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

Chapter 505 The illusion is shattered
Once again stepping into the library, Aying didn't know how many times she had come to this place. She just thought about finding a way to enter the fourth heaven, but she had never found any clues. Later, she placed all her hopes in dreams, thinking that if she met those people, she might be able to find a way to the fourth heaven.

However, when the four of them entered the library one after another and browsed the books with the permission of the library elder, she became bored again. She kept thinking of the youngest girl in her mind, probably the girl with bear ears on her head, who still looked so cute even though she had grown up.

Apart from the old man, this girl was the one she felt most familiar with, and she had a mysterious connection with her. However, she couldn't explain exactly what the feeling was. She was just bored and started looking for ancient books unconsciously.

In the library, an old book lies alone on a dusty bookshelf. Years have left deep marks on its yellow cover, as if every wrinkle carries a heavy history. No one cares about it, and it is forgotten by time in this corner. Surrounded by a dense sea of ​​books, some new and some old, each one tells its own story, but this book, like a forgotten old man, is quietly waiting.

The air is filled with the smell of mold and old paper, and the pages are mixed with the dust of time and the scent of ink from the past. Despite its age, the binding of the book still looks exquisite, and the remaining gold thread on the cover outlines a vague picture, which makes people imagine its former glory. Its existence is like a mystery, waiting for the interpretation of the destined person.

Next to the bookshelf, a dim desk lamp emits a flickering light, casting mottled shadows on the book, adding a bit of vitality to it. The light jumps on the cover, as if trying to wake up the sleeping text. But no matter how hard the light tries, the book remains silent, as if its life has passed away with the passing of time.

It was quiet all around, with only the occasional sound of footsteps and the rustling of pages. These sounds seemed particularly abrupt at this moment, highlighting the quietness and antiquity of the library. The books seemed to be waiting for something, waiting for a pair of eyes that could touch and understand them, waiting for someone who could read the story behind them.

However, time passed slowly, and the light in the library gradually dimmed. As the last ray of sunset disappeared outside the window, the book returned to silence. It would start a long wait again, until the next day, until the next possible reader appeared in front of it.

The reader was Aying. She opened the book unconsciously. Actually, she didn't care about the appearance of a book, because the contents of the books in the library could not be seen from the appearance. But to be honest, she didn't know how many books she had read in the library, but she couldn't remember clearly what she had read.

There are so many books here that it is impossible to remember them all, but Ah Ying doesn't mind. She just flips through them, her sight and senses changing.
The sunlight filtered through the emerald dome shattered into gold foil between the branches of the Jianmu tree. The boy stepped barefoot across the surface of the Mirror Lake, his toes creating circles of ripples. The seventeen-year-old boy took off his shirt, and the black scales on the back of his neck glowed in the sunlight.

If you look closely, he actually has many similarities with an old man who has just stepped into the library, as if he was evolved from the old man's past years, clean and handsome.

His eyes were like the deep night sky, dotted with stars, revealing a mysterious and elusive light. The black pupils seemed to swallow up all the light around them, leaving only his eyes, like two dazzling gems, flashing a resolute light in the darkness.

His eyebrows were thick and powerful, like a sword pointing straight to the sky, adding a bit of heroism to him. Upon closer inspection, there seemed to be a faint golden color between his eyebrows, which was the symbol of the dragon bloodline, representing his nobility and extraordinaryness.

His face was handsome and youthful, and his skin seemed to glow slightly in the sun. His nose was straight, and his mouth was slightly upturned, revealing a barely perceptible confident smile. His long black hair was casually draped over his shoulders, fluttering gently in the wind, adding a sense of elegance to his simple black robe.

He stood on the top of a towering mountain, with clouds and mist swirling under his feet, as if he was a god walking on clouds. The surrounding scenery, against his backdrop, also looked more magnificent and mysterious. The young man looked into the distance, as if his eyes were filled with infinite longing and expectation for the future, just like a young man with high aspirations.

He raised his head to receive the waterfall of light that filtered through the gaps between the leaves. The liquid golden light meandered down along the lines of his muscles, condensed into tiny beads of light at his waist and fell into the lake.

The Mirror Lake suddenly rippled with strange waves. The young man opened his eyes suddenly and saw a moon-white spirit fish breaking out of the water, its silver scales reflecting a colorful halo, and its tail swaying lightly, drawing an arc of light in the air. The spirit fish actually opened its mouth and grabbed his drooping hairband, turning around and trying to dive into the deep water.

