Guidestone (4)
The thick fog in the forest began to dissipate, and Mi could clearly see the mountains and valleys opposite, even faintly visible wisps of smoke rising from chimneys—there were houses there! Mi was stunned; the other side of the river was finally no longer shrouded in fog. Clutching the small stone she had picked up, Mi ran towards the valley. The wide river that had always encircled the entire Witch Forest split into several narrow streams in front of the valley, flowing quietly over the stone surfaces, carving deep and shallow furrows into the rocks.
Mi walked along the river, circling the entire forest again and again, until there was no more mist on the other side. Across the river lay an even larger forest, endless stretches of trees, the ground covered not only with grass but also with patches of moss that blanketed the tree trunks. Scattered on the ground were mushrooms of various colors; she could even see the hopping silhouette of a little white rabbit, and birds—that fleeting dark shadow was definitely a bird in flight.
Mi returned to the other side of the canyon. A winding, narrow path led through it; that must be the exit. Mi smiled smugly; this time she was sure she'd make it out. Mi looked down at the few streams of water that were exposed above the rocks. The river wasn't as deep as she'd imagined; the water was clear and shallow. Mi smiled and lifted her foot, then she got stuck. Her foot felt like it was sinking into soft dough.
Mi kept pulling her foot out and kicking it out again, but she got stuck every time. She felt no pain in her foot; she couldn't cross the streams. Mi picked up the small stone again and used its pointed end to scrape the dough repeatedly. The stone's edges seemed to disappear completely, unable to cause the dough any damage.
Mi threw the small stone in her hand into the canyon on the opposite bank in frustration. The stone spun twice in the air and returned to her hand. Mi tried everything she could think of to overcome the soft barrier in front of her, but in the end she found that all her efforts were in vain. She still couldn't leave this quiet forest.
Mi didn't know how to cross the barrier; she couldn't even see what the barrier was. Mi simply couldn't take a step. It was different here from the river, where she could touch a glass barrier.
It was like a giant, soft lump of dough; Mi's hands and feet were completely trapped inside, stuck and unable to move. A small stone floated silently in the air; Mi knew she was holding it in her hand, but she was stuck and couldn't do anything.
Before this valley, Mi could do nothing but watch. A small stone hung silently in the air before Mi, its tiny spikes pointing upwards towards the gray clouds. Mi struggled free from the dough and leaped once more onto the treetop, staring at the clouds above the forest: "What's there? How can I get there?" The clouds didn't respond, only slowly and perpetually rotating, even the occasional flashes of lightning gone, like a gray lid.
Mi began running through the forest again, rushing towards the valley time and again, trying to escape this confinement. Mi constantly changed the distance between herself and the riverbank, trying to find a sliver of a way across the river. Mi carefully observed the boundary between the river and the rocks, trying to find even the smallest crack through. This time, Mi held a small stone in front of her, trying to use this tiny, sharp thorn to break through this ubiquitous barrier.
Mi stood before the valley once more, standing quietly. She had almost forgotten El and Joe, forgotten the elders among the flowers, running back and forth endlessly, just as she had when she first entered this quiet forest. Mi stared at the small stone in her hand. Since she had this small stone, Mi had been unable to expand herself any further; she remained in human form, like a wooden doll, stubbornly and rigidly rushing outwards again and again.
"Did she get the guiding stone?" Joe asked, watching Mi run around non-stop.
"yes."
"She wants to leave?"
"Without a body, she cannot cross the River of Lost Souls."
"She doesn't want to be a witch?"
“I don’t know, she’s strange.” El gave up thinking and walked back to Mi’s side: “Hello, welcome to the Witch Forest, the birthplace of witches. I am your guiding witch, El.” El introduced herself again, making a strange gesture with her hands folded in front of her chest.
Mi immediately leaped up to the top of the giant tree: "What are you trying to do now?" Mi knew that El and Joe had been watching her, and for the time being, she only wanted to rely on herself to leave this enclosure, this observer's box. Mi didn't want to be influenced by El; El must have been sent in by someone from the outside to lure her in.
“I am the witch who came to guide you,” El lowered her hands. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long. I sensed the appearance of new life in the Witch Forest when I was in the distant Sea Kingdom. I didn’t expect that no other witches would return, leaving you, a newly born witch, to linger alone in the forest for so long.” El didn’t know why she had lost the guiding stone, nor did she know that this newly born witch was full of suspicion towards her.
“We’ve traveled a long way,” Jo murmured, playing with El’s fingers as he pulled her hand. “If it weren’t for you, we would have gone to Star’s Edge.”
Al patted Joe's head and looked up in Mi's direction: "I thought other witches would come back to guide you, but it seems that no other witches have returned in the last hundred years."
"More than a hundred years?" Mi slowly landed, stretching out her hand to show El the small stone: "Do you want this?" Mi had tried countless times, and this small stone was useless. If she could use the small stone to exchange for a way out, it wouldn't be bad. In any case, this small stone was found in the forest and did not belong to her.
