You said you would practice martial arts. Have you mastered the Tiangang Dharma?

Chapter 501 Memories Dispersed
When the morning mist begins to disperse, crystal dew condenses on the aerial roots of the ancient sycamore trees. These drooping emerald curtains sway gently in the morning breeze, filtering the sunlight into thousands of golden-green threads that pierce obliquely into the air filled with floating fern spores. Seven-colored lichens grow at the knotted roots, and every time dew drops roll over, they make a clear sound like bluebells. Young girls often see the old banyan tree demon meditating here, his brown beard and hair have long been integrated with the aerial roots, and the dodder sticking out from his clothes blooms small goose yellow flowers in sync with his breathing.

On the rock wall east of the spiritual spring, swifts build nests with milk vetch juice. These translucent nests cast amber spots of light at noon, and when the newly hatched chicks peck at the misty honey sent by the flower fairy, the down feathers at the base of their wings will glow with rainbows. When the girl passed by yesterday, she happened to see the white dragon molting in the cracks of the rock. The stalactites where he was perched were scraped by the reverse scales, and the fallen old scales turned into silver butterflies in the air. Some of them landed on the girl's sleeves, and their tentacles still carried the breath of thunder.

The Firefly Pond deep in the sea of ​​stardust flowers is the most mysterious place in the holy land. There are always unopened water lilies floating on the water surface, and the meridians of each lotus leaf are different star maps. At midnight, a blue flame will rise from the bottom of the pond, and the lotus seeds that have been sleeping for thousands of years will stretch in the flames, revealing the star cores wrapped in the petals. On the night of the coming-of-age ceremony of the little princess of the Black Turtle Clan, the girls saw twelve star cores blooming at the same time. The bursting light dyed the entire sea of ​​flowers into a glass color, awakening the yarrow monster in Yunmengze 300 miles away.

The canopy of the ancient sycamore trees is inhabited by the cloud nests of the black bird tribe. These nests woven with rainbow light and phoenix feathers change shape with the seasons, like weeping crabapples in spring and gilded lanterns in autumn. In the early morning, young phoenixes often practice singing by the nests, and the sparks falling from their beaks are caught by the long-awaited lantern grass, which accumulates into dancing balls of light in the broad leaves. The girl picked up a faded fire feather and inserted it into a crystal bottle in the study. Late at night, it would hum the ballad of nirvana.

The mermaids' weaving house is hidden in the reed marshes on the west bank of Mirror Lake. They draw the moonlight marrow into silver threads and weave the mermaid silk with water chestnut shuttles. The silk is as thin as a cicada's wing, but as heavy as black iron after being soaked in water. Last year, a girl accidentally entered this place during the rainy season and saw several mermaid girls weaving thunderclouds. They twisted cumulonimbus clouds into cotton threads and shuttled back and forth with a loom made of dragon scales. The brocade they wove spread out in the sky and was filled with rosy clouds.

The amber forest in the northeast corner of the holy land is the territory of the dream-eating tapir. The amber that solidifies ancient insects is actually the crystallization of dreams. Whenever the moon passes the zenith, a lavender mist will seep out of the crystal. A few days ago, the girl helped Mr. Bai Ze collect Monroe and witnessed the dream-eating tapir touch the amber with its long nose, and instantly released the fragments of memory of the primitive times - saber-toothed tigers stalking in the ferns, pterosaurs flying over the boiling magma sea, and those long-dead creatures howling to the sky in the mist.

In mid-spring, the vine monsters will hold a flower festival on the Panlong Pillar. The aerial roots of the strangler figs entwine the white marble columns, and the flower spikes of the bleeding vines are like waterfalls. The delicacies on the banquet are all the essence of heaven and earth: ice crack porcelain plates are filled with condensed dew, carved silver cups are filled with flower wine, and the best is the moon ball made of blue phoenix eggs. The moment you bite through the glutinous rice skin, a clear light will flow between your lips and teeth. When the banquet is in full swing, the flower monsters will scatter petals into the air, and each petal will turn into a colorful dancer before landing.

