Almost all the people present saw this scene before they were released from the cage, but not when they smelled it.
He had his eyes open, but he couldn't see anything. Because at the moment when the cage dissipated and disintegrated, someone suddenly wiped the end of his wet eyes and murmured like a sigh: "Smell when..."
The man seemed to have too much to say, but in the end he only whispered, "Don't cry."
When I heard this sentence, I was completely empty when I smelled it.
The hand that covered his eyes and wiped the end of his eyes before disappeared, and the person who hooked the puppet line to stop him also disappeared.
Everything in the cage fell like a giant curtain, and the real scene was revealed—
He was still standing in front of the collapsed home of the Zhang family, facing the hazy undulating shadows of the distant mountains.
The golden-winged Dapeng's flowing cloud wings swept across the side of the mountain, and Xiaozhao brought a long shadow of silver light to the ground. A mountain-like bright fire rose from their bodies, and then suddenly dimmed.
Like the embers of a firework, it went out for a while, and then it didn't light up again.
When I heard the exclamation, it seemed that many people ran in the direction where the giant puppet fell.
There were also people running towards him, calling his name.
But the soles of his feet took root, and he couldn't hear or move.
In fact, without looking, he also clearly knew what was going on—
It was not a sudden accident, but the withering of the puppet. It was a withering that he had been worried about for a long time and could not avoid or escape...
Thanks for the dry up.
In fact, before going to the col, he had a hunch. At that time, he grabbed Xie Wen to confirm the state repeatedly, and he was relieved to see that half of the other party's body was intact.
But he forgot that strangers enter the cage with illusory appearance. At that time, they were already in Zhang Daiyue's cage, and what he saw... were all false appearances.
When he smelled it, he still remembered that Xie Wen stood in the shadow of the night and looked over, his whole body was full of withered air.
Perhaps from that moment on, that person was already at the end of the line. I just couldn't rest assured, so I forced myself to accompany him again...
Now that the cage is broken, the phantom will also be broken.
He should have understood.
From the moment he learned that Xie Wen had just borrowed Puppet's body to return to the world, he should have understood that a touch of the body spirit would not last long. After all, he had to watch the man dissipate helplessly.
But the man never let him see.
Every time he leaves, he is behind when he smells.
He never let it be seen when he smelled it.
The wind came from behind, empty, and circled in front of him.
There seemed to be a knife wrapped in it, blowing through the eyes, sucking into the body, and the pain was piercing everywhere. He opened his eyes wide when he smelled it, and his eyelids trembled slightly after a long time. He lowered his eyes instantly, looking for something on the ground.
His vision was blurry, and he frowned tightly. In fact, he couldn't see anything, but he was looking very stubborn.
Not far away, someone seemed to have an accident, and there was a lot of noise, and some people called "Xiaqiao" or some other name. He couldn't understand it and couldn't care about it.
Zhou Xu ran over, but he spoke in Bu Ning's tone, calling him: "Wen Shi..."
He seemed to respond, his voice low and unpleasant. He blinked quickly, his vision was clear for a moment, and he finally saw what he was looking for—
It was a withered white pine branch, left beside him at some point, wrapped in the coldest fog in the middle of the night.
He stood silent for a moment, then bent over to pick it up.
At that moment, the pain of dissecting the spirit from a thousand years ago swept like a violent wave.
He grabbed the dead wood and couldn't stand up again.
When he was young, that person often said that his mouth was tougher than iron. Even if he was stabbed with a thousand cuts, he was soaked in cold sweat, and when he asked him, he would always reply "it doesn't hurt".
But at this moment, when the overwhelming darkness engulfed his consciousness, he finally moved his lips.
He wanted to say that there was no dust, and my whole body was in pain.
But no one can hear...
***
A long time ago, Chen Dao said that there are spiritual veins in Songyun Mountain, which can nourish both spirits and people. So Bu Ning sealed the past thousand years ago here.
Later, when the seal was lifted and the old friends reunited, he kept Zhong Si and Zhuang Ye in a spiritual pond in the mountains.
Now, the people in the mountains have added a few more—
He was in the house on the top of the mountain when he smelled it, and he had been in a coma for three days and three nights.
