Chapter 364: 139. Parasol Tree! Parasol Tree!
“Alright, you Fisher, you heartless person! I even went to study to not disturb your good deeds, but I ended up reading for a whole day and night, and no one came to find me. I thought you had died in the Sacred Marriage! I never expected, I never expected, you thick-browed and big-eyed fellow, that you would forget me!”
The wind and snow drifted at night, the heavy dark clouds hung in the sky. Fisher was ready to set off with Valentina on his back, with several female trolls clearing the path ahead, ensuring their direction matched the teleportation ritual they had set up earlier. Meanwhile, the square relic book was scolding while crashing its head into Fisher’s head.
This couldn’t be entirely blamed on Emhart, as Fisher had been busy since morning, ending the Sacred Marriage and going out with Valentina to eat before going alone beneath to inscribe magic until evening. In the meantime, Emhart had been forgotten in the troll’s archive storage. Only when they were about to leave did he remember, which naturally upset Emhart.
“You scumbag! You scumbag!”
Fisher, with his dead fish eyes, reached out to block Emhart’s attacks, but he couldn’t be completely blamed. After all, he had been pondering how to deal with Erwind, and even Valentina, who just became his partner in the Sacred Marriage last night, couldn’t stay with him, let alone Emhart. However, last night, Valentina had not rested well, and during her free time in the afternoon, she had just caught up on some sleep, so she naturally couldn’t understand Emhart’s anger.
“Don’t be angry, Emhart. Fisher has important matters to attend to, which is why he accidentally forgot about you.”
She called out a few times to Emhart and saw him squinting and turning his head to stare at her, puzzled, “Really?”
“Yes, he’s busy being affectionate with me ~”
“You mother.”
Seeing Valentina, who was covering her mouth and giggling on his back, about to get her hatred successfully diverted by Emhart, Fisher quickly grabbed him in his palm and roughly explained the situation from the afternoon, which made this little Sir Book pout and finally quiet down in his arms.
And it was during this little chat that they finally walked out of the troll tribe into the open. Daliwu, standing at the forefront, pointed ahead. In a cleared area of snow, a Slime’s windsock was stuck in a pile of items. That pile featured valuable metals like gold, with a token placed right in the center.
Fisher, carrying Valentina, approached the formation. When he spotted the boundary wind instrument stuck in the snow, he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow and asked Daliwu, “Wait, you said the teleportation has to do with slimes?”
“Of course! Do you think our trolls are clever enough to teleport others? Before the entire slime race left the Northern Region, my mother exchanged words with the Slime King. Our lifespans are longer than slimes, so my mother and the Slime King are friends. They agreed to help each other and to fulfill the Moon Princess’s command to assist the Phoenix bloodline’s return to the Parasol Tree. This teleportation array operates using the Slime King’s power.”
“This old thing.”
Fisher sighed in slight disbelief. He guessed that the Slime King had sensed the aura of Valentina’s phoenix blood on him and treated him well accordingly. Who would have thought that this guy originally intended to help Valentina return to the Parasol Tree unconditionally? That meant he had been taken advantage of and owed a favor.
Seeing Fisher sigh, Valentina gently poked his cheek and teased, “You’re not saying you were tricked by that Slime King with some sort of compensation when you went to the slime boundary, right? You didn’t mention it before, and now you’re leaving the Turan Family, so there won’t be any reimbursements anymore, huh? This is what you get for showing off~”
Although the slimes would be cautious in utilizing their favors, at least for now, their mistakes regarding those ladies wouldn’t be exposed. However, what if one day the truth came out? That would be serious.
Thinking of this, Fisher suddenly turned his face and kissed Valentina’s soft cheek to calm himself. Valentina, embarrassed, covered her face and patted Fisher’s shoulder, calling out,
“Fisher!”
“This is encouragement.”
“Hah? What encouragement?”
“Something that gives me more courage, I suppose. Thank you, Valentina.”
“You guy.”