The Star Pavilion of the Black Turtle Clan was built in the center of the meteorite crater. The armillary sphere on the top of the pavilion was made of the star sand of the twenty-eight constellations, and it would project the stars in the sky at midnight. That night, the girl followed the elders to observe the Mars in the heart, and saw the armillary sphere suddenly burst into red light, and the illusion of a burning battlefield emerged from the cracks in the tortoise shell. Mr. Bai Ze immediately activated the Star-suppressing Pestle, which led the evil spirit into the earth veins, and the star sand boiled in the eye of the formation for three days before it stopped.

The misty corridor at the edge of the holy land is a natural barrier. The seemingly fragile weeping jasmine is actually murderous. The guardian spirit sleeping in the stamen will wake up when an invader approaches, and the vines will instantly harden into a cage. The girl once saw the broken sword of a human monk stuck in a wisteria tumor, and the spiritual stone inlaid on the hilt has been corroded by the miasma and turned gray-green. The stone tablet deep in the corridor is engraved with demonic prohibitions, and the remaining spiritual power fluctuations can still allow those who approach to hear the roar of the ancient giant demon.

The sacrifice on the full moon night is the most solemn moment. The nine-tailed fox tribe held the ice soul collected from the far north, the black turtle tribe presented the star iron that had been tempered for a hundred years, the mermaids held the snail cup filled with moonlight marrow, and the elders of each tribe chanted prayers around the spirit core. When the roots of the ancient sycamore resonated, the sacrifice turned into streams of light and merged into the earth veins. During the sacrifice last year, the shadow of the ancestor black bird emerged in the spirit core. The track of her tail feathers left a golden totem on the rock wall, which is still faintly hot at midnight.

When a rainstorm comes, the holy land will activate the Water Moon Mirror Flower Array. Billions of raindrops hover on the surface of the barrier, reflecting an inverted phantom city. The brave little demons often reach out to touch the rain curtain, and when their fingertips pass through the phantom, they will be stained with the breath of another world - either the roughness of the yellow sand outside the Great Wall, or the warmth of the misty rain in the south of the Yangtze River. In a thunderstorm many years ago, the array accidentally penetrated the cracks in time and space, and the girls glimpsed the palace in the sky through the rain curtain. The mocking wind beast squatting on the glazed tiles was seven points similar to the young son of the black turtle clan.

The Falling Leaves Festival in late autumn is the most wanton carnival for living creatures. All the withered leaves are infused with spiritual power and transformed into red-gold firebirds circling the sky. The flower fairies throw the withered flower crowns into the air, and the demons who catch them will receive the blessings of the flower givers. A girl once picked up the fallen leaves of the black bird tree at the festival, and the residual warmth in the leaf veins turned into a young man in red. His figure dancing on the fire cloud is exactly the same as the red bird totem on the rock painting.

The frost ceremony on the winter solstice is related to the maintenance of the earth veins. Each tribe selects young cubs with pure spiritual power to collect frost crystals before the morning dew. These ice crystals must be sent to the underground palace before noon and embedded in the eyes of the cold jade array along the direction of the spiritual veins. Last year, the girl followed Mr. Bai Ze into the underground palace and witnessed the spiritual energy released when the frost crystals melted, like a silver snake wandering, outlining a totem older than the oracle bone script on the rock wall. Those twisted lines are clearly the primitive demon script of the dragon clan before it differentiated.

The awakening of all things during the Jingzhe season is the most shocking. When the first spring thunder strikes the ancient sycamore, all the hibernating creatures open their eyes at the same time. The lightning is guided into the ground along the aerial roots, and countless buds instantly burst out of the frozen soil. Those emerald-colored growth tracks interweave into a light network in the air. The most amazing thing is that the ancient seeds sleeping in the depths of the amber forest have grown into strange plants three meters high after being baptized by thunder. The floating light spots on the back of the leaves combine into a long-lost demonic music score.

