I settled into it easier than before.

  That was the one thing that had actually changed. A few weeks ago sitting still felt like punishment. Now it felt like... stepping through a door I knew how to find.

  The inner world opened up around me. Glowing patterns stretching in every direction. The sealed sphere deep in the center, pulsing slow and steady like always.

  I exhaled. Kept my mind still.

  Then a hand grabbed my arm.

  Not gentle. Not slow. It yanked — hard — and the ground disappeared under me. I fell through my own inner world like it had no floor, the glowing patterns blurring past, the sealed sphere shrinking above me as I dropped further and further down than I had ever been.

  I hit something solid.

  Darkness. Complete darkness. Different from anything I had seen in here before. Heavier. Older.

  I scrambled to my feet. "What—"

  A laugh echoed around me. Low. Slow. Coming from everywhere and nowhere.

  Deeper, the voice said. Let's go somewhere they can't follow.

  Chen Wei's eyes snapped open.

  She didn't speak. Didn't move. Just sat completely still, her qi reaching outward, reading the air around Qin Mu's motionless body.

  Something was wrong.

  Liu Hao felt it a second later. Her head turned sharply toward him. "His qi—"

  "I know." Chen Wei was already moving.

  They didn't need to discuss it. Both of them pressed their palms gently against his shoulders, closed their eyes, and pushed their consciousness inward — following the thread of his qi into the inner world.

  What they found stopped them cold.

  It wasn't the glowing patterns. It wasn't the sealed sphere. It wasn't anything they had seen the last time they entered.

  It was him.

  Qin Mu.

  But not the Qin Mu they knew.

  He was massive. Towering. So impossibly large that the entire inner world seemed small beneath him. He stood at the center of everything, head slightly bowed, completely still. His robes — robes he had never worn in the real world — moved like smoke around him, dark and endless.

  And he was looking down at them.

  Red eyes. Glowing. Calm.

  And on his face — that smile. Quiet. Patient. Like he had been waiting there for a very long time and didn't mind waiting a little longer.

  Chen Wei felt it hit her chest like a wall. Not fear exactly. Something older than fear. Something that made every instinct she had scream one thing —

  Leave. Now.

  She grabbed Liu Hao's wrist and pulled them both out.

  I gasped.

  The camp came back around me — trees, fire, morning air. My hands were pressed flat against the ground like I needed to make sure it was real.

  I sat there breathing for a second.

  Chen Wei and Liu Hao were already out of their meditation. Sitting across from me. Neither of them was speaking.

  I looked at them. "What?"

  Liu Hao opened her mouth. Closed it.

  Chen Wei just looked at me — steady as always, but something behind her eyes was different. Something she was keeping very still.

  "Nothing," she said quietly. "Rest."

  I frowned. "You're both looking at me like I grew a second—"

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  "Rest, Mu'er." Firm. Final.

  I looked between them one more time. They weren't going to say it. Whatever it was.

  I lay back, staring up at the dark branches above.

  The inner world was already quiet again. Like nothing had happened.

  But my arm still felt the ghost of something grabbing it and pulling down.

  I didn't mention that either.

  We broke camp early the next morning.

  I didn't argue about it. Honestly at this point I just went with whatever they decided. Chen Wei says move, we move. Liu Hao says eat, we eat. I was basically a very confused teenager following two girls through a cultivation world and trying not to embarrass myself too much.

  So far I was failing at that last part.

  I rolled up my mat, grabbed my bag, and looked around at the dark trees one last time. Couldn't say I'd miss this place. Between the creepy fog, the uneven ground, and whatever had happened in my meditation yesterday… yeah. No attachment whatsoever.

  "Ready?" Chen Wei asked, already standing at the edge of the clearing.

  "Been ready," I said. "This place gives me the creeps."

  Liu Hao walked past me, shoulders straight, not even glancing my way. "You trained here for weeks and now it gives you the creeps."

  "It gave me the creeps the whole time. I just didn't say anything."

  She stopped. Looked at me. Then kept walking.

  I took that as a win.

  We moved through the forest in a line — Chen Wei leading, me in the middle, Liu Hao behind. The trees thinned slowly, the light getting better the further we went. My legs had gotten used to this kind of walking by now. A few weeks ago this would have destroyed me. Now it was just… morning.

  That felt good to notice.

  The path started to widen after a while. The ground got smoother. And then — faint but there — I smelled something.

