A dark valley, a quiet bamboo forest, a bonfire, and four people.
The roar of thunder was incessant and lightning flashed across the night sky, illuminating Jiang Yuebai who was concentrating on cutting bamboo.
Xie Jingshan frowned and looked around, unable to imagine how Jiang Yuebai had managed to survive here.
Yun Shang looked at Jiang Yuebai with eyes full of heartache. Ge Yuchan felt a little uncomfortable. Her eyesight and hearing had been specially trained, and the thunder and lightning made it very difficult for her to bear.
Jiang Yuebai cut four bamboo cups and poured each of them a cup of green wine.
The three of them looked at each other, doubting whether the wine was still drinkable.
"Drink it, I brewed it myself, it's not poisonous, look."
Jiang Yuebai raised her head, and as the wine took a sip, her whole face instantly turned bad.
Gulp!
After swallowing the wine with difficulty, Jiang Yuebai smiled awkwardly, "This wine may have been stored for too long..."
Jiang Yuebai took away Yun Shang and Ge Yuchan's cups, and Xie Jingshan dodged aside.
"I want to see how bad it tastes."
After taking a gulp, Xie Jingshan almost vomited it out. He covered his mouth tightly and swallowed it with his neck stretched.
Anyway, when they were at home, he and his father would swallow the soup his mother made directly like this; they were used to it.
Xie Jingshan turned around and saw Jiang Yuebai staring in amazement. His face flushed slightly and he stammered, "It's... it's OK... it's not that bad."
Jiang Yue rolled her eyes. If she hadn’t tasted it herself, she would have really believed Xie Jingshan!
"Xiaobai, you were so young at the time, wouldn't you be scared living here alone?"
Yun Shang held Jiang Yuebai's arm and asked with concern.
Jiang Yuebai smiled and nodded, "Of course I'm afraid, so I keep myself very busy, working non-stop for twelve hours a day, so that I don't have time to be afraid."
Ge Yuchan looked at the bonfire and said, "It was the same when I was alone in the outer sect and didn't know anyone in the place. As long as I was busy, I had no time to think about random things."
Yun Shang sighed, "Although I have lived alone in the mountain stream of the Spirit Beast Valley since I was a child, I still have those spirit beasts to keep me company."
Yun Shang had similar experiences and was very thoughtful, so she could especially understand Jiang Yuebai's feelings back then.
Xie Jingshan looked at the three people with a bewildered face, remembering that when he was of that age, he would run around everywhere in the sect with Song Zhiang, Shen Huaixi and the others. Apart from being punished by the Jindan Zhenren and Yuanying Zhenjun, there seemed to be nothing that made him feel difficult.
Jiang Yuebai smiled nonchalantly, "I may have felt bitter, scared and lonely at the time, worried that I would not live up to expectations and couldn't see the future. But after I really got through it, I realized that every day I spent here was not in vain. If I hadn't practiced here for five years, I wouldn't be who I am today."
The night wind was chilly and the bonfire was roaring.
The three of them told each other about their childhood experiences. Yunchang even joked about how she cried all night because she missed her parents. Ge Yuchan also told them about the ridicule she received from the people from the outer sect without any care.
Jiang Yuebai laughed and said, "… This is like someone throwing mud at me, and I use the mud to plant lotus flowers!"
"Grow lotus roots and sell them for money." Yun Shang continued.
Ge Yuchan also laughed, "Now that I have money, I can laugh."
"Hahaha… "
The three of them laughed so hard that they fell down, and their laughter dispelled the loneliness of the dark night.
As they laughed, tears welled up in the eyes of the three men. Thinking back to the days when they were all unknown, and looking at today, all three of them have become direct disciples. The hardships they have gone through along the way cannot be understood by outsiders.
Xie Jingshan looked at them and laughed, but he couldn't laugh at all. He just felt that his journey was too smooth. Except for the time when he was attacked by two people from the upper realm and almost died, he had not experienced any crisis or hardship at all.
Even so, he complained all day long that his family was too rich, that his father only had eyes for his mother, that his mother only knew how to go out and have fun, and that his grandfather only knew how to use money to settle things. Compared with what the three of them had experienced, these things he had were not setbacks at all.
late at night.
Ge Yuchan and Yun Shang both went to Jiang Yuebai's small bamboo house to rest, preparing to enter Lei Ze early the next morning.
Jiang Yuebai walked out of the bamboo house and couldn't find Xiaolu anywhere. He didn't know where it had run off to.
She strolled to the edge of the cliff and saw Xie Jingshan sitting there alone, his back looking very solemn.
Jiang Yuebai sat next to Xie Jingshan, looking at Lei Ze in the distance.
The black sea of clouds is boundless, and thousands of silver dragons are roaring and galloping.
She was twelve years old when she left here, and now she is thirty-two years old, exactly twenty years.
In the past twenty years, neither Lei Ze nor this valley seemed to have changed at all.
She is the only one who has changed.
"I am very happy today. Twenty years ago, I dreamed that if someone could stay here with me, all the suffering would no longer be suffering, and it would be full of laughter and joy like today. The little regrets I had about this place and this time have been made up today."
