“I am not of this realm. If you wish to ask where I come from…”
Yan Zhu raised a finger and pointed toward the sky, her meaning self-evident.
The transmission of information went smoothly, unlike the protagonists in television dramas and novels who were restricted by the Heavenly Way and unable to speak of their origins.
Only, after she finished speaking, Qingtong felt that its tree life henceforth might not be so smooth-sailing.
For instance, its previously stable inner consciousness space now suddenly and without warning shook violently, with a constant risk of collapse at any time.
“Plop, ”
A tree branch the size of an adult woman’s forearm fell to the ground, and with great self-awareness, rolled all the way to Yan Zhu’s feet.
That thing didn’t look like a rough, jagged tree branch; rather, it looked more like some kind of artwork artificially polished to a smooth finish, emitting a soft luster.
Yan Zhu bent down slightly and picked it up. The feel was warm and moist, like holding a piece of extremely fine jade.
Whether it was because the owner had cut it off from its own body in a flurry of panic, the massive fractured end of the branch was still oozing sticky, un-dried golden sap.
Was the Tung tree… terrified?
A baseless thought popped into her head. Yan Zhu was somewhat dazed; she had merely wanted to tease this honest spiritual tree, never expecting to have gone too far.
However, she didn’t have much opportunity to say a few words of comfort either; the space before her began to show cracks like a glass product.
Another sensation of having her head covered and being fiercely struck from the outside struck her. Yan Zhu closed her eyes and uncontrollably fell unconscious.
Finally sent this great Buddha away.
Qingtong let out a breath, looking at its inner consciousness space, which was damaged by thirty percent, and felt like crying without tears.
It was truly foolish, genuinely so.
When it originally discovered that she was unaffected by the dreamscape, it should have kept its guard up; failing that, once it noticed the Great Dao aura surrounding her, it should have been cautious.
It was truly foolish, genuinely so.
How could it have provoked such a monster… yet the other party was going to return anyway, to return to the dream it had created… It would have been better to just grant it a quick release…
An ancient tree that had lived for a millennium shouldn’t still harbor meaningless curiosity.
The Tung wood raised its head and caught sight of countless flashes of lightning weaving through the clouds, hidden yet unreleased. Amidst the flickers, the sky above was brilliant and colorful, as if nine heavenly maidens were playing music and singing upon it. It shaked its trunk in fright, shedding a cascade of branches and leaves.
The inherent fear of fire and thunder in trees made Qingtong understand in an instant what would happen next.
It quietly retracted the vine tendrils it had exposed outside, desperately curling its body to shrink itself into a small, hard-to-notice corner.
And almost the very next moment, a streak of startled lightning pierced the firmament with the force of ten thousand jun, striking straight down and illuminating the earth in a blinding expanse of white.
Qingtong looked at this scene, leaving only the relief of having survived a disaster in its heart.
, This old frame of mine cannot withstand much tossing.
A gust of wind blew past, sweeping away two golden leaves on the ground.
“Yan Zhu, Yan Zhu, Yan Zhu…”
Who was calling her name?
It sounded as distant as coming from the other side of the world, carrying a heart-palpitating, sorrowful cry, weeping with every single syllable.
Yan Zhu’s heart was captured by the pain contained within, and she struggled to wake up.
Opening her eyes, she was greeted by a flat, unfolded expanse of the sky.
A pure blue, with white clouds as light and thin as floss. The sun was at the height of its splendor, its position shifted compared to when she had left.
The tips of the grass pricked her skin painfully, and the muddy ground had too many stones, making it hard and uncomfortable to lie on. As her consciousness gradually recovered, Yan Zhu tried her best to prop up her body and stand up.
The Tung wood in her hand could prove that her previous experience was not an illusion. This material was the primary choice for sword cultivators to make scabbards; because it was too precious, it was hard to find and priceless. Yan Zhu used it as a walking stick.
However, when she originally asked Qingtong for the branch, she had intended to hand it to little Song Qing as a weapon to fight back against that group of bad children. The old tree had a spirit, and its branches were tough and resilient; presumably, it wouldn’t break easily when beating people, allowing her to hold it and thrash a few more.
After getting up, without the luxury of time to think about anything, Yan Zhu steadied herself slightly and stepped across the clumps of grass that reached a person’s lower leg height in front of her, walking hurriedly toward the source of the sound in her memory.
In the forest, the roots of the trees were intertwined and knotted, and a thick layer of withered yellow fallen leaves from autumn and winter that had not yet been digested by the earth covered the ground, making a crisp sound when stepped upon.
A faint smell of blood drifted in the air, and the scattered spots of red on the withered leaves were exceptionally glaring.
The terrifying scenes popping up in her mind flickered past one by one like slow motion. Yan Zhu broke out in a cold sweat on her back, and the stray hairs on her forehead were soaked through.
Filled with timidity in her heart, her pace unconsciously slowed down. The hand holding the Tung wood gripped it fiercely and tightly, like a drowning person holding onto the only driftwood before them.
“Yan Zhu… Yan Zhu…”
The weak voice sounded like the whimper of a young beast.
A tiny figure stood in the vast expanse of wasteland, looking all the more diminutive by contrast, appearing only as a blurry black dot from afar.
She opened her large, round eyes, looking around blankly, repeating that name for the several thousandth or ten-thousandth time, calling out until her throat ached, turned hoarse, and felt painfully dry.
She hoped to receive even the slightest bit of response, but all that reached her ears was the sound of the gentle breeze.
Song Wenqing raised her head, only able to vaguely make out the contours of the clouds. But the sky was blue, and the clouds were white; she knew that.
The sky was so vast, and the earth was so vast.
