Chapter 245
Chapter 245
The instant the woman’s voice rang out, Water Ripple stirred.
This time, I didn’t even need to form a hand seal. It detached itself from my middle finger, transformed into a Dragon made of water, and wrapped around my body. Then it carried me hurtling away!
The woman continued chanting as Water Ripple sped through Linghai with me in its grasp.
We were moving so fast that I couldn’t make out anything around us.
Yet my thoughts had never been clearer. That voice belonged to Liu Junyan’s mother.
Water Ripple was something she had left to me.
She had also given me a box, but Liu Junyan had taken it away, and it still hadn’t been opened.
Mother Liu was trapped at the bottom of the Linghai Forbidden Zone. When Liu Junyan shook the Sword Tomb and opened a breach, she must have sensed Water Ripple. That was why she had begun chanting at the critical moment, activating Water Ripple to help me.
Just then, a phrase came back to me: Cangwu Zheliu, Lingshui Tangtang. Not until Yellow Springs shall we meet again…
Those were the words Feng Linu had spoken when she parted ways with Liu Junyan.
They meant that unless Liu Junyan could break off a willow branch from Cangwu Mountain, and unless he could channel the waters of Linghai into Cangwu Mountain to extinguish the Nirvana Fire, the two of them could never be together.
No matter how heartless those words sounded, they proved one thing: the far end of Linghai lay very close to Cangwu Mountain.
In other words, if Water Ripple could carry me to the end of Linghai, then it might also be able to take me into Cangwu Mountain.
Was that really possible?
As I was considering it, a tremendous roar suddenly came from behind me.
It sounded as if it had come from somewhere impossibly far away, yet at the same time, it seemed to be everywhere.
The moment the roar rang out, I clearly felt Water Ripple shudder.
Although Water Ripple could take on a Dragon’s form and let out a Dragon’s roar, it depended on water.
At its core, it was merely a current of water condensed by spiritual energy.
As soon as the roar sounded, Mother Liu’s chanting ceased.
Water Ripple became unstable, and its previous explosive momentum vanished.
Its speed began to fall.
Looking ahead, I thought I could actually make out a shore.
I turned to look behind me… but before I could see anything clearly, a gaping maw came snapping down over my head.
I thought I was dead for sure. But at that very instant, Water Ripple used the last of its strength to thrust me clear.
A towering surge carried me out of the water, hurling my body high into the air.
The instant I became airborne, the sight before me left me stunned.
Directly ahead was a dense wall of black fog, so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
It resembled an enormous black curtain. Not only did it block my vision, but it also confined everything belonging to the Realm of the Living to this side of it.
Yet this side wasn’t Linghai at all. It was a bottomless chasm, and raging flames blazed across the western cliff face.
Linghai lay to the east of the chasm.
At that moment, waves churned across Linghai, surging toward me one after another.
Any one of those towering waves could have swallowed me in an instant.
But what I expected never happened.
When the waves came crashing down, not even a single drop of water splashed across.
The chasm was a dividing line, holding the entirety of Linghai to its eastern side.
A gigantic white Dragon held its head above the waves. Its white body extended endlessly into the east, with no telling how long it truly was.
This was the White Dragon that had just opened its jaws to swallow me.
Now, he was staring fixedly at me with a pair of amber eyes.
Those eyes reminded me of Liu Junyan.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. By the time I came back to my senses, my body had already begun to plummet.
The chasm below was another giant beast, one that could tear me apart and swallow me whole in an instant.
Over the past few months, whenever a fight broke out, my first instinct had always been to summon Fengwu.
Maybe it was sheer force of habit. Although I hadn’t been able to summon Fengwu for a long time, at that critical moment, I still cried out instinctively, “Fengwu, come!”
The next instant, a blaze erupted from the west, spreading like wildfire.
In the blink of an eye, the entire curtain of darkness was illuminated by the flames.
A powerful suction force came from behind it and dragged me inside.
Was it Fengwu?
No.
Fengwu hadn’t appeared.
I had no idea where that power had come from.
By then, I had already fallen to the ground.
I struggled to my feet, only to freeze the moment I stood up.
I was standing beneath a towering Wutong Tree.
I knew this lush, flourishing Wutong Tree.
It looked almost identical to the Wutong Tree south of Qilin Temple.
I had always thought of that Wutong Tree as my lucky tree. There was no way I could mistake it.
When Tafeng Village was destroyed, the Wutong Tree had vanished.
It was as if it had never existed there at all.
Yet here it was, right in front of me.
I turned around in disbelief and realized I was standing at the summit of a mountain.
The entire mountain was barren, and the air was sweltering.
Yet in such an environment, this Wutong Tree was somehow thriving.
Without thinking, I reached out to touch its trunk.
The instant my fingers made contact, the scorching bark burned me.
I was about to snatch my hand back when an image suddenly flashed through my mind.
Fire!
An endless sea of fire!
Within the inferno, the figure of the girl holding Fengwu was clearer than ever before.
For the first time, I saw her face.
She… She looked exactly like me.
A realization struck me. Could this place be Cangwu Mountain?
Instead of pulling my hand back, I pressed it firmly against the trunk of the Wutong Tree. The same powerful suction force immediately reappeared, dragging me straight toward the tree.
But I didn’t crash into the Wutong Tree. The force pulled me inside it.
Just as I was about to plunge into the sea of fire, a pair of enormous black wings suddenly appeared. They enveloped me completely, then forcibly wrenched me back out.
The black wings withdrew, revealing the man standing across from me.
As expected, it was Feng Xianqiu.
I had seen those black wings, with a wingspan of two or three meters, more than once.
Every time they appeared, it was at the critical moment when Feng Lishu had been driven into a desperate situation.
Time and again, they had protected Feng Lishu.
I had once racked my brain trying to discover who they belonged to. Now, their owner had finally revealed his true face.
Feng Xianqiu wasn’t even bothering to hide it anymore.
And why would he?
This was Cangwu Mountain, the territory of the Phoenix Clan.
The Phoenix Clan had no Phoenix Master. As the Right Guardian, he held absolute power here.
Feng Xianqiu looked at me with a smile playing on his lips. “Ah Li, I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. I told you — you would come back and beg me eventually.”
We had exhausted every ounce of our strength to make it this far, only to find Feng Xianqiu waiting for us like a hunter beside a trap.
But unlike entering Phoenix Clan territory through the front and confronting Feng Xianqiu head-on, I still had a choice now.
I didn’t answer him, nor was I afraid.
Under his sinister gaze, I suddenly spun around and hurled myself squarely at the trunk of the Wutong Tree.
My earlier attempt had taught me that the Wutong Tree was connected to the heart of Cangwu Mountain — the place where the Nirvana Fire resided.
Snow Phoenix had said that traces of the Fire Witch Goddess’s Godhood might remain within the Nirvana Fire.
And if I wanted to reclaim my identity as the Fire Witch Goddess, I would have to undergo Nirvana…