Chapter 7: Brothers Pt.3

The next morning, the entire crew came to visit madam Mo. The girls had now changed into their dresses. Familiar flying phoenix adorned their clothes. FenFen in light blush and FuFu in spring yellow robes. Flowing sleeves looked like folded wings. They were almost ethereal, gaining looks wherever they went.

Their mother must have been a very beautiful, renowned, and well-raised woman, MingYu mused. He quickly turned his eyes away. For a thousand-year-old deity, he sounded like a scorned woman, disgruntled that others found happiness. MingYu blamed it on ShiBai's young body. Must be the damned hormones of the youth! MingYu thought. He found absolutely no other reason for it.

"Brother MingYu, we are here." PingZe said and took hold of MingYu before he walked into the pine tree.

MingYu turned around in a hurry, his cheeks slightly flushed. "Yes. Where are they?"

PingZe grinned at him, his eyebrows slightly raised. ZhiYi suppressed his smile. XiaoHe cleared his throat and pointed next to MingYu's legs. Looking down, MingYu saw the bird and the donkey looking at him with something that resembled annoyance.

"What are you doing? Trying to steal my family away, are you! In the middle of broad daylight, too!" Madam Mo hurried out of the house behind the tree, waving the bamboo scroll in her hand like a weapon. Her hair was uncombed and standing up in different angles. Spittle was flying everywhere. It was lucky she was rather short, so the spittle radar stopped below MingYu's face.

"You! Now you returned with two monks and girls? Threatening me with a group of people now, are you?"

"Madam Mo, we aren't here to steal anything from you. Please calm down." MingYu said as he fished his own scroll out and handed it to her. "This is my scroll. May we come inside and talk?"

She was looking at the scrolls in her hand in awe. She hurried inside without a word, and MingYu and ZhiYi followed her while the rest stayed outside. MingYu had decided to use his scroll to show madam Mo that he was also a descended deity. Maybe she would yield and hand over his brothers.

The other route was to bring her husband home. MingYu didn't hold much hope towards either of the options, yet stealing the animals was off the question. Nothing was as scary as the wrath of a woman, and he had had enough with the episode last night.

The house was small, the ceiling low, and MingYu had to hunch his back to walk inside. There was not much of anything within the house, a small fireplace for cooking, a table, and a bed. A little candle flickered on the table.

"Madam Mo, you live alone?" MingYu already knew the answer but asked anyway out of politeness.

"No, of course not!" Madam Mo said as she hurried back and forth, going through straw baskets of her items she kept in the corner. MingYu raised his brow at ZhiYi, who only shrugged.

"Oh, who do you live with?"

"My husband, of course! Silly child!" Madam Mo chuckled as she threw items everywhere on the ground and across her bed. "He has been gone for a while, but he will return soon."

"Oh, how long has he been gone?"

"I-" Madam Mo quieted down but kept rummaging through the basket, opening and throwing scrolls away. "He came to visit once. He said he will visit again, soon."

MingYu frowned. How could that be? ZhiYi had specifically said, her husband left thirty years ago to ascend a mountain and never returned. He pushed forward. "How was he like?"

"Wonderful, a magnificent man. A lot like you." Madam Mo gleamed with pride.

MingYu froze. He wasn't particularly magnificent, in any way. In fact, ShiBai's looks were purely average at best. An uneasy feeling crept up his spine. He shot a worried look at ZhiYi, who was studying madam Mo and her rummaging with interest.

"Madam Mo, your husband, is he-" MingYu's sentence cut away when madam Mo screeched in delight and jumped up with a dusty, mouldy bundle in her hand.

"I found it! Look, look!" She shoved it in MingYu's face, her eyes sparkling.

MingYu swallowed. He knew this scroll. It wasn't in a prime state, parts of the bamboo had chipped away, the words were worn out and barely readable. But it was what he had suspected. Madam Mo's husband was a deity, and not just any deity, he was one who was performing his punishment here on Earth.

But the part that spelled out his punishment was so worn out, there was nothing left to decipher. The scroll had been left in a leaky, dusty corner to rot for years. Judging by madam Mo's age, if she was now in her sixties, and they married young, the scroll was over 40 years old!

"What was his name?" MingYu tried to read the words, but it made no sense to him.

"Mo YunXing."

The name ringed no bells to MingYu. although there were many deities in Heaven. There was a possibility he didn't know of this particular man. But if the scroll was here and the man itself gone, it must mean Mo YunXing finished his punishment and already ascended back to Heaven 30 years ago. But then-

"He came to visit you?" MingYu said as he put the scroll down. A piece of the bamboo nicked off. MingYu put it in his pocket without madam Mo noticing.

"Yes. Youth these days doesn't pay any attention to elders talking." Madam Mo busied about cleaning the floor off all the items she had tossed.

"Once?" MingYu had to make sure.

"Why, yes. You really weren't listening, were you?" Madam Mo looked vexed.

MingYu looked as vexed. How could this be possible? Heaven had strict regulations, one couldn't freely travel between the realms. Visiting spouses certainly wasn't a valid reason to cross the borders. If one traveled without a special permit, they would lose a significant amount of cultivation powers. The borders were walled out with strong barriers, they also had specific guardians appointed there. Unless Mo YunXing wasn't crossing the realms. But then it meant he was still here, in the Earth realm. But why not stay with his wife? It made little sense to MingYu.

