novelraw Chapter 31 The Tail of the Azure Dragon - The Leopard of the Winnowing Basket
Chapter 31 The Tail of the Azure Dragon - The Leopard of the Winnowing Basket
When Lu Siye opened his eyes, his body was warm.
He lay in a pool of hot water, up to his chest, his back pressed against a smooth stone.
The outlines of the distant snow-capped mountains were faintly visible in the twilight.
He stared at the sky for several seconds, his mind working very slowly.
spa.
He sat up abruptly, water splashing all over his face.
A muffled groan came from the side.
Baozi sat in the opposite pool, covering his head, his expression very unpleasant, his eyebrows furrowed.
The middle-aged man leaned against the edge of the pool, in the same posture as before, with a smile on his lips that made you want to punch him.
He saw Lu Siye sit up, his gaze shift over, pause for a moment, and then his smile widened slightly.
"Awake?" the uncle asked.
Lu Siye did not answer.
His mind was still working, piecing those fragments together piece by piece.
Avalanche, cliff.
Then he woke up.
Soaking in the hot spring.
Was it another dream?
No, it's not a dream.
It's an illusion.
Just like the dream I had in the hot spring before.
No, he was the one who created that dream too.
From Tang Yuan on the train to the sycamore trees at Taoyuan University, and then to the avalanche and cliff just now, it was all an illusion created by this person.
Lu Siye raised his hand and pinched his cheek.
pain.
But then he remembered that he had also felt pain in the illusion just now.
So whether it hurts or not is meaningless. He can feel pain both inside and outside the illusion, so he can't distinguish between them and can't use that to judge.
He lowered his hand and looked at the older man.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The man did not answer immediately.
He tilted his head, looked Lu Siyue up and down, his gaze lingering on Lu Siyue's face for a few seconds before moving to Baozi, who was rubbing his temples, and then back again.
"It's fortunate that I was the first star you encountered," the uncle said, "otherwise, if you had met another star, you would have really died."
Constellations.
The fragments of the Four Divine Beasts of the Extreme Yang Realm recorded in Mo Zhanchi's notes.
Legend has it that by gathering all four powers, all filth can be banished to the realm of extreme darkness.
Su Nian went to the Southern Wilderness to find this thing, the relic of the Vermilion Bird.
Therefore, constellations are not things.
The constellations are people.
Lu Siye's mind raced in that instant, bringing up all the fragments from before.
Mo Zhanchi's notes, fragments of the Four Divine Beasts, the power of the Extreme Yang Realm, constellations... these things have always existed in his understanding in the form of "objects".
A fragment, a relic, something that can be collected, used, and consumed.
But the uncle was sitting right in front of him, alive and breathing, drinking alcohol, joking, and getting up to run every morning at five o'clock.
Are the constellations people?
Baozi woke up too, her voice still hoarse and bewildered from struggling out of the illusion.
The middle-aged man stretched and raised his arms above his head.
"I'll assume you've passed," he said, lowering his hands and leaning back against the rock. "I didn't mean to make things difficult for you; I was just testing whether you were qualified."
"What level is it?" Baozi asked.
The man did not answer the question.
He stood up from the water, water gushing down his body, picked up a towel from the rock, and began to dry himself.
Baozi watched him wipe his body and suddenly thought of something.
"What kind of reward do we get if we pass?"
he asks.
"Since you've tested us, you should at least give us something in return."
The uncle paused for a moment while wiping his body.
He turned his head, glanced at Baozi, then at Lu Siye, and then smiled.
"Didn't we already give you the reward?" he said.
Lu Siye and Baozi exchanged a glance.
Then the two of them looked down at the same time and looked at their left hands.
There is a new mark on the back of my left hand.
The mark is blue, a very deep blue.
Shaped like an animal, a running cheetah with its body stretched out, limbs outstretched, and tail whipping in a smooth arc behind it.
The cheetah's outline is not a solid line, but is composed of countless tiny, star-like dots that shimmer and twinkle beneath its skin.
Lu Siye stared at the mark for several seconds.
