Chapter 284 Belong to the DarknessAfter leaving Sigh City, he marched forward. Within less than five hundred kilometers, there was Snow Country.
The landscape in Snow Country was magnificent.
The snow was thick and heavy in winter; everything was quiet and desolate in the cold weather.
He went all the way to the North.
Li Tianlan finally started to lower his pace.
At the border of Snow Country, he started his first meditation since he set out.
In the whistling wind and snow, he meditated for continuous sixteen hours. Li Tianlan’s body seemed to disappear completely in thas world, becoming faint and illusory.
Li Tianlan became more and more silent.
He walked through the primary forest at the border between Zhongzhou State and Snow Country; all he could see was the trees, the wind and snow.
The world was silent.
Silence was freedom.
The Golden Retriever called Baby grew up day by day.
The snow and the cold weather didn’t seem to bother it at all. It was following around Li Tianlan, freely and naturally.
The Golden Retriever was the only one Li Tianlan could talk to.
But Li Tianlan spoke less and less.
He was so quiet that it seemed like he had blended in with the coldness of Snow Country. The words he told himself and the ambition in his heart before he set out were fading bit by bit.
Silence.
Quietness.
Concentration.
Purity.
He watched the flying snow and listened to the cold wind in silence.
His meditation became longer and more frequent.
In most of the time of a day, Li Tianlan would sit in the forest and explore his Martial Arts.
The trees were thick and dense in the primary forest.
It stopped snowing outside. It snowed again.
It didn’t matter whether it snowed or not.
Since there was a lot of snow piling on the tree trunks, the snowflakes kept falling down all day in the forest.
The snowflakes falling from the trees covered up Li Tianlan who was meditating.
So, for the better part of a day, a snowman would sit in silence next to the Golden Retriever, quiet and still.
There wasn’t much food in the forest in winter, but he could find some if he wanted to.
When he wasn’t meditating, Li Tianlan was a huntsman.
In winter, the rabbits were normally easy to catch. The man and the dog had quite a lot of rabbit meat; Li Tianlan was getting better and better at roasting rabbits.
He started to train the Golden Retriever.
It was indeed a dog with great spirituality. He turned a pet dog into a hound. Maybe it wasn’t good enough, but the Golden Retriever had learned to catch some small animals that were easy prey.
So Li Tianlan became a cook instead of a hunter.
The Golden Retriever brought the prey to Li Tianlan; Li Tianlan cooked and ate it.
Meditation.
Forward.
He cooked and survived.
When the Golden Retriever couldn’t catch anything, the man and the dog had to starve.
The early winter was pa.s.sing. The late winter came.
The man became thin, the dog also became thin.
But for the first time, a bit of faint and illusory sword intent appeared in Li Tianlan.
That seemed to be the sword intent that he was born with; it blended in perfectly with his body and became a part of his disposition.
Li Tianlan walked more and more slowly.
He still hadn’t draw the sword.
The famous sword Divine Punishment was on his back, being eroded by the wind and snow, looking old and worn.
Li Tianlan would gently touch the sword hilt and sword sheath on occasion, but he never wanted to pull it out.
Because the unsheating sound would be too loud.
Because the sword light would be too bright.
Li Tianlan wanted silence.
The wind and snow in the primary forest seemed to be a part of his life.
Such silence was like heaven to him.
A man and a dog spent their first Spring Festival in the primary forest.
No city lights, no noise from the crowd.
Li Tianlan, who had thrown away his phone, couldn’t get any news from outside.
On New Year’s Eve.
On the day of reunion.
Only the wind and snow in the forest were keeping him company.
He started a fire in the forest using the most primitive way.
The orange flames were swaying in the white scene with smoke.
The flames lit up Li Tianlan’s face; the forest around him was still faintly dark in the snow.
The Golden Retriever which had grown up lay between the fire and Li Tianlan, wagging its tail.
Its fluffy tail swept on Li Tianlan’ legs.
He was all alone, so lonely. Everything was so quiet and pleased him quite nicely.
Sword intent seemed to light up in the flames.
He gently stroked the head of the Golden Retriever.
The flames slowly died down.
Time pa.s.sed from the New Year’s Eve to the New Year.
The twenty-year-old Li Tianlan got out of the primary forest in Snow Country with his dog.
To the North.
He continued to head North.
He rarely stayed in the cities of Snow Country, he even acquired many of his supplies in the little towns around the urban area.
Winter had pa.s.sed.
But the deeper he went to the North, the colder the weather in Snow Country became.
Li Tianlan still didn’t drive.
He just marched on the journey of ten thousand miles step by step.
He kept searching and walking on his own path, all by himself.
That was his cultivation.
In spring, it was still snowing in the center of Snow Country.
It snowed heavily.
It was a spring with the temperature of minus forty degrees.
In the flying snow, Li Tianlan took off his shoes and walked on the snow with his bare feet.
The Golden Retriever kept running around him happily.
Li Tianlan’s eyes looked calm and determined as always.
The snow field was very cold.
But with every step, Li Tianlan could feel strength.
The strength of the earth.
Snow Country was very vast.
The flying snow all over the sky finally stopped.
Li Tianlan saw the running rivers, the towering mountains and the surging ocean of Snow Country.
He was walking behind time.
Then spring had pa.s.sed.
Snow Country had entered the cool summer.
Li Tianlan’s meditation time had shortened.
He was still wearing his white clothes and walking on the land of Snow Country with his bare feet.
