Chapter 121: Endless Fun

They had been searching for three days but still hadn't found Zhuxing's whereabouts. The map Mu Jin gave them didn't even cover one-third of the underground palace, so they didn't dare to act rashly the rest of the way.

There are agencies everywhere.

Jiaoran could naturally explore farther and deeper places with her own skills, but she couldn't leave Mu Jin alone.

But if she took the risk with Mu Jin, she would be too busy to find a way out of the trap, investigate her senior sister's whereabouts, and ensure his safety. This was too difficult.

Besides, she didn't want Mu Jin to get into trouble in the underground palace. If she was still in the Governor's Mansion, she could rush back in an incense stick of time if she had anything to do. He might even still be sleeping soundly. But this place was not even as good as the Governor's Mansion and was full of dangers.

The underground palace hollowed out a part of the mountain, and many paths were very cold. Mu Jin had begun to cough due to the cold.

He stopped kissing her to avoid passing his illness on to her, although Jiaoran didn't think it was a big deal.

They planned to avoid being seen and heard for another half hour before returning.

Mu Jin had a question all this time, which was why Fenghuang Chu was obviously imprisoning them, but did not send anyone to guard outside their stone palace, as if he didn't care about their movement in the underground palace at all.

Jiaoran had come this way before yesterday, so she didn't suspect anything. However, Mu Jin stopped her and said, "Something seems amiss."

"What's wrong?"

Mu Jin pointed to the three forked corridors in front of the corridor and said, "I don't remember this road appearing before."

Jiao Ran said, "Now that you mention it, it seems to be true. There were only two yesterday, right?"

Mu Jin nodded. "Let's go back. The path to the underground palace doesn't seem fixed. They have special mechanisms that can control the direction of the corridors. They can choose to open or close some corridors to disrupt our memory."

Jiaoran agreed, "Then we will retreat first."

Just as he finished speaking, a pair of hands pushed Mu Jin from behind with such great force that he fell forward. When he stood firm, the road behind him had disappeared and Jiaoran was nowhere to be found.

Mu Jin hurriedly patted the stone wall behind him, "Jiao Ran! Can you hear me?"

On the other side, Jiaoran reached out to pull him, but the accident happened too quickly. When she reached out, she only touched the corner of his clothes and saw him disappear before her eyes.

Jiao Ran also hurried forward and patted the stone wall in front of him, "Mu Jin! I'm here, how are you?"

But no one answered him.

Something is wrong. If Mu Jin was on the other side, then they would be so close that the sound would not be completely transmitted.

Jiaoran took off the hairpin on her head and knocked on the wall. After knocking for a while, there was still no movement behind the wall.

Mu Jin sat there cautiously, worried that Jiaoran would not be able to find him if he moved.

On the other side, Jiaoran touched every stone in the stone chamber. If there was a mechanism, it might be hidden near them.

Suddenly, she touched a protruding stone brick. As she pressed it down, a path slowly opened up in front of her.

She walked in, and as soon as she walked in, she felt something was wrong.

What appeared before her were countless Jiaorans. A piece of each stone in this stone chamber was neatly cut off, and countless of her faces appeared before her.

It's really a bit scary, as if I've stepped into a world in a mirror.

Those faces just now were the same as her current face.

But the lights in the stone chamber gradually dimmed, and Jiaoran could no longer see his own face in the mirror.

She turned around and yelled to the people around her, "Phoenix Chick, it's you, isn't it? What the hell are you doing?"

She circled around the spot, and just after she did this circle, the entire stone wall became bright.

Every cross section still shows the same familiar face, but what is different is that each face is slightly different.

Some have wrinkles on their foreheads, some have moles under their eyes, and one has a birthmark under its ear. Every face is hers, but you can't find two that are exactly the same.

She leaned in closer to take a look, but still couldn't make out anything. She could only explain it as an illusion, a magic trick.

For people in the Fish and Dragon Wonderland, knowing this little trick is nothing.

A door suddenly opened in the sealed stone chamber.

A familiar face walked out from behind the dark door - Phoenix Chick.

Who else could it be but him? Jiaoran was not surprised.

"What do you want to do?"

He said, "Looking at these, don't you think it's interesting?"

"What's the point?" Jiaoran disagreed.

"In every mirror, you can see your face clearly, from childhood to old age. You can even see other versions of yourself."

