In her feverish delirium, Liu Yan noticed how the air filled with a metallic buzzing sound. Shortly afterwards, the dense branches that cast deep shadows over the forest were briefly cleared.
"Cultists," whispered Xinxin, peering cautiously outside.
Liu Yan could hear her heart beating. Strong and fast, as if it would jump out of her chest at any moment. She quickly pressed herself back against the hollowed-out tree, holding Liu Yan tightly. "Zhao Yuan and Zhao Yuehao," she whispered, her eyes filled with sheer panic. She closed them and took a deep breath.
The brothers mustn't find them. They hadn't planned on encountering cultivators, let alone members of the Zhao family.
Footsteps receded and voices sounded in the distance.
"Check over there, their trail disappears here!" one of them called.
"They followed the demon," Xinxin said.
Liu Yan closed his eyes, feeling feverish and weak. His veins burned and itched. He was freezing, only to want to tear his clothes off the next moment because an unexpected heat overcame him.
Xinxin held his hands tightly and listened intently to the outside.
The sun was slowly setting, transparent black wisps of fog rose from the ground, and the miasma flowers gave off an eerie purple glow. Xinxin wrapped her arms around him and felt his temperature with her forehead. "The miasma poisoned you when you were pulled into the demon sphere," she said, dabbing away his sweat.
She reached for his hand and felt his pulse. Liu Yan was only vaguely aware of what was happening. Xinxin meant calm, warmth. She spoke to him, but he didn't respond; he didn't understand what she was saying because his ears felt strangely numb.
The only thing that still seemed real was her, whom he clung to.
Suddenly, she shook him and anger welled up inside him. Couldn't she just hold him for a while? Did she have to constantly pull and tug at him? He slowly opened his eyes. Xinxin looked frightened and worried.
"The poisoning will kill you by morning if we don't act," she explained quietly. Liu Yan shook his head.
He had endured worse suffering before and had not died. But Xinxin did not let up and shook him again.
"When miasma flowers bloom, some berries, roots, or plants here have surely developed a kind of antidote to defend themselves against it," she said quickly, lifting his face between her hands.
"Liu Yan, you have to stay here, understand? I'm going to find an antidote!" Liu Yan felt himself being gently leaned against the hollowed-out tree.
He wanted to protest as Xinxin's warmth receded. He raised his hands weakly, but she was already gone. Only a cold breeze remained.
Had she abandoned him? Left him alone? Had he become a burden, had everything she said been a lie? Now that they were free, she would surely make faster progress without him.
A headache spread through him and he slammed his hands against his skull. The pain stung like red-hot needles in his brain. He opened his mouth to scream, but his throat was parched, and no sound came out.
A tear fell from the corner of his eye and ran down his face. Pain, the feeling of having been betrayed again. Why did he keep getting his hopes up when he was always let down anyway?
Shivering, he crouched down in the hollow in the ground. What had she said? Hadn't she said something? He was freezing, he was sweating, everything hurt.
He manically scratched his arms until the earth mixed with his blood. It hissed and a stench of burnt incense filled the air. He quickly pressed his hands to the wounds and opened his eyes wide. He heard a rustling and a crackling. He listened.
"Do you have her?" asked a young male voice. It had to be Zhao Yuehao.
"Damn it!" he cursed. Zhao Yuan must have been with him and must have shaken his head.
"Did she escape?" asked Yuehao, stunned.
"I doubt it.
Shortly before we landed, I could still sense her aura. She suddenly disappeared when we reached the forest, when..."
He didn't continue. Liu Yan swallowed. When he had absorbed Jingzi. The demon was dead, which was why her aura had disappeared. He closed his eyes and rubbed his aching head against the brittle, rough bark.
"Misfortune is haunting our family, Dage, I tell you, all this at once can't be a coincidence!"
"We should never have let the curse shackle into our house," Yuan said bitterly.
"Father cannot disobey the emperor's order, besides, the engagement was decided before the two were born," Yuehao interjected.
