The Newborn Witch (The End)

Mi rolled back into the Witch Forest and only poked her head out after a long time. She carefully peered around the Witch Forest, making sure there was no foul smell before stretching out her body and returning to human form.

Al and Joe, who had been following Mi, laughed at her, saying, "You're going to live with Karin? I think you're more of a hypocrite than a true believer in dragons."

"Please excuse my poor taste," Mi said casually, cupping his hands in greeting. "People who are used to city life have long forgotten the taste of nature."

Seeing Al and Joe standing so easily in the valley, she couldn't help but ask, "Don't you think it smells bad?"

Al smiled without saying anything, but Joe whispered a reminder to her: "You need to learn to shut down your senses, otherwise when you go outside, you will be surrounded by smells, sounds, and thoughts."

"Shut down your senses?" Why are so many new terms appearing after acquiring the Witch's Body? Mi sat down, placed her straw sandals aside, and once again brought her feet together, forming a thin line as she peered out of the Witch's Forest. Mi frowned: "It stinks!"

She looked up helplessly, and El reached out his hand to her. Mi looked at him, puzzled. El said, "Come on, take my hand." Mi reached out her hand, and then there was a barrier in the air.

"What's this?"

"This is the witch's protection, just like the shield you touched earlier."

"How can I achieve this?" Mi frowned. "Is this a vacuum zone?"

Al shook his head: "You can think of it as rejection. When you refuse to be observed, that's your protective shield. The protective shield on the River of Lostness has always been there, preventing other creatures from coming in. Once you shut down your senses, you refuse to communicate with the outside world, and you cease to exist in the outside world."

"I refuse to perceive the outside world, and the outside world can't see me either?" Mi thought for a while, then lowered her head and muttered to the gray ball of thread, "Can't smell it, can't smell it." This time, the thread that had reached out couldn't smell the stench, and Mi happily jumped up and ran out of the forest again. Then, looking at the colorful scene before her and feeling the mountain breeze on her cheeks, she felt something was off. She looked at the two smiling people behind her: "I can't smell anything at all."

El couldn't help but burst into laughter: "You're so funny." The elders in the dormant flower were also startled by El's laughter and peeked out to see what was going on. Mi, embarrassed and angry, hid in the dormant flower.

El knocked on the dormant flower, revealing Mi's puffed-up face. She suppressed a laugh and said, "The elders can't get out; they simply can't understand your question."

Al pointed to his face again: "A person only has one nose to smell all smells. If you shut down all your senses, and don't even keep a nose, of course you won't smell anything."

Mi jumped out of the dormant flower, and El watched as the straw sandals slid out of the dormant flower behind her. Mi still had a long time before she left the Witch Forest.

This time, Mi stood in the Witch Forest, assigning tasks to her entire body: breathe through her nose, see through her eyes, hear through her ears, and walk through her feet. Then, in a very strange posture, Mi lifted one foot and took a step forward, then lifted the other foot and took another step forward, like a stiff wooden doll. Mi ignored the snickers from El and Joe behind her; the two of them found everything she did amusing.

Mi finally emerged from the Witch's Forest. She raised her nose and sniffed the air; it smelled of feces, flowers, dampness, and fresh grass—like a jungle far removed from the city. The air was definitely full of negative ions. Mi nodded in satisfaction and continued onward, using the cover of rocks and trees to observe Karin, who had run away from her arranged marriage.

During the day, Karin, who had run away from her arranged marriage, always kept herself busy, whether it was weeding, fertilizing, or feeding the chickens and dogs. Even her mealtimes were hectic; she would stand in the yard with a wooden bowl, watching around. As soon as a hawk flew in, she would immediately put down the bowl, give the hawk a strip of meat, and then quickly finish her own food before starting to process the hawk's prey. She would gut it, separate the flesh from the skin, boil and dry the meat, and repeatedly wash, soak, and tan the skin. Karin almost never allowed herself any rest. Mi could tell that Karin was deliberately keeping herself busy; only when people are busy do they forget to think.

As evening fell, Karin would light a fire in the fireplace. Once darkness descended, she would sit with her teacup, staring blankly at the firelight, her little dog, Spot, lying beside her. Sometimes Mi would see Karin silently weeping and couldn't resist the urge to hug the lonely girl. But Karin would quickly wipe away her tears, finish her water, and go to bed. "She's a strong girl," Mi thought, though she didn't know how she would endure such long loneliness alone.

As darkness fell, the surrounding cliffs obstructed Mi's view, and she could see nothing clearly in the darkness. While walking back, Mi lost her footing and tumbled back into the Witch Forest. This time, El and Joe burst into laughter.

The Witch Forest is forever bright. Mi lifted her feet, checked that she was not injured, drew her sword and practiced it one stroke at a time. She raised her hand to thrust the sword, spun around and leaped into the air. The sword drew a curved arc in the air, and the Mind Tree and the Dormant Flower all dodged.

El sat on the vines of the dormant flower, watching Mi Lianjian. She gradually calmed down, her whole being becoming one with the sword, the sword like her arm. Finally, she stopped, and a dormant flower, trembling, perched on the tip of the sword, suddenly sprang into the air and dodged away. El could even hear the dormant flower's sharp scream.

