Xiong Jun watched for a quarter of an hour, but still couldn't figure out what all those flowers were for.
They couldn't be eaten or planted, and they didn't even land at the human woman's feet.
Yet whenever someone sent one, she would look up and thank them. The people on the other side of the screen were delighted, as though they'd received some enormous benefit.
"These humans have too much time on their hands."
He turned to the side after saying it, expecting someone to agree.
Er Ming had his head lowered, his eyes fixed intently on his phone.
"A little farther left."
Xiong Jun paused, thinking he was also teaching the woman to turn her fan. Only when he leaned over did he discover that Er Ming had long since swiped away from the livestream and was watching a new cleaning video Lü Chengan had posted.
This time it wasn't a blanket being washed, but two leg guards caked in dried mud.
The man had just scrubbed one edge clean and hadn't touched the other end, but Er Ming was already getting impatient on his behalf.
Xiong Jun immediately lost interest in talking.
One human played a stringed instrument, another scrubbed mud, and these two could each watch their own video, neither paying the other any mind.
He took his phone and walked to another rock, just as Bi Ji returned from the woods. Instead of sitting down at once, she first set a small, disheveled ball of fur on the grass and released it from her fingertips, waiting for the little beast to find its footing.
The little one's hind legs were stained with grass juice. It had just run into a clump of thorny bushes. The thorns had all been pulled out, but it still felt a little aggrieved. It shook its fur and burrowed straight under the edge of Bi Ji's skirt.
Xiong Jun glanced at it.
"You managed to get yourself stuck with thorns over such a short distance."
No sooner had he spoken than the little beast shrank farther back.
Bi Ji looked down and soothed it for a while before turning to Xiong Jun.
"Stand farther away."
"I didn't even touch it."
"It knows you're here."
Xiong Jun reluctantly backed away. After two steps, the little one was still hiding; after a few more, its round ears finally emerged from beneath the skirt and swiveled from side to side.
Er Ming looked up from nearby, saw what was happening, and suddenly grew interested.
He propped his phone against a forked branch and tapped it lightly with a twig to start recording.
Xiong Jun saw him too and was about to ask what he was filming when Bi Ji raised a hand, signaling him to be quiet.
The little beast edged forward tentatively, sniffing first a blade of grass, then a wet rock. A small puddle lay beside the rock. It lowered its head and took a lick, then suddenly spotted another furry face in the water and jumped back in fright.
Its front paws landed unsteadily, and its hind legs were still trying to retreat. Its whole body promptly tumbled into a ball.
When it stopped rolling, it froze in surprise.
Er Ming's shoulders gave a sudden jerk.
He held back his laughter, but the twig in his hand slipped and touched the edge of the screen. Fortunately, the recording didn't stop. The little beast had already righted itself and was peering into the water again.
This time, it didn't approach directly, but circled halfway around.
The one in the water circled halfway around with it.
Xiong Jun was finally growing impatient. He took a step forward.
"That's you."
The little beast's ears shot up.
The next moment, it darted back behind Bi Ji.
The tip of Er Ming's outstretched twig stopped in midair.
The best part was gone.
He slowly turned to look at Xiong Jun.
Xiong Jun stared at the empty puddle, looking a little embarrassed himself.
"I told it, and that's wrong?"
Er Ming didn't argue. He simply picked up his phone and played back the two parts.
In the first, the little one peeked out, backed away, tumbled over, then quietly circled around again.
In the second, Xiong Jun had barely spoken before the little one on the screen was nothing but a blur.
After watching, Bi Ji finally laughed too.
"If you hadn't come over, it would have kept looking for a while longer."
"What's so interesting about a stupid little thing staring at itself?"
Xiong Jun refused to concede, but his gaze fell on the screen once more.
Er Ming ignored him and, following the method Xiao Wu had taught him, cut out the part at the end where Xiong Jun's voice could be heard, leaving only the little beast tumbling over and climbing back up.
The name was still A Stroll in the Mountains.
He wrote slowly, and it took him quite a while to add a few words underneath.
"It looked twice."
After he posted it, the first comment came sooner than he'd expected.
"Wait, don't go! Let me see if it finds what it's looking for!"
Er Ming immediately broke into a grin.
Another followed: "Does it think there's another one in there?"
And the next: "Why did it look so much like my puppy when it tumbled over just now?"