His voice was captivating. "Don't you want to know who these faces are that look almost identical to yours?"

Jiao Ran laughed dumbly, "Don't say they are all me, there is only one Jiao Ran in this world."

His deep voice was particularly eerie in this strange mirror room. "Perhaps, you are not you at all."

"I'm not me? Then who am I? You seem to be dreaming."

Phoenix Young stretched out his hand, and the faces in the mirrors before him disappeared. "What do you think is the difference between humans, gods, and immortals?"

"Isn't it just the lifespan that's different? And the power is also different. The techniques that gods and immortals can practice are something humans can never achieve."

Phoenix Chick asked her again, "Then what do you think is the difference between humans, monsters, and ghosts?"

"Monster? Ghost?" Jiaoran had never thought about this. One reason was that she only knew the immortals now and had never met any ghosts or monsters. The big python Jifeng didn't like others saying that she was a monster.

"Let me tell you, the human soul is immortal from generation to generation, and no matter whether it is gods, immortals, demons or ghosts, they do not have such spiritual power."

Jiaoran was a little tired, because she wondered what tricks Phoenix Young was going to come up with, and she had to listen to him talk nonsense and then flatter him, "Oh, is that so? Then being a human being is actually not bad."

"Do you really think you're a good person?"

Jiao Ran asked in return, "Didn't you say that people have immortal souls?"

"Your soul in this life, when it comes to the next life, do you think it will still be you in the next life?"

Jiao Ran was stunned. This question was too complicated, just like different bottles filled with different kinds of fine wine. "That shouldn't be it."

"Do you think those people you saw just now were you?"

Jiao Ran immediately understood who those people were. "The different faces just now were all my previous reincarnations, right?"

He smiled slightly, a sly smile that often appeared on his face, his eyes like a fox, "Exactly."

Jiaoran didn't know why he suddenly talked to her about reincarnation and soul, and she didn't have the patience to listen to him talk about such nonsense.

But he stretched out his hand, and immediately countless phoenix chicks in the mirror room stretched out their hands to countless Jiaorans, "Walk with me."

Jiaoran actually had an impulse to extend her hand, but she immediately came to her senses and clenched her fingers.

For a whole stick of incense, they looked at each other without saying a word. Jiaoran felt that he was surprisingly sad, an emotion he had never experienced before.

He drew out his voice slightly and withdrew his hand, "Then just follow me and walk slowly."

Countless doors opened behind the mirror, and he walked into one of them, with Jiaoran following closely behind him.

"Where are you taking me?"

Jiao Ran thought of his senior sister and decided to give it a try. "Give my senior sister back to me. You captured her, but where are you holding her?"

They walked through many dark corridors, some of which did not even have a pearl or a lamp. The figure of the phoenix chick merged into the darkness, which was as silent as stagnant water and lifeless.

His voice was a little arrogant. "You're looking for her, aren't you? You've been looking for her for many days."

Jiaoran suddenly felt that he had been watching them in the dark and was well aware of their actions.

He suddenly raised his hand and blocked Jiaoran, and Jiaoran bumped into the back of his hand. It turned out that if they walked further forward, there would be a huge hole below, which was bottomless and blue spring water was flowing under their feet.

The round entrance of the hole doesn't look like a well for drawing water. It's a bit wide. If someone is not familiar with this road, they might miss a step and fall down.

He led her to walk in the darkness and came to a cave where a blue spring was flowing. She didn't know where this road led to, but she dared to follow him and let him lead her.

"Is it beautiful?" He sat down at the entrance of the cave and looked down at the blue spring water at his feet.

The blue spring water emits a silver light, and there seem to be fish swimming under the water.

Jiaoran stood beside him, not sitting on the ground like him.

"Why did you bring me here?"

His fingers trembled lightly as he tapped the edge of the cave entrance, looking quite leisurely. "To be honest, from the moment you entered the underground palace, everything was under my control. Your every word and action could not escape my scrutiny."

Jiao Ran asked, "So, you also know that Mu Jin has sneaked into the underground palace?"

Phoenix Chick was indeed very honest. "I didn't notice it at first because I had already begun to trust your mother. But now I understand that she is not worthy of my trust. After Qingyun found the map, I realized that Mu Jin was already by your side."

"So you just planned to separate us?"

Phoenix Chick shook his head repeatedly, "No, no, no, do you think I'm going to capture Mu Jin and threaten you like I did with Zhuxing?"

