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...
The second treasure, Millennial Frozen Stone from Icy Boulder Trail, lies beneath eternal snow translucent as ice yet undiminished for millennia. Stones exposed fare poorly; cave-stored ones excel...
My daughter Xiaochu, three years afflicted sweating, wind-fearing, coughing blood... Thousand remedies failed. According to Master Diviner, I fed her cypress ashes, still no relief.
No cure, no ritual worked. What remains? If she perishes, how shall this father endure? Agony, agony!
Hearing of Cangzhou's Blue Luan's reviving blood, I ride through frozen wastes for hope. Gods of mercy, spare my child. This wretch seeks nothing else.
Under Icy Boulder's veins flow hidden streams. Northward lies moonlit caverns...
Jiayou 4th Winter: Blizzards trapped me. Three months from home, Xiaochu's face haunts me. Does she eat? Stay warm?
A scholar unarmed, robbed and wounded yet two treasures remain. Now storms delay me...
Cross mountains only when winds die. Disobeyers freeze... perish...
Between gales, I saved herb-gatherers good deeds for Xiaochu's karma. Strangers rescued, yet my own flesh I fail! Heaven mocks!
This humble life matters not. But if I die here, who'll shield fatherless Xiaochu? Illness? Future loneliness? Wedding day without my arm? Failed father...
Third treasure: Uncommon pine nuts from Boarwood frost-defying, snow-plump, jewel-like, fragrant...