Chapter 348: Entering Meditation in the Heavy Snow

Living alone, far from the bustle and all human relations, Pan Yun slept straight through two days.

During those two days, aside from waking to eat a little and occasionally walking the small path to fetch water, she just lay there sleeping.

She made up for all the sleep she'd missed over the past year, and the nerves that had been taut for a year slowly relaxed.

By the third day, she felt as though lying around had rotted her very bones.

Only then did she gather herself and sit down to cultivate.

Then she discovered that the time she could enter meditation was actually shorter than before.

This made Pan Yun knit her brows tightly.

After breaking through, she had not only failed to advance, but actually regressed?

Pan Yun regulated her breath and settled into position, beginning to enter and exit meditation over and over.

When she persisted until her heart grew restless and she could no longer enter meditation, she would sit at the cave mouth to watch the sea of clouds; once her heart calmed a little, she would take out the jade materials stored in her space and begin inscribing spatial formations.

First, a pair of jade tokens. Pan Yun examined and handled them carefully, first tracing the design on the jade tokens to fix the array points, then at noon the next day, when the light was at its best, she began inscribing the array points and connecting the formation.

Her yuan force was abundant now, and with the dense spiritual energy of Mount Sanqing, and the quiet here, once she threw herself in wholeheartedly, she carved out the pair of jade tokens in one go.

Watching the array points connect through yuan force and spiritual energy, opening up an independent space, she couldn't help but curl up the corner of her lips, and sank her consciousness into the space.

This pair of jade-token spaces was no smaller than Wang Cong's jade-pendant space. She couldn't help but raise her brows, holding the two jade tokens up against the sunlight: "I should give you a name, shouldn't I? Otherwise won't you get mixed up with Seeing Miao Zhen and Miao He's?"

Unlike Seeing Miao Zhen and Miao He's rectangular jade tokens, these two jade tokens were yin-yang fish.

After all, they had been carved from a single piece of jade; aside from slight differences, the two pieces looked much alike, and when placed together, one could still tell they came from the same piece of jade.

Wang Cong's carving skill was ordinary, but perhaps because he came from a Daoist temple, the jade tokens were not only in the yin-yang fish shape, but also had auspicious clouds engraved on them.

Pan Yun, hopeless at naming, began to come up with names: "Auspicious Cloud Yin Fish Token, Auspicious Cloud Yang Fish Token?"

She nodded approvingly, praising herself: "What great names I've come up with—realistic and pleasant to the ear. Truly impressive."

She put the two jade tokens into a small pouch and stored them in her space: "These two are for Third Senior Brother and Fourth Senior Sister."

She brought over a bowl, poured out the remaining jade rings, jade earrings, and jade beads from the cloth bag, and began selecting: "So small—they can be inscribed, it's just hard work."

The size of the space had nothing to do with the size of the jade; it depended on the number of array points and the array master's cultivation.

She had inscribed formations on even smaller things before, but that was with the aid of specialized instruments.

Pan Yun picked up her current carving knife, looked at it, and silently set it down: "Inscribing formations on jade beads and earrings with a knife like this won't be easy, but jade rings should be no problem."

Pan Yun took out a jade ring, carefully felt it over, and traced out the array points in her mind's eye.

Pan Yun looked up, saw the sun had already moved west, and decided to continue the next day.

Having inscribed two spatial formations, Pan Yun's mind and spirit returned to the proper path; now she only wanted to cultivate, and didn't feel like doing anything else.

She rubbed her belly, too lazy to cook anything, so she went back to sit on the stone bed and decided to cultivate by fasting.

This time, Pan Yun quickly entered meditation. When she opened her eyes again, everything before her was pitch black, the whistling wind reached her ears, and she felt the temperature plunge.

Yuan force circulated through her body, driving out the chill she had just felt. She stretched out her legs and rubbed them, and glimpsed a sheet of white outside, with white flakes flashing in the air.