The white clothes made of fiber material didn’t get dirty nor fade; they still looked fresh and new.
The moustache on the corners of Li Tianlan’s mouth was getting longer and longer, the beard on his chin had dropped down; it was a completely black. His hair covered the back of his head and dropped down on his shoulders.
He was still carrying Divine Punishment.
The famous sword that held the sword intent of Xuanyuan’s Patriarch and many generations of superiors of the Lin Clan started to shake on his back.
The clicking sound of the long sword rang again in Li Tianlan’s world.
He neared the desert of Snow Country.
Then he stopped at the desert of Snow Country.
He stopped at the river bank of the Volga River in Snow Country.
Then the Golden Retriever started to eat the fish.
It could even get into the water and catch fish.
The long sword Li Tianlan carried on his back trembled everyday, but he pretended that he didn’t notice, just putting his feet full of calluses in the water as he looked up at the sky.
The sky in Snow Country was clear.
That was natural beauty.
The Golden Retriever started to get farther and farther away from Li Tianlan; it no longer followed him around.
Sometimes its eyes would show human-like fear; it would often stare at the long sword on Li Tianlan’s back and occasionally let out deep barks.
The summer days started to pa.s.s.
The desolate autumn days in Snow Country made people feel lonelier.
The Golden Retriever which had gotten sick of fish meat kept biting Li Tianlan’s sleeves.
Li Tianlan finally stopped zoning out at the river side.
He had prepared enough fresh water. He went across the Volga River and went straight into the desert of Snow Country on a sunny day.
The white figure disappeared in ten thousand miles of yellow sand.
The sand storm started to enter the desert.
Divine Punishment on Li Tianlan quieted down completely and stopped trembling.
After the sand storm, the desolate desert became even quieter.
The view was the same.
People were the same.
The dog was the same.
Li Tianlan’s eyes became completely clear.
He no longer zoned out or meditated.
His speed kept rising.
The Golden Retriever couldn’t stand the sometimes hot, sometimes cold yellow sand; it was stumbling and looked exhausted.
Li Tianlan just wrapped gauze around the dog’s limbs. Finally, he carried it on his back and marched forward.
He stepped on the yellow sand with his bare feet, with a deep and determined sense of strength.
He left a line of deep footprints on the quiet desert, which became longer and longer.
A wild wind started to blow in the desert.
The yellow sand that seemed to swallow the whole world flew around crazily in the desert.
The wind rose and fell.
The yellow sand fell down.
The line of deep footprints was still there in the desert, obvious and distinct without any change.
The end of the desert was the gra.s.sland of Snow Country.
There were flocks of sheep and herds of cows.
His short hair had gotten long.
His short bread had gotten long. Li Tianlan finally broke his silence.
He still didn’t talk much, but he would talk to the Golden Retriever once in a while.
After the journey of ten thousand miles, the man and the dog had developed a deep bond with each other; the intelligent dog couldn’t speak, but it would try its best to respond.
So the loneliness and sorrow were fading away.
Li Tianlan started to put a smile on his face.
The faint and illusory sword intent was circling around him and completely became a part of his disposition, making him look distant from the rest of the world.
But his smile came from the bottom of his heart.
Behind the concentrated and pure smile, he seemed to forget about something.
Or rather, he didn’t want to remember them for now.
It was severely cold in the gra.s.sland deep in Snow Country.
In a place where they didn’t have to worry about food or supply, the man and the dog became more and more high-spirited.
In a freezing coldness that could kill everything, Li Tianlan and the Golden Retriever spent their second New Year’s Eve, together, weathering the cold wind.
Something white slowly appeared in the dark sky afar.
That wasn’t the morning sunlight of the New Year.
That was a glacier.
That was the color of the polar region.
Li Tianlan kept moving forward with his dog.
The polar region of the North wasn’t land.
It was an ocean.
And countless islands covered with glacier.
The New Year slowly pa.s.sed.
The Spring Festival was about to come.
Li Tianlan’s world became dark.
There was no more sunlight.
The sky was dark all day; there was only the cold moon hanging in the sky.
It was the polar night in the polar region.
In a few months, that place would be covered in darkness twenty-four hours everyday.
Li Tianlan and the Golden Retriever reached the seash.o.r.e of the Arctic Ocean.
He was close enough to see the glacier, the one that was the closest to him.
The ocean waves rose and fell under Li Tianlan’s feet.
Li Tianlan looked at the glacier afar in silence.
Under the night sky, a silent man, a silent dog, and the silent sword.
Everything was to the extreme.
He reached his hand and pointed at the glacier under the night sky, then said softly, “Baby, let’s go there and have a look.”
The Golden Retriever whimpered, as if it could understand Li Tianlan. It circled and jumped on his back.
It was close to the Divine Punishment.
Divine Punishment was quiet, it wasn’t sharp or cold.
Li Tianlan stepped forward.
His feet stepped on the water, making irregular ripples.
He was fast, walking farther and deeper on the sea surface.
The waves were surging under his feet.
Li Tianlan moved forward with a calm face.
He was stepping on the sea.
He was walking on the sea.
He let the waves splash, without falling or rising.
The polar night in the Arctic Ocean was the same.
The darkness seemed to be endless.
Li Tianlan walked in silence.
He walked from the border of Zhongzhou State to prosperous Huating, finally gaving off his brightest glory in Heaven Capital.
All the lights seemed to be left in the past.
Two years had pa.s.sed.
He came from the dark, and finally went back to the dark in the cold sea water.