"Splash—"
Memories flowed like melting snow, like slides playing before his eyes, fragments of images flashing alternately across Bai Zhou's vision.
He saw, he witnessed, he saw the past that had occurred on this land—
Bai Zhou saw a boy return to the door of his newly built thatched hut, stumbling through the swirling snow, holding a dusty, gray object.
It was a fledgling eagle with a broken wing, its feathers not yet fully grown, ugly and resembling a bald rat.
"Ugly and skinny, no meat for soup,"
the boy sighed softly, only to be pecked by the fledgling .
But this only made the boy smile, tucking it into his robes and taking it back to the thatched hut.
—This was the first encounter between man and eagle.
Later, the boy grew into a young man.
"Hey! Whoosh—"
A whistle pierced the sky above the snow-capped mountains. The young man put two fingers in his mouth, and a sharp, clear, and loud whistle rang out.
Instantly, a gray falcon took flight from his arm, like an arrow released from a bow, soaring through the sky.
Soon after, the falcon returned from the ruins of a distant mountain hollow, its wings flapping and circling, carrying a corpse it had found somewhere in its talons.
Dropping the corpse beside the young man, the falcon landed precisely on his raised arm, proudly raising its head as if awaiting praise.
The young man patted the ugly falcon's head, took a small piece of jerky from his pocket, and stuffed it into its mouth.
"Well done! But—are you sure you want to come with me?" the young man said. "There's no future with me. You belong in the freer skies."
The ugly falcon swallowed the jerky, perched on the young man's shoulder, shook its wings, and pretended not to hear.
————Days passed by like this.
"Hey! Whoosh!"
Whenever the whistle echoed across the snow-capped peak, falcons would take flight in perfect unison, like arrows released from a bow, soaring into the distant sky.
This whistle was their unique code, which would be sounded precisely on the tranquil snow-capped mountain peak every day thereafter.
Bai Zhou saw a man and an eagle walking among the ruins of the Sunset Mountains. The eagle circled in the sky, while the man climbed the rocks on the ground. Every now and then, a giant eagle would swoop down and fly back, leaving a skeleton in its talons.
Sometimes the remains were intact, sometimes only half remained. The young man carried the bones on his shoulder until his way home, when he would choose to fly, soaring alongside the eagle in the sky.
Every day, as the sun was about to set, the man and the eagle would busy themselves on the snow-capped mountain peak. The young man would build graves, while the eagle would perch on the ruins nearby, tilting its head to watch him dig the pit, bury the body, and carve the tombstone.
When the tombstone was finished, the young man would place the flowers he had gathered during the day before it, and the ugly eagle would flutter over and lightly peck at the inscription on the tombstone, as if trying to understand what the young man did every day.
"This is called mourning," the young man would reply.
Day after day, it was the same.
On the snow-capped mountain peak, in this sacred high place, rows of tombstones stretched out, and the young man who guarded the graves gradually grew into middle age.
The ugly eagle had grown into a large eagle, and even the young man marveled at the eagle's extraordinary bloodline; the passage of time showed no signs of aging, clearly indicating a different species.
Pollution in the Falling Mountains increased daily. Having traversed countless dangerous ruins, the middle-aged man's health deteriorated accordingly. His hair prematurely turned gray, and he continued his daily trek through the mountains, his back hunched, using an iron spear salvaged from the ruins as a crutch.
"Hey! Whoosh!"
His whistle was no longer clear, but the eagle could hear it—it always could. However, each time it flew away and returned, the eagle's landing on the middle-aged man's arm was much gentler than before, as if afraid of hurting him.
Whenever this happened, the gravedigger would pat its head, and occasionally, if there was no dried meat in his pocket, he would apologize sheepishly.
"No meat today—can you make do for now? Tomorrow I'll go check the mountain pass; maybe there will be some rabbits."
The eagle would then nestle its head against the gravedigger's chest, like a child saying, "It's okay, Dad, I'm not hungry yet."
