Chapter 51: The Fate Bound in the Poplar Forest
When Nanling Yaohua was very young, her grandfather told her that guarding Yumen was the mission of their Yumen Sands Sea Branch.
As long as Yumen exists for a day, at least one of them must eventually find refuge in that endless Gobi.
Her grandfather also told her that Master Bai and Master Lu would not be coming back, so it was up to her to guard Yumen.
The so-called Yumen was not the existing Jade Gate Ruins, which is a small earthen fort made of yellow clay with only an area of over six hundred square meters.
The world knows that the Yumen Pass recorded in historical texts is famous alongside Yangguan, with messengers and caravans constantly coming and going. That little earthen fort absolutely does not match the name of a majestic pass.
However, Nanling Yaohua knew that the real Yumen would only appear when an annual extraordinary sandstorm swept across the Gobi.
When the gale carried tons of yellow sand into the sky, the boundary between the sky and the Gobi became blurred in the storm, and the city walls stretching for miles would emerge amidst the dust where one could see nothing.
Accompanied by the sound of decayed war drums, evil spirits clad in rotten armor would burst forth from the city, leaving no trace of life in their wake.
Every year at that time, her grandfather would disappear for a while, returning with body covered in scars.
From that moment, Nanling Yaohua understood that her grandfather and the masters were guarding the “Yumen” on the Gobi, which, like this false Huacheng, was a special space constructed through high-level urban legends mediated by their own powers, consuming large amounts of spiritual energy and alchemical materials.
Thus, on the second day after arriving in this special space, Nanling Yaohua saw through what this place was and spent just over a week reclaiming her self from fictional memories.
However, in her understanding, a special space constructed by high-level urban legends could never operate like this false Huacheng, pulling projections from the real world to give birth to two closely related yet relatively independent entities.
This was approaching the realm of creating life.
————
Nanling Yaohua had arrived in this false city just over three months ago.
It was shortly after the Hundred Demons Walk in Huacheng, on Christmas Eve.
Although she wasn’t particularly fond of this foreign holiday, she wandered onto the streets to feel the festive atmosphere out of sheer boredom.
When she was very young, she had heard about the existence of Christmas Eve from a group of travelers passing through, and after inquiring with Master Lu, she learned of the urban legends associated with it.
The legend states that every Christmas Eve, an old man dressed in a scarlet robe, with hair and beard as white as snow, rides on a sleigh pulled by a creature with a face like a horse, horns like a deer, a neck like a camel, and a tail like a donkey, starting from a land that is frozen year-round to hunt across the globe.
He would pick obedient children; his shadow would slip into homes through chimneys or windows, leaving behind “gifts” made of unknown substances that exude an ominous aura.
These ominous “gifts” would be mixed among the many normal presents, waiting for the chosen unlucky children to unbox them the next morning.
The Night Alliance, a foreign organization similar to the Siye Society, spends a large amount of manpower and resources each year chasing Santa Claus, attempting to intercept him in that eternally frozen land, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.
This was somewhat similar to the New Year Beast, as the Siye Society would also invest heavily in countering the New Year Beast that might appear in any city across the country each year.
……
Nanling Yaohua had asked Master Lu, “What are those ominous gifts, specifically?”
Master Lu pondered for a moment and replied, “It’s probably ‘Five Years of Practice, Three Years of Exams.'”
Nanling Yaohua asked again, “What is ‘Five Years of Practice, Three Years of Exams’?”
Master Lu grew a bit impatient and pointed to the books and spell scrolls on the desk, which her grandfather insisted she study every day, saying earnestly, “It’s a super doubled workload!”
……
After hearing Master Lu finish the story of the urban legend, the young Nanling Yaohua frightenedly shrank her little feet into a sheepskin blanket, firmly insisting that she didn’t want gifts anymore, secretly relieved that her family lived in a cave without a chimney and that she wasn’t an obedient child.
To prove to that ethereal urban legend of Christmas Eve that she was not an obedient child, she that night placed an eastern sand python in Master Bai’s bed.
Then……
She got a severe beating from Master Bai, who had a snake hanging from his backside.
————
On Christmas Eve, it was lightly snowing in Huacheng, a bit warmer than winter in the Gobi, but the weather was still particularly cold, and the sky looked gloomy as if it were dusk.
