World in Shadows, Surface Layer, Nameless Hill.
Xilutaiya awoke from her restful sleep. Her exhausted body felt considerably better, and her spirits had largely recovered—though not quite at a full hundred percent, she felt at least around eighty percent recharged.
Returning once more before the Weathered Iron Sword, Xilutaiya recalled the scene she had witnessed in her dream.
At the end of that battle, the knight wielding the greatsword had slowly collapsed, but the blade he plunged into the stone became a beacon in this World in Shadows, briefly parting the sky's thick Deep Mist.
Through that brief opening, another figure crossed the boundary of reflection, descending from the continent above the sea of clouds to the World in Shadows below.
She was a practitioner of the moon attribute, possessed a graceful figure, and belonged to the class of people known in countless tales as "witches."
Crowned with a wide, pointed-brim hat, the witch descended into this realm of shadows and confronted the hag.
"You shameful traitors! How dare you mingle with those stone lackeys!" Seeing the witch descend into this world, the hag's face contorted with hatred and fury.
"Betrayal? Hardly. We were only ever thrown together out of convenience." The witch's voice was ethereal. Resting a hand against the brim of her hat, she revealed a pair of silver eyes. "The Moon Council has long been dead in all but name, and the Golden Honey Dynasty that backed its founding collapsed ages ago. What alliance could possibly remain?
"For the sake of this continent, we waged war against the Silver Radiance Church for centuries. In the end, neither side won. Instead, that black rabbit snatched away the legacy of the Radiant Moon and became the newly ascended Hour. Nowadays, whenever we borrow the moon's power, we must look to Its favor. Those glorious days are long past.
"You old crones hide away in the forests day after day. It's time you came out and saw the world."
"I don't need your ridicule!" Grinding her teeth, the hag pointed an accusatory finger directly at the witch hovering in midair.
The giant black serpent slithering around the hag lunged once more, surging toward the airborne witch with a gaping, bloody maw wide enough to swallow three witches whole.
"Ah, the 'Black Serpent of Teliya'—a thousand-year-old trick, and you're still playing with it," the witch remarked with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Raising the wooden moon staff in her hand, she gave it a simple wave. Intangible silver moonlight bloomed behind her, illuminating the charging black serpent.
The serpent, rampant and ferocious only moments before, froze instantly. Its scales discolored as though turned to stone, and at last it shattered, drifting down from the sky as countless crystalline particles.
Infuriated by the loss of her primary attack, the hag ripped the bone necklace from her throat and began chanting incantations, her other hand beating rhythmically against a small drum slung at her waist.
Before long, the bone necklace burst in midair, transforming into a swarm of skeletal, monstrous birds that swooped toward the witch in the sky.
"'Spirit-Devouring Evil Birds.' A nuisance, perhaps, but only a nuisance." The witch shook her head again.
Tapping her finger lightly against her lips, she spat out a blood-red bead. Grasping it in her palm, she sent forth an invisible ripple that shuddered outward in an instant, shattering the incoming skeletal birds to pieces.
"What else do you have, old crone?" Slipping the blood-red bead back into her mouth, the witch looked down upon the hag below.
"A Dragonblood Orb... How did you ever get your hands on such a thing...?" gnashed the hag, consumed with jealousy.
Afterward, the hag unleashed several more bizarre secret arts, yet the witch neutralized each one with ease. As their words had implied, both had hailed from the same faction a thousand years ago, and each knew the other's methods inside and out.
"I have no time to drag this out with you, old crone." The witch swung her wooden moon staff once more, scattering invisible powder that drifted down into the meadow below.
Instantly, the sea of grass across the entire mountain surged in frenzied growth. The blades twisted like slithering serpents and earthworms, writhing across the ground as they rushed toward the hag at the far end of the slope.
The hag exhausted every trick—incinerating, poisoning, resisting—but was engulfed by the twisted sea of grass. The blades burrowed into her body, drinking her blood and devouring her flesh.
"You traitors! Touching taboo, wielding the power of Distortion..." the hag shrieked.
"I curse you! I curse your descendants to die within this hopeless sea of Distortion!"
In the end, the hag was completely consumed by the boundless sea of grass, leaving behind not a trace of bone or ash.
"Phew. That's one nuisance dealt with." Descending to the ground, the witch strolled leisurely across the clearing, sifting through the hag's hoarded treasures.
"Nothing particularly valuable or useful, either." She nudged a skull on the ground with the toe of her boot, pinching a piece of old, hole-riddled leather between her fingers to see what lay hidden underneath.
"Whatever. Good enough."
Giving up the search, she walked over to the fallen knight, her gaze lingering on the sword he still gripped firmly in death.
"What unyielding resolve," she sighed softly.
"No wonder only foolhardy folks like you can carve out new frontiers, while clever people like us are left playing support.
"Knight Huolin, is it? I will remember your name. Rest assured, I shall tell Leijiade Buweili of your deeds. To honor your sacrifice and appease the people, he will surely confer a title upon your descendants.
"As for you, rest in peace here." Placing a hand upon the fallen knight's armor, she allowed his body to dissolve slowly into drifting sand, leaving only his sword planted firmly in the rocky earth.
Having finished her business here, the witch waved her moon staff once more. Intangible moonlight spread, forming veil-like ripples across the sky, serene as the surface of a tranquil lake.
The witch leaped lightly upward beneath this rippling lake, bathed in lunar radiance like the moon reflected in water.
Soon, her figure faded. Far above, upon that real continent across the distant sky, her silhouette reappeared.
The moon in the water, the moon in the sky,
A flawless illusion, turned in the blink of an eye.
——
Having recalled the scenes from her dream, Xilutaiya gazed at the hilt once more. Now, she could decipher the crest and inscription upon it:
'Fir Knight Order · Huolin'
If her guess was correct, the lord of Linden Village—Baron Holin's ancestor—was none other than this fallen knight.
Time was truly vast and full of lingering echoes.
In that case, back when the Knight King Leijiade battled the tribal hags across the mountains, he must have relied on the strength of witches. And according to what Taliel had mentioned before, the witches likely made a pact with the Scholars of Candle Fortress forbidding any mention of their deeds in the history books.
Yet the author of *The Rings of the Fir: Past of the Mountain Country* clearly knew the true history. He had found a clever workaround, obliquely alluding to it in the text.
Why did Leijiade bid the other Scholars leave his tent that night, remaining alone before the cage draped in black cloth? It was likely an allusion: the monarch had used that strange bird to deliver a missive and summon his final ally.
The truth of the past was veiled behind layers of black cloth. Whatever history she could now see and know had passed through who knew how many filters. The world's hidden depths ran far deeper than she had ever imagined.
Chapter 77