Chapter 311: Chapter 311

Seeing Yin Wanderer bow his head in agreement, Li Xun let out a long breath. Then his mind drifted to Qi Bi, who was still bedridden unable to get up, and a faint gloom settled in his chest. He didn’t feel like talking anymore. He just closed his eyes slightly and leaned back against the chair. Yin Wanderer understood at once. She moved behind Li Xun and began working her ten fingers over Li Xun’s scalp and shoulders.

With her skilled hands tending to him, Li Xun felt his body loosen up. A moan escaped him before he could stop it.

When the pleasant sensation began to settle into something comfortable, he spoke again. “I should thank you for stepping in that night.”

He was talking about the mountain wind that had nudged Shan Zhi’s body off course just before his death. That had been Yin Wanderer’s doing, so quietly and so skillfully that no one noticed a thing.

Yin Wanderer didn’t care much for the thanks. Her hands never slowed as she chuckled, “I didn’t expect you to have a soft spot. What made you soften up? Did he remind you of yourself?”

Li Xun tilted his head back slightly. His eyes were sharp like a blade, cutting toward Yin Wanderer. Then he suddenly remembered how, days earlier, Shan Zhi had provoked him into swearing he would write a treatise on forbidden techniques. His cheek twitched, and he actually smiled, though it was hard to tell how much of it was rueful and how much was self-mockery.

Yin Wanderer watched his expression shift with interest. Then she changed the subject out of nowhere. “If you had to divide all the cultivators in the realm into two categories, how would you do it?”

“Male cultivators and female cultivators, I guess.” Li Xun clearly wasn’t interested. His voice was lazy and flat.

Yin Wanderer flashed a bright smile. “Wrong. If you divide them into two types, they’re either people who are clear-minded or people who are muddled. The clear-minded know what they can do and what they ought to do. As for the muddled ones… there’s no need to say more. What do you think you are: clear-minded or muddled?”

A flicker of interest stirred in Li Xun, though he still disliked Yin Wanderer’s riddling. He grunted, “In your eyes, am I clear-minded or muddled?”

“To figure that out is very simple,” she replied with a small smile. She lifted one hand, pointing toward a tall tree outside the window. Several bird nests sat wedged among the branches, dark and stark against the winter snow. “How about you go destroy those birds’ nests?”

Li Xun glanced over. He could see a few fledglings inside, and his brows drew together. “What’s the point of that?”

Yin Wanderer chuckled. “Winter will pass and spring will come. When those birds grow up and start chirping away, won’t they be noisy?”

Li Xun couldn’t help rolling his eyes. He was annoyed enough that it almost made him laugh. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve got better things to do than worry about whether they’re noisy or not.”

Yin Wanderer raised an eyebrow at that. “Oh? Maybe today you don’t care. But if you were in a shitty mood and a crow started screeching right over your head, would you still ignore it?”

Li Xun frowned. Hard to say what he’d do in that situation. But either way, that kind of thing had nothing to do with those fledglings who might not even survive the winter. His mind instinctively chased the matter a few layers deeper. The more he thought, the more it felt like there was something hidden there, so he grew serious.

Is she calling me shortsighted? Saying I don’t know how to plan ahead? Or maybe that I can’t overcome my inner demons and lack decisiveness?

Or is it that my level is still too low to see the subtleties involved?

Each thought seemed to make some sense, but none of them gave him a full answer. Before he knew it, his mind circled back to the question of being ‘clear-minded’ or ‘muddled.” If I actually went and destroyed those nests, would that make me muddled or clear-minded? It would have to be muddled… yet doing it doesn’t seem to have any real downside. Downside…?

A sudden spark of insight lit up in his mind. There might not be any real harm in it, but there’s no benefit either. Most things in this world fall into that gray, messy category; neither good nor bad. The moment you act on them, even if you started clear-minded, it turns into muddle.

And these kinds of things are everywhere. You can’t avoid them. So what should I do to make them work in my favor?

That line of thought was probably a hundred times more complex than the one before it. The more Li Xun tried to chase it down, the more confused he became. For a moment it felt like this was the legendary art of calculating fate and discerning heavenly secrets, except what he’d grasped wasn’t even the surface. Naturally, the harder he pushed, the more tangled his thoughts became, until he was left dazed and unsure.

Yin Wanderer pressed a little harder with her hands, but her voice stayed calm. “You and I both do plenty of things that harm others to help ourselves, but even then the distinction needs to be made clear. The world was never just black and white, so you can’t simply divide things into ‘beneficial’ or ‘not beneficial.’

“Some things can’t be clearly sorted out, yet people insist on sorting them out anyway. They think they’ve figured it out, but in truth they just get more and more muddled, until it’s hopeless.”

Li Xun pondered for a moment before laughing. “So by your logic, those Water Mirror Sect people who peer into fate to dodge misfortune and chase advantage are actually just a bunch of muddle-headed fools?