Someone pushed the door and came in to turn on the lamp on the table, and the warm yellow light spread out, but the person lying on the side of the couch was still pale and could not see any blood.
The only place where he could see the blood was his fingers, which were torn a lot from the pine branch he was gripping too hard. Blood oozing from the crooked knuckles, wet and dry, has rusted into a dark red.
"My God." The person who lit the lamp glanced at it and said, "The blood is coming out again, why don't you try to break his hand off again?"
It was Zhou Xu who spoke, but besides him, there was no other awake person in the room.
Seeing that he finished asking this, his body froze, and his protruding neck was retracted. He was still the same, but he seemed to have changed.
When he spoke again, his tone softened, with a bit of tired melancholy: "It's not worth it, he's very stubborn and can't be separated."
Although he said so, he still walked over to the couch and bent down, trying to touch the hand that was holding the pine branch when he was smelling.
He just moved the dead branch, and more than a dozen puppet threads flew out from between the tightly clenched fingers, with a thousand coercion like a sharp blade.
Fortunately, the person who tried it was Bu Ning, who turned his head to the side to avoid it. If you change it, it has already been nailed to the wall by the puppet thread.
Those puppet lines were swept away, and then quietly retracted.
The owner of the puppet line is still unconscious, and the attack just now was just out of instinct.
"It's been three days, and it's still like this..." Zhou Xu was shocked and patted his chest.
After a while, he turned into Bu Ning, and replied in a low voice, "Yeah, it's been three days."
He looked at Wen Shi's brows, who were still in a drowsiness, and sighed, then stared at the dead branch and suddenly became fascinated.
Suddenly, the door "tuk-tuk-tuk" sounded anxiously.
Bu Ning turned his head and saw someone pushing the door in.
The person who came in was Zhang Biling, one of the former Liuzhuang grievance masters, who is now Zhou Xu's mother. She opened her mouth and looked at Zhou Xu's face, for a while she didn't know whether to call "Xiao Xu" or nod and call "Old Ancestor".
On the contrary, Bu Ning nodded apologetically at her and let Zhou Xu take the lead.
"Mom, why are you in such a hurry?" Zhou Xu switched freely.
Zhang Biling swallowed the title, pointed in the direction of the mountain road, and said, "Xiao Xia seems to be waking up."
The Xiao Xia in her mouth is Xia Qiao.
Ever since he hit Zhang's home and entered Zhang Daiyue's cage that day, something has never been right. Zhang Biling had been on the same road with him, and saw that he suddenly fainted when the cage was scattered, but no one knew the reason.
Everyone tried a lot of methods, but they couldn't wake Xia Qiao. No matter what, he was curled up tightly, fingers not covering his head in his hair, as if resisting some kind of pain...
I don't know if it was implicated at that moment when he created his smell.
Bu Ning simply took him, and Zhang Yalin, who was so devastated, that he could only breathe, back to Songyun Mountain and settled down on the mountainside.
Apart from these people who need to nurture their souls, only Zhang Biling, an outsider from the mountain, was acquiesced to stay and has been helping Bu Ning to take care of both sides.
"Wake up?" Zhou Xu listened to Zhang Biling's words and said, "That's great, it's really scary to be so dizzy again."
"But—" Zhang Biling looked a little hesitant.
"What's the matter, why are you hesitating?"
"Xiao Xia's situation is a bit strange."
"strangeness?"
Zhou Xu was a little puzzled, Zhang Biling simply said: "Don't take your seat first, let Ancestor Bu Ning come out and take a look at the mountainside."
Zhou Xu: "…"
With an "oh", he stretched out his hand and poked himself, and said, "You're welcome, ancestor."
The next second, he raised his eyebrows and cupped Zhang Biling's hand, "Ashamed, wait a moment."
As he spoke, he walked back to the couch, grabbed a few boulders on the table and set them on the couch.
Zhang Biling questioned: "This is the ancestor?"
"The formation." Zhou Xu suddenly raised his head and replied to her.
"Is it a formation for raising spirits?" Zhang Biling remembered hearing from Zhou Xu before that the old ancestor of Wen Shi had only a few fragments of the spiritual phase, and there were too many missing. The formation of raising spirit pools was not very useful to him.