The eagle had grown up, but the gravedigger had grown old.
He was so powerful that Bai Zhou couldn't comprehend it, but profound power comes with risks. His body underwent various mutations that Bai Zhou couldn't understand, and he suffered immense pain under the stimulation of pollution. The combined effects of these two factors leaked out, even causing strange changes in the thatched hut where he lived.
"Hey! Whoosh—
"
Then, Bai Zhou heard the gravedigger blow his whistle one last time. He released the falcon, but this time there was only the command to release it; there was no call back.
The man wanted the falcon to return to its own sky, forgetting that from its fledgling stage, the falcon's world only saw his presence.
When the eagle circling in the sky waited in vain for the whistle to call it back, it returned to the snow-capped peak with a new carcass, searching for its master, but could no longer find that familiar figure.
So, the eagle went mad.
In its madness, the eagle dropped the carcass and flew all around, enraging countless beasts. Wounded and battered, it returned to the snow-capped peak, but still found nothing.
That day, the entire snow-capped mountain heard the eagle's mournful cry from the peak.
The story should have ended here—
but Bai Zhou's perspective shifted, standing at the vantage point of the silent tombstone on the snow-capped peak, continuing to observe the events that unfolded on this sacred snow-capped mountain.
He saw the eagle, without eating, drinking, or sleeping, guarding the roof of the thatched hut for three days and three nights.
On the fourth day, it flew to a distant mountain, brought back a new carcass, and placed it in front of the thatched hut as before.
Then it flew out again and brought back another body—it piled the remains one by one in front of the thatched hut, making a small mountain.
How acute were the senses of this falcon species? It could pinpoint the hidden remains in the ruins and black mist of the Sunset Mountains, and naturally knew where the man had buried it.
It had discovered the man's presence immediately; it had simply deceived itself that its master hadn't returned home yet. It believed that by waiting here, it could wait for its master to return, to hear the whistle that called it back.
It just didn't understand—it didn't understand why the man was lifeless, why he was in a deep sleep, why this man with his strange habit of burying bones no longer got up to bury them.
But it still brought the bones back, because that's what the man had taught it. Perhaps one day, the man would wake up, stretch, whistle to call it back, and then clear away the mountain of remains.
—That day would come.
The falcon firmly believed.
"
Bai
Zhou witnessed everything unfold, like a silent tombstone watching the scenes flash back page by page, the days fast-forwarding.
The eagle returned each day carrying bones, but no one collected the carcasses, no one built a tombstone. The bones piled outside the thatched hut until there was no more room. Then it hung them on its wings, never letting them go when it flew.
Gradually, the eagle grew old. With its aging body and the pollution of the graveyard, its vitality and fighting ability declined sharply, making battles with the contaminated carcasses increasingly difficult.
As it sustained more and more injuries, the deformed carcasses began to merge with the eagle's wings along the healing wounds.
Its wings grew heavier, yet larger, as bones embedded themselves in the feathers, intertwined with flesh and blood. It became grotesque and ferocious, unrecognizable even to itself. Its eyes lost their clarity, becoming increasingly crazed in their murky depths."
Its speed grew slower and slower, it merged with the dense mass of corpses, its wings became increasingly weak, its sanity corrupted and eroded—
the mourner of the grave, the eagle left behind in the world, finally transformed into that terrifying [Wings of Mourning].
Afterwards, time passed, and the half-dead [Wings of Mourning], like a zombie, though far less powerful than before, lived a long and immortal life, forever circling above the snow-capped peaks, its body covered in corpses.
It circled and hovered—as if waiting for someone's return, as if waiting for the whistle to sound again, or perhaps waiting for nothing at all.
It had probably long forgotten who it was waiting for, forgotten why it carried the bones back, forgotten that a whistle-blowing person had once lived in that half-collapsed thatched hut—it merely mechanically repeated the action of carrying corpses, even though it was covered in wounds in the process.