  Food.

  My stomach reacted before my brain did.

  "Is that…" I sniffed again. "Is that actual cooked food? Like real food? Not storage bag food?"

  Chen Wei glanced back at me. "The village is close."

  "How close?"

  "Close enough."

  I walked faster. Liu Hao sighed behind me.

  The trees opened up and there it was — a small village, dirt paths, low rooftops, smoke rising from chimneys. People moving around doing normal things. It looked simple. Quiet. Completely ordinary.

  I could have cried.

  "Okay," I said, taking it all in. "Okay this is nice. This is really nice."

  Liu Hao appeared beside me, arms crossed, scanning the village with sharp eyes. "Don't draw attention. Don't talk too much. Don't ask weird questions."

  "I never ask weird questions."

  She looked at me.

  "Okay I ask some weird questions."

  Chen Wei was already walking toward the village entrance, calm and composed like always. People nearby glanced at her — just for a second, just a flicker — before looking away. Something about the way she moved made people's eyes slide off her carefully, like they weren't sure if they were allowed to stare.

  I noticed that. Filed it away.

  Liu Hao leaned close as we followed. "Eyes forward," she said quietly. "And don't embarrass us."

  "When have I ever—"

  "Mu'er."

  "…eyes forward. Got it."

  We entered the village together. The smell of food got stronger. Somewhere a kid was laughing. A cart rolled past. Everything felt so normal it almost hurt.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept walking. Kept my mouth shut. Mostly.

  That evening I went into meditation like always.

  The inner world opened up. Glowing patterns. The sealed sphere. The familiar heavy silence.

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  No voice. No laugh. No mocking. Just… quiet. The kind of quiet that felt different from peace. More like the quiet of an empty room where someone had just been standing.

  I stayed in longer than usual, half expecting it to show up late. It didn't.

  I came out and sat by the fire. Chen Wei was reading something. Liu Hao was sharpening a small blade. Neither of them looked up.

  I didn't say anything.

  Maybe it was just a quiet day. Maybe I was overthinking it.

  I went to sleep telling myself that.

  The next morning I went in again.

  Same thing.

  Glowing patterns. Sealed sphere. Silence.

  I walked through the inner world slowly this time, looking. The space where it usually appeared — that spot near the center where the voice always came from — was empty. Nothing. Not even a trace of that reddish fog it sometimes left behind.

  Just dark. Just quiet.

  Hello?

  I felt stupid the second I thought it. Calling out to the thing that had been mocking me for weeks.

  But nothing answered.

  I came out and stared at the ground for a long time.

  Liu Hao noticed. "You okay?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Fine."

  She looked at me for a second longer than normal. Then went back to what she was doing.

  I wasn't fine. I didn't know why the silence bothered me more than the voice ever had. It just did.

  Something that loud doesn't just go quiet for no reason.

  On the third day I went in and found it.

  I almost missed it at first. The reddish fog was low — barely there, drifting across the ground like something left over from a dream. It wasn't the deep red I had seen before. Lighter. The color of old rust. The kind you see in horror movies right before something happens and you already know it's too late for the person on screen.

  I walked through it slowly.

  The inner world felt bigger than usual. Emptier. My footsteps made no sound. The glowing patterns around me were dim, like they were holding their breath.

  And then I saw it.

  In the center. Where the inner self used to stand.

  A sword.

  Not a normal sword. Nothing about it was normal. It was massive — a giant claymore, wide as my forearm, tall as I was. It floated slightly above the ground, perfectly still, like it had always been there and the rest of the world had just finally caught up.

  Chains wrapped around it. Thick, black, the same kind that had grabbed the inner self. They coiled around the blade from hilt to tip, binding it completely, links glowing faint crimson in the fog.

  And down the center of the blade — a line of dark red. Blood. Moving slowly, flowing down the fuller like it had its own pulse, dripping from the tip and disappearing into the ground below.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  I stood there. Couldn't move. Couldn't speak.

  The fog drifted around it like it was breathing. The chains held. The blood kept flowing.

  And somewhere in the back of my mind — quiet, almost nothing — I felt like I had seen this before.

  Like it knew me.

  Like it had always known me.

  I took one step forward.

  The blood on the ground rippled.

  I stopped.

  The fog thickened. The chains glowed brighter for just a second. Then settled.

  Silence.

  Just me. The fog. The chains.

  And the sword that wouldn't stop bleeding.