Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Hello, It’s Me...
Cold.
That was the first thing Shen Yuan felt. It was a piercing cold, the kind of cold that never went away, and it crept over his back like fingers, following his spine in an invisible manner.
It seeped through his wet clothes and into his skin, making him shiver involuntarily.
His eyes opened slowly.
At first, there was nothing but blur and the sensation of water against his face. Then his vision cleared, and Shen Yuan’s breath caught in his throat.
The place was nothing like the demonic sect.
Above him, the cave ceiling stretched impossibly high, and scattered across it like deliberate constellations were lights, motes of light.
Tiny fragments of pure luminescence that drifted lazily through the air. Green, blue, and purple, among others. Their movements were so smooth and enchanting, as if they were chasing each other in some game only they understood.
Shen Yuan looked past the lights.
There—far above, so distant it seemed like a dream—was the opening.
the same hole he had fallen into.
It was small now, impossibly small, just a jagged black circle against the lighter grey stone. ’That’s where i fell from? how did i survive? I don’t think I can use it to go back now.’
Then he realised something else: he was not sinking!
His body was lying on something solid.
Cold stone.
Water lapped against him gently, caressing his sides.
Each wave that touched his chest receded slowly.
The water was warm. But only the coldness remained once it receded.
Shen Yuan pushed himself up on his elbows.
he slowly sat up on his bum.
Every muscle complained. Every bone ached with a distant pain. There were sores all over his body, but that was it.
His palm—the one he had gashed against the cave wall—had long disappeared without leaving even a mark.
’Weird...’ Shen Yuan thought.
How long was I unconscious? He sat up fully, his wet robes clinging to his frame like a second skin. That’s when he saw it.
The lake.
It stretched before him like a mirror, still enough that he could see his entire reflection within it.
The water moved with rhythm. The water swayed gently with the wind that flowed into the giant hole in the mountain.
The surface reflected the floating lights, creating a doubled world of green, blue, and purple.
Beautiful, something in his mind whispered. This was the same part of him that had recognised beauty in death.
Even now, he failed to see what was underneath the lake, but he could see the shadows moving. "Just how did I survive?"
The question lingered in his mind as he turned around and saw a tree.
The tree.
"Impossible," Shen Yuan whispered, his voice hoarse from water and salt.
It wasn’t just any tree, and it wasn’t even the slightest bit normal.
Its trunk was massive, thick as a building, maybe even bigger, and it rose impossibly high into the darkness above.
Higher than the lake was wide.
Higher than his eyes could comfortably see it at once.
It disappeared into another opening in the cave ceiling, a larger hole that suggested there were depths upon depths in this single mountain on which he lived.
The tree glowed.
it was not the reflection of the motes of light in the air but its own light.
In fact, it seemed like the motes came from it.
The colours moved beneath the surface like blood through veins.
The leaves—and there were hundreds of thousands of them—shifted through colours as if they were unable to decide which shade they wanted to be.
They caught the light and refracted it into something between liquid and solid.
The roots were more massive than the tree branches.
They spread out across the cave floor like a complex vascular system, some as thick as his body, others thin as hair.
They were wrapped around everything, mounds of dirt and stone ridges; they branched and rebranched, creating pathways and channels that covered nearly half the cave’s floor.
Some roots seemed to pulse with the same internal light as the trunk. Others lay still, like sleeping serpents.
Shen Yuan stood on shaking legs. The weakness was still there in his body.
The water receded from his movement, as if the lake itself were polite enough to give him space.
He slowly moved while looking around, in search of a way out. ’I have to get out of here. That is the safest place I can be at this moment.
His killer’s mind, the part of him that had always been sharp and practical, accepted the reality before him. But it also shoved the worst possible things that could go wrong in this place.
Hidden dangers. Sankes. Beast beyond his power could handle.
He was referring to a massive creature whose mouth was as large as the trunk of a tree. The same beast that had swallowed Chang Shi, who is also known as Peng Ho.
He walked towards the tree.
He was on bare feet.
when had his boots come off? he did not know.
The floating lights seemed to follow him, drifting closer to him, but he did not let them touch him. Who knows what might happen if i touch it? They look so suspicious. what if one of them explodes?’
The closer he got to the tree, the warmer he felt.
Like standing in sunlight after a long winter.
His wet clothes began to dry. The chill that had clung to his back for who knew how long started to recede.
His eyes drifted to the cluster of roots gathered before the tree like a shrine and saw something lying there.
it was a stone slab.
It was roughly rectangular, no longer than his forearm, and its surface was worn smooth by time.
There were words written on it.
Sharp and bold. even though there were traces of time passing on the slab, the words were still fresh. Just like someone had scribbled them the last day.
Shen Yuan crouched down to the slab and picked it up.
The first line written on the thing made his body freeze. Out of all the things, he did not expect something like that to be written there.
Hello there, Little Servant.
