I Can Reap Qi Fortune from Players

Chapter 908 - 2: Paint What I Paint, Love What I Love_2

"Later, in the Frozen Sea Domain, we locked eyes. I was the dragon in the sky, and he was the fisherman searching for the Glacier Ancient Tomb... I realized that his obsession in this life had changed; it was no longer about survival.""Even 'I know who I am' can change; what in this world remains unchanged? The world is dynamic, ebbing and flowing like the rise and fall of seas and mountains. Heaven and Earth are like this, you and I are like this. Change, aging, withering, extinction—such are the eternal laws."

Firewood Flower still did not believe.

"How about we make a bet?" The painter suddenly laughed.

That day.

The painter had once discussed Tao with Firewood Flower, exploring the meaning of life.

Talking about the decay of the dead and rebirth, discussing 'I know who I am' beneath the vast grasslands, lighting a bonfire, and planning and imagining the future.

Afterwards, Firewood Flower left.

Firewood Flower secretly plotted against the Jiushui Dynasty, wandering the Nine-State, luring those founding ministers to their pits of death, deceiving them into corruption, raising pseudo-human slaves, forming wall-enclosed pastures, Xu Huan of the Nine-State was just one of them.

Additionally, he took away the core of the Chronicles of Time, forcibly binding Jiushui from departing the capital, causing divisions within his forces.

Thus passed over a hundred thousand years.

A newly established flourishing dynasty quickly fell into decline.

Jiushui also fell into old age because he suppressed the Chronicles of Time, knowing he was passive, aware that there was someone secretly plotting against him. He guessed the presence of Firewood Flower, realizing that he had not truly defeated this powerful Firewood Emperor of the previous dynasty, thus drafting a long posthumous plan for an escape.

He had an incredibly broad mind, even prepared to ally with the young Firewood Emperor in the grave to defeat the rotten, aging, sinister Firewood Emperor outside.

On the other side, Firewood Flower fully launched the rebels to join forces for a surprise attack, dimming Jiushui's eyes under the Red Sun, which called upon professionals from all over the world to gather at the capital, making Sword Casting Manor renowned.

Yet over these hundreds of thousands of years, Firewood Flower grew old, having been a rat in the darkness for too long, becoming filthy, unscrupulous, constantly lowering his standards, so repugnant even he found himself disgusting.

He could not even recognize himself.

His mind was like a newly bought canvas, at first wiped clean daily with no speck, then accidentally tainted with some ink, which spread as he wiped more, ultimately ignoring it altogether.

Thus this gamble spanning over a hundred thousand years, witnessing the rise and fall of a Jiushui Dynasty, Firewood Flower lost.

That day, Firewood Flower awakened as an Ember Shell, crazily enamored with his younger, ambitious self, licking Xin Xichen's boots, the great, idealistic young Emperor.

"Burn me, young me."

"Please ascend to the throne, young Firewood King."

This was the sick and twisted final choice of Firewood Flower.

Snap!!!

Time returned to the present.

With a flicker before his eyes, the painter in the room stared blankly at the laughing mother and daughter outside, "Remembered our bet back then again."

He sat solemnly on the throne, silently gazing at this exhausted painter below.

At the moment of his death, he replaced this million-year-layout painter with a faux-person.

This exhausted painter looked feverishly at his younger self on the seat, unable to help but kneel in worship, wanting to lick his boots, "Young me, this is young me..."

"Get lost."

The painter disdainfully kicked away this guy, coldly saying, "We are not Xin Xichen and Firewood Flower; I shall never forgive you, ugly, filthy, disgusting piece of trash."

The weathered faux-painter said incredulously, "I lived for you for hundreds of thousands of years, laying out plans, deducing, accumulating techniques, yet... my aging and ugliness were all because of you!"

"Give me your knowledge and memories, then you can go die like Firewood Flower. Your existence only keeps me sufficiently young."

"Trash! I am the ultimate stench of ten thousand years."

