Zou Liqin was a bit unsure at first, but as more time went by and the sound didn't dissipate, she became sure what she heard were indeed sounds made by swallows.
She was bewildered by the whole thing, but then she suddenly remembered what Yu Mei had said earlier when she spoke about hearing the voices.
Zou Liqin gently touched her heart as she recalled her explanation of why she could hear those noises while Zou Liqin, Zou Yi, and He Shan couldn't.
The prerequisite of hearing those voices was for someone to have a sense of calmness. The latter two, i.e., Zou Yi and He Shan, were already suffering from the side effects of the red suckle berserker mushroom, which left them in an agitated state. At the same time, Zou Liqin had the four-year demons courtesy of the heart-cleansing waterfall to deal with, and even after when the trio had passed out, she was in a panicked and frantic state at being the only one conscious and overwhelmed by the weight of that reality.
"Turns out Mom didn't lie about the benefits of sleep," she thought as she smiled.
With the appearance of the swallow noises, it had altered the situation. Things seemed slightly more positive and hopeful than a few minutes to an hour ago. At least now she had something to work with. Even if it swallow noises she still didn't know how to use or make sense of, it was at least something.
Zou Liqin placed the trio down along with the coat as she decided to focus all her attention on the swallow noises.
"From what Yu Mei said, she heard swallow noises, cricket, bull, crane, katydid, and cicada.
Did the noises follow that exact order, or did she mention them based on what came to her mind first.."
Zou Liqin walked forward to pick up the stick she had used to select the direction she would go in. She gently sat down in a lotus position and proceeded to use the stick to write down all the clues Yu Mei had given her.
First were the voices she had, after which she added some of her questions, such as the order of the noises. Next, she went on to write a question in bold.
"Is this a formation?"
The experience from moments ago, where she walked a few steps only to reappear at this grassland, were indicators of the presence of a formation.
The fact that she couldn't even detect its fluctuations meant it was something above her current level of expertise, which meant she couldn't brute force it.
"Are the noises the key?" she wondered, increasingly feeling that may be the case.
She felt there was no way Yang Qing would put a formation so high level proving impossible to break through without leaving some clues behind, and maybe the noises were it.
Once she had written all she wanted to write and got her thoughts in order, she gently exhaled, inhaled, and then closed her eyes as she centered all her senses on hearing.
She submerged herself in the noise around her as she calmed her heart further. As she was writing her thoughts and making conjectures, she still had not heard any other noises apart from the swallows, which she suspected meant her heart wasn't completely calm.
She emptied her thoughts and committed her sole focus on the swallow noises. Her actions immediately bore fruit in less than five minutes.
The swallow noises that sounded like they came from all over the place and from a bunch of different swallows at different frequencies now had some order and uniformity to it.
The way Zou Liqin heard it, at first, when she listened to the swallow noises, it was all jumbled up, and it sounded like a thousand swallows were all making sounds trying to outdo each other.
As time went by, that cacophony of noises sounded less combative and more harmonious, and the number shrunk from a thousand to a hundred, and now it sounded like they were less than twenty.
Zou Liqin clenched her fists in excitement when she saw the results of her guess starting to show. However, that little burst of excitement made the noises turn a little bit chaotic again as the number of swallows making noises shot to fifty in an instant.
She hurriedly reigned in her enthusiasm and regained her calm focus. The number reduced, and harmony resumed. She couldn't tell how much time passed by, but the noise transformed into a melodic sound from just one swallow, and now she could accurately tell the direction it was coming from.
"Where are the others?" she inwardly wondered.
As if in response to her thoughts, noises from different animals immediately flooded her ears and seemed even to echo in her mind.
The sudden influx came as a surprise to her that she almost broke her concentration, but with clear results and a methodology to work from, she recentered herself as she slowly listened.
Instead of actively trying to force it, she allowed herself to be guided by it like a leaf gently floating on a river.
She thought this was the safest option for her since she wasn't sure if the animal noises had an order to them and if it would have an effect later. Therefore, it was better just to empty her mind of the choice and be guided blindly by the noises.
If that failed, she would isolate those noises based on the order Yu Mei gave her.
Just like before, the noises were so jumbled up that she couldn't even make how many different types of animals made those noises. This didn't deter her. She sat there silently welcoming it all in, and soon she could clearly make it out, and there seemed to be an order to it; first was the bull, then the crane, then the cricket, followed by the heron, then wolves, followed by cicadas, which were followed by katydids, then swans and finally ended with goat noises.
Zou Liqin was surprised when she heard more noises than Yu Mei did, and the order also seem different than hers.
She couldn't help but feel maybe she had assumed wrong, and Yu Mei randomly mentioned those names in the order of what she could remember and recognized, and as for the part about her hearing more creatures; Yu Mei may have heard them but didn't have enough time to mention them all, since she seemed to be hanging on by a thread by the time Zou Liqin had regained her consciousness.
Either that or the extra noises could only be heard once they were in the forest grove.
Whichever the case, Zou Liqin decided she would work with what she had on hand to see if it would lead her anywhere, hopefully out of the formation they were potentially entrapped in.
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