Three Heavens one by one, until he reached the ancient ice plains at the foot of Mount Sumeru. The vast expanse of goose-feather snow whistled in the strong wind. He shielded his eyes with his hand and vaguely glimpsed the majestic yet unclear Mount Sumeru at the end of the snowstorm. He murmured, “Is this the place where the great vow was made?”
He looked at the egg, as if trying to see the small phoenix chick sleeping quietly inside through the shell.
“One step, one prostration, all the way to the Buddhist hall at the top of the mountain. The vow you make, all the gods and Buddhas can hear…” Zhou Hui put the egg back in his pocket and muttered to himself, “Cheh, what’s the use of them hearing? Our wife is an ancient divine bird, not under the control of those gods and Buddhas.”
Although he said so, he still took a step, knelt down perfunctorily, and prostrated himself. He got up, took another step, and knelt down again.
The various fatal injuries he had sustained in his fight with Sakyamuni had not yet fully healed. Although his daily movements were not affected, the long trek was still a very strenuous matter. Zhou Hui would walk for a while, then stop, hiding behind the towering rocks on the glacier to avoid the wind, and then continue on his way. He passed the foot of the mountain, climbed up to the middle, crossed the steep, huge ice cliffs, and headed towards the summit of Mount Sumeru, Xuebao Peak. His footsteps meandered, as if he were the last traveler left in the vast world.
Zhou Hui finally crossed the ice plains, prostrating himself all the way to the front of the Buddhist hall. He stood up and patted the snow off his shoulders, chest, and legs. The monks on Mount Sumeru knew he was coming and all hid away, pretending not to know. Therefore, the incense-filled Buddhist hall was empty. Only Zhou Hui stood there, looking at the pure gold Buddha statue in the deepest part of the hall from across the main gate for a moment.
“This is where you made your vow last time?” he asked the phoenix.
The egg in his breast pocket made no sound.
Zhou Hui shook his head and smiled but did not make a wish. Under the gaze of the eighteen golden arhats and the various bodhisattvas and Buddhas, he turned around and continued to prostrate himself, one step at a time, but this time towards a higher place, the Phoenix Temple at the summit of Xuebao Peak.
“I don’t pray to gods and Buddhas, I only pray to you.”
Zhou Hui’s forehead touched the snow, leaving a deep mark. In front of him, the temple was majestic, reaching straight into the sky. Behind him, a long string of footprints led to the distant glacier, gradually being buried in the wind and snow.
“My dear phoenix, even in my last moments, please let me see you one last time.”
“Let me, in my last moment of disappearance, see you born into the world.”