"Which mountain did he ascend?" ZhiYi asked. The village situated at the foot of a cluster of mountains, some big, some less big, all as tall and uninviting when gazed at from the village.

Madam Mo suddenly wilted, her expression distant and melancholy. "He said he went where the mist never ceases and not even gods may find him."

That sounded awfully like Mo YunXing had gone and offed himself, but MingYu refrained from pointing it out.

"Among the four mountains, only Yongwu is surrounded in thick blankets of fog. I climbed it many times for years, but never caught sight of him."

So Mo YunXing lied? MingYu pondered a moment before he turned back to madam Mo. "Can you show us the way he headed back then?"

After a short moment of madam Mo mulling over it, she finally nodded and stepped outside. She walked along the road, tightly clutching the heavenly scrolls against her chest. The whole crew now followed after her like ducklings. When they finally reached the outer perimeters of the village, she looked at the mountains, standing silently in place.

"Madam Mo?" MingYu urged. Madam Mo seemed to be lost in her own little world. Her eyes were glazed over, and in just that little moment, she appeared to age another decade more. Her hair looked silver under the sun, and in her silent stillness, MingYu could feel the grief and mourning radiating from her. He could picture her standing in this exact spot, year after year, waiting. How many winters did she endure through?

"One can die, go to Heaven, Hell, or through rebirth but should never lose yourself in the abyss." Madam Mo's thin voice barely rose above the light wind that hummed around them in the valley. MingYu frowned at the sudden notion.

She turned to the crew with a bittersweet smile. "Those were his last words to me before he walked towards Yongwu." Her delicate finger was pointed at the second mountain from the right. Indeed, Yongwu was a fitting name for it as thick sets of fog twirled about the mountain, like a snake coiling around its prey.

The possibility of Mo YunXing being dead somewhere on Yongwu started to weigh on MingYu's mind. He couldn't really think of another option at the moment. But what kind of man said those words as his last goodbyes to his wife? Not to mention, why would he do any of this in the first place?

MingYu was so concentrated on the matter he failed to realise madam Mo had moved and was now silently making her way towards the village. She was still clasping the heavenly scrolls tightly against her chest.

"Hey! Madam Mo, my scroll-!" MingYu scowled. The old woman took his scroll with her. He needed it to finish his mission!

"We will follow her, you two figure out what is going on." PingZe said, as he, the girls, and XiaoHe hurried after the old lady.

ZhiYi looked at the mountains deep in thought before he turned to MingYu. "What now?"

MingYu relayed his thoughts to ZhiYi, and the demon looked worried, as he said, "You really believe Mo YunXing is dead?"

"If he wanted to ascend to Heaven, walking in the mist where even gods can't find him would be a little odd." MingYu said as he swept his gaze over the mountains before them. Tiankong stood proudly in its own solitude on the left. The other two mountains on both sides of Yongwu, MingYu hadn't heard of before.

An elderly man, with two bamboo baskets balanced on a pole, happened to walk by at that moment and MingYu stopped him in his tracks. "I'm sorry, but what are the names of these mountains?"

The man looked amused. "You are not from around here, are you? Everyone knows these mountains. They aren't that hard to remember either. From left to right, there are Tiankong, Zhongxiang, Yongwu, and Fuxing."

After the old man scuttled away, ZhiYi turned to MingYu expectantly. "What do you make of this?"

MingYu scratched his chin as he pondered the situation. After a moment of silence, he said,

"One can die, go to Heaven, Hell, or through rebirth but should never lose yourself in the abyss. The mountains are named accordingly, Tiankong – Heaven's peak, Zhongxiang – end lane, Yongwu – eternal mist, and Fuxing - rebirth. One tries to reach Heaven but dies, after death one travels through the eternal mist of Hell until you reach rebirth and the cycle starts over again. Which one do you think he climbed?"

"None of them." ZhiYi answered after a moment. He was smiling gently at MingYu.

"How so?" MingYu asked, curious about how ZhiYi came to the same conclusion as him.

"Madam Mo said Mo YunXing walked towards Yongwu. She also offered that one can go to Heaven, Hell, or rebirth, but never to the abyss. If Yongwu stands for the eternal mist of Hell, then he wouldn't have climbed it."

MingYu nodded along as ZhiYi continued, "Eternal mist is adjacent to rebirth and both are parts of Hell. You can't have one without the other. If one can go towards rebirth, one must be able to enter the eternal mist. Based on Mo YunXing's words, the only place he could go to be hidden from gods would be-"

"The abyss. The place where all the cursed souls go to after they are abandoned by Heaven and forbidden from Hell." MingYu finished ZhiYi's sentence.

ZhiYi nodded. "Mo YunXing told his wife the truth, but she had concentrated too much on the mist to figure it out."

MingYu started walking towards Yongwu with ZhiYi right beside him. "If we use these findings to apply to these mountains, the abyss must be the place between death and Hell. The gorge between Zhongxiang and Yongwu."