“Lu Feichen, who did you learn to kiss like that.”
Yun Yishan’s eyes snapped open in the darkness, she wasn’t dead?
Houli Crab!
She was actually still alive!!
That was her for you blessed with extraordinary fortune!!
Trembling, she reached out to feel her surroundings. Her fingertips brushed against the cold, slimy “palm wall.” Luckily, the metal staff in her hand was wedged diagonally between the Ghost Hand’s bone joints, barely propping open a narrow gap just big enough for her to curl up in. Nestled inside the crevice, every breath she took carried a bone-deep chill.
“Lu Feichen! Lu Feichen!!” She called out a few times, but only thick black mist answered her.
Her heart pounded wildly, cold sweat soaking through her back. Only now did fear belatedly grip Yun Yishan.
Was she going to die here? No one had ever taught her where the Erosion’s weak point was, where to stab for a fatal blow?
Gritting her teeth, she tried to move the staff, hoping to pry the gap open a little wider, but it wouldn’t budge.
She exerted force again, and the metal rod immediately bent and deformed. She could clearly feel the gap she was sheltering in growing even narrower, the inner walls on both sides pressing tightly against her shoulder blades, forcing a muffled groan of pain from her.
…Regret.
She deeply regretted it now.
She really should have just abandoned Lu Feichen and fled on her own!
Yun Yishan lay curled in the crevice, unable to move. Before long, her limbs began to stiffen from poor circulation. Under the crushing sense of suffocation, her consciousness gradually dissolved, and finally her head drooped to one side as she passed out.
The wind whistled, camel bells chiming.
Yun Yishan opened her eyes to a vast, boundless sky.
Beneath her was warm sand and gravel. She propped herself up and looked around endless yellow sands stretching to the horizon.
In the vastness of heaven and earth, a person was but a speck of dust.
“Yunhuang…” she murmured.
She couldn’t be mistaken this was her homeland! Yunhuang, the “Desert Pearl,” the wealthiest kingdom along the ancient Silk Road.
But how had she returned here? Intuition told her, she hadn’t truly come home. This was not a real place.
Was she dreaming? Or was this some kind of Illusionary Realm?
Gazing into the distance, she saw an oasis floating at the edge of the sky. And at the center of that patch of green stood a giant tree she had never once seen in Yunhuang.
Go take a look.
The thought had barely formed, her feet not yet stirring the sand, when she found herself already standing beneath the giant tree.
“Houli Crab!” Yun Yishan was stunned. “I’ve learned to teleport?!”
No time to dwell on it her gaze was drawn to the towering tree before her. Never in her life had she seen such a magnificent tree; it would take dozens of people linking arms to encircle its trunk! Its branches pierced straight into the clouds, its leaves swaying in the wind like the lingering echoes of ancient bells and chimes, resonating without end.
A single fallen leaf fluttered down, spiraling several times before gently landing in her palm, a phoenix tree leaf.
Suddenly, deep within the canopy, a flash of red darted past.
“Chirp chirp chirp…”
Yun Yishan looked up at the sound and spotted a small bird, entirely crimson, perched on a high branch, tilting its head as it watched her. Its two little black eyes carried an indescribable air of arrogance.
“A sparrow?” she blurted out. “Sparrows come in red?”
Red Sparrow: “…”
The next second, the little red bird suddenly flapped its wings and flew toward a higher branch, glancing back at her and chirping, as if to say: “Come up.”
Yun Yishan froze, she was actually reading bossy commands from a sparrow? She really was dreaming.
The thought barely stirred, and when she opened her eyes again, she was sitting on the highest branch of the phoenix tree. She gazed down at the familiar yellow sands in the distance, tracing in her memory the Yunhuang of days gone by.