Chapter 47: Anniversary
One day, Wei Yuan suddenly recalled that a year had passed since he arrived at the Palace of Absolute Beginning. If not for his daily classes, the line between human and jade toad would have started to blur for him. After all, he spent more time swallowing lunar essence as a jade toad than he did anything else as a human.
Dusk had fallen, and the moon had just risen into the sky. A hint of chill had crept into the evening breeze, and tall trees were casting mottled shadows across the lonely courtyard. It was a night of melancholic beauty, but the sight of the moon only left Wei Yuan with a feeling of nauseousness.
Still, this was his first anniversary since embarking on the path to immortality. It would be terrible if he spent it like any other day, right?
Wei Yuan set the utensils on a stone table. He poured clear water into a cup, and set a Qi-drinking Pill on a plate. Just like that, his anniversary dinner was ready. Now that he thought about it, the last time he enjoyed a real meal was when Bao Yun had treated the class to a feast. Since then, all he had was rice. This had not changed even though a year had passed.
It was a difficult year.
He had used up the pocket money Trueman Fen Hai had given him a long time ago. In fact, he owed the Enlightenment Hall over two thousand taels as of today. Some of the expenses had to be paid immediately, so he had no choice but to borrow from the public account Bao Yun had set up. Over the course of the year, he had accumulated a debt amounting to several thousand taels as well. By his calculations, his debt had exceeded ten thousand taels—a modest achievement, one might say.
It was an especially lonely year.
Since the meeting with Trueman Fen Hai, Wei Yuan had met Zhang Sheng only a dozen or so times in total. The total hours they had spent together didn’t even exceed half a day. Besides attending classes, most of his time was spent sitting on his rock and blanking out at the full moon. Oh, right. To the jade toad, sitting and lying down were the exact same posture.
Consuming lunar essence? Right now, Wei Yuan could do that even when he was asleep.