Chapter 248
Chapter 248
After leaving the cave, I opened the door to the neighboring one.
The stone door rumbled open, and cool, damp air rushed out to meet me. To my astonishment, there was a river behind it!
I could even hear the faint murmur of flowing water.
The river’s lower reaches vanished underground just beyond the stone door, flowing to parts unknown.
I followed the river upstream. After walking only a few hundred paces, I came upon a waterfall.
The waterfall was enormous. It plunged from the mountaintop, yet its upper reaches seemed to soar into the clouds, its source nowhere in sight.
I carefully followed the riverbank deeper in. After slipping past the edge of the waterfall, I discovered another opening in the middle of the cliff face, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through.
Once I crawled through, the view suddenly opened up before me.
On this side of the waterfall, I felt as though I had returned to the human world.
Tea plantations, fields, and fruit trees stretched as far as the eye could see. Everywhere I looked, there were signs that this land had once been cultivated.
Beside one of the field ridges, I even spotted a sturdy weeping willow.
The sight of that tree sent another stab of pain through my heart.
So… there really were willow trees on Cangwu Mountain!
It turned out Cangwu Zheliu wasn’t Feng Linu trying to make things difficult for Liu Junyan. It was a wish she had buried in the deepest recesses of her heart.
She must have hoped that one day, Liu Junyan would come to Cangwu Mountain and break off a willow branch for her with his own hands.
I strode over, rose onto my tiptoes, and snapped off a willow branch as thick as my pinky. I wove it into a bracelet and slipped it onto my left wrist.
Raising my wrist, I whispered, “Ah Li, if I ever make it out of here safely, I’ll personally give this willow branch to Liu Junyan and tell him what was in your heart.”
Yes, I was Feng Linu reincarnated.
At my core, I was Feng Linu.
But to me, Feng Linu’s love for Liu Junyan was the sincerest and purest kind of love — one worth cherishing and protecting.
I wasn’t jealous. My heart only ached for her.
It was still nighttime, and the light was dim, but I could see the stars overhead… something I couldn’t see from the other side of the passage.
This hidden world was just like Spirit Butterfly Valley in the Netherworld Realm.
Spirit Butterfly Valley?
The thought made me jolt.
When we’d looked in this direction from Spirit Butterfly Valley before, we had indeed been able to make out the silhouette of Cangwu Mountain.
Did that mean this was the far side of Cangwu Mountain, directly adjacent to Spirit Butterfly Valley?
That had to be it.
The wonders of the vast world truly never ceased.
Who could have imagined that the border between the Netherworld Realm and the Phoenix Clan concealed such a Paradise Beyond the World?
It was this land that had sustained life on Cangwu Mountain, allowing the Grand Witch and Feng Linu to live self-sufficiently.
As I gazed at the wildly overgrown tea bushes and fruit trees, then at the fields that had long since fallen into disuse, complicated emotions welled up inside me.
If the Grand Witch were still here, this place surely wouldn’t look like this, would it?
I returned to the previous cave and opened Feng Linu’s wardrobe. Several red-and-black archery outfits were neatly folded inside. I took one, went back to the waterfall, and jumped in for a long, satisfying bath.
After emerging from the seawater and then being scorched by the Nirvana Fire, my whole body had felt sticky and uncomfortable.
Only after bathing did I notice that a hole had been burned through the back of my original outfit. If the Cangwu Nether Seal hadn’t appeared in time, my back would definitely have been burned.
The outfit was ruined. I went back for two more archery outfits, washed them, and hung them from the Wutong Tree to dry. It was hot inside the cave, so they would dry quickly.
Now that I’d entered Cangwu Mountain, I clearly wasn’t getting out anytime soon. I needed to prepare myself for a long stay.
After running around all night, I was ravenous.
Fortunately, the tea garden had plenty of oil-tea camellias. Their edible tea galls and swollen leaves were enough to fill my stomach, and all kinds of fruit grew along the edges of the fields. Getting enough to eat wasn’t a problem.
When I returned to the cave, I tried the stone doors one by one again.
One opened onto a storeroom filled with farming tools, rice, and other supplies. Unfortunately, so much time had passed that none of the food was edible anymore.
There was another door whose mechanism I simply couldn’t find. I felt around for ages, but it refused to open.
The moment the final stone door opened, I knew at a glance that these had been the Grand Witch’s quarters.
The cavern was enormous and divided into many rooms: a bedroom, a study, an alchemy room… There was even a hatching chamber, though it had long since fallen into disuse and was covered in dust.
I looked around, but the moment I pushed open the door to the study, I froze in shock.
The study was spacious. Neat rows of bookcases made from Chinese parasol wood filled the room, their shelves packed with all kinds of books, bottles, jars, and boxes.
Against the far wall stood a desk made from the same wood.
And seated before it was a person!
No.
More precisely, it was a corpse.
There was no telling how many years the body had been sitting there. It had long since withered to little more than skin and bone.
I had seen the preserved remains of Chan Master Dahui after he passed away in seated meditation. This body was in exactly the same condition.
She, too, had passed away in meditation.
She wore a black witch’s robe over an intricately embroidered garment in predominantly red and blue, with a cloth cap in the same colors on her head.
She sat cross-legged on the chair, her eyelids slightly lowered, as though she had spent all these years gazing at the kraft-paper envelope on the desk before her.
I approached quietly, pressed my palms together, and bowed respectfully to the body.
Although I had never seen her full appearance, I knew the woman before me had to be the Grand Witch.
I turned my attention to the kraft-paper envelope. Written across it were the words: “For Ah Li’s eyes only.”
So this was the farewell letter the Grand Witch had left for Feng Linu.
I picked up the envelope and opened it, then pulled out a sheet of parchment and unfolded it.
The letter began:
Ah Li, my child, if you have returned to Cangwu Mountain, then my attempt to make amends was not too late.
Granny has wronged you.
I devoted my entire life to studying Ancient Witchcraft and prided myself on having mastered the Symbiotic Curse. When you and your twin elder sister hatched at the same time, I rashly cast the curse upon you both in accordance with the Phoenix Clan’s pact. I never imagined that it would cause such a catastrophe and ruin your entire life.
I did it only because your mother and her younger sister had died so gruesomely while barely managing to save the two of you. The Phoenix Clan could not withstand another such blow.
Even twins are born one before the other. Your elder sister was the one acknowledged publicly, so we took it upon ourselves to sacrifice you without ever asking whether you were willing.
We never considered whether it was fair to you.
Nor did we ever consider whether your sister was truly worthy of inheriting the position of Phoenix Master.
All the blame lies with me.
When the Symbiotic Curse tormented you until death seemed preferable, when they cruelly persecuted you to your death, and when your Fragmented Soul returned to Cangwu Mountain and resolutely cast itself into the Nirvana Fire… my heart bled as well.
Ah Li, Granny was wrong.
Granny truly knows she was wrong.
Granny regrets what she did more than words can say.
That is why I willingly extracted my own Three Hun Souls and Seven Po Souls and cast them into the Nirvana Fire with you. I asked only that even a single Po Soul might remain to temporarily stabilize your Spirit Soul, in the hope that you might still have a chance to be reincarnated…