The Sacred Ruins
Chapter 11

There was a peculiar look on Zhou Quan's face . He looked somewhat faltered and bashful . There was something on the tip of his tongue, but he seemed reluctant to let it out .

Then, with a silly simpering look, Zhou Quan nudged Chu Feng lightly with his knee and quietly whispered, "Do you reckon that the person who had grown a full pair of wings would soar and hover in the blue sky?"

"Maybe . " Chu Feng nodded, then he felt a bit amused . "It's not you who became the winged creature reported in the news, so why did you look all faltered and shy?"

"Don't you remember that I also have one of those glittering red fruits I took from a weed?" Zhou Quan carefully unwrapped a paper ball as he spoke . Inside was that stalk of weed that had been dug out earlier . Its fist-sized fruit was like a beautifully wrought carved agate with a rich aroma .

"If I put my life on the line and nibble away this fruit, what do you think I can grow?" Zhou Quan asked . Now, he looked even more shilly-shally than before .

This time, Chu Feng did not crack a smile, instead he had a solemn expression on his face . This would not have been much of a deal if they had never learnt about the potential of such a fruit . Now as they looked at it, they realized how much of a transformative metamorphism it could bring .

"I reckon we should wait for more updates on that winged man in the future . We need to be certain about any potential risks that associate with it," Chu Feng said .

"What an aromatic fruit you have there . What fruit is it?" asked the middle-aged man who had offered them the ride .

The car was speeding away from that small town, flying on the highway towards the end of the horizon .

"It's a wild fruit . No ideas what species it belongs to, so I don't really dare to eat it myself," Zhou Quan answered .

Indeed, Zhou Quan dared not to eat it . Just in case that what would grow on him was eventually not a wing, but rather some horns or tails, by then, he wouldn't even have the chance to regret it .

"Right . Don't eat it if you don't know about it . Nothing could be more troublesome than food poisoning at a time like this," the middle-aged chauffeur kindly reminded, then, he gave vent to a deep sigh .

He was worried about his family .

Hell seemed to have broken loose almost overnight . Strange occurrences cropped up almost everywhere across the country . Especially after personally experiencing it, he had never been so terrified in his life before . He only wished to get home as soon as he could, so throughout the journey, the car seemed to be going at a lightning speed .

One had to admit that this middle-aged man drove quite adroitly . The ride felt alarmingly dangerous, yet the thrill it brought was unparalleled by even the wildest adventure . It was quite an experience, but not much for Zhou Quan .

"Impressive! What a breathtaking joyride! Woo Hoo!" But soon, the continual jolting, rocking and tossing made Zhou Quan realize that this was not the thrill his body wanted . Carsickness soon developed into nausea and retching . He then gradually fell into a torpor .

The car was moving in full throttle . Even Chu Feng felt a bit dizzy by looking through the window at the speedily receding scenery outside . He was worried that driving so fast might lead to a severe accident .

He looked back and saw that bush of verdant vines still shrouded the vastness of the sky . Despite hours of speedy advance on the country road, they were still under the watch of this enormous cluster of vines .

It was suspending in mid-air . Its main body was kept distant to the ground . It looked like a green castle of sky-high stature . At the same time, it also looked like the outline of an undulating mountain range, grand and magnificent .

Deity Biomedical Group . . . what a name! Chu Feng mused . He used to think that this name might have just been randomly blurted out by Lin Naoi's father when he was in his high and vigorous spirits .

Now as he thought about it, he realized that the name might have carried certain specific implications beneath it . Judging by Lin Naoi's strange demeanors at times, he firmly believed that this family must have some insights into the truth that had been hidden away from the general public . She must have been anticipating something otherworldly to happen for a long time .

He finally comprehended that uniform look of indifference and aloofness on the faces of all her family members when all he wanted was to kiss her goodbye after graduation . It was the look of despise and contempt, and it was also his status as an ordinary outsider that made him unworthy of any forms of interaction with Lin Naoi . In the end, all he deserved was a wave of hand to farewell what had never belonged to him .

"What's the matter brother? Why do you look so dumbstruck?" Zhou Quan asked as he saw Chu Feng staring out of the window with unseeing eyes .

"Thinking about my ex," Chu Feng thoughtlessly blurted out .

"Did you break up with her? And now in a train of regret?" Zhou Quan asked with a smile .

"No . It was her . She broke up with me," Chu Feng answered forthrightly and honestly . To him, it was nothing disgraceful to be frank about it .