He didn't remember when or how the thing appeared.
In the illusion, he felt nothing unusual, no pain, no burning, nothing at all.
It was as if it had always been there, but he had never noticed it.
"What is this?"
Baozi asked, turning his left hand over and over.
The mark on the back of his hand was exactly the same as Lu Siye's: a blue cheetah in a running posture, its outline composed of countless star points.
He touched it with his right hand and scratched it with his fingernail, but the mark didn't change. It didn't hurt or itch; it was like something growing inside his skin.
"What's the use? I can't feel any change."
Lu Siye couldn't sense it either.
He circulated his primordial qi throughout his body. It was the same qi that came out of his dantian, traveled along the meridians, passed through his limbs and bones, and finally returned to his dantian.
There is no difference from before.
He then tried to probe his consciousness into the mark.
Try to sense whether there is energy flowing in this thing.
There was nothing there.
The mark is like an empty shell, with nothing inside, or something that he can't perceive.
He looked up at the older man.
The middle-aged man was already dressed and standing by the pool, tying his shoelaces.
Do you know about the four elements?
The uncle asked without even looking up, focused on tying his shoelaces.
Lu Siye and Baozi exchanged a glance.
"I don't know," Baozi said.
The middle-aged man paused for a moment while tying his shoelaces.
He looked up at them, sighed, squatted down by the pool, and began to draw on the wet, slippery stone floor with his finger.
He first drew a large circle, then drew four directions inside the circle, and wrote words in each direction.
The handwriting is messy, but still legible.
"The Azure Dragon of the East belongs to the Wood element."
His finger touched the far left of the circle and drew an arc from left to right.
"The constellations are composed of Horn, Neck, Root, Room, Heart, Tail, and Winnowing Basket."
The White Tiger of the West belongs to the metal element.
With my finger on the far right, I drew an arc from right to left.
"Kui, Lou, Wei, Mao, Bi, Zi, Shen".
The Vermilion Bird of the South belongs to the element of fire.
With my finger at the bottom, I drew an arc from bottom to top.
"Well, Ghost, Willow, Star, Zhang, Wing, Chariot".
"The Black Tortoise of the North belongs to the Water element."
With a finger at the top, draw an arc downwards.
"Dou, Niu, Nü, Xu, Wei, Shi, Bi".
His finger touched the character "箕".
"I belong to the tail end of the Azure Dragon's seven constellations, the Water Leopard of the Winnowing Basket. I belong to the Wood element."
He stood up and dusted off his hands.
"Of you guys, one has no attribute, one is earth, and one is water."
"Since your primordial energy attributes don't match, there aren't any special skills for you."
Baozi opened its mouth slightly, then closed it again.
He looked at the blue cheetah on the back of his hand, then at the uncle.
"So this mark is..."
"Watermark?"
"It's not that nothing has changed."
The man said to put his hands into the pockets of his tracksuit.
"Take a look at the vital energy within your bodies. Is there a bluish substance there?"
Lu Siye closed his eyes.
He sank his consciousness into his body, through his flesh, bones, and meridians, until he reached the location of his dantian.
That primordial energy is still there.
As before, nothing has changed.
But there was something else next to it.
It wasn't primordial energy; it was something he couldn't explain.
The color is blue, transparent, and lustrous, like the depth of the deep sea water penetrated by sunlight.
It floated quietly in a corner of the dantian, maintaining a distance from the white primordial energy.
It was as if they were reluctant to get close, or as if they were separated by something.
Very small.
It is about one-third the size of the primordial energy ball.
But it is bright, not in a glaring way, but in a soft way.
He opened his eyes and saw that Baozi was doing the same thing.
With eyes closed and brows slightly furrowed, his consciousness was submerged within his body.
A few seconds later, Baozi opened her eyes, looked at Lu Siyue, and nodded.
"Yes," Baozi said, "a small blue clump next to the primordial energy."
The middle-aged man nodded, as if confirming something he had expected.
