Chapter 96 The World Turns, Time Presses On (Part 1) Fish and Cicada...
The sound of the bell entered the water and slid into Xia Zhu's sea of consciousness. She stopped struggling and was completely dragged into darkness by a strange force.
This feeling is like drifting on the sea, with the water gently enveloping your entire body. The dimension of time has no meaning here, and your awareness of your own existence will only become shallower and shallower.
It felt like the second before falling completely asleep.
But then she suddenly smelled a dry, warm scent, a blend of rich, sweet grains and earthy aromas, so real and clear that she wondered if she had returned to a sunny day from her childhood.
The courtyard was covered with golden grains of rice, bathed in the bright sunlight and dotted with fish-scale-like clouds. Xia Zhu sat on the doorstep, while the neighbor's free-roaming kitten lazily walked past, stepping on the rice stalks across the yard, finally leaping onto the fence and squinting leisurely at the boundless fields.
Her sense of smell returned, but her body still couldn't move. Xia Zhu opened her eyes to a wall covered in murals. Sunlight streamed down from behind, making the colors appear exceptionally vibrant, and the figures in the paintings seemed to come alive in the light. Xia Zhu remembered that she hadn't worn her glasses before falling asleep, yet her vision was better than ever before. She could even see dust particles floating in the beams of light in front of the murals, and a chip on a bird-patterned pottery vessel in the lower left corner.
She refocused her attention on the murals, which depicted primitive scenes of hunting, celebration, and sacrifice from left to right. However, at the absolute visual center of the painting was a heavily inked man in a white robe with a blurred face. At his feet knelt a woman and behind her, countless people prostrated themselves on the ground.
At first glance, the painting seems normal, but upon closer inspection, it is full of incongruities. Both the painting technique and the narrative of the scene are different from those of the historical period.
The hunting and sacrificial scene is simple and vivid, just like the one Xia Zhu had seen in history books, but the white-robed man in the middle is a striking figure with flowing strokes, the most abrupt and eerie presence in this vast and obscure space.
Below the mural is a platform of earthen bedding covered with thick, warm animal hides. On the platform sits an exquisite bronze oil lamp, bright in the daylight, its beauty and elegance evident in its simple presence.
She turned her eyes around, taking in her surroundings, and made sure she was no longer in her guesthouse room, but in a completely new place.
Judging from the murals of bedding, the jade cong on the wall, and the row of pottery jars filled with millet and sorghum along the wall, this place is not even modern.
Her own perspective was also quite strange; she was neither lying down nor standing, but rather at a height of half a meter, directly facing the mural in front of her.
Unable to move, Xia Zhu couldn't gather more information, but she guessed that she might have entered a dream state.
Just like the dream I had when I entered Ye Li's mind that night at school.
However, last time it was because she left the Feng family and returned to school, and the two places were far apart, so the talisman on her ear only had a temporary effect. But this time, Feng Feng is in another room just a wall away from her, so the talisman should still work and limit her ability so that she won't easily cross the Dream Eater and enter the thirty-second day independent of the world just because she is asleep.
Therefore, there is another possibility.
This is not a dream, but the work of a plague demon.
Just then, a woman suddenly burst into view. As soon as she entered the room, she turned her back to Xia Zhu and lay face down on the bedding. Her back heaved violently, and Xia Zhu could hear her breathing heavily with fear and anxiety, as if she had just experienced something extremely terrible.
The woman wore silk that was priceless and extremely rare in this era, with jade pendants dangling from her earlobes. Her exposed skin was adorned with a large totem tattoo, stretching from her back to her right wrist. The totem was meticulously drawn, so lifelike that Xia Zhu could recognize it at a glance as a vivid bird poised for flight.
In a panic, she tore something off her chest and clutched it tightly in her hand. After taking a few breaths, she suddenly pressed the object against her right cheek. From Xia Zhu's angle, it was clear that she had stuffed something into her eye.
The woman covered her right eye with one hand, her whole body trembling violently. The veins on both sides of her slender neck bulged out, like two green snakes coiling around her neck. Sweat poured down her body and quickly soaked through her clothes. Xia Zhu could feel that the woman in front of him was trying her best to restrain herself from screaming.
The sunlight on the mural gradually shifted westward. After a long while, the person slumped on the bedding suddenly twitched twice. She slowly raised her head, seemingly gazing intently at the painting on the wall. Xia Zhu's gaze moved from the mural to the totem on the woman's back. She pondered for a moment, feeling that it looked somewhat familiar.