Pan Yun was slightly startled, and hurriedly slipped her shoes on and went out.

Because it was dark, she could only lean against the stone wall and stand at the cave mouth. Snowflakes, like pear petals, fell densely from the sky, caught by the wind halfway down and sent tumbling through the air, only to drift down slowly after a moment…

Falling on the stone peaks, on the small path, on the trees, into the valleys and the murmuring streams.

Heaven and earth were vast and blank; in this stretch of the world there was only her, the wind and snow, and these pines and stones.

Pan Yun stood rooted on the spot, her thoughts drifting off to who knows where.

Because of the snow, Pan Xiao Hei, who had braved the cold and trudged through the snow to visit her, had just leapt off a rock onto the snowy path when, looking up, it saw a snowman standing at the cave mouth and got a fright.

Pan Xiao Hei, startled, kicked its four legs about and nearly fell off the cliff.

Focusing and recognizing it was Pan Yun, Pan Xiao Hei was about to angrily rebuke her, when it saw her thoughts were elsewhere, as if in some kind of realization.

A bellyful of curses stuck in its chest, and Pan Xiao Hei couldn't get a word out.

She can enter meditation just standing—is it because she saved the world in a past life?

Pan Xiao Hei cursed inwardly, walked silently past her into the cave, gave its whole body a shake to shed the snow, leapt onto Pan Yun's clothes and wiped its paws, then with one leap onto the stone bed, slipped under the quilt in a flash, leaving only a cat's head poking out.

Pan Xiao Hei quietly waited for Pan Yun to come out of meditation.

It wasn't until the wind and snow stopped that her wandering spirit returned to her body, and Pan Yun came back to herself.

She turned her head thoughtfully; she felt as though she had leapt with the snow onto the wind and traveled all over Mount Sanqing.

She tilted her head, and snow slid down into her collar, a sheet of icy cold.

Pan Yun reached out and felt, only then belatedly realizing that her head and one shoulder were covered in snow, just like the pine not far away—her body had been buried by the snow.

Pan Yun shook the snow from her head, brushed it from her shoulder, and turned to go back into the cave.

Just as she lifted a foot, she raised her eyelids to glance at the stone bed, and her steps faltered slightly.

Pan Xiao Hei immediately let out a "meow" of greeting, afraid Pan Yun would mistake it for an intruder and pluck it away.

A cat's body was hard to come by, and it had even let this body begin to cultivate—it couldn't be discarded lightly. "It's you—when did you get here?" Pan Yun walked as usual to a stone nearby, took off the clothes she was wearing, intending to change into the ones on the stone. The moment she touched them, she glared at Pan Xiao Hei, tossed aside the clothes in her hand, and took out another set from her Ling Realm Space to change into.

She climbed onto the stone bed, took off her socks, and began rubbing the soles of her feet: "I'll prepare a cloth towel for you. Next time you come and use my clothes as a rag again, I'll chop off all four of your paws."

Pan Xiao Hei said nothing, and obediently lay still.

Pan Yun rubbed the soles of her feet for a full quarter of an hour; only after the soles grew hot did she lie down and pull the quilt up over herself.

Pan Xiao Hei lay not far from her, and only then began to chat with her: "In just four days, your cultivation has improved quite a bit."

The corners of Pan Yun's lips curled up slightly: "I think so too. This closed-door cultivation wasn't a loss."

Pan Xiao Hei: "You were too restless in the previous month. After breaking through, you should have been in closed-door cultivation for at least two months to consolidate your cultivation."

Pan Yun: "I would have liked to. Does Heaven allow it?"

She said: "I feel this closed-door cultivation not only consolidated my cultivation but also advanced it quite a bit. It also has to do with the temple fair we held some time ago."

"I have a premonition that once this winter passes, my private-savings allowance will grow again."

!. Read

It's already risen to eight hundred taels now; if it could rise to a thousand taels, that would be wonderful.

