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

Chapter 503 Waiting for the person in memory to come

At the intersection of the holy land veins, hundreds of acres of emerald "spiritual leaves" are suspended. These translucent leaves expand and contract with the tides of the sun and moon, inhaling turbid air in the morning and exhaling purified spiritual energy at dusk. The texture of the leaves is actually a three-dimensional map, marking the real-time spiritual energy concentration. During the Grain Rain season, the leaves collectively shrink into a bud shape, and the annual turbid air crystallization ceremony is carried out inside. The dark crystal clusters discharged will be absorbed and transformed by the roots of the Stardust Flower. Last month, a piece of spiritual leaf accidentally hardened into an emerald tablet. The inscription on the tablet turned out to be a prophetic spiritual energy distribution plan, which has now become a revelation for the Elders to dispatch resources.

The wise men of the Black Turtle Clan engraved the classics on the surface of the "Ten Thousand Pupils Stone" - this strange stone is covered with eyeball-like patterns, and each pupil is the entrance to the three-dimensional library. Readers need to press their fingertips on the iris and adjust the flow of knowledge by the degree of pupil contraction. Ah Ying almost got lost in the "Eye of the Blue Netherworld". The ancient star map was imprinted on her retina. After returning, she saw clouds arranged in oracle bone script within three days. The current curator is a pupil demon. Her three thousand compound eyes store indexes of different classification methods. When she blinks, a book spirit butterfly will flutter and fly out from between her eyelashes.

The demon tribe regards disease as an art of imbalance, and the "Epidemic Doctor's Office" is actually an aesthetic restoration center. Coughs are transformed into glass bells hanging under the eaves, fevers are transformed into furnace fires for forging sword embryos, and even plagues are guided into ever-changing fog paintings. I once saw a deer demon with heart disease receiving treatment. The doctor used moonlight marrow to draw a maze on his chest. The runaway blood flow precipitated into coral in the maze, and when it was finally taken out, it had become an exquisite inner carving ornament. The most amazing is the love sickness treatment - the patient is immersed in the mirror spring until the reflection in the water grows an independent spirit to bear the emotional pain on his behalf.

At midnight on the winter solstice, an anti-gravity snowfield appears on top of the ancient sycamore tree. The demon tribe holds a "floating snow banquet" here, with tea sets made of frozen clouds and snacks made of hexagonal ice crystal platters. The tea soup is suspended in a weightless state into a crystal water ball, and you need to touch the surface with a siphon to sip. Once, Ah Ying accidentally knocked over a jar of star sugar, and the sugar grains formed a nebula vortex in zero gravity, attracting tea drinkers to play gravitational wave music with straws until the morning light re-anchored the snowfield to the earth.

In the "Lianli Garden", there are magical plants grafted with memories. Two memories are sealed into twin buds, and when the flowers bloom, the two consciousnesses will entangle and coexist. The memory kapok that once saw the enemy in the war, the roots shook hands and made peace underground, but the crowns were still simulating fighting. The most poignant one is the "Liren Willow". The grafter comes to cut branches regularly, weaves the faded love memories into baskets, and holds the joy of new life. The gardener is an amnesiac tree demon, and his annual rings store the backup of the joys and sorrows of the entire holy land.

Deep in the archives of the Holy Land, the mermaid shaman recreates the atmosphere of the past by burning "Suicui Incense". The salty smell of the primeval tsunami rises from the ashes of ambergris, and the burning of fir resin releases the chill of the Ice Age. During the Lantern Festival special exhibition, a wisp of burning incense accidentally summoned the breath of the ancestral demon spirit, and all the demons present showed their original true nature for three days: the black fox degenerated into a ball of hair, the black turtle floated into an embryo, and even the ancient sycamore curled up back to the seed form, and was reborn after sleeping for 72 hours at the bottom of the Moonlight Spring.

