Warm breath brushed against her skin, and Nanshan suddenly pushed the person away: “What are you doing!”
Lingye, who was pushed away, closed his eyes tightly and fell straight down.
Nanshan was startled and quickly reached out to grab him, but they both fell together.
“Ah ah ah ah… ah!”
The hole in the air slowly shrank, finally disappearing completely after an hour, the sky was as clear as ever, as if it had never been damaged.
Nanshan didn’t know how long she had slept before waking up. When she opened her eyes, her hands instinctively grabbed at random, and ended up clutching a handful of snow.
Snow?
She suddenly sat up, and the next moment felt a painful ache in her back and waist, almost dying from discomfort, but she didn’t groan in pain; instead, she was startled by the scene before her.
All around was a vast expanse of white, nothing but snow.
She was in the middle of it, like a dried jujube kneaded into a bun, completely unable to tell east from west.
The clothes on her body were inexplicably dry, as if they had never been wet. Nanshan stared blankly at the snow in her hands, yet felt no chill.
What kind of snow is this? It doesn’t freeze my hands.
Nanshan frowned, just about to study it closely when her peripheral vision suddenly caught sight of a figure, startling her into falling onto her bottom.
“I thought it was someone else…” After realizing it was Lingye, Nanshan silently breathed a sigh of relief.
Lingye glanced at her and then turned his gaze away, a blatant act of ignoring her.
Nanshan pouted, following his line of sight to see a smooth piece of blue stone in the white snow, so polished it could reflect a person’s shadow.
“What is this?” Nanshan curiously leaned closer.
Lingye directly pushed her aside.
Nanshan twitched her lips and tactfully moved a bit further away from him.
Since arriving in the Underworld, Nanshan had not seen blue skies or white clouds. Now, standing in the endless snowfield, looking up at the azure sky made her mood uncontrollably lift.
With her spirits high, Nanshan felt the urge to talk to someone.
Although the person next to her was not suitable, after holding it in for a long time, she couldn’t help but lean closer again: “What exactly happened just now?”
To her surprise, Lingye did not ignore her this time: “Zhi Shen trapped you in the lake.
You retaliated intentionally, using the blood of your innate spirit bone to break the seal at the bottom of the lake, almost releasing the Seven-Legged Serpent.”
“…Stop twisting the truth. It was clearly you all who stood by and did nothing, which led me to be tempted by that serpent.” Nanshan was speechless.
Lingye raised his eyes: “Why were you able to be tempted?”
“I already told you, I heard its voice, and then my body was out of control…”
Before Nanshan could finish her sentence, Lingye suddenly conjured a sword glowing with blue light in his hand, pointing it directly at her throat: “Who exactly are you, and what is your purpose in the Underworld?”
Nanshan didn’t expect him to act so suddenly, freezing in place: “I-I am a mortal, from Sun Family Village in Nanshan County, here to marry you…..”
“Nonsense, how could a mortal understand the serpent’s whispers?” Lingye interrupted her.
Nanshan was taken aback: “Serpent whispers? What are serpent whispers?”
Her eyes were blank, as if she truly didn’t know, and Lingye’s brows gradually furrowed.
Nanshan came to her senses and quickly explained: “Are you referring to the voice of the serpent? I don’t know why I can understand what they are saying, but my mother said I could understand it since I was very small.
On the day I was born, over a hundred snakes came to celebrate, but because it was too strange, my parents didn’t tell anyone and forbade me from speaking about it.”
After saying this, she looked sincere, “Really, I swear I’m not lying to you.”
Lingye stared at her, trying to find some flaw in her expression.
Nanshan wanted to say more, but the sword in his hand suddenly dissipated into the air, and Lingye, who had been sitting upright, seemed to have slightly uneven breathing.
Nanshan then noticed that his face was as pale as paper.
“You… what’s wrong?” Nanshan asked cautiously.
Lingye frowned tightly: “I’m hungry.”
Nanshan: “…”
After a moment of silence, she couldn’t believe it: “You can’t be asking me to find food, right?”
Lingye stared at the mortal for a moment, seemingly realizing how absurd it was to ask her to find food, and then he changed the subject: “I consumed too much spiritual energy while fighting the Seven-Legged Serpent. Now my spiritual energy is depleted, no different from a mortal.”
Nanshan indeed forgot about the food: “How long will it take to recover?”
“About ten days.” Lingye replied.
Nanshan glanced at the vast snowfield: “Then… how do we get out?”
“Wait for my father to come and break the seal again.” Lingye looked indifferently at the sky.
The sky was clear and bright, as if there had never been a hole.
Suddenly, a snowball hit her sleeve, shattering into several pieces. Lingye looked at the broken snow on his sleeve, then expressionlessly turned to Nanshan.
“What are you looking at? You threatened me with a sword, and I can’t retaliate?” Nanshan said defiantly, forming another snowball and throwing it back at him.
This time it hit directly on his collar, the loose snow sliding inside. Although it wasn’t cold, it felt uncomfortable like sand.
“Sun, Nanshan!” Lingye suppressed his anger, coldly reminded her, “Don’t forget who saved you.”