"Isn't it?" Jiaoran couldn't think of any other reason.

He asked Jiaoran to look under the blue spring to see what was there.

Jiaoran didn't dare to go over, for fear of being pushed into the water and drowned by him, but he still had the thin dragon on his wrist, so he could fight him a few moves even in the blink of an eye.

"Fear?"

Jiaoran said no, and squatted at the entrance of the cave looking down.

For some reason, the gurgling spring water brought her great peace.

She looked at the flowing water, and between closing and opening her eyes, a vague shadow appeared in front of her. Jiaoran shook her head vigorously, and when she looked at the water surface again, there was nothing there.

But it was the blurry shadow of that moment, a long-forgotten memory and dull pain that exploded in her mind, sadness covered the figure, and what was blurred was not only the figure, but also a person's voice.

She was so dazed that she lost her balance and fell headfirst.

Phoenix Chick immediately grabbed her arm and pulled her to sit down.

"What did you see?"

He rubbed her elbow with his fingers. This action was extremely ambiguous. Jiao Ran immediately withdrew her arm in disgust, "What are you doing!"

"Don't touch me!"

He slowly withdrew his hand, "Have I ever told you how my mother died?"

"The people from the Fish-Dragon Wonderland killed her. Didn't you tell me that?"

Phoenix Chick said, "Yes, they later captured me and imprisoned me for over seven hundred years, a full seven hundred years."

Jiaoran thought of Mu Jin, who had also been imprisoned by the Governor's Office for many years and spent his childhood in darkness and hopelessness.

So she sighed.

The Phoenix Cub thought she was pitying him, and continued, "For the first hundred years, I missed my mother the whole time, day and night. In the second hundred years, I hated my father, day and night, because he was incompetent and selfish. In the third hundred years, I began to hate the elders, because I figured it out. In the beginning, my father wanted to let us go, but they had forced him to kill us. In the fourth hundred years, I began to serve the gods. While I meticulously served as the lowest-ranking god servant, I began to hate those gods, all of whom were hypocritical. In the fifth hundred years, I began to prepare for escape. This plan has been in the works for hundreds of years, because the Fish and Dragon Wonderland is so difficult to escape."

"Then how did you finally escape from Wonderland?"

The Phoenix chick replied, "If a man strikes hard and fast, and has hundreds of years of patience, he will be transformed from prey to hunter, able to capture any prey he desires and regain his freedom in the process."

Jiao Ran was a little confused when he heard this. "Why did you become a hunter? Do you have prey to catch?"

He smiled and said, "Actually, I could have escaped Wonderland a long time ago, but I chose to do so over two hundred years ago. I had more than a dozen chances to escape Wonderland safely, but I didn't do it."

Jiao Ran was even more confused. "Why? You didn't run away when you got the chance?"

He said, "Revenge has a different kind of pleasure in it. You are too soft-hearted. Even when you were betrayed by Mu Jin and Zhou Zhi, you never gave up on seeking revenge. Therefore, you are destined not to enjoy the pleasure of revenge."

"What did you do to them?"

"kill."

"kill?"

"I will kill them just as they killed my mother."

But Jiao Ran thought of the elders of Feisheng Tower and Zhu Su, "Did you succeed?"

He said, "I killed Zhu Su and several of the elders, so they had to elect Zhu Su again."

Having said this, he licked his lips, very satisfied, "It's a pity that I couldn't kill them all. If I could, I would even want to kill all the people in Wonderland."

"you--"

He killed so many people in order to obtain "Gao Shan Shou". Jiaoran did not find it strange that he was cold-blooded and cruel. It seemed as if he was born that way and would never allow himself to be hurt.

If he felt even a little pain, he would make everyone he could think of suffer the same pain, or even repay them a hundredfold.

"From the beginning to the end, you never felt the slightest bit of guilt for my mother Chai Ying and those innocent people who died, right?"

"Do you think I would?"

Jiaoran shook his head.

After that, they were speechless for a while.

They are not destined to be on the same path.

Jiaoran never thought that she was a righteous person, but she was also sure that she would not be like the phoenix chick.

"Do you know what I have been doing?" Phoenix Chick asked her.

She did not hide her inner thoughts and "went her own way."

He said no, "I'm just fighting against nature."

"So you win?"

"Win or lose, it doesn't matter. It's just fun."