Chapter 121: Thunder Xiao, one of the Nine Mountains
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!—”
Meng Zhao's spirit let out a heart-wrenching cry. He stared at the hollow hole in his body, vainly trying to embrace the shadow within his arms, which gradually disintegrated into a spirit particle. Even as his own body began to disintegrate, intertwining with the spirit particle and gradually disappearing...
The order in the formation began to waver. At the same time, mud and sand suddenly poured out from the remaining doors around it, with a momentum as powerful as a dragon escaping from the ground.
Song Yuqu sensed something was wrong, took a few steps back, and sternly ordered Fang Qing, "Let's go."
A cold voice rang out from the trembling earth and mountains: "Come as you please, leave as you please. Is this how you, Sanximen, treat your guests?"
Hearing this somewhat familiar voice, Bai Heng turned her gaze back from the direction where Meng Zhao and the others had disappeared. She wiped her tears and called out with a thick nasal voice, "Uncle!"
Amidst the thick fog, a young man in a white Taoist robe suddenly appeared. He had black eyes with red pupils, and the corners of his eyebrows and eyes were covered with dark blue veins due to the sudden force he exerted. He flicked his fingertips, and the earth veins responded to his thought. Rocks collapsed and ridges of rock stood up, all piercing Song Yuqu.
"This guy can still stand up?" Song Yuqu teased, subconsciously retreating repeatedly, refusing to engage head-on, using the ruins to dodge. Bai He slowly stared at her direction of flight, flipping his hand, and suddenly several deep ravines appeared in the ground, ready to swallow her in.
Fang Qing hurriedly opened a door: "Go!"
Unexpectedly, the next second, he was crushed by a toppling mass of rocks.
Song Yuqu had half a foot in the door, and at this moment he turned back with a sudden change of expression, and his breathing held. Just as he was about to move, Fang Qing, who still had a trace of consciousness left, put his hands together with all his strength, and the door slammed shut and gradually disappeared.
After doing all this, he had been barely alive for a long time, with no more strength left. His soul had long since become transparent. A crisp snapping sound was heard - that was the sound of the ghost-serving chains breaking.
His spiritual master will completely lose him.
Fang Qing smiled, and in an instant he was safely swallowed up by the rocks.
Bai Heng ignored the many questions in front of her and cried out in a tearful voice, "Uncle! There's a colleague buried underground! Please rescue him!"
The young man in Taoist robes turned around and lifted the long-passed Meng Chengyin to his feet, carrying him on his shoulders. He frowned and looked around: "I don't sense any other living people here."
Bai Heng felt a chill in his heart, and he didn't know whether it was because of the operator buried underground or the two people whose souls had just been shattered.
Upon hearing the sound, Weiwei turned around and covered her mouth with her hands and sobbed. The remaining operators looked at each other, all with sad expressions.
"The master of the formation is gone, and this place will collapse soon. I will lead you out first." Bai He also found the only remaining door and used his spiritual power to force it open: "Everyone, follow me closely."
The operators nodded hurriedly and ran out from the broken barrier. Only Bai Heng stopped at the place where Meng Zhao and the others disappeared, squatted down and pressed on the ground. When he withdrew his hand, there were faint spirit particles flickering at his fingertips, like fine sand mixed with crystals.
She rubbed her fingertips, then lowered her head and gathered a handful of soil with both hands, as if she wanted to take something back.
Bai He also turned his face to the side and said softly: "There is only such a tiny soul left, why bother."
Bai Heng clenched his palms, muttering with a worried look, "We need to take everyone out, including them."
Bai He didn't ask any more questions and reached out to push open the door in front of him.
Everyone passed through the door frame one after another and disappeared in the chaos. The moment the door closed, everything inside - ruins, corpses, broken walls, all turned into nothingness.
The hatred, love, sorrow and joy that had lingered for a hundred years finally disappeared completely.
At the same time, inside Changfeng Temple, hundreds of miles away.
Dozens of round beads splashed to the ground, crackling like a sudden rain hitting a plate, and ice and jade colliding with each other, which was particularly shocking in the silent bamboo forest.