The "Liuguang Treasury" on the west bank of Mirror Lake stores solidified fragments of time. The orange light at dusk is compressed into amber coins, the moonlight at midnight is frozen into silver ingots, and the purple lightning before the thunderstorm is quenched into dangerous currency. Borrowers need to mortgage their dreams or memories. Ah Ying once pawned her childhood sense of smell in exchange for three quarters of rainbow light, and the dead tree used for watering actually bloomed seven layers of phantom flowers. The most bizarre thing was that the vault was stolen last year, and the thieves were frozen in the stolen twilight, becoming an eternal warning sculpture.

Injured demons can go to the "Blood Weeping Garden" for spiritual healing. The blood beads oozing out of the wound are guided into flower seeds. After being planted in special soil, the blooming flowers will absorb the pain. Ah Ying has seen a broken-winged phoenix grow a flame iris, and each petal is a practice sketch for regenerating wings. The most shocking thing is that when the white dragon cuts its scales to heal its wounds, the ice crystal mandala blooming in the pool of blood actually seals its old form that fell ten thousand years ago, and on the full moon night it will turn into a mist dragon and wander around the mirror lake.

The Black Turtle tribe uses magnetic sand to paint ever-changing murals on the square. Sand grains will take on different colors when they are stained with different emotions: joy turns to gold, sorrow turns to blue, and anger turns to red. Every morning and evening, the whole tribe meditates collectively to change the direction of the sand painting, and the life span of the work does not exceed twelve hours. On the day of the Waking of Insects, the turtles inject their hibernation memories into the sand sea, which instantly condenses into a kilometer-long 3D Winter Palace phantom, and birds fly through it, bringing up an avalanche-like sand waterfall spectacle. All the sand grains eventually return to the central hourglass, and the moment it runs out is the time when art is immortal.

In the reed marshes on the south bank of Jinghu Lake, there is a circular singing stage activated by sound patterns. On the waxing night of each month, the vibration frequency of the mermaid singer's throat must resonate with the lunar craters, and the ripples carved by the sound waves on the water surface will condense into a visual musical score. In the "Tide Sound Festival" on Midsummer Night, the lead singer replaced the throat beads with meteorite iron cores, and the singing actually awakened the bronze chimes buried deep at the bottom of the lake. The inscription revealed when the thousand-year-old copper rust peeled off was the "Thirteen Chapters of the Sea and Moon" lost by the demon clan. Today, these chimes are suspended in a constellation array, and whenever the tidal force changes, they automatically play the rhythm of the corresponding solar term.

The "Bone Shedding Pool" deep in the Black Turtle Tribe's territory is filled with stardust pollen and mantle minerals. The bones of the person who soaks in it will temporarily soften into a chalcedony shape, and reshape their bodies as they wish. Ah Ying has seen bear monsters extend their metacarpal bones into glass claws, and flower monsters transform their spines into vine structures. The most shocking thing is the coming-of-age ceremony for the young children of the Spirit Snake Tribe - they break all 206 bones in the pool and let them reassemble into the form of a swimming dragon. The steaming blood mist condenses into a red dragon pattern on the dome, which lasts for three days.

However, the people of the Holy Land generally suffer from a strange synesthesia: the rainwater tasted by the black turtles tastes like bronze, and the love words in the eyes of fox demons appear as spiral spots. What's worse, when the annual rings of the ancient sycamore grow, all demons will synchronously sense the heartbeat of the sandalwood scent. This disease reaches its peak on the "Rainbow Halo Day" - when the aurora overflows the barrier, sadness materializes into blue crystals, joy turns into gold powder, and even longing has the crispy taste of almond candy, and the entire Holy Land becomes a feast for the five senses.

There are also mirages in the holy land, which are not illusions, but temporary buildings molded by the mirage demon with morning mist. These mother-of-pearl pavilions have a short lifespan but are fully functional: the operating room made of morning mist can remove painful memories, and the confessional built by dusk will grow sin-removing vines on its own. The most legendary thing is that in the rainy season that year, the entire arena took shape in an instant in the lightning, and after the epic duel between the black bird and the dragon, it dissipated into 700 rainbows as the rain stopped, and the secret of victory and defeat was forever sealed in the depths of the spectrum.

