Chapter 321: Chapter 313: Finale
A hundred years.
This number is but a flick of the fingers in the Heavenly Realm, yet in the Human World, it’s the passing of three full generations.
Nezha stood on the cloud platform outside the South Heavenly Gate, with the sea of clouds billowing beneath his feet. In his hand, he held a Copper Coin that had dimmed over time—given to him as change by an old man selling pancakes a hundred years ago when he left Chentang Pass. The old man said the Copper Coin was minted the year King Wu campaigned against the rebels and would ensure safety.
The Copper Coin remained, yet the grass on the old man’s grave had likely recurred over many cycles.
The Human World had passed a full hundred years.
During that century, Nezha descended to the Lower Realm thrice. The first time was the tenth year after Xiqi City’s fall, when he descended as a wandering Taoist into the city. The walls were rebuilt, the streets widened, and the blood-soaked bluestone slabs had all been replaced. He stood for a while at the old site of the hall where Ji Fa met his end, now a temple dedicated to the God of Wealth.
The second time was in the thirtieth year. Yin Jiao revived the Shang Tang, established the capital in Bo Zhou, and renamed the country "Xin Shang." That year, the weather was favorable, and harvests bountiful. Yin Jiao performs a fengshan ceremony at Mount Tai, offering sacrifices to heaven and earth. Nezha mingled among the spectators and saw Yin Jiao, wearing a black ceremonial robe, step by step ascend the heavenly stairs. At that moment, Yin Jiao looked up towards the sky, his gaze penetrating the clouds, meeting Nezha’s for an instant.
The two did not speak.
A week after the fengshan ceremony, Yin Jiao announced to the world, saying he had dreamed of an Immortal who told him his heavenly mandate had ended, and he should abdicate and seek the Way. The court was in an uproar, but no one dared to stop him. He passed the throne to his eight-year-old nephew and left with only three old servants, sailing east, disappearing into the vast sea.
Folktales say Yin Jiao went to Penglai Immortal Island and attained immortality.
Nezha knew this wasn’t true. He followed the ship three thousand miles and watched Yin Jiao land on a barren island with nothing but reefs and seabirds. Yin Jiao dismissed his old servants and walked alone into a cave in the center of the island, sealing the entrance.
Nezha stood outside the cave for three days. On the third night, a sigh emerged from within, and then everything fell silent.
Yin Jiao had died.
Not of old age, nor sickness, but by dispersing his own cultivation, turning into a handful of dust. This once Crown Prince of the Shang Dynasty, later a vengeful figure, and ultimately the Human Emperor, chose the most thorough departure. Perhaps for him, his mission alive had been completed, and all that remained was burdensome.
Nezha erected a wordless tablet on the island and then left.
The third descent to the Lower Realm was five years after Yin Jiao’s death.
In those five years, the heavens changed in the Human World.
First, the Yellow River broke its banks, flooding three provinces and sixteen counties. Then a great earthquake struck Guanzhong, collapsing half of Xian Yang Palace. Next came plagues of locusts, droughts, and epidemics. The Little Emperor of Xin Shang was only thirteen and could not stabilize the situation. The local lords grew restless, asserting that Yin Jiao’s abdication angered the heavens, signaling the end of Shang Tang’s fate.
The first to raise an army was a man named Ji Wang, claiming to be the seventh-generation grandson of Duke Ji Chang of Marquis Xibo. At the old site of Qi Mountain, he performed ancestral rituals and raised the banner of "Recovering Zhou," amassing a hundred thousand soldiers in three months.
Nezha went to see this Ji Wang. In his early twenties, his brows and eyes bore some resemblance to Ji Fa but carried more of the air of the commoners—before his rebellion, he was a salt merchant. Nezha listened outside the military tents for half the night, hearing Ji Wang and his strategists discuss siege tactics, how to divide the spoils, and who would become Prime Minister and Great General after success.
No one mentioned the "people."
The war raged for a full two years. The day Ji Wang’s troops breached Bo Zhou, the Little Emperor set himself ablaze in the palace, dying at fifteen. Xin Shang was destroyed, and the Great Zhou established—history recorded it thus, though this "Great Zhou" shared nothing but a name with the Zhou Dynasty from a century prior.
Nezha stood on Bo Zhou’s city tower, watching soldiers rob, kill, and set fires in the streets. An old woman wept over her grandson’s corpse, only to be kicked aside by a rogue soldier. The soldier snatched the silver bracelet from her hand, weighed it, found it lacking, and tossed it back in her face.
Nezha flicked his finger.
The rogue soldier suddenly knelt, bleeding from the seven apertures, and died instantly.
The old woman scrambled away in terror, leaving her grandson’s body behind.
Nezha turned and left. He could save one but not millions. This was the calamity of the Human World, and he could not interfere excessively—the heavenly edicts were clear as day.
The Heavenly Emperor was still there, but 0743 had died, and the new Executor from the Singer Civilization had a position evidently much higher, capable of cultivation, and had almost formed a Golden Core.
The winds at the ruins of Buzhou Mountain had blown for ten thousand years without pause.
When Nezha arrived, two people were already there. One was draped in a golden kasaya, meditating on a broken stone pillar, behind him the Dharma Image of a Thousand-armed Guanyin faintly visible. The other wore a cyan Daoist robe, standing with arms folded at the cliff’s edge, a scabbard of four swords hanging at his waist.
"Amitabha Buddha," Tathagata opened his eyes.
The Tongtian Sect Leader turned around, expressionless: "You have come."
The wind swept between them, stirring up pebbles and dust. The cracks left by Gong Gong’s strike that broke Buzhou Mountain millennia ago still remained, unfathomable, like a scar on the earth.
Nezha landed between the two.
He said nothing, only took out a ball of light from his chest.
That light resembled no spell’s illumination, not blinding, not piercing, even somewhat dim.
Yet Tathagata and the Tongtian Sect Leader’s expressions changed simultaneously, sensing that the light was "breathing."
Not the breath of life, but a dimensional kind of pulsation, each beat causing the surrounding space to distort slightly.
"You’ve mastered it?" Tongtian asked in a deep voice.
Nezha nodded, then shook his head.
He held that light, hand trembling slightly—not out of fear, but because the object was so heavy it was nearly beyond his cultivation to bear.