Long Zhu suddenly felt a lightness on his wrist.
She raised her wrist in a daze, only to see that the bracelet Meng Caiyun had given her had suddenly broken for some reason, and the agarwood beads suddenly scattered.
The beads bounced dizzily and rolled into the cracks of the rocks. In a blink of an eye, only one was brought back. The rest seemed to have never existed and were nowhere to be found even after searching through the mud and crevices of the rocks.
Long Zhu held the broken rope and the remaining beads in his hand, feeling inexplicably empty in his heart. He was distracted and the only bead in his hand fell into the pool with a splash.
Without a second thought, she jumped into the water.
The freezing water bit her bones, yet she was oblivious. The deeper she went, the more a familiar, warm spiritual energy drew her in, like a call from an old friend. The water was silent, the light dim, and soon she reached the bottom. Amidst the fine stones and black sand, the moss-covered talisman lay placidly. The words "敕镇" (Chizhen) engraved on the stone now glowed with a faint golden hue.
The agarwood bead rested steadily on the crevice of the stone.
Suppressing the doubts in her heart, she reached out and gently placed her fingertips over it. In an instant, the water flow, the dark green deep pool, the river algae and corals all disappeared.
When she opened her eyes again, she was in a vast expanse.
Here, sky and sea meet, a mirror-clear, azure blue. In the distance, clouds hang low, like gauze or fog. Beneath my feet lies a soft, sandy surface. Here, there is light but no sun, clear skies but no wind. Time seems frozen, yet it seems to have flowed on for millennia.
Why does the talisman lead here? What is this place?
She held the wooden bead in her hand and turned around several times, but she didn't find anything else here. In such an ethereal environment, everything and emotions seemed to be out of control. In a trance, an indescribable feeling of melancholy surged into her heart.
"Why is it you?"
A childish voice sounded from somewhere.
"Who?" Long Zhu keenly caught the direction of the voice, turned around, and found that someone had appeared in front of him without him knowing.
He was wearing a Taoist robe, his long hair was tied up, and his facial features were exactly the same as Bai He's, but Long Zhu could tell at a glance that he was a fake.
She frowned: "Change your face."
The other party was a little surprised: "At this time, you are still picky."
But he wiped his hand and suddenly turned into Ying Zhiwei's appearance again.
"I've forgotten what my true form looks like, so I'm borrowing someone you know. If you don't like it, just bear with it for now." He sighed and said in an unusually familiar tone, "How's the progress? Have you found Tianjiu?"
Long Zhu was stunned for a moment: "Huh?"
How did this person know that she had looked for Tianjiu?
The person on the other side quickly noticed something from her expression and widened his eyes: "Wait, you haven't forgotten everything, have you?"
Long Zhu nodded tentatively: "You... know me?"
The man on the other side held his head and wailed with a sad face: "Sure enough!"
Long Zhu suddenly had an idea and looked at the other party with half belief and half doubt: "Are you Lei Xiao?"
The man sighed deeply and glanced up sickly: "Well, it seems you haven't forgotten it all, okay."
He weakly pointed at the surrounding scenery and said, "This is just a reflection of part of my power. My true body is still on the Nine Mountains."
"Mapping, does that mean clone? Why are you here? What is your relationship with the Song family?" Long Zhu asked a barrage of questions.
Lei Xiao scratched his head. "That's hard to say... To put it simply, I owed them money in the beginning, so I left a little bit of Queshan Jade here. I didn't expect it to become a burden to them."
He sighed, "But at their current consumption rate, the Queshan Jade can still be used for another hundred years."
"A hundred years is quite short," Long Zhu squinted at him. "What will happen when it's all used up?"
Lei Xiao said: "Not very good, Queshan Jade will return to Jiushan again."
"So where exactly is Jiushan?" Long Zhu asked impatiently, "'Only death can return to Jiushan', is this true?"
Lei Xiao looked at her strangely. "They all say that Earth Xiao is born with a pure heart, and will fall into confusion after leaving the Nine Mountains. It's true."
