Chapter 12

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He ascended onto the back of the divine bird with his umbrella, and rose against the wind amidst the roar of the winter storm, fluttering in his white clothes, as handsome as a god. The herdsmen on the desert uttered a wave of exclamation, all kneeling down to worship him, as if the gods descended on earth.

She watched him from distance, from inside the tent where he imprisoned her, and instantly fell in a trance. Her mind suddenly flew back ten years in the past. Thinking in retrospection, the first time she met Shi Ying, she was only eight years old. At that time, as the only princess of the Red Clan, she left Xihuang for the first time and followed her father to the Jiuyi Temple. Before that, she had just passed a life and death calamity and narrowly escaped from the terrible red fever. The Great Wizard of the clan said that her father had made a great vow for her in front of the gods, and after she recovered from her illness, she must go with him to the Jiuyi Temple to thank the God for his blessing.

Hearing that she could go out to play, the child cheered up, but she didn’t know that it would take more than a month to finally arrive to Jiuyi. The temple dedicated to the Twin Gods of the Cloud Desert Genesis was majestic and magnificent. There was not a single woman inside, all priests and attendants who came to practice from all over the world were men, all with stern faces and unsmiling appearance.

After staying for two days, she started to feel extremely bored and secretly wandered in the foothills of Jiuyi Mountain while her father took a nap. Having seen the mirage on the tablet of the dead and the waterfall of the Yellow Springs flowing back from the Cangwu Abyss, the bold child secretly broke into the forbidden territory of the Valley of Kings behind the temple.

After the Emperor Kongsang was buried in the mysterious valley, a wall of iron bricks was built at the entrance and liquid copper was poured all over. The door was heavily guarded, and no one could enter without the permission of the Great Priest. Fearless of heaven and earth, she secretly ran over, looked around, and suddenly found that the doors were left half open.

A God-given opportunity! The child jumped of joy, and without thinking twice she squeezed inside through the half-open door, and ran forward. There was no one inside the Valley of the Kings, and the wide and flat tomb passage led to the depths of the valley, with branches connected with the mausoleums for a long time, one branch intertwined after another, with its long history, stretching from 7,000 years back to the present. The child had great courage and was not afraid of the tombs sparse all over the valley. She just went all the way to the deep of the valley to find the tomb of the legendary Emperor Xingzun, the ancestor founder of Kongsang.

Suddenly, she heard a sharp roar: deep in the deserted Valley, a huge white bird fluttered from the jungle, its feathers shining white and dazzling as snow in the sunlight.

Holy bird! Is that the legendary Chongming divine bird?

The brave child immediately went crazy and ran towards the Valley of the Kings, completely unaware of the signs of war that began to appear along the way. There were swordsmen laying on the grass on the side of the road. It must have just ended a fierce fight.

After running for half an hour, out of breath, she finally got to the place where the white bird was resting. Before getting too close, the white bird suddenly turned its head, opened the eyes and stared at her fiercely; that beautiful bird had a pair of eyes on each side of the head, as red as blood, like a demon! The bird also held the corpse of a person in its mouth, only half of the body, dripping with blood.

“Ahh!” The child felt frightened, took a step back and fell to the ground. How can this sacred bird eat people? Is it… it is a demon?

She screamed and turned around to run away. However, the white bird looked over viciously, gave out a shrill cry, spread its wings and chased after her, stretching its neck toward the foolhardy child and giving her a peck in the air!

She cried out in exclamation, and suddenly flew into the mist.

“Stop!” Someone descended from the sky at the moment of her death, waved her into the sleeve of his robe, and lifted her up, while with the other hand pointed to block the sharp beak of Chongming.

The huge divine bird suddenly bowed its head obediently.

She was shocked, huddled into his arms tight, and looked up to see the face of the savior. If it wasn’t for this person, she would have been pecked and eaten by the four-eyed bird as a snack. It was a sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy with a handsome face. He was wearing a white robe with a jade pendant on his waist. The clothes were simple, with a high crown and wide sleeves, unexpectedly dressed in an ancient style. The whole person looked indifferent and quaint, as if he had just walked out of an ancient tomb.

Startled, she couldn’t help but blurt out: “Are you… are you a living person or a dead person?”

The young man did not reply, but frowned and glanced at the trembling child in his arms: “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

His hands were warm and his heart was beating slightly in his chest. She breathed a sigh of relief and muttered, “I… My name is Zhu Yan. I came here with my father to worship the temple. When I saw the door open, I came in…”

The boy glanced at her, his gaze fell on the family emblem embroidered on the corner of her clothes, then he faintly said: “It turns out that you are a member of the Red Clan.”

“Mm-hmm! Who are you? Why are you here?” She nodded, and her fear finally faded. She looked curiously at the handsome young man who suddenly appeared in the depth of the valley. Her eyes lit up and suddenly raised her hand. “Oh, you have a beauty tip here!”

“…” Before her finger had a chance to poke his forehead, he opened his arms and threw her to the ground. The child let out a cry and fell so hard that she almost burst into tears.

After he threw her away, the young man brushed his sleeves and called back the big bird who went to grab food again, then whispered: “Chongming, don’t move; she is not in the same group as this dead people here, so you can’t eat her!”

After being stopped, the white bird with four eyes squatted back and stared bitterly at her. The sharp corner of its mouth was still bleeding but the half person she was holding before, had been already eaten. Zhu Yan couldn’t help but let out a cry of exclamation, and hid behind the young man – there were weapons scattered all around the place, blood dripping among the vegetation, covered with stumps and arms; it seemed that many people had just been killed.