The painter raised his hand, harshly crushing the old painter before him, then quietly absorbed the million-year accumulation of knowledge and system, discarded the useless emotional and memory garbage.

Indeed.

It was never him who appeared.

From the very beginning, it was a fake painter acting outside, devising and propelling the era for him.

He knew better than anyone else.

Having gone through much, thoughts became muddled, people grew old.

Like Firewood Flower, varied greed and ambition, corruption, filth, and dirt, turned him into someone he found ugly beyond recognition.

Thus.

He painted a person to do this dirty work instead.

While he spent every day indulging, calmly reclusive.

"Self-Transformation, self-transformation, without first painting me, how can I transform?"

"The Chronicles of Time left behind, all dead inside, my stained destiny should be accounted for."

"Abandon cause and effect, hence no karmic force."

"Can cross the final disaster of the Three Calamities and Seven Tribulations, Destiny's disaster, untainted by cause and effect, thus this tribulation is over... considered completely perfect, no need to rely on that Xian to become immortal."

He did not want to rely on Xian for immortal fate, determined to pursue the path most perfect, Three Calamities and Seven Tribulations, becoming immortal without external aid.

Moreover.

He cannot let outsiders know, as a mortal, he could paint immortals.

When those of the Nine-State ascend, even those in the Immortal Realm, knowing his existence, would merely deem him of minor skill, regardless of his painting mastery as still mortal, certainly not of immortal quality.

Those fellows of the Immortal Realm would not bother over a weak dead man defeated by a mortal, hence concealing his true existence.

"All grudges resolved, all past vanished."

He took a step out, entering the endless gray-white beyond the sky.

Three months later.

He returned once more, already an immortal, his depth terrifying to the extreme, yet his aura was restrained, no one could discern his strength.

"It should be 'death' again."

He sighed softly.

This newly entered Immortal Path immortal, his life aura quietly disappeared; he had committed suicide.

Returning as an Ember again, living anew with his wife and daughter, he said lightly, "Embers are but a canvas, only the eternal canvas can capture my youngest pinnacle moment."

At this moment.

He was thirty-three years old.

Revived for three months, still thirty-three years and three months, now once more as an eternal beautiful canvas, time frozen, left at the peak of youth, courage, and might, at thirty-three years.

His wife and daughter, equally young, unaging, undying, endlessly cycling.

"Since long ago, when one friend after another departed, I knew, nothing in this world is eternal and beautiful, all is fleeting, time makes life fall, fills us with tearful eyes."

He turned around, walking toward the garden where his wife and daughter laughed.

"Only by becoming an eternal canvas can I preserve the faces of those I love, leaving eternal expressions smiling without sadness, so that we no longer helplessly separate by life and death."

Having died and lived several times, his wish finally realized in this way.

Painted eyes that will never cry, eternally young and smiling friends and loved ones.

Initially as Xian, he hated himself for creating the world-ending ember, chose to commit suicide, later understood the embers, finally became one himself, freezing his family in this moment of eternal brilliance.

Embers no longer repulsed him, but brought him joy, already the perfection of his heart's blood.

The eternal freeze of embers, his paintings, will be the world's most perfect artworks.

Paint what I paint, love what I love.

"Father, Father, I want to see that Firewood Uncle from before, he seemed silly, very funny." The adorable daughter frozen in that instant spoke mysteriously.

"Alright, be a good girl, eat your meal, Firewood Uncle will be here soon." The painter sat in the chair, picking up chopsticks to give his daughter food, the three felt a sense of warmth.

Not long after, a painted Firewood Flower came to visit.

"I want new friends too."

The Night Emperor appeared, making faces, telling cold jokes, crawling on the ground eating dirt, performing eighteen dirt-eating tricks, very funny, making the child laugh heartily.

Embers were not a posthumous testament.

It was a freeze into an instantly eternal beautiful canvas, a system born from his heart's desires, a gift to the world, but also his beginning.

Let all flowers eternally remain in the brilliance of the moment of their blooming.