The girl smiled, and the baby in her palm also grinned, and the red sac under its neck sparkled like a gem.
"This blood is just enough for two people, neither more nor less. If you want to save her, you must drink it together with her."
There was only a moment's silence in the stone chamber, but the silence she had expected didn't last long.
"good."
The girl was a little surprised.
"You, you won't even ask me why?"
"I'm tired of searching for cause and effect and the truth. Besides, even if I found it, what difference would the outcome make now?"
What he said was not only correct but also very insightful.
The girl suddenly felt a little reluctant.
"Don't say I didn't tell you in advance. Shedding bones and cleansing your marrow is a life-threatening experience. Even if you manage to survive, any children you have with any woman will surely die young, and your bloodline will be lost in this lifetime."
"That's all?"
The girl paused for a moment, then nodded.
"That's all."
The man's somewhat indifferent face suddenly revealed a smile of relief. She didn't know how to describe the expression at that moment, but she felt that the flowers and plants in the room had finally been refreshed by the spring breeze, radiating infinite warmth.
"That's great."
******************
As daylight approached, the wind and snow gradually stopped.
The sun, just risen, climbed to the peak that towered solitary beneath the horizon, casting a fiery golden hue. Days of heavy snow had washed the sky a blue-purple hue. Atop a nearby cliff, the outline of a mountain city gradually became clearer and brighter.
This ancient city, nestled across the Secret Ancient Pass and nestled in the arms of Lake Naga, is Xuancheng. Nestled amidst a natural chasm, it draws in winds year-round, solid as a rock, indestructible and unchanging, just like the dawn above this plateau.
On the easternmost cliff of Stone City, a young girl sat in front of a stone house, still staring blankly at the snow frog with her chin in her hand. The frog's neck was empty, and its two beady eyes were also confused.
When her grandmother told her to wait for that man, she thought she would guard the mountain for the rest of her life.
Who would have thought that this day would come so suddenly and end in the blink of an eye.
Grandmother said that the bloodline of the gods would be cut off by the sword of disarmament, but she didn't see any sword, not even a bladed dagger.
Grandmother also said that when the time came, he would come in person with his demands, and then she would have to exchange her promise for another, without compromise. But before she could say anything, the man agreed to her terms.
She didn't understand the prophecies and didn't care about them.
She just felt a little emotional. The man finally saved his sweetheart, but would the only time they could be together be the coming dawn?
The morning light finally filled the entire mountaintop. Beneath an old pine tree, a pair of figures huddled together. Perhaps because the sun was too glaring, the man opened his eyes and slowly stood up.
He stood barefoot in the snow, his long, raven-black hair draped over his shoulders, wearing only a thin, long gown. He seemed unaffected by the cold, standing there quietly, his clothes rustling in the wind, a strangely graceful and beautiful presence, as if he were about to ascend to heaven in the next moment.
"God? Are you a god?"
A childish voice sounded from behind.
He turned his head and saw two short and stout dolls.
The girl was slightly shorter, but her aura was half a head taller than his. She looked him up and down like an adult.
"How can he be a god? Did you see clearly?"
The boy refused to accept it and kept sniffing his nose.
"That's what's in the painting at the entrance of the ancestral hall. It's a picture of a deity."
"That's not a god, just an ordinary person who lived a little longer." The girl pointed her chubby hand into the distance, her tone full of certainty and pride, "That's a god."
Perhaps because he was bored for a moment, the man glanced sideways and looked in the direction the girl was pointing.
In the distance, around the corner of the stone steps in the mountains, an octogenarian, hunched over, emerged. His hair and beard were completely white, his face wrinkled, and he wore a simple padded jacket over a coarse cloth garment, the attire of a northern farmer. He looked like an ordinary person.
His expression paused, then he sighed softly. Just as he was about to turn his gaze away, another person suddenly walked out from the corner.
She was an old woman who looked older and frailer, with a thick layer of raccoon fur covering her shoulders and her waist seemed to be bent.
The old man walking in front turned around every three steps and offered his hand to the old woman. The old woman took it tremblingly and then followed.
They walked up the long stone steps of about a hundred steps step by step.
"Isn't that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother? You're lying!"
The boy got anxious and his nose started running again. The girl was even more disgusted when she saw it.
"Who lied to you? You can't lie at the foot of Baitou Peak. My mother said that my great-grandmother was born to be a god, but she stayed in the human world because she couldn't bear to leave my great-grandfather."
"If she really is a deity, why haven't we seen her flying into the sky? If she really can transform and control the wind, why hasn't anyone seen it?!"
"Just because no one has seen it doesn't mean it hasn't happened!" The girl was also anxious, desperately wanting to find a third person to reason with her. "Come and judge, who of us is right?"
She put her hands on her hips with a huff and turned back with some dissatisfaction, only to see that the man had returned to the sleeping woman at some point and was leaning against the stone under the old pine tree.
"Hey, can you hear me?"
"I heard it. It's a pity that I haven't seen an immortal either." His voice was a little slow, as if he had just woken up from a long dream and was about to fall asleep again. "But your mother is right about one thing. Human relationships are the hardest to last, and good things are the hardest to come in pairs. Mortals are born lonely. If immortals are really as powerful as the stories in the books say, perhaps we can walk hand in hand until old age..."
The girl seemed to understand what was said, but she was confident that the other party was on her side.
"Did you hear that? He thinks I'm right, too."
The boy was not convinced at all and kept muttering.
"How old are you? You're not even as tall as a stove, what do you know about love and affection..."
"I'm not a kid anymore. In two months and four days, I'll be seven years old..."
The two children argued endlessly, their voices getting louder and louder.
The man under the pine tree sighed and pulled the person next to him into his arms.
"It turns out that you're right not to like the child being so noisy..."
As he spoke, he leaned against the stone and gently closed his eyes.
The two children were arguing when they suddenly felt silence around them. They looked at each other and then came closer. But the man never opened his eyes again.
His face was so calm that even the falling snow from the pine branches did not disturb him.
He finally failed to brush the snow off the woman's hair. The snowflakes blown by the wind fell softly, slowly dyeing his and her hair white.
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