Chapter 253

Amid the chattering of Xuanwu, Yu Tu caught a sentence that caught his special attention: "The phoenix also experienced nirvana nine times in ten thousand years."

...Phoenix?

Yu Tu suddenly thought of Chaoshan last year when the sky was covered with red leaves. He awoke from a nap in a pile of sycamore leaves and found a cool oval stone at the root of a tree.

The oval stone is white, opaque, and only the size of a thumb. It is called a stone, but it looks like jade and is extremely beautiful.

Yu Tu was suffering from a collecting addiction at the time, and he somehow mobilized his energy to create a rope with a net bag. He stuffed the small white stones into the net bag, then put the rope around his neck and tucked the net bag under his collar.

He didn't know what the small stone was used for, but he did it inexplicably and naturally. Later, as time passed, the stone became a part of the accessories of the Marquis of Buye, but he never showed it to others.

No idea what Xuanwu said. He was so anxious that he started to smoke. The whole snake was surrounded by smoke. Yu Tu stood up and glanced at him, but didn't say anything.

The small white stone under his collar, which had been cool all this time, began to heat up slightly. Following his intuition, Yu Tu chose to walk against the wind. The further he walked forward, the hotter the small white stone became. When it became extremely hot, Yu Tu seemed to hear his heartbeat.

But the next moment he realized that the heartbeat was his.

The stone was placed against his heart, and its vibrations gradually matched his heartbeat. Yu Tu touched his heart, which was aching from the burning sensation, and touched the small white stone through his clothes.

The emerald green before my eyes suddenly changed: the sky, the clouds, the grass, and the wind swirling around me, everything seemed to be an overturned paint box, all mixed together.

Xuanwu seemed to rush over from behind, shouting something loudly, but Yu Tu could no longer hear it clearly.

He felt dizzy.

In his dizziness, he had the illusion that he was a flowing cloud between heaven and earth, a drop of water splashing in a stream, a weary bird returning to its nest in the sunset, an insect resting under the lights late at night... He seemed to be everything in this world, but also seemed to be just a passer-by who stayed briefly among everything. He went upstream against the river of time.

The mixed paint box miraculously turned upside down, and the mixed paints gradually became clearer and became distinct colors. These colors returned to where they should be, and Yu Tu saw the lush green again.

He was no longer inside the [Desolate Mountain]. He appeared in a dense forest. Yu Tu was very sure that there was no such forest in the [Desolate Mountain].

Is it possible to escape from an S-level location so easily?

The forest is penetrated by an old stone road. The road is winding and many of the slabs have been broken into pieces over the years. Wild flowers and weeds struggle to grow out of the cracks, bursting with vigorous life.

Yu Tu couldn't be sure where this was, so he walked along the stone road. The end of the stone road would eventually be clear.

He seemed to be transported to the middle of a mountain, and the road down the mountain seemed more and more familiar to him, as if he had been here before. He walked along the stone road to the foot of the mountain, and at the foot of the mountain... was the familiar yet unfamiliar Huailin Town.

He said it was familiar because he saw some familiar buildings, but they were newer than what he remembered; he said it was unfamiliar because many of the roads and buildings were unfamiliar, and the people coming and going were also unfamiliar.

Yu Tu walked into Huailin Town. Other people seemed to ignore him, but he saw a familiar person among the crowd coming and going.

Not long after he took over the inheritance and moved to Huailin Town, Grandpa Li next door gave him a vegetable basket made of bamboo with a cute panda on the handle. Yu Tu always carried the basket when he went to buy vegetables in the town.

But the Grandpa Li who appeared before him now was not the man with gray hair and wrinkles on his face. His hair was still relatively dark and thick, with just a few silver strands mixed in. He did not have too many wrinkles on his face, and he looked no older than fifty.

...Rejuvenation?

This absurd thought flashed through Yu Tu's mind for a moment, but he quickly shook his head to drive this absurd idea out of his mind.

A strange yet familiar town, buildings that had changed from old to brand new, familiar people whose ages had reversed... Yu Tu could only think of the situations recorded in books, which were so rare that they were almost like stories and legends—

Go back in time.

Legend has it that by chance, people who meet the conditions will encounter a chaotic flow of time and space. If they are not torn apart by the energy of time and space, they will randomly enter a new time.

No one can say whether the refreshing time is the past or the future, and no one knows how long one can stay in the time once entered. Rather than a possible phenomenon, it is more like an interesting legend circulating in the inner world.

At least for now, no one living in the inner world has ever heard of anyone experiencing the chaos of time and space. Even if they have experienced it, due to the characteristics of time and space, the memory will be forgotten after returning, as if someone has forcibly covered this memory with layer after layer of veil, and in the end only the vague flowers are left in the mist.

Yu Tu now has an incredible guess——

The small white stone he wore around his neck triggered the chaos of time and space, protecting him from being torn apart by the energy of time and space, and then... he returned to the past.

But there is one question that cannot be answered. He entered Huailin Town many years ago. Was it a coincidence? Or was it intentional?

