Once they were back on the ground, the scratch a branch had left on Yang Zengyue’s hand had already healed over, so she never even noticed it.
She was puzzled. “Master, the birds have built their nests much higher than in past years. I remember that when I used to climb up to raid the nests for eggs, I could find them halfway up the tree. But this time I nearly reached the very top before I spotted one.”
Jiuxiao looked up at the dense old trees and noticed how unusually lush and glossy the leaves were this year. “That’s because the birds are as clever as you, Zengyue. To keep from being drowned by floods, in rainy years they build their nests higher up. Birds have a sense of danger too.”
“So that’s how it is!” Yang Zengyue had picked up another new bit of knowledge.
Back in the apocalypse she had noticed these anomalies as well, but by then there was no one left to explain such common-sense things to her.
After returning the little eaglet to its nest, the three of them rested and then headed straight down the mountain.
They reached home just at dusk.
The sun set quickly over the hills.
Yang Zengyue watched the sunset for a long while, thinking that a beauty this peaceful was truly nature’s gift.
The sunset she had seen before she died had been eerily, unnaturally gorgeous, and its appearance had heralded the coming of danger.
Jiuxiao didn’t understand. “What, have you suddenly found some deeper meaning in sunsets too?”
He knew she had been through the trials of the apocalypse, yet he still couldn’t quite grasp her present appreciation and longing for nature.
Yang Zengyue pressed her lips together. “It’s not some deeper meaning. I just love this kind of quiet and calm. In those seven years, every time a strange phenomenon appeared in the sky, it meant disaster was about to strike.”
Jiuxiao patted her. “All right. What’s coming will come regardless. There’s no use dwelling on it. What we should be thinking about is how to get the construction underway.”
“Mm. Jia’er and I will go make dinner.”
Yang Zengyue turned and went to the kitchen. She rinsed the rice while Chen Jia’er lit the fire, washing and cutting vegetables, then stir-frying, they worked in one smooth flow.
Both of them moved with practiced ease, clearly used to cooking over a wood fire.
In a little over an hour she had braised a pork belly, deep-fried stuffed eggplant, made sweet-and-sour ribs, finished with a stir-fried string-bean dish, and put together a three-treasure vegetable soup, her busy figure putting every earthen stove and pot in the kitchen to use.
Once the dishes were out of the wok she tasted them, not bad, it seemed. Her cooking hadn’t gone rusty after all.
Chen Jia’er was already drooling.
In the apocalypse she had only tasted Zengyue’s cooking a handful of times, and she had never stopped thinking about it.
Chen Jia’er declared dramatically, “Sister Zengyue, I’m eating three bowls of rice tonight!”
Yang Zengyue looked up and, through the drifting cooking smoke, gazed at Chen Jia’er’s round apple-cheeked face, hoping the years would always stay this peaceful. She smiled faintly. “Sure. Eat your fill.”
Jiuxiao looked at the dishes on the table and knit his brows. He said nothing, but Yang Zengyue was the one to catch the problem first.
She slapped her forehead. “Aiya, Master, I was so set on eating meat that every dish tonight came out heavy and rich.”
Hearing this, Jiuxiao felt a pang. “It’s been so long since either of you had meat.”
Chen Jia’er chimed in, “Hehe, feels like it’s been a whole lifetime since I last smelled meat this good.”
Yang Zengyue flushed a little.
Having her awkwardness exposed by her master was mortifying.
Seven years in the apocalypse without ever blushing, striding through everywhere with fierce confidence, a big shot no one dared provoke, in an instant she was reduced to the way she’d been as a child.
“Then eat plenty.” Jiuxiao picked up a piece of braised rib for Zengyue, and one for Chen Jia’er too.
Chen Jia’er smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Master Jiuxiao.”
Ever since taking up his cultivation at Xingyun Temple, Jiuxiao had eaten mostly light, plain fare, rarely touching anything greasy or sweet.