One day, a vibrant young man, compass in hand, ascended the snow-capped mountain. He bore a resemblance to the adventurer the tomb keeper had once encountered. He saw notes left by his ancestors and, believing a hermit lived atop the mountain, made a special trip to visit.
However, what awaited him was a long, menacing cry, followed by a monstrous monster swooping down from the sky for a merciless hunt—
and then, the scene shattered.
Bai Zhou opened his eyes.
His gaze shifted, returning to the two pits before him, one large and one small.
Buried in the smaller pit was not the Winged Wing that had transformed into a monster from the scene; instead, lay the body of a grey-white falcon, curled up at the bottom of the pit, its body no longer entangled with bones and decaying flesh.
The falcon was clean yet covered in wounds, as if it had just fallen asleep, its sleeping posture remarkably similar to—
the way the man had looked when he first found the fledgling.
It came, and it went; had it found the answer it sought at the end of its life?
Bai Zhou felt, perhaps not.
The completed last words only proved the fulfillment of the master's obsession—but the eagle, so confused that it couldn't even leave a last word, departed in the scorching heat of the burning flames of destiny, still unable to hear the whistle it had been waiting for.
As an observer of the last words, Bai Zhou was never sentimental, nor did he feel he owed anything to the master or the eagle. He simply witnessed it from the sacred snow-capped peak, and before the towering tombstones, as a fellow mourner of the deceased from a previous civilization, he wanted to do something.
He simply felt that good people should be rewarded, and that those who mourned and guarded the graves should also have successors to mourn for them.
So, Bai Zhou blinked twice, rummaged through the Trojan Horse for a long time, and finally found two dried-up bouquets from Earth, placing them in front of two pits, one large and one small.
In this way, the eagle and the person who always collected offerings and laid flowers for others, after their own death, also had people collecting offerings and laying flowers for them.
Then, Bai Zhou tried putting two fingers in his mouth, mimicking the image in his memory, and attempting to whistle.
"————Pfft! Pfft!"
Oh no, he couldn't whistle at all; only saliva splashed in mid-air, making muffled "pfft" sounds like duds.
Bai Zhou was completely clueless in this area; the skills that street thugs mastered without instruction were utterly foreign to Bai Zhou, a model student from Wancheng.
Fortunately, Bai Zhou always had an exceptional talent for learning. The details of the gravedigger's whistling movements in his memory were magnified and dissected in his mind. After a few simple attempts—
"Hey!" Bai Zhou shouted, standing among the towering flowers and tombstones, his voice carrying across the snow-covered, sacred peak.
Then, standing atop the snow-capped mountain, he whistled loudly into the distant sky: "Hey! Whoosh—
"
The whistle blew, carrying the lingering notes that had always echoed across this snow-capped peak for many years—the very tune the gravedigger had whistled his entire life.
It wasn't quite accurate, but it was loud enough to echo across the snow-capped peaks, like the young man who guarded the grave returning to this place.
In fact, the whistle's inaccuracy lay in the fact that it resembled both the whistle the eagle had been waiting for, calling it back to its wing, and the whistle used when releasing an eagle into the sky.
It was giving the eagle an answer to its long wait, and also fulfilling the master's wish for the eagle's freedom.
"Screech!!!"
In a daze, Bai Zhou heard the cry of an eagle, faintly coming from the distant sky.
Perhaps it was the rising snow, or perhaps the distorted black mist under the setting sun, that vaguely coalesced into the outline of an eagle, soaring from the distant mountain peaks, as if echoing Bai Zhou's whistle.
Like the last words, this magnificent scene, visible only to Bai Zhou, was reflected in his eyes from afar.
The eagle's silhouette swept across the sky, circling once in the sunset-lit heavens. When its wings spread, it was no longer the shadow of corpses that once blotted out the sky, but only a light, nimble arc, leaving behind illusory points of light in mid-air.