Joe walked up to her and whispered, "Witches don't see the world with their eyes." Mia suddenly understood; she could always see the entire forest and had never experienced a situation where she couldn't see what was behind her because her eyes were in front of her. But she said with difficulty, "Am I supposed to grow a ring of eyes on my head?" Then she actually arranged a ring of eyes on her head, and Al and Joe couldn't help but laugh so hard they were shaking.

While laughing, El asked her, "What are you going to do about your feet? You tripped and rolled all the way back into the Witch Forest."

Mi sat down again, ignoring the two people who were laughing at her. She stretched out her witch form, draped her clothes over the vines of the dormant flower, and floated in mid-air. She drew a circle around her head and then pondered on her skin. Joe had already run to the side in embarrassment. When Mi returned to human form, only El watched her with a smile.

"Where's Joe?" Joe always followed behind El, afraid of missing a single word of El and Mi's conversation.

El pointed to the clothes she had placed to the side. "Ah—" Mi quickly hugged her arms, crossed her arms and squatted down, covering her face as she put on the clothes.

"Hahaha." Al laughed again. Joe peeked out and, seeing that Mi's clothes were intact, came out. Al suppressed a laugh and said, "Now I believe you're from the same place, hahaha. Do you know that your clothes are also a sense? They're part of your body too."

Mi blushed and burrowed into the dormant flower, ignoring El. Joe reached out and tugged at El's sleeve, telling her to stop talking.

The next day, Mi left the Witch Forest again, making several trips a day to Fallen Leaf Valley to visit the runaway Karin. Each time she returned to the Witch Forest, she would mend her body; sometimes she would leave no trace, and sometimes she would stand still. Finally, she could walk like a normal person, having abandoned her shoes and walking barefoot on the rocks.

Mi was also observing the path she had walked, sometimes picking up two red fallen leaves, sometimes a small stone, sometimes a flower. But all of these things were blocked by the shroud above the misty river. Mi asked the pile of small items she had collected, "Why can't I bring these things in?"

El took out her witch's headband, which had a string of shimmering pearls on it. El took out a packet of salt and a packet of candy from it. Jo put the salt into a dormant flower, picked up a piece of candy and put it into El's mouth, before putting the rest of the candy into another dormant flower.

Each of the witch's tears was a separate space. When El first heard the elders' stories, she cried; she shed many tears. Her witch's headdress had a string of shimmering pearls that could hold all sorts of things. Each time El returned from the outside world, she would bring back things the elders needed.

"A witch's tears are storage space?" Mi felt she had encountered her biggest problem: how could a consciousness shed tears? She avoided El and found Joe, begging him to shed tears for her to see.

“A witch’s tears are not ordinary tears,” Jo said, taking out her witch’s headband, which had no pearls on it. “When you encounter something that touches your heart, you will cry. Whether a witch can cry is not something a witch can control. You have to experience very strong emotions, so strong that you wish you could change everything.”

"What is that?" Mi stared at Qiao. "You've never encountered anything like this before?"

Joe smiled shyly, looking at Al's retreating figure in the distance, and said, "Al protected me very well. I've always been happy and never felt like crying."

When Mi saw that El was smiling at her again, she had to give up the idea of ​​making Joe cry. Joe had also been upset and her eyes were red before, but she had quickly calmed down with El's comforting words.

Mi couldn't cry; she continued to observe Karin from her hiding place in the canyon. Karin had already harvested all the oats, burned the remaining stalks, and was loosening the soil with a hoe. Dot was digging around in the dirt nearby. Karin picked up a tree root and threw it away. Dot immediately ran over, picked it up, dug a hole next to Karin, and buried the root again. Karin pulled Dot by the ear and scolded it, finally leaving a spot for Dot to bury its roots, bones, and vine balls.

"Where did Karin's dog come from?" Mi asked Al and Joe, who were always following behind him.

“I don’t know,” El shook his head. “We don’t come out to see her as often as you do.” El thought for a moment and continued, “We just helped her build a small cabin; she built the current house herself. Her intelligence and competence have allowed her to survive in this forest.”

"Do you remember the Seventh Elder? She lived alone in the forest for twenty years." Joe said, recalling the Seventh Elder who was covered in white fur. Sometimes fear can make people submit, and sometimes fear can bring people a new way of life.

“Actually, we originally planned to send her to the Flower Kingdom after a while, where our old friends can look after her,” Joe continued to explain. “But when we came out of the Witch Forest, she had already torn down the little shed we built for her. She brought an axe with her when she left home. Can you imagine? A little girl like her built herself a house like this with just an axe.” Joe looked at Karin’s house with admiration. “Ever since Karin moved here, we’ve come back every few years to ask her if she wants to go out, but she always refuses. The second time we came back, she had a dog in her house.”

"Do you come back often?" Mi looked back at the forest that had once imprisoned her; it seemed she didn't want to return.

“We miss Karin’s life here,” Joe said. “If you don’t want to come back, you can never come back. Many witches only come back once in a very long time.”