Valentina blushed and buried her face in his shoulder, gently squeezing his earlobe, not sure if it was a show of affection or punishment. Meanwhile, Emhart, hidden in Fisher’s pocket, stared with his dead fish eyes, feeling out of place everywhere.
He felt that he shouldn’t be there but should instead remain in the troll tribe’s archive storing place to fend for himself.
“Alright, stand on top. This token belongs to my mother; it can bring you to her side. Be cautious after reaching the Parasol Tree. The hopes of our six races and other beings rest upon you. Oh, and say hi to my deceased old mother for me, if she’s still alive.”
Upon hearing Daliwu’s words outside the ritual, Fisher nodded in agreement. Then, with a cheerful smile, Daliwu signaled the other trolls to step back and give some space. He then took a long horn and blew into it, aiming at the sky, producing a deep, distant sound.
“Woo-whoo-whoo!!”
As that horn sound grew fainter in the night sky, Fisher, standing at the center of the ritual, suddenly felt an ancient song, faint yet real, resonate in his ears, just like when he had heard it at the slime boundary,
“Bareen Bareen Bareen Bareen!!”
The peculiar flute sound grew louder, and the precious metals around Fisher began to emit streams of golden light, slowly enveloping their bodies.
“Buzz buzz buzz!”
In the next second, the space around them warped suddenly. Accompanied by the soaring song, they traversed the surrounding twisted complex space, dashing toward a very distant direction.
At that exact moment, in another direction upon a mountain, a figure wearing a bird-beak mask suddenly heard the high-pitched sound and turned his head to look in that direction.
Although Erwind could ignore the Phoenix Bridge entering the back into chaotic, complex space, due to the troll settlement being enveloped in spatial turbulence, he had not discovered Fisher’s traces. Wandering mindlessly, he had not found the legendary Frost Parasol Tree. Just when he started to doubt if Fisher had already entered the Parasol Tree, the sound of the boundary horn echoed in the night sky, making him feel like a bloodthirsty wolf sensing blood and capturing the prey’s trail.
In the darkness, his figure gradually became blurry, as if strolling in spatial turbulence; sometimes he paced around this mountain, sometimes appearing on another peak, moving quickly toward the direction where Fisher was being transmitted.
“Bareen Bareen Bareen Bareen!!”
“Boom!”
Beneath the thick cloud cover lay an endless quiet snowfield. Just then, a golden ray fell from the sky. As the sound of the boundary wind flute gradually faded, the form of Fisher, carrying Valentina, gradually emerged from that golden light.
It wasn’t Fisher’s first time experiencing the Slime’s teleportation, so he felt fine. However, Valentina on his back felt a bit queasy, her face pale against his shoulder.
“Are you okay, Valentina?”
“Ah, I’m fine. Is this where Daliwu’s mother is? But this is a snowfield, and I don’t see any Parasol Tree. Wait, Fisher, there seems to be something ahead.”
Fisher looked ahead, seeing an endless snowfield mixed with fierce wind and snow. He squinted and saw a thin black shadow sitting on the ground, facing them.
Fisher cautiously took a few steps forward. As he got closer, he suddenly saw through the wind and snow that the black shadow was actually a massive troll sitting on the snow, draped in a cloak. However, this troll had long since died, completely wrapped in the cloak, which shimmered with some silver-glinting armor, seemingly of a very ancient style.
The visor of the armor covered her face, and from a small gap in the armor, Fisher saw the cold white bones hidden within. Behind her stood a massive and immensely heavy black battle axe, but this mother of Daliwu, long gone, did not reach out to grasp the weapon. She merely sat cross-legged on the ground, maintaining the final posture of her death.
In front of Fisher, her long-decayed right hand pointed toward Fisher’s back, seemingly guiding Fisher and Valentina in the right direction.
“Behind?”
Fisher turned around, and in the endless snowfield, following the direction pointed out by Daliwu’s mother, he finally saw clearly that there stood six statues protruding from the snow.
