Chapter 472: Hometown

In Taixu Lingshu, in the Youming Valley, there is a lush forest. The cool mountain breeze blows through the grass and trees, and there is a rustling sound in the forest. There is also the sound of spring water coming from afar, like broken jade flowing through the valley, which contrasts with the quiet and lonely mountain.

Several unknown small animals seemed to be frightened and hurriedly ran out of the nearby bushes and scattered. Then, the sound of clothes rubbing against scales came from behind the bushes. Along with the shaking of grass leaves, a head first emerged from the tall grass next to it, followed by the young woman's upper body rising, and a long snake tail followed closely behind, winding out of the woods quickly.

Snake Queen emerged from the bushes and looked at the lush green area with wide eyes.

She put away her terrifying heads in advance and transformed into half a human body. Her posture was no longer as scary as before. She also changed herself into a simple and elegant dress imitating the appearance of the female disciples of Qianfeng Lingshan. If it weren't for the long tail dragging from her lower body, she would have looked almost like a human.

She was afraid that she would scare everyone - after all, she hadn't been back for many years.

But... she searched for a long time but couldn't find the village she remembered.

Snake Princess raised her upper body and tried to look into the distance of the vaguely familiar hillside.

It should be here - she still remembered the appearance of this hillside, and the outline of the mountain in the distance from this angle. She also found the mountain spring on the way here and drank water from the spring. She also found the huge stone near the village and rested on the stone for a quarter of an hour... It should be here.

Snake Queen crawled forward slowly, her expression gradually changing from excitement at the beginning to confusion, confusion turning into uneasiness, and finally into thoughtful calmness.

Then after a while, she finally found some remaining traces at the end of the hillside. She saw the intersection covered with bushes and weeds again, the house that had been abandoned for who knows how many years, and the filled-in well.

She had helped dig the well in the first place - she thought so.

The scales rubbed against the soil and stones, making a rustling sound. She stopped beside a large stone cave near the rock wall, silently looking at the dusty stone table and stone bench in the cave, as well as a few pieces of broken wood scattered in the cave.

"Oh, yes, it's been many years."

Snake Queen muttered to herself, slowly crawled into the cave, curled up her tail among the broken wood, and stared blankly at the weeds outside.

How long have you been in a daze?

She doesn't know either.

But suddenly, footsteps were heard outside, and there was a human scent—an elderly-sounding voice came from outside the cave entrance, with a hint of hesitation: "Spirit Snake Goddess, Spirit Snake Goddess, are you back?"

Snake Queen was in a trance for a moment. At first she thought she had misheard, but then she reacted and suddenly poked her head out of the cave.

A strange old man with a hunched back was standing beside the cave, looking over here curiously, holding a basket in his hand.

The old man seemed frightened for a moment, but then he started laughing, and the wrinkles on his face gathered together: "It's really you, it's really you!"

He walked towards this side, looking quite happy, but Snake Queen just looked at the human in front of her with confusion. She couldn't remember when she had seen this face before. She quickly searched every face in her memory but couldn't match it. But the old man looked like he obviously knew her - so she tried harder to recall, and when the other person approached, she finally sniffed and vaguely distinguished something from his breath.

The aura was actually different from what she remembered, so she was still hesitant until she opened her mouth: "...child?"

"Yes, yes, yes—you still can't remember my name," the old man said happily, almost dancing with joy, "My name is Song Shan. Back then, adults called me Xiao Shan..."

"It's really you?" Snake Princess looked at him in surprise, and her heart was filled with joy. But then she looked around and couldn't help asking, "Where did everyone go? Why is the village gone?"

"People...most of them are gone. It's been almost two hundred years since you left," Song Shan, an octogenarian, shook his head. "The village was flattened over a hundred years ago, too."

Snake Princess slowly lowered her head: "Who flattened it? Why?"

“Because of the poverty alleviation and transformation of mountain villages…”

Snake Princess: “…Ah?”

"The mountain village is undergoing poverty alleviation and transformation. The immortals in the mountains said that even the Eight Gates Stars have escaped poverty, but our area has been lifted out of poverty year after year. They simply broke up the entire village and moved it to several nearby towns. Now the young people in the village are working in the towns."

Snake Princess blinked her eyes for a long time before she muttered strangely, "Oh, so... this is good."

Song Shan laughed and placed the basket on a large flat rock at the entrance of the cave. He then spread the blue cloth covering the basket on the rock. "I heard that you might be back in the next couple of days, so I come here every day to see you. I wanted to bring my children to see you, but they can't stand the hardship and don't want to climb the mountain... You haven't eaten yet, right? I made this at home. I remember you like shortbread..."

Snake Princess stared at the scene blankly, and distant memories suddenly flooded her mind. It was as if she had returned to many years ago, to when the village still existed. She remembered the old houses, the crooked paths, and the children who placed fruit at the entrance of the cave, burned incense, and imitated the adults in the games of worshiping the mountain god. The children in her memory were skinny and small, like black mountain monkeys, holding a bitten shortbread and placing it in front of her cave...

