Chapter 270: Grass Clippings
A dark cliff, a lonely mountain path, an abyss so deep that one couldn’t see their hand in front of their face. Only the wind blowing against them, carrying strands of hair and the hem of robes past their cheeks.
The deeper the night, the more conspicuous the white ceremonial robes. At the summit of Mu Valley, the elderly zither player slowly stroked the frayed threads newly scraped up on his instrument’s strings, silently thinking: One tune breaks the heart, two shatter the soul, and after three, could this illusion still fail to trap you? Could there truly exist a human whose Dao heart is utterly unstained by dust?
He was an elder of a southern Wu tribe, left behind in exile. His specialty was mental attacks; his zither’s music could conjure illusions indistinguishable from reality. Tonight especially, leveraging the momentum of Zhou Garden’s Mu Valley, the illusion he crafted could make any intelligent being who entered it see the most distant, hazy, and unforgettable fragments from the upstream of memory’s river—making them unwilling to return, gradually intoxicated or rather sinking into it, until finally falling into a prolonged slumber, never to leave again…
The elderly zither player had no idea that high above Mu Valley, a black dragon’s separated soul was watching everything, and had been dragged into this illusion by his music.
The black dragon saw many scenes from hundreds of years ago—traces of dragon aura that only her bloodline could perceive, the spiritual impact brought by Mu Valley’s true form, which only she could recognize. Back when she stood with Chen Changsheng in the wilderness gazing at Mu Valley, she had felt a stirring, as if someone were calling to her. Only now did she finally understand why this world made her so sorrowful: Zhou Garden was not merely that human’s home; it was also the tomb of her father, the most powerful Xuan Shuang giant dragon in a thousand years.
The elderly zither player knew nothing of this. The person his zither’s illusion aimed to trap was that white-robed girl; naturally, she was the focus of his attention. What the white-robed girl saw in the illusion, he didn’t know. He only knew that she never wavered for a moment, never grew intoxicated or sank into it. She merely stood quietly for a while beneath a solitary tree on the cliff, then saw through the illusion and broke it with ease.
She bit her own fingertip and let a drop of blood fall toward the heavens from which the zither’s music came. That blood, tinged with gold, solemn and sacred yet fiercely violent, as if containing boundless energy… effortlessly burned through the clouds and mist, destroying the illusion woven by the zither’s notes. Was that blood the legendary true blood of the Phoenix?
The elderly zither player’s expression shifted slightly as he gazed at the mountain path in the night, but he said nothing. Everyone in Snow Old City knew a taboo: never mention the word “Phoenix” in front of Her Highness Princess Nanke.
“The essence of life is desire and chaos. There is no absolutely transparent soul. Cultivation cannot polish the Dao heart to be utterly free of dust. On the contrary, her spiritual world is more complex than you imagine. She has layered many disguises over her Dao heart. Your zither’s music only touches the shallowest few layers—how could it move her? If it can’t even move her, how could it confuse her?”
The little girl spoke with an indifferent expression. “Actually, I’m curious. If she keeps disguising herself like this—sometimes a saintess, sometimes ordinary—will she one day forget who she really is?”
“If that happens, she will face enormous problems in the future.”
The elderly zither player, lost in thought, gently plucked a string. A condensed, unbroken stream of energy followed the note, continuing to isolate this mountain ridge from the real Zhou Garden world.
The little girl had never expected the zither’s illusion alone to trap her opponent. That white-robed girl had broken the illusion easily with her blood, but the illusory realm still lingered. To leave, she would have to come and meet them.
Come and meet them.
The destined encounter was tonight.
Gazing at the mountain path in the darkness, she said expressionlessly, “Phoenixes, those mad creatures, always end up burning to death in desire. But I will make sure she dies by my hand before she burns.”
The night wind blew along the lonely mountain path. The ceremonial robes fluttered like a cloak. The white-robed girl seemed to move slowly but was actually very fast, arriving at the summit of Mu Valley with the grace of a crane.
There were no stars in Zhou Garden’s night sky, but deep within the grassland below hung a dim, hazy glow. What was that? Pondering these things, she looked toward the little girl sitting by the cliff’s edge.
The little girl stood up, turned around, and said, “You’re here.”
The white-robed girl was stunned. The moment she saw the little girl, she guessed—or rather, confirmed—who her opponent was. Someone so young yet so powerful could only be the legendary demon princess, Nanke. What surprised her now was that she had never imagined Nanke would look like this.
Nanke appeared to be about ten years old. Her features were actually quite delicate, with a lingering childishness—she could be called a very pretty little girl. But the distance between her eyes was slightly wide, her dark, cold pupils tilted slightly toward the center of her brow, and the emotions in her eyes were wooden, giving her a somewhat dull look.
She looked like a village girl whose daily task was to go to the back mountain to gather a large basket of pigweed, then eat and sleep, waiting for dawn to go gather another large basket of pigweed.
Yes, she was just a village girl. Her life was gathering pigweed every day.
For some reason, the white-robed girl thought this, even though she had never lived in the countryside, never gathered pigweed, and didn’t even know what pigweed looked like. Yet she thought it anyway.
If this was a destined encounter, Nanke must have imagined it many times. So had she.
She had thought she would see Nanke as a proud, solitary peacock. In all the legends, the Phoenix could command all birds, but only the peacock remained forever cold and aloof, flying alone where the sun never shone. She had never imagined that Nanke would look like a little girl who gathered pigweed every day—somewhat dull, somewhat wooden, somewhat pitiful, inexplicably stirring sympathy, endlessly gathering pigweed.
This made her, unexpectedly, seem a bit dazed too.
The night wind on Mu Valley blew gently. Time flowed slowly.
She didn’t know what to say, feeling a inexplicable tension. She felt she didn’t know how to face this little girl named Nanke, so she turned her gaze to the elderly zither player.
She was the Heaven’s Mandate True Phoenix; with a single glance, she could see the truth.
She saw that the elderly zither player was an elder of the Candle Yin Wu tribe. His combat power might only be at the peak of the Tongyou realm, but his strength in the spiritual domain far exceeded that level. Using him to kill human cultivators in Zhou Garden was most suitable. The demon army’s strategist, Black Robe, indeed left no detail to chance.
Still, it was a pity.
She looked at the ancient zither on the old man’s lap, at the fraying strings, and shook her head regretfully.
That was the ancestral sacred artifact of the Candle Yin Wu tribe, lost for many years—the Yao Qin.
If that Yao Qin had not been used to set up the dual illusory realm, but instead coordinated with Nanke in an attack, she might have been in real danger, possibly even killed.
Nanke said, “I will kill you. No one else may interfere.”
As she spoke, the little girl’s black hair danced in the night wind, as if bits of grass clippings were falling from it.
(Stopping in the middle of climax is indeed extremely unsatisfying. I’ve been really unwell these past two days and can’t hold up well. Sorry, please bear with me. But when I wrote this part, I was truly… I don’t want to say ‘dedicated’—should it be ‘moved’? The chapters from here on will probably be the biggest climax since the start of Ze Tian Ji. Please allow me to take it slowly.)