Chapter 32 (1/2)

Before coming here, An Zheng had thought that the Illusory Perennial Domicile had been the only place to live withinthe Blue Boorish Mountain. If people had not been pushed to a dead-end, then they must have came here unwillingly, or they were refugees.. If not, no one would have come to such a place in the middle of nowhere like this place. People of the Sixteen Kingdoms of You Yan had wanted to hide themselves from war, or they were the scoundrels who were being hunted down by the criminal justice system. Those were the reasons why they came to live in the Blue Boorish Mountain. These people had the same thoughts that they would have died no matter where they had lived. Therefore, it would have been better for them to have risked their lives in the Blue Boorish Mountain because they might have had a better chance to live.

The terrain here was dangerous and rough, so why had the people made a road here? Moreover, the rock wall was s.h.i.+nny, and there were even wallpapers on it…

The existence of the wallpapers was not too special. The South or the West where there were original Mediation Sects, wallpapers were quite developed. However, in the North where everything was chaotic, it would have been very hard to be able to have seen the wallpapers. The content of the wallpapers were usually about an event of a sect, climate, or about something that was important.

However, the wallpapers which An Zheng was looking at were all about battles.

They showed the b.l.o.o.d.y scenes of murder. People in the wallpapers looked like the slavers who were digging out something. After that, some black objects jumped out from the mountain and had killed them all. Continuously, there might have been an army coming towards the mountain, and there was also a pract.i.tioner who was controlling the flying swords. Finally, the army and the pract.i.tioner had won, and those black creatures were caught or killed.

The remaining wallpapers had peeled off due to their old age, so nothing could now be clearly seen. Behind An Zheng, the Unicorn engraved Bird still did not give up. It still broke the cave with its beak. Therefore, An Zheng did not dare to stop. He followed the road to keep going forward. At the broken areas, he had followed the cave wall to climb up. After about ten miles, the path was now wider.

There was a big crack in front of him leading towards a valley. From the cave, the entrance was very small. An Zheng came from the south, and he looked at the north from afar, so he could see the northern border of the valley from the cave.

When they had moved into the valley, the kitten then went out from An Zheng’s chest. The star reflecting in its eyes was moving very rapidly. It looked at the valley and said meow as if it was quite excited.

An Zheng followed the rock wall to climb down and realized that there were plants growing in the valley, and these plants werecompletely different from the ones growing on the outside. The plants were a couple of evolution cycles different from the mainstays of the herbs and vegetations that were growing on the outside. He felt as if he had just entered the entrance of the highly fabled Shangri-La. He was even more amazed when he saw that the valley full of medicinal herbs. Moreover, there were also white and red herbs, so it must have been the reason why the Unicorn engraved Bird was still on the outside. It was due to the herbal valley inside of the mountain. Based on the scale of the herbal valley, he thought that someone had seeded and cultivated the valley. However, no one had taken care of the valley for a very long time. Therefore, the herbs had grown very disorderly.

From An Zheng's position, he could see that small pieces of stones had been arranged in a line, but most of them were hidden by the herbs.

He followed the small road to get closer. The closer that he came, the more surprised that he was. Because no one had harvested this herbal valley, the herbs had grown very well. It was very hard to see the fourth-level ginsengs in the outside world, but there were at least some of them in there. There were ginsengs, Giant Jade Lingzhi, and the Snake Bone Gra.s.s… this place was really a big botanical museum.

If someone had found this place, a b.l.o.o.d.y battle might have ensued. The army of the Sixteen Kingdoms of You Yan would have tried by all means to have taken over this place. If people of the underworld had known about this place, it would have become a graveyard for the pract.i.tioners.

Some basic herbs had even evolved to jade or even the white level because they had grown up in a perfect enviroment, so its conditions were immaculate. Therefore, An Zheng began to wonder why the soil in this area was so special.

After about three miles, An Zheng saw a cottage.

– “Anybody here?”

An Zheng tried asking, but no one answered.

He moved forward carefully, and he unclearly saw a person behind the windows. He stopped with haste and said with his hands clasping:

– “I visited this place by accident. I really don’t want to bother you, Senior. Please forgive me.”

This place was not an ownerless place. If An Zheng had wanted to ask for some herbs but the host did not accept, then he would have just asked for a way out. However, after some questions, the person still did not answer, so An Zheng said ‘excuse me’ and moved towards that person. When he was close to the windows, he then realized that the person was just a dried up corpse, and he did not know for how long that person had been dead for.

Because the herbs there were green and the herbal air was strong, the corpse had not been rotten yet. The corpse was of a man around seventy years old. He sat next to the windows and looked outside. His eyes had not been ruined yet, and they revealed loneliness. Although he was a dried up corpse, he seemed to use to have been a special man when he was alive, a courageous man.

– “He must have been a venerable senior living in solitude.”

An Zheng bowed to the dried corpse respectfully:

– “I just need some herbs, so I will not destroy this place. This is your lifetime confidant, so I will not dare to destroy anything.”

Having bowed, he looked around:

– “Although I don’t know who you are, I think other people may have disrespected you if they had seen this place. So, I would like tomake a tomb and bury you.”

He looked around the cottage and saw that it was terribly ragged and that it could have collapsed at any given second.

Coming closer to the corpse, An Zheng found some texts on the table. They must have been from the old man before he had died.

Guarding the tomb for five hundred years,

and no fairy found at last.

Looking at this human world,

and asking whose karma that was?

An Zheng could not explain the meaning of this poem. If explained based on the texts, then this senior had lived more than five hundred years ago or even longer. He insisted on living alone here in order to guard an ancient tomb? But why did he say ‘no fairy found at last’, and then asking ‘whose karma that was’? Without knowing of the situation of this senior at that time, I will never understand the meaning of the poem.

An Zheng knelt down on one leg: