Zhong Lanling has a natural loneliness about him.
His voice, passing through the vast river surface, reached Jianchou's ears without any hindrance. Several people on the boat immediately looked at her.
The Six Meridians Divine Mirror was faintly visible in her sleeve. She stood in an extremely steady and upright posture, with her eyes fixed on Zhong Lanling for a long time without moving.
She seemed to be pondering whether what the other person said was true or false.
But the boat stopped in the middle of the river as she wished.
After a while, she smiled and said, "When I first entered the Ice Prison, Daoist Fellow Zhong helped me. Now that Daoist Fellow has questions, I will naturally answer them. Please come aboard and have a chat."
There are so many of them anyway.
Even if Zhong Lanling wanted to take action, they were outnumbered and could not lose for the time being.
Because he has companions, Jianchou feels confident.
Zhong Lanling on the river bank was silent for a moment, glanced at Jianchou, and also glanced at Fu Chaosheng standing on the boat.
In the end, he did not refuse. He hugged Qin and turned into a breeze, floating in the air, and landed on the bow of the boat: "Excuse me, everyone."
Chen Tingyan's face didn't look very good.
In his opinion, Zhong Lanling was obviously an intruder, and he didn't know what his purpose was. Especially since the other party didn't seem to want to take action, he felt inexplicably uncomfortable.
In the killing field of Dingzheng, this situation is absolutely abnormal.
But when he looked at his companions around him, none of them reacted much.
Zhang Tang was indifferent to what was happening outside, and since he saw that Chou had already made a decision, he would not interfere. Gu Ling was just a little girl, she blinked and just looked at him curiously. Only Li Han on the other side might make people ponder...
Fu Chaosheng had fought with Zhong Lanling before.
Naturally, they knew each other, but Fu Chaosheng did not kill them in the end. Now Zhong Lanling finally caught up with them.
The man stood in the middle of the boat, his hands behind his back, with a barely visible hint of sarcasm at the corners of his lips.
A snow-white fish could be vaguely seen jumping out from the surface of the river.
Fu Chaosheng lowered his eyes and took a look, then did not pay attention to what was happening over there. He just bent down, reached a pair of hands that were so white that they seemed transparent into the river, and caught a fish.
Jianchou was already sitting cross-legged at the bow of the boat facing Zhong Lanling.
She could just see Fu Chaosheng's actions from her direction, so she suddenly remembered the time when Fu Chaosheng cooked fish on the Jiutou River outside Kunwu Mountain.
He laid Zhong Lanling's zither flat on his knees.
An air of vicissitudes and antiquity permeates every string. There are some mottled scratches on the body of the guitar, and it looks like it has been there for quite a while.
One after another, profound talismans are lightly covered on the body of the piano, giving it a sense of mystery.
Jianchou turned his gaze and noticed this detail: "Fellow Daoist Zhong's zither seems to be very special."
special
Many people said so, but no one gave him the same strange feeling as Jianchou.
Zhong Lanling's fingers stroked a few strings of the zither, and a stream of light flashed across them, following his fingers, as if longing for them: "Zhong originally thought that Daoist Fellow Jianchou should have seen this zither..."
I thought
Jianchou was startled, and she did not expect Zhong Lanling to say such a thing. But when she thought about it carefully, she had never seen such a zither, whether in the lonely island on earth or in the Nineteen Continents.
So, she shook her head and said, "Jianchou is ignorant and has never seen this zither before."
This answer was obviously beyond Zhong Lanling's expectations, or rather, it was a disappointing answer for him.
He stared at Jianchou, pondered for a moment, then turned the body of the zither over with both hands, revealing the back of the zither: "Then, have you seen this, Daoist Jianchou?"
Jianchou frowned, and as he did so, he only looked at the exposed back of the zither.
A deep scratch was left on the back of the piano.
The broken wood chips turned into wood splinters, and there was a faint light brown color in between. It was obvious at first glance that it was not paint, but blood left behind many years ago!
There was an extremely faint smell of blood...
But there is a familiar feeling hidden in it that makes Jianchou feel inexplicably trembling.
But this bloodstain was so faint that Jianchou couldn't tell what was wrong with it. She was about to ask, but her eyes suddenly shifted and she noticed the thing that was damaged by this scratch...
Around this deep scratch, there are actually several discontinuous traces of light ink.
It seems that there were originally some words engraved on the place covered by the scratches...
Suddenly, I felt extremely uncomfortable in my heart.
It was just like when the corpse was found under the Buddha statue in Hanbing Prison…
She was suddenly speechless.
