Yue Qi and Yan Che exchanged a glance, and then he spoke first.
"That's right. I don't know why you're so sure we came from Cangyun Mountain. After all, there's more than one road leading up the mountain from the village."
Yue Qi was right. Although they had been following the same path, they had encountered many other forks in the road along the way. Why was he so certain?
The old man stared at him intently for a moment, then puffed out a few more times, exhaling smoke as he sighed deeply.
“If it were any other day, I really wouldn’t be sure. But yesterday was the annual Sacred Fire Festival, and the entire road from the village to Cangyun Mountain was covered with colorful banners made with Xi grass liquid. You walked all the way, so you naturally smelled of Xi grass. Therefore, it’s not hard to guess.”
At this point, the old man looked at them with curiosity, "Cangyun Mountain has long been a dead mountain, what are you going there for?"
A dead mountain?!
Yue Qi and Yan Che's eyes instinctively met, and they both saw extreme shock in each other's eyes.
That's not how it works at all!
They remembered very clearly that when they met Ami near this Yundianzi Village, she didn't say anything like that at all!
Yue Qi hesitated for a moment, then took the initiative to ask, "Old man, do you know if there's a little girl named Ami in your village? We—"
Before he could finish speaking, the old man opposite him suddenly stood up abruptly, his voice trembling slightly.
"Ami—what did you just say? Say it again!"
The old man's reaction was so intense that even the most clueless among them would realize something was wrong with Ami. So Yue Qi tentatively asked,
"Old man, could it be that Ami isn't from our village?"
"Ami, Ami——"
The old man stood up shakily, walked directly to Yue Qi, and personally untied the ropes binding them. His voice was filled with barely suppressed excitement.
"Ami—you really saw her?"
Yue Qi nodded. "About half a month ago, when we came into the mountains from outside and got to this area, we didn't know the way, so we planned to find a guide—Ami was our guide at the time."
"More than half a month ago?" The old man frowned. "That's impossible!"
Yue Qi's heart skipped a beat. "Could there be something wrong with this Ami?"
When he looked at the old man again, he noticed that there were faint tears in the corners of the man's eyes.
The old man realized his lapse in composure; he raised his sleeve to wipe away his tears and let out a long sigh.
“Ami is my younger sister.”
"What?!!"
This news was so explosive that Yue Qi simply couldn't believe it.
Ah, she's clearly a teenage girl. This old man looks at least sixty years old; how could they possibly be siblings?
Perhaps their astonishment was too obvious, for the old man immediately noticed their confusion.
He took two more deep drags of his cigarette and said in a gentle tone,
"The Ami you saw, didn't she look only about ten years old?"
Yan Che's eyes widened in surprise. "How did you know?"
“That’s not surprising, because you’re not the only ones who have seen Ami. However, as far as I know, everyone who has seen her has died without exception.”
As the old man spoke, a hint of curiosity appeared on his face. "And how did you all survive?"
Yan Che was furious and glared at the other person, "What do you mean by that?! Why can't we live together?"
The old man laughed, but there was an indescribable sadness in his voice. "Because Ami is the Flower Cave Maiden. Anyone who has seen her will never be allowed to live by the Cave God."
"What?! The Flower Cave Maiden!" Even Yue Qi couldn't sit still anymore.
"No, that's impossible! We saw it with our own eyes—Ami, she's not the Flower Cave Maiden!"
"I've heard that more than once," the old man said, surprisingly without anger.
"To be honest, almost everyone who has met Ami says the same thing. But there is one thing I have not lied to you about: Ami is the real Falling Flower Cave Girl."
Seeing that the two still didn't believe it, the old man told them a story.
The village they lived in was called Yundianzi Village. Like several nearby villages, it was located deep in the mountains and had no access to outsiders, so even though it was in the same mountains, others were unaware of its existence.
The reason why these villages have been able to persevere deep in the mountains is because they have been protected by the cave gods for generations.
"The Cave God was still here more than a hundred years ago." The old man sighed as he said this, "Back then, Wuyun Mountain was incredibly beautiful—"
Mentioning Wuyun Mountain, Yue Qi also sensed something was amiss. "Isn't Wuyun Mountain in the lake? So it really is a mountain?"
"You don't understand." As a native of the area, the old man was extremely familiar with the surrounding terrain.
“My grandfather told me that Wuyun Mountain was originally a small mountain suspended in mid-air, and the large mountain below it was called Cangyun Mountain. It is said that after it rains, when you look down from the foot of the mountain, the entire Wuyun Mountain is shrouded in a sea of clouds, as if it were a fairy mountain in the sky.”
"And the Cave God has lived in Wuyun Mountain since ancient times."
The old man's words completely overturned everything they had seen and heard in the past few days, so Yue Qi had to interrupt him—
“Old man, but I clearly saw with my own eyes that Wuyun Mountain is at the bottom of the lake. Not only that, it should be an inverted mountain peak that is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. This is completely different from what you said!”
He merely voiced his question, but to his surprise, the old man flew into a rage, veins bulging on his face.
"Of course, because the Cave God was killed more than a hundred years ago!"
At this, tears streamed down the old man's face. He knelt down with a thud, facing the direction of Wuyun Mountain, crossed his arms over his chest, and bowed deeply.
When he raised his head again, the hatred on his face was uncontrollable.
"That's because, more than a hundred years ago, members of the Zhang family, together with an outsider, killed the Cave God!"
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