As she searched her memory for the time and place where she had seen the same pattern, the woman in front of the mural suddenly turned around, her gaze fixed on her spot.
Xia Zhu was stunned, thinking the woman had finally noticed him, but instead, the woman, pale-faced, lunged at him and grabbed him. Xia Zhu stared blankly as everything around him slowly descended, his vision shrinking until all he could see was the woman's狰狞 (zhengning - ferocious/hideous) face.
Ah, she suddenly realized that her consciousness might have attached itself to a small, or rather, easily held, object.
Looking at the face before her, so exquisitely beautiful yet twisted with hatred, mostly covered in blood, her heart pounded.
The woman had heterochromia; the left eye was a common dark brown, but the right iris, still oozing blood, had an odd blue tint.
As she brought her face closer, some kind of pattern could be faintly seen floating in the center of the blue background.
Xia Zhu could hear her heart pounding violently, as if it were about to burst out of her chest.
She remembered where she had seen the same bird pattern before.
It was Ji Wuchou.
That day, Ji Wuchou knocked on the door of room 2725 and appeared outside the door like a snake.
There are similar patterns in the right eye.
Feng Feng once said that the Ji family of Puyang are descendants of the Kongtong sect. Fu Yu is hidden in their eyes; their family's totem is the Black Bird.
The woman standing in front of him seemed to be the first member of the Ji family to have Fu Yu implanted in her eye.
In a way that is almost cruel.
Therefore, Xia Zhu guessed that the woman should be the first unidentified official of Puyang, the god-human Zhuanxu.
Female cultivator.
She, for some reason, traveled through time and space to millions of years ago and witnessed this scene.
No, no, although she understood her situation, Xia Zhu's mind felt increasingly blocked, and there was no clear path to the truth.
She had absorbed a massive amount of information in a short period, leaving her mind in a jumbled mess. Everything before her seemed to be malfunctioning at some crucial point, but she couldn't quite grasp it immediately.
She searched for the scene in her memory inch by inch, and suddenly, Xia Zhu looked at the female cultivator's chest.
There was a broken thin rope hanging there.
Therefore, the Ji family's amulet was originally hanging around her neck.
The female cultivator rushed back from outside, collapsed to the ground in a panic, gasping for breath. Then she suddenly made a decision, pulled the talisman that was originally hanging on the rope, and forcibly stuffed it into her eyes.
Everything has a cause and effect and its underlying logic.
Why did she do that?
Did something just happen outside? Or did she see something?
Stuffing Fu Yu into his eyes—was it an attitude towards the matter or a result of its handling?
Perhaps, it's a warning.
Who is being warned? The female cultivator herself?
A strong smell of blood lingered in the air, and Xia Zhu looked up again at the face so close to hers.
She had broken free from the grotesque and twisted state; instead, her lips curled into a smile, and blood from her eyes flowed into her mouth, staining her teeth red. The female cultivator was smiling, as if she had grasped a lifeline from despair.
And Xia Zhu, or rather, the thing to which Xia Zhu was attached, was that straw.
Just as she was trying to see "herself" clearly through the female cultivator's eyes, everything went black again.
It seemed like a long time had passed since we sank into darkness.
When a beam of light shone in front of her eyes in an open shape, Xia Zhu saw a pair of incredibly innocent and pure eyes.
A small, fair hand reached out from the light and gently cradled her in its palm. In this brief moment, Xia Zhu saw the mural on the opposite wall again.
She was still in that room.
The darkness just now was perhaps because the female cultivator had locked "her" inside some kind of container.
The room's furnishings haven't changed much, except that the murals on the walls are quite faded, as if they haven't been properly maintained for a long time.
"Is this Mother's precious treasure?" the little girl in front of her asked in a clear voice, looking at "Xia Zhu" with curiosity. Xia Zhu looked back at her as well.
Although she was only seven or eight years old, her eyes and brows were already quite clever. Unlike other children who were innocent and naive, she was adorable and her big eyes darted around a few times, as if she had already conceived several clever ideas.
She referred to the female cultivator as "Amu," the daughter of Zhuanxu, therefore she was...
"Yu Chan, you're not listening to me again."
A woman's voice sounded from behind.
Yu Chan was startled and wrapped the "Summer Candle" completely in her hand and hid it behind her back.
Darkness enveloped them again, but thankfully they could still hear the mother and daughter talking.
"Mother, why are you back? Didn't my brother have something to ask you and asked you to meet him under the Jianmu tree?"
