Episode 323
I found Senior Sister Tian not long after. She was so close to me that I almost laughed. It was a distance I could have covered in a few minutes if I had known the direction.
Senior Sister Tian stood at the edge of a precarious cliff. She had likely detected my presence but didn't look back.
What was she looking at?
Out of curiosity, I stood beside her instead of speaking. I followed her gaze, but the fog was so thick that I couldn't see anything.
Then Senior Sister Tian opened her iron fan and fanned herself. It wasn't easy to make such a simple motion look elegant, but how should I describe Senior Sister Tian's movements? They felt as elegant as a shrine maiden's dance.
The currents stirred by the iron fan soon built into strong winds that swept outward in all directions, driving away the fog and soon revealing the surrounding landscape.
"Wow..." I was a bit taken aback.
This was the first time I had seen such a panoramic view from Spirit Mountain. Even on days when the fog wasn't thick, strange energy currents always veiled this place.
I once wondered whether this rocky mountain had suddenly risen in a black void. That thought vanished during Senior Brother Arang's training, when I set foot on the ground.
"It didn't take long." Senior Sister Tian's voice reached my ears.
Her voice is pleasant to listen to, I thought while asking, "What?"
She folded her iron fan and turned toward me. "The time it took for you to find me, Luan."
She often behaved this way. Though she couldn't see, she still faced the person she was speaking to.
I knew it was a form of consideration or courtesy, so I also behaved properly.
For some reason, whenever I stood in front of Senior Sister Tian, I paid more attention to my behavior and appearance than I did around my mother.
Wouldn't it be like this if I had an older sister with a wide age gap? No, I do have one. Even if she is just a half-sister with whom I never had a real conversation.
"You have become stronger," she said.
One of Senior Sister Tian's strengths and weaknesses were her bluntness. I couldn't help scratching my cheek, though it didn't itch. "Yes."
I had undoubtedly grown at an absurd pace after returning to the past, but I wasn't entirely sure I had regained all my original strength.
"Once you stand in a different place, the scenery also changes. Luan, what do you see now?" she asked.
Was this a philosophical question? I didn't believe so. Senior Sister Tian didn't like vague ways of speaking. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I had heard that Daoist Masters disliked them as well.
Thus, I stood on Spirit Mountain and looked around. It was a view I had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times. The fog around Spirit Mountain had cleared, but that didn't mean all the strange energy currents had disappeared. In the distance, rising mountain shapes still appeared faint and indistinct, like an unlit lighthouse shrouded in sea fog.
"I can see other mountains."
"Other than that?" she asked.
"My mastery of external techniques ia lacking, so beyond that, Iā"
"You can tell me what you perceive with your senses other than sight."
At her words, I closed my eyes and opened up my other senses. "I think I can faintly hear the howl of a beast in the distance. There is also the sound of stone fragments falling down from time to time. And there is a faint scent of camellias from somewhere."
"It is my favorite scent," she remarked.
"Ah." I opened my eyes, a little taken aback.
Senior Sister Tian wore a slight smile.
Come to think of it, she always smells of camellias. I felt inexplicably embarrassed and changed the subject. "I can't see the bottom yet."
"I see. Shall we try broadening your field of view?" Senior Sister Tian pointed to the sky with her iron fan, and my gaze naturally followed.
I blinked and soon realized what she meant. The gray sky stretched overhead as a pale haze. Every time I had glanced upward before, I had only seen a faint glimmer occasionally flicker across that desolate expanse.
However, something was different today. A cluster of stars shone overhead.
Of course, stars could sometimes be seen during the day, depending on weather conditions, but I was still taken aback. I had never witnessed any stars while on Spirit Mountain.
"I can see the stars," I said.
"How many?"
"Let's see. Some are clustered together, and some are scattered. It may take me a while to count them one by one."
"Just point in their direction."
I stretched my finger and pointed to each visible cluster in turn. "Here and there. Ah, over there as well."
Senior Sister Tian was blind, but she pinpointed exactly where I was pointing from the movement of the air. She nodded and asked, "Can't you see something else?"
"Something else?" I looked at the sky again, but saw only stars. "No. I can't see anything else."
"Okay. The direction of your training has been set."
I was perplexed.
Senior Sister Tian grinned. "Luan, are you ready to go to Hell?"
Thus began the training called Hell.
***
That didn't happen.
Senior Sister Tian left me slightly tense and started walking somewhere again.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To the place I just mentioned," she replied.
The place she just mentioned? Hell? I felt puzzled, but I doubted she would answer if I kept pressing, so I quietly followed her.
I hoped for a cup of tea and a hearty conversation like the one I had with Senior Brother Arang. However, I didn't dare show any signs of this. There was no way she couldn't sense my thoughts, so there had to be a reason behind her actions.
Unlike before, when she disappeared, Senior Sister Tian now matched her pace to mine and walked at an almost leisurely speed. We climbed Spirit Mountain leisurely with little conversation and soon reached the peak.
I glanced at our master's residence. Naturally, I didn't sense any signs of life there.
Senior Sister Tian asked, "Do you want to see Master?"
"Well..." She had clearly read my thoughts, but I wasn't that surprised. That was typical of her.
Was it possible to read people's minds while blind? I didn't know.