Nanshan looked at the wound on his mouth and huffed: “If your friend hadn’t thrown me into the lake, I wouldn’t have needed you to save me.”
As she spoke, she began to form another snowball.
Lingye’s temple twitched, his expression still cold: “I just temporarily lost my spiritual power, not forever.”
“If I don’t retaliate now, can you guarantee you won’t trouble me again in the future?” After asking, Nanshan shook her wrist, the bright red coral beads contrasting with her fair wrist, “Besides, I have this. You can’t just kill me, right?”
She asked two questions in a row, and Lingye’s expression hardened, refusing to answer either, so another snowball came flying.
This time it hit him in the face, and as the broken snow scattered, even his brows and eyes turned white.
Lingye finally couldn’t hold back any longer and grabbed the snow nearby to retaliate.
Seeing this, Nanshan immediately rolled up her sleeves, ready to teach him a lesson.
The two inexplicably started a snowball fight, quickly making a mess of their surroundings. Nanshan didn’t expect Lingye, looking as if he might faint, to last so long.
She immediately formed a larger snowball to deliver a fatal blow, but Lingye was already prepared, dodging to the side as she threw it and then raising a large snowball he had ready.
“Wait!” Nanshan suddenly pointed behind him, “What is that thing?”
As soon as she finished speaking, the large snowball shattered against her face.
Nanshan: “…”
Lingye dusted off his hands and returned to his noble and aloof prince demeanor.
Nanshan spat out the snow in her mouth and ran to the blue stone. There, she saw a man and a woman cuddling together, crying over a baby in a swaddle.
She stared at it for a long time, suddenly widening her eyes: “That… looks like my parents… so young, why are they here?”
Lingye: “This is the companion stone of the Seven-Legged Serpent.”
“What does that mean?” Nanshan kept staring at the young versions of her parents on the blue stone.
Perhaps out of boredom while waiting for someone to rescue them, Lingye spoke more: “The so-called companion stone can only be possessed by serpents that have reached a certain level of cultivation.
By dripping blood into it, one can see fragments of their life. The higher the serpent’s cultivation, the more one can see on the companion stone.
It is said that the companion stone of the serpent ancestor from Hualao Mountain can show a person’s past and present.”
“That’s so amazing,” Nanshan felt a strange tremor in her heart upon hearing the name Hualao Mountain, but was soon drawn back to the blue stone, “But I didn’t drip blood on it.”
Lingye glanced at her.
She paused, then looked at the wound on her finger… It was from the injury she sustained at the bottom of the lake, probably from accidentally tearing it while playing in the snow.
The blood that seeped out got on the snowball, which then hit the stone, triggering the blue stone.
While Nanshan was lost in thought, a bunch of snakes appeared in the home on the blue stone, and she immediately pointed at the stone: “See, I didn’t lie to you.”
Lingye looked at the room full of snakes, his brows slightly furrowing.
“…Did you just say that mortals shouldn’t understand serpent whispers?” Nanshan probed.
Lingye turned his head, meeting her gaze before stating directly: “Serpent whispers are a unique form of communication among serpents.
Rather than saying mortals can’t understand, it’s more accurate to say only serpents can.”
“But I really am a mortal, and I can understand.” Nanshan pointed at the blue stone.
Lingye also didn’t quite understand why this situation occurred, and after a long silence, he could only come to a reluctant conclusion: “Perhaps you have some connection with the serpent clan.”
“If we’re talking about connections, it seems that the snakes I’ve encountered throughout my life have all liked me,” Nanshan said seriously, resting her chin on her hand, then quickly added, “Except for this one today.”
Lingye shot her another sidelong glance.
While they were talking, an old Taoist appeared on the blue stone. After saying a few words to Sun Jin, he took out a piece of red string.
Nanshan: “Your father is here.”
Lingye: “…”
The red string was a marriage string made from heavenly silk, commonly used by demons and spirits during engagements.
Such a common item was tied around Sun Jin’s waist as he carried little Nanshan in his arms, walking forward until he saw a local deity temple and directly entered.
The stone statue of the local deity inside looked remarkably similar to Lingye, clearly a product of someone’s handiwork.
“When I was just born, you were already like this,” Nanshan’s eyes widened.
She knew that deities lived for a long time, but seeing her infant self appear before a stone statue of someone in their twenties was still astonishing.
Lingye showed no reaction to her astonishment.
Sun Jin carefully placed his daughter on the altar, sincerely bowed to the local deity, then tied one end of the red string around his daughter’s body and the other end around the wrist of the stone statue.
Outside the blue stone, a faint red light suddenly appeared on Lingye’s left wrist, the color very similar to the red string.
Nanshan’s eyes widened, suddenly recalling that he had the same light on his wrist when they first met.
“Is the light on your wrist related to the red string?”
As soon as Nanshan finished asking, the Sun Jin in the image seemed to have made a certain decision.
He untied the red string he had just tied, found a pair of scissors, and snipped it into five sections.
He then re-tied one section to his daughter and Lingye, and after walking a short distance, entered a second local deity temple.
Lingye: “?”
Nanshan: “…”