These repetitive cycles are engraved into eternal rhythms deep in the tree rings. When the whispers of the stardust flowers and the tinkling of the moonlight spring blend in the twilight, when the vibration frequency of the black tortoise armor resonates with the fluctuations of the earth veins, the girl can always hear the sound of the ancient times in a trance - that is the contract made when the original demons and the sky were connected, and it is the most primitive oath of symbiosis of all things.

Yes, it used to be able to reach the sky, but later on, for some reason, it could no longer do so. It seemed that many people had looked for the answer, but none of them succeeded. The girl once went to the oldest library to look through ancient books, but she seemed to have found nothing, which was a little regrettable.

The days gradually became dull, and she just had a vague curiosity and expectation about the fourth heaven. It would be great if someone could take her up there to have a look.

"Will anyone be able to go to the fourth heaven? What does the fourth heaven look like?" the girl asked. The observatory at the highest point of the ancient sycamore tree hides the biggest secret of the holy land. The positions of the Big Dipper always correspond to the seven spiritual orifices in the tree canopy. When the Purple Palace moves to a specific position, the bark will crack open a gap that only allows moonlight to pass through. Last Mid-Autumn Festival, Mr. Bai Ze took the girl into this "sky gap" and saw the truth of the origin of the demon race in the hollow of the tree heart - countless luminous hyphae entangled into a huge cocoon, in which the ancestor demon spirit who had not yet differentiated his five senses was sleeping, and the frequency of his heartbeat was completely synchronized with the library thousands of miles away.

At the intersection of the ancient sycamore roots, there is a "ground fire kitchen" run by the stove weasel spirit. Twenty-four bronze cauldrons are embedded in the cracks of the magma, slowly stewing the vegetarian soup made from Kunlun snow lotus. The closet is decorated with screaming fog mushrooms and automatically peeling moonlight shells, and the spider silk hanging from the beam is used to filter the thundercloud wine lees. The most amazing thing is the thousand-year-old fire marrow stove. The flames often jump out of the Bifang bird that steals the fire, and the sparks scattered when the stove god chases it with a spatula can ripen the red fruits in the entire medicinal field.

When a demon child reaches the age of 300, he or she must complete the "Spiritual Awakening Ceremony" in the sea of ​​stardust flowers. The flower spirits use dew to draw star totems on their foreheads, the mermaids sing tide music to temper their ears, and finally the elders of the black bird tribe light the tail feathers to conduct the soul burning test. Last year, I witnessed the little fox demon accepting the test. Her original form revealed in the fire of karma actually had a fourth tail. The leaping fox fire dyed the entire alfalfa field a dark blue, which frightened the black turtle tribe and rearranged the star disk overnight.

When the girl heard this rumor, she was surprised: "Can a fox demon grow nine tails?"

She was vaguely curious, as if a long time ago, she also had a nine-tailed fox in her arms. She couldn't remember which one was bigger, but there was always a sense of divinity in the other one, cold and indifferent, yet cute, and much more powerful than herself.

When the abnormal red sun lasted for nine days, the holy land activated the "Praying for Rain Formation". Nine hundred demons held ice souls to form a ring formation, the white dragon attracted the electric charge in the clouds, and the mermaids evaporated the moonlight marrow into artificial rain clouds. The most shocking thing was that the ancient sycamore tree probed its roots into the underground water veins three thousand feet deep, and the water vapor evaporated from the leaves formed a rotating cloud vortex at the top of the barrier. Last year, the formation went out of control and caused hail. The soul of the ancient winged fish was sealed in the ice crystals that fell. When it melted into soup in the kitchen, it sang the dragon clan war song.

Under the bright appearance, there are scavenger monsters in the decaying tree holes to maintain the ecological balance. The ghost moth uses its wings to decompose fallen leaves, and the phosphorescent spores are the breeding ground for new colonies. Even the excrement will be converted into biogas by the swamp monsters and transported to the stoves of various tribes through hollow vines. A girl once mistakenly entered the "Guixu" deep in the humus layer and saw the spiritual power of the dead monsters condensed into fireflies. The star sand excreted after being swallowed by the luminous worms is the main source of nutrients for the sea of ​​​​stardust flowers.