"I do want to see him. I can often talk to or hear news about my fellow seniors, but it feels like it has been a while since I saw Master," I said.
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"A few months ago? There was a strange mirror in my family. I entered an unfamiliar space through it and met him there."
I was referring to the blessing ceremony where I received a blessing.
"So, Luan, you are the most recent person to have seen Master," she said out of the blue.
"What?" I asked, confused.
Instead of answering, she asked, "What did Master look like at the time?"
"What did he look like?" The question struck me as odd, so I repeated it.
Senior Sister Tian nodded kindly, and I searched my memory more carefully.
"Well, Master is always Master. He is unpredictable. But at that time, he gave me some serious advice, which was a bit unusual."
"I see." She nodded again. "Now, let's continue going up."
"Okay..."
What did she mean by that?
I looked around in confusion. We were already at the peak of Spirit Mountain, where our master resided. There was no higher to go.
Senior Sister Tian ignored my doubts and walked toward the cliff. Then she stepped into the air.
"Senior Sister?" My voice rose slightly, but not to the point of a scream.
With her skills, she wouldn't suffer a scratch even if she fell from Spirit Mountain. Still, that didn't explain her strange behavior.
What happened next was even more unexpected.
Senior Sister Tian started stepping on the air.
I rubbed my eyes slightly, but the scene remained unchanged. She was stepping on air and gradually ascending.
"What...?"
Was it the Air Steps I had only heard about, or one of her techniques?
I had never seen it myself, but I had heard that some people could even ride the clouds and soar through the skies.
At some point, Senior Sister Tian stopped midair and looked down at me. She didn't speak this time, but I understood that she wanted me to follow.
Going to Hell doesn't mean throwing myself off the mountain, smashing my head, and dying, right? I felt doubtful while placing my foot exactly where Senior Sister Tian had stepped.
I felt something solid beneath it. It seemed there was an invisible staircase.
Was there such a thing on Spirit Mountain? I had lived here for ten years and knew nothing about it. I was standing on it, but I had no idea what it was. It didn't seem like stairs after all. If so, I would have noticed something unusual on rainy or windy days.
I felt suspicious as I climbed the invisible stairs.
Then Senior Sister Tian called out, "Luan."
"Yes."
"You have to follow me closely from now on." Her tone was firm, the same one Senior Sister Tian used when offering serious advice.
I nodded without a word and followed her.
***
Spirit Mountain was a place where the concept of time was faint. There was no boundary between day and night, and no such thing as a clock. Even if one existed, it likely would not function properly. Thus, there was only one way to tell the passage of time here: the cry of an unknown monster. Each time I heard it, I realized that roughly a day had passed.
I briefly looked down. I could still see Spirit Mountain below me, but it lay in darkness. Once I realized how high I had climbed, an unfamiliar sense of unease settled in.
To be honest, I didn't have the confidence I would survive a fall from this height. Spirit Mountain alone wasn't a small mountain, and now I stood at least a few thousand meters above it. The feeling was only natural. It also reminded me of the past, when I climbed the academy's stairs.
Was it the Infinite Staircase created by Dean Alderson? The trial hadn't posed much of a challenge at the time. Now I was much stronger than back then, but I felt a mounting pressure despite climbing a much smaller distance.
Why does it feel like I am getting tired so quickly? I had only been climbing for around a day, but a heavy fatigue had already built up, and my breathing had grown labored.
I had heard that the higher the altitude, the thinner the oxygen became. I didn't know if the same rule applied to Spirit Mountain, but my breathing felt strained in a way that differed from physical exhaustion. Therefore, it seemed likely.
I wondered, Do I look that pitiful?
After a long time, Senior Sister Tian finally spoke. "Let's take a break."
I asked, "Can I sit down here?"
"You can even lie down."
At that, I lay down on the spot and stretched out.
As I relaxed, I realized that I was more tired than I thought.
Wasn't it natural? I had treated the Iron-Blooded Lord in the Badnikers' home, come to Spirit Mountain, and spent the entire day ascending an invisible staircase. Since it was invisible, I had to remain tense with every step.
A breeze drifted in from somewhere, cooling the sweat on my skin. It felt refreshing.
The break probably lasted about five minutes.
"People often refer to the whole world where we live as the realm under heaven." I opened my eyes at Senior Sister Tian's calm voice and looked at her. "I suppose they meant that the world is everything under the sky. Then, as knowledge advanced, humans came to realize that the world still extends beyond the clouds. Of course, it's not heaven nor a paradise. There are no immortals there."
What was she getting at? I felt puzzled. However, Senior Sister Tian never spoke without purpose, so I kept quiet.
"In fact, wise people knew it from the beginning. The stars that adorn the night sky aren't fixed in place. They truly exist, far away, in distant places." Senior Sister Tian opened her iron fan and continued, "Luan, you now believe that there are many different worlds in this universe, right?"
"Of course." My seniors on Spirit Mountain came from different worlds, including Bai Luguang, so I had no reason to doubt it.
"Then how many worlds do you think there are?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. Perhaps dozens."
Senior Sister Tian laughed. "No one can count them."
"What now?"
"Would you believe me if I said that there are more than the grains of sand in some unknown desert?" she asked.
I closed my mouth.