The babbling of springs on both sides of the lake is the sound of the first snow melting.
The grass along the stream has already sprouted quite a bit, its color a vibrant green, and it looks quite beautiful.
A girl emerged from the icy river, her eyes vacant as she surveyed her surroundings, before plunging back into the water.
After a while, perhaps out of boredom, she walked toward the largest tree by the lake. If you looked closely, you could see a long chain hanging from the tree at her feet.
"Hmm..." She opened her mouth, but she couldn't speak yet.
A monkey was perched in the tree. It was startled when it saw her. Seeing her scratching her head like a fool, it threw a fruit at her.
“Stream, water…”
The monkey squeaked twice, stuck out its red bottom, patted it, and ran to the riverbank in a defiant manner.
She was still standing in the water, but she held the fruit the monkey had thrown in her hands.
After the monkey became familiar with her, it often came to visit her. Sometimes it would mischievously squat on her head and wouldn't leave no matter how much she chased it away. Sometimes it would bring her some food.
She felt neither hunger nor pain; her feet were locked by the roots of the tree, and her only range of movement was that waterway.
“Stream, water…” She often uttered these two syllables, and after a while, the monkey also started to say these two words to her.
But monkeys are animals after all. Even though it was the most talented monkey in the monkey family, and knew what stream water was, and even fed it to the girl, the girl still could only say those two words.
She spends most of her time sleeping, standing in the water, sinking to the bottom of the river, or floating on the surface.
There are only birds and beasts here, no humans. This place is still a barren land that has never been developed.
In the first few years after she appeared, apart from fish and shrimp and that bold monkey, no creature in the river dared to approach her. They all accepted her as a terrifying creature.
Until one day, a phoenix chick with a broken wing fell from that big tree, and only then did she clearly utter those two words, "Who is it? Who am I?"
When the phoenix landed, she was sleeping at the bottom of the lake. The monkey was old, and that night he threw countless stones into the lake to wake her up. As soon as she emerged from the water, the monkey waded through the water and threw the phoenix to her.
She squeaked incomprehensible words, but perhaps influenced by the phoenix's innate spirit, she finally understood what the monkey was saying and also learned human language without any instruction.
"I'm leaving now," the monkey said reluctantly as he bid her farewell.
"Who am I? You still haven't told me why I exist."
"I don't know, you were here when I was a little monkey." The old monkey seemed very distressed. When the monkey troop migrated, it didn't go with them, but stayed by the lake with this freak. Now it's old, and the freak is still stuck at the bottom of the lake.
She doesn't seem to age at all. Could she be a celestial being who was imprisoned here because she made a mistake?
"Where are you going? Will you come back?"
She didn't know what separation was before, but with the arrival of the phoenix, she seemed to understand what reincarnation meant.
"I'm not coming back. You have Little Phoenix with you now, you don't need me anymore."
She tilted her head in confusion, looking at the monkey's retreating figure, and said, "Are you going to die?"
"...Yes." The monkey's half-hunched back stiffened for a moment, then he nodded. "Yes, I will take care of my corpse."
"A corpse? Dead?" She was even more confused: What was that?
She didn't understand; she felt it the day the monkey died.
A creature floated past her and quickly disappeared. She knew all the creatures in the vicinity, and she knew about their deaths.
However, she didn't know that was called death before.
Soon, the little phoenix grew into a big phoenix, and the big phoenix learned to transform into human form, a very handsome boy with a red mole between his eyebrows.
She named him Baiyu.
Because she heard human voices in the sound of the wind, and colors and feathers were new words she had learned.
The phoenix is a fire phoenix, yet it has a white wing, the color of the broken wing that grew back after drinking her blood.
She thought the white feathers were beautiful and called him White Feather, but the phoenix always said he was called Red Feather.
Phoenix's only wish is to take her out of the river, carry her to fly in the heavens, and accompany her to see the magnificent landscape.
Unfortunately, she was still in the river.
One day, the river water changed color.
The phoenix perched on that giant tree at night. When he awoke, he saw her covered in blood. His heart skipped a beat, and many scenes he had never experienced before came to mind.
It was only later, when he ascended to the throne of the Demon God, that he learned that the thing was called a seal, a tribulation imprinted on his soul by his parents, which he could not cleanse even though they had protected him for a period of time.
"I'm going back now."
The girl seemed to understand what he was going to do, and simply nodded. She tilted her head towards the sky and said, "It seems that most of the gods in the sky are dead."
Bai Yu often flew to the outside world, and when he returned, he would tell her about what happened there. She was a loyal audience member and always listened attentively.
This was the first time Bai Yu had heard about the gods in the heavens from her. Even though she had been locked in the lake by the tree the whole time, she just knew about it.
"Then what?"
“You will sit in that position.” She was very certain, pointing her finger at the red birthmark between his eyebrows. “In human terms, you are my son, and I will bring you my blessings.”
"I am a phoenix, and what are you? Humans say that only those of the same kind can be father and son."
"I don't know." She shook her head, reached out and scooped up a handful of water from the lake, looking even more confused. "I don't know, I want to know too, but I don't know."
"You... just wait and see! Once I'm in that position and I've figured out my background, I'll definitely come back for you."
She didn't speak, just stared blankly at the water flowing beneath her.
This place was once a clear spring, but now it is covered in blood. "The demon race will have a place here in the future."
"Um?"
“That tree!” She pointed to the tree that had imprisoned her for thousands of years and said in a daze, “It’s me, yet it’s not me. My name is Slaughter, born to fight.”
The phoenix flew away, unaware that after he left, she, who had nurtured him for over a thousand years, was pulled towards the center of the lake by a tremendous force, and then heavily thrown up by the great tree.
The shackles on her body were broken, and she could leave this land, but her legs could not move.
Even more so, her clear mind fell into chaos again. She squatted down, cut off a piece of her own arm, and buried it next to a big tree.
“I feel like I’ll come back. If I don’t, please keep an eye on her and make her create another me.” She touched the trunk of the big tree. “I had a dream where I killed myself.”
"However, it's someone else pretending to be me, and I don't like that. If there were no killing in the world, I would come back here and continue to raise... raise my son. If I'm going to die, it can only be by killing myself, don't you think?"
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