“On the contrary,“ she said, “look at them. How many times have they actually schemed for their own benefit? Most of the time, the ones caught up in things can’t see straight while the bystanders see it clearly. The same situation can look completely different from another angle. In a way, that is the true art of staying alive.”

Everything else she said was fine, but once she brought up “staying alive,” Li Xun burst out laughing. “Anyone else could say that, but coming from you it is ridiculous. Staying alive is not something you just talk about.”

Yin Wanderer was not offended and her smile did not change. “If all you think about is staying alive, how could you ever break through and ascend? Honestly, if you just hid inside Mist-Hidden Pavilion for a thousand years, no one would ever be able to touch you. That would be the smartest survival strategy. But would you do it?

“So what we are talking about right now is not some trick to simply stay alive. We are talking about facing hardship head-on and fighting fate itself.”

It was rare for her to speak this way. Right now, Yin Wanderer was no longer a puppet to be pushed around. Li Xun could erase her with a single thought, yet listening to her now, her words and bearing were so striking that, for a moment, he forgot the awkward nature of their relationship.

“Being clear-minded doesn’t guarantee ascension, but anyone who ascends is clear-minded. A fool, even with power like Zhong Yin’s, will eventually die under heaven’s tribulation.” A cold, mocking smile touched the corners of Yin Wanderer lips. She stared at Li Xun. “So do you know where the line lies between being clear-minded and being muddled?”

It looked like a genuine question at first glance, but she had just explained so clearly that if Li Xun still couldn’t answer, he might as well fall on his sword. “It’s not about what is advantageous or not, nor about what you can or can’t see clearly. The key is knowing when something can be seen clearly, and when it cannot….”

The tongue-twisting logic made Li Xun want to laugh, but Yin Wanderer nodded slightly and continued with a serious expression, “There is more to it. Heaven and earth are boundless, but a human body has limits. Of all the gains and losses in the world, the ones you can truly see clearly are few, and the ones you can’t are many. From that, we get two more questions: if you see clearly, what do you do? And if you can’t see clearly, then what?”

Li Xun waved a hand to cut her off, a half-smile on his face. “I get it, you’re saying that with Shan Zhi I wasn’t careful when I should have been, and I wasn’t ruthless when I should have been. I waffled and made a fool of myself, right?”

Yin Wanderer smiled softly. Her ten slender fingers slid around to the back of his shoulder like nimble snakes and gently kneaded. Warm energy flowed through a few key meridians to loosen them before she finally said, “This is a small matter in the end. It’s rare that you were able to make the connection. But not everything under heaven is that simple. Even if we take ten thousand steps back and pretend everything really is just a bunch of these clear, obvious little matters… can you honestly guarantee that out of a hundred of them, you’ll see every single one clearly and handle every single one perfectly?

“If even one of those hundred is mishandled, advantage turns into disadvantage, and who knows how many consequences that shift might trigger? And that’s not even talking about the majority of situations where you can’t see the gains and losses clearly. What then?”

Li Xun pondered for a long time, but couldn’t think of a single approach that would actually hold up. “Alright,” he finally said, “Tell me.”

Yin Wanderer’s smile carried a trace of mischief. “It’s actually simple: don’t mess with things you shouldn’t mess with. That’s all.”

“Don’t mess with things?”

Li Xun almost felt like laughing, but in the end, he held it back. At his current level, he could vaguely sense a kind of indescribable pressure flowing ceaselessly behind those words.

“When I say ‘don’t mess with things,’ what I mean is: do what you’re sure of, and avoid what you’re not sure of. To know what’s urgent and what’s not, to know when to advance and when to hold back, and to understand the limits of your own strength… that is true wisdom.”

She paused there, noticing Li Xun’s lips part slightly as if he wanted to argue. So she went on:

“Of course, there are things in this world you can’t avoid, even when you can’t see the gains and losses clearly. When that happens, just act. The worst that can happen is taking responsibility for your own choices. If you have the strength, you make it through. If you don’t, then leave it to the heavens.”

Li Xun stared wide-eyed, unsure whether he should cheer for what felt like a fallacy.

Yin Wanderer kept smiling. “Naturally, when you stumble into one of those unclear messes, you still need a sense of discipline. The fewer parties involved, the better. The faster it’s resolved, the better. And the cleaner the aftermath, the better… Put simply, it all comes down to one line. Eliminate as many variables as possible and keep the situation firmly in your own hands.”

“If you can keep doing that for a hundred years, a thousand years, without slipping… if you push it to the extreme, you’ll find the world around you becoming cleaner and quieter. From the outside in, it turns whole, complete, and utterly free. Inside and out you’ll be clear as glass, untouched by even a speck of worldly dust. And that… is the final path to ascension.”