"This is the power of the constellations that I'm giving you," he said, his tone becoming more serious, no longer as casual as before. "With this cluster of constellation primordial energy driving the Xia Lan technique, it can effectively suppress the power of the Extreme Yin Realm."
"If ordinary primordial energy hits Zero, it will shatter and be gone."
"But the Starry Sky Qi is different. When it hits Zero, it leaves a wound inside their bodies. This wound will not heal and will remain, constantly consuming their Zero power until they are completely purified."
Baozi looked down at his left hand, where the blue cheetah on the back of his hand glowed faintly in the twilight.
"Also," the man spoke again, his tone more somber than before, as if he were saying something he didn't want to say but had to, "didn't you Xia Lan create a divine pendant?"
Lu Siye and Baozi both raised their heads at the same time.
"I heard from the mountain spirits that it seems to have been polluted," the uncle said.
The divine pendant has been corrupted.
Lu Siye's fingers curled up involuntarily.
The god fell.
The most powerful weapon of Jiugongling, a treasure formed by generations of Xia Lan with their lives and primordial energy.
Under pressure from radicals, Jiugongling was handed over to the state for safekeeping.
Xiaoman once said that the military used the power of the divine pendant to create the Guardian Legion and mass-produce artificial Xia Lan.
Now the uncle says that the divine pendant has been corrupted.
"What contaminated it?" Lu Siye asked.
The older man glanced at him, his gaze carrying an indescribable meaning.
But he didn't say it aloud; he just shook his head.
"You don't need to know that."
"All you need to know is that the Star Constellation Qi Cluster can ignore the bonus from the Pollution Divine Pendant and directly damage the main body."
He paused, then added a sentence.
"Regardless of whether the original body is human or something else."
Baozi opened his mouth as if to ask something, but the uncle had already turned away.
He picked up the towel that was on the rock, draped it over his shoulder, and started walking outside.
He took two steps and then stopped, turning back to look at the two people still soaking in the pool.
"How much longer are you going to soak? The water's getting cold."
Neither of them took any action.
Who is "The Ballad of the Mountain Spirit"?
The man paused for a moment.
He stood on the stone path by the pool, his back to them.
He was silent for two seconds, then turned around with a helpless expression on his face.
"The Ballad of the Mountain Spirit," the uncle said, his tone carrying a faint, almost imperceptible nostalgia, "is one of the most remarkable Xia Lan in your line of work over thousands of years."
Baozi blinked.
"Never heard of it."
"That's normal," the middle-aged man turned around and continued walking forward, his voice drifting back from ahead, somewhat scattered by the wind, "You probably wouldn't recognize each other now. By the way, don't you guys read books regularly?"
Lu Siye and Baozi exchanged a glance.
"Who would bother flipping through ancient books for no reason?" Baozi muttered. "Only Su Nian and Yi Songjin would bother to take them out and tell us about them."
The man didn't stop walking, but his shoulder twitched slightly.
He pushed open the back door of the gym and went inside. His voice came through the crack in the door, muffled.
"Forget it, forget it. I don't know him anyway. That taciturn guy probably wouldn't even bother to write it down."
The door closed.
Lu Siye and Baozi were still soaking in the pool, looking at each other.
The water in the pool had indeed cooled down a bit, not as hot as before, but it was still bearable.
Baozi spoke first.
"So... Xingxiu is actually quite easy to talk to?"
He said it with a sense of relief, as if he had survived a disaster.
"I thought it would be like those ancient books, where you have to overcome many obstacles, offer sacrifices, and answer riddles to pass the test."
"The result was that I soaked in a hot spring, had a nightmare, and then they gave us a ball of blue primordial energy and a tattoo."
Lu Siye looked down at the blue cheetah on the back of his left hand.
The outline formed by the stars glowed faintly in the twilight.
"Do you think that was just a normal nightmare?" he asked.
Baozi paused for a moment.
His expression changed for a split second.
It wasn't fear, nor sadness; it was something more complex, a mixture of relief and lingering pain.
His lips twitched as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he just shook his head.
"It's unusual," he said, his voice much softer than before, "but it's not entirely a nightmare."