Xie Jingshan looked heavy-faced and turned to look at Jiang Yuebai.
"In fact, if you wanted to stay back then, Lu Nanzhi and I would have been able to protect you."
Jiang Yuebai shook his head. "If I were to choose again, all my choices would remain the same. Even if some of my choices were irrational and not optimal, I would never regret it."
Xie Jingshan sighed, looked at the surging sea of clouds, and asked, "Did you really get struck by lightning here and become blind and paralyzed, and lay there for a month without moving? Are you kidding me?"
Jiang Yuebai suddenly laughed, "I brought this upon myself back then. Why not practice the Sharp Edge Technique here? If it weren't for the mountain protection formation, I would have been chopped to ashes right on the spot. But now..."
Jiang Yuebai raised his hand, and a golden light burst out from his fingertips.
Snap!
A silver bolt of lightning struck down from above his head. Xie Jingshan raised his hand to block the blinding silver light and watched in horror as the lightning hit Jiang Yuebai, but was deflected by her protective energy and turned into tiny arcs that splashed out.
Jiang Yuebai smiled, "Even if there is no mountain protection formation now, thunder can't hurt me."
Xie Jingshan rolled his eyes. "This is an ordinary thunder at the edge of the Thunder Lake. Go to the depths of the Thunder Lake and try the Crimson Palace Thunder and the Guishui Thunder. Even a Yuanying Zhenjun would tremble if he encountered them."
Jiang Yuebai took out some talisman papers, a box of talisman sand and a dragon-hair talisman pen. The talisman papers floated in front of him and he casually drew a few earth-escape talismans.
"The night is long. Are you interested in accompanying me to the bottom of the mine?"
The Earth Escape Talisman was pushed in front of Xie Jingshan, who looked through it curiously, "How do you use this thing?"
Jiang Yuebai stood up and asked in surprise, "You haven't even used the Earth Escape Talisman?"
"It's hard to control the distance of earth escape with this thing. I have more accurate earth escape beads. What do you need this for?"
Jiang Yuebai rolled his eyes and said, "If you can't keep up with me, don't come!"
After saying that, Jiang Yuebai activated the Earth Escape Talisman, turned into a yellow light and disappeared into the ground.
Xie Jingshan refused to give in, "Can't keep up? Impossible! I, Xie Jingshan, will not only ascend before you in this life, but I will also die before you!"
Boom!
There was a roar of thunder, and Xie Jingshan shivered suddenly. He made a loud noise and activated the earth escape talisman to catch up.
After the pulling feeling disappeared, Xie Jingshan's chest sank and he found that half of his body was outside and the other half was stuck in the mountain wall, unable to move.
Xie Jingshan: … …
He said, this crappy thing is too random and not useful at all!
"Hey, Master Xie, are you stuck?"
Jiang Yuebai came out from the mine tunnel nearby and laughed at him.
Xie Jingshan twisted his body and forced his way out of the mountain wall with the rubble. "I'm not skilled at this. Give me two more. I'll get better with practice."
Jiang Yuebai threw a few earth escape talismans at Xie Jingshan and looked around. The mountain wall was full of traces of excavation. There were no spiritual stones or even residue left.
Jixiang and the Flower Rat poked their heads out from Jiang Yuebai's waist. The two mice twitched their noses, but didn't smell anything good, so they shrank back and continued to sleep in each other's arms.
Jiang Yuebai used the earth escape talisman to go down all the way, passing by the place where he had fought for his life. He saw that the elixir he had pulled out that year had sprouted again, and the mole beast that had escaped had come back to give birth to cubs.
Some mines were inhabited by vengeful spirits and evil corpses, which she easily dealt with.
The past is still vivid in my mind. The immature and green shadows in my memory have been erased from the mine and returned to my mature body and soul.
Xie Jingshan followed Jiang Yuebai silently and was stuck on the cliff again. He accidentally discovered the small mark left by Jiang Yuebai.
A small crescent moon with the word "正" drawn on the back. The number of kills became smaller each time, apparently recording how many people or monsters she had killed, and in several batches.
Behind the crescent moon in the last row, there is an ugly smiling face.
Xie Jingshan smiled knowingly, as if he saw the young Jiang Yuebai at that time, standing in the middle of the monster's corpse, covered in blood, holding a spear and laughing happily.
Xie Jingshan suddenly recalled a passage in Wangshu's Notes:
[He advanced three times and retreated three times. The fourth time, he fought the poisonous fire spiders alone and killed them all. He killed the spider king.]
At this moment, he gradually understood the sadness, pain, joy and satisfaction behind the straightforward narration in "Wangshu Notes".
He only saw Jiang Yuebai's achievements and how she walked ahead of him time and time again, but he never saw how bumpy and difficult the road under her feet was.
"Little Green? Where did you go?"
Jiang Yuebai's voice came from the front. Xie Jingshan squeezed out from the mountain wall and saw Xiaolu confronting Jiang Yuebai. There were three words on the lantern.
[Discovered]
(End of this chapter)