Jia Ming felt a headache right after recovering her memories.
Her head was now covered with sweat as she tried to massage her forehead to ease the pain.
"Ugh...!"
.....
"Little Shan, remember that you must retrieve the Heavenly Cotton for mama, okay?" A mother hurriedly said while running through a huge hallway, carrying her daughter.
"Stop right there!" Plenty of guards were chasing the pair through the hallway, all of them wearing a full suit of armor.
"Mama, I don't understand..."
Little Shan was getting dizzy as her mother was running very fast, shaking her, who was in her arms.
"You... you'll understand soon." The mother of Little Shan looked at her daughter with a complicated gaze in her eyes.
"Hmm? What is soon? When is that?" Little Shan asked innocently.
"...It's nothing." The mother responded meekly as she had a worried expression on her face, looking behind her ever so often.
Finally, they reached the end of the hallway.
There was a room with a big door, covered in various Zodiac marks. A hand could be seen in the center, indicating that one's hand needed to be put there to open the door.
The guards were rapidly approaching as the beads of sweat on the mother's head produced quicker and quicker. She hastily put her hand in, but the door didn't budge.
She pushed the door desperately in hopes of getting through. However, all of these attempts were futile.
"No..." The mother cried in despair as she looked one last time at her child, who was still innocently tilting her head.
The guards saw the mother's desperate attempt to open the door as they talked among themselves.
"It's useless, she'll never open that door."
"Yeah, that door can only be opened by someone of master's blood."
"But since he's dead already, no one can open it anymore."
As the mother heard this, she had a flurry of thoughts go through her mind. But the most dominant one was...
"That's right... her hand!"
Without hesitation, the mother pulled her daughter's hand and put it on the hand on the door.
"Ouch! Mama, it hurts."
This time, the door reacted!
Rumbling, dust fell off the door. It had not been opened for a long time.
The guards were shocked! Why did this little girl's hand open the door? Aren't they just thieves?
The leader of the guards hesitated for a moment before saying, "Catch them alive! We need to interrogate them."
The door slowly opened, and the mother anxiously looked back and forth as the guards were approaching.
At last, the door was big enough for her daughter to go through, but alas, not for her.
In a last minute decision, she threw her daughter in. The door reacted to this move as it starting to close.
"Ouch! Mama, don't throw me..." Little Shan said. A tear could be seen in the corner of her eye. With one hand, she was wiping her eye, and with the other, she was massaging her back which hit the floor.
The mother looked at her daughter inside the room, and looked back behind her. The guards were only a few breaths away from catching up.
Thankfully, the door was closing, so there was no way for the guards to catch her daughter, Meng Shan.
The mother tearfully reminded her daughter once more, "You have to avenge both me and your father, Little Shan! Retrieve the Heavenly Cotton..."
Meng Shan sucked on one of her fingers as the door closed, cutting off her mother's words.
Oblivious to the situation, Meng Shan walked towards the door and spoke, "Are we playing hide and seek, mama?"
Meng Shan waited for her mother to respond. After a long moment of silence, she said, "Mama, you said we were supposed to hide from the guards... why are you hiding from me?"
Feeling sad, she walked back with lazy steps as her posture was slumped.
Suddenly, her foot stepped on an enigmatic figure on the floor, and the room became dark.
"Huh? I'm scared!" Meng Shan was very afraid of the dark.
After this, countless more enigmatic figures consecutively lit up through the room, and with the room being dark, the enigmatic figures were easily seen.
"What's this?"
Meng Shan walked towards one of the enigmatic figures. She was intrigued as this one reminded her of something.
Trying to recall where she saw this, she put her pointer on the side of her head and closed her eyes.
"Aha! Mama, I found it." Meng Shan subconsciously said.
She recalled that she saw this figure previously in a book, and that her mother was repeatedly pointing at it and saying, "This is where the Heavenly Cotton is, go here, okay?"
"Okay, mama." Meng Shan said as she put her palm on the figure.
Suddenly, the other enigmatic figures all disappeared, and the one that Meng Shan was holding was the only one left.
Meng Shan trembled. It was incredibly dark inside the room, the only source of light being the figure she was holding on.
The figure lit up stronger and stronger. It also grew in size.
"Huh?" Meng Shan watched curiously as her fear of the dark dissipated.
The figure that she was holding on now covered the whole wall.
Suddenly, the room shook, making Meng Shan fall on the floor headfirst.
"Ouch!"
Blood came out of the side of her head, the room still shaking.
The whole room lit up in a flash, and darkened again, Meng Shan not there anymore.
.....
Jia Ming walked towards her bed as she stumbled on the little bumps on the floor.
"Ahh! It..."
As she recovered her memories, a teardrop came out of her eye.
Many more tears followed as she sobbed. "Mo- mother...!"
Li Bai looked at Jia Ming curiously. "I wonder what she remembered to make her bawl like that."
After which he walked on over where Jia Ming was and patted her back slightly, so as to ease her pain.