“This… what’s going on?” The child was frightened and stammered.

“It’s nothing,” the boy said lightly, “an assassin sneaked into the valley just now and was killed by Chongming.”

“Is that so? It… it eats people!” She leaned out from behind him and glanced carefully at the big snow-white bird. “Is it a demon?”

“Only eat the wicked ones.” The boy said lightly, “Don’t be afraid.”

The bird rolled its eyes and looked at the child, purring in its throat.

“Hey, it screams like my golden sniper! Did you raise it?” The heartless child suddenly became bold again. She almost stuck on the white bird’s wings and touched its white feathers.

“Can I pluck a feather? It’s so beautiful, it must look good when it’s cut and pinned on the clothes!”

Without waiting for her to come closer, the bird flapped its wings, rolled up a whirlwind and threw her back into a somersault.

Thinking back now, this must be the reason why Chongming never liked her? Because from the first meeting, she had this mean idea and tried to pluck her feathers.

The young boy didn’t reply, he gave the eight-year-old child a cold look, frowned, and asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“A girl, of course! Am I not pretty?” She cried out discontentedly, glanced at the white bird again, and pulled his tunic. “Big brother, please let me take a piece of feather for my dress! Okay?”

“She is a girl?” The teenager ignored her plea, his body suddenly tightened, and his eyes became a little strange. “How did this happen?… Is the prophecy going to come true?”

“What prophecy?” She was a bit dumbfounded. She asked the question, but shuddered immediately. The young boy’s eyes suddenly became very strange, looking straight at her, the pupils seemed to become entirely black all of a sudden! The sleeves of his robe did not move, but the hands inside the sleeves were quietly raised and pressed slowly towards the top of her head. Between the fingers, a sharp light started to flicker mysteriously.

“What’s wrong? Big brother, you… why are you shaking so badly?” The eight-year-old child didn’t know that she was in danger, she just stared at the young man in a daze, preoccupied, “Are you sick? Do you live here alone? Shall I call a doctor for you?”

The child looked at him with concern, her pupils as clear as a pool of autumn water, reflecting the empty valley with its white clouds, so bright that one could not hold a direct gaze.

At that moment, the young man’s hand had already pressed her against the spiritual platform, trembling slightly for a moment, but suddenly put her down, his hand landing on her soft long hair, touching it with a delicate caress, and finally let out a long sigh.

“What’s the matter? Why do you sigh?” She could not understand his trembling, not knowing that she just walked back and forth from the gate of the ghosts in that moment, she just complained, “Are you reluctant to give up? That four-eyed bird has so many feathers, I only need one piece, can’t I have one? So stingy!”

“…” The young boy’s eyes regained coldness, and after a short glance, he picked up the noisy child and whispered to himself, “Forget it, she’s just a child; maybe it doesn’t matter if you don’t kill her?”

“What?” She was startled, “You…are you going to kill me?”

The teenager ignored her, he just picked her up, threw her back outside the fence, and warned her sternly: “Remember, never tell anyone that you were here today, let alone that you have seen me! If you break into the forbidden land of the King’s Valley again without permission, you will get beheaded!”

The child was frightened, and didn’t dare to talk about it anymore, but she couldn’t help her curiosity. She could only walk in a circle and ask the people around for information: “Hey… I ran to the mountain yesterday, and while I was playing there, I’ve seen a figure in the valley from a distance! Why is there still a living person in that valley full of dead people?”

The curious child went back and asked the other attendants in the temple, only to realize that the young man living in the deep valley was named Shi Ying, a young priest in the Jiuyi Temple. He was only seventeen years old, but he has been practicing in Jiuyi Temple for twelve years. With magnificent spiritual power and superb skills, he is known as the only genius that Yunhuang has seen in the past hundred years. He usually lives alone deep in the mountains, is a vegetarian dressed in commoner clothes, is accompanied by a sacred bird, and never comes into contact with anyone except the Great Priest.

“Remember, you can just look at him from a distance, but don’t try to disturb him,” the attendant in the temple patted the little child on the head and exhorted, “the young priest doesn’t like to talk to people, and the Great Priest won’t allow him to talk to anyone; whoever dares to get close to him and try to speak, will have to suffer!”

However, she was obstinate and curious by nature, how could she give up so easily? The next day, Zhu Yan sneaked back to the fence, but the door was closed, so she tried to climb over. But as soon as she climbed, she felt like she was hit by an electric shock.

“Ahh!” she cried and fell back to the ground, with such pain, that her buttocks seem to be about to split into four pieces. What’s going on? That elder brother must have done it, right? Did he guard her from running in and plucking the four-eyed bird’s feathers?

Zhu Yan walked impatiently around the fence, but there was nothing she could do to get herself in. In the end, she had to climb the cliff on the other side of the valley and look down at the man in the valley, shouting and begging him in every way to make him take her with him. However, not only did the bird ignore the child, but even the teenager never said a word back to her again; he seemed to be a born mute.

She shouted for a long time and started to feel bored, so she sat down under a tree in frustration and looked at them.

The Valley of the Kings is extremely quiet, as silent as death; there are only countless tombs among the verdant trees, and it seems that there will never be a breath of living person.

The young man practiced very hard. Every day, regardless of the wind and sun, he sat cross-legged on a white rock every day and closed his eyes. While sitting, sometimes he will fly up from the ground, open his arms and whirl in the air like a bird; other times he will summon all kind of animals, let them dance in line, make them advance and retreat in an orderly manner; and some other times he would open the palm of his hand and lotus flowers would bloom into his hand, then it would turn into various forms of clouds…

The child was stunned and fascinated.

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