In the fourteenth year of the Kaiyuan era of the Tang Dynasty, a swordsman, riding a silver saddle on a white horse, traveled around the beautiful rivers and mountains of the Tang Empire. He traveled from Jinling to Guangling, drinking and reveling along the way. Little did he know that when future generations mention the glory of the Tang Dynasty, they cannot help but mention him.
Afterwards, he traveled to places such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, and even crossed the treacherous seas. He returned to Yangzhou, scattering gold like dirt and generously giving away three hundred thousand taels of gold. This elegant and charming swordsman traveled in the martial world, wrote several poems, and then fell ill, unable to continue his journey. He began to miss his home.
Later generations called him the "Panda Lord of Traveling", no wait, they called him the "Poet Immortal Li Bai".
During his adventurous journey in the martial world, Li Bai's horse died, which was more embarrassing and shameful for a swordsman than turning from cavalry to infantry. But Li Bai was not an ordinary person. After drinking a few mouthfuls of wine and calming his emotions, he prepared to write a funeral poem for his old companion.
At this moment, a handsome man in white passed by. He saw the swordsman who was about to write a poem for his horse and smiled. He opened the stopper of his wine gourd, and a blue smoke transformed into a strange beast. The beast blew a few breaths into the horse's nostrils before returning to the gourd. The horse neighed loudly and regained its spirit, appearing even more magnificent than before.
Li Bai was overjoyed and offered gold and silver as a reward, but the man in white declined and walked away leisurely. Li Bai tried to catch up with him on horseback, but the man quickly disappeared on the official road. Soon after, due to long-term travels, Li Bai fell ill and had to temporarily stay in an inn.
By the side of his bed in the inn, Li Bai saw the moonlight as clear as white frost. After thinking about his hometown for a moment, he pushed open the window and looked up. He saw a sinister moon - this moon, as white as jade, seemed eerie tonight, its clear radiance gradually turning crimson.
A demonic wind blew over the inn's roof, and the tiles rattled. Then, a shrill laughter echoed all around, eerie and heartbreaking.
Li Bai pulled his thin robe closer and reached out to take his sword hanging on the wall. He was confident in his swordsmanship. Regardless of what kind of villains or monsters dared to approach within ten steps of him, they would surely die on the spot.
But someone beat him to it. A man in white jumped down from the roof. He tossed up his wine gourd and muttered some words. Then, he approached a white wall, drew his sword swiftly, and the wall let out a scream as blood spurted out. A black smoke was sucked into his wine gourd.
The man in white plugged the stopper back in, shook it a few times to listen to the sound, and then smiled at Li Bai. In the night, his radiant white teeth were still dazzling. He made a gesture that seemed to invite Li Bai to go out for a drink.
Li Bai, who was full of elegance and heroism, admired the man in white's swordsmanship and was grateful that he had saved his horse. He immediately opened the door and went out to sit on the ground with the man in white. The man in white asked Li Bai if he was afraid that there was a fierce ghost melted in the wine. Li Bai laughed heartily, pulled out the stopper like a whale sucking in water, and drank it in one gulp. Then he laughed heartily and said, "What great wine!"
The man in white introduced himself as Cui Beihai, and the two of them chatted and got along well. That night, Li Bai drank to his heart's content.
"When wine enters the heroic spirit, seven parts become moonlight, and the remaining three parts turn into sword qi. With a single exhale, I am half of the prosperous Tang Dynasty."
Li Bai noticed that from the moment the demonic wind blew until he drank with the man in white, the inn was incredibly quiet, even the stable was silent. It seemed as if there was no one else in the world, only the two of them talking and drinking, passing the wine gourd between them countless times.
"Beihai, where did you come from?" Li Bai asked with a drunken voice, handing the wine gourd to Cui Beihai.
"From there." Cui Beihai pointed to the moon with his hand, then tilted his head back and took a sip of wine. The moon was no longer sinister.
"Can you take me back? I can't find my way home... I have visited famous mountains and rivers, but I still can't find my way back home."
Li Bai's voice sounded lonely for a moment. In that instant, he was not a swordsman or a poet, but a lonely child searching for his mother while holding a broken umbilical cord.
Perhaps touched by Li Bai, Cui Beihai nodded and agreed, showing him a waist token carved with the golden characters "Mountains and Seas". After pondering for a moment, he told Li Bai that as someone who had traveled throughout the Tang Dynasty for many years, he had been observing Li Bai for a long time, and he hoped that Li Bai could join their organization.
Li Bai learned that they belonged to a special organization, and Cui Beihai's role was to "suppress demons". Although the organization had few members, they traveled across all directions. It was clear that Cui Beihai intended to recruit Li Bai into the organization, but the assessment period was long. Cui Beihai advised Li Bai to first present his poems to the Emperor and the literati in the court, infiltrating the heart of the court and becoming a trusted confidant of the Emperor, waiting for further instructions.
Cui Beihai promised Li Bai that once he became an official member, he would take him back to the heavenly moon palace - this exiled immortal always believed that it was his true homeland. His talents were too extravagant to be contained in the human world. Even when he drank alone, he raised his cup to invite the bright moon.
In the first year of the Tianbao era, Cui Beihai told Li Bai that the time had come. Indeed, when the Emperor issued an edict summoning Li Bai to the capital, Li Bai wrote in excitement, "Look up to the sky and laugh loudly, are we not the extraordinary people of the world?" He immediately set off for Chang'an.
Copyright 2024 Light Novel Netwww.lightnovelnet.com