"Did you let go of it so fast?" Zhou Quan was surprised then began to wail mournfully . For him, his first love could never be deleted from memory easily . He was all heart-broken for almost two years . He felt that he could never let this die in his memory . His latest visit to Tibet was to actually cherish the memory of his first love and to let go of all his grief and misery .

"She had always been flat with me," Chu Feng replied, "There wasn't even a high incidence of us walking abreast . It had started plain as water, and then it ended in a prosaic way . "

"Why? What happened between the two of you?" Zhou Quan curiously asked .

Chu Feng shook his head wearily . He had let it out, but understandably, he was also coy about the details of his insipid romance . He wanted to say no more .

At last, after hundreds of li of endless journey, the middle-aged man was nearing home . Chu Feng and Zhou Quan could no longer take this lift . They had to be dropped off somewhere before their destination .

"Those vines are out of sight now!" Zhou Quan realized that the blue sky was no longer clouded by the overgrowth of vines . This out-of-darkness moment made him feel ever so relieved .

Under the shade of the overbearing vines, there was an inexpressible feeling of constraint .

Half an hour later, they entered a neighboring city . They came to an inter-city bus station where they would then catch a bus heading northwards towards Taihang Mountains .

After the bus had been successfully dispatched, they felt a burst of ease and relief . They had been fearing that the current situation might perhaps hinder the buses from dispatching, but now it proved that their worry was redundant .

"To me, it is highly likely that this area has not encountered any strange occurrences so far . I think all the strangeness was only happening in that particular part that we just went through . I reckon everything that has happened so far was all thanks to that cluster of vines overhead!" Zhou Quan seemed indignant .

This coach's final destination was a metropolis in the north that had been the ancient capital of six dynasties .

During its trip, it would stop by the foot of Taihang Mountains .

"If everything goes as planned, we will get home before the sun sets," Chu Feng said .

There were only eight hundred li between that northern metropolis and where they departed, so even if they ran into a congested traffic, they would still arrive before the sun set .

Strange things occurred in succession at many places, so naturally, these occurrences became the most discussed topic in the coach .

"It is said that missiles have been used to bombard some of the stuff that have been floating in space . "

"Yeah, I heard about that too . But I'm yet see any official reports from a reliable source, so I can't decide if this rumor is trustworthy or just bogus . "

The voices of debate in the coach were all in a muddle . Discussions were mixed with a jumble of different opinions .

Chu Feng and Zhou Quan looked at each other at a loss for words . They had immediately come to think about that vine-like plant floating in mid-air . They thought it was crucial to bombard it at once .

Time flew as the coach smoothly drove on .

Zhou Quan sighed . He tried to search for more news on his communicator, but his search was futile until he finally found a picture of the winged man . It was him being picked up by the staff from the Deity Biomedical Group .

That was his last sighting . No more follow up reports could be found after that .

"Are they going to give that man inspection or are they using him as a publicity stunt?" Zhou Quan resentfully contended . In the photo, there was a convoy led by an array of luxury cars loaded with all the top executives from the Lin family .

Chu Feng glanced at the photo, but he left with no comments .

Nowadays, everyone's communicator had been flooded with all sorts of reports . A new report on the latest strange occurrence cropped up every now and then, making those who read them ever so anxious .

Chu Feng gave those headlines a fairly cursory reading . He then closed his eyes for rest before he finally fell asleep .

"Hey man, wake up! We've got a problem here . " Zhou Quan roused Chu Feng from his slumbers .

Chu Feng looked a bit confused as he first regained his consciousness . It was afternoon already . The sun was almost down .

"What's the problem?" Chu Feng asked .

"The driver seemed a bit anxious . He said that he had been driving more than a thousand li, and he has yet to see the destination . He said that he had just seen the guidepost indicating that there were still a few hundreds of li left to cover," Zhou Quan explained .

Besides, many sections of the highway seemed to have also been torn apart by some unexplainable forces . At times, they had to endure some rather unpleasant moments filled with bumpy rides as the bus had to veer off the broken highway and onto the rugged dirt road .

This caused Chu Feng to wake right up, because to him, the story had sounded ever so familiar . Perhaps it was the same phenomenon as the one that had happened in the district where the cluster of vines had claimed its domination . Was the ground here also expanding, or was it being stretched by some forms of mysterious force?

Some passengers felt like the blame should have been on the driver himself . The possibility that perhaps the driver had been going the wrong way seemed more logical than Chu Feng's theory . But the driver swore that as an adept coach driver that had been taking years of itinerary travelling on this line, he would never make such an inadequate mistake .