Tonight, though, he meant to keep company with the two girls who had endured seven years of inhuman torment and eat to his heart’s content.
Yang Zengyue took a bite, clearly her cooking hadn’t slipped. It tasted just as good as ever.
“Heh heh, tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll go back to the usual menu. Just let me eat my fill today.” Yang Zengyue said, her words muffled around her food.
The girl’s voice, crisp as a little bell, echoed through the dining room. Jiuxiao shook his head, but he still ate two bowls of rice alongside her.
Yang Zengyue ate with great gusto, during those few days at school she’d just made do with whatever.
Both she and Chen Jia’er finished the meal thoroughly satisfied, and afterward the two of them let out several rather unladylike burps.
Watching them, Jiuxiao felt both helpless and heartsick.
Not wanting to watch her behave with such an utter lack of a young lady’s reserve any longer, Jiuxiao stepped out into the courtyard.
His right hand rubbing at a black thumb ring on his left hand, he kept turning over in his mind the apocalypse Zengyue had spoken of, not noticing at all that the sky had already darkened.
Having cleaned up the dining room and kitchen, Yang Zengyue heard footsteps in the courtyard. She folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe without a word.
Night had fallen, and worried her master might not see the steps beneath his feet, Yang Zengyue switched on the path lights.
Startled by the sudden brightness, Jiuxiao came back to himself.
Yang Zengyue walked over. “Master, you don’t need to worry about all this. I can turn Sikun Mountain into a fortress of iron and bronze. This will become the safest place in the whole Mid-Dimensional Realm.”
On this point she was quite confident. She knew exactly the required thickness, height, and load-bearing capacity of the walls, all the figures.
She had taken part in building such structures before, she was the finest kind of warrior, one who could fight, endure hardship, and possessed boundless strength.
“Mm. It’s something else I’ve been thinking about.”
“Oh, is it about Xingyun Temple?”
Yang Zengyue smiled. In her past life she had never actually fathomed the temple’s secrets. She only knew that Meng Chuyang had taken something away from Xingyun Temple.
Still, before she left Nanyuan for Zhaoqi Mountain, as an elder she had left Meng Chuyang a very big surprise.
The kind that could cost a life, and he’d even be grateful to her for it! Hmph. Trying to pry a meal out of the mouth of her, Yang Zengyue, without first taking stock of his own weight.
As for being trapped on Zhaoqi Mountain, in the end that had been her own choice.
Otherwise, she could have simply turned around and walked away, leaving those six thousand survivors to their fate.
But had she done that, she would have had no face to meet her master or Patriarch Xingyun.
Because the education she had received since childhood was that with greater ability comes greater responsibility.
Her master had left because of the apocalypse, and she didn’t want anyone else to suffer as she had, losing loved ones.
Call her stubborn and dense, call her a fool, this was the conviction that kept her moving forward.
Jiuxiao knit his brows. “Mm. Tomorrow I want to look through Xingyun Temple’s records again. Perhaps I’ve overlooked something.”
One of the things Zengyue had mentioned weighed heavily on him: several groups of people had come to Sikun Mountain, one after another, heading straight for Xingyun Temple.
And in the end, someone had taken something away from it.
Taken away what?
“Master, when I came back, I took the Jiusheng and the Yichao, two blades, from beneath Patriarch Xingyun’s seat, along with a small chest of ancient texts.”
She had taken the two blades away with her. The ancient texts had later gone missing, and in the end she discovered that Meng Chuyang had stolen them.
But she had no proof and no way to confront him, so she’d been forced into a last-resort measure.
Before leaving Nanyuan for Zhaoqi Mountain, she’d found an opportunity and swapped the Xingyun texts back out from under Meng Chuyang.
In the end, the Xingyun texts had turned to ash and smoke together with her.
Jiuxiao knew of the two blades. “Mm. The things are indeed there. But there’s one more item you must not have gotten.”