Although it was a foreign holiday, various merchants spared no effort to host all sorts of “discount” events under the holiday banner to profit.
As Nanling Yaohua walked out onto the street, every corner felt festive.
Upbeat songs floated in the air, nearly every mall had a Christmas tree adorned with bells, stars, and other decorations.
Nanling Yaohua knew those Christmas trees were a custom, as Master Lu mentioned; it had a protective effect against evil spirits like using firecrackers to drive away the New Year Beast.
Placing many gifts under the tree could confuse Santa Claus’s senses, making it think it had already delivered a gift once and thus would not leave an ominous gift again.
She saw people dressed as Santa Claus giving presents to children, and she found it a bit hard to understand what kind of twisted interest would make adults masquerade as urban legends to scare children on a festive day.
Two words: perverted!
Later, she tried the roast turkey she had been looking forward to at a restaurant.
The turkey meat was tough, with large chunks that weren’t very flavorful, far from what she had imagined, going there excitedly but returning disappointed.
But for some reason, a pair of student-like young lovers at the next table seemed to be having a great time.
Throughout their meal, they wore overly sweet smiles that made Nanling Yaohua briefly think their turkey must have been different from hers.
When the young couple left and during the gap before the waiter cleared the table, she secretly sampled the leftover half turkey they left behind and discovered it tasted just as bad.
Sitting in the restaurant, chewing the tough turkey meat, Nanling Yaohua couldn’t figure out why the young couple enjoyed it so much, merely feeling a vague discomfort in her chest.
That night.
Nanling Yaohua lay on the bed previously occupied by Luxianbei, staring blankly at the ceiling, reflecting on her experiences since leaving the Gobi, plagued with various worries.
When she left, she left a note for her grandfather saying she was looking for Luxianbei. At first, she had indeed embarked on this journey with the fantasies of a girl in love.
Yet in reality, after leaving the Gobi, she hadn’t seriously looked for Luxianbei at all.
The outside world had many interesting and appealing things to experience, far more than the Gobi filled with endless yellow sand, poisonous creatures, demons, and monsters.
In the past few months, she had seen many landscapes she hadn’t before, met kind-hearted people who gave her rides, and also encountered villains controlled by urban legends who hunted individuals at gas stations in remote areas.
After arriving in Huacheng, she had only searched for Luxianbei for less than two weeks before being drawn away by other matters.
It was as if she stumbled upon a primary school teacher who was a spiritual ability user, quickly becoming close friends and spending almost a month crossing over ten cities to help her find students abducted by an urban legend, even dismantling a human trafficking gang controlling those legends.
Later, through her friend’s introduction, she encountered an urban legend reward website.
From then on, Nanling Yaohua’s life became busier, and she almost forgot about why she left the Gobi.
Until Christmas Eve, when she returned to the Lu Family Manor, tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, she unexpectedly thought of a day many years ago…
————
Many years ago, after Lu Ming and Bai Kai left the Gobi for the first time back to their dilapidated cave, it left a yearning for the outside world in little Nanling Yaohua, who was barely four years old at the time.
At that time, facing her grandfather’s earnest teachings, she completely did not understand what duty meant, staring with wide, watery eyes, anxiously asking, “Then why doesn’t Master Lu need to stay in the Gobi to guard it?”
“Because he is a traitor; I will expel him from the sect tomorrow!”
Nanling Yaohua looked at her grandfather, gritting his teeth, contemplated for a moment, took her grandfather’s hand, and said seriously, “Then could you expel me from the sect too? How about it?”
Then……
She received a beating from her grandfather and was punished to copy the “Yumen Spell Sutra” ten times, and she wasn’t allowed to sleep until she finished.
The “Yumen Spell Sutra” was the introductory text for the Yumen Sands Sea Branch, totaling six thousand five hundred seventy-two words. It seemed not too much to copy it ten times.
Yet in the Gobi, paper, pens, and water for ink were luxuries, so naturally, Nanling Yaohua couldn’t use real stationery to copy the Sutra.
The “paper” she used was the hard, compacted blocks of salt and alkali soil commonly found in the Gobi, which were tough and heavy, like stone slabs.
Her “pen” was also not a brush, but a peculiar sword made of special metal, surprisingly heavy.
