Chapter 2
Chapter 2
My name is Yuehong, and I am the Yue Lao of today’s Heavenly Realm. I oversee the mortal world’s marriages and fated bonds. Across the rolling sea of red dust, countless lovesick men and resentful women pass through my hands, bound together by a single slender red string, their destined ties knotted into place.
Are you a mortal emperor greedy for power and status? Then I must ask you, Your Majesty: do you love your empire, or do you love the beauty at your side?
Are you an enlightened master who claims to have severed all feelings and desires? Then I must ask you, Sage: is there truly such a perfect way in this world, as you say, that lets you fail neither the Buddha nor the woman you love?
You say you are an unrivaled hero, proud to the bone, willing to break before you bend. Very well, hero. Have you ever tasted the poison of love? Once it takes hold, it feels as though a hundred ants are burrowing into your heart. I would very much like to see just how many days that proud spine of yours can endure.
In truth, at the very beginning, I wanted to cultivate the Path of Ruthlessness.
Previous Yue Lao was always rapping me on the head with his walking stick. “Ahem, ahem, girl, are you trying to drive me to my grave? In the twenty thousand years and more of our Matchmaking Shrine, when has there ever been a Yue Lao who cultivated the Path of Ruthlessness? This is outrageous disrespect!”
Clutching my head, I darted around in circles and trampled a great swath of Laojun’s carefully tended rose bushes. “Stop hitting me! Laojun, stop! It hurts! Cultivating the Path of Ruthlessness makes one’s cultivation rise quickly. What’s wrong with that? You old man, you’re being unreasonable.”
Laojun stroked his beard and struck even harder. “You want to cultivate the Path of Ruthlessness? Do you think tying red strings is as simple as randomly finding a man and a woman and binding them together?”
I said, “Isn’t it? Love, romance… one man, one woman, holding each other, wrapped in each other’s arms. However they live, aren’t they still living?”
“You call that matchmaking? That is making a complete mess of the lovers’ register! Ahem, ahem. This old man must teach you a lesson today!”
“I was clearly just a rock, and you insisted on enlightening me and turning me into the Fate Stone. Now you won’t even let me cultivate the Path of Ruthlessness. What kind of immortal are you? I… I’ll go jump from Zhuxian Terrace! I don’t need to be an immortal at all!”
With that, I bolted for the door. Laojun was so furious he stamped his feet, his face flushed red as he summoned the Immortal-Binding Rope to tie me up.
Like a newborn calf, I charged forward with all my might, only to plunge headfirst into someone’s arms. A man’s cool, sweet scent rushed over me. I lifted my eyes and met a pair of ink-black eyes, dark as polished lacquer, so clean and clear they were like a pool of autumn water, tempting one to sink and never surface.
This immortal fell into them, and even after two hundred years, I still had not found my way out.
In the end, I cultivated the Path of Emotion after all.