This night was too quiet.
A dangerous kind of quiet.
The kind that implied the world was holding its breath.
Tian Shen adjusted the straps on his travel pouch for the third time and fidgeted for the fifth.
He was ready now, after the last major disaster.
He grumbled, not wanting to run away again.
Elder Su, beside him, simply stepped past him, her robes billowing like a herald of frost.
Drowsy chirped a mournful farewell from a branch.
Little Mei waved from behind.
Feng Yin stood with her arms crossed, with smile on her face but worry on her heart.
"Go now, She’s not going to slow down."
Tian Shen called back, jogging to catch up with his master, who was already descending the sect’s misty stairway like a moving glacier of purpose.
The road south of the sect was rarely traveled. Most disciples used flight talismans or direct teleportation formations. But Elder Su? No shortcuts.
"We walk," she had said. "If your legs can’t carry you through the mountains, they won’t carry you through battle either."
Tian Shen gritted his teeth and kept pace. Actually he’s just pretending. He doesn’t feel tired at all.
Ancient pine trees whispered overhead, their needles dusting sunlight like falling stars.
The air was crisp with the scent of moss and Qi-rich herbs, and the mountain paths wound through glens and valleys like nature’s own script.
"Do we know what’s actually happening?"
He asked once, during their second hour of walking.
"Then why are we going?"
"Because I was told to."
"That’s... odd of you."
She glanced sideways.
"I was forced to say yes. And the fact that it involves a literal sect burn down to ashes makes in even scarier."
"...Ah. So the same suicidal reasoning, just with paperwork attached."
But her fan snapped open.
Which meant she was amused.
He hadn’t learned how to tell the difference yet.
They stopped by a stream shaded with blue-leafed trees.
Elder Su sat on a flat stone, pouring tea from a travel kettle she conjured from her storage ring.
Tian Shen knelt nearby, chewing dried meat and rice balls Feng Yin had packed for him.
He peeked at her, cautiously.
She looked... almost peaceful.
So naturally, he had to ruin it.
"Why’d you take me as a disciple?"
Her hand paused on the teacup.
"Do you want the real answer?"
"Also, you were loud."
"...I’m sensing a pattern."
"But now," she added, sipping slowly, "you’ve become... annoying."
He wasn’t sure if that was a insult or what.
He simply chewed his rice ball slower.
"Would it have mattered if I failed?"
"I would have let you die."
Then looked at him, eyes cool and silver beneath her lashes.
"And now, you don’t get to quit."
He looked back at the stream.
The water flowed gently, undisturbed.
But under it, he imagined there were stones being worn away, moment by moment.
Maybe that was what training with her was like.
Painful, slow erosion.
Until only the core remained.
They made camp in a ruined watchtower nestled in a forested pass.
Elder Su didn’t bother pitching a tent. She simply sat atop a stone boulder, her back straight, her eyes closed in meditation.
Tian Shen, on the other hand, had a bedroll, a tiny campfire, and the overwhelming realization that this was the first night he’d spent outside in a while.
The stars looked... beautiful out here.
He poked at the fire with a stick. He glanced at Elder Su and asked.
"...What if I screw up?"
Elder Su didn’t open her eyes.
"That doesn’t sound very reassuring."
"You should’ve asked for reassurance from someone less practical."
"I could ask you the same."
The fire crackled. A nocturnal beast roared somewhere far away.
Tian Shen settled onto his back, staring at the sky.
He was exhausted, bruised, and still mentally shaken from the meeting back at the Sect Hall.
He had no idea what they were about to walk into. But—
He didn’t feel worried either.
He had strength to fight back.
Like he had a say in what came next.
He drifted to sleep to the sound of the forest.
And a quiet voice saying, just before he slipped under—
A foot nudged him awake.
Tian Shen blinked blearily.
"...Is that your way of a wake-up call?"
Elder Su had already doused the fire, packed her satchel, and tied her hair into a high knot.
She tossed a peach at his face.
A bite revealed it was juicy and delicious.
She said nothing. But the corners of her lips twitched.
They continued down the mountain trail.
No longer like master and student, not quite equals either.
Something in between.
And, for once, something that didn’t feel hopeless.
By midday, the path narrowed into a canyon gorge flanked by slate-gray cliffs. The wind grew stiller. Birds no longer sang. Even the insects had vanished.
Tian Shen tugged his robe as a clammy mist crept in, brushing across his skin like fingers searching for warmth.
That was his first warning.
She never slowed unless something deserved it.
Tian Shen reached for his sword—not because he thought he needed it, but because not holding it would make it worse.
Elder Su’s fan was already open.
As the journey continues, so did the terrain.
A thinning of leaves. A souring of the air. A heaviness in the wind that clung to the skin like unseen cobwebs.
Tian Shen noticed it midway through their fourth day of travel.
He didn’t say anything at first—because traveling with Elder Su had taught him that commenting on ominous things often invited them to become more ominous.
But eventually, when even the trees began to look wrong, he dared to speak.
"Is the ground supposed to... be ?"
Elder Su did not slow her pace. Her fan remained closed, but her eyes glinted with sharp awareness.
’Then what do you know?!?’
He cursed inwardly, then kept walking.
They moved in silence, each step swallowed by thickening fog. The trees thinned out until only twisted stumps remained, gnarled like the hands of buried corpses.
Up ahead, a gate appeared—half-collapsed, moss-grown, its once-golden plaques now blackened with soot and time.
Inscribed on the crumbling stone:
Tian Shen’s breath caught.
Elder Su said nothing, but her eyes shimmered faintly with silver light.
She stepped through the gate first.
It pressed against them like a second atmosphere—denser, foul with corrupted Qi. Even the spiritual energy in his meridians recoiled, like it didn’t want to be here.
They passed through a shattered grove—once clearly a sacred orchard, now with trees bent into unnatural arches, their bark blackened with Qi burns.
Every step felt like it took a piece of him. Not in pain, exactly, but in lightness—his spiritual balance felt dulled, like a calligraphy brush dipped in muddy ink.
Even his breathing grew shallow.
"...Feels like we’re walking into something’s mouth."
He muttered. Which didn’t get any response.
They came to a rise overlooking the Lotus Pavilion.
Or what remained of it.
Tian Shen stopped cold.
Elder Su stood beside him, silent.
Below, nestled in the valley, the once-beautiful satellite sect lay ruined.
Then Tian Shen heard it.
Not loud. Not intelligible.
Too many voices for a place this empty.
"Good," Elder Su said. "It means you’re still sane."
Buildings collapsed, trees grew inward, spiraled like twisted bonsai cages. The air shimmered with oil-slick darkness—corrupted Qi. An entire lake near the central courtyard had turned into obsidian glass.
People, frozen in mid-motion. A disciple shielding a younger child. A sect elder raising his blade. Another elder in mid-chanting.
Another sword-wielder, judging by his frozen stance, was trying to retreat.
His face locked in terror.
All of them—calcified.
As if their very life essence had been flash-frozen by some malevolent design.
Tian Shen whispered and swallowed thickly.
He tried not to look at the petrified statue beside the path.
He didn’t ask if they were too late.
But they hadn’t come to mourn.
They came to solve this.
Even if it meant walking straight into hell’s waiting room.
But all that left was... faint whispers he can’t even be certain of.
Elder Su’s robes rustled in the wind.
"Now you understand."