Sixty kilometers west of Cangzhou lies Mount Lingfrost, home to the Azure Birds. Resembling doves yet crowned crimson with long tails, they dance with wings like trailing clouds.
These sacred attendants of Queen Mother of the West possess blood that tempers Divine Weapon and revives the dead.
Yet being spiritual beings, they dwell only on sacred peaks, perch solely on snow-phoenix trees, feed exclusively on pine nuts, and drink only crystalline springs. To summon them, one must gather Cangzhou's Four Treasures:
First: Frost White Paulownia.
Second: Millennial Frozen Stone.
Third: Snowbound Pine Nuts.
Fourth: Subterranean Coldspring.
The first treasure, Frost White Paulownia a rare tree found along Frostsift Path feels warm as jade. It stands centuries alive, remains erect centuries dead, endures centuries fallen.
In Jiayou 4th Year's autumn, I reached Frostsift Path. Endless frost and skeletal forests stretched before me.
Amid icebound wastes, a gleam flickered southeastward...