It swept over Bai Zhou's head, over the rows of tombstones, over the site of the thatched hut, and over the snow-capped mountains, and then with a whoosh—
it took flight.
Under the pure white sunset, illuminated by the rising blood moon, the eagle's silhouette grew smaller and smaller in the afterglow, its outline fading further and further on the horizon, until it finally disappeared completely.
The bodies of man and eagle, buried together in the same grave, nestled side by side, while the eagle's soul flew far away, to the ends of the Eternal Heaven.
Its soul returned to itself, finally free from its constraints!
At this moment, the falcon seemed to have gained unfettered freedom, as if it could finally follow in the footsteps of the man who had gone so far.
However, Bai Zhou was certain that in the instant before the magnificent light and shadow disappeared at the edge of the sky, leaving behind snowflake-like specks of light—
the eagle's light and shadow turned back on the horizon, as if bidding farewell to Bai Zhou.
Witnessing the story of the dead, reaping the gratitude of the dead—at this moment, how could Bai Zhou not feel a sense of accomplishment?
This feeling was—pretty good.
The next instant.
With a "snap!"
the fragments of the last words, already shattered into images, shattered again, then reformed, crashing into Bai Zhou's destiny space.
The final stage.
The deceased's gift had arrived.
"Rumble—"
In an instant, thunder roared in the destiny space, and the Sea of Ignorance surged with waves.
Above the dark waves of the Sea of Ignorance, beside four ancient characters that floated and glowed mysteriously, a brand new ancient character was slowly taking shape!
Upon seeing this, Bai Zhou's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't expected that the reward bestowed upon him by the tomb keeper would be the long-awaited ancient character of destiny.
He'd hit the jackpot!
"Buzz—"
The instant he saw the ancient character, Bai Zhou vaguely saw the tomb keeper's unwavering devotion to the eagle, and the eagle's undying obsession with the tomb keeper.
Countless images flashed before his eyes, and his spirit and thoughts seemed to expand endlessly at this moment, like surging waves, a mysterious power, invisible yet real, surrounding Bai Zhou.
At the same time, as if struck by a divine inspiration, Bai Zhou knew the meaning of this ancient character.
Then, Bai Zhou opened his eyes, stood atop the snow-covered mountain amidst the swirling winds and snow, and, following the surging impulse in his heart, softly uttered the pronunciation of that character.
He said, "[Recite]."
The next instant—
some strange, unseen power rippled outwards from Bai Zhou, like waves rolling in layers.
"Buzz!!!"
The wind stopped, the snow froze, the air seemed to stop flowing, and the snow-capped mountains that howled all day suddenly fell silent.
The wind didn't blow, the snow didn't move, even the air itself fell silent in that instant. Bai Zhou stood still, not moving at all, but there must have been an invisible force gathering power beside him, silently surging and roaring.
Countless unspeakable whispers and murmurs piled up in his ears, each word indistinct, each word filled with longing, like invisible hands caressing Bai Zhou's body, raising goosebumps on his skin.
This was the power left behind by the ancestors on this mountain peak littered with the dead—
a power called "longing."
Myriad mysteries, a thousand wonders, countless echoes of longing layer upon layer, silent yet capable of destroying mountains and seas.
Even Bai Zhou's perception—
it seemed to possess a special affinity for undead spirits clinging to obsessions!
If so, this was an immense gain for Bai Zhou, who always walked among the dead!
The next second,
Bai Zhou's gaze fell upon a patch of black mist swirling in the air, releasing a thousand whispers and ten thousand thoughts that surrounded it.
"Tear—
"
An invisible, surging power roared forth, as if an invisible hand had suddenly descended, tearing the black mist apart. The rift receded in all directions, revealing a clear sky and a pure white sunset behind it.
The light of the pure white sunset and the blood moon simultaneously fell upon the tombstones scattered across the snow-capped peak.
And so, for a brief moment, the sky above the snow-capped peak cleared
.