Standing in the boundless heaven and earth, she suddenly gave birth to a strange, unprecedented sensation.
Her heart felt as though it was being gnawed by countless tiny insects, soaked in water, aching, sour, and suffocatingly dull, floating up and sinking back down.
“Yan Zhu… did you fly up to the moon?”
The words were so soft they melted into the wind.
Song Wenqing could not see the boundaries of the wasteland. Standing in the vast heaven and earth, her hands were empty with nothing on her person, the corners of her clothes occasionally flipped up by a gust of wind blowing from ten thousand miles away.
She was the abandoned child of the world, and fate was about to strip away even her sole bit of fortune.
Yan Zhu closed her eyes and took large, heavy breaths.
She hardly dared to approach her.
The tiny figure had collapsed onto the wasteland, her originally tattered clothes stained with blood, with a few unavoidable patches of red becoming the most vivid colors among them.
As if a large hand was gripping her throat, Yan Zhu was overwhelmed by sorrow, her heart aching so painfully she could hardly breathe.
She squatted down and quietly embraced the child’s body, warm tears pouring down in large drops.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I came late…”
“I’m sorry…”
The pain in her heart spread to her fingers, and her fingertips trembled lightly.
Yan Zhu’s eye rims were red, and tears streamed down incessantly as if they couldn’t be stopped.
She did not know how long she had cried; she was simply immersed in her sorrowful emotions and struggled to restrain herself, hence paying no attention to the movements of the person in her arms.
Until a pair of arms wrapped around her neck, Yan Zhu blankly raised her head.
Clear, amber-colored pupils reflected her disheveled appearance.
As if unable to believe it either, the girl gently touched her cheek with the palm of her hand.
“Yan Zhu… are you crying?”
The tears still lingering on her eyelashes slipped down smoothly, intercepted by the child’s warm fingertips.
“Song Qing… you… you are not…”
Yan Zhu widened her eyes, her tongue feeling tied, too surprised to speak a complete sentence.
“I thought you…”
The rest of the words were too inauspicious, so Yan Zhu caught herself in time and cut them off right there.
The girl did not answer, only carefully pressing her cheek softly against hers.
“Yan-Zhu…”
“I thought you flew away… flew up to the moon…”
Tears similarly stained her cheeks, but Song Wenqing cared not at all.
Happily narrowing her eyes, she tried her best to tighten her arms, wanting to hug her even closer.
“I said I would come and take you away; how could I break my promise?”
Yan Zhu also snapped back to her senses, recalling her own behavior just now, and couldn’t help finding it somewhat amusing. She reached out to tidy the girl’s messy hair, unexpectedly discovering a slightly swollen small lump at her temple.
Recalling the bloodstains she had seen on the child’s clothes, Yan Zhu’s heart tightened instantly.
“Song Qing… are you alright? Are you injured anywhere?”
Under her anxious gaze, the person before her instead burst into a brilliant smile.
“Only my forehead, knees, and ankles hurt a little…”
Not looking like she had suffered a grievance at all, she rather looked like she was listing the medals upon her person.
Yan Zhu grew somewhat anxious, her brows slowly furrowing: “Let me see, let me see if you’re bleeding…”
A small hand stopped her movement, and the smile on the girl’s face grew even brighter.
“Yan Zhu… I chased them away!”
“But you’re hurt, on your clothes there are…”
The words were abruptly cut off by their speaker.
, Even if there is blood from an injury, it won’t be on the outside.
Yan Zhu looked at the girl who was acting smugly as if claiming credit from her, curved her eyes into a smile, and reached out to ruffle the already disheveled hair on the child’s head into an even greater mess.
“Well done, that’s just the way it should be… beat them until they’re afraid, and they won’t dare bully you anymore…”
“No matter when it is, never let yourself be bullied. You must protect yourself.”
Song Wenqing stubbornly grasped her fingers in her palm, while her other hand tugged at the corner of her sleeve with great force.
Receiving praise for the very first time, her whole body felt as light as a feather, floating up into the clouds.
Song Wenqing raised her little face, her eyes shining brightly like they contained a sky full of stars.
“They won’t come back anymore…”
She bit her lip shyly.
“They won’t come back anymore.”
Like a key turning, a crisp, shattering sound that only Yan Zhu could hear rang out.
Raising her head, she saw the azure sky lose its color in an instant, the scenery around her dissolved bizarrely, and right after, like a disorderly dream, various eerie scenes flashed past her from all around.
Yan Zhu had no time to ponder further, and with that, she completely lost consciousness.
When she woke up once more, she had no idea where she was.
Upon opening her eyes, it was a mountain peak floating in the air, surrounded on all sides by misty floating clouds, looking from afar like it was immersed in the firmament.
It seemed that the place she was currently in was also a floating mountain peak.
Yan Zhu reached out and grabbed a handful of white mist drifting leisurely past her, feeling like passing through a stream of water vapor, her palm sensing a wet, chilly coolness.
Turning around, there was a field planted with bizarre plants.
Appreciating her gaze, a flower that grew excessively enchantingly even deliberately shifted its position, hiding behind a black “radish” next to it.
“How could the Senior Brother let her come take care of the flowers and plants? Can she even take care of them properly?”
“Don’t you speak so loudly, watch out for someone overhearing!”
“What? You won’t even let people speak now? I don’t know what virtue or ability she has to be… taken in as a disciple… isn’t she just a yellow-haired little brat?”
The sound of women talking accompanied by noisy footsteps came approaching from this side.
Yan Zhu subconsciously wanted to hide, but then remembered that she was currently a presence invisible to everyone except Song Qing, so she halted her movement.
And at this moment, that group of people also walked to the edge of the spiritual field.