Having asked what she wanted to know, Ming Zhu rose to her feet and gave a courteous word of thanks.
Someone had once taught her that this was the time to say thank you.
Ming Zhu did not necessarily understand why one should do or say such a thing, but she had decided to listen to him for now.
Seeing her turn away, Gu Congshan hastily scrambled to his feet as well and called after her retreating figure: "Wait, do you know the way out?"
If she did, she might as well take him along—
Gu Congshan had been wandering these woods for a long while now, unable to find the path he had come by.
But his words came a step too late. Ming Zhu's figure had already vanished into the dense, shadowy forest. She had channeled her spiritual breath into the Jade Slip in her hand, and her consciousness had been drawn into it. She did not notice his call. She did not respond to Gu Congshan's words.
So it was true—one needed spiritual breath to see the records within the Jade Slip. Ming Zhu swept past the treetops, her expression somewhat blurred in the mountain mist.
Gu Congshan tried to catch up with Ming Zhu, but after trailing her for the better part of a day, he was left gasping for air, hugging a tree trunk, unable to move another step.
She was far too fast!
After he caught his breath for a moment and looked up, there was no trace of Ming Zhu to be found anywhere. Gu Congshan fell silent for a while, then gave up on the spot.
It was getting late. The sensible thing to do was find something to fill his stomach first. Though he was a cultivator, at Gu Congshan's current level of cultivation, he was still far from being able to live on wind and dew.
Following the sound of water to a stream, he speared two fish without much trouble, built a fire on the spot, and neatly gutted the fish before setting them on skewers to roast.
By the time night had fully enveloped the mountain forest, the fish on the branches were giving off a fragrant, charred aroma. Gu Congshan sniffed the scent, nodded in satisfaction, and took the fish up.
In the darkness, a pair of eyes watched Gu Congshan silently. As if sensing something, his motion of opening his mouth to take a bite halted. He looked up.
Their eyes met.
Gu Congshan let out a shriek, threw down the roasted fish in his hand, and bolted away at lightning speed.
Ming Zhu caught the roasted fish he had thrown, dropping down from the tree. She did not understand why he looked as if he had seen a ghost.
By the faint glow of the fire, Gu Congshan, still shaken, made out Ming Zhu's face and finally let out a breath of relief. Good, good—it was a person, not a ghost.
As long as it wasn't a ghost…
Perhaps because he had heard too many tales of the strange and supernatural in the past, Gu Congshan was genuinely afraid of ghosts.
Ming Zhu lowered her head and sniffed the fish in her hand. A strange expression crossed her face. This smelled different from what she had eaten before.
"What's different about it?" Gu Congshan could not help but ask.
Ming Zhu took a bite before answering: "It's not bitter."
Everything she had tasted before—whether roasted by herself or by others—had carried a bitter, cloying taste that stuck to the mouth.
Hearing Ming Zhu say this, Gu Congshan's gaze toward her suddenly filled with sympathy. Had she really been eating things like that all along?
Seeing Ming Zhu finish the roasted fish in her hand at a leisurely pace, Gu Congshan picked up the other one, now perfectly cooked: "Would you like more?"
One fish should not be enough to fill her stomach. As for himself, he still had plenty of wild fruit he had picked.
Ming Zhu shook her head. "That's enough."
She ate so little, Gu Congshan thought as he bit into his roasted fish.
Ming Zhu did not know what he was thinking, and so she did not explain that she did not actually need to eat to sustain her energy—she simply wanted to taste something she had never tried before.
Fortunately, she didn't say it, or Gu Congshan would have suspected her of being a mountain spirit again.
Over the next two days, Gu Congshan naturally traveled alongside Ming Zhu, though one was always in the trees while the other chased along the ground.
It was only after watching Gu Congshan forage for food morning and evening that Ming Zhu realized—humans, like the wild beasts of Yugu Mountain, needed to eat.
But back in the mountains, he had seemed to need no food, just like her, so Ming Zhu had assumed all humans were the same.
So that wasn't the case?
"Miss Ming Zhu, so you used to live in the mountains?" After they had grown slightly more familiar, Gu Congshan heard fragments of her origins during casual conversation.
Ming Zhu nodded. She had lived in a bamboo hut atop Yugu Mountain for two years, learned to speak and read, kept company with the tigers and wolves of the mountain, and had never even seen a third person.
Gu Congshan then asked about her age. Ming Zhu thought for a moment, and counting from what she knew, fourteen years should have passed in this world.
Since she hadn't specifically mentioned being brought to Yugu Mountain two years ago, Gu Congshan assumed she had lived in the mountains for over a decade.
Born in such an isolated place, no wonder she knew nothing of cultivation… So she had truly just glanced at his cultivation manual and lit her Life Star?
Even with his shallow cultivation, Gu Congshan knew what that meant for Ming Zhu's natural talent.
If she had entered the Dao earlier, who knew what level she might have reached by now—
Gu Congshan felt no jealousy, only regret on her behalf, but Ming Zhu herself didn't seem to care.
What difference did sooner or later make?
Perhaps because of the bond forged over shared roasted fish, Gu Congshan and Ming Zhu grew closer, and when he proposed traveling together, Ming Zhu didn't refuse.
Along the way, they also had opportunities to discuss matters of spells and cultivation, and Gu Congshan had to admit—the difference between one person and another was truly greater than that between a person and a pig.
spells that he had trained painstakingly for months to cast smoothly, Ming Zhu could master with a single glance, and their power was immeasurably greater.