Er Ming read through the comments one by one, growing happier the more he read.
Standing behind him, Xiong Jun glanced over his shoulder once, then again, before finally picking up his own phone.
It was just filming a little creature.
How hard could that be?
He walked to the edge of the woods and found a low-age Soul Beast pawing through fallen leaves. The moment he raised the camera, the Soul Beast froze, half a leaf still dangling from its front paw. For a long time, it didn't dare put it down.
Xiong Jun didn't move, and neither did it.
Xiong Jun crouched down, and it pressed itself even lower.
When he finished filming, all the footage showed from beginning to end was a ball of fur flattened against the ground.
Refusing to believe it, he found another one.
This one did move.
It ran so fast that the phone didn't even catch its tail.
Xiong Jun returned with the two videos, while Er Ming was still reading comments. Bi Ji casually took the phone. When she saw that the second clip showed nothing but bare tree roots, she glanced at him before saying anything.
Xiong Jun said in a muffled voice, "I didn't release my presence."
"You didn't hide yourself either."
"I have to hide?"
Bi Ji handed the phone back and pointed to the little beast, which had poked its head out from beneath her skirt again.
"It's much more afraid of seeing you than seeing itself in the water."
Xiong Jun stared at the little one for a while and finally refrained from approaching again.
When Di Tian brought the phone down to the bottom of the lake, Liu Ruyan's livestream had not yet ended.
The music reached the depths, sounding especially clear in the silence.
The Silver Dragon King didn't ask what had happened outside. She only had him pause the picture on the lamp beside the instrument.
The lamp looked quite ordinary.
What caught her attention was that when the lamp shifted slightly, the woman's face changed with it. Her features hadn't changed; rather, the parts that had been hard to see suddenly gained delicate definition, and the little pendant by her ear lit up as well.
She lowered her gaze to her own phone.
The silver light and shadows she had recorded earlier were still there, but the bright areas were crowded together, and even the original patterns on the scales were hard to make out.
"Do humans use lamps when filming themselves too?"
Di Tian glanced at the small room.
"Presumably so they can see clearly."
The Silver Dragon King didn't answer immediately.
On the screen, Liu Ruyan happened to be responding to a viewer's request. She took off one of her earrings, placed it in her palm, and slowly turned it halfway around. What had originally been no more than a spot of light finally revealed its fine patterns.
The Silver Dragon King watched closely, only looking away after the earring had been put back on.
Then the phone slowly moved from its original position.
She didn't intensify the silver light nearby, but instead drew it back a little. The camera shifted to an angle where the brightest spot no longer faced the screen directly, and the silver that had blurred together really did gain several distinct edges.
Di Tian's gaze flickered.
If all she wanted was to light this place up, even ten more Cloud Sound Workshops would have been no trouble.
Yet lighting a place up and filming it clearly turned out not to be quite the same thing.
The Silver Dragon King put the new and old clips side by side and watched them silently for a while.
She kept the new one, but didn't delete the old one either.
"There's someone else beside that woman," she said suddenly.
"That's the person playing music for her."
"What about the one holding the paper?"
Di Tian looked at the edge of the screen. Shen Qilan's hand appeared briefly as she passed a cup of water over. Liu Ruyan took it and smiled at someone off camera.
"She should be someone who prepares these things with her."
The Silver Dragon King murmured in acknowledgment.
She said nothing more, so Di Tian stayed as well. After a while, a new video from the shore was forwarded to them. In it, the little beast once again tumbled over in front of its reflection in the water.
In the silent depths, the silver light suddenly stirred ever so slightly.
"Play it again."
Di Tian tapped the clip to replay it.
This time he didn't watch the phone, but looked toward the place where the silver light rested.
For a long time, whenever he came down, he had asked about her injuries, the Soul Beasts, or matters in the forest that needed handling.
Tonight, however, someone remained awake a little longer for a little creature that couldn't recognize itself.
Di Tian held the phone a little steadier.
On the shore, Xiong Jun had finally learned to circle around behind a tree.
He crouched down, hid his shoulders, and patiently waited for the little beast to come over on its own. Just as its ears appeared, Er Ming's lowered voice came from behind him.
"Your foot is still sticking out."
Xiong Jun looked down.
That paw was wider than the tree trunk.
He fell silent for a moment, then quietly switched to another tree.