Wei WuXian left the donkey down at the bottom of the mountain. He stepped over the remains of the wall and walked up the mountain path. Soon later, he saw the stone statue of a headless beast. The statue was thousands of pounds in weight. It had guarded the mountain path for many years. Vines climbed over it and moss gathered at the dents. The head of the beast had been chopped off by an axe and tossed somewhere near. As if to assert power, it had been smashed into small pieces. The cut was still new, revealing the whiteness inside. Farther along, similarly, the next statue that they saw had been cut into two halves, from head to toe.
Wei WuXian knew at once that these were the stone beasts that the sects had set onto the acupoints of the terrain to guard the mountain after he had died. The stone beasts were capable of exorcism. They required much craft and were quite expensive to produce. Now, it was likely that all of them had been destroyed. It was truly a waste.
Side by side, Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi walked a few more steps. Inadvertently looking back, he saw that Wen Ning had already appeared.
He stood beside the stone beast, head lowered and unmoving. Wei WuXian asked, "Wen Ning? What are you looking at?"
Wen Ning pointed at the base of the stone beast.
The stone beast was on top of a short, thick tree trunk. By the trunk, there were three smaller, shorter trunks. They seemed to have been burnt over by fire. They were entirely black.
Wen Ning kneeled on the ground with both of his knees. His fingers dug deeply into the dirt, grabbing a handful of black dirt, and clenched it within his palm, "... Sister."
Wei WuXian didn't know what to say. He walked over and patted his shoulder hard.
Throughout Wei WuXian's life, two periods of time had been extremely hard to endure. Both happened here. He never intended to visit such a place again.
And, to Wen Ning, Burial Mound was even more of an unforgettable place.
A gust of cold breeze swept over. The sea of trees rustled as though tens of thousands of thin voices whispered. Wei WuXian listened carefully. Kneeling on the ground with one knee, he bent down and murmured something toward the earth below him. Suddenly, a bump formed below the surface.
As though a pale flower had grown out of the black soil, a skeleton arm slowly broke through the dirt.
The portion of the skeleton arm was weakly suspended in the air. Wei WuXian reached out and grabbed it. He bent down even lower. His long hair fell from his shoulder, masking half of his face.
He pressed his lips toward the skeleton hand and whispered something. Then he was quiet, as though he was listening for something. A while later, he nodded slightly. The hand formed a flower bud again and withdrew into the soil.
Wei WuXian stood up and swept away the dirt on him, "These days they've taken over a hundred people up here. They're all at the top, still alive. The people who took them have already gone down the mountain though. I don't know what they want to do. Anyways, we should be careful."
The three continued upward. They came along a few run down shacks standing alongside the mountain path.
The houses varied in size. The structure was simple, even crude. Just one glance, it was obvious that they had been built rashly. Some were so burned that only bare frames were left, while some slumped entirely to one side. Even the most complete ones were half-destroyed. After being under over ten years of rain and wind, with nobody to care for them, each looked like dying ghosts in tattered clothing, looking down in silence at those who came up the mountain.
Ever since they had gone up the mountain, Wen Ning's footsteps had been especially heavy. Right now, standing before one of the houses, again, he couldn't walk any longer.