"Axue!" The young man jumped into the lake, and the green scales spread from his spine down to form a dragon's tail. The water waves gently wrapped around his sturdy body. Through the rippling green, he saw the spirit fish transformed into a silver-haired girl, who was swimming among the corals holding his black-green hairband. The cheek lines behind her ears opened and closed with laughter, and where the tail fin swept past, the sleeping pearl oysters spit out their glistening pearls.

A whirlpool suddenly rose in the center of the lake, and thousands of light particles gushed out from the roots of Jianmu, interweaving into a glowing corridor underwater. The young man's tail swept across a fluorescent water plant, and the plant immediately stretched out its leaves, releasing all the stored starlight. The entire area of ​​water suddenly turned into a flowing Milky Way, startling groups of transparent jellyfish, whose umbrellas were filled with the light and shadow of Jianmu's annual rings, like a swimming history book of life.

The silver-haired girl suddenly stopped in front of a clump of blood corals and tied her hairband to the highest branch. When the boy caught up with her, he saw that his hairband had been soaked in the spiritual energy of water, and tiny ice crystals had bloomed between the lines of his black hair. Ah Xue lightly touched the water surface with her fingertips, and immediately a rainbow fish brought colorful shells, decorating the hairband like stars.

"Today's Jianmu is three times brighter than usual." The young man looked towards the light source and found that the roots of the sacred tree were writing ancient demonic characters underwater. Those glowing characters swirled up along the water flow, and when they touched the water surface, they turned into golden mist and were swept towards the flower fields by the wind demons who had been waiting for a long time.

Ah Xue suddenly reached out and pressed the boy's chest, and the green scales on his chest glowed with resonance. They both turned their heads to look at the eastern waters, where a group of jade-colored toads were returning with morning dew on their backs. The crystal containers on their backs reflected the entire forest.

Dusk pressed the first golden seal on the brocade flower field, and the hibiscus tree where the lark demon bird lived began to tremble. Each petal seemed to be pulled by an invisible thread, turning in unison towards the setting sun. The singer lightly jumped to the highest flower cup, and when his tail feathers swept the evening breeze, the entire sea of ​​flowers suddenly appeared with fine golden red fluff - that was billions of pansies stretching their pores at the same time, starting to swallow the last of the skylight.

The bamboo flute-playing boy sat cross-legged under a glowing pandanus tree, and the notes flowing from his lips became translucent vines, entwining the escaping rays of light. The captured twilight collapsed into amber droplets in his flute sound, and flowed into the ground along the leaf veins.

Ah Ying squatted on the observatory covered with dragon blood vines and saw the light liquid rushing along the roots of the Jianmu tree and condensing into a glowing stalactite forest at the bottom of the Mirror Lake a hundred miles away.

When the first star pierced the sky, the entire holy land was filled with tiny explosions. The lantern thistles that absorbed saturated light energy during the day began to exhale, and their umbels rotated and sprayed fluorescent spores, lighting the street lamps for the night demons. Ah Ying reached out to catch the floating light dust and found that each spore contained a projection of Jianmu that was reduced by tens of millions of times, and the tamed sun fire flowed between the annual rings.

Seven spiral beams of light suddenly rose in the northwest. They were the night-watching wind demons adjusting the pressure of the barrier. Their emerald wings vibrated at a high frequency, squeezing the remaining dusk into dark purple crystals. The mineral spirits riding on black leopard beasts shuttled through, using silver nets forged by moonlight to hold these crystals - it is said that this is the core material for making star compasses. The Jianmu sacred tree switched its breathing rhythm at this moment. The rustling sound of the tree crown absorbing the starlight formed a counterpoint melody with the roar of the roots emitting the embers of the sun. The ancestral spirit sleeping in the heart of the tree opened its compound eyes, and thousands of irises simultaneously reflected the grand scenes of the holy land in different time and space. The thorny vine on Aying's wrist suddenly blossomed. This was a warning from Mother Earth: a spiritual turbulence will appear in the southeast quadrant in three quarters of an hour.

Sure enough, when the seventh star of the Big Dipper was aimed at the top of Jianmu, the water of Mirror Lake boiled without warning. The light energy stored in the ice crystals during the day gushed out, colliding with the starlight at a height of 100 meters, exploding into emerald aurora. The night owls collectively opened their beaks to catch the falling spiritual fragments, and the star map rotating in their pupils thus completed a new trajectory.