It is said that people in many foreign places can see an illusory castle that always appears in one direction. It cannot be approached or distanced, and it also carries the legend of leading to the fourth heaven. That is the mirage of the holy land.

Therefore, the rumors were not wrong, because the holy land was the last place where the demons entered the fourth heaven, and the library stored the methods to go to the fourth heaven. However, no one remembered who entered the fourth heaven and through what methods.

And every moonlit night, the demons would wrap dodder around their temples and connect them to the "dream web" made of ancient sycamore mycelium. The collective subconscious converged here to form a vast sea of ​​stars, fear turned into meteor showers, and desire condensed into nebulae. That night, they collectively created "A Dream of a Thousand Pupils", with each participant having a narrative perspective. After waking up, the dream book co-authored by everyone recorded three hundred parallel endings.

The Xuanniao tribe also uses the "Nirvana Needle" to perform spiritual tattoos, with the needle tip dipped in plasma of different emotions: happy blood draws wing patterns, angry blood draws flame patterns. Tattoos are not only decorations, but also compressed survival memories - lightly touching the fire feather pattern on the shoulder blade can reproduce the burning pain of the ancestors passing through the thunderstorm layer. The apprentice promotion ceremony requires completing the "Hundred Sufferings Chart" without anesthesia. When the last needle is inserted into the coccyx, all the pain will flow back into light wings and burst out, and phosphorescent fire will bloom on the spine for three days.

At the top of the food chain in the Holy Land stands the python-shaped digestion tower "Taotie Throat". The offerings are decomposed in the nine fermentation chambers and finally burst out from the top of the tower as liquid poetry. On the day of the sacrifice, Ah Ying threw in three pounds of morning frost. After seven days of squirming, the tower spit out the "Ninglu Fu" with the rhythm of bronze chimes. The rebels once secretly stuffed weapons into the tower, and as a result, the tower erupted with the battle cry of "Pozhenzi", and the sound waves shattered the granite three hundred miles away. From then on, the tributes must be purified by the sea of ​​stardust flowers before entering the tower. The "Frozen Time Bay" in the tributary of Mirror Lake is rich in time sand, and the mermaids run an underwater hourglass farm here. Each hourglass is an independent time bubble, and the speed is adjusted by the cultivated time worms. Those who accidentally enter the acceleration zone will witness the corals complete a thousand years of growth in the blink of an eye; those who fall into the stagnation zone will even have their thoughts frozen into amber specimens. Last month, an hourglass broke, and the leaked time slurry froze the entire reed marsh at dusk. To this day, a nightingale is still hanging in the air, flapping its wings forever.

That was one of the places that Ah Ying was most curious about. It was vaguely similar to the things in the past that she sometimes recalled. Unfortunately, she was unable to understand it in depth.

The "ground-stomping dance" performed by the Black Turtle tribe at the altar is actually a geological stabilization technique. The frequency of the tortoise shell hitting the ground is synchronized with the convection of the mantle, and the copper bells on the ankles can dissolve the stress of the plate. In that grand ceremony that lasted for three days and nights, the dancers stepped on the ground to create magma patterns, the audience's bones resonated uncontrollably, and even the water in the Mirror Lake boiled into geometric ripples. When the dance was over, the elder's shell shattered, revealing a map of the center of the earth with lava veins, which has now become the ultimate blueprint for the holy land's earthquake resistance.