"You think you can fool your mother with these little tricks?" The female cultivator's voice was cold, but she was gentle and loving in front of her daughter.
After a few flickering movements, Xia Zhu was placed back in its original position.
In this way, both mother and daughter can appear in her field of vision at the same time.
"Also, how many times has Mother told you? The Jianmu tree is now just an empty shell. It will collapse at any time due to wind and rain. It's very dangerous there. Don't go playing on Sanjiu Peak anymore. Do you understand?" The female cultivator bent down and tucked a stray hair behind Yu Chan's ear.
Yu Chan nodded.
"But Mother, why did Jianmu leave us? Did she no longer like Riyue Mountain?"
The female cultivator's expression changed at her daughter's question. She lowered her eyes, seemingly thinking about how to answer it.
"Does Yu Chan like Riyue Mountain and Puyang?" she asked.
Yu Chan nodded vigorously again.
"I love it! Yu Chan loves everything here! I love Mother, I love Brother, I love everyone! Except for that annoying Si You!"
The female cultivator chuckled, "Does Yu Chan want to see the outside world? Kongtong, Dongshan, or the distant Nanhuo Mountain?"
"I want to too!" Yu Chan's eyes sparkled. She had often heard the elders in her clan say that the world was full of wonders, with mountains, rivers, lakes and seas stretching as far as the eye could see. In the west, there was barren land for thousands of miles, and in the east, there were endless rice paddies. It was a landscape that one could never see in a lifetime by walking on foot.
Of course, the little cicada doesn't know how long a lifetime is yet, but she knows that when she grows snow-white hair like her mother and has broad, strong hands, the road she walks will soon come to an end.
"That's it. Jianmu, like Yuchan, also wanted to see the outside world, so he left here."
"So that's how it is!" Yu Chan jumped up happily. Now that's good. She had previously thought that it was because she sat under the tree every day, nagging about this and that, crying about the wilted little flowers, and cursing the annoying Si You that she had annoyed Jianmu away.
As the female cultivator looked at her daughter's innocent and carefree appearance, the gloom in her eyes grew heavier and heavier.
She suddenly reached out and picked up the "Summer Candle," solemnly placing it in Yu Chan's palm.
"Fish Cicada, do you like this kind of thing?"
Yu Chan excitedly looked down at the "Summer Candle" in her hand.
"like!"
"How about I give it to you, Mother?"
Yu Chan grinned and shouted happily, then jumped into the female cultivator's arms.
But soon her tone became worried again.
“But Mother, isn’t this your precious treasure? If you give it to Yu Chan, you won’t have it anymore.” She held the treasure up to her eyes.
The female nun smiled and stroked her daughter's head.
"But the cicada is also Mother's treasure. Mother has enough with the cicada."
Hearing her mother say this, Yu Chan chuckled and rubbed her fluffy head against the female cultivator's neck.
So what exactly is this treasure?
She nestled in the female cultivator's arms, fiddling with the object with her head down, but found that her mother hadn't responded to her for a long time.
"Mother?" Yu Chan looked up at her mother.
"Isuzu." The nun suddenly pushed her daughter out of her arms, placed her hands on her shoulders, and her expression became serious.
“Fish Cicada, this thing is called Isuzu. It was given to Mother by a… a friend.” The female cultivator stared intently into her daughter’s eyes, her obsession stirring up a tide that Fish Cicada could not fathom. She felt her mother’s hand pressing down on her shoulder with increasing force until she felt pain.
"Yu Chan, now that I've given you the Isuzu, can you guarantee that you'll always keep it by your side and never let it out of your sight?"
She spoke slowly and deliberately, "Forever."
Yu Chan stared blankly back at her mother, then nodded expectantly.
The female cultivator suddenly released one hand, and her wrist flipped, forming an ice crystal in her palm.
"Your mother wants you to swear an oath to the ice that you will keep Isuzu by your side for the rest of your life, no matter what happens, until the moment you die." Her tone was cold and hard, completely unlike the gentle and loving mother she had just spoken of. "If you break this oath, your mother will die without a burial place and be condemned to eternal damnation in the abyss of the dead."
A tear slid down Yu Chan's eye.
Her childish voice trembled as it came out of her throat.
"Uochan... swears to the ice... that she will keep Isuzu with her for life... and will never abandon her no matter what..."
"If I disobey... Mother... Mother will die without a burial place... For all eternity... I will fall into the abyss of the dead..."
"A lifetime again," Yu Chan thought sadly, referring to this word she could never understand.
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