<h4>Volume 3, Chapter 60 - Secret of the Mountain Temple</h4>
Trantor: Aoi
Lily felt thrilled and the bluish snowy mist in front of her dispersed before Yuki-Onna made her reappearance from the shimmering pentacle shrouded in frigid mist.
“Oh! So, this is shikigami summoning!” Shiu’s eyes turned into stars, but she began to shudder as the surroundings turned colder because of Yuki-Onna’s reappearance.
“Tell me, Yuki-Onna. What’s so special about this mountain temple that it intrigues you?” Lily questioned. In fact, she was also a little intrigued.
Lily had a feeling that this mountain temple still hid some kind of secret. She was quite perceptive with directions and kept feeling that the treasure spot on the map didn’t match up with the location of the mountain templepletely, but she chalked it to be a minor error or deviation between maps.
Yuki-Onna giggled while covering her mouth, “Those two little friends of mine woulde out to y in the snow each winter, but they would return to the wrong position each time.”
“Return to the wrong position? Why do you think so?” Lily felt puzzled.
“I also don’t know. It could be because we are all snow-attributed spirits. I just have a feeling that there’s a slight congruence with the position they return to.”
“Let’s return, Master. This ce is bing colder again, and you’ve killed the two snow children, so is there any need to wonder about where they return to?” Shiu really found it hard to withstand the frigidness around Yuki-Onna.
Lily, however, didn’t mind her and returned inside the mountain temple. She felt that the two malevolent stone statues of mountain deities within the dpidated temple were looking at her even now and that someone extraordinary had created these divine craftworks that possessed the ability to move.
The two mountain deity statues also had a hole each in their chests.
Lily took out Crescent Moon and liberated the animas of the two snow children from within it. As they were rtively precious grade 7 animas, Lily hadn’t absorbed them yet.
“Yuki-Onna. Do you still remember which anima belongs to which side?” Lily inquired.
“Hmm. Let me see… Hehe, pitiful little guys. This one belonged to this side originally,” Yuki-Onna pointed at one of the anima.
“Are you sure?” Lily questioned once again to confirm it but felt like she was demanding too much.
“I’m not fully sure, but that’s where it should be,” Yuki-Onna answered.
Lily pondered for a moment and decided to believe Yuki-Onna. She then used the power of her realm to suspend the two anima in mid-air and ced them into their respective cavities in the chests of the mountain deity statues ording to Yuki-Onna’s spections.
Although Lily didn’t know what would happen if they were ced correctly, there was a chance the two mountain deity statues might get reactivated if they were ced wrongly, which was pretty dangerous. Lily wore a solemn expression and finished her preparations to fight in case that happened, but since she had the aid of Yuki-Onna, she could handle the mountain deity statues even if they came alive.
A brief moment of silence followed after the animas were returned to the cavities, but the eyes of the rocky mountain deity statues shone suddenly after that.
“What?! Did they really get reactivated?” Lily was taken aback, “Watch out, you all!”
Lily looked at Yuki-Onna grudgingly, who seemed to wear an uncertain expression and offered an innocent wry smile in response.
Thend underneath them began trembling and thergest stone b inside the temple began to rise up while raising up a cloud of dust.
Lily and the rest stepped back quickly.
The two-meter tall mountain deity statues had indeede alive, but they moved pretty sluggishly as they descended from their pedestals. They also didn’t seem to hold any interest in Lily and the others and walked towards the risen stone b instead before stabbing their stone swords into the floor. They then hunched over slowly and grabbed the edges of the huge stone b with mechanical movements before lifting the 5 square meters wide giant b up slowly.
A few trails of fine sand flowed down from the cracks of the time-worn stone b as it got hoisted up and a dark entrance leading underground appeared underneath the b.
Lily was now certain that she wasn’t mistaken!
The two mountain deity statues hoisted the b on their shoulders and finally stopped moving, the b now suspended at an elevation higher than a human’s height.
“Crack!” The glow in the eyes of the mountain deity statues disappeared after they stopped moving and left the impression that their current stance where they hoisted the huge stone b over their shoulders was how they were meant to be, and the temple also stopped trembling at the same time.
Lily and the others waited for the surroundings to regain their serenity and stepped forward after ascertaining that no other changes were to follow.
The underground entrance was square-shaped and led into a several meters wide downward-sloping stone tunnel.
A stone door was also visible faintly at the end of the tunnel.
“What… is…” Yukiko, Yumi and Shiu sighed one after the other as they never expected this temple to have such a tunnel underneath it.
“Hehe,” Yuki-Onna, however, chuckled coldly while covering her mouth.
Lily and the others entered the tunnel cautiously and arrived in front of the stone door. The door was pretty heavy and old and had stonenterns on both sides that had existed here for an unknown amount of time. Yumi inspected them once and was surprised to find that they could still be lit when she attempted to light them up.
The ancient Jōmon characters etched on the time-worn stone door became visible from the luminescence of thenterns resultantly.