The trembling old man slowly placed the pancake on the blue cloth. His arms were very thin and his waist was very bent - he seemed to have been strong in the past, but those days were gone and now he was thin and small again.

"You're so old, kid."

"You... don't seem to be the same as you used to be."

Snake Princess slowly moved to the big rock and looked behind the old man: "Where are those kids who played with you back then?"

The old man paused and shook his head slowly: "Dong Ge and Liu Zi passed away a hundred years ago, Liu A Niu and San Mei died more than twenty years ago, and I am the only one left..."

He raised his head, looked at Snake Queen and smiled, "We all wanted to wait for your return. We all learned some basic Taoism from the master, but we didn't learn anything. I was more or less diligent, and relying on hard work to make up for my shortcomings, I finally got into the way. I'm lucky to have lived for these two hundred years - otherwise, no one would come to bring you cakes today."

Snake Princess was silent for a moment. In her somewhat fuzzy memory, those names slowly became associated with equally blurry faces. She murmured softly as she recalled, "I haven't even seen what you look like when you grow up..."

“You’ve actually seen it.”

Snake Princess looked up in confusion.

"We've visited you," the old man said slowly, placing the basket next to the large rock. "When everyone was still here, we'd go to Qianfeng Lingshan every few years. The immortals there would take us to visit you—but you didn't recognize us back then. Later, when they were gone, I went to see you a few times myself. The immortals there said that even though you can't recognize people anymore, seeing familiar people often will help suppress your inner demons. And that Yuanhe Zhenren also said that you always feel much calmer when you see us..."

"The last time I saw you in the Demon Suppression Tower, you were already able to speak to people. Although you were cursing at that time... it was just curses.

"Now you can recognize me."

The old man smiled, picked up a piece of pastry and handed it to him: "Try it."

Snake Princess hesitated for a moment, then reached out her hand slowly and clumsily, but failed to catch the pancake, and it fell on the stone.

"I, I'm not very good at using my hands yet," she said a little awkwardly. "Old... Yuan He only taught me how to transform, but he hasn't had time to teach me how to use these extra arms and fingers."

"It's okay, it's okay," the old man said quickly, then smiled and picked up the shortbread and put it directly to Snake Princess's mouth, "Then I'll feed you. I've fed you before."

The pastry is delicious, and the bean-filled pastry is also delicious.

The fruit is delicious too.

Of course, these wild foods are not as exquisite as the fruits and snacks on Qianfeng Lingshan Mountain, but Snake Queen feels that she has not eaten such delicious food for many years.

She ate everything in the basket and drank up the pot of homemade wine that Song Shan brought.

The wine brewed by ordinary people is very light. To the demon fairy, both the taste and the spiritual power contained are as thin as water. But she still got drunk and said a lot of things to Song Shan in one breath.

About Qianfeng Lingshan, about the Demon-Suppressing Tower, about the strange stone ball at the bottom of the tower, the strange creatures imprisoned in the tower, and the disciples on the mountain who were constantly called "evil disciples" by Yuan He and Yuan Ling, and the group of weird people who had recently arrived at Qianfeng Lingshan and were called "the hostel"...

She actually didn't understand many things. She didn't know what the "Dark Angel" was, let alone what the masters from the borderland meant. She gained enlightenment in the mountains, spent her days in a small village, and lived in a daze in the Demon-Suppressing Tower for two hundred years. To her, this world was just a bizarre grass nest, and everything was a mess.

But she never thought there was anything wrong with it, because life has always been like this.

Based on her own understanding, she told Song Shan, a "mortal" with low cultivation, many stories about the fairy mountain, and kept talking until it got dark.

Song Shan is going back.

If I go back late, I will inevitably be missed - mortals live short lives, but are very fertile. The dark-skinned child of the past has now grown into the "old man" of a large family.

Snake Queen looked at the clouds gradually darkening in the sky and felt that the clouds looked a bit like the sea of clouds on the Thousand Peaks Mountain.

"Do you want me to help you down the mountain?" She looked at the old man in front of her. "You are very old."

"It's okay. I have some cultivation experience, so I just consider crossing mountains and ridges as a leisurely stroll." Song Shan shook his head, but then seemed to remember something. He looked at the "Spirit Snake Goddess" in front of the cave in the fading light and said, "Do you have a place to go? If you don't mind, you can come to my house."

Snake Princess thought about it seriously.

It was getting dark, and beneath the distant clouds, a few colorful fireballs were faintly rising. They seemed to be the fireworks in a nearby town. As part of the celebration, the fireworks were set off a little early, but they looked very beautiful when they exploded in the darkening sunset.

"No," Snake Princess finally shook her head. "Knowing that you are all living well after I left, I feel at ease. Go back. If there is a chance in the future... I will come to find you."

At this point, she thought for a moment and added, "I have a very good nose and can find your house - now, I have to go home too."

(End of this chapter)