Using stone as paper and a sword as a pen, copying the “Yumen Spell Sutra” once would leave an ordinary adult’s wrist sore and his fingers tired.
Even with some degree of spiritual energy enhancement, copying it ten times was an arduous task for the young Nanling Yaohua.
Her grandfather, who normally never kept his word, was particularly stern this time, showing no mercy.
So, Nanling Yaohua could only cry while copying.
When she got to the third copy, Master Bai appeared, comforting her, “It’s fine; don’t cry, copying the scriptures is also like practicing swordplay!”
“I’ve copied scriptures since I was young! Not only have I copied the ‘Yumen Spell Sutra,’ but I’ve also copied more words than that in ‘Sands Sea Spell Mountain’ and ‘Yumen Spell Sutra Source Classic,’ so my swordsmanship is great now!”
“If you seriously finish copying, you will definitely become as good as me! Keep going!”
With tears streaming down her face, Nanling Yaohua glanced at Bai Kai and thought about possibly becoming just as dull and silly as him, only knowing how to practice swordplay all day, making her cry even harder.
Seeing the little girl crying so much, Bai Kai felt helpless and left in shame.
When Nanling Yaohua reached her fifth copy, Master Lu was drawn in by the constant crying and gently touched her head, asking seriously, “Little Hua, do you want to stop copying? Do you want to leave here?”
Nanling Yaohua looked at Lu Ming with tear-filled eyes, nodding her head vigorously like a chick pecking at grains.
At that moment, she firmly believed in her Master Lu, as he was the only one amongst her “family” who could persuade her grandfather, who had a peculiar temper.
“Okay! Then we won’t copy!” Lu Ming smiled, “I’ll go tell your grandfather.”
Saying that, he left the dimly lit cave illuminated by a yellow candlelight toward the campfire amidst the twisted, eerie poplar forest.
Driven by curiosity, Nanling Yaohua stealthily followed Lu Ming into the poplar forest, watching him approach her grandfather by the campfire, and then she overheard a conversation that would become unforgettable.
In the stillness of the night, as distant howls echo from behind the soil hills, the flickering light of the campfire illuminated the haggard figure of her grandfather, dressed in a sheepskin coat that seemed to have aged many years.
Lu Ming stopped before her grandfather, respectfully cupping his hands, “Master, I salute you.”
Her grandfather raised an eyelid, shooting a glance at Lu Ming, “Get lost!”
Lu Ming pondered for two seconds before, without chanting, pinching out a spell with his fingers, brewing it, bowed again to her grandfather, “Master, I greet you.”
Her grandfather’s peripheral vision caught sight of the glowing spell construct in Lu Ming’s fingers and nodded, “Hmm, what is it? You need not pay attention to formalities.”
Upon seeing this, Nanling Yaohua, hiding in the distance, bit her lip and excitedly clenched her small fist.
Hearing this, Lu Ming released the counter spell, dissipating the light in his hand, and sat beside her grandfather, smiling, “Master, do you really plan to keep Xiaohua on the Gobi for her whole life?”
“……”
Her grandfather fell silent, took out his pipe from his waist, filled it with tobacco, lit it, took a deep puff, and while exhaling smoke, he said faintly, “Of course I don’t want to, but this is not something I can decide.”
“What if I said I have a way?” Lu Ming asked.
Her grandfather shot a fierce glare at Lu Ming, scolding, “Stop using your tricks to harm my granddaughter, or beware I’ll break your legs!”
“Master, you misunderstood; this is really not a trick!” Lu Ming said earnestly, “How could I joke about my dearest son and niece?”
Upon hearing Lu Ming mention Luxianbei, her grandfather furrowed his brow, “What do you mean?”
Lu Ming smiled, clasped his hands, and said, “What I mean is, seeing how close we are, why not have the two children form a bond? Wouldn’t it be a good deal?”
Hiding behind a crooked poplar tree, Nanling Yaohua blushed at this remark. Although she did not fully understand what forming a bond meant, she felt that it was a bit embarrassing.
Perhaps it was like Anar Guli, the sister who herds sheep, getting married, which involves kissing a boy!
“You mean…” Her grandfather pondered for a few seconds, snapped back to reality, his face suddenly darkened as he waved his hand, “No way, absolutely not! He’s three and a half years older than her!”