"seven mansions…" Gu Congshan collapsed beneath a tree with vacant eyes, unable to believe what he had just heard.
She'd only lit her Life Star a few days ago!
He sat up, indignant: "Are you really human?!"
"Am I not?" Ming Zhu, sitting across from him, tilted her head, her eyes carrying genuine confusion.
Seeing her reaction, Gu Congshan's words caught in his throat. He imperceptibly scooted back, then scooted back again—no way…
The firelight cast Ming Zhu's shadow, and his heart wrestled with doubt—if she were a ghost, she shouldn't cast a shadow, right?
After another two days of wandering through the forest with Ming Zhu, Gu Congshan finally realized something—it wasn't just him; she also didn't know the way out of Wuyin Forest.
But after witnessing Ming Zhu dispatch the forest's wild beasts as easily as chopping vegetables, Gu Congshan settled his mindset—as long as they kept moving forward, they'd eventually find a way out, right?
With no need to constantly fear for his life, he had room to notice other things.
Since they couldn't leave Wuyin Forest anytime soon, he might as well take the opportunity to look for spiritual treasures along the way. Gu Congshan had entered Wuyin Forest in the first place hoping to find rare herbs and exotic plants to trade for Spirit Jade.
From the mud beside the swamp, Gu Congshan dug up a flowering branch that shimmered with spiritual light. Carefully, he tucked the spirit flower into a bamboo case, a hint of barely concealed delight spreading across his face. With this spirit flower, his haul from this trip to Wuyin Forest could fetch at least ten Spirit Jades.
"What do you want that flower for?" Ming Zhu sat on a boulder, watching his movements, one hand propping up her chin as she asked.
"This is a cornel branch—it can be traded for quite a few Spirit Jades." Gu Congshan replied matter-of-factly. Only after the words left his mouth did he remember that Ming Zhu had once lived in the mountains and knew nothing of cultivation—it was only natural she'd never heard of Spirit Jades.
Just as common folk needed silver and coin for food and drink, cultivators couldn't do without Spirit Jades in their practice. Only with Spirit Jades could one trade for spells, cultivation manuals, Alchemical Pills, and magic tools.
Gu Congshan explained as he fished out a Spirit Jade and handed it to Ming Zhu.
It was the last one he had hidden on him—the rest had been snatched away by that wretched fox that had come out of nowhere.
Ming Zhu took the Spirit Jade from Gu Congshan's hand and held it up to the light, seeing within the stone the spiritual breath drifting like mist.
The greatest difference between a Spirit Jade and an ordinary roadside stone lay in the spiritual breath it contained.
This spiritual breath stored within the jade could be refined and absorbed by cultivators, or used to power magic tools. Thus, cultivators rarely traded in gold or silver—only in Spirit Jades.
"…So, Spirit Jades are truly important." After such an explanation, Gu Congshan concluded with a solemn expression.
Without money, you can't take a single step—that saying was an eternal truth, and even becoming a cultivator didn't exempt you from it.
Ming Zhu, who had never suffered such hardship, returned the jade to him, still unable to fully empathize with his words. But if he wanted to trade for such stones—
"Why not pick that one?" Ming Zhu's gaze drifted to a vine hidden in the shade nearby.
On the vine bloomed a small, nameless white flower, looking utterly unremarkable.
"What is this?" Gu Congshan scratched his head, unable to identify what kind of vine it was.
After all, no one had ever taught him—his knowledge of trees and plants was quite limited, and he could only recognize a few common varieties.
"I don't know," Ming Zhu replied. "But it should be worth more stones than the one you just put away."
In her eyes, the white flower on the vine contained a denser mist, though it still fell far short of any random blade of grass on Yugu Mountain.
But what Ming Zhu could see so easily, Gu Congshan couldn't sense at all. He looked again and again, yet still felt the flower was nothing special.
In the end, however, he decided to trust Ming Zhu's words. He stepped forward and used his short dagger to cut the white flower from the vine.
No harm in trying, anyway—and if it really could fetch a good number of Spirit Jades, they could split the profit later.
Another day passed in the blink of an eye. Beneath a cliff somewhere in Wuyin Forest, Gu Congshan crouched before a cluster of leaves, staring hard as he tried to discern: "Is this really perilla or not?"
It looked like it, but something seemed off.
Just as he was agonizing over it, a female voice came from above: "Though it looks very similar, what's in front of you isn't perilla—it's poisonous."
Hearing this, Gu Congshan looked up along the source of the voice. A young woman carrying a bamboo basket was hanging from a vine above, her features delicate and fair, appearing to be about two years older than him.
Who was she?
Just as Gu Congshan and the young woman stared at each other, the taut vine let out a dull snap and broke clean through. The young woman clinging to the cliff lost her support, and was clearly about to fall.
Watching this scene, Gu Congshan screamed even louder than she did. He instinctively reached out a hand to catch her, but after shuffling left and right in a flurry of activity, he could only watch helplessly as the girl landed flat on her face, right beside where he stood.
A gust of wind blew past as Gu Congshan stood there with his hand still raised, his expression awkward.
Fortunately, the girl had nearly reached the bottom of the cliff, so she had not fallen from too great a height. The grass cushioned her fall, so she was not badly hurt.
"Are you alright?" Gu Congshan asked stiffly.
"…I'm fine." The girl lying face-down on the ground replied in a muffled voice.