He just reached out and slowly straightened out the sawdust and wood splinters around the scratch. After removing the interference of these trivial things, the remaining handwriting could finally be pieced together into a little outline.
Return, Crane.
Return Crane...
Jianchou almost trembled all over, and even felt a chill that slowly spread throughout her body along the trace of the two words on the back of the zither where her fingers touched!
Return Crane!
This should be the name of this five-stringed zither. It doesn’t seem to be anything special, but it’s just an elegant name given by a free-spirited person…
But she is a disciple of Yashan.
Return crane, return crane.
On top of Lingzhao Mountain, there is a deep and cold Guihe Well. Is it still the same as before
Jianchou almost couldn't control the sour emotion.
Considering the subtle sense of familiarity she had felt before, how could she not know that this was actually a zither, a magical instrument left behind by the ancestors of Yashan
The piano has scratches.
Covered in blood.
There is no need to ponder where this zither came from and how it ended up in the extreme region.
The answer immediately came to Jianchou's mind.
She closed her eyes slightly, forcing herself to hide all her emotions, deeply... hide them. This is the Jiyu, not a place where she can expose her identity at will.
For some reason, the fingers I stretched out seemed a little stiff.
Jianchou slowly withdrew his fingers, looking a little dazed, with a flawless smile on his lips. He only asked, "The name of this zither seems to have a special meaning..."
My heart feels tight.
It was as if a heavy stone was pressing down on him, but not a single word could be heard from his words.
Her gaze fell back on Zhong Lanling, but she found that he was still looking at her without any retraction.
It was a look that was hard to describe.
It seems that I am lost, down and out, and I seem to have no one to rely on in life and no one to rely on in death. It seems that I am just a passer-by in the world...
He asked, "Daoist Jianchou, have you never seen this zither?"
Fu Chaosheng said that Zhong Lanling had a secret.
And it was very strange when she said that. Now seeing this zither again, she was almost certain that there must be some connection between Zhong Lanling and Nineteen Continents, or even Yashan...
Fiery eyes and golden pupils.
She did not have this ability. What she had was only the "heart's eye", the eye of the mind, which Fudao Shanren taught her to open when she first started practicing.
With a light touch of her fingertips, a stream of soul power flowed along her body and rushed to the ancestral orifice between her eyebrows.
Then her eyes narrowed slightly, with a sense of illusion, and she looked at Zhong Lanling again -
At this moment, there was only a loud bang deep in my mind!
Jianchou could no longer hear the sound of water on the river, and could not even hear what Zhong Lanling was saying. There was only a chill that suddenly froze his whole body!
What appeared in her sight was actually a monster!
The whole body was covered with cracks, and seemed to be made up of pieces of debris, crude and ugly, like a tattered piece of clothing with crooked stitches.
Fragmented, emitting a mixed and turbid light.
She saw the left side of his face, which belonged to an old man, full of wrinkles;
She saw his right face, belonging to a young man, young and arrogant;
She saw his forehead, which belonged to a woman, smooth and full;
She saw his neck...
…
Except for the position of the heart, which seemed to be missing a corner, every part and every fragment of his soul came from different people and different souls!
The light of each fragment is different.
That's why he looks like a mixture of mixed lights, extremely turbid.
The originally undressed and down-and-out musician, at this moment, looked even more terrifying than Sima Languan, whom Jianchou had met before!
But what shocked Jianchou even more was the unwillingness and familiarity condensed in each of these fragments...
These…
What are...
A vague voice in her heart emerged and kept repeating to her: You know, you know, you figured it out. You guessed it...
But how could she dare to listen, how could she dare to believe it!
Jianchou couldn't even tell what he was feeling inside. Maybe it was a cold murderous intent, maybe it was a mixture of sour shock and pain, or maybe it was a kind of confusion...
All the emotions were churning and stirring in her internal organs and even deep in her mind.
His breathing became unstable, and his entire body began to tremble.
Zhong Lanling had been looking at her for a long time, so he would not fail to notice the changes in Jianchou. His fingers on the Guiheqin were a little stiff, but his voice was a little hoarse: "Did you see it?"
Look out.
The faint light in Jianchou's eyes finally disappeared and went out, and the Six Meridians Divine Mirror was tightly held in her palm.
It seemed that if she didn't hold it tightly enough, this thing would fly towards the man in front of her!
Her soul was trembling, but her voice remained calm: "Sir, where are you from?"
"… "
Zhong Lanling was speechless for a moment, because he really knew nothing about his own origins.