With her current ability to earn and spend money, a thousand-tael allowance is barely enough to get by.

This is the heaviest snowfall Yushan County has seen since winter began. Not long after Pan Yun lay down, fine snowflakes began to fall again, sparse at first, then growing dense.

When Pan Yun slept until she woke naturally and opened her eyes, a glaring white light stabbed at her.

Pan Yun didn't even turn her head to look outside the cave. After all, the stone bed was at the very innermost side of the cave, diagonally opposite the entrance, so when she lay down it was just out of the line of sight from the opening.

But this was bright as if a hundred-watt white lightbulb had been installed inside the cave…

Pan Yun hugged the blanket and sat up, scooted to the other end of the stone bed, and turned her head to look outward.

She saw a vast expanse of white outside. As far as the eye could see, the mountain path was a sheet of pure white; the Shanfeng opposite the cave was half-white; and the pines rooted on the Shanfeng had white snow weighing down their crowns, revealing only a touch of deep green—an extremely vivid green.

Even having already experienced the winter at Mount Sanqing, Pan Yun was still stunned by this beautiful scene.

After a long while, she softly let out a little "Wow" and sighed in admiration: "Truly, 'Snow fills the mountains at year's end, the pines a lush deep green.'"

Pan Xiaohei said, "Do you need me to pull up all the poems about snow and pines recorded in the Ling Realm for you?"

Pan Yun pressed down on its head with one hand and said expressionlessly, "If you don't speak, no one will take you for a mute cat."

Pan Yun threw off the blanket, got up, pulled on her outer garment, socks, and shoes, and walked out of the cave.

She didn't go far; just standing at the cave mouth, she felt the cold wind pouring straight into her face and down her neck.

Although circulating her Yuan Power made her not feel cold, Pan Yun still shivered once.

This was the cold felt in her heart.

Pan Yun murmured, "A big scarf would be perfect right about now."

"A big scarf—cotton cloth or satin would both work, but neither compares to wool yarn; Datong should have some over there…" Pan Yun's thoughts were leaping about at this moment. She murmured, "If Mount Sanqing is already this cold, Datong must be even colder, I suppose. The letter I sent to Father still hasn't had a reply; I don't know if they've received it."

Pan Yun turned her head to look at Pan Xiaohei and asked, "Did any letters arrive during the few days I was in closed-door cultivation?"

"None."

Pan Yun tilted her head back and continued to watch the snow. "It's also possible the heavy snow has blocked the roads and delayed the letter. It was the same last year—once winter comes, the exchange of letters slows down."

Pan Yun suddenly thought of that panicked, struggling courier postman, and wasn't in such a hurry anymore.

The safety talisman she'd given her father and the others had remained intact; so far she hadn't felt it activate again.

So, no news is, in a way, good news.

As long as they aren't dead, her family will always have a chance.

Pan Yun watched the snow seriously, exclaiming again and again: "So beautiful~~"

Looking back at her own cave, the corners of Pan Yun's mouth lifted slightly. "Senior Brother truly understands me. What a great spot he picked for closed-door cultivation—I could stay here for a whole month!"

Pan Xiaohei: ……Who was it that was reluctant and unhappy just the day before yesterday?

It had only been two days since it came down, and she'd already changed?

Women really are fickle.

Pan Xiaohei reminded her, "Didn't you say it's inconvenient to get water here, inconvenient everywhere, and that you weren't happy?"

"Now that you mention it, I remember," Pan Yun said thoughtfully. "This isn't the future era—the snow here is perfectly clean, completely edible."

It happened that her water bucket was empty. Pan Yun decided to go collect snow—mm, perfect chance to practice her lightness skill; she'd gather snow from the pines.

Interesting things always spark the mind. Pan Yun finally recalled, "I still have that big wooden tub from when I was confined at Long Hushan stored in my Ling Realm space—I can put it to use."

Missing one chapter, will make up tomorrow

(End of chapter)