“This is your guiding stone; no one else can take it away.” El smiled. “Congratulations on finding your guiding stone. Now you are a complete sorceress.”
Mi looked up and saw a glowing object in El's eyes: "Now you can see me?" Mi looked down and realized that she was different from the little ink droplet. Her surface seemed to be coated with a film, and she was no longer a lazy net.
“Hmm,” El nodded, “No new witches have appeared in the Witch Forest for over a hundred years. I was almost forgetting what new witches look like. You are very cute.”
Mi looked at El with a puzzled expression: "Has no new witch appeared in over a hundred years, or has no witch returned in over a hundred years?"
“The witch who appeared in the Witchwood was Joe,” El said, turning to Joe. “I am also Joe’s guiding witch. According to the passage of time in Joe’s hometown, Joe is already a witch over a hundred years old.”
"One hundred years old?" Mi stared at Joe for a moment, the woman before him clearly a beautiful young woman, no more than twenty. Most of the elders looked much older. Mi looked at Joe and asked, "Do witches have ages? Do witches get old?"
“There is no time in the Witch Forest,” El smiled apologetically. “We are used to maintaining a fixed image.”
"You two aren't from the same place, are you? It's Joe's hometown." Mi asked curiously. El and Joe were always together, even though they looked quite different.
“We come from different planets. Joe comes from a beautiful blue planet,” Al asked with a smile. “Where are you from?”
"Where did I come from?" Mi looked at herself, a tiny, coated figure. She didn't know how she had been captured and brought here; she hadn't come on her own.
The elders also came from different planets, and besides the second and third elders, they had given their planets different names. Mi looked up at the sky above the riverbank; it was just empty air. Were there people behind it? Who could be so ruthless as to abduct people from different worlds? Mi had never heard of those planets before. If the elders' stories were true, they lived in different parts of the universe, certainly not in the solar system. Mi was silent for a moment. Should she say the solar system, or Earth? Finally, she picked up a small stone and asked, "Can I leave now?"
"Uh, you still need to reshape your witch body." El didn't understand why she was in such a hurry to go out.
"Didn't you say that with the guiding stone, we wouldn't get lost?" Mi looked at the small stone. El had said it was a navigation device, but Mi saw it more as a surveillance camera. With this recorder, the experimental box was useless; why imprison her at all?
Al really didn't know how to explain to Mi, so she suddenly reached out and took something from Mi. Mi was startled and immediately scrambled back to the treetop. She looked down at herself and saw that the coating was intact, with nothing broken. She then looked at Al, who had a cloud of gray mist in her hand. Al took some of the ink droplets.
El looked down at the light gray ribbon in his hand: "Joe, she's from the same place as you!" Then El looked up: "Welcome, soul from the distant blue planet."
“Blue planet, soul,” Mi repeated El’s words blankly, “Am I really dead?”
“You’re not dead,” Joe said excitedly upon hearing that Mi and he were from the same planet. “You’re just having an out-of-body experience.”
"Out-of-body experience? Is this some kind of cultivation technique?" Mi was completely confused. A witch, an out-of-body experience—what on earth was going on?
"Have you heard the story of the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea?" Qiao lowered her head and thought for a moment before asking, "Where is your hometown? Emperor, are there still emperors on the throne? Have you heard of Yuan Shikai? Or..." Qiao was a little anxious and incoherent. She tried to say more information, but her eyes suddenly reddened. Qiao clenched her hands and choked up, unable to speak.
"You're from Earth? You're from the Republic of China era, so do you know Mr. Sun Yat-sen?" Mi suddenly snapped out of her daze. This Qiao was from her hometown; no wonder she had black hair and eyes and was so adorable. Perhaps it was the shared hometown feeling, or perhaps it was Qiao's sweet and lovely appearance that lowered Mi's guard. Mi slowly descended. In Qiao's eyes, Mi saw her as a billowing mist, wanting to escape yet also wanting to reassemble her body.
“Mr. Sun, I know, that’s why I came here.” Joe seemed to recall something, a pained look appearing on her face. El reached out and stroked her face, and Joe buried her face in El’s palm. Mi noticed her shoulders trembling slightly and couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. How had he made her cry?
Joe was sobbing, while Mi clutched a small stone, looking around as if she wanted to hide inside a dormant flower. These past few days, El and Joe had maintained an ethereal, otherworldly demeanor; they could fly anywhere, they would answer her questions but never bother her or pry into her private affairs, remaining restrained, polite, and gentle. The elders, on the other hand, were quite agitated and all hid inside the dormant flowers.
"Tell us about your hometown, tell us about the current situation on Blue Star." El looked at Mi almost pleadingly, hoping that Mi could offer some comfort to Joe, a soul that had been wandering in a foreign land for more than a hundred years.
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