The coach drove in the exact direction suggested by the roadside guideposts .

"The Deuce! Alright, I'm done . I quit . Fxck this . " The driver was a man of hot temper . As he was being surrounded by whirls of complaints from his passengers, telling him that he had been going the wrong way, he decided to throw up his job . "What on earth is happening? I guess it must be somehow related to all those strange occurrences reported in the news . I want to live . I don't want to die yet!"

"Uh?" Someone raised his head and looked straight ahead .

There was a mountain towering into the clouds . Its appearance was sudden and abrupt . It situated itself right beside the highway, only inches away from blocking it .

"This mountain wasn't here just seconds ago . What happened?"

"Driver, please hurry! Take the wheels and get us out of here!"

Shrill shouts rang from within the bus .

The driver took a quick look at the situation around him, and without another word, he stomped onto the clutch . The coach hastily accelerated, going like a bat out of hell . He promptly acted because he was quite frightened too . He witnessed the unexplained appearance of that mountain in action .

"I really shouldn't have set myself on this long journey . " He remorsed . His face was pale as a sheet as he desperately tried to accelerate .

Within the coach, many people were anxious .

Chu Feng and Zhou Quan had been through a lot, so in comparison, they were staying relatively calm .

However, Zhou Quan's composure could not last long before he could no longer trust himself, so instead he turned to his prayers . With eyes closed, his mouth murmured, "God bless me! God bless us! God let us arrive home safe and sound!"

The coach almost felt like it was being driven by a madman . It charged and swerved between lanes and lanes; they had too many narrow escapes from a severe accident .

In fact, one could see with ease that all the other cars had also been speeding . Obviously, the passengers on those cars were just as frightened .

"Thank God . We finally made it . "

As the sky finally turned indigo blue, and a great many stars were shining, Zhou Quan gave vent to a sigh of relief . He saw recognizable sceneries . The unbroken line of the undulating prodigious hilltops of Taihang Mountains felt ever so familiar and intimate to him . It was there, his hometown, finally becoming gradually visible .

Chu Feng felt more and more eased in mind . It was only a matter of few li before he could reach home . He could easily walk there from here if he had to .

However, before the passengers could even learn to appreciate the smoothness of their ride, the coach came to a sudden halt . Many passengers crashed their faces and upper bodies into the seats in front of them, instigating another pandemonium as the passengers cried in pain .

"Do you even know how to drive?" someone cursed .

But soon, the coach returned to silence .

There was a lake forming under the canopy of glittering stars . Plumes of mists rose from the surface, mingling with the serene moonlight; it looked as if it had added a layer of chiffon to the fa?ade of this tranquil lake .

The lake was a big one . It gleamed with the glittering shadow of stars, lighting up the darkness of the night . Everything was in harmony with one another . All represented elegance and grace .

"What's happening? How comes the road has already ended here? And what's this? A lake?" Zhou Quan was astounded . They were not far from where he lived . He had been living in this district since his early childhood, and he had never spotted a lake here during all those years .

The road ended here too!

"Hurry up! Let's get off and go around it!" Chu Feng urged .

The cause for the abrupt appearance of this lake and the mountain were the same in essentials, while differing only in minor points . They were both due to the rapidly expanding earth on which they were located .

Some landforms of mountains and rivers that had been previously unknown to the world was now emerging before people's eyes!

The passengers were quite divided . Some suggested to take a circuitous route around the lake, while others insisted on remaining in the coach and waiting for the dawn to break .

It was a long trudge home for Chu Feng and Zhou Quan . They trekked for four hours along the circumference of the lake before they could see a small village up ahead .

It was a country town called Shun Ping . Zhou Quan's house was right in that town .

Yet, it would be another ten li for Chu Feng .

"Home sweet home!" Zhou Quan was glorying in the success of his homecoming journey . Although it was not an easy one, but it was, for sure, unforgettable and inimitable .

"Uh? What is that?" Chu Feng was facing the Taihang Mountains, when suddenly, the sound of rumble incessantly lingered on . Many towering mountains abruptly emerged .

"How majestic!" The mountains had an altitude of at least thousands of meters, if not tens of thousands . The mountains' ridges twisted and twined, stretching endlessly . Hundreds and thousands of them emerged in the blink of an eye, dwarfing all those that had come before them .

Chu Feng stood, revelling in the glittering view in front of him .

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