"Not all." Zhou Xu raised his head again, "mainly because he was afraid of running away."
Zhang Biling was stunned: "?"
Bu Ning finally stopped letting the half of himself talk nonsense. He put down the third stone and explained, "I'm afraid he wakes up and does something stupid."
Zhang Biling didn't quite understand what he meant by "stupid thing", but he still answered habitually: "Old Ancestor doesn't seem like someone who can mess around when he hears it."
Bu Ning straightened up and said with a sigh, "My junior brother looks so cold...he's crazy inside."
He was about to set up the fourth stone formation, but paused halfway through and glanced outside the door.
"What's wrong?" Zhang Biling asked.
But before Bu Ning could answer, she knew the reason—there seemed to be movement on the mountainside.
At night, Songyun Mountain is surprisingly quiet, and the voices from a hundred meters away are close at hand as long as they are not deliberately restrained.
Bu Ning's stone formation was not finished after all, and he hurried down the mountain road with Zhang Biling.
They went too fast to know. Not long after the door was closed, Wen Shi, who had been sleeping for three days on the couch, suddenly opened his eyes.
***
When Bu Ning and Zhang Biling went down the mountainside, they saw the fine cracks on the wall at a glance, as if they had suffered a heavy blow.
Not surprisingly, this is the source of the voice just now.
"Someone went up the mountain?!" Zhang Biling's first reaction was this, she turned around suddenly and looked around.
Before she could find the trace, Bu Ning said, "It wasn't made outside the house."
"It's not outside the house? Could it be..." Zhang Biling stared at the room and murmured, "Is it made in the house?"
When they pushed the door and entered the house, they found that the damage inside was more serious. There was a depression, and the dense cracks extended from there to all sides.
It was actually made in the house.
But there were only two people in the house before—
Zhang Yalin was tortured badly by the ancestors of the Zhang family. It is difficult to say whether he is alive or dead. Lying there like a piece of dead wood in the shape of a human being, even his vitality is indistinguishable, so there must be no such traces.
Then only Xiaqiao is left...
But Xia Qiao has always been timid and weak, and neither Shen Qiao's skills nor Wen Shi's skills have been learned. To get a crack of this magnitude, he might have to break a bunch of bones first.
Zhou Xu thought so, briefly took control of his body, and looked towards the bed where Xia Qiao was.
I saw the people who were sleeping curled up facing the door before, and I didn't know when to change their direction, facing them with their backs, their foreheads against the wall, and curling inwards.
You can see by the lights in the house that he is shaking.
I don't know if it's scary or painful...
"He turned back and forth several times before, and he was still talking, and he looked like he was about to wake up." Zhang Biling stared at the person on the bed, paused and said, "I don't know if it's because of the shadow or something, I feel like he He's grown a little taller, and his hair is darker than before..."
When she said that, Zhou Xu also felt—
From the back, Xia Qiao was slightly different from what he had imagined.
"You said he kept talking, what did he say?" Zhou Xu asked Zhang Biling.
"It's too vague, I can't hear it at all. It seems that I called my grandfather and my brother. Later, the tone of voice changed, so I couldn't hear what he was saying."
Zhou Xu walked to the couch and vaguely saw the man's profile, it was indeed Xia Qiao. He closed his eyes and frowned, as if he was trapped in a chaotic dream, and he seemed to be suffering some kind of pain that could not be escaped.
Zhou Xu saw that he was shaking so badly, he finally couldn't help but stretched out his hand and pushed him, shouting, "Xiaqiao? Xiaqiao you—"
"roll!"
A hoarse voice sounded low.
Zhou Xu only had time to see Xia Qiao, who was curled up, raise his hand, and Bu Ning took the main seat.
In the next instant, he took two steps back sideways.
As soon as he stood still, he heard a loud bang in the house.
The hand that Xia Qiao threw away was like a wind blade, hitting the wooden table and the wall, leaving a deep ditch.
If this falls on a person, the bones will already come out.
Zhou Xu looked at the deep ditch, and then looked at Xia Qiao, who was still curled up and trembling on the bed.