"I came here to ask Daoist Fellow Jianchou about this..."
Jianchou didn't say anything.
She had already vaguely guessed why Zhong Lanling came to her.
Fu Chaosheng and others were in the middle of the boat. At this moment, he had taken out a small pot from somewhere, put the fish he had just caught into it, and started to cook soup.
Gu Ling huddled up and curled up to one side.
Chen Tingyan looked on in amazement, as if he couldn't believe that "Li Han", a guy who was moody and would kill people at will, could actually cook soup.
Zhang Tang's eyes swept across Fu Chaosheng with a hint of suspicion, but he quickly passed by and turned to look at the two people at the bow.
Since Zhong Lanling decided to find Jianchou, he wanted an answer, so he told him everything he knew.
"I was born this way..."
It's like a person who suddenly wakes up from a deep sleep but has lost all his memories.
Everything is like a new life.
When he opened his eyes, his consciousness was chaotic and blurry.
Before his eyes was the endless, dim sky, and the ten thousand miles of bad land became his bed, carrying his body.
The grass of heaven took root in the soil, and the Rakshasa spirit flew in the silhouette of the hideous black mountain in the distance.
The power of the earth gushed out from the depths of the earth like a spring and poured into his body. Then he gained other senses, touch, smell, hearing...
Crash.
It is a huge and wide river flowing in front of us.
Countless ghosts are floating in the river, and eerie white bones are visible at the bottom of the water.
Huge waves hit the rocks, and in the surging waves, a long piece of wood with five strings stretched on it floated over.
At that time, he didn't know what it was.
He knew nothing about the world around him.
I don’t know what I am, where I came from, what my identity is, and I don’t know where I am going.
Everything is a blur.
Everything is unknown.
He held the zither, feeling a sense of intimacy, and followed the river, walking up and down for a long time. When he reached a certain place, he saw many black square pieces of wood placed on the other side of the river.
Later he realized that it was a coffin.
There is a bridge above, spanning the wide river.
Several figures were walking on the bridge, talking to each other, but the sound of the flowing river was so loud that it drowned out their voices.
Zhong Lanling could only see them opening their mouths.
He found that they were the same as him, with noses, eyes and mouths, and seemed to be the same existence, so he walked over with the piano in his arms and wanted to ask them.
Unexpectedly, the people standing at the bridge were shocked when they saw him, as if they couldn't believe their eyes at all.
"How is it possible..."
"Isn't he the one who failed?!"
Zhong Lanling couldn't understand what they were saying.
But when they saw him holding the piano, they seemed to be reminded of some horrible memories and an expression of fear appeared on their faces.
Several people ran to the other side of the bridge, while the rest surrounded him as if they were facing a great enemy.
He didn't know what he should do, and when he opened his mouth only strange noises came out, but they seemed to be even more nervous, so he just stood there and didn't move.
After a while, several rays of light flew in from the sky.
Several white-bearded old men stood in front of him. The one in the middle, holding a jade slip in his hand, walked around him for several steps, saying "amazing, amazing" repeatedly. He also looked at the empty space on his chest again and again, saying something like "You can live without a heart"...
He didn't know what "alive" meant, nor did he know how to make the sounds of these people speaking, so he was very confused.
Later, a few more people came and asked about the old man's situation.
The old man shook his head and said, "Without a heart, it cannot be infused with consciousness. It is just a useless shell. If you want it, take it."
So, he was led away by the people who came later to a strange place. They all called it "Fengdu City", and during the time he stayed there, the word he heard most was "Ghost King Clan".
As time went by, he began to speak, knew how to tell time, and named himself Zhong Lanling.
But they kept silent about his origins.
About four months ago, the old man who took him away appeared and asked him to participate in the Ding Competition, enter the Eighteen Levels of Hell, and get the Ding Yuan, or help other cultivators of the Ghost King Clan to get the Ding Yuan.
"But I didn't expect to meet Daoist Fellow Jianchou at the top of the Ice Prison."
"I helped you at the beginning because I sensed a familiar aura on you. For no apparent reason, I thought you might know my identity..."
“Or maybe, he comes from the same place as me.”
Zhong Lanling's hoarse voice finally slowly became lower.
He stared at Jianchou for a while before continuing, "Later I found out that the river was called 'Huangquan' and that area was the battlefield of yin and yang..."
After hearing this, Jianchou finally slowly closed his eyes.
Doing so would be too obvious, but if she didn't, she would be completely unable to stop the murderous intent that suddenly spread from the deepest part of her heart to the bottom of her eyes!