Chapter 67: The Dead Tree
"Crunch, crunch"
The snow was stepped on and trampled on by cloth shoes, and countless tiny hexagonal ice edges were forced to rub and squeeze against each other, making a tooth-aching sound.
"Crunch, crunch"
The woman in the red and blue robe held a paper umbrella and walked step by step behind the dead leaves.
The sky above her head was suddenly replaced by yellowed paper, and the girl dressed in black was not surprised, but lightly opened her thin lips like cinnabar and spoke indifferently.
"Take the umbrella away first, let me look at it for a while, Yonglin. ”
The yellowed paper was removed, and the girl could see that the white of the sky had turned into tiny dots, mixed with the countless snowflakes that fell leisurely, as if she were one of them.
The girl had long, shiny black hair that was the color of a crow's chick. She wore twelve singles with black as the main color, this complicated and gorgeous clothing well concealed her slightly insufficient body curves, and set off the girl's stunning face. A thin layer of snowflakes had accumulated on the twelve sheets, which was exceptionally white compared to black, but still not fairer than the girl's skin. The girl who looked like she was no more than a young man was dressed in a gorgeous costume, silently watching the little dot gradually drift away until it completely disappeared from view, without sorrow or joy.
The woman in the Taoist costume behind her put away her umbrella and accompanied her quietly. Just as it was 300 years ago, as it was 1,300 years ago.
"You don't have to envy him so much, princess. ”
Bayi Yonglin lowered her eyes, really stood behind the girl like a staff, and said softly.
"What he has, you have, what you have, he may not have. The bat seems to be unrestrained, but in fact it is just a pawn that walks blindly in the night. ”
"Who can say that it is a chess piece? a chess piece that no chess piece or even a chess player dares to touch easily, a chess piece that affects the entire chess game? How can even a monster such as the monster sage Yakumo Zi be allowed to be free?"
The girl sent out a series of questions, but she was not angry, but she recounted it lightly, not excited, nor lonely.
"And I didn't envy him, I just came to see him, put on a formal suit, and came to see ......"
"My eldest brother is just on the side. ”
As if tired, as if bored, the girl finally lowered her head and sighed softly.
"I'm tired, let's go back, Yonglin. ”
"Yes, Princess. ”
"Don't call me a princess, I wasn't a princess in the first place. I'm just a sinner. ”
The girl stretched out her slender jade hand from the wide sleeve of her robe, took the paper umbrella depicting the dragon sparrow in the hand of the woman in the Taoist costume, took one last look at the dead leaves on the ground, and turned to leave.
"A natural sinner named Penglai Mountain Kaguya. ”
The figures of the two women slowly disappeared into the Enchanted Forest, leaving only two faint footprints that stretched into the distance and were quickly obscured by the wind and snow.
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"Why don't you bloom?"
Yuyuko holds a piece of yokan in one hand and a chopstick in the other, gently puts it in her mouth, chews it carefully, and swallows it slowly and gracefully.
Surrounded by cherry blossoms, the cherry-colored undead carefully examined the dead tree not far away. It was the largest and oldest tree in the Cherry Blossoms of the Underworld, and the only one that didn't bloom. It was withered but sturdy, and countless iron branches without flowers and leaves were scattered and separated, piercing into the sky like sharp swords, and like countless charred black arms unwilling to despair. The tree was so large that it almost crushed itself, its branches unkempt and dense, as if the root system of the tree was on the surface, and its body was actually at the other end of the earth.
The gaze of the undead roamed over every inch of the cherry tree's surface, almost piercing the poor old tree.
"Why don't you bloom?"
A red bat flapped its wings and landed on a branch of a cherry tree. It hung upside down, flapped its wings lightly twice, wrapped itself in its membranous wings, tilted its head, and stared at Yuyuko of Saigyoji Temple with a pair of small eyes that were round and black like jewels.
"Ah...... Little bats, come on, come here. Are you here to see the tree blooming? It is said that when the tree blooms, it wakes up someone, and I don't know who it is......
The undead princess reached out and beckoned softly to the bat.
She seemed to be very happy.
After all, the undead princess has been exposed to a culture in which bats have always been a symbol of luck and joy, not the sinister evil of today's total westernization.
The bat didn't pay attention to Yuyuko of Xixing Temple, it squinted its eyes and sniffed the sharp iron branches, as if it could smell the fragrance of cherry blossoms on the trees thousands of years ago, elegant and long.
The bats look at the trees, and the undead look at the bats. The immortal petals of the cherry blossoms of the underworld flutter and fall like snow, endless and silent. You can step barefoot on the land here without any sound. Pale pink petals gently support the soles of your feet, layered on top of each other, and countless delicate reds come together to become the toughest protection in the world.
The bat doesn't move, it half-squints, as if it's faking sleep. The undead was not agitated, she had been waiting under this cherry tree for more than a thousand years, and she did not care about the insignificant three or five quarters of an hour.
It's just time to drink a pot of sake.
And it was the first time she had seen an animal that dared to approach the cherry blossom.
The shallow petals slowly drifted from the air, and it swayed irregularly as if drunk, swirling, swinging, and finally landed in the wine cup of the undead, like a small flat boat.
The cup reached his lips, but the undead seemed to sense something and stopped moving. She looked down and saw the cherry blossoms still trembling on the wine, and couldn't help but chuckle tolerantly. Then he raised his glass and greeted the bat hanging upside down in the tree, and drank the wine with its elegant fragrance.
The bat raised its eyelids to look at the undead, yawned lazily, spread its wings and let go of its paws, and fell from the dead tree.
"Be careful, don't touch the land of the underworld. ”
The undead princess put down her wine saucer and smiled like a flower.
"Because once you set foot in the realm of the dead, you will never return to the world of the living. ”
"If you're just an ordinary person. ”
"It doesn't matter. ”
With a low, steady male voice, the bat's small body suddenly swelled, and in the process of falling, it turned into a man, and its feet were firmly planted on the equally barren and blackened ground around the dead trees.
"I'm no longer a living thing. ”
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From today onwards, I'm going to go for reinforcement learning, so I'm going to do it every Wednesday like I did recently...... Or will the situation of the two watches no longer exist, and you should be mentally prepared. But it's still okay to change it every Monday.