"Similar to the engagement with Weiye now, as long as Father has no reason to cancel, he must follow the emperor's decree."
"But we knew better, Yuehao. We knew he was a magnet for bad karma, we knew misfortune would follow him. That's why we didn't look when Jiejie took her anger out on him. Only his pain can filter the bad karma," Yuan said angrily.
"If he really is dead, if that is his body lying in our backyard, little brother, then the misfortune has only just begun. The karma in him has nowhere else to go, and it will fall back on our family first."
Liu Yan pricked up his ears. Xinxin had once said something similar. If he died, the corrupted qi that had accumulated inside him would be released.
Serves you right, he laughed inwardly. Although he was still alive, the idea of seeing the Zhao family suffer amused him immensely.
They deserved it, every one of them, from the head of the family to the kitchen maid, deserved a terrible fate and a cruel end.
Liu Yan suppressed a dry cough. He tasted blood in his mouth and carefully wiped it off his torn robe. "Yuan, we should collect the skulls and give the remains we find a proper burial.
If the demon is truly gone, evil spirits will soon form here from the miasma left behind," said Yuehao.
Liu Yan flinched when he saw a pair of boots coming dangerously close to his cave. He held his breath as the footsteps revealed that one of the brothers was dragging something unruly.
He stumbled backward but did not fall and did not seem to have noticed the opening.
Shivering, Liu Yan wrapped his arms around his upper body and tried to suppress the pain inside him so as not to attract attention, while he could hear the two men nearby picking the skulls from the flowers.
Gradually, the light they had provided faded, and his hiding place grew darker and colder. He drifted off, back to a time when he had crouched in a corner of the cold palace in exactly the same way.
Heavy rain had flooded most of the dilapidated, desolate rooms. It was warm, too warm, and he had been sweating, just like now.
The rain was pouring down, and he looked through one of the large round wooden windows. A small bell that hung from the roof and had not rung for a long time swayed in the wind and endured the constant impact of pebble-sized raindrops.
A narrow trickle ran incessantly from the roof. Little Liu Yan, perhaps seven or eight years old at the time, he wasn't sure, shivered in his soaked clothes, but had nothing else to wear.
His black hair clung to his body and his skin was unnaturally pale, revealing his blue-black veins underneath. His stomach growled and he pulled his legs even closer to his chest.
The big tree swayed back and forth, its lush green leaves seeming to welcome the rain. Out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw a person approaching him. He blinked and couldn't believe his eyes. He watched the maid scurry closer under an oil umbrella, cursing.
"Damn it, why me," she cursed. "Can't you send someone else?" She stepped closer and threw a plate in front of the door.
Only now did Liu Yan slowly get up and come into her field of vision. The woman screamed and jumped back. She looked at him like a rat that had crawled out of the sewer.
"Don't look at me," she cried.
"Don't talk to me." She ran away.
When she was out of sight, he opened the door, which was only half hanging on its hinges anyway, and turned over the overturned plate. On it were dried-up cookies and cupcakes that were slowly starting to mold.
He quickly scraped them off the floor before the rain could wash them away. They crumbled under his fingers and slowly dissolved. He quickly licked his fingers and even licked the floor before the cakes disappeared completely.
It tasted awful. The dirt and stones he swallowed burned in his stomach. He carried the rest of the mush on the plate inside and set it down on a small table.
He wasn't allowed to eat everything at once. Sometimes they forgot to bring him anything for a few days. If he ate everything at once, his stomach pains would get worse again.
So he sat down on a dusty chair and dangled his legs, resting his head on his arms and looking at the tarnished pile of dough and crumbs like it was treasure.
Someone must have had a birthday. Cake wasn't available every day, not for him. Maybe it was his birthday? He didn't know. He knew that days, weeks, months, and years passed, but he could only tell that a year had gone by from the change of seasons.
Sometimes he decided to become a year older on the first day of snow. Sometimes only when the first buds bloomed. He didn't know exactly when his birthday was. He only knew this concept from his teachers.