When the wandering cranes from afar bring news from the outside world, the diplomatic etiquette of the Holy Land has a unique charm. The reception hall is set up in an upside-down stalactite forest, the tea cups are thunderstorms frozen in black ice, and the snacks are the fragrance of seasonal flowers compressed into crystals. Last time, many monsters from outside the Northern Wilderness visited, and the Holy Land set up the negotiation table on the surface of the Mirror Lake. Mermaids used bubbles to pass documents underwater, and the seal condensed from moonlight marrow produced pansy patterns when it touched silk, causing the compass in the sleeve to spin wildly.

To the west of the ancient sycamore tree are hidden twelve arches covered with moss, each stone arch corresponds to a different solar term. On the Spring Equinox, passing through the "Qingzhe Gate" entangled with vines, you can see translucent solar term elves emerging from the cracks in the stone, holding dandelion umbrellas and chasing the afterimages of lightning. The most magical thing is to pass through the "Daxue Gate" at midnight on the Winter Solstice. The accumulated snow will automatically pile up into an ice crystal palace, and the icicles hanging from the eaves seal the dreams of the ancient snow demon. Last year, I mistakenly entered the "Chushu Gate" at the Beginning of Autumn, and I encountered two seasons wrestling here - the red of maple leaves and the gold of rice ears flowed and fought between the columns, until Mr. Bai Ze used the morning dew to mediate, and then condensed into an amber Beginning of Autumn barrier.

On the Qixian Slope on the east bank of Jinghu Lake, the black fox tribe plucked the natural stone harp with the tip of its tail. The spiritual ginseng soaked by the sound waves would sway in the soil, and the red fruits on the top would change color with the scale. When the ancient music "Jiushao" was played to the third chapter, the entire medicinal field would rise into the air, and the plants would weave into the shape of a blue bird in the air. A girl once took care of a mutant night-crossing vine here. It only absorbed the five notes of Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng, and Yu to grow. One day, after secretly drinking the tears of the black bird, it actually produced a gourd that could hum a lullaby, and was snatched by the cat demons to make a swaddling cloth for their cubs.

Half a quarter before sunset, the shadow of the ancient sycamore tree will become a physical entity. Shadow demons emerge from the inky branches, exchanging dark matter for treasures from the light world. Their currency is solidified twilight, and the trading table is covered with scales that have faded from the stars. Once, a girl exchanged three rays of morning glow for shadow world water, and the mandala watered with it actually bloomed a corolla that rotated counterclockwise, and the back of the petals showed the reflection of a parallel world - there, a huge bronze tree stood in the center of the holy land.

In the low-lying area in the northwest corner of the holy land, colorful mist rises every Gengshen day. This is an illusion formed by the liquefaction of overly rich spiritual energy. The plants and trees will reveal their previous life forms in the mist. The girl once saw the thousand-year-old ginkgo degenerate into ferns, and the vine monster turned into a giant python cruising in the mud. The most dangerous one was the bear spirit that broke into the mist last month. He touched the memory crystal cluster that had accumulated for thousands of years and was instantly pulled into the ancient battlefield. If Mr. Bai Ze had not dragged him back with the immortal rope, he would have been trapped in his obsession forever.

The dead of the demon race will not enter the reincarnation cycle, and their memories will crystallize into "tracing light stones" and sink into the mirror lake. After these crystals are swallowed by the clam spirits, the pearls will seal the fragments of the previous life. The thousand-year-old clam pearls salvaged last year actually contained the wedding scene of the ancestor nine-tailed fox. When the moonlight penetrated the pearl layer, the long-extinct rotating turtle sedan chair emerged in the void. The moment the curtain of the sedan chair was lifted, all the spectators tasted the taste of the peaches that had been lost for a thousand years.

The ancestor of the nine-tailed fox, every time I mention him, I feel a sense of longing and trance, as if a figure appears in my mind, but gradually dissipates.

In a trance, the girl murmured: "Who am I?"

(End of this chapter)