He hurried forward, and from left to right, six statues made of some kind of black mineral knelt on one knee in the snow, lowering their heads facing forward, maintaining a supplication posture, but holding nothing in their hands, as if waiting for Fisher to place something in those statues’ hands.
“These statues look exactly like the ones depicted in the six races’ tokens. We should place the tokens in, right?”
Fisher nodded, taking out the six race tokens he had collected along the way, which were the [Cangniao Tribe], [Troll Race], [Moon Rabbit Tribe], [Slime Race], [Cloud Cat Breed], and [Snow Fox Tribe].
Fisher carefully placed the six tokens into their corresponding statues’ hands and then stepped back several paces, waiting for some mechanism to activate. However, several seconds passed, and beneath the heavy cloud cover of the endless snowfield, nothing happened.
Fisher looked perplexedly at the kneeling statues before him, and Emhart poked his head out, wanting to see what had gone wrong. He hissed and asked Fisher,
“Eh, why hasn’t anything happened? Fisher, did you not secure it well, or is this mechanism too old and broken and doesn’t activate?”
Valentina stroked her chin, also puzzled,
“Ah, this is a mechanism built by the phoenixes; can it really break?”
While Fisher and the others stood there contemplating, he suddenly felt a light breeze hitting his back. After that, the breeze seemed to gradually grow stronger, until it became increasingly powerful. He turned his head to look, feeling a gust of wind that seemed colder than the entire North Region’s winter crashing against his face, the wind mingled with the snow hitting his face, causing him to raise his hand to shield his eyes.
“Whoosh whoosh whoosh!!”
The violent gale surged in, almost like a blizzard, quickly blowing away the body of Daliwu’s mother sitting on the ground, along with her massive axe stuck in the snow, whisked away to an unknown destination.
“Hold on, Valentina!”
“Fisher!”
Amidst the roaring wind, Fisher gritted his teeth, standing firm without moving, letting the icy, frosty wind batter him. After several seconds, the cutting wind gradually subsided.
Gasping for breath, Fisher opened his eyes. He looked down first to see where he was standing; it was no longer thick snow but a complete, shimmering, foggy mineral. On that mineral, moonlight like water was splashed over it.
This is true ice?
He paused slightly, then slowly raised his head. The scene before him instantly sank into his heart, leaving an indelible impression.
As the fierce cold wind swept by, at this moment, the thick dark clouds in the sky were blown apart, revealing a cloudless expanse showing the twinkling star river; a bright yet chilling moon hung high in the heavens. With the full moon as a focal point and the starry sky as a canvas, radiant green auroras, seemingly alive, spread across the sky, sketching out the stunning view above.
Below the place where Fisher and the others stood was not an ordinary mountain but a complete, translucent peak made of true ice. Any block casually mined from the ground was extremely valuable true ice, revealing that the spot once covered by heavy snow was a towering true ice mountain.
Through the hazy true ice mist, mixed with the moonlight and aurora’s night, an exceedingly grand architectural shadow revealed itself within the true ice mountain.
An impressive array of grand plazas, spires, corridors, buildings, and palaces connected and sprawled, their magnificently beautiful exteriors stretching endlessly at a glance, quietly resting within that long-sealed true ice peak, containing historical weight beyond human estimation and imagination, showcasing the shadow of a great race with heavenly craftsmanship.
Under the slight light of the heavens and the true ice responding to each other, the stunning architectural shadows resembled branches and trunks of a giant tree that grew upside down in a soil of star rivers, shaking the senses of every small life experiencing its majestic silhouette for the first time.
That was not a truly living tree; its life was given by the beings once living within it.
Before Fisher was the phoenix’s hometown that spanned both heaven and earth, a historical monument.
Great phoenix!
Once again, spread your sky-covering wings!
Crossing through long epochs, removing heavy frost and snow,
The Frost Parasol Tree where you reside finally reveals itself before your eyes!
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(End of chapter)