The old turtle pushed the star sand compass from the depths of the wisteria curtain, and the sand was gathering into a vortex-shaped warning. Ah Ying saw the garnet representing today suddenly crack, revealing the beating phosphorescent heart inside - this was a good omen that had not appeared for a hundred years, indicating that a new spiritual vein would be born at midnight. The wind brought the clear sound of the accelerated growth of the Jianmu tree rings, and the spiritual energy concentration of the entire holy land was breaking through the critical value.

The lightning-struck tree in the southwest corner suddenly caught fire, and a nine-tailed woman walked out of the silver-white flame. The scorched earth where she stepped barefoot instantly bloomed with star-patterned moss, and the twelve-hour bells hanging around her waist rang at the same time. All the demons looked at the foundation of the Jianmu tree, where a chalcedony-like substance was oozing out of the cracks, turning into flowing star mist when it encountered wind - the new spiritual vein was conceived and formed in the intercourse of moonlight and aurora, just as the prophecy said.

When the bells of midnight bloomed, Ah Ying pressed her throbbing temples and recorded: The efficiency of spiritual energy conversion has increased to 370 times that of the past, and the star mist of the new spiritual veins has spontaneously constructed protective meridians. The demonic text that emerged in the annual rings of Jianmu showed that this change was related to the spiritual fish that stole the hairband during the day. Perhaps the boy himself did not realize that when he chased Ah Xue through the roots of Jianmu, the spiritual essence scraped by the scales had quietly changed the energy structure of the holy land...

Huh?
But why?

Ah Ying was stunned for a moment, and turned to look in the direction of the young man. A sense of familiarity finally came to her mind, and she subconsciously called out the name that was most profound in her soul: "Jiang Qiu!"

Da, the sound was not very strong, but her vibration had already swept the entire holy land. Even the young man who had already run very far was startled, as if he heard the sound of a huge bell, and turned around: "You are..."

Jiang Qiu didn't know how long he had been in this holy land. He had forgotten his own name. It had been so long that it seemed to have erased his original thoughts, as if he had experienced thousands of reincarnations. But when his name rang out again, he suddenly grabbed a trace of memory from the darkness.

"My name used to be Jiang Qiu."

"What am I doing here? Where's Xue?"

His heart was shocked, and he looked around again, but the silver-haired girl he had been chasing was no longer there. The scene of this holy land was gradually losing its color. Even the cute girl with bear ears on her head who had just called out his name had collapsed along with the illusion of the holy land.

Everything was collapsing, but his memory became clearer, like a touch of clear water wiping across the edge of a sword, gradually emitting a cold light.

At this moment, I finally realized that the person who called me just now was Ah Xiong!

The first living being he met since arriving in the thirty-six heavens of the Dragon Emperor's Secret Realm was even the demon who accompanied him step by step from the initial point of the first heaven to the third heaven!
"Axiong——"

Realizing this, Jiang Qiu shouted out two words again, but the only response he got was an endless echo. His vision was already dark, as if he had been abandoned by the world, or as if he had woken up from a dream.

"I'm going to the fourth heaven, but why am I staying here?"

After a moment of trance, Jiang Qiu recalled the memory of continuous exploration since the first heaven, all the way to the third heaven, looking for the holy land, entering the library, and then continuing to explore the passage to the fourth heaven.
It was clearly a very short period of time, even shorter than the second realm where people did not remember years, because everything was so peaceful, and the decades of life in between were so fleeting, as if when he closed his eyes and opened them again he was already an octogenarian, and now when he woke up he was young again, experiencing the cycle of time.

Is this a holy place?

Why is the third heaven so peaceful and quiet? Everything is so friendly. I can even see Axue and live with her for many years.
Who is Axue?

【Snow】

Once, before coming to the Dragon Emperor Secret Realm, the person closest to her had never seen her true face. She was the girl who had been with her all the way from the Yin-Yang World, and whose souls were almost one with hers.

At that time, I suspected that she might be the reincarnation of [Hua] who grew up with me in the Beixue tribe in the north, but there was no result. Later, the one who followed my bloodline gradually evolved into the appearance of a dragon girl.

I don't know why, but I recalled it again in the illusion of the third heaven.
(End of this chapter)