Dusk Returns to the Ruined Building

There was a lot of fog on the mountain, but the moon was bright and the stars were sparse on the top of the peak, and the sky, the earth, objects and people were all within sight.

On the top of a strange peak, there is a pavilion, a table, and a cup of tea. The tea leaves are dancing in the cup, and the fragrance is overflowing. An old Taoist in white clothes and holding a whisk stands quietly in the pavilion, looking into the starry sky, with a deep light in his eyes.

After a cup of tea, a soft cry of "Ah!" broke the tranquility of the night sky. A flash of surprise flashed across the old Taoist's calm face, and then he closed his eyes, concentrated, and counted with his fingers.

The moonlight had filled the pavilion without anyone noticing, and a figure appeared silently behind the Taoist priest. The man was dressed in a green shirt, had a formal face, a beard, and his black and white hair was tied on top of his head with a jade hairpin. Some hair floated by his ears, and his slightly pale face revealed a gloomy look.

Turning around, their eyes met, the old Taoist whispered: "It's been many years since we last met, and your cultivation seems to have stagnated! How did you find time to come to my Guanxing Mountain? I don't have any food or wine to treat you!"

"Alas, if I can't break away from worldly ties, it will be difficult for me to improve my cultivation," the man in green shirt felt sad.

"I see that you have a strange look on your face. I really can't think of anything else in this world that can move a master stargazer." The green-shirted guest asked instead of answering, revealing the old Taoist's identity in one sentence - a master stargazer.

"Alas, the Tianquan star has moved, the Yuheng star is in the middle, the Tianshu and Yaoguang star seem to be reversing, the Big Dipper is about to break, the Ziwei star is dim and unclear, the way of heaven may have changes, whether good and evil will tend to chaos or reverse, I can't see clearly," the stargazer shook his head and murmured, as if he was talking to himself rather than answering the guest in green.

"Why don't you use your divine copper coin to tell a fortune? I haven't seen that thing for decades." The man in green shirt said this while flicking his sleeves, clearing the table.

The two men sat facing each other, and the star-gazing hermit took out a crystal clear jade tortoise shell from his sleeve, which contained three rusty yellow copper plates. The copper plates were round with square openings. There were four characters on the four sides of the square opening: heaven, earth, yin, and yang. Heaven is opposite to earth, and yin is opposite to yang. Next to the characters were lifelike dragon patterns carved. The three copper plates exuded a sense of vicissitudes of life.

The old Taoist held his breath, narrowed his eyes, placed three copper plates in the jade tortoise shell, shook it up and down three times, turned it counterclockwise for two weeks, and then turned it clockwise for three times. Then, he threw the three copper plates into the sky. The three copper plates rolled in the air, and the rusty yellow copper plates actually shone with yellow, green and white light. When the light dissipated, they fell onto the table.

The two men rushed to stand up, eager to know the result of the flip. Those who were careful would notice that the old Taoist had a frown on his face, with beads of sweat appearing on his forehead, while the man in green shirt was holding the table tightly with his hands, not sure whether he was nervous or excited!

"The world is full of evil, the heroes are leaderless, and the mountains and rivers are stained with blood!"

"Yin Qian Yang Kun, Yin and Yang are reversed, Yang is confused and Yin begins, chaos will arise!"

The old Taoist looked at the three copper coins that had long lost their luster and were lying quietly on the table, and spoke calmly.

"What does it mean? The decline of good and the rise of evil? Is the martial arts world that has been peaceful for a thousand years going to be in turmoil again?" the man in green asked anxiously.

"The hexagram shows that heaven and earth are upside down, and yin and yang are misplaced, which shows that good and evil cannot coexist, and the yin and yang of heaven and earth are tending to chaos!"

"Is the world really going to be in chaos? Are good and evil really going to fight? With such a huge disparity in power, how can evil be reversed?" The Green Shirted Man said to himself.

The old Taoist explained slowly: "We have respected the righteous path for thousands of years, but time flies and people's minds change. Things will turn to the opposite extreme and prosperity will decline. This is the eternal law. The righteous path has been passed down for too long, and there is no clear distinction between good and evil in the world. If there is change in good, it will become evil, and if the evil turns to good, they will gain the Tao. It's just that in this process of change, the change in power will destroy the ideology that people are accustomed to."

The old Taoist looked up at the undulating mountains in the distance, and said, not knowing whether he was speaking to himself or to comfort the guest in green, "But the sun sets and the moon rises, although it is a cycle, but in the process of setting and rising, the moon waxes and wanes, and the sun has yin and yang. Who can accurately peek into the changes of the laws of nature?"

"The world is upside down, yin and yang are misplaced..." The man in green shirt kept muttering.

But another voice quietly came to my mind: "Hey, is the Ji family's thousand-year-old ancestral precept really going to come true? Is the glory of dozens of generations really going to turn into dust?"

The man in green suddenly stood up and walked out of the pavilion. The sky was filled with colorless stars. As his figure disappeared, the loneliness and a little bit of unwillingness slowly dissipated between heaven and earth.

The stargazer ignored the departure of the man in green and looked calmly at the hexagram on the table. A fresh green leaf happened to fall between the three copper coins. The copper coins seemed to sense something and emitted a faint green light.

"The green leaves fall without wind, a sign of strange phenomena in the sky. Could it be that the laws of nature have changed? Is there still a glimmer of hope? Where there are leaves, there must be roots, and where there are roots, there is hope!"

The old Taoist looked at the empty mountains and fields and said, "Ji Xuanfeng, Ji Xuanfeng, this hexagram is caused by you, and the changes in the way of heaven are also in your Ji family. In this case, the old Taoist will go down the mountain and leave the roots of your Ji family to respond to the way of heaven!"

a few days later.

Xuantian Pavilion, a holy place of immortals that only exists in legends, a sect that has been silent for a thousand years, a place where only the libraries of major sects have records, suddenly sent a message to the world, with only eight words: "The world is in chaos, and good and evil are united."

No one knows on which peak Xuantian Pavilion is hidden, or on which riverside it stands, because the last recorded history of Xuantian Pavilion can be traced back to the great battle between good and evil a thousand years ago. The righteous path headed by the Ji family of Zhongzhou was at a clear disadvantage in terms of power, but they defeated the evil path, which was regarded as demons by people, the Fengyao Sect and the Exorcist Sect, which led to the thousand years of stability and prosperity. Of course, just as there are shadows behind tall buildings, there are also turbulent waves in the rivers and lakes behind the stability and prosperity.

In the great war a thousand years ago, the message that Xuantian Pavilion conveyed to the world was only eight words: "The seven stars have returned to their positions, and the righteous path should be established." It is said that the reason why the righteous path won that war was because Xuantian Pavilion sent its elite descendants to participate. Of course, this is impossible to verify, but it does not affect Xuantian Pavilion's status in the world.

Strangely enough, after that victory, the Ji family became the leader of the righteous path, and the Xuantian Pavilion disappeared. For a thousand years, there has been no news about the Xuantian Pavilion, and no disciples of the Xuantian Pavilion roamed the world. As time passed, the Xuantian Pavilion was lost in the long river of history, so that everyone thought that the Xuantian Pavilion was defeated and destroyed in the last battle between good and evil, and it was the Ji family who turned the tide. The real history is only known by a few people, and what has been circulated are those that are easy for us to know or deliberately made known to us.

I wonder what kind of storm will the sudden news from Xuantian Pavilion bring to this turbulent martial arts world? And how long will it affect the martial arts world in the future?