Yang Xing glanced at her and shook his head.
"I meant exactly what I said."
Xiao Wu's grinning face froze.
After two or three seconds of silence, she still shook her head.
"Master, stop joking. How could that be possible? More than four hundred years have passed. How could the two of us still go there? Surely you can't reverse time?"
Yang Xing shook his head.
"I don't have the ability to reverse time yet."
Xiao Wu breathed a sigh of relief and was just about to speak.
"I knew it. How could-"
"But I do have the ability to take you back a dozen or so years to see your mother."
Xiao Wu's face froze again.
She stiffly turned her head toward Yang Xing, an edge creeping into her voice.
"Master, don't joke about my mom. No matter how good-natured I am, even I'll get upset over something like this."
Yang Xing reached out with his left hand and stroked her head.
"Is that so?"
Then he stopped walking and looked ahead.
"Look."
Xiao Wu turned her head, following his gaze.
A silver lake spread out among the trees, its surface shimmering, impossibly tranquil.
Silver Moon Lake.
The name surged up from the depths of her memory. This had been their home hundreds of years ago, before Da Ming and Er Ming occupied the Lake of Life in the core region. She had spent long years here, every tree and every stone etched into her memory.
Then she saw her.
Beside a patch of grass on the opposite shore, a rabbit roughly half a person's height sat quietly. Her sleek fur gave off a faint, soft white glow in the moonlight.
She held a smaller rabbit of the same kind in her arms, her eyes brimming with tenderness-the gentlest