“This is…” Although Lily couldn’t read Jōmon characters, she discovered that these characters were of the same style as those in the mirror space.
The stone door didn’t have any opening and it felt quite firm and unusually dense when Lily tried to push it, as if some kind of ancient power was guarding it so that it couldn’t be opened or destroyed via brute force.
However, the stone door did have an octagonal notch at its center which was of the same size as the mirror in Lily’s bosom.
“The mirror girl’s treasure!”
Lily felt thrilled when she realized that this was the real path leading to the mirror girl’s treasure!
She fished out the mirror from her bosom and decided to take the risk after ruminating for a moment and inserted the mirror into the octagonal notch on the stone door.
The ancient spell runes etched on the mirror began shining and caused the Jōmon characters on the stone wall to light up as well.
“Boom!” The stone door split open into both directions with the octagonal notch as the center after that and an even darker underground tunnel leading to an unknown location revealed itself behind the door.
Yumi and Shiu lit up the makeshift torches in their hands and the group entered the tunnel.
From the looks of it, it seemed like an old, man-made tunnel carved out by humans.
After walking for a few hundred meters inside the tunnel, Lily’s group spotted moonlight shining through the darkness in front of them.
When Lily’s group arrived at the end of the tunnel, they found themselves facing an old enclosure whose surface was covered in snow with snowkes falling down from the sky apanied by the whistles of the wind.
Lily looked up and saw the pitch-ck night sky above her.
The enclosure was 3 to 4 meters deep and had plenty of sunken rocks, so Lily climbed higher using them, and came to a sudden realization after climbing to the top.
This ce was a valley enclosed by mountains and it had an uneven terrain with ups and downs that were covered by vast sections of snow.
The trees towered high and the rocks were smooth and there was also a zigzagging stream of water running across the nd. At first look, it seemed to possess the rustic charm of a naturally-formed garden.
Yukiko and the others also climbed up by now and checked the surroundings curiously while Yuki-Onna flew up directly.
“Who could’ve imagined that a valley like this was hidden in these mountains,” Lily marveled subconsciously.
Although the mountains and the trees looked normal when viewed singrly, Lily felt an indescribable elegant charm emanate from the valley when it was viewed all together, a natural charm that surpassed the realm of perfect beauty embodied by the magnum opus of a master gardener.
“This ce is so beautiful,” Lily’s gaze traveled across the vivacious old trees and the snow-d mossy rocks, as well as the flora growing tenaciously within the snowstorm and the clear stream water that was akin to a celestial maiden’s tears. No matter where she looked in this valley, each location seemed to possess a beauty and charm of its own thatbined to form a unified charm. Although there were several painting scrolls that captured the nature and scenery of the Heian Empire, this location alone brimmed with a unique elegance.
Even though thisnd was situated in the deste wilderness and Lily had experienced a huge battle in the outer valley, Lily fell in love with this ce at first sight.
“It’s just some weeds and broken stones in this ce and it’s so cold too, so there’s nothing good about it… However, it seems there’s less snow in this valleypared to the outside and the temperature also feels slightly higher,” Shiu stated.
“Look, there are vapors floating up from the woods over there,” Yukiko pointed at the picturesque woods on the bank opposite to the brook.
Lily and the group crossed over the brook and entered inside the woods, wading through the dark, winding trails. This filled Lily with heartfelt appreciative reverence towards nature and the world’s beauty.
“Thank you, world, for allowing Lily to enter such a beautiful location and feel the rustic charm of thendscape here.”
The group followed the direction of the vapors and arrived in front of a steaming, azure spring of water surrounded by trees and rocks alike.
“A hot spring!”
Yukiko hunched over to check the temperature of the water with her finger, “The water is lukewarm and has the perfect temperature! I never thought we would actually discover a hot spring in this deste valley.”
“This ce possesses a beautiful scenery brimming with natural rustic charm and even has a hot spring on top of that! It’s a really incredible ce.”
Lily liked this ce even more with each passing moment and came to a sudden realization, “Oh, yes. This ce is mine!”
“Huh?”
Lily looked at the others and seemed happier than when she obtained the treasure, “Lord Tsunenobu gifted this valley to me, so this valley is mine!”
Lily walked into the open space and spun around with her arms wide open. For some reason, she felt that this ce was very meaningful to her.
Yumi looked around and said, “Although the scenery here is quite beautiful, it’s in such a remote ce and has nothing else at all, Master. Lord Takeda gifted it to you in order to return the favor at little cost, so it’s useless to dither here for long as it has no practical value.”
“This ce is enclosed by mountains from all sides and so secluded. Even the treasure map didn’t mark this ce and the tunnel is possibly the only way to arrive at this location. Also, master’s mirror was required to activate the mechanism that opens the old stone door, so this is definitely not a normal ce. Shouldn’t it have more than just a unique scenery?” Yukiko asserted.