Chapter 247
Chapter 247
There were more than ten Longbow weapons.
Their strings ranged from forty or fifty centimeters in length to one or two meters.
They had been arranged in order from smallest to largest.
Looking at them, I felt as though I were seeing the story of a young girl’s growth.
Not one of the Longbow weapons had any arrows, yet every string had been worn smooth and glossy. Each had clearly been drawn countless times.
I raised a hand, wanting to touch them one by one, but my fingers hovered above the Longbow weapons and ultimately never came down.
I was afraid… afraid they would crumble into dust the moment I touched them.
I drew my hand back and turned toward the inner part of the cave.
A large bed stood against the far wall.
Made of parasol wood, it looked exceptionally sturdy.
Several silk quilts and mattresses were stacked on the inner side of the bed, all washed clean.
Beside the head of the bed stood a dressing table, also made of parasol wood. A wooden box sat on top of it.
The wooden box seemed out of place there.
It wasn’t locked, so I walked over and carefully opened it.
The box had two compartments. The upper one was filled with all kinds of little wooden toys: a pellet drum, spinning tops, tiny wooden figures, little wooden insects…
They were all toys for a baby.
Every one of them had been carefully preserved.
In the lower compartment, many tiny baby clothes had been folded into neat stacks. Every piece had been sewn entirely by hand with fine, close stitches, and some were even embroidered with flowers.
Although each piece showed signs of wear and had been patched, they were all clean and tidy.
Whoever had made these clothes must have loved this baby very much, right?
I closed the wooden box and opened the drawers of the dressing table.
The first drawer contained only two wooden combs, a few hair ribbons, and several pairs of wrist guards.
But when I opened the second drawer, I froze.
Inside were three physical masks, each a Golden Half-Face Mask, stacked neatly together.
Some were new, while others were old.
Every single one was identical to the Golden Half-Face Mask I had seen in my dream!
So this cave was… the room where Feng Linu had once lived?
This was where she had grown up!
I turned to look at the dozen or so Longbow weapons on the eastern wall again. My heart ached, and tears instantly misted my eyes.
Of course.
When Feng Linu was still an egg, the Grand Witch had secretly brought her back to Cangwu Mountain.
She had hatched here on Cangwu Mountain in the first place.
Why should it be surprising that she had lived here?
I picked up one Golden Half-Face Mask and put it on as I looked into the hazy bronze mirror.
It fit perfectly.
The Golden Half-Face Mask completely concealed the ulcerated lower-right part of my cheek.
I removed it and set it on the dressing table instead of returning it to the drawer.
That was when I noticed the bottom drawer.
It was locked.
I swept my gaze around the cave before finally fixing my eyes on one of the lamps. Striding over, I reached beneath its shade and felt around. Sure enough, my fingers closed around a bronze key.
I brought it back and inserted it into the keyhole. With a click, the lock opened.
I pulled open the third drawer and found several miniature portraits and a parchment notebook inside.
Every portrait depicted the same man… a man I knew all too well.
That face, those features, those amber slit pupils… Who else could it be but Liu Junyan?
Only back then, his gaze had been clearer and brighter.
It was nothing like the depth and gravity it held now.
All the secret feelings in a young girl’s heart had been hidden in these few portraits.
She… had always carried him in her heart!
Only when I opened the parchment notebook did I realize it was a diary.
The first third of the diary was distinctly childish.
“Punished to kneel for the time it takes an incense stick to burn today.”
“Punished to kneel for two hours today.”
“Struck twenty times on the palm today. My hand is swollen. I can’t hold my chopsticks.”
“The skin on my knees was scraped raw from kneeling today.”
“Punished to kneel today…”
There were many scattered entries like these. The handwriting gradually changed from crooked and riddled with misspellings to neat and orderly… and most of the entries were about punishments.
It was almost like a little book of grudges.
Of all the punishments, kneeling appeared most often, recurring throughout nearly the entire first third of the diary.
I suddenly realized that the smooth, rounded Meditation Stone beside the wall outside… was probably where Feng Linu had been punished to kneel as a child.
Well… considering how smooth it had been worn, she really must have spent a lot of time kneeling there.
The middle section of the diary revealed Feng Linu’s agitation.
“It hurts!”
“Why are they treating me this way?”
“Why are they forcing me to do these things?”
“I hate this.”
“I want to run away…”
Those words had been written with such force that they nearly pierced the parchment.
I supposed these entries reflected Feng Linu’s state of mind while she was being tormented and controlled by the Symbiotic Curse, forced to serve as Feng Lishu’s provider.
Yet she never described any of the details.
Her identity had never been acknowledged, and she existed like an invisible person among her entire clan. She was cautious — so cautious that she could not even describe her own suffering.
Until…
“I met someone in a cave today. His fish was charred. Heh.”
It was only one short sentence, yet it felt as if a powerful hand had closed tightly around my heart.
A charred fish… That was how Liu Junyan and Feng Linu first met.
Liu Junyan had once drawn that story for me.
He had not actually burned the fish at first. Feng Linu couldn’t get any to eat, so she tried to snatch it by force, and that was how the fish ended up charred.
They came to know each other through a fight.
That seemingly exasperating beginning nevertheless left a deep mark on both their hearts.
From that moment on, Feng Linu’s entire outlook changed.
“I ran into him again on this mission. We hunted down a wild bear monster together.”
“His childhood friend is a White Fox.”
“His swordsmanship is excellent.”
“…”
“White Fox hinted that he has a chance to Ascend to Dragonhood. Will he really attain Ascension?”
“He didn’t come this time. White Fox invited me to visit the Ghost Market with her. Did something happen to him?”
“Something seems to be troubling him.”
“…”
“There’s no chance left. Ultimately… there’s no chance…”
That was where the diary ended.
My feelings had shifted from smiling despite myself during the first third, to understanding and pity in the middle, then through a tumult of emotions at the end… until all that remained was a soft sigh.
This diary chronicled Feng Linu’s entire life, yet did not record a single important detail.
She had known the fate awaiting her. She had been unwilling to accept it and had loathed it, yet ultimately, she had been powerless to change anything.
Cangwu Mountain was both her birthplace and her cage.
Though she could walk out of that cage, she had never escaped its bondage or imprisonment.
A Symbiotic Curse was a set of invisible shackles, binding Feng Linu for her entire life…
I closed the diary and gently returned it to its original place. After stacking the small portraits on top of it, I locked the drawer and put the copper key back beneath the lampshade.
I stood before the dozen or so weapons, each a Longbow, and gazed at them for a very long time.
At last, before I knew it, I murmured, “Ah Li, look. Cangwu Mountain may not have any willow trees, but he stirred the waters of Linghai and sent me back to Cangwu Mountain. He… did it!”
“And in the end, we ended up together too.”