But they didn't stay long. Most only stayed for a few weeks of the month. Then they were afraid of catching too much bad karma and went to a temple or had themselves purified by monks in a monastery. Slowly, he closed his eyes and let the sound of the rain lull him to sleep.
"Was that all of them?"
Liu Yan startled awake from his memories. He was hot, his head hurt, and he was thirsty, thirsty enough that he would drink from a puddle.
"I think so, it's getting light soon, we should come back later with helpers and comb through the forest more thoroughly," the older voice called back.
"The poor things, Jingzi must have been intercepting them for decades and collecting them here. That explains her power. A demon who can create a multi-layered sphere belongs to the upper class," said Yuehao.
"We'll renew the protection around the estate, and then, when we've regained our strength, we'll search for her again thoroughly with our brothers from the Silver Crane Sect. If she's hiding, it's somewhere around here. She can't just leave her territory and leave her cultivated miasma flowers behind," Yuan objected.
"If we fly back on our swords, we'll make it back before dusk and can reassure the employees."
Once again, the sound of whirring metal filled the air. Liu Yan was left alone in the darkness. Would this tree become his grave, and if so, would anyone find him?
Coldness took hold of him, gnawing at his heart and spreading through his veins and meridians. He did not shiver, even though he could feel himself slowly cooling down. His movements and his breathing slowed down and gradually came to a halt. His gaze was half-open, fixed on the cave entrance.
With his life, the last light of that damned hope would die within him. That spark he clung to over and over again, burning him every time.
Xinxin fought her way through the undergrowth. Thanks to the glowing flowers, she had at least some light. She searched the bushes and dug for roots under trees that still had a few buds sprouting.
It was only natural that a living organism like a forest would defend itself against the intruder and the corrupted qi that Jingzi had brought with her.
There were rodents and birds, which meant there had to be something keeping it alive. She dug her fingers until they bled and prayed silently that Liu Yan would stay in hiding. She wasn't sure if he had understood what she had said. He had literally burned up between her hands.
She crawled on all fours through the dirt and earth, tearing her dress. There wasn't much left of the shred anyway. With the few pieces of jewelry she still carried hidden on her body, she would definitely get them new clothes as soon as they got out of here.
The journey was long and arduous. Beyond the forest, they would have to pass through countless villages and towns before they reached the border. She hoped that the unrest with the neighboring country had not yet escalated and that they would be able to flee across the great river as she had planned.
Nervously, she brushed her hair out of her face and continued searching. The Zhao brothers must not discover her. Xinxins heart pounded, she was at the end of her tether and close to tears. If it was the fate of the curse shackle to absorb all the suffering of the people, she could only feel compassion for Tian Liu Yan.
The suffering she had endured in the last few weeks alone was enough for three lifetimes. She had never been lucky, but she was always content with what she was given. As long as she was free.
The time she spent with the human traffickers before she met the scholar Tao had been terrible. Never knowing if and when she would be next. Or if the men would change their minds and do the same to her as they did to the adult women.
Even today, when she closed her eyes, she could still see the blood running between her legs. She could see the pain they had to endure, hear the screams and the futile pleas for mercy.
At the time, she was too young to understand exactly what had been done to them, but with each passing year, as she grew older and understood more, her fear and revulsion grew.
She had hidden herself away for a long time after Tao's death, so great was her fear of falling into the hands of such people again. Until she met him and her comrades, allies who betrayed her.
She frantically searched the ground when her hand got caught in dense, thorny undergrowth. She gritted her teeth and pulled the thorns out of her skin. When she looked up, she saw deep black, juicy berries. Her heart leapt.
The fact that the antidote protected itself from predators with a thorny bush was a clear indication that it would work. She quickly plucked some of the berries.
Their shells were hard as stone. She gathered so many that one of the fruits rolled out of her hand.
An owl nearby didn't need to be told twice. Quickly and silently, it grabbed the rare treat and in one gulp, it was gone.
Xinxin smiled. Now she was sure. She just had to make it back to Liu Yan before dawn.