“Girls are often older; it’s counting golden bricks!” Lu Ming said with a sly grin, “It’s a guaranteed profit!”
“Shut up! I know your son is a fool! Any girl who bonds with him will surely have bad results!”
“Moreover…” Her grandfather took a drag from the pipe, slowly exhaling smoke, “Even if that makes Xiaohua leave here, that child probably cannot change fate.”
“I know this!” Lu Ming said with a bitter smile, stealing a glance in the direction of Nanling Yaohua, leaning in closer to her grandfather and murmured a few words.
Nanling Yaohua couldn’t make out what Master Lu said, only remembering that her grandfather became very angry after hearing it, his face darkening as he furrowed his brows, picking up his pipe to smack Master Lu on the head.
“You worthless thing, how dare you even say this isn’t a trick?”
“This drives me crazy! I taught you the union technique to use for this?”
“I’ve lived nearly a lifetime, and this is simply the most crooked trick I’ve ever seen!”
The burning hot pipe struck Lu Ming’s head three hundred sixty times, each strike ringing clear, the rising wind rustling the poplar branches with a soft sound.
Yet Lu Ming merely bowed, standing firm like a stone, quietly enduring his master’s “teaching.”
Once the three hundred sixty strikes were finished and Lu Ming’s head was swollen, he subtly raised an eyebrow and kneeled before her grandfather, in a formality that had never been seen before, he made a grand bow.
“Thank you, Master, for your guidance. What do you think about Xiaohua and Xiaobei forming a bond…?”
Facing Lu Ming’s question, her grandfather neither agreed nor refused, only glaring back through clenched teeth and squeezing out a single word.
“Get lost—!”
Lu Ming stood up, bowed again, “Thank you, Master.”
After saying that, he staggered out of the poplar forest, heading toward the Nanling Yaohua hiding behind the crooked poplar, gently lifting her up as they walked back to the cave.
“Xiaohua.”
“Mm?”
As she carefully rubbed the bump on Lu Ming’s head, Nanling Yaohua tilted her head.
“You don’t have to copy scriptures anymore; you also don’t need to fulfill that stupid mission anymore,” Lu Ming smiled.
“Really?”
Nanling Yaohua’s eyes widened with excitement.
“Really, when has Master Lu ever deceived you?”
“Last week!” Nanling Yaohua pouted, rubbing her small stomach seriously, “You tricked me into thinking the watermelons in the desert were edible, and then I had a stomach ache!”
Lu Ming frowned, “Aside from last week, when else have I tricked you?”
“Also, last month you said that male goats also have milk. I insisted on asking Grandfather for it and got beaten. And the month before that, you said…”
Nanling Yaohua began rattling off every instance of Lu Ming tricking her since she could remember at three and a half years old, making Lu Ming’s lips twitch as he fell into silence.
It really wasn’t his fault; who doesn’t enjoy teasing a little girl?
Sometimes Lu Ming considered if he had a daughter, her childhood would surely be particularly “tragic.”
After leaving the poplar forest and having lulled Nanling Yaohua to sleep, Bai Kai arrived in the poplar forest shortly after.
Upon seeing his master, Bai Kai curiously asked, “Master, why did you hit Senior Brother? You beat him so severely he just went back and puked bl**d all over me.”
“Can your dull brain understand anything!” her grandfather shot Bai Kai a fierce glare.
“If you don’t explain, how would I know I don’t understand?” Bai Kai scratched his head and mumbled.
Her grandfather looked at Bai Kai sideways, saying solemnly, “Come here and let me enlighten you.”
Bai Kai foolishly leaned in closer, only to be met with a fierce beating from the pipe surrounded by rich spiritual energy that left him bedridden for three days.
However, what her grandfather did not know was if that time, he perhaps overdid it with Bai Kai’s enlightenment.
After he briefly stayed with Lu Ming back at the Gobi and then returned to Huacheng, Bai Kai soon fell for a woman he thought was his destined one and lost his mind; then he walked down a path of debauchery that was hard to bear…
————
Nanling Yaohua did not reject Lu Ming’s proposal, so Lu Ming took it as tacit approval.
From then on, Nanling Yaohua realized she had a fiancé named Luxianbei, the child of Master Lu, who lived far, far away.