Long Zhu tilted his head. "They said? It sounds like the Nine Xiaos don't seem to be that familiar with each other?"
"Of course, even though we're all old creatures who've lived for tens of thousands of years, we each guard our own mountaintop." Lei Xiao lifted his skirt and sat down, gazing dimly into the distance. "You asked me if I can only return to the Nine Mountains after death. I can answer you 'yes,' because the Nine Mountains are indeed located at the intersection of yin and yang. But I also want to tell you, whether it's Tian Xiao or the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, and thunder, none of us can kill each other, and nothing in the human world can kill you either."
"Your desire to die is in itself a pursuit of an impossible answer."
Long Zhu's expression was dull, and he frowned for a moment: "But...why did that Taoist priest lie to me back then?"
"How should I know?" Lei Xiao rolled his eyes slightly. "I'm just an illusion of Queshan Guardian Ghost. I have a very small brain capacity. Don't ask me anything too complicated."
He turned his head: "But, I know why you left Jiushan."
Long Zhu: "...Looking for Tian Jiu?"
She remembered the question the other party had asked when they first met.
"Yes," Lei Xiao nodded. "Gold, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, and thunder. We can travel between the human world and the Nine Mountains because the rules of the human world require us. All things are influenced by the Five Elements and change in response to them. The sun, moon, and stars shake and cause wind and thunder. But you are different. You cannot leave the Nine Mountains at will, just like building a house requires a solid foundation. This time, it was because we encountered a little trouble that I asked you to find Tian Xiao. Well, although we can't kill each other, there are still differences in strength."
Long Zhu thought that there were also different classes within the Nine Goblins. Heaven and Earth, Wind and Thunder, and the Five Elements sounded like three levels.
"What exactly does Tianxiao want to do?"
Lei Xiao was silent for a moment. "Tian Xiao, right? He's quite special. Compared to humans or ghosts, he's closer to the Tao. No one can figure out what he's thinking or doing. All I know is that he's a threat to us and to the human world."
He slowly turned his head, his expression serious: "Because he can appoint generals to become immortals."
"Seal the Immortal?!" Long Zhu squatted beside Lei Xiao and looked up in surprise: "So he is actually a god?"
Lei Xiao looked back at him with an expression that looked like he was mentally retarded: "If you must say so, we are all gods."
He conjured a branch in his hand and drew a dot on the light-colored sand: "This is Jiushan."
After a moment, he drew another circle outside the dot: "Look, this is the human world, the world you see now. Everything was originally born from the Nine Mountains. Hmm... According to the human world, we may be what they call the founding gods."
Long Zhu was shocked: "Don't they all say we are mountain-guarding ghosts?!"
"Then they also created the Thirty-Six Heavens, the Three Islands, and the Ten Continents. These were all created by ascetics who wanted to explore the world in the past, piecing together the original form of the Nine Mountains. It's like the blind men and the elephant. You've heard of that, right?"
Lei Xiao picked up the branch and poked nine more points within the circle. "The Nine Mountains are the origin of the world, and the Nine Xiaos are the beings that protect them. After death, the soul returns to the Nine Mountains, transforming back into its original pure and clean form before being reborn into the human world. This is what they call the Yellow Springs Reincarnation, though the underworld is just a fictional place."
Long Zhu thought of what Hu Aqing had said: "So the Nine Mountains are not in the clouds."
She pointed to the innermost point and said, "The root of the world, the very center, is beneath our feet."
"So, becoming an immortal... is really becoming a Xiao?"
Lei Xiao lowered his eyes and poked the initial spot with the branch. "Yes, but it's not the immortal from 'our' world."
He pointed at the hole and said meaningfully, "It's the 'new world'."
Long Zhu was stunned.
Lei Xiao raised the corner of his lips: "However, this road to becoming an immortal is currently blocked by one person."
In a flash, Long Zhu remembered what Hu Aqing said, that her soul had wandered outside the "Immortal Gate" and she had seen a person there.
She blurted out a name: "Lingxuan Taoist, Meng Bujiu."
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