In the resonant valley in the southeast corner of the holy land, there grow "song ferns" that absorb sound. These spiral plants transform sound waves into growth patterns, love songs give birth to pink and white petals, and battle cries breed thorny fruits. Flower fairies regularly hold "sound therapy sessions", humming healing melodies to the ferns, and the sound patterns crystallize into medicinal stones that can repair the cracks in the soul. On a full moon night, Aying once witnessed the entire nursery run wild - the infrasound waves of the ancient sycamore rings triggered the ferns to grow wildly, and the vines wove a three-dimensional scale maze in the air, and those who trespassed would be solidified into human-shaped musical notes hanging on the branches.

The mermaids breed "tear shells" in the abyss of Mirror Lake. These soft-bodied creatures parasitize the host's tear glands and transform emotional tears into pearls. Tears of joy condense into golden beads adorned with smile lines, and tears of sadness condense into gray beads with rain sounds. A rebellious dragon boy secretly breeds tear shells, and his angry tears explode into miniature thunderstorms, destroying the entire coral field. The tear shell ranch is now supervised by a blind witch, who uses her empty eye sockets to collect the purest tears of repentance, and refines black jade beads that can illuminate the karma of past lives.

But when Aying went to look, she couldn't see anything. She felt regretful, but the other party didn't know the reason either.

After all, my mind always thinks of things that I don’t know about, and maybe my past life was also vague.

There are many such strange places in the Holy Land, such as the weavers of the Xuannv tribe weaving "Rainbow Clothes" in the ionosphere, with the golden shuttle threading the solidified aurora and the weft being rain threads in a weightless state. The ready-made clothes have their own climate attributes: the fluttering of the cloak can summon drizzle, and the rotation of the skirt can gather flowing clouds. The famous "Burning Heaven Wedding Dress" is embroidered with 360 stars. When the wearer dances, solar prominences burst out around the body. On the wedding night, the sunset glow of 30,000 miles was accidentally ignited, and the night sky still has a burnt dark red nebula.

Oh, and most importantly, the "Mirror of Residual Memory" under the library will deconstruct the memory of the person who touches it. The complete experience is disassembled into independent sensory fragments: the cold feeling of touching an icicle, the trembling frequency of a love word.

But as usual, Aying didn't get the answer she wanted, as if she was an unsolved mystery.

The elders of the Black Turtle Clan will enter the "Time Cocoon" before their lifespan ends, eating away their own memories and spitting out time threads. These white threads can be woven into a swaddling cloth to prolong life, but overuse will lead to a historical fault. The famous "Great Dark Cocoon" seals the centuries-old memories devoured by an elder. When it is unfolded, it releases a torrent of time without images, and those who come into contact with it will fall into a dizzy state of nothingness without beginning or end. It is now sealed in the deepest cracks in the ancient sycamore tree's annual rings.

Such things are useless to Aying. She seems to have been born in the holy land, but is outside the rules of the holy land.

It's like walking through a sea of ​​flowers without getting a single leaf on you.
Even though, in the depths of Mirror Lake, there are translucent "memory fish" swimming around. They feed on dissipated memories, and their bellies store random fragments of history. Fishermen use emotions as bait: the melancholic fish catch the twilight of childhood, and the angry fish capture the echoes of battlefields. Last month, a memory fish swallowed too many ancient memories and evolved dragon horns and claws. Its migration track carved the lost "Return to the Ruins" on the lake surface. Those who touch the water ripples will suffer from marine nostalgia, and the sound of whale falls will echo in their ears all day long.

Ah Ying was not able to fully understand it, but the appearance of the dragon's horns and sharp claws reminded her once again of the image of a young man in her memory, walking in the dust with a few people, and gradually growing old.

I don’t know when, after wandering around so many places in the Holy Land and witnessing so many laws, an idea gradually came to Ah Ying’s mind: “Maybe I should go look for the person who appeared in my memory.”

This idea is ridiculous because memory has a lag. How can we possibly wait for things that happened in the past?

However, she never found the answer in the library. In the dark, only the person in her memory could bring her the answer. So she often walked around the area outside the holy land, waiting for the person in her memory to come.
(End of this chapter)