The two remained silent for a while.
The sound of water gushing from the cracks in the rocks was particularly clear in the quiet twilight.
Lu Siye stood up, water dripping down his body, and picked up a towel to dry himself.
When he wiped his left hand, he paused for a moment, his gaze falling on the blue cheetah.
"The uncle just said," Lu Siye said while putting on his clothes, "that it was lucky we encountered him first, otherwise we would have really died if we had met any other star."
Baozi was putting on his pants when he heard this and paused for a moment.
"What about the other constellations?"
Lu Siye zipped up his jacket and stretched his shoulders.
He said that not all constellations will integrate into human society.
Lu Siye went through the uncle's words in his mind, trying to repeat them as accurately as possible.
"Some of them still choose to live in their original form, that is, in beast form. They won't create an illusionary trial for you; if you die, you really die."
Baozi paused for a moment while tying her shoelaces.
"Beast form?"
"Yes. It's... what real stars look like. Not human."
Baozi was silent for a few seconds, then looked down at the blue cheetah on the back of his hand.
"So... this thing on the back of our hand, its true form might be..."
"Um."
"A very, very large cheetah that eats people?"
"perhaps."
Baozi tied her shoelaces, stood up, stomped her feet to make sure her shoes were secure.
"Fine. We've already taken their things, so we can't just return them."
Lu Siye put on his last piece of clothing, picked up Baozi's phone from the edge of the pool, and handed it to him.
There were several unread messages on the screen, all from Xiaoman, asking where the two of them had gone and why they hadn't returned yet.
Baozi glanced at the phone, didn't reply immediately, put it in her pocket, and then looked at Lu Siye.
"What did he mean by his comment about your scent?"
Lu Siye paused for a moment.
The uncle's words echoed in his mind again.
"They'll beat you to death because of the smell you have."
"After all, the beast-like constellations act almost entirely on instinct, and the Sin Seal in your hand will ignite their most primal desire to attack."
"I could smell it from a great distance on the snow-capped mountain, let alone them."
He remembered what the uncle had said in the illusion.
"Do you think you're qualified to become the Four Symbols Heroes?"
At that time, he didn't understand what that sentence meant.
Now he probably understands.
It's not about asking them if they're qualified, it's about telling them.
You are not qualified, far from qualified.
He took a deep breath and suppressed those thoughts.
"We should be thankful," he said calmly.
"What's there to be thankful for?"
"We're so glad we encountered him, not some other star."
He turned around and walked towards the back door of the gym, but stopped after a couple of steps and looked back at Baozi.
"Think about it, an uncle who has run a gym at the foot of a snow-capped mountain for decades, gets up at five o'clock every day to run, and likes to talk to young people about life."
"Would you choose a man-eating cheetah that wants to tear me apart just by smelling me?"
Baozi thought for a moment.
"Uncle."
"So," Lu Siye pushed open the back door, "we should be thankful."
He went inside.
The gym's back corridor was dark, with only a dim wall lamp at the end of the corridor.
The uncle is no longer here; he's probably gone back to the hotel.
The corridor was quiet, with only the sound of his footsteps and Baozi's footsteps echoing behind him in the narrow space.
Baozi followed behind, and after a few steps, he suddenly spoke.
"Why do you think he helped us?"
Lu Siye did not answer.
He didn't know either.
The uncle didn't say, and probably won't.
Perhaps it was because of boredom, perhaps because of having too much free time, or perhaps because they had been on the snow-capped mountain for too long and wanted to talk to someone.
There may be a deeper reason, or there may not be.
Sometimes, someone helps you without needing a reason.
He quickened his pace.
Wen Ranran is still in the hotel.
Xiaoman and Baozi agreed to have dinner together.
These are the things he needs to think about right now.
We'll talk about the stars, the fall of God, and the seal of sin later.
Finish the tasks at hand first, one by one, and move on to the next after finishing one.
He walked out of the gym; it was already completely dark outside.
He walked back to the hotel, his steps much lighter than when he came.
Not an enemy, at least not now.