One day in the future, Luxianbei would come to the Gobi and take her away, ending the mission of their Yumen Sands Sea Branch to guard Yumen for generations, as well as her daily unending sword practice and studies.
However, she waited a long, long time, and in the end, Luxianbei never came.
Sometimes, she even wondered if Master Lu had forgotten to tell Luxianbei that someone was waiting for him on the Gobi.
So, she ran away from home, heading to Huacheng.
However, what she didn’t know was that even though she had developed skills far surpassing her peers, if her grandfather did not want her to leave, she could never escape that Gobi.
On the day Nanling Yaohua left the Gobi, her grandfather stood on a soil hill, watching her departing figure and recalling what Lu Ming had said many years ago.
Lu Ming said, “Who decided that a person is allowed to form only one bond in a lifetime?”
“Master, Xiaohua doesn’t really have to marry Xiaobei; in the future…”
“Once she leaves here, everything will start to change.”
————
That night on Christmas Eve, Nanling Yaohua reminisced about her original intention of leaving the Gobi.
A sudden idea struck her; she decided she must seriously find Luxianbei, dragging him out to eat a roast turkey once, to see what it tasted like when couples eat together.
So, that night, she went through the things left by Master Lu and, not knowing what kind of events it would spark, arrived here and found “Luxianbei.”
After entering the city, as a flood of originally nonexistent memories poured into her mind, Nanling Yaohua suddenly realized why she hadn’t found Luxianbei in Huacheng.
She hadn’t anticipated that Luxianbei’s mother had constructed an almost entirely real “city” for him to protect him!
Allowing Luxianbei to grow up in this city completely unharmed.
What delighted her even more was that she had already met Luxianbei before, and the Luxianbei she met was not only not the awkward person she had imagined but also the boy who had appeared in the tower and shared her interests.
She had once harbored a slight affection for this boy, pondering over it for quite a while.
Thus……
She decided to stay, to empty herself out, let the original memories fall into silence, and allow the new memories to take dominance, embracing a new identity.
The “dream” that Qin Nanzhu wove for Luxianbei was too beautiful; it had “the boy riding a bamboo horse, playing with plums around the bed” and “the thatched roof is small, grass grows by the stream. In drunkenness, Wu dialect sounds delightful, who in the white hair couple’s family”…
Life might carry some bitterness, but after the bitterness, there are always endless sweet aftertastes.
Even she, as a “side character,” unknowingly became immersed in the story, in the back of the boy who, foolishly for her, took a beating, and in the changing seasons of the backseat of the bicycle; she became absorbed in the past, the present, and the visible future.
Now, Nanling Yaohua no longer needed to drag Luxianbei to eat roast turkey; she already knew what flavor the turkey that couple talked about that day had.
Though she had always known that everything she saw here was false, what did it matter if it was fake?
This world was so big; not everything was true, and not everything false must be bad.
Moreover, if a beautiful dream could last a lifetime, then what difference did it have from reality?
When someone acknowledges a certain set of values and living environment, they wouldn’t care about the issues that exist within that environment.
But now……
This city, for some unknown reason, experienced a turn of events and started to exhibit urban legends!
And it was an obviously strong, malevolent urban legend.
Such changes could very likely cause catastrophic damage to this special space and its template—the Huacheng, or even turn Huacheng into a wasteland where humans could hardly survive.
Much like the area surrounding the Yumen Pass.
Legends say that west of the Yumen Pass, the thirty-six kingdoms of Qiuci, Zhaqiang, Loulan, and Jingjue—all were extraordinarily prosperous.
Their demise seemed to have happened overnight, with the most crucial factor being the destruction of the special space known as “Yumen.”
The only difference was that the remnants after Yumen’s destruction fell like vast yellow sands from the sky, while the fragments of this false Huacheng would appear in an unknown manner.
Nanling Yaohua found it hard to imagine what would become of Luxianbei if one day he awoke from this “beautiful dream,” facing a battered Huacheng.
Thus, Nanling Yaohua fell silent for a long time, tightly gripping the long sword in her hand.
“This absolutely cannot be allowed to happen!”
She had to think of a way to find the source of the trouble and deal with it.
She must not let this city, especially not the city that Luxianbei sees, suffer any damage. Nanling Yaohua thought.
She wanted to maintain this “beautiful dream” for Luxianbei, and for herself.
