After an unknown amount of time, the drowsy Ning Jinyu felt the weight on her body lighten and heard a cracking sound. She lifted her head to look.
What was cracking was actually an eggshell. A small black dragon, resembling a little snake but with claws and horns, was perched on the edge of the broken eggshell, looking down at her.
Ning Jinyu, already unable to move, watched in horror as the little dragon crawled down the eggshell and opened its mouth to bite her. It hurt so much, as if something was being torn off.
It was a blade of grass. The little dragon bit off the blade of grass and used it to sharpen its claws.
“…” Ning Jinyu rolled her eyes. She was dead.
The scene shifted again. It seemed she could move now, but her perspective was inexplicably, abnormally low.
She looked at the towering blades of grass and giant rocks, the boundless sky. She looked at her hands, then her feet—they were snow-white and round. It seemed she had now become a rabbit.
“Squeak squeak squeak!”
“Ahhh! The Demon Dragon is coming again!”
“Everyone, run!”
Every time Ning Jinyu heard the word “dragon,” her spirits lifted. She looked up at the sky. The little dragon seemed to have grown; it was now the size of a giant python, and it could fly!
As a simple, unadorned modern person, her senses were dealt a severe blow!
She controlled her rabbit legs and started to hop and run.
The little black dragon in the sky spotted the snow-white rabbit at a glance. It playfully dove down, snatched the little rabbit with one claw, and flew up into the sky.
The flying roller coaster experience she had missed at the amusement park was now fulfilled.
She was tossed up and down by the giant dragon like a ball, experiencing the terror and shock of a nosedive from the heavens.
She had nearly used up a lifetime’s worth of fear.
Seeing the limp, dead rabbit, the little black dragon tossed it away in disgust and sneered, “So timid.” Then it soared into the sky and left.
Ning Jinyu seemed to have come back to life again. Fortunately, this time she didn’t seem to be some unlucky animal; she was a human.
A woodcutter walked towards her, carrying a basket on his back, and led her down the mountain to a small hut.
The woodcutter went to chop wood and cook. Ning Jinyu looked left and right but didn’t see that mischievous black dragon. The heart that had been hanging in suspense finally settled. Could she go find Song Qingyan now? She had no idea what kind of animal, or perhaps plant, he had become in the illusion.
Just as she was about to slip out of the room, the basket on the woodcutter’s back suddenly moved. As she watched curiously, the woodcutter, holding a sharpened knife, lifted the lid of the basket. Inside lay a large, coiled-up little black dragon.
!!! No, why was it everywhere? The heart that had just settled was now dead again.
The black dragon stared coldly at the woodcutter. Before the knife could come down, it spat fire and burned the woodcutter to a crisp. Then it flew out of the cage and looked at the little girl collapsed on the ground beside it.
She was crying so miserably, so pitifully. Her father was dead, wasn’t he? He might as well do a good deed and send them to meet on the road to the underworld together.
Ning Jinyu, deceased once more.
The scene shifted again.
“Demon Dragon! You have committed countless evils and harmed living beings. Today, I shall enact justice on behalf of the heavens and will surely eliminate your malevolent aura!”
This place was extremely familiar. Wasn’t it that forest from the dreamscape?
So this place was real. Why did he use this place as a trial after death?
A dashing man wore an out-of-place ghost mask and held a folding fan that shimmered with rainbow light. His entire bearing was extraordinary.
Ning Jinyu, who had awakened again, had finally not turned into something else. She was now like a spirit, standing on the ground and watching the two masters fight in the air.
One was a black dragon beast, the other was a ghost-masked hero. Speaking of which, that ghost mask looked strangely familiar.
! That person must be Lord God Jun Xi! So the folding fan in his hand was a Divine Artifact! The Floating Life Memory!
Ning Jinyu’s eyes lit up. She scrambled to find a tree to climb, wanting to get a closer look at the two of them.
An Upper God was truly formidable. The Demon Dragon was beaten back at every turn, a sight that warmed one’s heart.
She watched motionlessly as Jun Xi walked over to the Demon Dragon and tapped its head with the folding fan, the Floating Life Memory. The black dragon inexplicably vanished, replaced by the figure of a boy.
The familiarity was startling. Ning Jinyu’s heart raced, her eyes wide as she stared at the spot.
After doing all this, Jun Xi flew away with a whoosh.
Ning Jinyu jumped down from the branch and walked towards the boy lying on the ground. With a trembling hand, she turned the boy over, revealing his somber and handsome face. It was the eleven or twelve-year-old Song Qingyan!
An immense terror, like a great beast from the abyss, enveloped her. In an instant, Ning Jinyu felt her blood flow in reverse.
The scene shifted again. Her body stiff, she saw Jun Xi muttering to himself.
He had picked up the boy from the forest and found a village to drop him in.
It was Qing County Magistrate.
“This Demon Dragon’s mind is immature, and he is too young. To eliminate him would be too cruel. I only hope that after becoming human, he can change his ways.”
Jun Xi’s lifespan was nearing its end. He prepared his own tomb in advance, and then he thought of the Demon Dragon whose memory he had taken. In the mechanism that hid the Floating Life Memory, he carved in draconic script, writing down the method to find the Floating Life Memory, as well as a blessing, hoping that after he regained his memory, he would still remember that he had once been human.
“Man Man, Man Man, Man Man…” Ning Jinyu cried, her voice choked with sobs, calling out in her mind.
Man Man suddenly arrived from another plane: [Host, you called me.]
Ning Jinyu was almost suffocating. She choked out, “Before, before, what was that Black Dragon Demon Lord’s name again?”
Man Man stated calmly: [Song Qingyan.]
“…It’s nothing. You can go now.”
With red eyes, Ning Jinyu returned to the front of the giant stone dragon statue.
Seeing her crestfallen appearance, the stone dragon asked nosily, “Weren’t you in a hurry to go in just now? Why are you out?”
Ning Jinyu snapped back to her senses, glared at the stone dragon, picked up her sword, and ran.
Her damn memory. Her family had told her since she was a child that her forgetfulness would sooner or later lead to disaster. And wasn’t it true? She couldn’t even remember the great demon’s name.
What should she do? The future felt completely dark. What was she supposed to do now? Song Qingyan was a bad dragon, and he had regained his memory. It was so frustrating, so chaotic.
“Fellow Daoist Ning!” Su Qingyue watched, bewildered, as Ning Jinyu ran past with red eyes.
Luo Chuan was equally puzzled. Where was that man surnamed Song? Su Qingyue looked in the direction Ning Jinyu had run from, faintly sensing that the Floating Life Memory was over there.
She glanced at Ning Jinyu’s retreating back, then turned and walked forward.
…
Ning Jinyu felt like her world was in chaos, as if the sky had fallen.
All the terror she had just endured was nothing compared to this blow.
The friend she spent her days and nights with was actually the indifferent black dragon who had bullied her in the past.
The laughable thing was, she couldn’t even bring herself to take revenge, let alone face him.
Thinking back on all their time together, she just wanted to find a hole to crawl into.
Perhaps because she had already seen the Floating Life Memory, after running out of the forest, Ning Jinyu woke up from the illusion.
At that moment, she was still leaning against the sleeping Song Qingyan!
She looked around at the other cultivators who were still staring blankly at the stone inscriptions, and some who were imitating them by sleeping to enter the dream.
She took one last look at Song Qingyan, found the tunnel she had come through, and left the place.
She still remembered that when she came, Song Qingyan had carried her on his back. Now, she couldn’t see anything and could only grope her way forward, using both her hands and feet like a blind person.
Where should she go back to? To the Joyful Union Sect?