After more than ten days of seclusion, Ye Chen finally emerged from the mid-mountain villa at Champs-Elysees Hot Springs.
Those ten-odd days of seclusion were, for Ye Chen, like a night of tossing and turning without sleep, because his mind was constantly on Xiao Churan, and he had never been able to settle his heart to cultivate.
It was now the end of March in the Gregorian calendar, the end of February in the lunar calendar, and Nanjing had entered the season of warming spring and blooming flowers.
With the Qingming Festival drawing ever closer, the Ye family had already begun preparations for this year’s ancestral worship. However, with everything now under Ye Chen’s control, Old Master Ye Zhongquan had taken the initiative to ask Ye Chen about the specific plans for the ancestral worship ceremony this year, such as whether to hold it on a grand scale or whether to notify members of the collateral branches to participate.
Yet, despite sending Ye Chen numerous messages and WeChat texts, Old Master Ye had received no reply, so he left a note for Ye Chen: if Ye Chen continued to ignore it, he would step in and take charge of the ancestral worship arrangements.
For Ye Chen, his first consideration was whether the ancestral worship ceremony was even necessary.
Paying respects to ancestors and parents on Qingming was naturally his duty as a descendant, but there seemed no need to make a big show of it.
So, the ancestral worship was essential, but the grand ceremony was not.
Moreover, he felt that he himself had become somewhat listless, and in this state, he was even less suited to organising a ceremony.
Thus, after some thought, Ye Chen decided that this year’s ancestral worship would be kept simple, with no extravagance or waste, and no permission for collateral family members to go to Yeling Mountain. Only the direct descendants of the Ye family would gather at Yeling Mountain for a devout tribute.
By this time, Ye Zhongquan had already been busy for several days with the ancestral worship preparations.
As Ye Zhongquan grew older, especially approaching the age of knowing heaven’s mandate, he became all the more attentive to these rituals of paying respects to ancestors, because he could not help but associate them with himself. The more sincerely he worshipped his forebears now, the more he naturally hoped that his own descendants would worship him with equal devotion in the future.
However, when he suddenly received Ye Chen’s message stating that there would be no grand ceremony, he felt a pang of reluctance but knew he could not overstep, so he had no choice but to call off all the preparations.
Ye Chen stood on the mountain ridge, gazing at the vast scenery, and for a moment fell into a daze.
He did not know where he should go next or what he should do.
He did not want to go home, because home was no longer home.
Nor did he want to go anywhere else, because he lacked the energy to go to any place.
Return and continue his seclusion to cultivate?
That did not seem like a good idea either, because he was like a severe insomniac: forcing himself to lie in bed would not make him sleep, but only make him more anxious the longer he lay there.
So, he called Li Yalin and asked about the progress of the investigation over these days. Li Yalin answered truthfully: “Young Master Ye, over these days we have preliminarily traced the leads on those vehicles. Each one’s movement trajectory has been deliberately concealed, so even using initial elimination methods, it is difficult to narrow the scope quickly. At present, it is hard to find a breakthrough; we estimate it will take at least two months for the first round of screening on these vehicles. By then, we should be able to eliminate at least 60 per cent of them, and then conduct a second round of screening on the remaining 40 per cent.”
Ye Chen felt his scalp tingle at this.
The first round alone would take two months; after several rounds, a year would be gone.
