Clutching the bankbook with over 150,000 yuan, thinking of the thirty gold bars hidden beneath her bed.
'Tian Jing' touched her pounding chest. She wanted to talk to someone, to voice her unease and fear.
But there seemed to be no suitable person.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
There was a knock on the door. She hid the bankbook, opened it, and saw an old acquaintance, 'Li Zhengguo'.
"Why are you here?"
"I came to see you. The restaurant owner said you resigned, and you'd moved out of the basement. I inquired for a long time and finally found you here. It turns out we live so close?"
"How close?"
"Next door."
...
Li Zhengguo and Tian Jing exchanged knowing smiles, raising their respective recommendation letters.
This time, could they return to the third life?
On the train, amidst the clanging and grinding of the wheels against the tracks, the couple fell asleep.
In their deep slumber, they felt a sense of weightlessness.
Just as they tried to steady themselves, they were flung to the ground.
Li Zhengguo sprang up like a carp, rushing to help his wife, who had fallen not far from him.
"Tiantian, are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
Tian Jing shook her head, staring at the stone gate not far in front of them. "Where is this?"
Li Zhengguo glanced at the stone gate, then looked up at the dim space around them.
"I think, inside this stone gate, should be the private treasury."
"But weren't we on a train?"
Li Zhengguo couldn't answer this question.
Tian Jing was also at a loss.
Forget it, her priority now was the main business.
As they walked to the stone gate, they felt their own insignificance.
The stone gate was wide, tall, and massive.
There were no visible seams, no bolts, no locks, and no recesses matching the size of a golden lock, let alone a keyhole.
There were no door rings either.
Only nine squares.
A nine-square grid? A game?
But numbers one to nine were arranged in order, so what was there to play?
A game of "Hua Rong Dao"?
Where was the space bar?
The couple exchanged glances, looked at the nine squares again, exchanged glances once more, and then looked at the nine squares.
After a long while, Tian Jing said, "Try pressing them like a phone number."
"What number?"
"345678921."
"Is that the order of the nine worlds I've visited? But yours are different?"
"Only you have visited nine worlds, and there are exactly nine squares here."
Li Zhengguo nodded. "Alright, I'll try. Be careful."
Tian Jing activated her energy shield. "You should be the one to be careful."
Li Zhengguo slowly pressed the numbers his wife had called out. A wave of palpitations hit him.
He reached out and embraced his wife. "Pull back!"
"Swish, swish, swish."
A volley of flying arrows shot towards them.
"Clang, clang, clang."
The sound of arrows hitting the ground lasted for fifteen minutes before it stopped.
Tian Jing held up her energy shield with all her might, preventing herself from being pierced.
Hiding at the farthest point from the stone gate, Tian Jing deactivated her energy shield.
Li Zhengguo looked at his wife with concern. "You should meditate and cultivate for a while. Do you have any seeds left?"
Tian Jing felt her pocket. "Still..."
She had only said one word when she froze and looked at her husband. "Zheng Ge, our cotton-padded jackets."
"What about the cotton-padded jackets?"
Li Zhengguo replied, then looked down at his own cotton-padded jacket and also froze.
"This? This? These are the cotton-padded jackets we wore when we entered the mountains. Not from the second life, nor the first."
As he spoke, he took out two bottles from his pocket.
A bottle full of ginseng essence, untouched.
Half a bottle of blood, still not coagulated.
Seeing these two bottles, Tian Jing's eyes narrowed.
"Zheng Ge, have you noticed that the second and first lives, like the third life, all took place in winter?"
"No!"
Li Zhengguo shook his head. "From the fourth life to the ninth life, the time I transitioned between worlds was always winter."
Tian Jing took the ginseng essence from her husband's hand. "We can ask the passage of time after we get out to get a definite answer about this."
...
After replenishing her internal energy, Tian Jing decided she would press the numbers.
Li Zhengguo stopped her. "Let me do it. Put the 3 at the end."
This time, after pressing the nine squares in the order of 456789213, no hidden weapons were shot from around the stone gate.
Just as Tian Jing thought it was another failure.
"Clang."
A heavy sliding sound, followed by a harsh "creak, creak."
The stone gate slid open to both sides.
What met their eyes were two gleaming mountains – a mountain of gold and a mountain of silver.
Tian Jing's energy shield dared not be deactivated.
Enveloping herself and her husband, she walked into the now wide-open stone gate.
Facing the two mountains, Tian Jing asked her husband, "Zheng Ge, after experiencing eight seemingly real lives, do you believe these two mountains?"
"No!"
Li Zhengguo shook his head. "Unless we don't plan to move them out, they wouldn't be piled up like this."
As soon as Li Zhengguo finished speaking, the mountains of gold and silver vanished.
The light in the space dimmed considerably.
The two of them surveyed the area.
It was a cave several times larger and more spacious than the cave on Green Pine Rock.
Along all the cave walls were piled large chests, four or five layers high.
At a glance, there were at least several thousand.
Dust floated in the air, yet the chests themselves were dust-free.
Another formation?
Li Zhengguo couldn't bear to let his wife spill her blood.
He sprinkled blood from his bottle.
As expected, the scene flickered, and a transparent object appeared.
Tian Jing was very curious. "The outermost formation can utilize trees and rocks."
"The formation in the middle, the labyrinth, can not only utilize the natural formation of Misty Valley but also utilize trees."
"What does the formation here utilize?"
Li Zhengguo looked around and shook his head. "I can't tell. We don't understand it either. However, this formation is ultra-thin. Could it be the simplest? Or the most powerful?"
Tian Jing shook her head, unable to guess. "Should we open the formation and the chests to see?"
Li Zhengguo hesitated for a moment and said, "Let's take a look. We've gone through so much hardship to get here. Let's see if it was worth what we've experienced..."
When they saw the contents of the chests, the couple was stunned, and then burst into laughter.
...
Just as Mother Li was about to cry along with her granddaughter, she finally heard a heavenly sound.
"Lili, Mommy's back."
Lili, whose eyes were wide open and mouth agape, stopped crying abruptly upon hearing the voice.
"Mommy, back, is."
Pushing herself up with her hands, she arched her little bottom and agilely got up from the ground.
Pat, pat, she ran outside. "Mommy, back, is."
Mother Li rubbed her throbbing temples and sat on a small stool, recovering from the ringing in her ears.
Little Lili had welcomed her mother.
Tian Jing picked up her unchanged daughter, smiling happily. "Why aren't you with Grandpa?"
"Crying, noisy."
Looking at her daughter, who had tears in her eyes but was behaving well, Tian Jing couldn't help but recall what 'Tian Jing' from the second life had said about her daughter's temper being like hers.
Was she like this as a child? She really didn't remember.
"Where's Grandma?"
"Fainted."
Tian Jing couldn't help but tap her daughter's forehead. "Do you know how troublesome you are? Why don't you change?"
"Mommy, not, here."
"Didn't I say I was going up the mountain?"
"Not, here."
"Mommy."
"Mommy."
Two figures ran from the east.
Li Zhengguo squatted down, spreading his arms, and said gently to his two sons, "Your Mommy can't carry you both. Let Daddy do it."
Li Weihao and Li Weibo immediately stopped in their tracks. "Dad, are you alright?"
"Hahahaha."
Tian Jing hugged her daughter and laughed heartily.
She knew her husband had been frightened by the first life, thinking he wouldn't have enough time to watch their children grow up.
Who knew it was just a dream, or rather, eight dreams.