Yu Tu prefers the latter.

The little white stone, which had cooled down after arriving at the woods, was now slightly hot again, but compared to the scorching temperature before, the temperature was much more suitable, as if it was struggling to survive a burst of electricity.

Yu Tu chose the direction to go based on its temperature, and for some reason he had the illusion that the small white stone was a GPS.

The slightly warm little white stone led Yu Tu to a path he had no impression of at all. There was no such path in Huailin Town where Yu Tu would live in the future.

The path led to a very remote place. Yu Tu followed the guidance of the small white stone, turned one corner after another, passed through narrow streets and alleys, and finally reached the end—

An old orphanage with peeling paint on the door and walls.

There is a large plastic sign with white letters on a red background standing in the yard. The part that touches the shelf has faded due to wind and sun, and the exposed iron corners under the sign are also covered with reddish-brown rust, which shows its age.

This is the Compassion Orphanage.

There were several date trees planted in the yard of the orphanage. One of the date trees grew crooked, with most of its branches and leaves close to the ground. Under the crooked tree, several children were sitting and playing in the mud, mixing mud and leaves and throwing them around. They were all dirty, like a few mud monkeys.

A similar scene seemed to flash through his memory, but it was so fleeting that Yu Tu couldn't remember it.

He stood outside the courtyard wall made of fences and broken bricks, watching the scene quietly. The small stone pressed against his chest, emitting heat steadily, as if reminding him that this was his destination.

No one could see him, so Yu Tu walked into the yard openly. In front of the Ci Xin Orphanage were three buildings, one large and two small, and in the back was a row of low bungalows. Between the front building and the bungalows in the back was a playground made of coal slag, with several long benches covered with black marks at the edge of the playground.

Everything here is old and gray, but Yu Tu inexplicably feels strangely familiar, as if he has lived here before.

But the orphanage he was in was called Sunflower Orphanage.

Yu Tu stepped on the real black coal slag under his feet, and the familiar feeling became stronger and stronger, but when he tried hard to recall, his memory seemed to be blank. He became more and more convinced that he had not entered this period of time for no reason.

The coal slag ground made a dull sound when stepped on. Yu Tu walked across the playground and headed for the bungalow that hadn't even been scraped off the putty.

This row of bungalows has the most primitive cement walls, wooden windows painted green, glass covered with a thick layer of dust, and uses ancient latches.

The room at the front is the kitchen. After entering, you can see a large earthen stove on the front right with a big iron pot on it. There is a narrow bench in front of the stove where firewood is placed. Behind the bench are firewood piled up against the wall, tied into bundles. Near the door is a large wooden table. Most of the vegetables on the wooden table are fresh vegetables with dirt on them, but there are also many that have obviously been left for a day or two and look wilted. The chopping boards, kitchen knives, seasonings and other bottles and jars have been squeezed into the corner by the vegetables.

Yu Tu looked at the kitchen and an inexplicable sense of familiarity came to him again.

He did not go in, but turned around to continue checking other rooms, but suddenly he heard a noisy sound coming from outside the building, as if it came from those children playing under the date tree.

Those dirty children seemed to be dragging a clean-dressed child, pushing and shoving him to the playground covered with coal slag.

Isn't this bullying?

Yu Tu walked over and subconsciously wanted to stop him, but his hand passed through the empty air and he could not be seen or touched.

Yu Tu saw the three children throwing mud and leaves at the child who was squatting with his hands on his head, and touching his clean clothes with their dirty hands. Their laughter was sharp and piercing in his ears.

The child surrounded in the middle protected his head tightly, and the small ball kept shaking. Yu Tu heard a weak cry.

There was no adult to reprimand them, and no children of the same age to help, so the bullying ended with them pushing the man to the ground on the cinder playground.

The three bullies walked away triumphantly, while the bullied child remained curled up for a long time before slowly getting up.

His limbs were not very flexible. After he sat up slowly, Yu Tu saw him wipe his face with his dirty hands. On the exposed skin on the back of his hands, there were black marks of mud and slightly bleeding wounds mixed together.

He lowered his head, hugged his knees with his arms, and rested his forehead on his knees. Only the whorl of muddy hair on top of his head could be seen.

He sat quietly, but after a while, the playground became noisy again—

"The star of death! The star of death!"

"Look here, Omen Star! What do you think this is?"

"Wow! The Death Star is looking over here! He's so dirty!"

The bullies came back, one of them holding an old wooden box in his hand. The box was open and contained a lot of scattered things: a beautiful stone with an odd shape, a straight twig, a multi-petal plum blossom made into a dried flower...

With their dirty hands, they took things out of the small wooden box and showed them off: "Look at the unlucky things from the Death Star~"

Their voices were sharp and thin, like a small spike piercing into people's hearts.

Yu Tu suddenly took a step back.

The dusty memories were dusted off and he remembered.

The bullied child raised his head from his arms, his eyes filled with tears.

He remembered——

That's not someone else, it's himself.